Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Guest Podcast: Everything I Screwed Up When I Started My Podcast (That One Time)
Transcript
- 0:00Today, on that one time, I'm joined for the second time round by Scott D. Clary. Scott
- 0:16is an entrepreneur and the host of the Success Stories podcast, which boasts over 20 million
- 0:21downloads across over 650 episodes and has featured interviews with the world's best business
- 0:28This episode is a little different as instead of being an interview, we're pulling back the
- 0:33curtain of the business of podcasting. If you've ever thought about starting your own podcast or
- 0:39want to level up the one that you have, this deep dive is for you. Scott shares his journey,
- 0:44challenges and the strategies that has propelled his success. We also explore the A to Z of the key
- 0:52elements required to create and build a winning podcast. Whether you're a seasoned
- 0:57podcaster or just starting out, there is something in here for everybody. I really think you'll
- 1:02enjoy the insider's guide to podcasting success with Scott D. Clary. If you find value in this
- 1:09episode, please follow us, give us a rating on Spotify or like and subscribe on YouTube.
- 1:14We're on a journey to a thousand subscribers and your support means a world.
- 1:26Today we're doing something different. I'm here with Scott D. Clary, who's a friend of mine
- 1:29and the host of Success Stories podcast, which to date has done over 650 episodes,
- 1:3420 million downloads and interviewed some of the greats in business such as Seth,
- 1:38Gordon, Grant Cardone and the founder of Netflix, Mark Randolph and many more. Scott, welcome back.
- 1:44Thanks for having me back. I'm excited to do this. It's it's it's it. Part two. Yeah, part two,
- 1:50we're going to be doing a deep dive into the podcast business, how to run a podcast, the stories,
- 1:58the ideas, the directions of technical analysis. So yeah, let's get into it. So well, let's start with
- 2:03your story. Where did you where did your podcast begin? How did it begin? What were the early days
- 2:09like versus what's going on now? So the podcast started when I was building a company that was
- 2:16eventually acquired and the sort of the thesis behind the the thesis behind creating a brand,
- 2:21which came before starting a podcast. And I actually first started posting content and building
- 2:27a brand in air quotes on LinkedIn. But it was about future proofing myself. So I know that the
- 2:33company that was building at the time was going to be acquired, but it wasn't going to be like,
- 2:36if you never work again, money, it was not that kind of exit, not that kind of company. It was
- 2:42listen, it was a season of my life. And I'm very grateful for it. But I knew that I had to start
- 2:46again at some point. And I didn't want to have to start from scratch. And I was also a marketer.
- 2:51So I you mentioned before we pressed the record that you have a bias towards content. And you know,
- 2:56the Gary Vaynerchuk's of the world and the Seth goans of the world and like the Grand Cardones and
- 3:00all the other people in the Hermosies and all the people make tons of content. And at the time,
- 3:05Seth was around Gary was around. Grant was ish around, but he wasn't really considered like
- 3:10marketing thought leader. He was more of like he markets, but he was more of a real estate guy.
- 3:15And Hermosie was not really around. So I was a student of Gary Vaynerchuk and I saw that he built
- 3:21the audience basically just through reps over a period of time. And then he used that audience to
- 3:26launch brand. So then he would launch. Well, he had Vayner Media, which is kind of what the first
- 3:31business he built with his brother. And then he had a Vayner sport and empathy wines and eventually
- 3:36dropped his NFT project. And he has a ton of other businesses. Some probably have never even seen
- 3:41the light of day. But the point is he's used this platform to launch stuff. And I didn't know what I
- 3:46wanted to do in the future. But I knew that I didn't want to start from scratch. And I wanted to
- 3:50basically make my life easier going forward. If I wanted to launch a new company or I wanted to
- 3:56launch a product or I say, I want to do like coaching or consulting or whatever. So that's
- 4:01that New York in the background. Oh, yeah, we love it. It's soothing sound that like makes me feel
- 4:07safe and at home. I miss that sound. I miss New York. But I have to. New York's a very inspiring
- 4:15city, actually, every time. So Miami, it's interesting because you have wealth everywhere. But you
- 4:20have like, you have wealth, but it feels like nobody wants to work. But you know that when you see
- 4:25all the yachts, the people work like crazy to get those. But I feel like now, people Miami,
- 4:31they just like the lifestyle, it's so much lifestyle. When I go to New York, I feel so small and
- 4:39insignificant. And you look out over the city and you're just like, shit, like there's so much I can
- 4:44do. I mean, you just feel like you've got to hustle more. It's such a, yeah, everyone is hustling.
- 4:51Yeah, very different vibe. I go to New York is like, is like a mix of like a palette cleanse,
- 4:59but also just like to lay like a fire under my ass every once in a while. Cause that like,
- 5:03anyways, back to the podcast. So yeah, just understood that I want to do stuff in the future.
- 5:08I don't want to start from scratch. And if I had an audience of people that knew who I was and
- 5:12liked me and trusted me, then I wouldn't have to spend X million dollars on marketing budgets to
- 5:16take a product to market. That was really the thought process. So then I was like, okay, so what do I
- 5:20know? What can I talk about what type of content can I create? I'm not like a big fan of short
- 5:24form video at the time because I didn't really understand video that well. I didn't think about
- 5:28I didn't think TikTok was a great medium for like somebody who came from an entrepreneur
- 5:32background to really kill it at. I saw people killing it on TikTok and other short form platforms.
- 5:36Actually, I can't even remember if short form was a thing on Instagram when I started. I don't
- 5:43think so. About six years ago, I can't remember when it was on marketing. Yeah, it was, it was just,
- 5:48it was just coming off. And it was like dancing videos. I'm like, okay, this isn't, yeah,
- 5:53this isn't a vibe for me. So what type of content would I enjoy to create? Can I figure out how
- 5:58to create and can I and can I build a system so I can do it and play the long game? Cause I've
- 6:03spoken this a lot. But if I believe if you if you do something for an unreasonable amount of time,
- 6:07you're going to have almost an impossible chance of failing at it. If you're a smart person,
- 6:11you iterate through some of the things you don't work and you learn and you improve. So I was like,
- 6:15I had that mindset going into the podcast as well as I would with any business. So I'm like, okay,
- 6:20what's the thing I can do for a long period of time? And I started with LinkedIn because that
- 6:24seemed to be my demographic. I was running sales and marketing at a startup and I understood sales
- 6:29and marketing. I spoke about these types of topics and conversations and hiring and ICP and
- 6:34buyer persona and avatar and sequencing and outbound. I don't know what any of those words are. You've
- 6:38just it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. The point is it's about driving revenue for companies.
- 6:43And I was leading sales and marketing. I did that my whole career. So this is what I started
- 6:46speaking about on LinkedIn. Obviously resonates with a super nerdy LinkedIn audience. And I'm
- 6:51I am a nerd. So I can call people back. So started there. And I also realized that that's great.
- 6:56But it's not a scalable strategy. So if I write a long post for LinkedIn, it could hit on LinkedIn.
- 7:00But it's not going to translate into YouTube. It's not going to translate into Instagram without
- 7:05some sort of interpretation or some sort of massaging that. So that I looked at podcasts and I
- 7:10looked at, okay, not only is this type of content going to be video content, which is a little
- 7:15bit more engaging. It can be replicated across platforms. It's less lift in my opinion to take video
- 7:21and turn it into written content that it is. It take written content and to format it into video.
- 7:25Because if I'm already recording the video content, then I can just chop it up and distribute it.
- 7:29Also, a side effect of doing video content and podcasts, it's sort of like, check two other
- 7:35boxes. One nobody gave a shit about me at the time and nobody knew who I was. So I wanted to
- 7:40interview. Except for your mom of course. My mom always cared. I'm always care. Yeah. Yeah. She's
- 7:46always been a fan of my content. Sometimes I think she thinks she still doesn't 100% get what I do
- 7:52when she sees my face pop being up on YouTube all the time. But yeah, she's always been a very
- 7:57big fan and supportive. But my dad's actually really funny because he's like, he's like a big car
- 8:03YouTube guy, which is all like the car channels. And then he lasts because he's like, I always watch
- 8:09my car guys and then like your face pops up on my YouTube. But he's not watching. I don't think
- 8:16he's watching stuff. I don't think he's watching a kind of like entrepreneur interviews. He's
- 8:20like this. I don't know what my son's doing here, but whatever. Good for him. Anyway, I could
- 8:25rate to explain it that I've used is like, it's basically a new form of like CNN. You're creating a show
- 8:33that doesn't distribute through a TV channel. It's true, but it's such a hard, it's such a hard
- 8:38concept to wrap your mind around when you build it from scratch. Yeah. Because you build the
- 8:44you own the distribution and you build it from scratch. And that's a very novel. I mean, it is
- 8:48new. It's not like it's not new and strange for us because we live it. But it's new and strange
- 8:55for a lot of people. I mean, Joe Rogan having more impressions than like Fox and CNN. That's insane.
- 9:01That's absolutely insane. So it is new media. It is built your own distribution channel.
- 9:07Yeah. I mean, like I dated a girl a little while ago and she had, she was an influencer and
- 9:14she was, she would always like get weed when someone asked her what she did for work. And I'm,
- 9:18I just determined to say you work in media. You are, you run a media company. Like that is the core of
- 9:24it. It's so funny. Gina, Gina. So, so my better half also, she has a massive Instagram account
- 9:31called my therapist says they've been doing it for the hell like 8.3 million followers.
- 9:35That's her whole business. They built it with their sister. She built it with their sisters.
- 9:39And it's so funny. She also, I mean, she knows what she's doing. She built a massive company
- 9:44around this. But like when somebody asks her what she does, like there's been all these different
- 9:50versions of an answer. And I'm like, this is just like, you're not, you're not just an influencer.
- 9:55Like you built a media brand. You have media business. You have 10 different assets that have
- 10:01X millions of followers. Like this is, I mean, I, I, like they've hit over 100 million US
- 10:09impressions per month. Yeah. Well, they're not always there. But like they've hit that number.
- 10:14But that's like phenomenal. That's a wild amount of impressions. Like I wish my podcast did 90
- 10:19million. That's wild. So, I mean, you are a media company at the end of the day. And that's,
- 10:27and it's funny because you go through this journey of all these different identities when
- 10:31you're building your contacts. You're a creator and you're an entrepreneur and you're a founder.
- 10:35And then you're also a media company and you're all these things all at once. But it's also,
- 10:39it's probably an interesting conversation about the psychological component of entrepreneurship
- 10:45and what you identify as. And I don't, I'm not an expert in that by any means. But I,
- 10:50there is something interesting there when somebody asks, what do you do? And the first answer that
- 10:54comes to your mind. And that's a really good signal as to what you're focused on or what you're
- 10:58not. And really where your energy and your passion goes. But anyway, so podcast seem to make a lot
- 11:04of sense. I could bring in guests. And again, not every podcast has to be a guest interview. But for
- 11:08me, it was like, I want to tap in other people's audiences because that's how I'm going to grow
- 11:11because eventually no one knows who I am and nobody cares about me. And that will eventually change
- 11:16as you grow and you become a creator and your own right and people actually do shop for your show
- 11:20for you, not the guest, but day zero. Nobody knows who you are. And then again, so super scalable content
- 11:26strategy, record the podcast, turn into all these derivative pieces of content, simultaneously
- 11:31tapping into other people's audiences, which is a helpful growth mechanism. And then the last thing
- 11:37that I really liked about podcasting is it, it was a medium that I enjoyed. I enjoyed the core of it.
- 11:46Yeah, I think so. I've thought about this a lot like I enjoy long form content. I enjoy content
- 11:51that has context. I don't enjoy clickbait. I don't enjoy short form that doesn't really provide
- 11:55value. I also don't enjoy people who oversimplify complex topics or who are not genuine. And I found
- 12:07that podcast just if you speak to somebody for two hours, it's really hard for them to bullshit
- 12:11you for two hours. And also it's not even about the bullshit. It's just about oversimplifying
- 12:17things that are not simple. So I enjoy listening to a podcast because I get like the real
- 12:22answer or the real insight from that person. I also believe that, you know, I have very strong
- 12:27opinions about books. I think that books are edited and filled with fluff from the editor just to
- 12:32hit a certain word count. I like listening to authors that come on podcasts around the time when
- 12:39they released a book because the author is going to talk about the points that they actually care
- 12:43about. Yes, there's a whole bunch of benefits of reading, but there's a lot of fluff in there to
- 12:48hit some page counter word count that I don't think was probably the first most important,
- 12:53most top of mind, most, you know, thing that this author is so intimately passionate about,
- 13:00that's not 100% of the book. But I do want to know what that is. And I can do that through
- 13:04a podcast, which is obviously I'm a fan of the medium because I do it. But that was really the
- 13:10that was a kickoff. And it's sort of just been doing it since then. It was the two ideas with
- 13:16the, I think the author idea, probably the really good authors get their book cut down by like
- 13:2590% and then the bad authors need to get fluffed up. So it's probably, probably goes in those two
- 13:32ways. And the other, the other thought I had was, um, and the thing I love about podcasting,
- 13:37like this podcast has a, you know, that one time has a small audience right now. But it is,
- 13:45you know, we're 70 episodes in and that's, that's nothing in this like world.
