When Hustle Isn’t Sustainable, Systems Are

We share what worked and what didn’t while prepping and hosting a trade show, plus why we shipped a flawed audio episode to keep momentum. We dig into pay-per-appointment cold calling, LinkedIn access risks, and how to scale outreach without burning trust.

• choosing cadence over perfect audio to keep growth
• trade show highlights and why paying for setup wins
• real-world barter value from fridges to golf balls
• new member sign-up via event proof and energy
• testing pay-per-appointment cold callers with SLAs
• guarding brand by avoiding shared logins on LinkedIn
• list hygiene and auditing activity for quality control
• building resilience with flexible part-time teaching
• stacking systems to reduce grind and increase leverage
• voice acting cameo in a new beta video game

Chapters

• 0:02 Welcome Back And Why The Gap
• 1:15 Audio Mistake And Publishing Tradeoffs
• 3:22 Inside The Trade Show Sprint
• 4:42 Pay For Setup, Save Your Sanity
• 6:17 New Signups And Real Trade Value
• 8:29 Side Path: Substitute Teaching Plan
• 9:39 Outsourcing Cold Calls And Fiverr Tests
• 12:02 LinkedIn Access Risks And List Hygiene

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Trading Post Podcast, where we unlock the secrets of business-to-business trade, dive into powerful networking strategies, and share my exciting journey of using a podcast to market my business instead of relying on SEO. I'm your host, Trader Stew. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Trading Post. I am your host, of course, TraderStu. And it's been, I was trying to look, I didn't even bother opening a computer right now. I think it's been a week or two, I think two weeks since my last upload. And it was an unintentional hiatus. We had our trade show this last week, actually, on the 15th. And it it takes a lot to get it ready. So everything else got pushed aside, including, you know, of course, uploading podcasts, because the whole point of the podcast is to help assist the business, not to be the business, of course. So and then I also noticed that the I think it was the last upload I did for all of y'all out there that are looking to utilize podcasting for your business to advertise and promote it and uh things like that. I noticed that the audio was less than desirable. And that was because I up I uploaded or you I used my mic at my office and it's attached to my laptop. The I reason why I do that is because the mic has a pop filter on it, the pop screen, it has the phone housing on it, it's got an audio vox, whatever like that. Awesome, you know, USB mic. Here's the problem is that when I was using it, I didn't check to make sure that the input was that mic and not the laptop microphone, which of course sucks. So I used digital enhancement to try and make it listenable, and I noticed that it sounded pretty okay, like on my phone or my laptop, whatever when I played it back, but when I when I tried the the car or uh even headphones, whatever like that, it it sounded tinny. And so sorry about that. It goes to one of those things to where do you re-record a 20-30 minute, you know, spiel, or do you just rock it and satisfy the algorithm by not being late and doing the one week, you know, per or one audit upload per week to you know keep the algorithm alive for you. So I don't know, catch 22. It's not like I have millions of listeners, right? It's not like that. So I have dozens or whatever you want to call it, hundreds, I guess. But yeah, it's it's I don't know. I'm gonna I might do it again or might not, I guess. It's one of those things. Anyway, keep that in mind. If you screw up, you got to make a decision call. I didn't have time or the desire or need or want to upload again. I didn't I was like I said I was getting ready for the trade show. So it was either I upload it or I get nothing at all for almost a month, you know. I mean, so you just have to make that kind of decision. Anyway, what else is going on? Ah, yes. So the trade show. I was actually gonna make an upload uh at the trade show and go around and interview everybody, but you know, when you're a host of something like that, you get pulled in about a dozen different angles, and I just didn't have time to go out and grab a microphone and go around booth-booth and start talking to people. So I in my head it sounded cool all the way up until the point to where I didn't even have time to sit at my designated station and do the registration for everybody that came in. I was actually just running around and and you know, I was I had a lot of my members that showed up, so it was nice. I had to talk to everybody, see everybody, and I liked it. I mean, it was at a great time. This was the best year for me ever to do the trade show. I've done probably half dozen or so, and including when I was here before. And I gotta tell you, paying for things to get done is the way to go. Like this year, we paid for pipe and drape to get be put up by one of our new members, and I actually brought them on for the trade show. And wow, that saved like six hours of work or something like that, and a lot of labor and a lot of setup and a lot of decisions that didn't have to be made. So some things are worth paying for. What else? Uh oh, you know, the trade show is nice too, is that I always say I had a new sign-up show up, and uh actually she signed up at the show. It was a referral, and it's a lot of excitement. So people don't really understand trade or you know what it how benefit the benefit of it. So until they go to maybe an event like that, and then you get to see how people you know buy and sell their trade, right? So we had everything from refrigerators there, like$2,500 refrigerators. I helped a guy carry in all the way to golf balls, you know, for a couple bucks a ball, whatever. He it's a cool uh he does re-what do you call it, like rein reinstatement or refurbished, refurbished golf balls where they find them in ponds, you know, and they clean them up and then resell them. So they might have only been hit maybe one time. Actually, probably that is mostly the case because they all looked brand new to me. But yeah, absolute golf. And uh what else? Oh, yeah. So the what was gonna say? Ah, I forgot, doesn't matter. Oh, this week is starts my training for substitute teaching. I'm gonna do part-time. And the reason I'm doing that is because with all the crap that's going on in the world today, I it's called CYA, right? The one thing that didn't shut down, or I guess several things that didn't shut down during the last shutdown, was schools. So I figure being a substitute teacher gives me the flexibility. I can make my own schedule, I can work when I want, whatever. You know what, you know, I guess that's three different ways of saying the same thing, but it's also kind of different anyway. And so yeah, I don't plan on doing it in full time, obviously, because I still am gonna be here at Metro Trade. And that leads me down the other rabbit hole that I'm going down, and that's trying to interview people to do my cold calling for me. I plan on paying, I guess, out of my own pocket to have my cold calls done for me, my appointment setting. So I'd ideally like a person that'll sit here and crank out some phone calls for me and set appointments. Now, I happened upon Fiverr last week and then let kind of the request brew over the weekend. And I had two or three real good candidates to where I can probably pay somebody, one guy was$75 per appointment set, which you know satisfied the how do you make sure they're working? So me, me and the owner were talking about this, and she's like, How do you how do you gauge? How do you tell that they're working? Do they send your reports? So, how do you know you're not just smoking your money, you know, every week, and then they're just gonna sit there in Bangladesh or Pakistan or whatever and just take your money and not do anything about it. So I like the whole, I don't get paid until they set a solid appointment. So, and that's a great way to do it because if I call them and say, hey, I had my appointment setter guy, you know, say you're expecting my call, and then if they tell me I don't know what you're talking about, or no, I didn't, you know, so now you know that that was a garbage appointment set, and that they're probably not a good person to keep paying, which is cool because you can stop paying them without the pay unemployment, of course, because they're a contractor. Beautiful thing. And the other one was they pay you have to supply them a cold call list, and they make about 110 to 150 calls a day, which if you don't know anything about cold calling, that is cranking, man. That is hustling, dude. So 40 a day, maybe is what I do, right? 40 is solid, dude. That's a good including lunch and all that other crap. It's that's uh it fills your day up, and so I would say it's worth it if they're setting appointments for you, though. You know, I mean it's one of those things you gotta try it and before you have to buy it, and you can't test it other any other way. So the only thing I don't like is I had two fellows say that they won't do cold calling, but they will do appointment setting for me over LinkedIn. And what was the other one? WhatsApp or what or Snapchat? I don't know how that's gonna work, but you know, they want my login for for Salesforce. I'm like, no, that just sounds like fishy and sketchy. And I'm gonna give some guy in Bangladesh my login for LinkedIn and then spam people for me out of my account with my name and logo on it. That just is a that's not a good idea. I I don't think. Has anybody ever done that before? If you've done that, let me know. Like, you know, comment or or or send me a direct message or whatever, because it's I don't I just don't know. I I think the only thing that might that might work for that if is if I did sales navigator and then made them a rep, maybe I'm not sure how that would work either. But I don't know. The the thing is is I'm already doing that. I'm already doing appointment setting, I guess, through messages, you know, or whatever. I I don't know, it's so hard to do because it's like do you pay someone to do your dirty work for you, so to speak, and then hope that it's kind of those things that you hope they don't recall your current members and offend people that are already members because there's no way for them to know. They don't know unless you get unless you find some way to scrub a list that like maybe AI could go through all the members in MetroTrade and then make sure that they're not recalled again.

