All Systems Go! Podcast Expert Mark Savant Shares How to Transform Your Creative Business with A.I.

00:00:00
Are you worried that AI is going to take away the very human part of your creative gift? And are you worried that it's impossible. For you to figure out how to. Use AI in your business or your creative calling? Where you feel this tension between I got to use this stuff to I'm afraid it's going to totally take over.

00:00:19
The world and I don't want to. Be a part of it. If that's you, you're going to want to listen to every minute minute of this interview with Mark Savant, the host of the After Hours Entrepreneur Podcast. He's going to show you how you can find the right ways to use AI to open up the doors to really amazing growth in your creative life without sacrificing your authenticity and the human touch that creativity brings to the world. You're really going to love this interview.

00:00:48
Give me just a moment to welcome those of you who are new to God and gigs and then we'll get right into this fascinating conversation.

00:00:59
Artists, musicians and creatives of all kinds looking for help bAllencing your passion to create with your everyday life. Not sure if your faith can coexist with your profession? Welcome to a place where real artists discuss real life. You're listening to the God and Gig show. Visit Godandgigs.com for show notes, links and more information.

00:01:23
Hello and welcome to our show. Thank you so much for making this podcast a part of your creative day. If you are new to our show, you are in the right place at the right time with the right people. Why? Because if you're a musician, artist, entrepreneur, creative, anyone that operates around the intersection of the arts and entertainment industry, but you also have a heart or maybe even a job in ministry.

00:01:50
Well, this is the place where we help you to connect the dots between your practical life and your spiritual life so that you can solve temporary problems with timeless spiritual principles. That's what we do here. So please make sure you subscribe on your app right now. Stay connected with us and you'll find all of our social links as well in our description. Now for this interview and episode today you're going to hear so much of what you might have thought was a scary or unapproachable subject approached by someone who has really got a heart for entrepreneurs, creatives, and for people like you and me who don't want to be left behind by this rise of AI.

00:02:32
So today we're going to talk to Mark Savant. Mark Savant is an entrepreneur, podcast host and business leader who has been at the forefront of helping to meld these worlds together of podcasting, AI and business growth. He is the host of the After Hours Entrepreneur Show, which is a top 1% global podcast that helps business owners, entrepreneurs, side hustlers, and professionals who are disrupting their industry and want to use automation, social media leadership and innovative tactics to gain the advantage they need to thrive in the world. But not only is Mark an incredible business leader and strategist for these companies, he's also a man who understands what it means to build a business for the right reasons. He has his why in place.

00:03:22
When you hear this interview, you're going to hear him talk about the realities of building a business, the realities of dealing with AI. The reason that you need to know these tools and how these sales and business tactics actually apply to your real life, that they're not just pie in the sky or thought pieces or books or a whole bunch of guru speak. That it really does come down to human connection and authenticity that allows you to become the creative that can harness these tools in the right way. This is a fascinating conversation and a really practical one that I think you're going to love, and it's going to take that scary veneer off of AI and turn it into something that you can now apply to your daily creative life and your business growth. Mark is really the perfect person to.

00:04:11
Talk about this, so I want to. Get right to this discussion. So without any further delay, let's talk to Mark Savant, the after hours entrepreneur.

00:04:29
Ladies and gentlemen, I am so pleasure to have my man, my brother, after hours entrepreneur, someone that absolutely understands what you're going through right now, the struggle you're going through with how to manage. All the things that are going on. In your creative life and whether you should bring on somebody, bring on a tool like AI, what to do about it, how to do it. He's already done it, and he's going to show us how to do that. Mark Savant.

00:04:56
Welcome to the guide and gig show. How are you doing, my friend? What's up? What's up? What's up, Allen?

00:05:00
Glad to be here, brother man. It's absolutely a pleasure. Now, I have to always let people in behind the curtain. You and I have connected number one. We are so we're like we could be millions of miles away on the zoom, and yet I could probably just walk to your house right now and we could chill and have a drink and talk about entrepreneurship.

00:05:21
Yeah, next time. Next time. So you have connected with me through Podfest, through podcasting. I have admired you from afar before that, even before we met at Podfest, because you just seemed like a guy that knew what he wanted, how to figure out entrepreneurship. And then when I got to know you, man, you're just a cool dude.

00:05:43
You don't carry yourself like someone that's like, oh, six figure, seven figure guy. You're just a regular guy, which I'd say is a compliment. So for people that are meeting you for the first time, do you do the spiel? You know, the thing right? But just tell them, what would you like them to know about you before they know all the stuff about after hours entrepreneurship.

00:06:05
What's the first thing you want people. To know about you when they meet you? Well, great question. And the answer is, it depends. Depends who I'm talking to, which I think is an important part of entrepreneurship.

00:06:13
Like, you want different people to know you for different reasons. But listen, my main goal right now is building my podcast agency. So if there was one thing the whole world could know about me right now, be that I help Thought Leaders launch and automate podcasts. That's it. I help Thought Leaders launch and automate podcasts above and beyond that.

