About a year ago I was just getting started with The Creative Brand on a full-time basis. Up until that point it had been a part-time affair. A few hours here and there for a little extra spending money (and an escape from the day-to-day corporate grind).

I’ve been lucky in that over the years, I’ve pushed to build relationships. Those relationships meant that I got to learn from people I respected and liked without any expectation. Now that I’m out there trying to build something, those people have wanted to help. It’s super humbling—I don’t know how else to put it. Anyway, as I went out on my own I wanted to learn how others were doing it.

I always talk about how curiosity drives a lot of what I do and this was no different. Yes, I wanted to learn how to survive but I also genuinely wanted to learn why they decided to make the jump and how they were helping their clients. That led to some amazing conversations with friends and strangers. It made me realize two things:

1. I’m very lucky to be able to chat with a lot of these people, not many get to.

2. These people are brilliant and don’t always have a mechanism for sharing how they do what they do.

Out of those, the spark that would become What’s Your Process? was born.

What's Your Process? Season 1 Trailer

Going from idea to reality

I had this idea for sharing processes but no idea how to do it. Was it a newsletter? A podcast? A report? A book? I hadn’t started this newsletter yet (that would come about eight months later) so that felt wrong. A podcast was interesting but terrifying to me because believe it or not, I really don’t love being in the spotlight. A book just seemed beyond me—who’d even buy it?

A podcast it was. A podcast from the guy who doesn’t listen to or really like podcasts. A podcast that absolutely scared the hell out of me. And of all the reasons that could’ve stopped me in my tracks, fear is what pushed me forward. I didn’t want to be that consultant making recommendations about things he’s never done himself so I needed to put my money where my mouth was.

What is one thing you’re world class at?

Once I determined that it’d be a podcast I needed to figure out my format. It was always going to be about process (I think the title is the first thing I came up with) so I needed to build one otherwise I’d be full of it.

I didn’t know what I wanted the show to be yet but I knew what I didn’t want it to be:

1. Another show that spends most of the time on someone’s Linkedin

2. A show where people didn’t feel comfortable sharing their greatness

3. A show that was super loose

These were the start of the outline. It meant the intro would be super tight because we didn’t need the life story, then we’d need to talk process but what would be the lead in? That’s when rule #2 punched me right in the face. The thing that holds most people back is humility. That was going to have to go.

My imaginary guests (at the time) were going to be world class so why not just ask what they’re world class at? v1 of the question was “What are you world class at?” It didn’t feel right especially when you consider that some of these people are really good at a few things. v2 ended up being the final:

"What is one thing you’re world class at?"

This was the right version of the question because the pressure of world class was coming from me rather than from them but they could pick the actual topic which hopefully put them at ease. From there it was jumping into process.

After figuring out the key questions the structure came together pretty quickly. I felt good about it. Time to get started, right? Right? …right?

August 24, 2024

Yeah right… Remember that whole “podcasts terrify me” thing? Well that hit pretty hard right after making some meaningful progress. I’d delay and come up with excuses as to why it wasn’t the right time. None of them were real because I was still excited to tell people about the concept, I just couldn’t bring myself to get started. Then one random day in August two exceptionally random things happened that kicked me into gear.

The first was a catch up with Nish Patel. Nish has been a buddy for a few years now (I was a guest on his CreativeOps Podcast back in January 2024) and we regularly grab time to catch up. I shared the idea and he just looked at me confused, “what are you waiting for?” he asked, “Just start.” Most people would appease me, Nish checked my BS immediately.

I thought about that moment over and over throughout the day. When the kids went down that night I wanted a distraction. I cracked open Very Good Copy by Eddie Shleyner (best copywriting book in the biz hands down) to a vignette about Leonardo Da Vinci. How his curiosity drove him towards different pursuits and discoveries. The conclusion was the second wake up call that day.

Excerpt from pg. 100 of Very Good Copy by Eddie Shleyner

I wanted to do the show. I was curious about what could happen if I did it. Curiosity has carried me to every good place in my life. I’ve never regretted pursuing an idea and seeing where it led—even if I failed—because it meant I’d at least tried it. Reading that vignette I realized that my curiosity had to outweigh my fear. The next morning I got to work.

The Process for What’s Your Process?

Choosing Guests

It all started with a guest list. Who did I want on the show? Who would want to be on the show? I put together a Notion doc with my wish list along with their topics.

My initial guest wish list (it evolved over time to include outreach and scheduling)

I know the names are blurred here (that’s partially because this is a working doc and I’m still organizing) but you can rest assured that these are some of the best and brightest minds in tech and marketing. A lot of people would start small with friends and colleagues but I figured if I’m stepping out of my comfort zone then I may as well swing for the fences.