- 13:51Shut up. That's substantial. What are you talking about that? You know, I've told you this
- 13:54stat. It's like, if you, if you do more than nine episodes, you're already in like the top 1%
- 13:59of podcasts. Let me rephrase that. It's, it's nothing in the world of successful podcasts
- 14:05because you hear the stories of pretty much every successful podcast that I've heard of like a,
- 14:10how to do a podcast episode on, they all say, yeah, we were doing shit for like three years and
- 14:16nobody was listening. And then one day it just went bang. But yes, but also it's, there's some
- 14:22other crazy stats like, uh, the top 10 podcasts account for 35% of the ad revenue in the entire
- 14:30market. So yes, there is, there is going to be a slow grind for a podcast. There's going to be
- 14:38a middle class creator economy with podcasts that aren't making a hundred million dollar Spotify
- 14:43deals. But if you stick with it long enough and you are good at it and you find a niche that you
- 14:48serve, I mean, they're, like in any industry, there could be outsized returns once you get to
- 14:53the top of your field. And then also, I do believe that again, you're building a form of leverage,
- 14:58right? You're building one of the four types of leverage, which then you can use to launch
- 15:02other products or services. And look, um, the thing I was going to say, Diary of a CEO, he spoke
- 15:08about the impact that podcasts have on people. He, he, there was a podcast you put out in 2021
- 15:17that I recently listened to that he was talking about, you know, how much money is made and why he
- 15:21keeps doing it. And he mentioned that he's like, we would do these Facebook posts and they'd get
- 15:26millions of views. But then we would do podcast episodes and have thousands of views. And I would
- 15:33get stopped on the street 95% of the time because of his podcast. No one remembers the short form.
- 15:40But these long form episodes and these long form pieces of content with the right talking to the
- 15:45right person at the right time locks into their brain in a very, very deep way. Just as another
- 15:53example, I again, in context, small podcasts, small listener base growing up into the right, but small,
- 16:01I get a call from a friend of mine. And she goes, the last podcast you did was unbelievable. Like,
- 16:06I've told all my friends, I've told my family, I love it so much. Just that alone.
- 16:11There's one of those is amazing to like here and motivate, extremely motivating. You don't get
- 16:17that from like some random TikTok you're going to do. No, because because the trust that's built
- 16:22with the podcast is like any other social. I mean, I was actually just reading, I was in a Facebook
- 16:29group for Riverside. We're actually recording on right now. And one of the questions, because I like
- 16:37to read just for content ideas, I like to read like what problems people are having because it's
- 16:42actually a great way to create content because you know that that's like a topic that's going to hit.
- 16:45And one of the people, one of the people in the group was saying like, I had two reals on
- 16:51Instagram that got over a million views. And I had, and nothing happened to the downloads on
- 16:58the podcast. Yeah. Yeah. So, and also that's that's pretty that's a pretty normal situation. If you
- 17:06look at, if you look at not just podcasts, but long form video or long form versus short form.
- 17:14If you look at a big YouTuber and long form could be 10 minutes, it could be 60 minutes, it could
- 17:19be like Lex Friedman's eight hour long forms, anything like over 30. This is my whole
- 17:24episode too. Did you actually? I did. That's not too wild. That's too much. That's a long ass episode.
- 17:31But if you look at YouTubers, the biggest YouTubers, and you want to gauge how effective at building
- 17:38trust and trust leads to actual revenue and trust leads to evangelism. But if you want to look at
- 17:44the biggest YouTubers, they their audience follows them. So the biggest YouTubers have massive
- 17:51of Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and TikTok and everywhere else. You go to a big TikToker.
- 17:56It's like tickets everywhere else. Yeah. Yeah. Billions, billions with a B views on TikTok and have
- 18:03like a hundred Twitter followers. It's actually insane. I don't, I actually don't understand
- 18:10how disloyal TikTok audiences are. But I know that like in past lives, I've run campaigns and I've
- 18:17run marketing campaigns and I've run ads and I've done TikTok influencers and it's just the worst.
- 18:22It just has not worked out. I don't know what it is. I know that people, I know that people
- 18:31scroll and maybe they just don't build an affinity with the influencer or the thought leader on TikTok
- 18:37like they do. But I see the signals that it's just not an effective trust building platform. It's
- 18:45almost like if you think of social as like a funnel, I would say like TikTok is at like the top of
- 18:51the funnel and then YouTube could be somewhere closer to the bottom where you're trying to get
- 18:55closer to like conversion. But TikTok is just like awareness. Like I want, like if I'm using TikTok,
- 19:02I just want somebody to like not not everyone's going to be a Charlie Demilio. I just want somebody
- 19:06to like see my face once and then in a month or two months when they finally stumble across my
- 19:14YouTube or my podcast, they're like, oh yeah, I remember him. Let me see what this podcast
- 19:17is about. Like that's the conversion. But it's not going to be like and then they're going to listen
- 19:21to the podcast and they're going to become a subscriber or they're going to buy my product or service.
- 19:25But it's not going to be like for for from my experience TikTok directly through to lifelong fan
- 19:32or high value customer. Well, it's probably because if I'm thinking this through in any
- 19:39meaningful way, TikTok, there's like low intent, like you go on TikTok, you're scrolling through
- 19:45a 4U page, you're getting fed an algorithm, you're watching low intent, low impact videos.
- 19:55And you're not making any personal choice to get to that point. And then the other one,
- 20:02I think the other reason why I think YouTube's very, very powerful is you have to, you know,
- 20:07it's really going to see the same creator over and over again without a follow. So you like
- 20:12someone you follow them. There's like the first point of intent. And then let's just say a podcast
- 20:18or a weekly video or something. There's, I did, I didn't episode, I can't remember with who,
- 20:23but they said that, oh, I think it might have been, no, I think it was, I've got, I just,
- 20:32my brain just went, I don't know what, forget about the person, what did they say?
- 20:39Out of my head. Anyway, so I did, I did a podcast recently with a guy and he mentioned that
- 20:47he would build trust through spaced repetition, consistency over a weekly check-in with his
- 20:56self resulted in much more trust to occur. And you could do that with your business partners,
- 21:01you're done with your relationships, you do that with strangers. So the idea that every time,
- 21:06spaced repetition and showing up consistently builds a basis of trust in all components of
- 21:14the human interactions. So if you model that directly to content, that could be a weekly show,
- 21:21that could be, you know, a daily show with Oprah. You're there every day, same day, same time,
- 21:27you're doing a podcast release at 6 p.m. every Thursday, same week, same time, it builds that,
- 21:33that genuine trust that is just part of the human interaction, but TikTok does not.
- 21:39In any form. Yeah, TikTok is just chaotic. And by the way, that, that, that strategy is a pretty
- 21:44common strategy. So even in, again, talk about sales, like you have to have, depending on how
- 21:50expensive your product is, 15 to 17 touch points with the customer before they trust you,
- 21:56enough to make a buying decision. So that, that could be a call, that could be an email,
- 22:00that could be, that could be them going to your website. Like, it's not necessarily spaced out
- 22:07in a cadence like what you're talking about. If it could be, that'd be phenomenal. But,
- 22:12yes, that's a very, that's a very common, it's a very common idea. And I think that it's actually
- 22:18very smart for content. And the fact that, again, there's no, it, it's a little bit different
- 22:24if you're trying to structure this idea around somebody buying a product or service because they
- 22:28need this product or service. In content, the thing they need can be found anywhere. It's not,
- 22:37it's not like there's four or five vendors that they have to look at to buy this thing.
- 22:41The thing that somebody needs when they're looking at content could be entertainment,
- 22:45it could be distraction, it could be information, it could be humor. There's a couple different
- 22:49things that people actually need and get out of content. But it can be, it's almost like,
- 22:56there's so many opportunities to get it that if you aren't dialed into one person and if you
- 23:02just see them flip through your screen, great. But I can find content just as good if not better
- 23:07than that person in the next 20 slides or whatever, the next 20 tick talk thing. So it's just,
- 23:14it's just like a, it's a commodity. It's just like, it's just pure commodity and there's so much
- 23:19of it. So it's really hard to gain the trust with somebody. Now, the inverse would be if somebody
- 23:27discovered you on YouTube and watches all your content and then they go follow you on tick talk
- 23:30because they like you and they want to just consume you everywhere and they trust you. But
- 23:35the trust has to come from YouTube first. It's very rarely going to come from tick talk first.
- 23:39Yeah, exactly, exactly. So moving into your story a bit further, what was the point of inflection?
- 23:51Well, I think that, I think the idea, when I think inflection point, I think something that had
- 23:57to happen that pushed me towards starting a thing. So maybe, sorry, let me reframe that question.
- 24:04So what you started the podcast, you had, it started work, it started going and then there was
- 24:12there a moment in time where you went, where you saw that it was really clicking and how long was
- 24:18that and what do you think pieced it all together? No, no, no, not at all. Not at all. I would say that,
- 24:28I would say that because I don't want people to think that there's a point where it just gets
- 24:34a lot easier. The same workflow that I did in the first week of creating that podcast is more
- 24:40or less the exact same as the same workflow that I do now. Now, what is improved is I'm a better
- 24:47interviewer. I have better guests. I have a better team supporting me, which then creates a flywheel,
- 24:54which drives more revenue, which allows me to promote it more, which allows me to get better guests
- 24:58and hire better people and just do more and better. And I mean, the podcast growth has really been
- 25:09like just anybody who's listening who's created a ton of content on other platforms usually can
- 25:16equate their success to a viral moment. That's what I've heard from people that have built on
- 25:21other platforms. There's like one tweet that's shared by somebody huge or there was one TikTok that
- 25:29went viral and then you got 50,000 followers. For a podcast, I have found that it is very much
- 25:36like this linear growth significantly linear growth. And the reason why that is is because there's no
- 25:43organic discovery on podcasts, which is also why I also focus on YouTube a lot. But for the majority
- 25:51of this career, it's been just linear growth. It's so interesting because it's very tough to
- 25:59build a podcast. It's probably one of the hardest things that I've done. But it's also afforded me
- 26:03the most opportunity. And now is one of the funnest things that I get to do. So I don't mind it,
- 26:08considering the fact that I talk to people I find fascinating for a living. But there was no one guest
- 26:16or there was no one strategy that was like, oh, it's going linear. And then all of a sudden,
- 26:22it like shoots up into the right like some massive bell curve hockey stick growth. I would say that
- 26:28the hockey stick growth starts when you start. It's almost it's like this. It's life is so cruel.
- 26:37Life is so cruel. Because your hockey stick growth starts for podcasts, audio for sure,
- 26:45when you start to chart. And when you start to chart, that's when people discover you. And that's
- 26:51when you get like truly exponential growth. However, you when you chart on Apple.
- 26:56Oh, charge. Charge. Charge. Charge. Yeah. Charge. No, charging charging does not lead to
- 27:02exponential growth. If anything, it has the inverse effect. So how do you chart?
- 27:09You have to hit X amount of downloads a month. And that's how you chart. And when you hit that
- 27:15amount of volume, then that's when you chart, then that's when people actually start to discover
- 27:19you outside of the effort and energy that you're putting in. So my subscribers and my growth
- 27:27almost exclusively had been attributed to me. I mean, the gamut of marketing activity. So
- 27:34turning the podcast into a whole bunch of shorts, turning the podcast into a newsletter,
- 27:37into a blog, assuring the blog on my website, doing running paid ads for it, doing collaboration
- 27:43with other podcasts, cross pollinating my audience across all my different. So newsletter
- 27:48tells people to go to the podcast, podcasts, people go newsletter, social tells people to go to
- 27:51the newsletter podcast. So it's like the every single marketing activity you could do for a business
- 27:57you do for your podcast. And that's what helps it grow. But it's not like there's one particular
- 28:04marketing activity that had outsized returns compared to all the others. So but it's a very
- 28:11loyal audience. So the audience does stick with you. And the audience does follow you around. And
- 28:17that's a benefit of it. But yeah, so it's it's it's tough because I don't want that to be I don't
- 28:23want that to be, you know, to turn somebody off from starting it. But what I do want them to do
- 28:30is understand that if you're going to do this, do it for the long game and build a system or
- 28:36process that allows you again to do it for an unreasonable amount of time, five to 10 years,
- 28:42because it's fine. It's supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be enjoyable. But if you can stick
- 28:47around for five to 10 years, and then you adopt some marketing strategies to help it grow. And if
- 28:53you reinvest the revenue that comes from it right back into the marketing and the advertising of
- 28:57the show, you'll you'll be successful. It's not a matter of it's not a matter of if it's a matter
- 29:02of when. But I do think that expectations have to be met because we live in again an era of
- 29:07instant gratification and virality and overnight everything. And usually when success comes quick,
- 29:14it can also go quick. So I think that that's really that's what I found at least. I mean,
- 29:19people can definitely use virality to kick off careers. Don't get me wrong. But I don't mind having
- 29:24a loyal I don't mind having a loyal audience. It's six with me and continue to grow with me.
