A Conversation With Mischa Zvegintzov of Influence Army
When’s the last time you just picked up the phone and called someone — no calendar appointment, no text-first? If that thought makes you kinda jumpy…you need to listen to this conversation with Mischa Zvegintzov.
Mischa is — his description — ‘old school’. He made over a million phone calls and pounded the pavement. Now he helps companies capture the value of -their- conversations — with customers, with podcast guests, and as podcast guests.
Does email come up in the conversation? Absolutely! Even though he’s completely conversant with social media channels, Mischa is 100% keen on the value of the you-own-it relationships in an email list.
This is also a refreshingly personal and non-pitchy conversation — about being a parent as well as an entrepreneur.
Matthew Dunn: Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the Future of Email. My guest today, a gent who's closer to my age than most guests. Misha Zvegintsov. Did I get it
Mischa Zvegintzov: right? Matthew, amazing. Well done. All
Matthew Dunn: right. Misha, tell, tell me about Misha, man. We, we are getting acquainted live on the air here.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Yeah. Yep. So pleasantly surprised when I jumped on and saw that we are relatively close in age. Yeah. So many people in the marketing, podcasting space, online marketing space are, are the younger generation. They're puppies, man. They're just puppies. They are puppies. And speaking of that, too, it's funny when, when you get to see the poppies have some success, they think they have it figured out and it's [00:01:00] nowhere to go but up, but it's like, well, hang in there for a little bit because it will rain, right?
Matthew Dunn: So you went from stay at home dad to yoga to really building marketing and a brand and tell me about the business.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Yeah. So I help people guest speak on podcasts. Well, really what I like to say is I help people go on an influence tour and that all starts with guest speaking on podcasts. So we start to get speak on podcasts, getting our message out there in a big way.
So many benefits of that, which I can. Say quickly, but there's obviously the call to action where I literally can say, Hey, everybody, if you like what I'm talking about, you can join my influence army. That's what my membership is called, that I help people guess, speak on podcasts. It's called the influence.
I might go to, go to bad suck. com again, B A D Z U C K. com [00:02:00] join my influence army and we'll start getting on podcasts. So there's that power right there. Anyone listening right now. Right. And then podcasting. So sometimes the host will direct, direct recommend us to someone. So by the time we're done with this conversation, you are probably going to know a couple of people who are at least our age and perhaps some youngsters, but you're like, Hey, I think you need to talk to Misha because this guy is smart, savvy, spin through it.
He can help you. And so you might make a direct recommend. Sure. Sure. Yep. Sometimes the hosts themselves will use the services. By the time we're all said and done here, Matthew, you might go, wow, I need to be guest speaking on more podcasts. So help me. Hmm. Right.
Matthew Dunn: Connect a lot of people. What, what got you interested in
Mischa Zvegintzov: this?
Oh boy. That's such a great question. [00:03:00] So I, I'm old school sales.
Feed on the street sales for 20 years at some combination of door to door as in business to business. So in the 2000, early 2000s, late nine 1999, 2000 and such, I was, I was in the tech space going door to door business to business selling it infrastructure. Okay. Then next thing you know, I just, I have.
Oh boy. Built telemarketing teams. I've literally made a million hand dialed phone calls myself, then started using auto dialers. Sounds like that. Yep. Then I started sending out massive flyer campaigns to get the phone to ring and building scripts and doing all those sorts of things. The bulk of my sales.
Experience was in the home mortgage industry. So from about 2001 to about 2015, [00:04:00] somewhere in there funded, you know, 1. 5 billion in home loans. And that's a lot of houses, a lot of finances. Yeah. But anyway, mentors back and at those times were Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, I would have those tapes. Literally on my Walkman and autoplay.
But fast forward to 2012 timeframe, 10, somewhere in there, divorce parent, both parents died in rapid succession. What else happened? You know, financial distress, career upheaval, more failed relationships. And all of a sudden I found myself as a single dad. Needing to get my boys through school and just the universe was like, you need to retire and get your boys through school.
Yeah, by the grace of God, I had a, you know, enough money in the bank to retire. I'll never forget the day I went to my boss and said, [00:05:00] Hey man, I quit. I'm done. I'm retiring. And he goes, we'll match whatever offer you have out there. And I said, no, you don't understand. Like I'm done. I'm retiring. I quit. There are offers
Matthew Dunn: that can't be matched.
Exactly.
Mischa Zvegintzov: And this was 2014 15, I've lost track of the exact timeline, but he looked me straight in the eyes and said, Man, I wish I could quit too. I'll never forget it. But anyway, I, so then, I, so I retired. And my focus was hold space for those two boys, get them through grade school, get them through high school, love yoga, meditation, all the mindfulness practices.
And so basically I became a substitute yoga teacher. So I'm in Encinitas, California, perhaps the Mecca of West Coast yoga. And there's plenty of classes to sub, to be a sub. So it really just allowed me [00:06:00] to hold space for those boys, make their lunches, get them to swim lessons. I loved reading in my boys classes.
I don't know if you ever had an opportunity to do that, but loved that. But anyway, as one son got out of high school and moved out and the other one was getting ready to, Intuitively. I knew that I would have an opportunity to express myself entrepreneurially, be an entrepreneur again, marketing sales.
I love all that stuff. Marketing sales, entrepreneuring. And so I got in Russell Brunson's funnel, you know, Russell Brunson is sure click, click funnels, right? Yeah. Click funnels. Right. So he's a master online marketer. And I ended up in his, in his ecosystem. And of course, being a type compulsive, I jumped right into his 25, 000 a year coaching program.
