Increase your business ROI Build trust among your audience Create content your customers want to consume Scale every marketing strategy you have 
If you want to get off the blocks and into the podcasting world, this episode will help you do just that. B2B marketing strategies can come from a large array of creative sources Create content your audience wants to consume Build trust with your audience for future relationships and sales Learn about true user-generated content for your business Expand your thought leadership influence with a B2B podcast
00:00-07:14 | Trainual’s Genius Marketing Strategy 07:14-12:28 | Create content people actually want to consume 12:28-18:28 | Creativity begets new marketing strategies 18:28-26:36 | Engage your audience with a personal brand podcast 26:36-35:07 | How your thought leadership can become a B2B podcast 35:07-42:06 | Learn how your target audience is also your target client
“There's two types of content on the internet: there's the content that you want to consume, and there's the content that interrupts the content that you want to consume. One's a show and one's a commercial.” - Kap Chatfield “The only way to build trust is to start at a place that is not abrasive or interruptive of the audience’s experience.“ - Jonathan Ronzio “The podcast model allows you to generate conversation with your audience that everybody else can be impacted by.” - Kap Chatfield “CEOs, owners, and founders should engage in content creation, because it doesn't just help market your product, it helps equip your team, so that they know how you think.” - Kap Chatfield “The target audience is the audience, the target audience is the guest.” - Jonathan Ronzio “Our guests represent the persona that we want to serve--so we extract that content, help them share that content and serve the broader audience.” - Jonathan Ronzio “I let my intuition and experience inform the kind of content we should create.” - Jonathan Ronzio “You do not want to interrupt people, you want to compliment what they are doing, if not be the thing they want to watch.” - Jonathan Ronzio- Rveal’s website: rveal.media
- Rveal’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rvealmedia/
- Rveal’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC69p14R2ccMdyUbbmdlWCEw
Full transcription:
Kap Chatfield 00:20
Hey guys, welcome to B2B Podcasting. I'm really excited for the guest that we have on the show today. It's Jonathan Ronzio. He's the CMO at Trainual. And he's also the lead strategist of a podcast that Trainual just started called The Fastest Growing Companies Podcast. And he's also the host of his own show called Stokecast. Jonathan, glad to have you on the show today.
Jonathan Ronzio 00:43
What's up, Kap? I'm excited to be here. We've got a lot to talk about. I'm sure so we'll cram it in.
Kap Chatfield 00:50
Yeah, we do. So let's just jump right into it. Jonathan, why don't you share a little bit with us, I'm personally, I'm a huge fan of Trianual. I think it's such an elegant software. I see the ads all the time. The marketing is brilliant. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But for anybody who doesn't know what it is, What is Trainual?
Jonathan Ronzio 01:08
Trainual is your business playbook. It's that one spot for all of your processes and SOPs and your policies, and like, you know, people, directory or chart situation. It's like, essentially, it answers, who does what and how? And that's, I think, what every small business owner, as your team scales beyond just you, is trying to keep their like their their handle on, right? You're trying to keep your processes efficient, and understand like, who, what roles and responsibilities are on somebody's plate. And as you plan your future org, how to keep quality at scale. So it's, it's like, kind of in the middle of, of wikis and learning management systems. And it's a it's a unique position in terms of knowledge and training. But yeah, that's, that's what Trainual is.
Kap Chatfield 01:51
So if anybody who's listening has ever read the book, the E-Myth by Michael Gerber, I'm sure that's a book that it's like a must read at your company. But one thing that Michael Gerber talks about in that book is documenting your processes, so that you can create a consistent product, create custom, consistent customers hear a service experience, whatever you do, that's worth doing, basically write it down so that you can train somebody else to do it. But as an entrepreneur myself, I can tell you, I was just talking to my partner the other day, and I was like, Dude, where, where do we keep all these documents again? Are they in Google Docs? Are they in a dropbox folder? What's our formatting for them? But so it's, it's super chaotic, and it takes a lot of work to just kind of create the process for for documenting processes. But that's what Trainual does for you, right? It's like, it's this really beautiful, seamless app that allows you to document those processes for different SOPs, for different job titles. You can use documents, you can use video, it's it's so beautiful, it's so it's so intuitive to use and it actually makes it pretty fun to use. So if you haven't already tested it out, do you guys do a free trial or anything? By the way?
