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Stefan Angelini is Joined by Mike Mortlock from the Geared for Growth Podcast, a man who also runs MCG Quantity Surveryors, to discuss investing your time and money into a podcast while running a business.
Stefan Angelini
Good day everyone thanks for tuning in to another episode of investor types you've got your host Stefan Angelini here with Mike Mortlock from MCG Quantity Surveyors hi Mike how are you matey
Mark Mortlock
I'm very well Stefan thanks for having me
Stefan Angelini
My pleasure mate so what we're doing for everyone out there is we're talking about investing into yourself and your business but starting a podcast while you run your own business we all know that education is paramount now and people rather than listening to music when they travel or run they'd rather listen to a podcast and it's a great way to promote your business but it's not for everyone like look I'm doing it Mike's doing it Mike runs a business it's a corner it's a quantity surveying business and they do tax depreciation schedules for properties and they do cost estimating for construction I run a financial advisory business together Mike look we're not the most exciting people going around here we are pushing the boundaries of entertainment
Mark Mortlock
If our pitch for a TV show is a quantity surveyor and a financial advisor get together already they're like we're out that would not were about these guys they genuine just be thumbs down
Stefan Angelini
Anyway what's so interesting about you so you started your business in 2011 now you've got you've got nearly 20 employees your business is going great guns but back in 2017 you launched a podcast on the side of your business
Mark Mortlock
Yes yes
Stefan Angelini
A lot of people are starting to do now and it's like it can be expensive you can make it cheap and easy to do I've started to do it which is why if they're people listening to this and
they're watching the video go check out the podcast but basically I want you to tell everyone so why did you start it
Mark Mortlock
Yeah and I started it before it was cool
Stefan Angelini
Yeah
Mark Mortlock
No actually like I felt like a very late adopter I can't of thought ah this is this is a bit you know it's a bit sad like the the podcast thing is already off and running I'm gonna look like a bit of a hanger-on but the reason why I started it was based around the relationship that we have with our clients right so I started the business because I wanted to do the best possible
thing by the clients and have a great relationship with them but but by virtue of what we do our relationships quite transactional right and it's not just be because of a decision that we've made it's just the way that it works so if you buy an investment property and you want to get a depreciation schedule you'll need to contact us directly or you might be referred by your accountant we might chat on the phone briefly we may just chat by email chances I will
never meet we may never speak we might meet your tenant and say hello but not yourself and the whole thing is done within a couple of weeks and a couple of emails and that's it and people go off into the big bad world so I thought well how can I stay in touch with our clients and say thank you to them now everyone has a mailing list and they're all kind of garbage with respect I'm on some really good ones that put a lot of effort and research in but it's kind of ruined by the fact that everyone has one and you you know you buy some flowers or something in your life this is what's new in you know floral design I don't care no disrespect to florists out there and it's just not my bag and I kind of thought well the average property investor owns one property right it's like 72 percent of people only own one and I don't think people get into property investing with the idea that they were going to finish at one right they want to fundamentally change their financial future and having one properties probably not necessarily gonna do that and I think a big reason why people only have one is they get the first one wrong they might buy the wrong property they're forced to sell because they don't have a cash buffer or it doesn't grow and they think this property investment business is rubbish I'm going to the stock market so I wanted to put people in front of experts to help them navigate their portfolio and grow their portfolio and achieve their financial goals so there's a couple of different reasons but it was really just providing a service to our clients to say thank you for working with us
Stefan Angelini
So you basically get experts or people that buy properties for a living on the podcast
Mark Mortlock
Yeah yeah it's it's weird like when we started I basically started the podcast by sending an email out to three people and I thought I don't how to start a podcast probably gonna be hard I probably won't have time but I'll send an email to three people and if one of them says yes like that would be a good get so if they say yes then I'll launch it and I can't remember who the three people are now but the first person to say yes was my friend Pete Worden who's a very very clever finance guru and he basically email back and said yeah when are we doing that I'm like oh gosh now we start the podcast
Stefan Angelini
Let's see push yourself into the deep end to get going and that's the biggest things
Mark Mortlock
Absolutely
Stefan Angelini
These things it's it's not an immediate business driver so it's not a sales generating tool or anything like that it's more of it you've got to have the passion to do it but the only real way
you get yourself going is you force yourself by booking in a meeting
Mark Mortlock
Yeap
Stefan Angelini
Yeah
Mark Mortlock
Yeap
Stefan Angelini