This was a few [00:07:00] years ago by now, and I'll never forget it. I was talking to Waylon, who was 17, 18 at the time, just about to graduate from high school. And I said, Hey, Waylon. Found this guy, Russell Brunson, you know, I can't wait to jump back into online marketing, bring, bring all this old school feet on the street experience into the, into the, you know, the new world of this digital marketing.
And I said, Hey, it's going to cost 25, 000 a year. I can't believe I told him that, but also it's going to take a lot of time away that I had from, from you. And he said, Hey, dad, you know, I got my girlfriend. I've got my job. I'm just about to graduate got college dialed in. Do it, you know You don't need to babysit me anymore.
And I was like, Oh my gosh. Okay. So just dove straight in and fast forward to, I'm going to all these masterminds, [00:08:00] you know, in Mexico and Arizona and Florida, just meeting thousands of entrepreneurs, literally. I start a podcast, which is called the table rush talk show right away. Russell Brunson, it's like, start a, start a podcast.
So I started. So I'm interviewing people, interviewing people, I do an online virtual summit. I'm interviewing people, I'm traveling around the world, talking to entrepreneurs. And it becomes very clear, very quick that us entrepreneurs are horrible at telling our own stories, right? And then we're also horrible at telling our, our stories through our customers eyes.
One of the things that Russell Brunson is so gifted at and taught me and I saw is getting those customer testimonials dialed in, getting them on camera, getting them written. And then being able to tell, [00:09:00] tell your company's story through your customer's eyes. Hmm. Nice. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm seeing all this happening and I'm, I'm, I'm interviewing all these people.
I love people's stories too. I was a home loan officer, so I talked to thousands of people. And one of the questions you have to ask is what do you do? What's your two year work history? And My niche in the home loan business was CEO, CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, GMs, VPs. I had just gravitated, I have a finance degree, all this stuff can speak interest rates, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So would just be fascinated by what these entrepreneurs were doing, what these VPs were doing. So it was really easy and natural for me to have those conversations. Anyway I'm going along. So. All of a sudden, people start paying me to get their customer video testimonials. Oh, wow. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm flying around. [00:10:00] Yeah. Right. So people are like, okay, you're good at interviewing people. You're personable. You know, I ask great questions. I, you basically want to get the customer story arc. That's what I call it. The framework, get the customer story arc. So I'm getting, I got flown to Ireland to get customer testimonials there all around the United States.
Anyway, I'm getting all these customer testimonials being relatively new to the online marketing space, even though I'm getting paid, I have horrible imposter syndrome. Right? Where I'm like, am I adding value? Do I know what I'm doing? Is this going anywhere? Should I be putting myself out there? Two things happened really quick, in quick succession.
One of my customers, her name is Stacy Oliver. I wake up one morning to an email from her that says, Misha, you're the only one that moves the needle in my [00:11:00] business. She said, I pay all these other people and they, nothing happens. She says, I pay you and you drive revenue for me. Nice. Yeah. And I was like. Oh my gosh, like I am adding value, my, my old school knowledge is serving in this new realm.
And at the same time, coincidentally, I'd had a buddy, his name is Ryan Lipsy, and he's a title officer. So in real estate, if you buy a house or do a refinance, you need a title to show that Who owns the house, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But he's been doing it forever. He's got this massive Realtor following.
And he had been harassing me saying, Misha, I need you to teach my Realtors how to get video testimonials from their customers. Nice, yeah. Yep, and then I'm pretty savvy with repurposing that content. And he's like, you gotta show them how to turn that into micro content. And the reels, tick tocks, all these [00:12:00] things.
So he'd been harassing me. Finally broke me down after a few months. And I said, okay, so I get on his show. It's called the small business spotlight. And I talk about my perfect video testimonial system, my five step system for getting your customers to gladly do your selling for you. Hey, thank you. Apple fireworks.
I need to turn that off. So I crush it. I absolutely crush it. And I was like, I'm adding value. I've got a story to tell. I can tell the story. I need to go on a podcast tour. So I do this crazy Facebook post where I go, I'm going to go on this podcast tour. I'm going to teach everybody how to. Get their customer video testimonials, but I'm going to bring all my old school sales and marketing knowledge into it.
So I'm going to create the scripts. How do you find the podcast emails? How do you find the shows? What do you [00:13:00] say? Just all the stuff, right? And I go, who would want those assets? And I got this flood of engagement and. I was like, Oh my gosh, like people have a story to tell and they need help telling it.
And I was like, that's it. Light bulb went off. I can help people guest speak on podcasts, use all my stuff, but that's to take a, give you a relatively long answer, but I hope that answers it. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn: That's that's actually quite, quite fascinating on a whole bunch of levels. Two quick backup questions.
We're in Wyoming. And how the heck did you get from finance to this kind of marketing acumen?
Mischa Zvegintzov: Yeah. Boy, that's another great question. So Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Okay. Nice place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Teton Village, the big ski area for the skier. So yeah, I grew up skiing, fishing, camping, snowboarding. Early days of [00:14:00] snowboarding.
Yeah, early days of snowboarding. As a matter of fact, I was, yeah, so I started snowboarding Yeah, early. Yeah, and before that I'd been riding snurfers. I don't know if you remember
Matthew Dunn: the snurfer. The leash on the front, baby snowboard basically.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Yeah, absolutely. So I would climb Teton Pass, which is in Wilson, Wyoming, just outside of Jackson, and we'd snurf down it.
Anyway, I'm graduating, I'm in senior of high school, and I see somebody on a, on a Burton snowboard. Like the, one of the first ones around the time and I was like, that is insane. I need that. So anyway, I start snowboarding, but I was literally the first snowboarder on many of the ski areas in the West coast, California, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Targhee, like I would be that.