Jonathan Ronzio 03:02
Yeah, yeah, it's a free trial. And and it's like Trainual is the system to get it done. But it definitely does take work still, right? Like it takes time to make time. But, but that was a good analogy with with Gerber and the E-Myth. We actually have a book coming out called The Business Playbook, where Michael E. Gerber wrote the wrote the foreword to it. And so so like, he's kind of, in essence passing the torch. He wrote the foreword saying, like, "Look, you read the E-Myth, and you learned you needed systems to do this thing". But what his book didn't give you was like the, the how to, to implement how to write and write down the best kind of like, the next step is is this upcoming book, The Business Playbook. It's due out in early October.
Kap Chatfield 03:44
Gosh, okay, man, you guys are just content machine. Like, you're just creating podcasts doing really cool marketing campaigns. One of the cool things that you guys love this book, but let's just go right into it. Dude. One of the most mind blowing B2B SAAS marketing initiatives that I've ever seen, you guys just finished and you just launched, I think you know what I'm talking about. Can you explain the song: This is how you do it? Yes, yeah, break it down for us.
Jonathan Ronzio 04:17
I can break it down. So for everybody that's listening right now who might not have seen this or be familiar with it. We just dropped a campaign where we collaborated with Montel Jordan, and Daymond John to basically remix the iconic, "This is how we do it" right? Like we took
Kap Chatfield 04:33
Wow you're way better singing than I am.
Jonathan Ronzio 04:36
So we took that song, which, you know, the stars aligned in terms of this even coming back into just the cultural zeitgeist of like, on tick tock, separately as we're working on this campaign on tick tock aomebody started using that track. And it just went, it blew up, it went viral, the original Montel version. And then a ton of people were jumping on and now we got people that like weren't around 20 years ago or 25 years ago when that song came out who are now in discovering Montel. So like it all collided at the same time. But But yeah, we we initially reached out just to chat with Montel back in December to get him to do just a shoutout for our company holiday party because we had Chris, our CEO, my brother and I, we had always joked that "This Is How We Do It" was the perfect anthem forTrainual, because essentially, you're trying to say like, this is how we do it here, right? But so we just wanted to get Montel to do a shout out for our team to like, be a fun thing that motivated them. And then we talked to him after that and started thinking like, well, let's, let's do some kind of partnership here. Let's figure out how we can actually work together. And, and I thought it would be just awesome to, to rewrite that song and do something that takes the original hook that feels memorable and nostalgic, right? That you recognize, but has a different spin on it that's modern, that's fresh and that's not about going out and partying on a Friday night. But that's about like the entrepreneurial hustle and the grind that like we wanted to relate it to for a campaign. So so my buddy Chris Plant, who I work with on my own original music, amazing producer, him and I and Montel wrote, "This is how you do it", the new the new song and released that just last Friday and and basically we wrote the song, we recorded it with Montel, we did a whole music video. And then we brought in Daymond John, who was just part of our last series B and we did a partnership with him. And so so we got him to join the campaign because his iconic FUBU story, like happened at the same time that Montel's song was getting nominated for Grammys and so tying them together, just made all the sense in the world. And we had this whole campaign where like we show Daymond covering the stresses of basically building a business and trying to figure out how to like scale it beyond you. And then Montel being the catalyst that comes in and is like yo Damon, no, this is how you do it and introduces Trainual and so it's super like comprehensive multi-channel campaign, all the way down to the Spotify release, where Trainual is now a spot an artist on Spotify. So you check the song, and it's like, it's it's like Montel Jordan coma Trainual, "This Is How You Do It." And it's it's blowing up right now. It's so fun.
Kap Chatfield 07:14
Dude, props. That is hilarious. That is awesome. I love the original song. Like in even in college, which is like, you know, that might have been like 10 years ago or something. And so it wasn't like a new song then. But I was just like, Dude, this is the jam. Like they need to make music like this more often. And then, oh my gosh, like, as soon as I saw that the title, actually you had you had mentioned to me on a previous call that you guys were thinking about doing something like that. And I was like, Oh, dude, I get it. It's so clear. This is this is how you do it and ahh. So major props, man, I have not seen anything done like that before, especially for for your industry. So it's gonna be interesting to see what new what new artists end up popping up on Spotify after that move.