Yeap and it sounds like so an educational way to keep in front of clients mean I'm exactly the same giving out education for what you do and what you look at everyday is all is very very
handy but some people while like even yourself you organize the meeting to get
started other other than that how hard did you find it to get started what did you have to organize in order to pick it up and go we're podcasting now
Mark Mortlock
Yeah it wasn't that much I spoke to someone else who I knew had just started a podcast so I had to organize a podcast host so you can use you know companies like podbean or libsyn or whatever you like there's no paid promotion I should probably hit him up and and then basically how I was going to record it so I started off using a little plugin with Skype
Stefan Angelini
Yeah
Mark Mortlock
Then I sort of got sick of that because I was having some technical issues and I ended up working with Zencastr and of course you can do it with Zoom such as we are at the moment so that's not a really difficult thing you know setting up your iTunes account you know getting it across to to things like Spotify as well and then it was just figuring out how I was going to do it whether I was going to do it remote or in person and getting the audio right
Stefan Angelini
Yeah
Mark Mortlock
So um I was a bit of amused on back in the day so I had a condenser microphone and I thought I can get this sort of sorted but if you listen to some of my earlier podcasts
and even look at some of the podcast reviews that they say things like great
interview but the audio quality is terrible
Stefan Angelini
Yeah
Mark Mortlock
You know one star since then we've come we've come along a little bit better with the audio quality but yeah look there's not really that much to it and you can google how do I start a podcast and it'll point you in the right direction or reach out to someone that you know has got one and I'm sure they'll be they'll be helpful actually someone did that to me recently and I sent them an email explaining the whole thing so I probably got in my side and items you know so we can I can flick it over
Stefan Angelini
Reach out to Mike he's willing it he's willing to help your good man I remember myself I was researching how to do it for so long and I'm like don't wanna do a podcast I wanna do a video series and then I'm like porque no los dos why don't I do both so now I've got
even in my office I've got normally if we're not around coronavirus covid 19 I've got an oh I've got a video set up a video camera set up in my office with little plugins from lapel mics put the audio over the top of the video it's a bit more work but the way I said is I'm trying to build like a big grand round at end but you said I am actually one of the people who started behind everyone else so I got to play catch-up much
Mark Mortlock
Yeah right
Stefan Angelini
Because not
Mark Mortlock
Yes
Stefan Angelini
Only 100 episodes
Mark Mortlock
Well it's it's it's similar to when we sort of started the business I was looking at some of our competitors and what they were doing when they started and we couldn't afford to be
that sort of sloppy when we began with respect to them you know the technology was was you know a long way away from what it is today but we had to come out of the gates pretty strong like we had to have a really good product really good service from from day one we didn't really have time to sort of learn things and you certainly have come out the
gates really really well I mean your your your podcasts the video series you know that little animated ball that I always talk about headbutts things out all the way it's all quality gear I mean if you're looking for a role model and how to create a little media thing don't look at me look at Stefan
Stefan Angelini
And I'd spend money on that which I didn't want to do because I want to start I want to bootstrap this but Hey so spend money on a little microphone you already had it being a
music obviously helps I'm gonna have music owning my body which means I don't have a guitar or a microphone lying around so I had to go and spend the money
Mark Mortlock
Yeah
Stefan Angelini
Hey yeah
Mark Mortlock
And then the microphone that I've got being a condenser microphone it's very good it's
sort of picking up music from an acoustic guitar but it's it's not actually perfect for a podcast because it picks up things all around the room so if you're clicking a mouse or doing
something like that you can probably hear I'm clicking on it now if you if you're shuffling something on the desk it's it's no good because it's got a real broadband that it picks up but the modern sort of podcasting microphones they have a really tight area where it actually picks up the signal so I certainly wouldn't recommend what I've got but you know it's a three or four hundred dollar microphone just lying around my my sort of music days a kind of hard me so I thought
Stefan Angelini
You can't be a tough play tunes force come on mate
Mark Mortlock
I don't have one in the office maybe next time it here's a red hot tip if you go and listen to my podcast and you're coming up very soon so I encouraged people that that are fans of your show to to listen to me turn the microphone in your direction the music on the podcast is me playing a little bit of blues on the guitar so you can have go and listen to that that's my little intro and outro there you go and that just shows how low-rent the podcast was like I couldn't afford any stock music so I thought I don't know the guitars over there are I'll play a little tune and and there I'm stuck with it it's sort of you know a lot of people have got those high energy you know highly produced intros I've just got me being a goose on the on the mate and
Stefan Angelini
Better than me mate I've had to find the tune online that no one will sue me
for if I use it so so that bad is so so one one conception one thing that always