- 29:29And the podcast is only moving in the right direction. And I I have set myself up so that it is not
- 29:37so much of a burden on me time wise or financially that if it does, you know, now it's obviously
- 29:44successful. But if if it did take another 10 years, I would have to quit because I couldn't pay my
- 29:50rent or I couldn't pay my rent or I don't have any time with my family. In my mind, that's the
- 29:55podcast. That is there's no there's no point in speedrunning a podcast. I don't think it's valuable.
- 30:02I don't think it's a it's a way to win. Now there's ways again, there's strategies to help
- 30:06it grow. But still, I think that you do have to have some patience when you're building this out.
- 30:11Yeah, definitely. And I'm noticing that there's my editor and I appartners in this and he makes a
- 30:17joke that he's like, Oh, I mean, this for three years with nothing. I know that we're not getting
- 30:21anywhere for at least three years. But it's all compounded. It's all compounded. And also,
- 30:27there's other ways. So the way that I did it, I did not start a podcast for a business. I
- 30:33started a podcast because I enjoy chatting with people and I started a podcast for starting a
- 30:36podcast. But if you have a business, there's ways to leverage a podcast that can better serve your
- 30:43business. So if you have a product or a service you sell, then it can monetize much quicker,
- 30:48right? We're talking about podcasting just for the sake of ad revenue, which is different than
- 30:53having a business on the back end of it from day one. Well, some very interesting conversations
- 30:59are beginning to develop. Like I have one example of a sponsor that I had that started off as a sponsor
- 31:09and that relationship is slowly developing and we're looking at potentially coming on as like
- 31:13equity partners for that brand with a part of the sweat being incorporating media, which
- 31:23which is wild. So you're going into businesses. Yeah, buying into businesses through the media
- 31:32channel is a really, really interesting long term growth strategy for just life.
- 31:39Well, look at 20 VC with Harry. He started a VC focus podcast and I'm pretty sure that's how he
- 31:46raised his fund. He has a nice little portfolio of companies acquired. Also, I don't know
- 31:58if they use their podcasts to raise it. I'm pretty sure, I don't know, I don't want to speak
- 32:03at a lie. I don't think user podcasts to raise a fund. But I know that one of the co-hosts,
- 32:08for sure, I think both of them actually have their own funds. Again, business focus podcast,
- 32:13I'm sure at the very least it gives them access to deal flow because they have such great
- 32:18connections. So even if it's not directly like they're advertising, they're raising a fund and
- 32:24they're going out to some of the listeners to raise as GPs, it will give them access to deal flow.
- 32:32And also, I know that the opportunities that you get from doing this, they're huge. I mean,
- 32:38I've spoken at inbound, which is a massive business conference put on behalf spot for the past
- 32:42three years. And it sort of kicked off like a little bit of a speaking career for me. And now I
- 32:46speak at a variety of different spots. And those acquired guys that I just mentioned. Again,
- 32:51that's a very large business podcast. And they just did a live podcast interviewing Mark Zuckerberg
- 32:59at the Chase Center in what is it? SF, I think. And that was spot that was put on. And that was
- 33:08in front of 10,000 people. And that was put on by JP Morgan, who is their title sponsor for I guess
- 33:13this season or last season. So like the opportunities are absolutely huge. And there's going to be
- 33:20ways to monetize and just basically just improve your life in a variety of ways or build a bigger
- 33:27brand or whatever you want to accomplish if you start a show. And the reason is because you are
- 33:34just exposing yourself to so many ideas and so many people that the advertising component really,
- 33:42if you look, if you zoom out and you look at the impact, yeah, it's like it's so small compared
- 33:47to the impact that's going to have on your life. Yeah, really? No, I don't, I don't want to sound
- 33:51corny, but it's true. I mean, the stepping onto some of the stages that you'll get set onto and
- 33:56the people that you'll meet, it's like it's truly life changing. There's not many other ways that
- 34:00to do that, to have that many opportunities, it would be very expensive to do that without this
- 34:08particular, or this particular media. Yeah, well, look, you know, using the recent guests that I've
- 34:14had, which is the biggest guests I've had, you know, outside of you, of course, was Chris Voss,
- 34:19like he's a very well-known, Chris is a very nice person. He's massive, right? And
- 34:24and that came off the back of realistically, he's like, the list of reasons why he came
- 34:31onto the podcast. And I've read his book, I've done some of his masterclass, I've listened to a
- 34:37ton of his podcasts, like he's been on Joe Rote, no, no, no, no, no, he's been on Diro Vassillo,
- 34:43he's been on Andrew Huberman, he's been on Lex Friedman, he's been on, I think Chris William
- 34:50said, like he's been on, he's been on, yeah, he's been on a lot of spots. And they've all got
- 34:55millions of views on YouTube, he's got a book that sold two and a half million copies,
- 34:59he speaks for probably 20 to $50,000 for an hour. And again, I know you say that I'm in like
- 35:09the top one, but as far as I'm concerned with where my goals are at, we are at like, we are at
- 35:14the point five percent of where I want this to be one day. But just by the sheer fact that we
- 35:21at this point, I got to sit down with him, you know, camera to camera for an hour and 15 minutes
- 35:28and talk to him about what he's the fuck I wanted to talk about. I know, it's amazing.
- 35:33And then I get to potentially make money off that. That concept alone is ridiculous. And
- 35:40the thing I said before it was Chris, that was where the podcast, that was where that idea of
- 35:45like space repetition came from, because it came from him talking to, oh, about about like a
- 35:52hostage, yeah. Hostage is constantly negotiation with the criminals. He would do space repetition
- 35:59the same time building trust. And we spoke about this idea that, oh, is that relevant for the
- 36:05rest of your life? And he said, 100%. You can apply that to every other element. And that,
- 36:10that is an idea is going to fundamentally shift how I navigate dating, how I navigate my staff,
- 36:16how I navigate my friendships, desire of checking in, said from someone who does this at a high
- 36:23level to me, and not to anybody else to me, etches into your brain in a very strange way. And,
- 36:30and I just want to talk about the story specifically. He came onto the podcast because of a few things.
- 36:36It was, we had a nice branded website. We had a reasonably branded pitch deck. We had,
- 36:44what a set is a reasonably, like a reasonably reasonably branded pitch deck. It's just like, I
- 36:48want to see what a reasonably branded pitch deck looks like. You've got the pitch deck.
- 36:54Do I have it? Oh, shit. Well, clearly, maybe the pitch deck doesn't matter. No one reads a
- 37:00pitch deck. But yeah, we have the pitch deck links with the website, the kind of, the reasons why
- 37:06the podcast are clear, like why the podcast is just so clear, like the pillars are there, the pillars
- 37:11are health, wealth and wisdom. It's like, it's, it's easy enough to digest. The trust is built
- 37:17from that element. And we've done 70 episodes. So it's like, not a flash in the pan. He doesn't
- 37:24know who the hell I am before I reached out to him. But we've done 70 episodes, one of those
- 37:29episodes hit and went kind of viral, which means we've had some success. And that was the one with
- 37:36one of the, that one has like 120,000 views on YouTube. And it was interviewing the lead singer of
- 37:44an old metal band from New York. And he turns out he has a crazy story and a crazy viral, like a
- 37:51crazy, like die hard fan base. He's, he's serious. That's that. And the episode is, I'll send you it
- 38:00later. But the episode itself is, it's, and this is a funny point. I, when I did that episode,
- 38:07right, it was really hard to get him on because he's like, he lives in Tulum. He's in his,
- 38:13probably late 50s now. We randomly met because I was in Tulum for two months. We kept crossing past.
- 38:21He takes a call on, on his laptop, without a mic, sitting on his like rooftop looking,
- 38:30overlooking the jungle in Tulum. He's vaping. He's topless full of tattoos.
- 38:35That's so funny. He didn't even give a shit. I don't know.
- 38:39But I thought to myself, oh, this episode is going to be like really rough. And then it's the
- 38:42one that popped. So you don't know when it's going to go. Yeah. That's another thing. That's so true.
- 38:47It's so true. And then, and then, so you're to your point or to what I mentioned before,
- 38:52but you still have to work at it because not all 120,000 of those people are going to
- 38:58listen to the next one. No, of course not. But it's just, it's just a moment in time that shows
- 39:03a person that I don't know that, okay, this guy is worth at least considering. And then,
- 39:09I had a good cold email. I found his email on LinkedIn, emailed him. They said, yes, he came on.
- 39:15I see. You didn't, you didn't talk to him at all? No. No, no, no, no. This is like Chris Voss,
- 39:21I didn't talk to him. Oh, shit. It's going back to the Chris Voss thing. Yeah, yeah. I knew
- 39:24that the one that went fine, but getting back to Chris Voss, it's like, there's a little bit of
- 39:28success. And then it's a well structured cold email that clearly shows value and that there's,
- 39:35this has been done a number of times. It's not a complete waste of time and considering
- 39:40what they would want out of it, which was content. They, you know, I said, you can license this
- 39:44long form. You can have the clips. I don't care. Like, that's what you want. You can have it.
- 39:50All I want is to speak to you. And he came on. And you just got to move fast. Like, he's like,
- 39:55when do you want to do it? Here's my link. Book it in. Done. No fucking around.
- 40:00And that in my head, probably five years ago, version of me reading, never spent the difference,
- 40:06would never, ever, ever have thought that I would be speaking to him. And that's podcast.
- 40:14I mean, I've had, I've had a lot of moments like that. I mean, if you, if you just keep going,
- 40:19you'll just have repeat moments like that. I actually started wanting to become an entrepreneur
- 40:26because I was listening to Seth Godin's Akimbo podcast in a car ride back from, I can't remember where
- 40:32it was somewhere in the US. I was like driving back to Toronto. And it was like, I didn't do a lot
- 40:37of road trips, but this was a road trip. And I was like tired of music. So I was like, okay,
- 40:42let me just find some business podcasts and like listen to them. And I remember him telling a
- 40:46story about, oh my God, I'm blanking on the story now. What's the story?
- 40:55I always tell this story too. And I'm going to blank on it one second. I got to look up this story,
- 41:00one second. I'm going to find this story because I forget the guy's name and it's going to bug me.
- 41:09Who's the guy? Icarus. Oh my God. That's what I'm talking about. Okay. So he was telling a story
- 41:15about Icarus. And the story about Icarus basically goes very, very short version as a guy flew
- 41:21too close to the sun and got burnt. But like Seth Godin was kind of like tongue in cheeking it,
- 41:26saying like, hey, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, and these are not Seth Godin's words
- 41:29because he's a poet. And I'm going to bastardism, but everything he says, but basically Cole's
- 41:34notes was he said, listen, if you're an entrepreneur and trying to build something, don't worry,
- 41:40fly close to the sun, you're not going to get burnt. And I'm like, oh, so powerful goose bumps.
- 41:44I have to become an entrepreneur now. Seth Godin gave me the permission through his podcast,
- 41:48to become an entrepreneur. And I know that if I'm going to try and do this, I'm going to be okay.
- 41:53It's very scary when you first, when you, when you leave nine to five and try and build something
- 41:57yourself, right? Very unnerving feeling. I don't know that feeling. I've never got a job.
- 42:03Yeah, I have. I have. I have. I mean, good jobs, but I mean, still it's like, there's no more safety
- 42:08net. And when you start, right, you don't think of, I think that also, I think you're a little
- 42:13bit younger than me. And I think that 32 are, you're not that much younger than me that. I'm 34.
- 42:18Yeah, 32. Not that much. It's like a child. It's the, it's the conch shells around the neck.
- 42:26I'm like the surfer vibe or whatever the, you have like, I haven't worn, I remember it was like,
- 42:33what was it? Like, like grade eight, when you'd wear like the Abercrombie polo with like the white
- 42:38shell necklace around like the pop collar. And it's like the ultimate like douchebag get up.
- 42:49I love that. Pretty much. Anyway, so yeah, so that was sort of, that was like my introduction to
- 42:56entrepreneurship. And then when I started the podcast, obviously, we showed to him and he said,
- 43:00no, the first time. And then since then, like fast forward six years, he, he's come on, come on
- 43:06once. He's coming on again in I think a couple weeks. So like you have these like meet your hero
- 43:13moments quite often when you do this because you just start meeting cooler and cooler and cooler
- 43:18people. So it's a lot of fun. And then it'll get, you know, you know, it'll, you know, it'll be a
- 43:24mind fuck for you when you interview somebody who's listened to your podcast and then they're a
- 43:29little bit nervous because they're meeting you for the first time. That's also that also message
- 43:33with you. Or when you, when you get recognized in public from the, from the show, that also messes
- 43:37with you. So funny. I'm ready. I'm ready. I've been training for this moment. I'm practicing
- 43:43your autograph. So yeah. Oh, I actually found that there was a, I started randomly getting fed ads
- 43:51to have like a custom autograph template thing mailed to you. So you give them your name and some
- 44:00like calligraphy creates an autograph for you. And then you just get like books worth of like
- 44:05practice. That's smart actually. Yeah. It's a business. So I always use to practice my autograph
- 44:11because I wanted to play in the NHL and obviously you have to have a good autograph. So I would like
- 44:15when I was playing hockey, I'd like find a way to include my number in the autograph and obviously
- 44:20nine. I know I have this like shitty little signature. But at one point I cared about it.