00:06:33
Husband, father, churchgoer, exercise. I own chickens. Yeah. So it's wild. Okay, let's stop there just for a second.

00:06:45
Let's do the left turn right now so we can get this out of the way. I was not ready for chickens. I know. We're in South Florida. We see chickens all the time.

00:06:52
I was not ready for that for you, my friend. So please give me just at least a little bit. Yeah. So my mom used to have chickens. She moved up to Central Florida, and she can't have them anymore.

00:07:03
So long story short, now I own chickens. And it's cool. We get probably a couple eggs every day. They don't require a ton of work. They're pretty minimal, and it's cool.

00:07:14
I have a four year old son, seven year old daughter, and it's cool for my kids to kind of experience where food comes from, how to care for it, how to nurture know. I think if you asked most people where food comes from, they'd say, oh, the grocery store. Yeah, for publix. Exactly. I love that, and I love how that just led us into you are a family man.

00:07:33
And the reason why I want to make sure we put that in is because all the tactics and the strategies we talk about are for a purpose. Right? It's not just to build businesses. It's a purpose behind the reason we build businesses. Why do you want to be your own boss?

00:07:47
It's because you get the time back, because you get the chance to focus on those things that are important to you family, faith, your home, to do cool things. But of course, to do that, you got to build something that can sustain it. So you mentioned at the top that you help people to automate you help people to build podcasts. So give me just a little bit of that backstory. Like, how did you even get into because podcasting is not no one grows up and says, hey, Mom, I want to be a podcaster.

00:08:14
When I grew up, like, at least not 30 years ago, no one said that. Now it's popular. Now people might say that, right? Most gen zers, they want to be YouTubers. And I actually want to push back on this idea a little bit because there's this idea that I want to become an entrepreneur.

00:08:27
So I have all this time and I have all this freedom and it actually doesn't work that way, at least not at the beginning. Life moves through seasons and this is, I think, for me, we talk about being a family man and being an entrepreneur. It is a really difficult it's a very difficult struggle, something I struggle with regularly. My wife and I communicate about this regularly. We try to create a shared vision and take shared action because the reality is you're not going to quit your day job and just work 10 hours a week and sit margaritas on the beaches in Tulum or something.

00:08:59
That's not really how it works. I'm kind of in a phase of life where I'm putting in more time now so I can plant those seeds. I want to plant the seeds so that I can harvest them later in life. So it is nice to have freedom. I have the time, freedom.

00:09:13
I don't have a boss looking over my shoulder and saying, hey, you were at work late today, or what do you mean? You got to go take care of the kids or something. But I think to be an entrepreneur is going to require more of your time up front than just to be an employee. But the benefits abound as you start to harvest the seeds, as you start to build the wealth and as you have the freedom, actually be at events that you want to be at. You can create your own vision, which is why I think it's so attractive to me and why I preach that on the after hours entrepreneur to people.

00:09:42
I love it. No, I love the distinction and I appreciate that because I'm literally looking over my shoulder at this four hour work week book behind me, which a lot of great concepts love Tim Ferriss, right? You can't knock the hustle, right? You can't knock what he created. But there are some myths that kind of seeped into, I think that ethos of another book that I know that you recommend, probably, and I recommend as well, is the E myth, right?

00:10:05
The idea that suddenly you trade in this lifestyle and all of a sudden you go from entrepreneur to the person that is running the business that is in the business. So I love the fact that we are really talking again to people who are busy, people who are talented. A lot of them have amazing gifts, musical or maybe writing or creative design, graphics, all kinds of things. And they do the thing well. But doing the thing and selling the thing or creating something that you can sell is a whole nother story.

00:10:38
Yeah. And by the way, that Tim Ferriss defoe workweek is really good. Yes. Oh, no, we're not hiding on it. Absolutely not.

00:10:44
Because that concept is really important and especially for creative people, this is a really easy trap to fall into every time you land a client, you want to do all of the work, right? Because you want all the profit for yourself. The problem with that is there's only one Allen, there's only one Mark. We can't scale that up. So the idea between a four hour work week is $10 here is worth $100 in other countries.

00:11:07
Right. It could go so far. So you can leverage the economic prosperity that we have here in the United States to hire people overseas who are awesome, who do great work, who share beliefs, and in a lot of cases, you're putting food on their table by hiring them. So I think some people sometimes feel like you're hiring someone for $5 an hour. What a scumbag you are.

00:11:28
Money is figurative. Like, if $5 here can buy me, like, four eggs unless I have chickens, $5 in the Philippines, for example, could buy five dozen eggs. So you're still empowering others anyway. I think that's a really powerful tool. However, just to kind of back it up to your point, the point I was making where people are selling this dream, entrepreneurs are selling this dream.

00:11:53
There's been this dream that's been crafted that says, leave your job, open up an ecommerce store, get rich, sit margaritas. The reason why that works, and this is, I think, a really important concept for us as entrepreneurs, from a sales perspective, is they're doing what's called selling the gap. And what they're doing is they're contrasting the miserable, down low, horrible life that you have now. That life that you're thinking about all the time, oh, I got to wake up and I got to drive through traffic. I go to this job versus you have a website that brings in passive income and everything is grand.