gets asked of me so people people see me now talk to people oh you started a
podcast it looks great you know your business must be flying it must be driving so much business for you because you're out there you've got these videos pumping out so tell me you've been running a podcast now since 2017 has it driven a lot of business for you
Mark Mortlock
The the short answer is no
Stefan Angelini
Yeah
Mark Mortlock
And and having been a guest on a number of podcasts as well like I don't know maybe
10 or so there's probably only one that I actually got business from as a guest
Stefan Angelini
Right
Mark Mortlock
And that was like me saying go to this website and I've created some content that I talked about in the episode so you can get a copy of some of my data and you know you can you can have access to a you know a reduced fee code if you're wanting a tax depreciation
schedule so I actually sort of did like a proper sales pitch as a bit of a test
Stefan Angelini
Called to action
Mark Mortlock
And yeah and I got a little bit of traction out of that it's not really my style not really a sales this sort of guy I'm like it's what I do I think I'm good at it and if you agree then give me
a call and you know we'll look after your sort of thing but for my podcast know what what it's enabled me to do is talk to people that perhaps wouldn't pick up the phone to me if I didn't have a podcast
Stefan Angelini
Yeah
Mark Mortlock
For example I got Shane Oliver the chief economist from AMP on the podcast now I'm certain he still doesn't know who I am he was a lovely guy but a very very high-profile economist and you know one of the most quoted people in Australian media that exists like I think he averages a quote a day every single day of the year there's just there's just no economist that can sort of match him and having a podcast it's essentially you know here's a link here's some questions are you happy to come on and at the end he sort of said oh so you're based in Hong Kong like I'm like no I'm not shame he's like anyway yeah good chat talk to you later
Stefan Angelini
That mate in Queensland or New South Wales
Mark Mortlock
New South Wales yeah
Stefan Angelini
Oh no bit just a bit far away like we're in Hong Kong right now yeah your right
Mark Mortlock
Yes
Stefan Angelini
Great idea for a brand building perspective and like you know I'm running my own television show radio station almost so people like I'm having to come on like I'm I'm a small joe I
don't I don't do much and I've been reaching out to guys who run I just interviewed someone who runs a nine it was part of a company who manages ninety billion dollars worth of funds
Mark Mortlock
Yeah then you got me so some days you win some days you lose
Stefan Angelini
We provide some great insights which is really good and you know what I wanted to get you on is because I don't know what I'm what's happening with me I'm getting drawn to doing more of this podcast thing because it's exciting it's something new it's entertainment I get to talk to people rather than look at spreadsheets all day
Mark Mortlock
Yeah
Stefan Angelini
How do you find the podcast more exciting and running a business now or where does your attention go
Mark Mortlock
I prefer the spreadsheets man
Stefan Angelini
You do
Mark Mortlock
I've got a boost actually on
Stefan Angelini
You go for the long time
Mark Mortlock
We're not no I don't want to I don't want to be sort of cruel to the guests or anything like that I do have a lot of fun it's really just I guess it's a it's a balancing act and when when I'm busy in the business which is how I get paid I don't make a cent out of the podcast in fact it loses money I think some people are surprised by that and we don't have any paid positions or sponsors and I'm not really interested in getting any it's just when you're busy with work and you know that you have a podcast interview lined up and I like to pay a respect to the guest by doing research and asking them questions to get the best out of them which takes time to do properly when I'm flat out with a deadline or something and I realize I've got to do that before I can leave that's where it sort of takes a little bit of the fun out of it but once I'm chatting to someone especially someone that I can have a good chat with and a good bit of bandwith and you'd be a good example we've never actually met in person it'll happen eventually but we've already got some good rapport like it's easy to have a conversation
other times you know people it's a bit like drawing blood from a stone
Stefan Angelini
Yeah
Mark Mortlock
That makes it a little bit trickier but I still have fun but I started the business with my business partner Marty really because I wanted to sort of drink Shiraz and do asset registers on an excel sheet until the early hours
Stefan Angelini
Yeap
Mark Mortlock
Now the only thing that I do is drink Shiraz I don't touch I don't really do that many depreciation schedules anymore and really like being sort of a natural introvert most of my job now is is on the extrovert side of things it's it's doing interviews it's doing videos you
know it's it's it's it's doing media and stuff like that and and business development so yeah it's funny funny what your job ends up being from what you sort of plan it to be
Stefan Angelini
Where's the business owner you are responsible for trying to think outside the box to try and drive revenue if it happens so have you found this podcast has helped you become more of an extrovert
Mark Mortlock
I think like before I started I had to get out of that sort of introvert style it's it's it's it's not an act but I think it's not my natural personality so when I'm at home I tend to be very quiet and
keep to myself I don't sort of seek company on the weekends and that sort of stuff it's just
Stefan Angelini
Yeah
Mark Mortlock