- 44:24I'm time to bring back the autograph practice for when this podcast grows to the next level.
- 44:29Exactly. Have you ever seen them? There's like a viral clip of like Mike Cena
- 44:36signing all of his own merch before like WWE, whatever events. And he like would sign like
- 44:4310,000 pizzas of his own. But you mean John Cena? John Cena. Yeah. My little brother Mike.
- 44:48Oh my god. John Cena. Oh man, it's a Friday. I am shocked that I'm doing this much of a deep
- 44:57dive on podcasting on a Friday. But then I realized he was bullshitting half the time.
- 45:01Yes. John Cena. My god. I don't know who I was thinking of.
- 45:04Yes. So he signs all his own merch and he was like there's this viral clip of him signing like
- 45:09it was like 10,000 pieces of merch and it took him like it was like an hour and a half and he's
- 45:13just like it's hands like killing after. So you know what? I can only I can only hope and pray that
- 45:19one day I have to deal with problems like that. Yeah. That's a crazy that's a crazy problem to have
- 45:24but there's always problems. Regardless of what you're doing. There's always challenges.
- 45:28You're always doing streams. Trains. Those are very those are very good problems that have
- 45:33definitely. Hey, look, I want a deep dive a bit more into the podcast business itself.
- 45:37We've spoken a lot on a high level. So you mentioned there's different
- 45:40different pillars of content. So what are the different content pillars?
- 45:45So in terms of just like where the part goes after it's like goals for people.
- 45:52So what are the different reasons why people listen to content in the first place or view content
- 45:58like entertainment etc. So I think that yeah. So I think that there's a few reasons why people
- 46:03listen to content. I think that I think that deep down the reasons are they probably stem from
- 46:14social interaction and or it's probably social interaction, financial betterment. There's
- 46:23something along those lines because if I think about why do people listen to content.
- 46:27Yes, they want to learn but why do they want to learn? They want to learn so they sound smarter
- 46:32with their friends or they want to learn so they get the next promotion or they want to learn
- 46:37so they can start a company. Like there is some motive and incentive there to to learn.
- 46:43If you think about humor content, well why do people watch humor content? They want to be entertained,
- 46:47they want to seem funny to their friends when they share a meme and there's also just information
- 46:52where people want to sort of seem in the nose. So there's always, if you're going to create content,
- 46:58you have to think about how is this accomplishing some sort of objective or motivation for the person
- 47:05who's listening to it. It doesn't really matter. There's no there's no ranking of which motivations
- 47:10are better or worse. It doesn't make no difference but know that it has to tap into the motivation
- 47:16of a person. Like what does that person want to accomplish? And it's okay that person wants to
- 47:20upskill and be smarter and maybe they want to get that promotion. They want to have more to talk
- 47:26about when they're at a social event. Whatever it is, that's fine but you have to know what that is
- 47:31and you have to serve that to them. And yeah, I think that's why there's only so many types of
- 47:36content that really resonate. I mean, it's news, it's entertainment, it's education, it's pretty much
- 47:41it. Like if your content doesn't do one of those three things, it's not going to really hit home
- 47:47with anybody. So that's how I think about content. Obviously, I chose education information.
- 47:56That's the type of content I enjoy doing too. Like it has to be something that you actually enjoy
- 48:01speaking about. I've thought about this a lot. I look at humor podcasts and stuff that
- 48:09grow so quickly and it's frustrating because it seems like guys just like bullshitting and whatnot.
- 48:15But is it something that you want to do? Is it something that you want to create? And it's not
- 48:18easy to create that kind of content either. The energy and the charisma and the personality
- 48:23you have to bring to that to very different skill set than being able to interview somebody and
- 48:27pull out wisdom and insight. So it's just as difficult. It's just a different kind of content.
- 48:32And you have to decide as a creator, what do you want to create? And for me, this was a type of
- 48:37content I wanted to create. And I think that ties back to, can I stay in this game long enough?
- 48:43If I was doing content that I felt was not fun for me to create or not exciting or was
- 48:49not aligned with who I am as a person, I don't think I could stick with it long enough.
- 48:54Yeah, exactly. You have to love it and you have to love doing it without being paid because
- 48:59you won't be paid for a long time if you want to make this a career. But eventually, as you said,
- 49:04you know, I'll let you know when it happens, but eventually you do get paid.
- 49:09Well, you said you had a sponsor, no? We've had two. Yeah, we've got two. We've got a current
- 49:12lifestyle. So use up here for your content. I guess I got paid for my content. Does that make
- 49:17you a professional? Or does it make you a professional? The more you get paid, the more I'm
- 49:21distracted. Listen, dude, I'm just taking a sports analogy. I think the second you get paid for
- 49:28something, you become a professional. Okay. Well, I'll take it. So on that note, when should you
- 49:33start a podcast? Yesterday? It's for everybody. Like, why should you start a podcast? Why should
- 49:41you start a podcast? And then when should you start a podcast if you think the why is there?
- 49:44Yeah. I think that we spoke about sort of the types of content that hit home with people. I think
- 49:52that as a creator, you have to decide what type of content you enjoy creating. I chose podcasts
- 50:00I like talking to cool people. And I also knew that fit into like my marketing mind knew that it
- 50:06would fit into my content distribution strategy. And I would achieve success quicker because I knew
- 50:10that I could leverage that pillar content and distribute it everywhere. However, I was comfortable
- 50:17with audio and video and interviewing people and doing the research and turning the long-form video
- 50:23and then doing the post-production and then editing it and then turning it into a newsletter.
- 50:27I was comfortable with all those things. So you did all that yourself? Yeah, I did everything
- 50:32myself. You still didn't like it? No, not anymore. Now I have a team. I have five people. I have a
- 50:38CMO and he has four people to do post-production. What was a lift? What was a lift on all of the
- 50:42like filming, editing, uploading to all the channels? Yeah, yeah. I'd say about eight hours per
- 50:50episode. It's not a crazy amount. No. I was pretty good. I mean, so just to give context,
- 50:59me being entrepreneurial and working in like startup environments has been a huge advantage
- 51:04to the podcast. It's not even a question. I have done almost every business function myself
- 51:11at some point, including up to not coding app but coding websites. So yes, I'm not a developer,
- 51:18but I can audit code. I can see something doesn't work or doesn't make sense or there's hygiene
- 51:25issues with it. I would code my own websites, which is really just HTML and CSS, but still that's
- 51:30more than some people. I would do my own piano. It's very difficult now with cursor and
- 51:35Claude. No, but keep in mind that I didn't have any of that when I was still building. I was
- 51:41using WordPress. The point of making is the excuses are even lower now because it's very quickly.
- 51:51Yeah, it's 100%. But like in startup land, I've done the technical side, financial side,
- 51:58owning a P&L. I've hired people. I put out job postings. I've set up all the tools,
- 52:06all the software, like SaaS tools that a team would have to use for basically any business unit.
- 52:10I've set up the marketing campaigns. I've set up the ads and done the targeting. I've
- 52:18done the sales sequencing. I've done the sales call. I've done it all. I've done everything.
- 52:22So for me, it was like, okay, what's the type of content? I already know how to do all the tasks
- 52:27associated with distribution and growing an audience. So what's the type of content I like to do?
- 52:32If I wasn't sort of like this startup in the weeds person, then maybe podcasting videos
- 52:39like very overwhelming for me. And maybe I just want to write, which is also cool. But the point
- 52:44is you have to understand your strengths, right? Your strengths. What is it? The Iki guy,
- 52:50which is I think like your strengths. What the market needs and what you can monetize is a
- 52:55rough. Something on my side. Yeah. Basically, you see some bend diagram of what you're good at with
- 53:01the market needs and what you can monetize. And this made a lot of sense for me. Now again,
- 53:06if you're talking to all creators, maybe you find that your content or the type of content you
- 53:12like to make is more short form content. Or maybe you don't like being in front of a camera. Like
- 53:17Gina, I mentioned, my therapist says earlier, she does memes. And they built this massive
- 53:24media portfolio of companies that have a whole bunch of memes. And they started their account
- 53:28when they were when there was like a betches and fat Jewish and fuck Jerry and all these meme
- 53:33accounts. A lot of them in New York, a lot of people in New York know my therapist says it's
- 53:36one of their largest audiences. Actually, if you talk to most women in New York, they'll follow
- 53:41my therapist says, or I'm not joking, you do it as an experiment. But if you don't like putting
- 53:48your face out there, there's an option. If you're only putting your face out there and your
- 53:52great writer started newsletter on sub-stack, beehive, convert kit, whatever it is. So yeah,
- 53:58you got to figure out what you're comfortable with because what you're comfortable with is going
- 54:00to tie back into the first idea that I had, which is you're going to be able to do it for a long
- 54:04enough period of time. Yes, there is something to be said for pushing yourself outside your comfort
- 54:08zone. However, pushing yourself outside your comfort zone to take on a brand new thing when
- 54:13there's not even money involved, I'd say is not just pushing yourself outside your comfort zone.
- 54:17I say that you're almost setting yourself up for failure. So I would say, oh, there's a key
- 54:22guide. Yeah, a key guide. That's what you're good at. What you're good at. What you love,
- 54:26what the world needs and what you can be paid for. So basically, the passion is what you love
- 54:31and what you're good at. Mission is what you love and what people need. Vocations, what you can be
- 54:35paid for and what people need. And then all for a combination, that is your yikigai. Perfect.
- 54:42So now we're only going to be guys. No, we know. But yeah, I would say that's my best advice
- 54:48because you can make a living doing anything as a creator. But again, how do you make a living?
- 54:54You have to stay in the game long enough, which means you have to do the thing that's already
- 54:58going to be tough work with as little friction as possible. Yeah. So on that note, what do you need
- 55:06to have, you know, maybe equipment-wise, skillset-wise, basically to be a podcast. Yeah, to start a
- 55:12podcast. So to start a podcast, you definitely don't need to do what I'm doing right now and what
- 55:18you see on like diary of a CEO, which is I think like six cameras or five cameras. Seven cameras.
- 55:23I noticed, I noticed, because we look, we model off all of the really big podcasts and try and
- 55:28like take ideas from, you know, that we like and put into our spin. But I noticed that the
- 55:34in-person podcast, which is crazy, they have the mic and then on the mic is a camera. I was like,
- 55:40that's such a good idea. So there's a mic and there's a camera pointing. Yeah, it's like a mini camera
- 55:46pointing to the other person on the other side. So there must be some form of like
- 55:53housing that allows a mic and a camera to exist. What's the shot? The shot is like the point
- 56:02that the front from like face to face shot if that makes sense. So the mic goes that way and the camera
- 56:08shoots to the guest and the other camera shoots to the host. I've never seen them cut to that angle.
- 56:15You'll see it now. If you look at the new ones and you look at like the setup, you'll see it if
- 56:20you really look into it. That's a brilliant idea. Anyway, it's smart. It's very smart. So that would
- 56:26make it so that because they have, they have one camera on a track, which I have and then they have
- 56:31two cameras and then I think they have another two cameras. So one, two, three, four, five and then
- 56:36oh yeah, then the mic cameras would be six, seven cameras. Seven cameras. I didn't know we need to start.
- 56:42No, no, no, no, no. But this guy, you know, this guy had a different goal. Like he already made his
- 56:47money. He didn't give a shit. He was having fun with it. He was like, if we're going to do it,
- 56:51I want to do it. I think you said in 2021 and that that deep dive episode he did, he's like,
- 56:56we spent a hundred grand on our setup or like 80 grand. So I'm just a big number. And another thing
- 57:02I did an episode with Kate Tollo who works with Brian Johnson and she went on diover seo and she
- 57:10said on my podcast that he has a button that clips under his desk. This little button that presses
- 57:19every time he has a clip. So he like in person can clip moments that then the editors can,
- 57:25I didn't even know how that technology would work. I think it's very custom. He would have something
- 57:31he would have to yeah, he would have to well, it depends on the camera, but you can feed information
- 57:38back to the cameras if you have the right setup. Like if you have the so if you have like black magic
- 57:45cameras and black magic mixer, I think you can feed information back and forth. I listen,
- 57:51like technical enough, I'm not that technical, but it's very interesting. But so to start to start,
- 57:58you don't need any of that. I mean to start, I would say audio quality matters so you can get
- 58:04it out. No, it's all put away now. You can do like, oh, what's that? This is a sure SM7 DB.