00:12:28
So what they're doing is they're contrasting the problem that you have with the dream that you want, which from a sales perspective is a really important concept. It just can go too far. Oh, I love this. I was not ready for this conversation. But this is really good because I know we're not going to dig deep into ethics and things like that, but there is, I think, because you talk to so many entrepreneurs who have to deal with this issue, and I think it strikes.

00:12:53
The reason why I immediately wanted to grab onto it is because as creatives, I think we do fight that urge to feel like snake oil salesmen. We fight the urge to feel like, yeah, we're selling, like, now. As soon as I get off this call, if I talk to another client, I'm going to tell them, you need to make your client problem aware. They need to feel the pain. Right.

00:13:11
You need to dig deep and say, okay, even in terms of if I'm selling a song, I need someone to want to hear it. I need someone to feel the pain of I got to get my girl back. Well, what are they going to sing well, they're going to want a song that really gets to that girl's heart, right? So there is a place for that where we're actually called to fill needs. I mean, even ministry, our job is to fill needs.

00:13:32
We can't fill needs unless people admit they have needs. But there is another part you said, where we kind of dig and just try to do that for wow, what's the word I'm looking for? Exploitive, I guess. And so I think I'm wondering, have you had to toe that line in your own business? Like, how have you done that in your own business where you've wanted to do it the right way, build a business, but never like, taking advantage of people.

00:13:59
For me, it's about transparency, okay? Right. Because sometimes people will say, like, well, why your price is so high? And I'll say, well, that's because I need to have 60% to cover the cost per production per episode, and there's another 20% which are fixed expenses. So I take home 20% for my effort, for my expertise, for my years of podcast production, right?

00:14:19
So it's about transparency. It's also, I think, about under promising and over delivering, because that's where you get into trouble when you start selling this dream. And I think this is an epidemic when it comes to, quote unquote, high ticket coaches. They're like, oh, my time is worth $1,000 an hour, or something like that, right? Okay, great.

00:14:39
The problem is they're so focused on the sales part, they're not worried about the delivery. And so when I was starting off my entrepreneurial journey, I had a lot of coaches that wanted me to get into coaching. But I didn't feel like I was equipped. I didn't feel like I was ready. I didn't feel like I could deliver on that coach.

00:14:57
I hadn't grown a business, I hadn't started a business. I didn't want to coach people on how to be coaches so that they could coach people on how to be coaches. To me, it's a big pyramid scheme. What I said is I want to provide a tangible product and service. I want to build a team of people.

00:15:12
I want to build systems, I want to generate income, revenue. I want to learn leadership, I want to learn all this stuff. And over the past five years, I think we built that. And the podcast agency is working. I just landed a new client today.

00:15:27
So anyway, that's quite I kind of think it and also just one more quick thing on that. People want to buy easy. They want to buy simple. They want to buy. It's going to be quick, it's going to be painless.

00:15:37
Here's the solution. If that's what people want to buy, that's what we need to sell. But let's be honest, getting a six pack isn't easy, right? It's not easy, but it is simple. It's simple.

00:15:48
Work out more, eat less. It's not complicated. So that's kind of the way that I try to frame it, is like when I'm talking to someone, I won't use the words easy, I'll use the word simple, nice. Yeah, that's a great distinction. But it's funny when you said that.

00:16:02
It's simple but not easy. Like, we're talking to a faith focused Christian audience. And I thought about someone that I think Jakey Chesterson, or maybe it was C. S. Lewis I know who said it.

00:16:14
He said, the Christian faith has not been found unaffective ineffective. I'm paraphrasing. It's been found difficult. And so people aren't like, oh, this Christian thing is like bogus. No, what they said is, oh, this is tricky, this is tough.

00:16:28
It's not just, oh, I just go into church and everything just my life goes perfect. So if it's the same thing in our faith, it's the same thing in business, like you said, that we have to tell people. And I love that because in God and gigs, I've never been the person to say, oh, go, AB ECD and you reach Stardom. Like, that's not what I'm here about. I'm here about holistic real success, which is financial, but it's also faith.

00:16:49
It's also your family. Right. It's got to be all those parts. And so I've always felt like I can't tell people it's going to be easy when it's not. I love that.

00:16:56
I want to go back to something you just mentioned, though, because I remember one of your seminars. We talked about this. You talked about hiring out. You talked about getting your time back and scaling. You mentioned that.

00:17:08
But you didn't start this business out of nowhere. You also, I believe, had a nine to five. You also had to make that tough decision at some point, hey, I'm going to take the leap. So talk to me a little bit about that and tell the audience. What was it like?

00:17:23
Where was your pivot point where you said, hey, even though I've got this particular job where I might be paying the bills, it's time for me to try something? And how did that even work out for you? Well, when I graduated college, I went into the insurance industry, and it was paying the bills, right. But I didn't enjoy it. I didn't fill my cup.