And we were, we were all of us before you got banned, right? Before we got [00:15:00] banned, we were on the race to see who could not, you know, the first, first, first border on the left. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I what happened was, is I, I started in financial services, my sales. So I, I, I had moved to San Francisco Bay area.
And I, I was what, four or five, six, seven years out of college, I had been a snowboard instructor. I was a pro snowboarder. So I was in the magazines, things like that, but I kept getting injured. And so I was like, I got to get, I got to get my life together. Right. Anyway, had a finance degree. I ended up in the San Francisco Bay area.
And I start, I become a retail commodities broker, which is that gnarliest of the boiler room telemarketing at the time. So [00:16:00] literal, literally boiler room telemarketing, if that makes sense when I say that to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matthew Dunn: You can hear in the background, all the other guys making the calls when that guy calls you, right?
Yes. And you were probably literally dialing pre auto dialer, as you said.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Yep. So I'm dialing like mad. What's that? Hard job. Hard job. I was brutal. I don't, I would, wouldn't recommend it to anybody. I mean, it was literally brutal. No, it was, it was brutal. And the people that I was working with were of sketchy character said with love.
Yeah. Yeah, you know, and so I'm in it, but I'm just paying my dues dial and dial and dial and learning how to talk on the phone listening to Zig Ziglar doing all these things and really learning my chop. So I get 2 or 3 years into it. Tech booms in full swing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Somebody says to me, Hey, Misha.[00:17:00]
You know, you are an animal on the phones, tech is in full swing, like we need a guy like you selling for us. And so all of a sudden I go from just grinding it out so gnarly to here's stock options, here's a base salary, here's a crazy commission structure. It's like, Oh my gosh. So literally overnight on paper, I'm worth a whole bunch of money due to these stock options.
And I'm thinking this is ridiculous. It's probably what people went through with Bitcoin. But anyway, next thing overnight, four or five months later, NASDAQ crashes. I don't know if you remember that time. All my stock options worth nothing. And so you have a six month vesting period. Yep. So like month four, I'm like, I can't wait to buy a house or whatever.
Sorry. Sorry. Overnight literally worth. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn: You're talking to com crash, right?
Mischa Zvegintzov: Yep. com crash. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And so at the time it was such a [00:18:00] crazy time. Yeah. It was. Company goes bankrupt. I get a raise to go to another tech company. It goes bankrupt. I get another raise to go to Pac Bell at the time. It was, yeah, SBC.
Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn: Shoot. What's his name? Cartoonist. No longer very popular. Worked Pac Bell.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Right, Scott? Yeah. Gilbert. Gilbert. Yes. Yes, so grinding it out in the corporate structure and the, the market is so brutal back then. Yeah. It literally, I worked, I went from knowing grinding on the phones, having success to that market completely collapsed.
I went to SBC Pac Bell and for one year I did not sell one thing and I'm a hard worker. Especially at the time. So I'm dialing, going on appointments, cold calling, doing everything I can. Not only did I not sell anything, I [00:19:00] sold inverse. I got, so I got handed this Territory and SBC's VPN product at the time.
It was so bad.
Matthew Dunn: It was so bad, yeah, because telcos were trying to figure out what, what their place was in a package. Yeah. Yeah.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Right? And the other thing was, at the time, due to the crazy government regulations, the telcos had the tech. But they, due to regulation, they couldn't sell it. So we were having to resell third party services by law.
Right? So we couldn't sell the good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we were selling, it was called COVID, I think. No, it wasn't COVID. It might even literally, the company might've been called COVID. You could look it up. But, oh my gosh, that's funny. I never made that connection. Wow. So we're selling this third party VPN.
That's so bad that I get handed this territory. People are backing out of their con their contract. So not only did I sell nothing, [00:20:00] I sold negative. It was brutal. Anyway, I had nostalgia, man. Yeah. Right. This is kind of fun. No, it's so fun telling these stories. I forget them. So here's what happens. I am trying to get a job.
Anywhere doing anything, and I have my wife, Dawn, at the time, who's, as I said, divorced now, but we're great friends, we've been divorced 10, 12, 15 years, something like that, but at the time, I'm married to Dawn, we have, Hooper is 9 months old, and I am trying to get a job anywhere doing anything, and so SBC, Pac Bell, I was like, I'll move to Wisconsin, I'll climb telephone poles, I'll hang telephone wire, like, I got a mouth to feed, right?
And Tech has completely collapsed. The economy is kind of shaky at best, so there's no jobs. My Don's wife's husband, Darren Riley [00:21:00] was his name, had been in mortgages. Third generation mortgage broker, best of the best. Mortgage broker you will ever meet. So Darren and his wife had been saying, Misha, they've been telling me for years, you need to get into the, into the mortgage business, you know, finance, you know, you're good with people.
You've paid your dues, you know, how to dial the phones, all this stuff. You need to get it in the mortgage business. And for whatever reason, I was like, absolutely not. I don't want to work with family. I'm not moving to San Diego. I get laid off finally, SBC. I'm trying to find another job. My only option is a job with Theron, Oceanside, California.
Pack up and leave San Francisco. And I did not want to leave San Francisco. I love San Francisco. And I was, I thought you were sentencing me to suburban hell in San Diego. Right. [00:22:00] And so I ended up in San Diego and 2001. And everything comes together for me in the mortgage business, everything, the, there's what's called the multiple listing service, the MLS, which is much more prevalent and known now, but back then realtors really only knew about it.