- 58:11Yeah, this is what I've got as well. But you don't need this. This is with the with the
- 58:16lifter included. That's about 500 bucks, which is expensive again. But there's the little,
- 58:22oh my god, Yeti, the Yeti mic, which is kind of like the de facto starter USB mic. That's a good
- 58:27start. There's also a sure mic, which is like $190. It's something cheap. Yeah, it's there's
- 58:33also a sure mic that is USB because this is XLR. So you could get a sure mic that's USB that plugs
- 58:40right into your computer, which is also easy. This is what I'm doing. So so I bought after the
- 58:45recommendation from you, you said to get the sure SM7B because I was on the road, the little road
- 58:51mic. Yeah, yeah. And it just didn't sound as good. This is the sure SM7B, not the DB because the DB
- 58:58has like the lifter. And then I bought a separate lifter that also turns into a USB C and then that
- 59:05USB C goes into the laptop. Yeah, so that's perfect. So it sounds great. And I think if I remember the
- 59:09first time you were pitching when we first started, then I had to get you to turn down your volume.
- 59:13Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I didn't fuck it up. I looked like I was doing like 10 episodes with
- 59:21our settings. How good is it sound now? It sounds phenomenal. No, it's completely different.
- 59:26It's a whole nother level. Yeah, yeah, that's so. So yeah, so I would say, listen, USB mic,
- 59:31Yeti is fine or you can do a little bit more expensive. I personally recommend that you always
- 59:39start with video because then you have the content to clip out. Riverside is a great platform for
- 59:44recording. You can use zoom as well. It works just as fine. Riverside is going to get you a higher
- 59:49quality recording because it records locally and it uploads after the fact. I actually switch back
- 59:55to zoom funny enough. I switch back to enterprise. Interesting. For my reason why is because I used to
- 1:00:02some company that I was working on that was eventually acquired is it was a video, it was a streaming
- 1:00:08company. That was a piece of what we did. I know for a fact that video is very complex technology.
- 1:00:16It's very difficult to get right. Riverside is a web app and zoom is a desktop app. The difference
- 1:00:24between a web app and a desktop app is maybe about almost insignificant latency but significant
- 1:00:33enough that it rooms the natural flow. In most in some cases of a conversation,
- 1:00:39unless your internet is exceptional. So how do you zoom for a podcast now? Let me
- 1:00:46through the recording process of that. I mean, it's a you it's enterprise zoom. So we get
- 1:00:511080p recording on their end and I find that there's a better chance of the conversation not having
- 1:00:57any latency or lag which in my opinion creates a better vibe and a psychologically comfortable spot
- 1:01:05for the guests to open up because they feel like we're having as close to an in-person conversation
- 1:01:09as you possibly can virtual. Riverside is great. I used it for a while. However, there's going to be
- 1:01:14times where you have latency in between when I speak and you hear me and that latency just keeps
- 1:01:21reminding people that they're on a call and it's very hard to get them to be comfortable enough
- 1:01:26because they keep thinking about call and it's almost like you can't have a live conversation.
- 1:01:30Now it's actually much better than it used to be. Yeah, I mean, zoom is zoom. You set up a link.
- 1:01:37It records in high definition. Now I'm paying for enterprise zoom. So I get 1080 on the guest side
- 1:01:44and on my side, my camera is such bad advice because we're supposed to talk about how to get started
- 1:01:50but my camera is an FX30 and my FX30 can record at the same time as its streams.
- 1:01:58So that means that I get a 4k recording of me. I get a 1080 of the guest and the guests can
- 1:02:04also see me as we're streaming. It works. It works for me. Also keep in mind that I'm trying to
- 1:02:10retire the virtual as much as possible which is why I set up a studio behind me. So this is like,
- 1:02:16this is sort of, it's working for now. The only thing I'm missing by using zoom would be
- 1:02:23potential 4k on the guest side. But I found that potential 4k on the guest side is not worth
- 1:02:29ruining the conversation which has happened in the past. That's the only thing. And Riverside should
- 1:02:35take note and actually turn it into an app because then it would blow zoom out of the water.
- 1:02:39I think I have an app but it's not very good app. So that's, it's just because if you download
- 1:02:45software on your computer and you load it and you work through that, it will always be better than
- 1:02:48web. Web cannot work as well as an app ever. Like full stop. The technology does not compete.
- 1:02:55Anyway, so to start, ignore everything I just said. Just start. You need Riverside or zoom.
- 1:03:04You need a mic. And then you can use your phone which is probably the, like you can get a webcam.
- 1:03:10If you want to get a webcam, get like a Logitech Brio which is wild to think that I think it's been
- 1:03:15out for like six years and it still seems to be one of the better webcams available. Or what you can
- 1:03:20do is I did this for a while. There is an app on your phone and I'll tell you exactly what it is but
- 1:03:27it turns your phone into a webcam. And I found that everybody has a phone which has like a great
- 1:03:33camera on it. So that's the phone as a webcam is going to be a better, it's going to be a better
- 1:03:40camera than like a Logitech Brio. And the app or any webcam really. And the app is called Camo.
- 1:03:48C-A-M-O. And it turns your phone into a webcam and it's phenomenal. And then you just need a little
- 1:03:57stand to put your phone on. And make sure you put your phone on. Do not disturb or airplane mode.
- 1:04:01So you don't get a call that kills your video halfway through the podcast. But that's how you
- 1:04:06start. And then you pick a hosting provider. Obviously, I just told you to record videos. You're
- 1:04:12going to be recording video. You're going to post that up on YouTube and then you're going to go
- 1:04:15to megaphone or Libson or Red Circle. I use Red Circle right now. I've used megaphone in the past.
- 1:04:21They're all great. They all have different functions and purposes. Choose the one that works for you.
- 1:04:25And then upload your podcast and then start to market it and then build out a routine and
- 1:04:31end a cadence and show up every single week and don't stop and don't get discouraged when
- 1:04:36your first couple of episodes don't get downloads. But that's how you start. It's really not
- 1:04:41expensive or complicated. And I would say if you do make money, roll it back into the podcast.
- 1:04:47Find a way to make it so that any advertiser dollars come in, you roll it right back into the
- 1:04:51podcast and then remove yourself from the process as soon as possible by using Upwork or Fiverr
- 1:04:58to take care of the day-to-day tasks. I mean, even so my CMO that I have right now, his name's
- 1:05:03Ali. I think it was Upwork. I originally started working with him as a video editor and he built
- 1:05:11out an entire, this is obviously a unique case, but he built out an entire marketing agency.
- 1:05:16And we worked together the entire time and now he manages the team takes care of my show.
- 1:05:22But I mean, at the beginning it was just building a relationship with somebody who checked
- 1:05:26off one box and then I knew that he had aspirations to build out a lot more. So he just wasn't the
- 1:05:32editor just doing the work. He wanted to use very entrepreneurial, which I love, which is why we
- 1:05:35still work together. We're very much kindred spirits. And he built out a whole agency around
- 1:05:40podcast editing. And now he has a whole bunch of people to work for him and he manages the team
- 1:05:46as opposed to doing the work himself, but he's been great. So I mean, find great people is also the
- 1:05:51other solution to any business problem, but you need a little bit of money to do that. So you have
- 1:05:56to find a way to do it to the point where you make money, then you roll that money into removing
- 1:06:01some of those tasks off your plate. So how many, let's just say in total full time hours,
- 1:06:08do you think you're spending with this podcast? Like you said, you have five people working for you.
- 1:06:11What's your like weekly, weekly time commitment to a podcast now? Are you releasing weekly or bio
- 1:06:19weekly? What's your, no, I'm doing, I'm doing two to three a week. Okay. So you've got a
- 1:06:23bit of time into it. Yeah, but that's because I have a team supporting me. So I would say the time
- 1:06:30the time for me invested in the podcast. I like to do, I like to do, so I have a tiny bit of
- 1:06:40help with the research, but I do a lot of my own research for the shows. So I spent a couple hours
- 1:06:46doing the research and then I show up as a talent and I record and then everything else after that
- 1:06:50is, is a team. So you've probably got like four, five hours of work plus a little bit of management.
- 1:06:57Maybe a day a week. Yeah, but a day, maybe a day and episode, a day and episode, but then I'll,
- 1:07:04like I also enjoy, like creative things, like I enjoy writing. So sometimes I'll take a topic
- 1:07:09that we speak about and I'll spend a couple hours writing a newsletter about it. I mean,
- 1:07:13that's hours, but it's something I enjoy and I find that writing really like helps clarify my
- 1:07:20thoughts and it helps, it helps my thinking process and it just, I find it to be a very therapeutic
- 1:07:26exercise. So I really, really enjoy it. But that's, I guess, hours that you could add or subtract
- 1:07:31from the podcast. It's not directly related to the podcast, but it's all content, personal, brand
- 1:07:35stuff. So yeah, I would say, yeah, as well. So Ali, who I mentioned, he's CMO, he manages,
- 1:07:44and then probably like two days a week, do you think? Yeah, I think, yeah, maybe a little bit more
- 1:07:52than that, a little bit more than that. But yeah, I mean, I don't have that. So the actual hours,
- 1:07:57I can probably pull a list of like how many hours I contribute to every single piece of it.
- 1:08:02But so audio video, copywriting, you have a separate copywriter? Yes. And then graphic design. And then
- 1:08:14kind of like admin assistant, executive assistant for posting across social platforms. Yeah, that
- 1:08:20makes sense. So right now for me, we've, you know, again, much smaller on the output, but it's me doing
- 1:08:27the, uh, guest booking, the research, guest booking is, I forgot about that piece. The guest booking
- 1:08:35is just to touch on that IDM, a lot of people. And then I also get a whole bunch of inbound,
- 1:08:40which I review myself. So that would be a couple hours as well. I forgot that piece.
- 1:08:44Yes. Yeah. So, which is probably one of the most important parts. And I think I like the
- 1:08:48personal touch of it, of the guest booking, and then, and then dealing with the like advertising.
- 1:08:55So I, which we'll get into later, for me, I do that. And then I've got Joe, who's my editor, he does
- 1:09:01the editing of the videos and the audio uploading that to all the channels. He does a social media,
- 1:09:09posting, makes a clips, and does just like the thumbnails, and we're going to work together on
- 1:09:14the thumbnails and stuff. And then I've got a VA who I've recently given a role of each week,
- 1:09:19just doing the, the comms. So she'll take all the content off YouTube. And then she'll put it on
- 1:09:26to Twitter, yeah, uh, sub stack, the website link. Similar, similar ish workflow. I mean, there's only
- 1:09:34some things you can really do. But the standard is probably a bit lower because, you know, I've got a
- 1:09:38VA that's doing it through chat GPT. She's not, she's not going to be writing. And I'm not, I don't
- 1:09:43have the space to hire it right up. No, no, I know. But I mean, like, you know the jobs to be done,
- 1:09:48and you know what you, I mean, again, there's, there's even points like now when I have to step in
- 1:09:54and help out with something. I just try and, again, this is more like a, this is less of a podcast
- 1:09:59discussion, more of like a hiring the right people discussion. But Ali, in my opinion, is a, like,
- 1:10:04an A player kind of higher. He's very entrepreneurial. Uh, he is building his own business, which is fine,
- 1:10:11obviously, because he's not full time. But he spends a lot of his time dedicated to me and, and the show.
- 1:10:16But I enjoy that because he's always upskilling himself and he's always learning himself. He's
- 1:10:21killing it. And then when you have people like that working for you, they're going to hire other
- 1:10:24people that are also A player. So, and so then I, again, this is not like, it's not like been all
- 1:10:30easy. It's not like we haven't made misses on who we brought into the, into the company.
- 1:10:35But ultimately, if you hire the, you know, the, if you, if the person you hire, the C-suite,
- 1:10:43the direct report is an A player. They're only going to be comfortable with other A players. And
- 1:10:47then it's just going to help you build a healthy organization. Um, so I don't micromanage at all.
- 1:10:53I, I actually ask Ali and the team for ideas. Um, if we want to do something, and he comes to me,
- 1:11:00even without me asking for like different ideas that he wants to try. And I'm like, yes, sure. Like,
- 1:11:05it's just, it's just the people, the people make a break in organization. It's not, that's not
- 1:11:09unique to podcasting. But, um, yeah, I think that's also why you should always be hiring. I
- 1:11:14always be looking for new great people. Just quickly though, I want to talk to you about a taboo,
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- 1:11:33Chemicals, microplastics, and artificial environments are wreaking havoc on our internal systems
- 1:11:38at every turn. And if you know me, you know, I'm obsessed with health. And the health of my
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- 1:12:04testicular cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and even early death. And on top of that, your sperm
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- 1:12:46for 10% off. That's givelegacy.com using the code TOT for 10% off. Thanks for listening. Now back
- 1:12:54to the podcast. So you mentioned two to three episodes a week. What was the reasoning behind doing that?