00:17:42
And quite frankly, I looked at the disruption that was happening in the industry. More and more policies were being written online. People were going to insurance.com and writing the policy more and more. And so I said, where do I fit into this? Am I going to be the guy that just gets yelled at by clients because their premiums went up?

00:17:59
That's not what I want to do. So that was one of the main impetuses, amongst others. So about five years into that, I recognized that that's not where I vision my life. I want to start learning new skills. I tried several other business kind of ideas, but I really fell in love with podcasting.

00:18:16
I decided to try it because I was listening to a lot of podcasts. I said, these are great. I'm going to try to launch one. I started off recording on a potato, basically, and now I've got this nice studio with thousands of dollars worth of equipment. But what I did at the time, and I don't necessarily recommend this, but what I did is I read The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss and on a trip to Jamaica, sandals, Jamaica, Ochirios, which is amazing, by the way, you got to take your wife there, ladies and gentlemen.

00:18:43
It's everything it should be. So anyway, I was read The Four Hour Work Week, and I was like, okay, I'm still working this day job. I'm getting paid a lot of money. I'm going to use all the overflow to hire people to do the production for me. And over time, I built out some really good systems to produce my show.

00:18:59
I would just basically show up, do the interview, and then my team would handle all the rest. Right? I had about three people that were three to four people. And then, lo and behold, people started asking me, hey, Mark, can you do that for me? And then it got to the point where I had enough clients, I had enough breadcrumbs, I had enough success, that I said, you know what?

00:19:21
Now it's time. I'm going to pull the plug. I'm going to drop that six figure salary that I had with benefits, and I'm going to go all in on this thing. I think the big takeaway there is you got to start experimenting, trying find something that works, something that people will buy. And once you find a thing that you're good at, that you enjoy, and people will buy, that's when it's time to say, okay, now I need to give this my focus.

00:19:43
That's so great. But I did notice something. I'm going to pull back a second because you didn't gloss over it, but in your story, you probably went through this moment and I'm hearing somebody say, hey, wait, I heard him say started to hire people systems, three people team. And you had just started. As far as I could tell, it sounded like you just started.

00:20:04
So tell me just a little bit, tell the listener who just said, wait a minute, I'm a solopreneur. I'm a solo creative. I cannot see myself bringing on a team of one, much less three. So what was the pivot point? Right there.

00:20:18
It's like, hey, I need to grab these people. Did you immediately go into the fivers? Did you get the overseas VA? Did you find somebody local intern? What was that first process?

00:20:26
Because I know somebody is thinking right now, I need that first person, but I have no idea where to start. Yeah, the way you start is the stuff that's time consuming and that you don't enjoy. I think is where you start, right? And honestly, I kind of get enjoyment out of a lot of the things that I do. But it's so time consuming to edit videos and create the clips and then write all the copy.

00:20:46
I think the first person that I hired was an audio and video editor. They were doing my audio and video editing because it was just taking so much of my time. It was really hard for me to find someone that could write good copy. So I continued to do that for years. Okay.

00:21:00
Writing is a very difficult skill. Spoiler alert, AI makes writing copy a lot easier, right? And it's incredibly empowering to people. People that normally can't write very well can leverage AI to go from a level two to a level eight. So AI is very empowering when you use it.

00:21:18
So listen, if you're a creative, I'm with you. You want to create, you want to draw, you want to get your hands dirty every day. But if you're going to create a real business, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you absolutely are going to need to find parts of your day, parts of your system that you can outsource. Because what you need to do to be a successful entrepreneur is get better at selling. You need to get better at Marketing your message, getting on calls, convincing people that this is the problem that you have.

00:21:46
I have the solution. And then closing. You will not have a sustainable business unless you're able to do that. My opinion that is the most important part is getting that sales down and then having the system on the back end to handle that. That's a great answer, and I appreciate you really just nailing that down because there's so many of us that are going to stay in that rat race, including myself, by the way.

00:22:08
This is always preaching to me first. I always say this is like me receiving the information and then hoping somebody else also holds me to my feet, to the fire and follows through. Because I just hired my first assistant maybe a year ago. My overseas, it took forever. And I know I am still not leveraging.

00:22:25
She is amazing and I don't give her half the stuff. Why? Because I still feel like my hands have to be in it. I have to be figuring it out. So let's pivot right there to what you just mentioned.

00:22:35
The spoiler alert. One of the things that allows us as creatives and people that are doing the business now is this rise of AI. So tell me, there's no 20 year veterans of AI. It didn't even exist. So how in the world did you first figure out how this could work in your business?

00:22:55
How it could be added to the systems you already had? And what was the implementation like for you when it was a totally new technology? For most of us, yeah. So AI changes everything. Everything is different now.

00:23:06
Everything has changed just from two years ago. The whole world has changed. Most people don't know it, which is why I'm glad we're talking about this. This is the time. One piece of advice to everybody.

00:23:15
Spend 15 minutes a day playing with Chat GPT, asking it questions that you have. It will blow your mind. So I first ran into AI at Podfest, coincidentally enough, two years ago. Not this year, but the previous. I think it's Podfest 2022, January 2022.