Darren goes, here's a thing called the MLS where all properties are listed for sale and here's the password and I was like, I'm a data guy and I was like, you mean I can log in and download every property listed for sale and he goes, you sure can. And as the new listings come up, I can know that he goes, yep.
And so I started marketing to him. I was like, Hey, you're selling your current house. You need a new one. So you're probably going to need a home loan. So that was, I'm just dialing for dollars there. [00:23:00] Start mailing to him. Then a title guy comes to me and says, Hey, here's access to a database of every property in California that you can subscribe to.
And it's data rich. I'm like, what, I can have access to that. And he goes, you sure can. And so I'm just downloading properties, all the robust information doing what's called reverse of pans, getting the phone numbers, telemarketing, whatever. It just went crazy. And at the time. Then, you know mortgages, real estate before the meltdown.
Pre 08, right? Yeah. So I worked for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, which was a paper, there's what's called prime loans, which are the best of the best loans, a paper loans. Wells Fargo is the best of the best, still is today, although they do some sketchy stuff on the banking [00:24:00] side. But anyway I, so I was doing a paper.
I was part of the solution, not part of the problem, I guess is what I'm trying to say. But anyway, so even through the meltdown, I thrived. It was just, I'd find the niche, find the, it's just my gift. Fast forward to divorce, financial chaos, due to, this was like 2014 ish, 13, I just Parents have died, gotten divorced, more failed relationships.
I had money in the bank and I was like, burned out. Yeah. I was like, I can't do this anymore. Retired, got my kids through school. And part of my journey is, how can I be of service? Like I've just had this prayer and mantra. This may be way too much information for you, but when I was 17 years old, I got sober.
I got clean and sober. I was, I was a derelict, right? And judge rank. I [00:25:00] graduated judge rank judge rank last day of high school tells me you can go to jail for six months or you can go to treatment and for whatever reason the path of addiction unfolded in front of me and I was like, no, so I chose recovery.
I've been on straight line recovery ever since. So I'm super active in the recovery community, mentoring people, helping people, you know, change their lives in that regard. But part of that lens is. Ego reduction, and part of that ego reduction is how can you be of service? So my whole life is, I've always had this prayer and mantra, you know, how can I be of service?
What can I bring to the table? And I say that before I jump on this with you. And so, as I'm getting ready to re enter the entrepreneurial space, Wayland's about to graduate. It's like, hey, God, how can I be of service? What can I bring to the table here? And fast forward, it's [00:26:00] like, help people get their message out.
People get their message out. Wayland for Jennings. Yeah, Waylon for Jennings. Exactly. Cooper. Cooper hockey. Well, I obviously have a Russian name, Russian background. So I don't know if you remember Cooper hockey products, but I don't, but Russians like hockey. So just like Cooper, just
Matthew Dunn: a bit. I, I, I, I'm, I'm curious about your perspective.
The chronology is kind of interesting because you sort of took, you, you, you which is not retired, quit, quitting and unquit on either side of arguably the, the real explosion of social media, especially digital, you know, everything's on the net in general. What looked different as you started sort of walking back into, you know, you talked about old school.
What looks different about the new school and what's [00:27:00] not actually as different as everybody thinks.
Mischa Zvegintzov: I love that. So what looked different, excuse me, I'd always had this dream of speaking on stage, selling one to many webinars were kind of percolating as I was in the tail end of my mortgage career. And so all that was put on hold.
All of a sudden, and so, you know, Russell's one of the masters of one to many sales webinars, those sorts of things. So it was a natural gravitation to him. So. Love that about online marketing. That was the big thing. It's like you can do one to many sales. This type of conversation right here could be resonating with 30 people right now.
Yeah. And how powerful is that? And it could be
Matthew Dunn: resonating with another 30 people in a year.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Exactly. [00:28:00] Yeah. Yeah, so that's really the intriguing thing to me. Storytelling, old school sales, is about telling the story. I don't care if you're door to door selling pots and pans, selling Solar selling, siding, whether you're going business to business, selling T1 lines,
tech infrastructure. I know what that is. I know.
Matthew Dunn: We're going to have to explain it for the audience. I
Mischa Zvegintzov: know. T1 line is like the old school data line audience, right?
Matthew Dunn: Before you could get internet. Yeah. Before you could
Mischa Zvegintzov: just call AT& T and say, yeah, I'd like, I'd like your one, I'd like your one gigabyte. Yeah, you know whatever.
Yeah. So telling, selling T1 lines, DS3 lines, for anybody listening, DS3 lines were, were the, were the dream. [00:29:00] Yeah. Yeah. The big pipes. Oh my gosh. Anyhow what was I saying
Matthew Dunn: before I got distracted? What's, what's you know, what's different as you come out the other side of that time away and, and, and the world arguably changed.
A lot in that
Mischa Zvegintzov: period. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, just the force of social media, the force of, of, yeah, social media is crazy. The power of email lists. I was heading that direction of in mortgages of, of all right, it's, I can, I can. We reach out to my existing mortgage customers via email in an effective manner for quarterly reviews for all these sorts of things, right?
Do you have a son that needs a loan? Are you getting married, getting divorced, whatever, all these ways to communicate on a, [00:30:00] on a, on a bigger level, right? With mail merge and things like that. And, and so all of a sudden that was put on halt. So to see that. Exponentially in 2015, 16, what, when did I really start in earnest into this?
2019, I guess I was just teaching yoga for awhile, getting my kids through school, posting on Facebook a little bit, right? But all of a sudden I'm back in it and it's like, wow, email is king. Right. We got to be collecting email addresses. That's very important. If you want to read, resell, I think that's missed a lot.
