A couple of months ago, I came close to having my 15 minutes of fame.
The potentially life-altering opportunity that flew right over my head came from one of the most popular podcasts in the world: The Joe Rogan Experience. For those who may live in a cave, Rogan hosts a long-form podcast where he has three-hour conversations with fascinating guests, ranging from comedians to UFC fighters to top thought leaders. I love his show. And so do a lot of other people. Like, millions of them. Rogan’s conversations are heard by 95 million listeners a month and seen by 50.3 million people each month on YouTube. So, imagine how cool it was to hear one of my former clients was a guest. Pat McNamara is a former special operations guy who has done some really, really fascinating work during his career. Since his retirement, he’s become one of the country’s most respected firearms and fitness trainers.
I was happy to see Pat getting the spotlight he deserved.
After two hours of talking about everything from Pat’s background in the Combat Applications Group (used to be called Delta Force) to his fitness and nutrition philosophies, the conversation came around to how the audience can connect with Pat.
The producer puts Pat’s website up on the screen and boom, I’m crapping my pants.
But, let me back up a bit.
You see, I had revamped Pat’s website a few months earlier.
When I first talked to Pat, he knew his site had some room for improvement. My objective was to work with him to establish a consistent content and visual standard...and do it all on a platform that would allow him to maintain the site when we were done.
Pat told me he got these offers all the time but no one followed through.
I did.
Although I wasn’t able to take Pat’s site through the full revamp process, this is the four-step framework I like to use when helping clients fix their websites:
Limit the viewer’s choices on the home page. The more menu items and images they have to process, the longer it takes for them to make a decision. The longer it takes to make a decision, the more likely they are to bail. This is not my idea, it’s science. Check out Hick’s Law.
Tell a story. People love stories. Every company needs a good origin story in their About Us section and very few actually put any effort into it.
Create compelling content. This applies to product descriptions that list features and, more importantly, showcase benefits. Provide educational blog posts that demonstrate your expertise and help your readers.
Build your list. Always, always, always have an email sign-up form so you can stay in touch with people who want to hear from you.
Accomplish steps 1-4 in eight seconds or less. People have the attention span of a goldfish so help them find what they’re looking for with great design and great content.
OK...fast forward to March of 2019 and that website is now being shown to millions of people around the world on Rogan’s show: The Joe Rogan Experience (starts at 1:20:25)
As they’re talking about the site and all of the cool things the site shows Pat doing, I’m just thinking just how awesome it would be if Rogan said, “Man, that’s a really cool website. Who did that for you?”
And Pat would say, “This amazing dude in Las Vegas. John Kuhlman.” I waited.
And waited.
But, it never happened. So, I continue to valiantly remain cloaked in Internet marketing obscurity.
Which is totally fine.
I was just honored to have my work come up in that conversation. And, it was even cooler to see Pat’s work get that level of exposure.
If you need help applying that five-step framework to your website or want to become almost famous, let’s talk.
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