00:23:30
And there were a couple of girls there, Deidre and Bona, who are the creators of Cap Show. And I was going up the escalator, and I was walking by, I had just done, by the way, an entire day of recording. I brought a whole mobile podcast recording set up. I had done ten, maybe twelve interviews. I was beat.

00:23:48
And I was walking up, had all my gear, and these girls go, hey, come over here. Come talk with us. And I'm like I'm like what's up? What do you want? You.

00:23:57
And everybody wants to talk to me. Okay, come on. Yes, I get it's. Podfest. They're like, we want you to demo our product.

00:24:03
And I was like, which, by the way, people are pitching me all the time to try this and try that. And so I was like, all right, okay, fine. I go over and they say, this is AI. We're going to upload an audio file and it's going to write out the description. And we did it.

00:24:21
And I was shocked. I was like, Whoa, this looks pretty dang good. This looks pretty good. And that was kind of my first taste of AI. And once I got that, I was using Capshow for a while, and then Chat GBT came out and I just started experimenting and playing, and I was like, Whoa.

00:24:41
These programs solve some very real problems that I have in my business. When you look at all the different steps of your business, everything from Marketing and client acquisition, to delivery of the service, to follow up, to referrals, it smooths out all those edges. Plus, as I mentioned before, it empowers people to be much more effective at what they do. Everything from creating video clips, to writing notes, to writing emails, to guest outreach, to research, everything is empowered. So I became somewhat obsessed.

00:25:16
And now we're using AI in just about every aspect. I've had meetings with about six different app developers just this month with things that they're developing and working on. They're hungry, it's moving quickly. And one of the cool things about having a team is if someone comes to me with a cool new AI app and I'm like, okay, that sounds interesting, I just send it to my team member that I think could use, and I say, hey, test this out, try it out, tell me what you think. And some of them, they're like.

00:25:42
Not for us. Other times they're like, whoa, this is amazing. We need this. So anyway, that's kind of my short story on how I became an AI fanatic. It's unbelievable.

00:25:53
I feel like I have to evangelize AI to everybody because it's so powerful. No, I'm glad you went there, especially. Okay, so number am I definitely a fan of Cap Show. I'm using actually two for my podcast. It's kind of like here's behind the scenes stuff that I know podcasters other people like glaze over.

00:26:07
But podcasters love this stuff. But I've tried out cast Magic and cap show. So I'm using Cap show. Really? For my personal show.

00:26:15
Here the god of gigs that you're listening to right now. A lot of that is Cap Show starting off with the rough draft, but I want to kind of start with that moment right there, the rough draft. And the people who are scared that they're going to lose their voice, that AI is replacing the writing, that AI is replacing the creative. So I want to start right there by admitting, yeah, some of the stuff that you guys are reading on my things are started by a Cap show, by a swell, by Paul Creative Services, and then there are some obviously, like you said, emails, chat, TBT things, but it's still me. I wonder whether you have ever felt in the use of AI.

00:26:53
That your voice. What makes you Mark that's what people gravitate to after I was an entrepreneur. It's your personality, it's your style. So how do you navigate AI not taking over that and making sure that. You'Re still you and you're speaking to your audience?

00:27:08
Well, a quick side note, by the way, castmagic just had a deal on AppSumo. I don't know if it's still live. You get a lifetime subscription for, like, 100 will. I will link that in the show notes if it's still there, because I absolutely grabbed that. That's why I mentioned it.

00:27:21
Same my team member reached out. He's like, Mark, you got to get this. I love this app. I'm like done. Get it.

00:27:27
Go mean. Listen, I'm not naive and blind to the fact that there are some moral hazards that come with AI. There are some challenges. There's some real problems to society. They're going to come with AI.

00:27:42
These have happened throughout history. There's been a technological shift, and things have changed. People have changed. Jobs have changed. Jobs have been lost.

00:27:51
But here's the deal. AI. You cannot ignore it. And people say, you will not be replaced by AI. I kind of disagree with that.

00:27:58
I think that you will be replaced by AI. But the common going logic is you will be replaced by someone that's using AI, which I 100% agree with. Here's the deal, though. I'll give you an example. There's a big writer strike happening in I think it's California, New York.

00:28:13
There's a big writers union. That's striking. Yeah. As we speak, as we're recording and. You look at what these writers will do in some sitcom, they'll have 20 writers sitting around sharing jokes.

00:28:23
And whatnot with AI, you don't need 20 writers. You need two writers, or maybe just one who's using AI to create tons of different ideas, throwing up against the wall, running them against algorithms to see what hits and what doesn't. So sure, you're going to be replaced by someone that is using AI, but the more proficient you are, it's like going from having two hands to having 50 hands. You know what I'm saying? And so to me, I'm not scared that I'm going to lose my voice because I've got a podcast.

00:28:57
I'm talking every week. I'm sharing my ideas. I help professional thought leaders build income, build influence. I help them launch and automate podcasts. Because again, I think that podcasting is the best way to build that personal brand.