You know hanging out with my little family that's more than enough for me but yeah before the podcasts I had to learn how to present to people how to pitch the business you know done a couple of TV spots and things like that and you've really sort of got to try and be engaging especially when you're talking about something is boring as tax legislation you've got to try you've got to try and have a little bit of fun and and and you know have a bit of a joke at yourself so the podcast yeah I think it's still refining the skills and I and I get to the point now where sometimes people say you know like I you know how do you do that on camera like it must just be natural must just be your personality and that's it's not necessarily the case I think it's a it's a learned skill to be able to answer questions and hopefully be somewhat entertaining
Stefan Angelini
Yeah yeah a hundred percent you pick it up practice makes perfect right Mike
Mark Mortlock
Absolutely what do you need 10,000 hours and you can win it anything
Stefan Angelini
That's it you said that and I love that but we had the outsiders so now that you're running a team nearly twenty people what's what's the biggest what's your day mostly consists of
running a team
Mark Mortlock
Yeah it really I guess it depends on on the day and it depends on whereas sort of the business is at so heading into certain times of the year like for example heading into tax time he's making sure that everyone is fed and watered and happy and ready to surf a
big tsunami of tax time coordinating the the inspections around the country country and just providing assistance and support to the guys that are really sort of the ahead about our technical side of the business thankfully Belinda my EA does a lot of the heavy lifting for me and we've got a really good good relationship so I can I can delegate things that she's actually better at than me or than aren't the best use of my time so so a lot of my work at the
moment is working on the systems and the strategy of the business we're working on lots of automation within the business that enables us to be to have more efficiency just working on some staff training we've done a lot during this sort of lockdown we've done a rebrand we've got a new website on the way we've started some new advertising of launched webinars we've got our new backend which automates some of our information chasing so we've been really busy with that so I know that's probably not a really great answer
Stefan Angelini
No no its good
Mark Mortlock
But it really depends on the day
Stefan Angelini
When you start your business you know you're all that you've got to do what you've got to do the operations that get you paid
Mark Mortlock
Yeap
Stefan Angelini
Which is doing the other education schedules now being a businessman and you've got so many staff you got to keep the staff fed one but you got to make sure the business continues to grow
Mark Mortlock
Yes
Stefan Angelini
Makes think outside the box
Mark Mortlock
Yes
Stefan Angelini
Doing webinars podcasts and that's that's part of the part of the reasons of starting a podcast is to just have something a little bit different that's out of the box
Mark Mortlock
Yeah and the podcast is just one kind of channel that that we operate within MCG so we if you listen to my podcast you know I don't really talk about myself I don't even think I say hi my name's Mike or anything like that I just say if you want to find out who I am it's not that
hard
Stefan Angelini
Yeah
Mark Mortlock
Whereas when I'm on sort of LinkedIn or doing a Facebook thing that's where I'm talking a little bit more about what I do and my craft and what I think investors should know I really focus the podcast on getting the most out of that guess and even on the Facebook or the LinkedIn stuff there's never any really sales pitch from us it's just not our style from from myself anyone else in the business I mean we have business development managers and they don't really do the sales pitch style thing it's just how can we provide value to you so if you're a property manager you know we can assist you with some training to up skill your property managers on the basics of tax depreciation so they can provide a better service to their landlords just little things like that so just trying to add value and help people navigate
tax legislation it's a pretty rock and roll stuff
Stefan Angelini
You've got to have the octopus having many arms
Mark Mortlock
Yeah
Stefan Angelini
So so Mike if if there's someone out there who runs a business and wants to start a podcast if you were to turn to them and go well what sort of a what sort of a person do you need to be and what tips what tips would you have for that person
Mark Mortlock
Yeah I think like one thing that we tend to do is we get a little bit caught up in in our own little sphere of influence and we get we get to thinking that we're a little bit more unique or interesting than we actually are I think don't underestimate how little people care about you right now now that sounds like a little bit nihilistic or you know a little bit depressing but but what I'm getting out there is that people don't really want to hear you you go on about yourself and how great you are and and you know what you can do and all that sort of stuff so I think if you think about it from the person that's listening and what they want to hear and that's a good starting point right so there's you know if you're building an audience they're
going to seek you out and they're going to want to connect with you you don't need to force down their throat like that you're the best at what you do so I think it's important to just think like nothing is is as interesting as you probably think it is when you're talking about you and your business because everyone's passionate right you know
Stefan Angelini
I agree.