Jonathan Ronzio 08:02
Yes, as companies. So it's so full circle for me because I started as just a singer songwriter in punk bands and, you know, through middle school and high school. Like that's, that's where I feel like my creativity came from and and essentially, like, everything I take everything I look to as far as like, what I think of marketing is attributed back to those early days of music, where I wrote a song, I wanted people to hear it. How did I do that? I had to figure out like, you know, I made a MySpace page and had I wanted, I wanted the MySpace page to be a certain color, I had to figure out HTML. I like needed to set up a website? I learned how to make a website. I needed to like figure out how to get on the charts on pure volume and these other like indie record things and figure out how to, like, promote stuff to get there. Like it's, it's essentially all the same. It's like you create something and you want people to pay attention to it. And I learned all of that through trying to get music out there. And now here we are, this many years later. And and so I think like uniquely my background, and continued passion as an artist as a musician led me to think like I've got a, you know, got to use this engine that is Trainual to make my personal dreams come true and figure out how to how to make them work together.
Kap Chatfield 09:20
But what's so great about that, too, is you like I don't I know you're probably just like, way too modest to say this, but you and your team have basically thrusted like SAS marketing into a whole new dimension of of how to market a product, right? It's like because the song is actually good. It's not like it's not like, A, It's not just like a jingle like a 15 second jingle that you just slap on to you know commercial, which can be still pretty funny. But and it's it's super well produced. It's like it's a banger, like I would just listen to that just driving down the street. So,
Jonathan Ronzio 09:58
Well that was just, that was the intention. When we like went about writing it, I think initially, like Montel was even surprised. Like he thought we were writing like a jingle when we first got together and he was like bringing it as if we were. And trying to like bring, you know, and hit the marketing hooks of Trainual. And I was like, No, dude, we let's, let's like, I want to hear this and think, if I had nothing to do with it, I would just want to license that song for Trainual marketing because it's so perfect, right? So I was like, this has to exist on its own outside of us. And just be that good that people want to listen to it, add it to their playlist, share it, and we just happen to be associated with it.
Kap Chatfield 10:39
Okay, brother, I need to go on a micro tangent and then I'm going to kick it back to you. All right, as we sit, we say this all the time as a company, it's really our sales pitch, I'm going to share it with you and if you're listening, this is considered this the sponsorship part of our page of our of our podcast. So what we say at Rveal Media is that there's two types of content on the internet. There's the content that you want to consume, and there's the content that interrupts the content that you want to consume. One's a show and one's a commercial. Yes. What we say is too many businesses are still marketing their product as commercials, but commercials get muted, they get skipped, they get ignored. If you, they even have premium versions of apps so that you can just completely ignore them altogether. But what what a show does, unlike a commercial, a show actually builds an audience that attracts an audience providing value, whereas a commercial repels an audience. And the reason why I wanted to go down that micro tangent is because, what you guys are doing, you understand the difference between just being another commercial and being white noise, and being a show and communicating something in a creative way that actually attracts an audience. You understand what I'm saying?
Jonathan Ronzio 11:50
Totally? Yeah. I mean, like, when, when you are watching TV, if a commercial comes on, where do you go? You go here, you pull your phone out, and you're not looking at commercials on TV, you start engaging with like, either you're in Slack or your email or your Instagram or somewhere else, where you just you want to be or need to be. So So yeah, you're you're totally right. And, and you, people have to understand that that like, it's like, why are my Facebook ads not working? Oh, well, you're just, you've got graphics on a stock photo and you expect that to stop somebody in their scroll and like them to be, you know, bought in enough and feel like you understand them enough and that they want to engage with you? No.
Kap Chatfield 12:28
Gosh, so you get that. I mean, clearly, like, with all the stuff you guys are doing, it's just, it's so different. It's so it brings so much value. It's so interesting. Where would you say that stemmed from? Would you say that came back from your I mean, you have, you know, your musical background, as you said, but you also, if I'm not mistaken, you are also in action sports marketing for a while, which in and of itself, I mean, thinking about like Red Bull, for example, Red Bull content is just interesting, because you got people jumping out of planes, you have motorcycles like jumping the Grand Canyon. And so naturally, it has this entertainment factor to it. So would you say that that was somehow inspired or developed through that, that season of your life?