For season one it wasn’t just about brilliant marketers though. If we’re being honest, they had to be brilliant and have a high follower count too. I’ve had a long (and mostly positive) career in this industry but building a personal brand was something I didn’t really think about until about a year ago so I knew I’d need help. While I could never mandate promotion from the guests I was hoping that I could leverage their audience to build out the show. The initial list was about 20 people because I assumed some would say no (only two said no and both asked me to come back to them for season 2 as it just wasn’t a good time).

The Setup

I’m not talking mics or cameras (although I did buy a sweet Midnight Blue Blue Yeti mic), I mean the actual process. If you’re going to do it, then you’ve got to do it right. For me that meant:

My outreach template

I wanted a tight blurb that I could share that would give potential guests an idea of what to expect:

Hey [name], I wanted to invite you to be a guest on my brand new podcast. It's called "What's Your Process?" and the idea is to dig into your process—start to finish—for one thing you're world class at. You're good at a lot of things but I'm thinking the topic for you could be [topic idea that I researched for them] (but of course I'm open to suggestions).

If you're into it, I'm including the booking link below. If you have any questions, happy to chat through anything with you. If it's not a fit right now, totally get it and there's absolutely no pressure. Thanks for considering it!

Talk soon,

Dmitry

 

Booking link: [HubSpot meeting link]

Personal meeting link: [HubSpot meeting link]

Meeting Link and Automation

Once I got someone interested, I needed to make it as easy as possible to book a recording slot. I used the HubSpot meeting scheduler to set up a meeting link that was synced up to my calendar. A potential guest could just grab a time that suits and we’d go from there.

My HubSpot meeting link for podcast guests

Within the link I also wrote out a detailed calendar invite so that there were no surprises and guests knew what to expect. The same info was sent out via email as both a thank you and a heads up. Again, the goal here was to make this as easy as possible for guests with no surprises on the day of.

The day of

The first recording was with Bill Macaitis on PLG. I was so nervous—he’s an absolute legend–but he was so cool. We worked through the initial structure together, hit record, and spent close to an hour just chopping it up on PLG and Enterprise. It was so much fun. That session gave me so much more confidence and if we’re honest I think you’ll be able to tell the difference between the early recordings and the later ones.

The session also helped me understand how to prep for sessions and how to make the guest feel at ease.

It starts with doing your homework. I know it’s obvious but if you don’t know who the guest is, what they do, and at least a high level history of their career you’re wasting your time and theirs.

From there I’d prep a cheat sheet.

My Google Docs day of cheat sheet

After muting my phone (and my doorbell), I pull this doc up on my external monitor and before we hit “record” I’ll go over the structure of the conversation with the guest (this is a great time to nail pronunciation and any role changes/new releases).

1. A brief intro
   This is literally as brief as possible from me. “Welcome to the show. I’m joined by [name], [title]. How you doing, [name]?”. We’ll chat for a moment or two but the goal has always been to get to the process as fast as possible.

2. What do people need to know about you?
   This is the guest’s opportunity to introduce themselves. When we prep, I tell them to take as much or as little time as they’d like and so far we’ve gotten a wide range of intros which has been delightful.

3. What is one thing you’re world class at?
   I have the answer to this before we start and we confirm it in the conversation.

4. What’s your process?
   This is the meat of the interview where we break down their answer to the world class question. I ask guests to think about a high level process* for us to follow along with. We don’t go over that in the prep.

5. What’s next?
   This is their time to talk about where we might see this process come to life next.

This overview takes about 5 minutes then we get to it.

*When I talk about the high-level process I actually mean something like this email. There are headers and subheaders. The headers end up being the chapter markers and they discuss the subheaders within those.

Editing and promotion

I initially started off thinking I’d self-edit. What I quickly realized is that even though all of these video editing tools have become much easier to use, I’d never get the video quality I wanted on my own so I had to find an editor. And into my life walked the incredibly talented Alejandro Ramirez Avila. He’s helped with almost every cut you’ve seen and will see.

When we think of an episode there’s both the audio and video to consider, those are Alejandro’s department. When it comes to the editorial, it’s a team effort. For every episode we create a long form video (for YouTube), an audio file (for Spotify and Apple Podcasts), and 3-4 social clips (umm… for social).

As we’re getting ready to start shipping episodes I’ll be sharing the social clips with the guests and asking them to promote the episode. I specifically say asking them because there’s no expectation. They already took valuable time out of their schedule to speak with me on camera. Of course, I’d love for them to promote it (that was one of the initial parts of the plan) but ultimately that’s my job!

What does that job look like? I’m going to be promoting the show on Linkedin, in this newsletter, and by booking some spots on other podcasts. I don’t have the budget that many big creators do but I’m hoping that between the quality of the show, the caliber of the guests, and with a little bit of luck I can get this in front of the right people and that they love it.

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As of typing this I’ve recorded 9 sessions and have followed this process every single time.