Mark Mortlock
Like I love love the business that I work in but no one wants to hear me talk about you know we started on this date and then we grew to this and blah blah blah even though that's kind of what I have been doing some I've got to listen to my own advice yeah I think just think about the listener and curate something that you think if you didn't know about you these
are the questions that you'd want to be asking and and and and really try and get the best out of your guests if you're interviewing people
Stefan Angelini
Yeah yeah and from my perspective what I'd say is consistency so be willing to set aside
time be consistent imposing maybe find someone like an assistant to help you out who can arrange schedules organize follow-ups and things like that because just just to reduce the amount of time that you spend on the podcast and then yet consistency get help and yeah I
think get started
Mark Mortlock
Yeah get started
Stefan Angelini
Get started
Mark Mortlock
I mean yeah you just like I I couldn't recommend strongly enough asking someone would you like to come on my podcast and then not having a podcast ready to have them on there's nothing that forces you the launch of podcasts and an upcoming calendar meeting for you to interview somebody
Stefan Angelini
I know I know you really
Mark Mortlock
You got to be careful right now though because microphones are hard to get as as you found out
Stefan Angelini
During coronavirus if you're looking for microphones if you're looking for webcams if you're looking for computer screens good luck but anyway who knows when this is gonna be relief smart bill to be released in February 2021 no yeah
Mark Mortlock
Well see and here's a tip to if you're a guest mention current events and then they have to bump you forward
Stefan Angelini
I know I know
Mark Mortlock
Actually
Stefan Angelini
So this is good
Mark Mortlock
Actually yeah yeah so today is no I'm not going to do that but that's something to think about as well like with with the podcast as you said consistency is really important we do a fortnightly podcast just because I don't really feel like I have the time to commit to do it weekly to a certain quality standard it would be better to certainly do it weekly but you got to be careful to to frame it in a sense that if you're talking about something that it's it stays like a perennial topic like we've done a couple of webinars all about Covid 19 right but they’re useless for anything other than right now whereas a lot of the questions that I ask a fundamental portfolio building style questions that are still probably going to be relevant in 10 years time so I think it's good like if if you're if you're doing it fortnightly or weekly you want to have a few in the bank you want to have a few in advance maybe record three in a week so that if something happens or you want to go on holidays you've got them in the pipes but you've got to sort of stop people from talking about did you read the paper today
Stefan Angelini
Yeah yeah a hundred percent evergreen evergreen content is what you want and hopefully we've provided some really great evergreen content something that people can draw back on and go alright I'm a business owner I want to start podcasts how do I do it should I do it
am I trying to drive business from it and if you are don't do it maybe over the long term but anyway so ladies and gentlemen if you want to reach out to Mike Mike you said you're willing to share you pro your process on how to get started
Mark Mortlock
Yeah yeah absolutely
Stefan Angelini
You might get using that to me I'll throw it onto the YouTube video that's going to appear and is a link in in the podcast so if people want to reach out to you Mike how would they get in touch with you
Mark Mortlock
They can go to the website which is MCG like the cricket ground and then qs for quantity
surveyor so mcgqs.com.au you can search MCG on Google Facebook all that sort of stuff or search my name there's not too many more locks out there except for that rugby player is
named Sterling so you can't get us confused he's also a big unit and I'm a weedy little accountant so yeah I'm pretty easy to find
Stefan Angelini
And don't forget so the podcast is the geared for growth podcast if you don't want to go and check it out Mike thank you for investing appearing on investor types forever and out there to listen thanks for giving up the time we really appreciate it if you have any comments
feel free to reach out as a comment on the YouTube on YouTube video or through the podcasts otherwise reach out to me Stefan at angeladvisory.com.au Mike thank you so much for your time mate it's been a pleasure having you on I will chat to you soon thank you everyone for listening take care Mike
Mark Mortlock
Good fun cheers thanks very much
Stefan Angelini
Bye