- 1:13:02Because we can do it. Okay. It's more content better versus polish content. Where
- 1:13:09I think that I don't think you should do. I don't yeah. No, it's not. If you can't do good at
- 1:13:15three episodes a week, then don't do them. That's my that's my feedback. The type of show that we do
- 1:13:23with the prep that we're able to do. I don't think that interviews come across as unpolished.
- 1:13:29If they were, I wouldn't put them up. I don't think for example, with the style of content that we do,
- 1:13:36if we like I could change the style of content and I could be doing a four-hour interview with
- 1:13:40somebody that's a different style of content. With an hour to an hour and a half interview,
- 1:13:45I feel like the quality of the content is very good and I think that it competes with some of the
- 1:13:50best. Now if we were doing the type of and I also do virtual, I've decided that that's an okay
- 1:13:57piece of my show. I don't mind that. If I was doing all in person and it would probably be scaled
- 1:14:03down a little bit because I wouldn't want to compromise a quality. If we were doing a show like
- 1:14:07acquired where they do a month's worth of research before they put together an episode, it's just a
- 1:14:13different style of show. So I found that and I by the way, I have dialed back the quantity
- 1:14:21because the quality isn't there. So there's been many weeks where it's been one episode a week.
- 1:14:26We've just built out a process that I think allows us to deliver quality and quantity at the level
- 1:14:32that we're at repeatedly. And if I felt like if I felt like things were hurting or things weren't
- 1:14:39working well, then we take it back until we get the process, then we can scale up again. And that's
- 1:14:44always been like I'll always try and push and do more but do more better. And if we can't, then we
- 1:14:50bring it back again. But it never sacrificed. I personally don't agree on
- 1:14:56I personally, a lot of people have different opinions and not to say that there's shows that are
- 1:15:01not good quality, but there's shows that put out episodes daily and multiple episodes a day,
- 1:15:06just wild to me. And I think that you could blur the lines of quality when you start to get to
- 1:15:11that level. But it depends. I mean, you could there's news companies that put out news is 24.7
- 1:15:18and they're high quality. Look at the quality of the content these days. Well, listen,
- 1:15:24okay. So in terms of content, it's it's not quality per se, but it's very highly produced. And
- 1:15:33it's a huge team that supports it, right? It's a multi-billion dollar organization or whatever
- 1:15:38or industry. So I think that you if I could produce a high quality interview once per day,
- 1:15:45great. The only thing that would be limiting me there would be my own like energy level. So my
- 1:15:49own. But if I had for like to push back on what you just mentioned, if I had a full researcher,
- 1:15:58I had like I had I don't even know what else I would really need to do that. Probably be research,
- 1:16:04a really good researcher researcher. Yeah, like like you're talking like paying somebody like a
- 1:16:09hundred grand a year just to book guests. I mean, it gets to the point where I have nothing else to do.
- 1:16:14If I don't have another like if I not work on anything else, then well, yeah, I can sit down
- 1:16:21and talk for two hours a day. It's not really that much work. If I had like if I had twice as many
- 1:16:27editors and we could we could push out, you know, twice as many clips, it's just a it's just a
- 1:16:31money problem. The end of the day if you want to do more because most people can handle talking
- 1:16:37to somebody for two hours a day, especially if you if you do it if you do it daily, you're going to
- 1:16:42get very good at it very quickly. But I think that sometimes people maybe try and rush and then
- 1:16:47that quality suffers. But it also depends on your type of content. So if it's more casual and it's
- 1:16:52less prepared and it's like two guys just like if we just like rift once a day, maybe the audience
- 1:16:59likes the casual maybe the audience likes the unscripted and then it works. You just got to know your
- 1:17:03audience at the end of the day. What if you don't have an audience so you don't know your audience
- 1:17:08and you want to know the people that are closest to you. You have friends, you talk to people who
- 1:17:13are close to you. And then you also so you you talk to people who you're close as to you send them
- 1:17:17your episode and you ask them what they think of it. And you're also a consumer. So you have to
- 1:17:22understand what do you like if I was going to create from scratch, which kind of is what I did,
- 1:17:27I looked at what I listened to and then I reverse engineered how that happened and how was put
- 1:17:31together. And then I started my first version was something similar to that. And then I've had
- 1:17:37I've had different people that I reverse engineered their content based on the type of content I
- 1:17:41want to put into the world. And I learned from other people. And then I have not the perfect content
- 1:17:46but I have a great working thesis as to what works because I know that there's a version of this
- 1:17:50that already works. And I do I'm a firm believer that if and somebody can figure it out, I can
- 1:17:54figure it out. It's not like it's rocket science. Nobody's that special. So why not? Why not reverse
- 1:17:59engineer something else? But yes, I do talk to people. I talk to friends. I talk to family,
- 1:18:03especially when I was first starting out. I talk to people that I trust. You can also go to if you
- 1:18:10don't have any friends, God forbid, that's not great, but it's another makes and forms makes and
- 1:18:15friends. But no, there's also there's also communities. I mean, like the barrier to to access is
- 1:18:21also lower than ever, not just the barrier to building an entrepreneurship and technology. I mean,
- 1:18:26if I wanted to start an entrepreneurship show, go to go to like why coordinator or
- 1:18:33a hacker news or something like just go somewhere where you can find people that would consume
- 1:18:38your content and just ask if you at Facebook groups, I mentioned Facebook, there's definitely
- 1:18:42Facebook groups that you go into right now. And when you ask for help, it's wild, but people
- 1:18:48actually want to help you. Like more often than not, early stage creators, people are so ridiculously
- 1:18:54supportive. You just have to have the balls to put yourself out there and people are going to respond
- 1:18:59and they're going to give you real data. If you're looking for real answers and you put yourself
- 1:19:04out there, people will give you real answers and they'll give you real data that should inform how
- 1:19:08you create content. If you have no other people to speak within your immediate circle, but that's how
- 1:19:16it's done. On the note of starting, do you just from my story, started things and it'll prompt
- 1:19:25potentially your thinking, but before I started the podcast, like launch the podcast into the world,
- 1:19:35we agreed that we were going to do a podcast and then we filmed the first 12 episodes before
- 1:19:40that, just because I read somewhere that most like 90% of podcasts don't make it to 10 episodes.
- 1:19:45I'm like, all right, we're going to meet that by doing, before we even start, I'm going to do
- 1:19:52the film 12. What are your thoughts around how to go before launching? Do you just start with one
- 1:19:57and see what happens or do you build out a content library and then launch? What do you think is a better
- 1:20:02way to do this consistently long term? I think for most people building, batching content is a very
- 1:20:11smart idea because I think for most batch creating content or batch creating content before you start
- 1:20:17or even batching content after you start, meaning you set like a day up and you do four interviews,
- 1:20:22I think batching content in general is a smart idea because I think that most people, not all people,
- 1:20:27but most people are very bad with their schedule and life gets in the way. When life gets in the way,
- 1:20:33you prioritize the things that are urgent and important and you don't prioritize the new thing,
- 1:20:37the thing that really doesn't benefit you at all. Again, this sort of brings it back to setting
- 1:20:43yourself up for success. If you're going to set yourself up for success, what's the action you have
- 1:20:48to take to reduce the chance of you failing? I think 12 episodes is smart because you know what it
- 1:20:53does? That's my mentor. Third week is momentum and that third weekend when you start posting and
- 1:20:59oh my god, I got to pick the kids up and oh my god, I have to work overtime or whatever or just
- 1:21:05life happens or I got a cold, you know, you still have, you have a podcast supposed. So you don't
- 1:21:11like, you're not going to kill the momentum right away. Now, do you need to? No, of course not. I mean,
- 1:21:15you could just record a podcast once a week and post it and you just hope that life doesn't screw
- 1:21:19you over, you just have a discipline to set time aside. But if it's a new habit, I'm sure that
- 1:21:24James Clear would have a little bit to say about this, but if it's a new habit, like you have to
- 1:21:28find a way to set yourself up so that the new activity actually turns into a habit and I think that
- 1:21:35taking the activities that reduce the chance of you failing, that's that's how you win. I mean, if
- 1:21:41you know, if you want to go to the gym in January, well, first, if you want to work out, you should
- 1:21:45probably get like a gym membership first and then you should probably set some time aside and let
- 1:21:49people know that on Sunday afternoon, I'm going to go to the gym and then it would probably help also
- 1:21:53if you pick the gym close to your house. You just have to set yourself up for success. So yeah,
- 1:21:58batch episodes because it just reduces the chance of you failing and just giving up. I think it's
- 1:22:02just all these little things are just smart. When you want to go on a diet, why do you eat like vegetables
- 1:22:08and rice and proteins or whatever because it's really hard to lose weight when you're eating a ton
- 1:22:13of fiber and protein. But you're just setting yourself up for success. If you want to go on a diet,
- 1:22:18you take all that shit, you take all the junk food out of your house because it's really hard to
- 1:22:21overeat if you don't have any junk food in your house. It's the same thing. It's just all like
- 1:22:25setting your environment up to this is a really low chance that you're going to fail.
- 1:22:29Yeah, yeah, okay. And quickly jumping into some more specific stuff, the editing process,
- 1:22:38editing the video. What's the process for you guys on editing the video?
- 1:22:42So, no idea. Yeah, so we don't really, I mean, so we record in Zoom, I take the raw files,
- 1:22:52keep in mind, so I'll download the Zoom recording. And by the way, if there's something
- 1:22:58that I didn't go into in depth enough, feel free to like go there again. I'm just, again,
- 1:23:02I'm in it. So I never know. You probably experienced this too. I never know if I'm being too high level
- 1:23:10or going too much into the weeds, because I just live it every single day. So for me, this is very
- 1:23:15normal. Yeah, but for Zoom, download the recording, transfer the file, which is now like a massive
- 1:23:25file from my camera. So it's going to be like a 100 gig file, which is 4k file. This is an
- 1:23:30interesting point. What's your data management tools like to upload to get to your editors,
- 1:23:38not locally, because this is where I'm getting in a lot of trouble. Like Google Drive was really
- 1:23:42difficult. It like uploads poorly. It's a whole thing. So what I do is I take the memory card out,
- 1:23:51I transfer the file, because I don't upload during the day. I could use a second computer. That
- 1:23:57would probably be the best way to do it. I don't bother with that. I take the file, I move it onto
- 1:24:02a four terabyte SSD drive, and I'll put that in a folder with my, so I actually record my audio
- 1:24:10through Premiere Pro. I record my podcast through Zoom. That's where I capture the guests video,
- 1:24:16and I record my video through my camera. Take all those three files, put them into a folder,
- 1:24:22put them on a four terabyte SSD, and I have a ton of these. I've got a couple of unlimited
- 1:24:32amount of these everywhere. I take that, and then I plug it into my computer when I go to bed,
- 1:24:40and then I just upload all the podcasts that I've recorded, and I've used to one per grand,
- 1:24:46so the more expensive one that I use is P Cloud. It's just another, they're all the same,
- 1:24:54really. It's just a matter of how much they are. So P Cloud is the more expensive one.
- 1:24:59I've never had issues with Google Drive. We just find it incredibly expensive, especially for
- 1:25:03people starting out. And then there's another one called SYNC, and I have, I paid some ridiculous
- 1:25:10price for lifetime unlimited storage on that. So upload there, and that's where the editors pull
- 1:25:19the clips from. P Cloud is very good as well. The only reason why I use SYNC now is because my
- 1:25:27files are huge. So it's really getting hard to find a cloud service that isn't going to cost me
- 1:25:31thousands of dollars per month to store all those files. And keep in mind, I don't delete files,
- 1:25:37not because I'm a hoarder, because I actually do like to have like, so all the episodes I've
- 1:25:42ever done, they're stored locally on these here, and then they're also stored in the cloud.
- 1:25:50How do you like track and manage where the episodes are in the by year? Yeah, just by year,
- 1:25:59and by guess name. Okay, I mean, it's only when you just write it down, you go,
- 1:26:04that's going away, you get a new one, you put a sticker on it. Exactly. Yeah, it's not that
- 1:26:09complicated. Yeah, because these are challenges, like these are challenges people will face it,
- 1:26:14like when they begin to scale and they get a little content. For sure. And I do like holding
- 1:26:18on to the old content. In case I want to pull, like in case I want to pull clips from old content,
- 1:26:23I mean, it never happened, but for me, one SSD drive is going to last me like a year,
- 1:26:30or a year and a half, right? So like whatever, I think I think a four terabyte is 220 something
- 1:26:36like dollars like that, 200 bucks a year for sort, like this is like, it's full time now. I'm doing
- 1:26:41this full time. And keep in mind, most people starting yet are not going to have 100 gig files.
- 1:26:45No, right? Like if you are doing zoom, and you're recording, and you're not recording locally to
- 1:26:52a memory card, you are going to have like 700 meg, maybe 800 meg files max, like they're going to
- 1:27:01be like so, so, so small. Do you need an older port for the podcast? I do not actually.