Jonathan Ronzio 13:14
I'm sure that played a part in it. Yeah, I think that, you know, one of the earliest opportunities that I had, I was still in college, and I won an internship with Old Spice. And they they sent me out to Zermatt Switzerland for two weeks to launch the Matterhorn deodorant line. And this was like her early, early Twitter days, like early blogging, like they gave me a flip camera, when those were still around, it was before GoPros. And so like, I was just out there for, you know, two weeks vlogging. Before that was even a term and tweeting and blogging and like, basically like snowboarding up to people on the Matterhorn and tossing deodorant sticks at them. And like, I just like that was, that was what I thought of as far as like, this is where marketing is going. And all of my experience to that point had been, it was building a video production company with my brother and having like my hands in the mix of just like audio and video and understanding how to how to use that to like create content and to tell a story. And then I was like, you know, studying marketing and understood consumer psychology. And then I had this passion for adventure. And it kind of all came together in that moment with that Old Spice internship where I was like, this is truly what's going to be the future. I know that social media is going to like blow up, I know that brands are going to figure out how to play in it and how to make content that feels like stuff people want to engage with. And it's got to be rooted in, it's got to be interesting. It's got to be entertaining. And so like that probably did inform the DNA of things that I did in the adventure industry where I like went and and ended up working with a bunch of brands like Clif Bar and Justin's Nut Butter and made documentary films and, and kind of just pursued that that route of being a adventure athlete content creator for a while. And then took the the pivot that made no sense and launched a SAS brand in the like entrepreneur, HR tech space. And just from the start, I mean, I think it was good that I knew nothing about SAS, because I hadn't, I had no benchmark to say like, these are the best practices, these are the brands that are doing it, right, quote, unquote, right. And like, I wasn't looking at any of that, I was just letting my intuition and experience inform the kind of stuff we should create. And the stuff that had worked for me, in the outdoor adventure space, was now all of a sudden working for Trainual. The very first ads that like we ran, it was just Chris and I walking down the street and me with a phone pointing back at us talking about, you know, how you, like people want to clone themselves. And my brother always wanted to clone me, but like, you know, he couldn't and we just joked with it. And then I took that video, threw it into my Instagram, added the little like Instagram text over it and said, like, you know, Can your business run without you? And then, and then downloaded the video, I didn't post the story, I downloaded that video after adding the Instagram text, and then transferred that to my computer and ran that as a Facebook and Instagram story ad. And because it was just two guys, like on an iPhone walking on the street, and it had like the, the text that was native to you actually typing something in stories. It felt it felt like it was like, it should be in your feed, right? Like you get to it and people were like, not instantly thinking this is a brand trying to sell me. They were like, I did I forget that I followed these guys like, what Who is this? Right? And And instantly, I was like you Yeah, back to your mantra, like you do not want to interrupt people, you want to compliment what they are doing, if not be the thing they want to watch.
Kap Chatfield 16:47
That's Oh, man, I could I could unpack that with you for a while just that the analogy that I think of is like if you were at a party, and you know, you showed up like fashionably late, you know, music's bumping, and people are hanging out. And, and all of a sudden, like you notice, like, people have already kind of developed their own little circles, like you see some people talking one on one, you see some people talking in little groups sitting on the couch or whatever. You're not just going to go in with like a giant poster board and say, "Hey, who wants to talk to me?" Right? You, you'd get kicked out of the party super fast. Or even if you tried to like, get yourself into one of those little circles, you're not going to just dominate the conversation right away. You want to listen, you want to you want to find your way, find a way to like naturally get into the conversation by understanding how they're talking, what's interesting to them and then contributing. And that's basically what you're doing in the digital space with your ads is, "how do we make this feel as natural as possible so that people aren't turned off by it, but they're actually excited to learn more?"
Jonathan Ronzio 17:48
Totally. And at least at a high level, right? At a brand level, at an awareness level, at a prospecting level. Like that's sure a lens you have to take. Once once people are a little further down the funnel, they've been to the site, they've maybe checked out your your view your pages, they've listened to your podcast, they've seen X amount of your ads, like when you get them there, like now you can start talking a little bit more about your product and your features and show your reviews and whatever else it is. But the only way to build that trust is to start at a place that is not not abrasive or interruptive of of of their experience. And because you show that you truly understand who they are, where they're at and what they want.
Kap Chatfield 18:28
I think um, I think that's also part of you know, why we believe so much in the podcasting model as a company. Because when you do a podcast, the interesting thing about a podcast is, I don't know if there's any other type of content besides maybe a movie or a TV show, where you can hold somebody's attention for like 20 to 120 minutes. And when you're a company that's actually creating a podcast, that's that's kind of what you're able to do as well. Is you're, you're not just creating this abrasive content. And I love I love the clarification because I do believe in paid media, we run bottom of the funnel ads for our company and for our clients. But too many people are just focusing on that and they're not thinking about the top of funnel, how do you get someone even warmed up to your brand? So with that sort of pivot to talking about podcasts, I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience with the with the Stokecast first. I just I think that's there's so much interesting stuff that you're doing there. So give us a little bit of like an elevator pitch about what that show is about, who it's for and what the format of that show looks like.