00:29:13
I mean, I am worried. AI is so crazy. The world is completely different. I love the fact I wanted to tell you right there, I did a whole talk. I did a podcast about the things that AI cannot replace.

00:29:26
It cannot replace a soul, right? It cannot initiate. It can respond and take what humans have put in, right? Large language bottles. All this was human stuff.

00:29:37
So it can only reproduce and re put together what we've already created. So it can't reproduce that, it can't produce that, and it can't produce emotion and spirit of what we do. So for creatives, I was trying to calm them all down. That was my tell of what you just said, which is, hey, just because AI can create a cool picture doesn't mean and what you said is really awesome. It's really powerful.

00:29:57
Yes, it will replace some jobs, right? But what I believe is not only will it become kind of where the people that use it most proficiently will become the winners, also there will be people who will say, hey, like a podcast, my voice, this is 100% human. There will be a Market for those who are also saying, hey, this part and this is what big one for musicians and creatives is live. Can you believe everything you see and read and hear? Maybe not.

00:30:29
Deep fake this, deep fake that. Yeah, we get it right? Technology. We had the same problem with Dapster. We had the same problem with streaming.

00:30:36
We had the same problem. People were scared of TV back in the day, right? So what I believe is that it's going to really encourage people to do what you just said, which is use their voice to actually step out, be on lives, be in front of people, shake hands, because that's going to become more and more what people gravitate to. Yes, the AI can take care of all the stuff that you don't need to see. But then when you and I show up, it's like, oh, there's Allen.

00:31:01
There's Mark. I know that person. I know that voice. I know the thing. So the AI, I love that point that you put that it's proficiency of using the tool.

00:31:10
It's incredibly important, and I think that people more and more are going to continue to crave authenticity. There's a reason why podcasts are the new media. While people are leaving traditional, mainstream corporate media where everyone's paid to have a certain talking point, everyone toes the line, and people want different ideas. They want like, well, what do you really think? Right?

00:31:30
Don't tell me what the control room is telling you here. Tell us what you really think. And so I think the authenticity is really important. And again, I think it's where podcasting can shine. Absolutely.

00:31:40
I've definitely promoted that to all. And if you're not, by the way, creatives, everybody listening to me, I've already done a podcast about this. If you're not doing a podcast, if you're not going to work with Mark and create a podcast, you need to be guesting on them, like, period. Nobody in this audience should not be either a guest or a producer of a podcast. There's no excuses.

00:31:58
So I love this topic and I want to get back to what our listeners and what our audience really do struggle with, which is how do I now scale something that I'm doing by myself? You talk to some of the most brilliant entrepreneurs all the time on your podcast. What's one thing that you are hearing from them? The advice that you've maybe received from a guest that you love that has really helped you to kind of get your brain around like, hey, I can scale this thing. This can be bigger than what I'm seeing.

00:32:27
It can be more than because you already kind of have it sounds like in your DNA of building and scaling, but has there been anything that you've heard in the last five years or so that has really lit the fire under you and really explained to you, hey, this is how you make a business that builds? Well, nothing specifically, but I got to go back to sales because I've been thinking about it a lot recently. For a long time, I kind of felt like sales was a bad word. Right. And I think that's another problem that our country has.

00:32:55
We put salespeople on such a high pedestal. It is probably the most important skill. But celebrating people like Jordan Belfort, the world wolf of Wall Street, and giving him a movie, it makes me sick. Like, this guy's a criminal. Yeah, a little know, he's done so.

00:33:10
Much damage and now he's a celebrity. I really dislike that. But listen, if you're going to build wealth for your family, if you're going to give your family freedom, if you're going to impact your community a positive way, you need to generate income. You must. And in order to generate income, you need to convince people to give you their money, right?

00:33:29
So you need to be good at sales. So, again, I've been thinking about this a lot recently. We've actually been covering this a lot in the after hours entrepreneur pro group. You need to get in here too, by the way, Allen, you'd be a great fit. But in the pro group, we've been talking a lot about sales because you can have the best product in the world.

00:33:46
If nobody knows about it, nobody will buy it. And what I try to think about is how can I spend less time in the weeds with my hands rolled up doing the editing and stuff? I want to spend as little time doing that and as much time getting on calls with potential clients as possible. I want to have as much time doing that because that's the thing to your point, that you can't replace you can't replace you. You're the face of your business, especially as a creative, and it doesn't mean you don't lose your creative direction, by the way.

00:34:13
So just one thing that I'm going to give everybody here. This is something that I didn't really focus on when I was young. This is fresh in my mind because we just had a master class on this this morning in the pro group. It's being thoughtful about what to do with all the conversations that you get on. Oh, I love this.

00:34:30
Okay. When I was coming up, I would get on a conversation with anyone at any time for any reason. Let's have a coffee to chat, type, pick your brain. Yeah, don't do that. Don't do that.

00:34:44
Every time you get on a call, there should be some outcome. Is this a potential client or is this a potential referral partner? That's the way I look at it, is a potential client or potential referral partner. And if you're getting on too many calls where you don't have any product or service for that person, develop maybe another offer that you could have for them or maybe there's someone that can serve their need that you can connect them to, right? I know this is kind of a long winded answer, but I love this.