unknown: 10:28

I don't know, man.

SPEAKER_00: 10:30

It's just one of those things where it's been over a year since I've been back, and the grind, the hustle, and the the daily co-calling is like not, it's just not sustainable. So, but I love the job. Like I like being a part-time broker. I like the job because I'm a part-time broker, part-time sales rep, part-time sales manager, part-time marketing, part-time social media manager, part-time networker, part-time god, I don't know, errands, kind of like errand boy. I do accounts receivable. It's fun. Like it's a I'm a jack of all trades, and I I have to have that in a job. Like, that's cool. That works for me. But the uh the cold calling's gotta, something's gotta happen with that. That's all. I mean, that's it. I mean, and I can might be able to like get that done for me, you know. I mean, so that's cool too. But what else? I think that's pretty much it. I'm not gonna like keep it dragging on just to make to fill time because you know it's been a hot minute, but I just want to like kind of check in. I don't know, am I still uh sponsored by Michigan Renaissance Festival if they're no longer open? I don't know how that works. I would probably say not, because the contract was to mention them every time, you know, every for every weekend, but now that they're closed, because it's the end of the season, I think that's up. But anyway, thanks to Metro Trading Association for enabling me to do this. And uh what else? Press X to play. I just talked with the owner, and she said that the get prepped game is up and run, not up and running, but like they have their first beta test release for the video game I'm gonna be in. My voices are done, and uh yeah, so I'm excited to see what I look like and how I act and talk and all that stuff in a video game, and be definitely buying it when it gets released. I mean, why not? And I've always wanted to be in a video game, I thought it'd be so cool. So, yeah, check out the trading post, the trader. I'm the trader, of course. And yeah, so that's it. All right, we'll see you next time. Be good or be good at it.