Jonathan Ronzio 19:39
Yeah, man, the first year of Trainual was pretty wild. Because actually like we we launched that and I was still like I hadn't closed the doors on my adventure media agency. So Explore Inspired was still a thing and I was trying to figure out how to like, make them both work at the same time and eventually had to decide like Trainual was was where I was putting my attention. But, but six months in, so we launched Trainual in January, and six months in, June, I launched The Stokecast with my friend Emily, who had been, she had done some writing for Explore Inspired and, and we just thought it'd be fun to do to do a show where we could connect with some of our adventure icons, or idols and some of the outdoor icons out there. And, you know, whether it was activist or adventurers or athletes or entrepreneurs, like it was all in that outdoor space. And it gave us a reason to get in touch, right? Like that was that was the magic, it was like, access, like we never had. We could reach out to the biggest names in the sport, and they'd be down. Because it's only the only benefits them and that's something that's been unique to the you know, the the guests for the Stokecast is that they're all making a career for themselves off of their personal brand of what they do and how much coverage they get all that is beneficial to them for being able to sign more sponsorship deals. So unlike, you know, sometimes in, in business, it's harder to get people on your show, or if you get them on the show, they're less in, you know, they're less reliable in terms of how much they're going to promote it. Because in the business space, nobody wants to be out there saying like, it's all about me, like check out everything that I'm on, right? But in the outdoor space, like everybody who is at that kind of level, they're sharing everything that they do, because it helps them build their career even further. But yeah, it was not hard to get initial guests. And over the course of 100 or so episodes, like we did 83 episodes. Just every week, didn't miss a week. And then we took a little break when COVID hit and then came back for like a we called it Stoked From Home a virtual event where we brought together like all the past guests in little panels and did a full day thing. And then and it's it was pretty cool. I mean, we ended up I think the podcast has close to a million downloads now. Two and a half years in, and was just amazing to bring to life. Like I never tried to monetize the audience. It was literally just to, to meet cool people, to hear cool stories, to share cool stories and to have fun building a show that kept you know, for me selfishly one foot still in the door of an industry that I care so much about while I happen to be building this this tech brand.
Kap Chatfield 22:29
I love that. I love the the genuine motivation for starting it. Now, you talked about having guests on your show. But I remember before we started recording you were also saying that you would do like consultation sort of calls. Is that was that part of Stokecast or is that a different endeavor?
Jonathan Ronzio 22:45
Also part Stokecast more recently. Because, so actually, recently my my co-host Emily actually decided that she had to pursue a different project. Because she became sober and wanted to go tell sober stories as related to the outdoors. Yeah, good, amazing. For her. She's found like a such new motivation and purpose. And so she launched a show called Nature Untold recently, and she's been doing amazing with it. And so that gave me a chance to say like, Alright, let's take a step back and say, What am I doing with this audience here on The Stokecast? And and like, where do I take the show from here without Emily? And one of the things that kept coming up was that our listeners would like DM me and ask if they could jump on a call, ask if I could give advice for their like outdoor business, their blog, their adventure dream or what how do they get a sponsor for this. There was just like reaching out to me for advice on some of the content and stories that we'd shared along the way. And so I just opened up my Calendly for a couple months and just like let listeners book on whenever I can carve out some time and record those conversations. And then the last, the last like nine episodes that have come out have just been like listeners listening to listeners and sharing like the stories of the the average folks that are might be in a nine to five, that are trying to be weekend warriors, that are trying to figure out how to how to bring their hustle to life or their dream to life and like you know, do whatever I can to to offer up my help and advice.
Kap Chatfield 24:18
That's like true user generated content. Your your and that's what's so interesting about the podcast model too, and how you're leveraging it specifically because, it's not just a one way street where you're just like broadcasting a single message. But you're actually generating conversation with your audience that everybody else can be impacted by, so smart.
Jonathan Ronzio 24:39
That's the hardest thing about podcasting, I've found is that like, you know, you get a comment on a Facebook ad or on an Instagram post and, and you can chime in, you can like actually engage. Whereas a podcast you put it out and unfortunately, a micro amount of the people who actually listened to you are ever going to like you know, tag you in a story or DM you and say that like what they got out of that episode. And if they happen to leave a comment on apple or a review on Apple, like you can't reply to that review, right? So it's extremely hard to actually have that conversational element and have that two-way connection with your, your podcast audience. So it's, yeah, it's been a cool way for me to kind of solve that and to start having those conversations. But I don't think it's, I don't think it's perfect. There's no way to like, easily layer on the conversational element with the community that you call today from a podcast.