A lot of people think that I can just talk on Facebook or Tik TOK or whatever, but ultimately if we're not building that asset of that email list, we're doing ourselves a disservice because Tik TOK could get shut down by the U S government. Any day or [00:31:00] they change their
Matthew Dunn: rates or policies or whatever.
You don't own your tick tock audience.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Absolutely Yep. Facebook, the, the very interesting thing when I jumped back into the entrepreneurial space in earnest, three, four years ago, whatever it was, as we record this, the iOS change was happening or just about to change. So app privacy protection, you mean?
And so multimillion dollar businesses Yep. That were built on Facebook ads and that rich iOS data. Mm-Hmm. or, you know, the Apple data from the phone overnight elapsed. Yep. Yep. And I, so that was the other thing about guest speaking on podcasts. I was like, we need to learn how to build organic content. We need to learn how to, to talk one to many.
And not be dependent on Facebook ads. The other thing too that is so [00:32:00] horrifying, which I just, I saw it again and again and again and again, and we still see it today is people trying to learn their message by buying Facebook ads. And you will go broke before you dial in your messaging, before you dial in your product, before you do all this stuff, as far as bootstrapped entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, what have you, small business owners.
Right. So it's like the, the, the model is literally from what I've seen and what I believe. And what's the guy's name who speaks to it so well, I can't remember. He's got such a great podcast. It's called the, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm gapping on it. Colin, Colin Boyd. What's his podcast. Everybody should listen to it, but he talks about, cause he went through this himself and he speaks to it so eloquently is [00:33:00] learn what your audience wants and needs by having conversations with them.
Obviously, how do you do that? You get on podcast, you get on, you know, summits, you, you guest blog, you do all these things. You're, you're, and you're getting that feedback and you're learning. You know, the pain points of your customer, what's their current pain state, what's their future happy state, and how do we become that bridge as Stu McLaren likes to say but a lot of people, so you do all that once your messaging is dialed in, once you're able to build your business organically, then you go, all right, now I know my messaging, now I know all this stuff, now I have all this recon, what All this data or call it what you will my messaging down now apply that to ads.
Does that
Matthew Dunn: make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As versus thinking. Yeah. Thinking someone's going to sell you that insight. [00:34:00] Yeah,
Mischa Zvegintzov: absolutely. Bad Zuck. Hence bad Zuck. You got it. Nice. Yes. Yes. Yes. So one of the key things that I think people miss that is absolutely in force today, bar none is follow up, follow up, follow up every most people think I'm going to be shiny on Facebook or the social media.
I'm going to get a lead. And it's going to sell itself. Reality is, is you got to follow up, follow up, follow up. If someone DMs you and says, I'm interested and you say, great, here's the link to buy, you're probably going to have to follow up three or four or five times. Right. Fortunes in the followup rule that we had that I still use today, back in the day, and I don't know if it was Zig or Brian Tracy or who it was, but it was five times, like count on needing to follow up five times.
Yeah. And so, but now all we can automate all that. Right? So we can
Matthew Dunn: if a lot of it, yeah. A but yeah, [00:35:00] I go back and forth on that. I mean, I, I, I, I do the automation stuff as a software developer. I loathe it as a recipient. Like, you know, when you get a message that's clearly just a crappy mail merge. Right.
Hey, Dr. Matthew, go the heck away. Like, seriously, you didn't even bother to look at my name. So I know it's a mail merge.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Yes. And well, I think when I say automate it, so
Matthew Dunn: you mean really automate it well
Mischa Zvegintzov: to and also building out the templates and the responses. So one thing that I learned and this holds true today, which I think people don't think holds true, but it absolutely holds true.
Back in the day, I would find a new niche. I would start marketing to it, and then I would start getting responses. The no's, the, what do, I can't remember what we call it, but the no's. And so we need to learn how to meet those objections. So, I would start writing down, literally I'd start a new campaign, find a new [00:36:00] niche, write the scripts that I thought would work, and start testing them in the market.
And then people start saying, no, no, no. And so you write down the, no, I literally would write down the no. And so how am I going to meet that? And either I need to tweak my product so I can address it, or I need to learn how to address that as not being a real thing or what have, right. And so then you've got a templated response.
And so when I say automated. I want to write that response one time and then be able to just cut and paste and tweak it a little bit. So I'll still hand respond if you want to call it that, or by email or something like that, but it's like, which, what's the objection and what, what answer do they need?
Now that can be automated. Still on
Matthew Dunn: once you, once you learn your market and once you've got product market fit, I think. [00:37:00] Yeah.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then it's even a matter of the higher ticket you sell. So you have your company campaign genius. io you're you're in the email, right? Yeah. Okay. So you probably have a high ticket solution.
I'm guessing. Yeah. Yeah. So the higher ticket. Perhaps the higher touch. So that needs a personal dm. It needs a personal phone call. It needs a personal email. But realistically, we don't need to rewrite the whole thing. Yeah, we need to just personalize the template. If that makes sense. Yeah, take
Matthew Dunn: that, take that set of insights and back into our conversation about social media a little bit on seems to be where to.
tension point about what amount of privacy and what amount of [00:38:00] convenience, you know, what we're willing to give away and what it costs us in attention when we give that away. And we, we, we're very different in the U. S. than most other markets. We're, we'll, we'll give more away for convenience, but even now we're starting to say, hang on enough the successor to the app privacy protection that you mentioned.
It's starting to happen now. The eventual death of the third party cookie, which fundamentally is privacy driven. Like where, where, where does it, where does this go? Are we going to continue to be an open book for every sales guy? Are we going to start to close that book a bit? How do you think it's going to pan out?