00:35:12
Get on calls with people have a purpose. Why am I getting in a call with this? But don't just get on a call for no reason. Get on a call because there's a specific purpose. And don't just surprise them and try to sell them, say, up front, like, let's get on a call.

00:35:24
I help help Thought Leaders launch and automate podcasts. Does that sound like a cool topic to you? I'd love to talk to you about what that can do for you. Right? So you get on they already know what the deal is.

00:35:33
You know what the deal is. So you're not wasting one's time, A, but B, you should definitely have a spreadsheet with the names, emails, contact information of everybody you get on a call with. You should also keep notes of maybe what is this person's business, what business are they in? What's their challenge? That's an important one.

00:35:52
What are they challenged with? And then lastly, I like to tag them with what's something that I can do for this person? Is this like a referral partner? Is this someone for a podcast launch? Is this someone that has a podcast that might want to produce this?

00:36:07
Maybe there's someone that's a good fit for my pro community. Like, what am I doing with this person? And the reason why this is important, Allen, is because you might not be focused on sales today, you might not have this infrastructure today, but I'm telling you yourself, in twelve months, 24 months, 36 months, you're going to be sitting there thinking to yourself, I need to get more leads, I need to talk to more people. And you know what you're going to do? You're going to go to that spreadsheet that you've been keeping track of the last several months, and you're going to have tons of leads.

00:36:38
I just got on a phone with someone that I had met a year and a half ago, and it's looking like there's going to be a potential business there. If I wouldn't have saved that in my spreadsheet, they would have been gone. It would just been a random person on LinkedIn, right? Yeah. So anyway, very long winded answer, but I would encourage everyone to be thoughtful about the calls that you're getting on and keep a spreadsheet so that you can fall back on that in the future.

00:37:02
I'm going to tell you right now, I'm going to raise you the long answer and tell you even a longer answer in terms of what that really looks like for creatives. We have a pro community as well. We have our guiding gigs, 360 Gold program. One of my clients in there, one of our members, I should say, he's over in England, he does worship on the streets. Name it, guys, look it up.

00:37:22
He's amazing. Worship on the streets. He's a professional street busker, singing, worship and going across the countryside singing and spreading the gospel patreon community. Like, he is killing it. Right.

00:37:35
Here's what I saw when he because you might say that's an amazing mission. He's a creative, he's a singer songwriter, poet, like, all kinds of stuff. And then he showed me his organization, because this is the part that I heard when you said I heard the groaning in the background of someone be like, I have spreadsheets, no leads. No, this is not me. No.

00:37:56
I like to sing, I like to write, I like to draw. I don't want to do any of that stuff. Right. I'm pointing out my friend Aaron, because Aaron, when he showed me his lineup, of how he's organized all the things so that he can keep up with his team members, keep up with the musicians, keep up with the venues, even in terms of where he fit God in Gigs 360 in his planning to help him, to make sure that he was getting ready to sharpen the saw. Right.

00:38:20
So he could do all these things. The man was organized. I can't remember the quote right now, but there's a great quote that says most of the time, creativity looks like boredom. Creativity looks like doing the boring things that you just mentioned. That keeping up with people who you just talked to.

00:38:37
When did I talk to this person? What can I help with them? And this works in terms of any industry, podcasting, songwriting, Marketing, anything that we do, we have to be intentional. Bible talks about do not despise small beginnings, right? Be faithful over a few things.

00:38:52
Everything in these little details ends up mattering in the end because we actually pay attention. And it really honestly, it shows that we care about people. If you say like you said to me, hey, let's get on a call, let's go on a podcast, you and I's relationship started at Podfest because you gave me some time and it was intentional. We find out that we're close by. So to everybody listening, these things are not just sales concepts.

00:39:17
These are like literally like human relationship concepts that will make a difference in your life and your business. I didn't mean to preach all that. I'm sorry, but you lit a fire under me because I feel like people hear this and they hear it in what you just talked about. They hear it in the sales head. Like I said, I'm not a sales guy.

00:39:33
I'm a creative guy. I just want to record podcasts all day. But I recognize that in order for me to have that dream, you need to be able to do the boring stuff too. And you know what we talked about why at the beginning, why do we get into entrepreneurship? It's for that freedom.

00:39:51
Yeah. Discipline equals freedom. You need to have the discipline to do the small things. Hashtag, you got it. Error.

00:39:59
Got engaged. You got it from after hours entrepreneur. Make sure you tag Mark Savant when you tag that. Discipline equals freedom. Man, this has been a great talk.

00:40:07
I know we could talk literally another 2 hours, but they need to be following you. They need to be listening to your podcast so they can get more of this, whatever they want by following your podcast, by following you on all your social media. So tell them how they can get in touch with you if they want to work with you. Because, again, we've said this out loud and we're going to say it again. If you're not creating a podcast, you.