- 1:27:09Okay, I know. Is there a reason for that? For like the edits? Because I don't want my editor to
- 1:27:16get lazy and miss a part. Okay. That's really it. Yeah. So just for my listening,
- 1:27:22auto-pod is like an add-on to Premiere Pro that basically uses AI to do the like clipping between
- 1:27:28yeah, between the audio video of the different people in the podcast, and it just does it in like
- 1:27:33five seconds. And it's funny you say that because Joe, my editor, has said, I'm not using auto-pod
- 1:27:40for that exact reason. He's like, I build out my trailer off the back of watching it normally.
- 1:27:45That's true too. That's a very good point. He's not going to know what to put in the trailer if
- 1:27:50you use this auto-pod. But what I'm more concerned about is he uses auto-pod and human nature,
- 1:27:57humans are humans. And if you use auto-pod, you're going to be like, why am I rechecking this?
- 1:28:03It already did it. Even though you know that there's a chance it has screwed something up. But when
- 1:28:08you go, when you watch the whole thing, you're going to know, and first of all, if you watch the whole
- 1:28:12thing, you're going to know if there's any parts you should clip out. We don't really clip much out.
- 1:28:16But just in case, I mean, like there's times when like a doorbell rings and the guest has to go
- 1:28:22up and get the door, I mean like life happens. So you just want to make sure that there's no weird
- 1:28:27edits. Auto-pod's good, but it's not. It's good if you have an editor that is going to go against
- 1:28:36their human nature and still triple check the shit out of it. But I find that I don't know. I like
- 1:28:43the, I like somebody reviewing it. It also helps me create the really good intro, which the editor
- 1:28:48does. And if I ever want to pull out clips from it, then the editor, I'll be like, Hey, can you
- 1:28:51give me like two or three reels from the show? The editor is going to know where to go. If not,
- 1:28:57you're not going to know where to go. So it's just, yeah, AI is good. But there's some things that I
- 1:29:03trust it with and some things that I don't. And it's probably better for solo people as well.
- 1:29:08Like solo creators that need to do everything themselves, lean on as much AI tools and as much,
- 1:29:13like you lean on chat GPT, lean on auto-pod, lean on all the things you can to minimize your lift
- 1:29:18because you've got so much work to do. But as you build a team, like the little human touches really
- 1:29:23make those want to make a huge difference. It makes a huge difference. And it actually,
- 1:29:30it differentiates. I mean, even if you're going to use AI for copywriting, the way that I look at
- 1:29:37AI is just the first pass at a creative problem, but it's not the end result. So if you're going to
- 1:29:44use it for copywriting, I mean, there's very few times I've ever used it for like an Instagram
- 1:29:48caption and I haven't, I'll get an idea out of it, but I'm still going to change it because it's
- 1:29:52still isn't as good as, or it's maybe it is good. I don't know. Maybe I just think I know how to
- 1:29:58write, but in my opinion, when I look at it, I'm like, I wouldn't have written it that way.
- 1:30:03And to me, that's enough to change it. So, yes. So that's really the sort of like the workflow.
- 1:30:11So record your show. I just mentioned where I record everything. If you are going to use a camera
- 1:30:17to record, obviously you're going to need a memory card. And if you want to record in 4K,
- 1:30:23this is a little bit more advanced, but you need a high speed memory card.
- 1:30:27Oh, you need a, well, actually, yes, you would need a capture card too. That's a good point.
- 1:30:30So what do I have? I have a, oh, what's the name of it? I've got a cam link for K.
- 1:30:35Cam link works. What's the name of mine?
- 1:30:40So, well, he's looking at that for those listening. What is it called?
- 1:30:45It's called Aver Media. It's an Aver Media capture card.
- 1:30:49So for those listening, the capture card basically takes the HDMI output from the camera,
- 1:30:56whatever camera you're using, if you're not using an iPhone. And it takes it and converts it into
- 1:31:02a USB or a USB-C type that then connects to the laptop, which allows you to use your camera
- 1:31:11at 4K. And you have to be careful because there are 1080p ones and 4K ones. So if you have a 4K
- 1:31:16camera and only a 1080p capture card, it'll throttle your, your output of your camera. Like,
- 1:31:24imagine going from a highway into a small street. It's not going to be as good. So, you know,
- 1:31:28ideally, if you're careful that you buy a, I was going to say, I was going to be careful if you buy
- 1:31:32a camera and you try and use 4K, you have to make sure that it doesn't time out after 30 minutes
- 1:31:36or over. Oh, God. Yeah. So that's a whole other thing. So the camera, yeah, look for camera,
- 1:31:42because there's a lot of cameras that just stop after 30 minutes. And there's also a lot of cameras
- 1:31:46that with continuous recording overheat. So go on Reddit, go on some threads and look for cameras
- 1:31:52that don't overheat and cameras that work at 4K for hours because that's what you're going to
- 1:31:58need. Like, I've returned multiple cameras because of this exact issue. Just built a studio,
- 1:32:05bought FX30s, a bunch of cameras and they're all overheating and I couldn't use them for the studio.
- 1:32:11FX30s. FX30s don't overheat. Oh, maybe it was another one. The one without, I don't know,
- 1:32:18anyway, maybe it wasn't the FX30s. FX30s are actually, FX30s, in my opinion, are like
- 1:32:22perfect for this. Are they the ones with the fan? Yeah, they have a built-in fan. So it wasn't
- 1:32:29we got to the FX30s at the end because of the fan, but there was another one where we built,
- 1:32:33I bought three like $8,000 worth of cameras. Oh, my God. It's more, and they were just
- 1:32:38shutting off, like cutting off. So these are the things to consider, but this is as you,
- 1:32:42as you scale and you want to do a studio and all these other things. Speaking of the studio,
- 1:32:47though, just I'm conscious of time. Let's quickly talk about touch on blind.
- 1:32:52Okay, so I have, so I have sort of two sets in this studio. So I have the virtual set that you
- 1:32:58see me on right now. So I have a key light here and I have a little bit of a, you know, what I
- 1:33:04know, it's not going to talk. It's like the little thing that hangs in front of it. The fuser,
- 1:33:09right? The light, the fuser. Then I have, oh, I'm going to blank on the names of the actual lights.
- 1:33:13And I have one more light. Let me see if I try to on and off. Let me see. I have one more light
- 1:33:18here. I'm breaking the fourth wall. I have one of these lights. And then I have one last light
- 1:33:24here that just sort of gives me, it lights up the side of your head. So it creates dimensions.
- 1:33:29That's the whole goal. It's great depth and dimensions and the lighting.
- 1:33:33I know what I know where the lights should go. There's technical terms for all these lights.
- 1:33:37I can't remember what they're called. So it doesn't have the point. I was like, hey, you go on YouTube.
- 1:33:41There's a lot of people that give you an instruction on how to use these in terms of the actual
- 1:33:48brand. Let's see what we got here. This is newer, I think. Yeah, newer solid. Yeah, that's good.
- 1:33:55And also we've got a, we've got teleprompters here. So we're both using teleprompters
- 1:33:59to connect with the cameras. Yeah. So what I'm looking at now used to be I'd look at the,
- 1:34:07I'd look off and it would feel kind of off. But then Scott gave me, you gave me a kick up the
- 1:34:14teleprompter. And I brought a teleprompter out throughout. I have to say because I'm like,
- 1:34:17why do you look so much better? What's going on here? Tell me. And you said, this is on this.
- 1:34:21And you said, I mean, if you really think, if you're really taking this seriously,
- 1:34:24you should buy them. And I thought, fuck all right. I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad you did.
- 1:34:30Yeah. So now the camera sits behind like a screen that inverts the, the video from the laptop
- 1:34:39or the computer. And I can look straight at the camera. So it looks like I'm looking straight at you.
- 1:34:44But I'm still looking at like a version of the screen. So it's perfect. It's perfect. So now I,
- 1:34:48it works all right. It's amazing. And now the, now the, the ad reads a hundred times better.
- 1:34:56Now the intros are a hundred times better because I'm reading off a teleprompter. And I can actually
- 1:35:02like think about how I communicate as opposed to be like, fuck what was that line?
- 1:35:09Or just going off like the dome and just like rambling like a lunatic.
- 1:35:13No, I know. It's like such a game changer. At the end of the day, you have to realize like, yes,
- 1:35:17you can, you can upskill yourself. You can memorize an intro or memorize an ad read. But just,
- 1:35:22if you're going to take this seriously at some point, you've got to give yourself the tools
- 1:35:26to be successful. I mean, you don't have to make it harder than it already is. So don't really don't.
- 1:35:30Yeah. Yeah. So, and that's probably another point of how to get better on camera. It's reps.
- 1:35:35And it's using tools like a teleprompter. And I really amazing
- 1:35:40skill that I learned recently was, can don't talk to a wide audience. If you are on doing a
- 1:35:53podcast or doing any content, even just doing like a come with me as I do blah, blah, blah,
- 1:35:58today, you might feel like you're talking to lots of people, but you are at the core of it when
- 1:36:05you drill it down, you're talking to one person. So everything needs to be one-on-one. You need to
- 1:36:10be using eye and you and us and staring at the camera into the lens as though you're looking into
- 1:36:18the eyes of the person that's reading the con or listening to the content. And when you flip that,
- 1:36:23it changes how you communicate and it makes you a much better person in camera. Is there anything
- 1:36:29else you'd add to that? I would say, by the way, we can go a little bit longer. I mean,
- 1:36:36if you want to just, I've got like three or four things. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. Don't stress.
- 1:36:40But I would say you sort of fall to the level of your preparation. So the more that I prepare
- 1:36:47obviously, the better the content is. It's pretty, it's the same as if you're going to go on stage
- 1:36:52and speak or go into a meeting or pitch and investor. I mean, you prepare. You do better. It's
- 1:36:57very simple. Yeah. You can use AI to help you with your preparation. You can do the research
- 1:37:03yourself. I recommend listening to a couple podcasts that the potential guests have been on.
- 1:37:09If you do an interview show or just if you aren't doing an interview show, you're doing a solo show
- 1:37:13and it's more educational. I like to spend some time doing research. Like the preparation
- 1:37:17really does show. Yeah. You talk to Lenny, what's his last name? Rick Kiewski. Lenny, Rick Kiewski,
- 1:37:25from Lenny's newsletter. It's a big business newsletter. If I'm mispronouncing your last name,
- 1:37:29Lenny, I'm sorry. But both him as well as the acquired podcast, one thing they've both said that's
- 1:37:37really struck a chord with me is again, Lenny's newsletter is massive acquired is also a massive
- 1:37:44podcast. But I've listened to them both just to study other. Lenny's, it's called Lenny's newsletter.
- 1:37:51It's actually called Lenny's newsletter. It's like one of the largest sub-stack publications.
- 1:37:56Might have to get him on the podcast. He's super cool. But both him and the acquired guys,
- 1:38:01they've done interviews and they've said the episodes that we prep for and the newsletters that
- 1:38:08I do the most research on just outperform everything. It's not even a question. So the acquired
- 1:38:14guys are in extreme. They spend about three weeks doing research before they record an episode.
- 1:38:21Lenny, I'm sure, has his own writing process. But did you find them?
- 1:38:26I wasn't sure if you were looking at like the icky guy maybe before.
- 1:38:29No, no, no. I've never done that before in a podcast. I like it. It was very cool.
- 1:38:34It was very cool. I'm just going to speed it up, get my like little side person here that can just
- 1:38:38like see what happened, a research for me. But it's all about prep. So I would say that's the
- 1:38:45most important piece out of everything else. Prep will make you more confident.
- 1:38:49Prep will make your guests feel more confident. They'll make you feel guests feel respected.
- 1:38:52It'll show in the content. It's all about prep. And the more unique questions you can ask,
- 1:39:00the more the guest is going to appreciate that you've done your research. And when the guest
- 1:39:06appreciates that you've done your research, they'll just be in a better mood. And when you create
- 1:39:11this vibe where you know you're respecting each other's time, that's when you get the best
- 1:39:16content. Everyone wants to see each other win. But if you know, if a guest is being asked a question
- 1:39:21that no one else has ever asked them about something super personal, not in a bad way. And like I
- 1:39:25cared about you enough to figure this out. And by the way, I can actually very much help this
- 1:39:28process outside of you listening to other shows they've done. It's just a positive experience.
- 1:39:34And it'll show up in the content. That's probably my best advice for anybody who's starting.
- 1:39:40I'm going to drop a bomb here. I'm going to give you guys what give you I mean you probably do it.
- 1:39:45But anyone that doesn't do it that doesn't really know AI too well. Every single podcast episode I do,
- 1:39:52I begin with AI. And it is it has cut down my research time so much. And I pretty much what I do
- 1:40:01is the script into AI is I'm doing a podcast with X, you know, who are they? What do you know about
- 1:40:09them? Provided details summary. And we start there. And then they give you a summary. And then I
- 1:40:13say, I want to build out some questions ahead of the episode. And we'll provide transcripts from
- 1:40:18other podcasts. He's done to get an understanding of him before before I get you to provide questions.