Kap Chatfield 25:38
But one thing though, that because I totally agree, but what you are, what you're doing is, you're finding like another, like, you're creating another avenue for interacting with that audience and building that relationship. And then the podcast becomes a vehicle for just further content distribution, which I think is like that's particularly really interesting about podcasts. Because I've seen people do the same sort of thing, recorded consultations, we actually do it for our company. I've also seen people do live webinars and the webinars, they just do they bring like 20 to 100 people into a zoom call, it's kind of like a clubhouse sort of, sort of thing. And then they record that, and then that's what they distribute as a podcast episode as well. So the podcast becomes a way to just like, archive that content a little bit better, and then distribute it. And then as you know, it's it's also a great way to like kind of scale the mark the micro content side of it as well. I want to transition from The Stokecast. Yeah, To what you guys are doing at Trainual with your show The Fastest Growing Companies Podcast. So tell us a little bit about that. I know it's not the first podcast you guys have done as a company. But obviously, you're you're doing this probably with a more strategic, what's the word? Motivation behind it? So just Yeah, tell us a little bit more about that show.
Jonathan Ronzio 27:00
This one isn't scratching just a personal interest itch. But yeah, so with my experience from The Stokecast, I knew that podcasting was a thing, right? Like, I knew that this is a channel. It's powerful. It's a place to create tons of content, to cultivate an audience, to I don't know, I just there were. It checked every single box in my mind as far as like, yes, of course we're going to create a podcast and we're gonna invest marketing resources into that. And what's the ROI of it initially? Who the hell cares? I don't know. But we're doing a podcast. So we started one called Process Makes Perfect. This was it was Chris speaking with like, you mentioned Michael Gerber, Vern Harnish, Gino Wickman, like some of those big names of of, you know, all the business like process and systems kind of books, right? So we, we went out to just align, align the brand, like initially, that was the thought is like, let's just create a bunch of content that aligns our brand, with the biggest names in systems and processes. And we put out Process Makes Perfect. That ran two seasons, and did really well. We were, you know, at least getting a few 100 listeners, if not, you know, close to 1,000 on each episode. Which we'd get people tagging us in like Instagram comments saying like, for like obsessed with this with the show, and then found Trainual and then saw like this ad that you had for the office and now signed up and, and it just it started to the web of connections started to happen. And we start to see more and more listeners actually end up in our funnel. And so we knew that something there was working, but but then we kind of just pulled our foot off the gas on Process Makes Perfect and figured we'd be working on Season Three or something at some point and just got distracted with a lot of other initiatives in the business. So by the time we came back around, it was to launch a daily version of the show. And we pivoted it, we rebranded from Process Makes Perfect and made it Organized Chaos. And so Organized Chaos was the consulting company that my brother owned, that Trainual was born out of. And, and so it was like an interesting way to be able to, to leverage Chris's expertise and thought leadership and, you know, kind of the consultative sessions like he would do for small business owners when he had Organized Chaos. It was like, "Well, you're not consulting anymore but let's, let's pay homage to that with this podcast where you're giving, you know, our listeners advice". And that became a daily show, it's still going every single day, a new episode of Organized Chaos comes out. And it's just basically all either original or repurposed content from Chris for entrepreneurs and small business owners and people leaders. And that one has been super fun to bring to life and it also becomes a place where our writers can can grab content, our PR team can grab content because it's just nice. Like it's just fuel from the CEO, right? So Organized Chaos is still going. And then separately, we're like, alright, well, this is our Organized Chaos is our thought leadership show, right? Where we're positioning, Chris, as this expert in business systems and process and entrepreneurship and management and all of that. That's our thought leadership show. But that's more tied to him and his personal brand. So what do we do that's tied a little bit more to Trainual? And as we thought about that it's like, who's the target audience for Trainual? Well, it is a fast growing small business. It's a team of 10 to 100, or sometimes five to 250 people that is rapidly scaling that takes growth seriously. They're ambitious, they're they're focused on efficiency, they, they're investing in systems and in people, where are those companies? Well, they're the ones that made the Inc 5000. And all these other lists every single year of fastest growing companies, right? So so then we started doing combing, combing through these lists, and finding like, Alright, these are the, you know, these are the 3500 companies that have less than 100 employees, but that have grown exponentially in the last three years. And let's just invite that, and then filtered that down to like, CEO is owner or founder, and cool. Now, here's their contact info, let's reach out to them and get the the CEO owner or founder of one of the fastest growing companies in the country, onto a show in a conversation with Chris, that positions them as the thought leader. And so, so it puts them on the pedestal, they're happy to do it, because they're, you know, even though some of these companies are growing extremely fast, and they're getting some recognition. Like any business press is still hard to come by at that scale, right? And so, so they're hungry for the opportunities, and their teams are hungry for content to share that's published by a third party that that shows external validation. So they're the, they're the the expert, we unpack what they've done to go from 13 people to 35 people, or from 50 to 150, right? We unpack the strategies behind their people growth, and, and then share that. And, and then so that gives us you know, one amazing content for our core target audience, and then Two, like, one to one connections with also our core target audience. Sp like, continue so that they now know about Trainual.