00:40:28
Should be guesting on a podcast. And we are all content creators, by the way, period. Whether you like it or not. Musicians, creatives, freelancers, whatever you call it, we are all content creators now. So tell them how they can follow you, how they can get in touch.

00:40:38
With you, and how they can learn more from you. Yeah, you could find Mark Savant on every platform. Follow me on YouTube. Mark Savant. And that's where I'm sharing all my if you we just kind of touched the tip there.

00:40:51
Yeah. I wanted to dig even deeper, but I want to leave them wanting more so that they can get to you and learn more from you. Yeah. On Mark Savant on YouTube. I'm doing, like, walkthroughs, doing a lot of cool stuff there, and I just encourage everyone.

00:41:02
If this filled your cup, if you want to chat, hit me up, Mark@Marksavantmedia.com. Email me. Mark@Marksavantmedia.com. That's Mark@Marksvantmedia.com. It's pretty easy to remember.

00:41:13
I'd love to talk to you. Absolutely. And the podcast, which I've already got on my Good Pods list, as one of my favorites. I'm definitely again, going to make sure that Mark, hopefully will be interacting with God in Gigs 360, which is our leadership program for highly motivated creatives who want to build self sustaining businesses with values that reflect what God has put inside them. I want to make sure that we are collaborative at this, like all rising tide lifts, all boats.

00:41:40
And so that's why, Mark, you're my friend. You're my brother in Christ. You're a person that I really respect and honor, and I'm so glad you're a part of our God and Gigs community now, a member of the God and Gigs show pantheon. So I appreciate you being on the show, sir, and we got to do. It again sometime soon.

00:41:57
Honored. Honored. Which, you know, quick, by the way. Yes. If you haven't yet.

00:42:02
After I was entrepreneur, listen to the last episode with Patrick Bet David. It's short. It's about nine minutes. And I asked him, how do you talk to your wife about money and entrepreneurship? You must listen to it.

00:42:16
Okay, this is the bonus. This is the bonus. I literally did the sign off. We're going to do the bonus because before we turn on the mics, you asked me a question, and now I'm going to throw that back around you because I love this question, but I'm going to ask in a little different way if you could have any guests. In the world, living or dead.

00:42:36
Okay. On your podcast? Yes. I'm opening it up to everybody. Who would you want to talk to?

00:42:42
Well, I mean, obviously I need to talk to Jesus, right? That's the easy answer. No, you didn't have to go there. In my men's group, we're going through the sermon on the mound, like you said. Simple.

00:42:56
I want to know some of the stuff he says on the sermon on the mound. I really struggle with. If someone slaps you, turn the other cheek. I'm like what? Yeah.

00:43:05
I'm like, I'm supposed to do that, right? Because honestly, when you look at what's happening in our culture, there's some stuff that I do not get down with I don't like it, I don't want it around my kids. It's really heinous stuff. And this idea of turn the other cheek, I kind of struggle with that. But that's a whole nother philosophical thing we get.

00:43:24
I know I opened a can of worms right there, but I just wanted to jump that one in because for podcast or podcasters, like, man, we get to do this all the time and yet there's always that one person like, oh, if I wish I could ask them one question, but no, man, this has been great. As you can see, I just kind of left it open for a part two because there's no way we can just close it off with just one episode. I want to be respectful of your time and everybody else that's listening. So you guys, thank you, Mark, so much for being a part of the Guided Gig Show. And we'll have you back, hopefully very soon.

00:44:00
Well, my friend, I am so glad you got to hear that incredibly smart and wise perspective on how AI can actually benefit your creative business and how you can see the entire picture of building a creative business around you, the authenticity that you have to present while leveraging the power of technology like AI. Mark was the perfect person to bring this forward to you. I hope that you are subscribing right now to the after hours entrepreneur. It's one of my favorite every week. Listens.

00:44:35
And you definitely got to follow Mark on his socials and stay connected with him so you can learn how to really leverage these tools. And especially if you are thinking of creating a podcast. I could not recommend anyone more highly than Mark and his team at Mark Sabant Media. Now, once you start using these tools effectively, you've got to get the accountability, the encouragement and the support so that you can stay on the path to becoming a completely confident creative. To do that, the best way is to get with a group like ours at God and Gigs 360 Gold.

00:45:11
That's where you'll find highly motivated, high character creatives who are absolutely committed not just to their own success, but to yours. And we are joining together weekly and monthly, consistently helping each other to identify strategies and to stay connected with our values. It's an incredible group. I have been so blessed by them. I get more out of every single call that we do than maybe even the group does.

00:45:37
And so I would love for you. To be a part of that. If you are listening to this episode, you are probably the perfect candidate for God and Gigs 360 Gold. So check us out@gotingigs.com Gold, and you'll see how you can become a part of that incredible community. Well, my friend, that's all the show we have for you today.

00:45:57
So until next time, continue to become the creative that you were created to be. God bless and I'll see you next episode. Thanks for joining us here at the God and Gigs show. Please leave us a review on itunes like our Facebook page, or visit godandgigs.com and tell us what you thought of this show. We'll be back soon.

00:46:17
In the meantime, go create something amazing.