Mischa Zvegintzov: Yeah, that's another great, great question. I think that definitely the pendulum of privacy is swinging. More restrictive, if we want to say it that way, which I don't think is bad, right? So I think the more we [00:39:00] can craft and hone in our message. Organically talking to you right now, I'll debrief after this and I'll go, Oh, what a great freaking conversation with Dr.
Matthew, right? Like, wow. And so as I can hone, refine, craft that whoever's best at that, it doesn't really matter how much they restrict the privacy. I'll be able to speak it. To an audience effectively for ads and things like that, if that makes sense, and so many people are sloppy with it right in the heyday of Facebook ads or YouTube ads or things like that.
Yeah, right. First adapters could just throw spaghetti at the wall and make money. And then as, as those restrictions. Come in around us. Those who dial it in the best can still have that positive return on investment or ROI. Yeah. Well,
Matthew Dunn: [00:40:00] the example you gave personally of early, early, early MLS data. Yeah.
Right. I, I, I don't think that would fly as well.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Yeah, I could get away with a lot back then and people were like, that was amazing that you're so smart. And now people would be like, you're verging on breaking the law,
Matthew Dunn: my friend. You're verging on breaking the law. Well, and, and also that, that adoption curve, which you alluded to, it's Ev Rajer's diffusion of innovation curve, right?
Their early adopters will go, Oh, wait a minute. We could do this with it. And there's going to be enough bad actors in the early adopter middle adopter stage. That, that take it too far. That eventually we go hang on a second, let's put some additional rules and breaks and things like that because I really don't want to call about a mortgage.
I, I just don't. I get, I get occasional text messages which irks me to death. I get [00:41:00] text messages, hey, do you want to sell, you know, I'm like, A, don't text me, I didn't say you could. And B, Like, piss off. No, I don't. I don't even want to have to answer you,
Mischa Zvegintzov: right? You know, it's so interesting. So you see it on LinkedIn or, or things like that where people automate the reach out process and then LinkedIn's shut you down at a hundred emails or 50 or so people get banned or things like that.
Or you see that on Instagram or what have you. What's interesting is people, there's a whole bunch of data available to people. You can scrape, scrape websites. You can scrape, and so there's all these scraping bots and people are using AI to automate the scraping and all this. Working with a company that's built on that.
Like those are questions that I [00:42:00] ask. So there's companies out there that are, they'll help you crush LinkedIn. And so I'm like, well, is your fundamental business based on breaking the rule that's that door window's going to close? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know to answer those questions, cause I'm 55 years old and been through it enough and, and, and worked the system effectively, you know, I mean.
Yeah, anyway, I, I, I don't want to overplay that, but I think that, that if you find something that works by scraping, for example, can you find the person that's getting that data? I don't know if I want to say legally, but has paid Apple for API access. So they're right. So then you're rebuying from Apple, right?
Like it's somebody who's. Legally, ethically, [00:43:00] commercially accessing the data, the API through APIs. I don't mean to go too deep. Technobabble. But there's companies out there that are right that are have API access by paying for API access to different databases. And it's all databases. We can call it whatever we want.
In reality, it's all a database housing, certain data. So can I access that data? And I pay somebody to access that data. I think I'm going down a rabbit hole. I'll, I'll, should I stop?
Matthew Dunn: Well, I mean, the fascinating thing is you can be at. You can be at this a long time and it's going to change around you and we'll, we'll be grappling with some new stuff and then still have, have some of the same principal challenges to wrestle with.
Yeah. Yeah. Companies and people who are of service tend to cut through the noise eventually because fundamentally what they're trying to do is, is going to end up being [00:44:00] beneficial to their customer. The ones that are just. On the quick on the cheap looking to make the sale and then move on and it's not really of service.
Hopefully I'd like to hope that they go out of business. Yeah,
Mischa Zvegintzov: right. Yeah. You just made me think of something else that is an old truth. That is a truth now. And so back in the day. So when I started in the late nineties, telemarketing, selling door to door, things like that. Yeah. You had to take the risk and put yourself out there.
You had to make that first phone call. You had to knock on that first door. You had to write that first script and then go test it and try it. And I think the illusion is, is that with social media, none of that holds true, but it all holds true. You still, so many of us still need to make that first video, make that first post, make that [00:45:00] first offer, get the data, right?
It's, it's, you still have to take the risk and put yourself out there and hopefully learn from it. Yeah. I
Matthew Dunn: wonder, I mean, we talked about this before I hit record that we're both, both in the two boys club. As, as dads and kids roughly the same age the, the reduction in willingness to converse face to face is, is a bit of an unexpected shift.
And I'm, and I'm going to pick on, you know, I'm going to pick on younger millennials and so on. Like, what do you mean you called me without texting me first? Like that, that sort of ethos. And I'm thinking. It's, it's actually a surprising advantage to be open to and understand the value of putting yourself out there and having the conversation, because you always learn.
stuff that you weren't [00:46:00] expecting to learn by, by that actual direct engagement, not mediated, not messaged, not in a sense, not scripted. Right. That's where you start going, Oh, that's what they really need. Or that's what the real problem is. Not what I thought was right. Yeah. And you can't buy Facebook ads.
This kind of goes back to your Facebook. You can't buy Facebook ads to let you know what you don't know, but you can get that out of a
Mischa Zvegintzov: conversation. Absolutely. And. Yep. Yes. I did a podcast episode. I wish I remembered the number of it. I had that epiphany just that you talked about where I was like, I'm just going to pick up the phone and call this person and close the deal.
