How to Build a Personal Brand That Gets You on Bigger Stages

Chad Durfee (0:00)

Two stages can unlock 200 paid stages. If Apple has me ranked as a top 10 podcast globally, that's Apple telling the world, hey, Chad's one of our top 10 podcast hosts. That's Apple now communicating a signal to the market indirectly about my expertise. Or if I have a best seller, that's New York Times or Amazon communicating to the market something about me. Or if I'm on a TEDx stage or a celebrity stage, that's TEDx communicating something to the market about me.

And so, if you can sandwich your prospects in the marketplace in between the direct signal you're putting out and the indirect signal those trusted third parties are putting out and they're communicating the same story, you've now effectively controlled the narrative. You're controlling the lens through which people perceive you.

Luis Diaz (0:44)

I've helped generate over 50 million podcast downloads and worked with over 250 different podcasts. And the great thing about that is that I get to use all that information to share at least one helpful tip every single week to help you grow your influence and your online presence with video podcasting. Hey, my name is Luis Diaz. I run a company called Top 10 Podcasts, and this show is dedicated to helping you learn at least one helpful tip every single episode to help you grow your influence and your online presence with video podcasting. So that sounds good. Let's get into it.

It's funny to reconnect because so for a little bit of backstory, at least that I can provide is that you were in a completely different space when you first connected. And you pivoted into like helping people get on podcasts, helping people speak, helping people launch podcasts, which is really cool, dude, to see you because I knew you. Yeah, I knew you as like the performance, like the referral base guy who helped build crazy referral programs. So it's good to speak, man. Today, selfishly, and people know that I'm pretty selfish on this show, I want to talk to you about booking stages because that is everyone's focus. And I guess to hyper focus in before we get into how you got here.

Stages regarding like TEDx talks or live in person type stages.

Chad Durfee (2:03)

Yeah.

Luis Diaz (2:04)

So if you're good with that, dude, how did you get here and then talk to me about stages this year?

Chad Durfee (2:11)

Yeah, well, I mean, shoot, we met, was it back in 2020 when we were partnering with Rudy Moore? Yeah. Yeah. And my stuff that I do is all referral stuff. And we crushed it for the people that wanted to do it. I mean, Joe, if you remember Joe, at Daroma, Rudy's COO, he ran that referral program we built for them, and they made 1.5 million in seven months. And then he was singing it everywhere, but nobody wants to do referral stuff. So like, the more I got into it, the more people were like, yeah, it's nice. Cool that you made a million and a half in seven months, but too much work.

You know, so it got more and more difficult to get people that wanted to lift a finger to do stuff on the back end. It wasn't quite like bleeding neck problem.

So yeah, man, this last two years was an exercise in completely reinventing myself. It actually started, referrals actually started what we're doing right now, though. You know, so we started transitioning to B2B, kind of JV type stuff. We were doing LinkedIn outreach to begin those conversations. LinkedIn is so saturated now with with cold outreach and like just people, you know, you connect with somebody and there's an offer in your inbox. And so we were like, how do we, how do we kind of cut through the noise there? And I ended up starting a podcast with one of my clients. I didn't really know what I was doing. I was like, let's figure it out. Let's figure it out. And then we figured out that that's a great door opener to get actually people that have tons of clients and big audiences on the show, if you can structure it right. So that became a great way to get guests on podcasts and then turn them into referral partners on the back end through that reciprocity and that conversation. So that kind of started it. And then we were like, man, most of our podcasters were writing books. I paid 30K for my first book. And it was, it was tedious. I was like, man, I don't have time to read books, let alone write a book. Then I had to write a book and then they sent me the edits and it was a whole book. So I had to go reread the entire book that I just wrote. Yeah. I was like, this is crazy. So we figured out a faster, more efficient way to write clients books, you know, through audio recordings and different things that have to write it out. And it really is still a process to get it done in a month or two. And it's all still their book. It's all their, you know, their unique IP and their words and their voice. So we added the publishing house to it. So now we do podcast. Obviously, you are incredibly supportive on that front. So anybody who is like looking for high level podcast work, LUIS team helps us a ton.