Kap Chatfield 32:28
Dude, I knew it, man I knew it. Okay, this is okay, let's, let's just rewind a little bit. Because there's this, there's just so much strategy behind what you guys did. First, I'll just say this, I love that you guys, we're not afraid to pivot. Because I think so many people are afraid of, I want to start a show, but I want to make sure it's perfect before I launch it, because I don't want to be embarrassed if I mess up with anything. And the reality is, is it's an evolution, just like starting a business is an evolution. And you're going to try one, one method, and you're going to discover some things that work great or don't work that great. And then you have the second iteration. And then you see what purpose that serves. And then now you're on this third iteration. And, and I think every single iteration was a success for for that season, that you were doing that thing. And so just want to share that to anyone listening who's like, you know, I'm too afraid to start, just get started and watch that thing evolve. But one thing that was super interesting that I loved about Organized Chaos that you said, was the content from that show, because it was really kind of mining, this thought leadership out of Chris, who, you know, was leading this consulting company, about helping companies, you know, organize the chaotic processes in their growth, mining that thought leadership out of him so that the whole team gets smarter, so that the whole team better understands the philosophy behind the product that you guys are selling. And I think that is that's one thing that I think a lot of business owners and business leaders, really, those top three people that you just mentioned, CEO, owners and founders. That's one reason why I think it's so important that those those three job titles, engage in content creation, because it doesn't just help market your product. It helps equip your team, so that they know how you think. So just amazing that you guys are doing that.
Jonathan Ronzio 34:24
It's not comfortable for anybody with that title to do, some people are naturals. But even you know, Chris, who if you look at what he's, you know, he's doing now, he looks like a superstar with the content he's able to create. But three and a half years ago, it took me just shoving a camera in his face and like, you know, having a good enough relationship as my brother that I could like, joke with him and coax him and get him to just like, roll with some topics and get out and get out of his own way, right? Like and stop caring about how he looked or how it sounded and just start rolling with the thoughts as they came. And, you know, so everybody starts somewhere.
Kap Chatfield 35:07
So cool, man, I'd love that you guys had the trust where you're able to kind of get him out of his comfort zone. Because I mean, there's a reason why he's, you know, I think he just won Entrepreneur of the Year award. Yeah, recently, I saw that on LinkedIn. So super cool, man. Well, okay, so going back to the Fastest Growing Companies one. So I'm seeing like the strategy of all these different things, The Fastest Growing Companies, it's, you know, you're targeting CEOs, owners and founders of some of the fastest growing companies, is it in the world, or is it just in America?
Jonathan Ronzio 35:40
I was starting with just America, because those are the lists to pull from, and the easiest time zones to coordinate with.
Kap Chatfield 35:47
Yep, easiest time zones, easiest languages, got it, America. America's has got enough companies too, so you'll probably have a lot of content to work with. But what you're doing there is you're interviewing these people who are in that that tension of growth, where they're growing at such a rapid rate, where they need to be able to scale that thought leadership, scale their processes, and get everybody on the same team. So you know, as a company, like that's, that's your target market is people who are trying to find a way to organize that chaos, quote, unquote, and try to understand, you know, try to build something that's coherent for everybody to follow. So you're bringing people on your show, that are talking about what what they're doing that's working, what they've done that isn't working, and it's actually feeding that very audience that you want to have a relationship with. Am I getting all of that correctly?
Jonathan Ronzio 36:37
Correct. Yeah, the target audience is the audience, the target audience is the guest.