Yeah. And I started doing that, right? This was within the last two years where I was like, all that person needs is a little high touch. Yeah. We'll pick them up and call them. Yeah, right. And I was like, Oh my [00:47:00] gosh. And so many people won't do that or they're trying to outsource it too. So everything's trying to be outsourced appointment centers, this, that, the other thing, right?
Like where it's like, I'll, I'll do what we used to say back in the day. Or you'd hear people would say, if I could just, I'm great at closing the deal. It's like, right. No, you're not because you're not good at getting the pipeline full like that people who I don't know this is it could be a really funny rant, but you know, people want to pay to get their appointments set and then people want to pay to have the deal close people don't want to work.
I don't know. I, you know, I want to automate all that.
Matthew Dunn: I wonder about that. I mean, with. It'd be cliche for, for a couple of guys of our generation to say, well, these kids, these kids don't want to work. I don't think that's, I don't think that's actually true. I think what they, I think what work they think [00:48:00] is necessary may be different than how they're being shaped to work.
Mischa Zvegintzov: I love that. That's like such a great way to say it. Yeah, they're, my boys are more than willing to work and have paid their dues and love it and have great work ethics. Yeah, yeah. However, I think. The general perception with social media and all that is like, Oh, you have to be an influence. Oh, you just be an influencer and tell your story and you'll magically money will appear.
Matthew Dunn: Or what? What's the one that drives me nuts? Right? I'm going to be a thought leader. Like, well, maybe you should start with thinking. And seeing if you have something worth saying before you, and then we'll decide if you're leading or not. Honestly, let the audience let the audience market tell you that.
Yeah.
Mischa Zvegintzov: So good.
Matthew Dunn: Oh, good. Hey, one other, one other question before we wrap on, and it's, it's really relevant to what you're doing with [00:49:00] podcasts. You look at the panoply of equipment in your office, in my office, you know, we've got high def cameras, mics on, booms, you know, machines recording stuff, AI transcribing as we're going.
None of this stuff existed. Like six, eight years ago, you wouldn't do this. Boom. And like everybody is NBC, CBS, ABC themselves sitting in their office now. Isn't that just
Mischa Zvegintzov: wild? It is wild that the barrier to entry to having your own TV show, your CVS,
Matthew Dunn: there is none, right? There is none. Like we've got a TV show in here, right?
Mischa Zvegintzov: Oh, it's so crazy. Boom. Is
Matthew Dunn: it gonna, is it gonna last? Like podcast specifically, let's pick on that since that's your expertise. It seems like we're in a boom for podcast, which is a, is a kind of a cool [00:50:00] surprise to me, actually. But you also see the beginnings of pullback Spotify kind of backing off on level of investment and stuff like that.
Where do you think this goes?
Mischa Zvegintzov: I think, again, with the barrier to entry being so low, that I don't know if we've reached peak podcast creation. How about that? Right. So I don't know. There's four or 5 million podcasts. Wow. And counting right now. I'm sure it'll be 6 million or 7 million next year. The, the, the dirty little secret is that the bulk of the podcast, like, like 50 percent or more don't make it past three episodes.
Yeah. 80 percent don't make it past 10 episodes. Really? Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. It's called pod [00:51:00] fade. There's a term for it. Pod fade.
Matthew Dunn: Your episode number one or two, by the way, for the future of email.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Amazing. That's so good. That's that, that shows a passion for it for one labor of love to write that, that willingness to keep at it.
I love statistics. And when I got my finance degree. It took a lot of statistics classes and I had this amazing teacher named Dean. I wish I could remember his last name, but Dean had us do these statistical models where basically we proved, and it still holds true today. Most people don't want to believe it, but that statistically speaking, you have as much chance as being correct in consistently picking stocks as you do.
Flipping as choosing heads or tails on a coin. Okay, so what that means is that, [00:52:00] statistically speaking, if we got 10, 000 people flipping coins, one of those people would guess right a hundred times. And we would say, that guy's a genius. We'd be like, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen. That guy somehow knows the weight, the, the, the thumb trajectory, the whatever, the wind speed.
Right? But it's statistics. One person is going to get lucky. The numbers might not hold for this. But you get what I'm saying, right? Same thing with stock pickers. There's no, statistically speaking, somebody is going to get lucky and pick right. X percent of the time, and we're going to think it's going to, because of smarts, because of this, because of that, la, la, la, la.
So what we did was, and the way you ultimately prove that is, you do it over 10 year holding periods. Right. So, statistically speaking, a stock picker who was great for 10 years, Statistically, wasn't great the next 10 [00:53:00] years, and it's just proven again and again and again. So anyway, thank you for following this line of thinking.
So, with podcasts, with 4 million podcasts out there, statistically, somebody's gonna get lucky and hit it right out of the gate. It's just gonna happen. Right message, right, honestly. Bunch of accidents, right? Yeah, bunch of accidents, and even that. I'll listen to some of these massive podcasts and I'm like, it's painful for me to listen to, right?
I'm like, I don't get it. Right. And that's not to say it's bad. It's just to say, yeah. For whatever reason, that statistically, that one, boom, that one took off. Well,
Matthew Dunn: do you remember Chris Anderson's book, The Long Tail?
Mischa Zvegintzov: No, but it sounds like I need to read it. That,
Matthew Dunn: that'd be good. It's gosh, I think Long Tail is almost 20 years old, but in brief, Chris Anderson, former editor of Wired Magazine.
said, [00:54:00] here's an interesting observation. Half the Amazon sales come from a tiny number of books and half come from the long tail, which is a power curve always shows up in nature. I am, I am sure without looking at a single stat that the listenership of podcasts is long tail. A few of them at the head.
Half the views, and then it tails off where most of them are, you know, 5, 10, 2, my mother and some other friend, right?
Mischa Zvegintzov: So yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So check it out. I'll tell you some cool things about podcasting. And I don't know if I answered your question, but I'll tell you my experience with it. Okay. So in the question was, where do I see this going?
I think podcasting has legs. I think that it will be continue to have legs. I think quality conversations will stand out. Like this kind of conversation right here, literally, if somebody stumbled across this upon this episode and they [00:55:00] wanted to learn about sales marketing a couple of old dogs, man, great, great episode, right?
Great experience for somebody to glean and pull and, and, and learn from and be inspired from, right? So I think that podcasting. As a tool for that and people, you know, creating their own ads and things like that Stations and things is going to, going to go, but what happened to TV, right? Pretty soon it was regulated.
There's a great chance that, that somebody says in America, like you need to start a podcast. You need a license. You need to have these credentials. You just, not anybody can just start talking about whatever they want. Might sound crazy, but that's what we do in America. We're like, it's like zero barrier to entry.
And then there's a barrier to entry. So maybe that happens. Maybe not. Maybe it's like, what are you going to talk about? Oh, you can't, you have to be licensed to [00:56:00] talk about that or something. I can see, I'll make
Matthew Dunn: you, I'll make you a counter. I'll make you a counter
Mischa Zvegintzov: prognostication. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn: Given the, the digital basis of podcasting, it's equally likely that we'll see a monopoly or probably a duopoly.
end up with choke point control. of distribution. Spotify's arguably, we started to head that head that direction and Apple's got obviously pretty big influence there. And if they decided they actually really cared about it, think of it like compare, compare podcasts to the app store, right? Not a whole lot of rules.
We can start one, getting an app in the app store actually takes some work because there's rules and barriers to hop through. If, if, if there are a small enough number of companies in the birdseed controlling it. And they'd start, it, it's, it's the, it's the digital era version of regulation. Right?
Mischa Zvegintzov: [00:57:00] Love it.
Yeah. You know, what's interesting about that? You just made me think to, you know, how companies will want to go public. And so instead of going through all the regulation S who's at the S E C six security exchange commission. Yeah. Instead of going through all that, they'll go buy a stock. That's. Yeah.
And in effect, just sitting there, the company is not real or it's not that it's not real, but it's not doing anything. Yeah. Reverse
Matthew Dunn: merger to get the ticker symbol.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Exactly. Yeah. I could see. So you just made me think that when those choke points start happening and they will, they will, there's just no way around it.
Probably. Yeah. Right. Like we were down to facebook tiktok somehow came in into the fray. But interesting,
Matthew Dunn: right? Yeah. Interesting how they did.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Yeah. There might be value and there'll be some sort of grandfathered thing. Right. So if you have an app in the app store, right, right.
Matthew Dunn: [00:58:00] Your podcast is grandfather.
Congratulations. Yes.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Right. And so then all of a sudden, these old podcasts will have value because they're. Right in, in the ecosystem already, but I'll tell you, podcasting to me, the illusion is that we need to speak on Joe Rogan's podcast. The reality is, is with what I do and my price point and how I serve people, if you have a captive audience of 10 people or 20 people, if you have 20 downloads, 10 downloads and that they're willing, that, that is value to me.
And how I can repurpose this content, right? So if somebody said to me, Hey, Misha, or I said to you, Hey, you can go speak on a stage in front of 10 or 20 people and talk about what you do. And they are probably interested. Is that a value to you? Yeah, it is it to me. So, so, okay. And then podcasts come and go, right?
Podcasts come and go. And so you don't see [00:59:00] someone start with that three episodes and then stop. And then all of a sudden they're starting again. So I think. There's that. The other thing is I interviewed along the way. I've got to interview some bigger people on my podcast, bigger, whatever that means, but like people that have followings and power or call it what you will, they're not sharing it with their audiences.
You know what I figured out people that are sometimes not interviewed on a podcast ever. They're passionate about what they do. Mm-Hmm. . And then they speak on a podcast. They share it with everybody they know. I was just on a podcast. Right. They share with their family, friends, associates. Right. Yeah. It's this illusion of like, I get Joe Rogan on there.
I mean, Joe would be great. 'cause all of a sudden, but you get what I'm saying? Like there's this idea that, that I need to be targeting certain people. Like if I'm looking for podcast growth, maybe interview people that aren't always interviewed. Yeah. Then they're going to share it with everybody. So that [01:00:00] is, I figured that out, but it's like, that's a great way to go.
Like if you want to get some quick subscribers, some quick, some quick new audience, anyway, there you go. There's a, there's a. There you go.
Matthew Dunn: We should, we should wrap, but hopefully someone listens to this set of insights that you've shared. Where do they, where do they come find you if they go, Oh, I want
Mischa Zvegintzov: to talk to this guy.
Yeah, so badzuck. com, you can always go to badzuck. com.
Matthew Dunn: I love that, I will always remember that now. Yeah,
Mischa Zvegintzov: and then my, my podcast is The Table Rush Talk Show. The Table Rush Talk Show. Okay. And then, obviously, you can always DM me on Facebook. So, there's not many Misha Zvagintsov's out there. Zvagintsov.
Well,
Matthew Dunn: Misha, it has been a fantastic conversation. I am so glad we connected and that you made the time to to come on and talk with me.
Mischa Zvegintzov: Matthew, it's been amazing. Dr. Dunn, if that's more appropriate. Thank you for
Matthew Dunn: having me. I just do that to annoy people on LinkedIn. Thanks, we're [01:01:00] out.