Kap Chatfield 36:42
It's amazing. And then now I don't want, here's what I want to make sure people are clear on because it's, it's obvious that you're not doing this just to have fun. I mean, if you had the money to do it as an organization, that would be great. Wouldn't we all love that? At the end of the day, you want to do this to build your business in some way. At least build brand awareness, but obviously, if it can lead to revenue generation, then that's the biggest win for everybody. But you're not inviting people on your show. And I'm, you know, I know, I'm speaking on behalf of you for this, you're not having people on your show, just to get the sale out of them, because you want to create a genuine experience for your audience. But at the same time, by having those leaders on your show and giving them some, some publicity and, you know, introducing them to what you do A, you're better understanding the problem of your core audience, because you're you're, you know, dissecting that. All these, you know, you're pulling from them all the things that they're dealing with currently, as a business owner, business leader, which can help you in your own product, and you're in further content creation. But on top of that, now you have a relationship with them, so that if they do come to a place of you know, what we need Trainual and we had a great experience with them on the show that we were on, we're gonna do business with them. Am I right? Is that, has that happen? And has that been part of your approach?
Jonathan Ronzio 38:05
Yeah, yeah. 100% There's, there's no sales pitch at the end of the show. They don't like once their episode publishes, they don't go into like a follow up sequence of any sort. Like, we're not thinking one to one sales over here. I'm thinking about the macro market. So if if, if 100% of the people that we invit to be guests on the show, don't end up using Trainual, whatever. Good conversations, good content, and like it's helping the audience of people that might become, you know, customers of Trainual. So but if some of them immediately are like, Oh, I've heard of this, and now I'm on their show, and let me check this out. No, I've got to have this, or a year down the road they're trying to solve this problem. And they're like, You know what, I talked to that guy on that podcast that we did, what was that Fast Growing Companies by Trainual? Well, let's go and like, let's see what Trainual was about. Now, maybe that happens. But again, I'm not thinking that like I'm trying to, I'm not inviting a guest on because I want to sell them. I'm inviting a guest on because they are representative of the persona that we want to serve. And, and we want to extract that content, we want to help them share that content. And we want to serve the broader audience. And then we are also we just turned Fastest Growing Companies actually into our own award, as well. So now we're tying that into we've got an event at the end of the month. It's a two day event, the first day is like a customer and consultants kind of day for like a user conference. And a component of it is The Fastest Growing Companies Award. And so now we're fueling that language back into like our customer base, and we'll be awarding, awarding our customers with a recognition of their growth be making this like Fastest Growing Companies list that happens to be tied to this show that creates this buyer like feedback loop of discovery.
Kap Chatfield 39:54
Bro. Man, I just want to hog your time. I want to just chat with you all day. You're you're just, I'm so blown away by what you and your team are doing. It's you guys are doing some really cutting edge creative stuff. It's inspiring me. It's inspiring my team, everything you guys do. It's just, it's just so elegant. So excellent. And, man, I'm so grateful to have you on the show today. I'm so grateful for everything that you shared. And you taking time with us. Before we close out this episode, please let everybody know where they can follow you, where they can follow along with some of this content. Just give us a little bit of a sales pitch maybe not for the product we did at the beginning, but just for you personally.
Jonathan Ronzio 40:37
Yeah, I mean, like, you can check out any of the shows that we've mentioned. If any of that content seems interesting for you. We harped on the Trainual sales pitch enough at the beginning. Thankfully, you did it. I like it when when other people kind of talk about what it is.
Kap Chatfield 40:51
It was effortless man, I believe in it. So yeah, I'll give you another plug at the end to once we're finished. But But yeah, what shows and
Jonathan Ronzio 40:59
For me, I mean, if you just want to connect with me, it's @ Jonathan Ronzio anywhere, so. I'm probably mostly on Instagram, or LinkedIn. So either of those two, but um, but yeah, I mean, follow up for a conversation to chat about marketing, or chat about ideas, creativity, whatever else. Don't follow up if you're trying to sell me something, get more creative than that. Don't Don't DM me on LinkedIn that you have a pitch like get more creative than that. I hope that that's what you've learned from this conversation. That's not the way.
Kap Chatfield 41:32
No. If you DM somebody here, I'll just share this last tidbit. If you're going to spend money to get into somebody's DMS on LinkedIn, give them something. Don't just ask for something. That's that's the strategy right there. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us, man. I had a blast with you today.
Jonathan Ronzio 41:49
Thanks a lot Kap This was fun.