- 1:40:22Don't provide any questions until I've explicitly told you to and that I'm no longer going to
- 1:40:26provide any more relevant information. Are you ready? And that's his yes. And then I go, here's the
- 1:40:30podcast. Please summarize it and add it to the understanding of this thread with the intent to
- 1:40:35provide questions based on the initial parameters I said at the start. Please note the year that the
- 1:40:40piece of content was also released and consider whether any information you hear may actually not
- 1:40:44be relevant anymore if it's old. On top of that, please write out a list of every question you
- 1:40:49notice has been asked by the host to the guest in the transcript as well as a summarized answer so
- 1:40:54I can both get an understanding in detail of what they talk about and how to avoid those questions
- 1:40:58again. And then I say, please do not provide the actual podcast questions until our episode for
- 1:41:03our episode until I say so. And I put all the trend like I just go YouTube YouTube AI transcript,
- 1:41:09pull the YouTube transcript, chuck it in there, read the summary, next podcast, do that, next podcast,
- 1:41:14do that. And I get maybe like, I'll go through 20 podcasts and really get a really, really good
- 1:41:21understanding. And then at the end, I go, okay, please provide me 20 questions of the podcast with
- 1:41:26the following format intro about him, blah, blah, closing out. Here's the past questions I consider
- 1:41:31in every episode. Here's my standard question list. Further to that, please only come up with unique
- 1:41:36questions that haven't been seen in any previous podcast transcripts. And then it's just like
- 1:41:40it's good to spit sound shit. So I really think that I'm like, double down on this, give me 10 more
- 1:41:46of this one. Like and very quickly, this could this whole process from start to finish, I'm absorbing
- 1:41:51like 10 podcasts takes me like an hour. I'm smart. It's very, very smart. I don't remember my
- 1:41:57problems because I don't have in front of me. Yeah, I'm going to have an awesome. Yeah, that's awesome,
- 1:42:02dude. I also have a like a very similar process to just like understand what they've spoken about
- 1:42:07before. Yeah. So even the tools, yeah, the tools. Yeah. So a couple of things I want to talk. So
- 1:42:14while we're on this topic, how do you become a better interviewer?
- 1:42:21There's a book you can read. Let me find it. Let's can't remember it. I haven't read it in a while.
- 1:42:28I would say read this book because it'll teach you about different kinds of questions
- 1:42:33that I will find for you in a second. And outside of that, it's about the reps. Yeah, but
- 1:42:39but there is one book that I found. Let me see if I can find it. But ultimately, it's about
- 1:42:50reps because even if you know every every single kind of every single kind of question and you
- 1:42:57understand them like almost like the theory behind interviewing, there's really nothing like
- 1:43:03there's really nothing like just doing it because then that's good. And I would say that the
- 1:43:07prep is a big piece of it because when you prep, you have confidence. And I think confidence is
- 1:43:16actually like a major X factor in interviewing. Oh, it's called how to be a better interviewer.
- 1:43:23Oh, wait, no, that's the wrong one. It's by, it's by the guy who did Mixergy, which is Andrew
- 1:43:29Warner, one second. What's the name of the damn book? It's a yellow book. I just can't remember the exact
- 1:43:33title. Stop asking questions by Andrew Warner, how to lead high impact interviews and learn
- 1:43:42anything from anyone. I like it. It's a good one. I'm going to read that. I haven't heard of that.
- 1:43:48There is a there is a slight pushback that I'll that I'll have on this because I've got the
- 1:43:52same route like I have, you know, I try to prepare and I give the guests the questions beforehand
- 1:44:01to give them some freedom to like consider where I'm out in the direction. But I think there is also
- 1:44:06genuinely no right answer to this because something comes to mind is like I listen to a podcast
- 1:44:13a talk to that just did interviews of, you know, the top 20 interviewers ever of history. And
- 1:44:20their approaches are all wildly different. True. One of them specifically being Larry King
- 1:44:26did not do any prep. His team did not do any prep for any any interview ever. And all he did
- 1:44:33was sit there and go, wait, what? Your childhood. And then the conversation is just
- 1:44:41went in a direction that you would never expect because he had no bias of where he was taking it.
- 1:44:48And he was just there just chatting. So another another interesting thing to do after you're
- 1:44:53going to do that. Nothing wrong. I'm sure that first of all, not everyone is as gifted as Larry
- 1:44:59King at steering at pulling out conversation. And maybe he didn't do prep. But you self to understand
- 1:45:05what's the objective of the actual content. So no one's going to Larry King to learn how to raise
- 1:45:12money. Yeah. But if you want to build a podcast, it teaches something like that. That's the
- 1:45:17difference. So you do have to know what kind of content you want to create that does change.
- 1:45:23I guess like King was like an a list interviewer. And then he people a list interviewers want to know
- 1:45:28they just want to know like people listening to that want to just know things that they didn't know
- 1:45:32about this I list interviewer that you can't get in any other format than just like chatting with
- 1:45:37them for an extended period of time. True. I also think that I also think that there gets, I mean,
- 1:45:42with Joe Rogan, I'm sure when guests go on Joe Rogan now, the guests are trying to bring their
- 1:45:48A game because they know the reach. I would not say that's good advice for somebody with no reach.
- 1:45:54I would say prep a little bit. Yeah. I don't think yes, they're always going to bring their A game
- 1:45:59if they don't know who you are and you're just starting out. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the process
- 1:46:04changes is podcast scales. If you want to be casual and you want to be entertaining and you want to
- 1:46:09just like shoot the shit and do like I'm trying to think of like Joe Rogan is that kind of casual
- 1:46:16like flagrants kind of like a casual podcast. But he does a little bit. Andrew Schultz is a little
- 1:46:21bit of research. There's some pretty like casual chill like just like shooting the shit podcast.
- 1:46:26Maybe you don't research as much because you actually want to have like
- 1:46:30like caller daddy. It's like that's a kind of podcast, right? Like they just kind of riff
- 1:46:36and they their personalities show through. So it really depends on what you want to make, I think.
- 1:46:40But yeah. Yeah. Another idea and going back to the Chris Foss thing, never split the difference
- 1:46:49is actually a really good book to learn about how to interview well because there's a couple of
- 1:46:54very specific techniques that I've used. And it reminded me doing the prep because I reread his
- 1:47:01book prior to doing the podcast with him. And it's just little things like if something is
- 1:47:08peaking your interest using upwards inflection mirroring. So you know, you say something like
- 1:47:15I made a hundred grand last year and you want to double down on that without being like tell me
- 1:47:20more about how you made a hundred grand. It kind of breaks the flow. But I would just sit here
- 1:47:25and go a hundred grand last year with like an upwards inflection. And then shut the fuck up.
- 1:47:33And that naturally will like lead, you know, draw people into saying more. And you can, I do
- 1:47:39this on a weekly basis. I can sit here and then up with one back and see when you are presented.
- 1:47:44I do it all the time, bro. I do it all the time. And I can sit here and I can have a person talk
- 1:47:51for two hours straight. And all I do is upwards and flat. I don't need to tell anyone else.
- 1:47:55Because they filled the space. I've seen some of his stuff before. He's very good.
- 1:47:59Yeah. And the second one is also silence. So being okay with sitting in that slightly
- 1:48:07silent space and giving people the space to think. So I think it's an energetic thing. But
- 1:48:16what I've learned, and I think I'm getting okay as an interviewer, like genuinely I'm getting
- 1:48:21feedback from podcasts, people who go on podcasts that have been on some of the biggest podcasts.
- 1:48:25And they say to my face, this was one of the better interviews I've done. And it's not the first,
- 1:48:30I've heard that probably half a thousand times now. So I think it's moving in a positive direction.
- 1:48:35And I'd be a big part of that is also I think due to slowing it down and being comfortable in
- 1:48:44sitting in silence. Like if somebody, if I ask a question and someone sits there for 20 seconds,
- 1:48:49I can give a shit. Just take your time. That's tough. That's very tough. I've also found that I found
- 1:48:56that like if I'm tired or if I don't, like I have to manage my energy levels too. So when I'm tired,
- 1:49:03I'm less good with those circumstances. And when I'm not tired, I have energy, not stressed out
- 1:49:13about other things. Because I think that all those external factors, and it's, listen, this is
- 1:49:18not easy to do. But I think they're finding ways to sort of be in the present and be in the now.
- 1:49:23And also maximize your energy as a professional. And it's an entrepreneur. These are all very
- 1:49:28important ideas that all play into this because it's like the podcast is like game time. It's
- 1:49:35like high pressure. It's like high pressure in like the least high pressure situation. It's not
- 1:49:40that bad. But it's like it's performative. You got to show up. You got to be your best. You got
- 1:49:45to feel comfortable as an interviewer. You got to create an environment where the guest is
- 1:49:49comfortable. You got to be comfortable with like you mentioned silences and not rambling and
- 1:49:55all the stuff that comes with interviewing. It's not easy. So it's just, but I think reps will
- 1:50:03either make you better or highlight your areas for improvement. Yeah. I don't think there's another
- 1:50:08way to do it. So if I show reps a K. And if I feel like I'm rambling or I feel like I asked an
- 1:50:16awkward question and then they didn't answer right away. So I felt bad and then I jumped in and
- 1:50:20well, why did I do that? Maybe it's because I was tired. Maybe it's because maybe it's because I
- 1:50:26didn't prep. Maybe it didn't feel comfortable to get whatever it is. There's like something. There's
- 1:50:29a tell there that you have to pay attention to. And I think you pay attention to those. That's when
- 1:50:34you improve. And the interviewing skill itself, again, I'm just going to purely go off my personal
- 1:50:40experience is improving every facet of my life. Everything is getting better because of my ability
- 1:50:47to have a conversation. I agree. It's really cool. And I think it's a skill that in copywriting
- 1:50:55are probably two skills that will probably never go away. They're going to be useful skills forever.
- 1:50:59I agree with that. Yeah. That's good. There was some good nuggets across the board. So a couple
- 1:51:05of last things I've got is how to monetize. Let's talk about how to monetize when you should monetize
- 1:51:12and how you should go about doing all those elements and whether you should let look, I'll just let
- 1:51:18you go. The way that I monetize is one way. Obviously, I don't think it's the best way. The way
- 1:51:27that I monetize was when I get so many downloads that I'm looking for. So I went through agencies.
- 1:51:36So agencies will usually start to accept you if you're at about 5,000 downloads per month,
- 1:51:40which is like a $200 ad slot or something. I can't do the math in my head based on CPMs,
- 1:51:46but it's not a lot of money. But yeah, I mean, that's what would you do in episode?
- 1:51:51So if you do a 5,000, sorry, you go ahead. I was going to say two pre-roll, four mid-roll for like
- 1:52:00an hour to an hour and a half and then two post-roll. So you get the 5,000 downloads a month. Let's
- 1:52:06see, doing a week of podcasts. It's approximately 1,000 downloads an episode or maybe 500 downloads
- 1:52:11an episode plus evergreen. You can revenue-wise, if you're saying $200 an ad roll to $6.8, did you say it?
- 1:52:21So that's times $600 a week in revenue. And that is at like higher numbers. That's just probably
- 1:52:28pretty average. And how likely would you get eight advertisers? Like is it? No, you wouldn't have
- 1:52:34100% inventory sold out. So yeah, you're not likely at that point because maybe 60% sold out?
- 1:52:41Yeah. And your show is probably going to be bundled with other shows that they're selling. They're
- 1:52:44not selling your show. They're selling. I have 20 shows in the business niche that have this many
- 1:52:51downloads. That's what they're selling. And you're one of those. So you can go through agencies.
- 1:52:58You can go to Gumball, Advertised Cast, Red Circle, has an ad program, Glassbox.
- 1:53:05What are they tightening? 30% on average. Okay. Is it worth doing those in-house, do you think?
- 1:53:14Do you have the capacity to hire and train a sales team or jump on every single call with every
- 1:53:18single advertiser and do reporting? I felt like it wasn't worth it to me. I felt like I could do that,
- 1:53:23especially when I compare it to reporting. They're components are sales. The components are sales.
- 1:53:29The components are, okay, so how do I find decision maker email addresses? Because I did sales.
- 1:53:35I built sales teams. I know how there's not a single thing in sales that I haven't done myself
- 1:53:39or hired somebody to do. So you have to find the brands you want to work with. You have to find
- 1:53:45the emails of the decision makers. You have to run outbound campaigns. You have to run follow-up,
- 1:53:50not just one email, like nurture sequences. Make sure you're targeting properly with the right
- 1:53:54ideal customer profile and buyer persona. That's a conversation for another day.
- 1:54:00But then once you find those people you run emails, they're going to jump on calls.
- 1:54:03You're going to discover recall. You're going to demo call. You're going to eventually negotiate
- 1:54:06closed deal. You're going to get the creative brief. You're going to record the creative brief.
- 1:54:11You're going to send it back to them from approval. You're going to embed that either programmatically
- 1:54:15or baked in. Depending on which platform you use, some can do programmatic. Some can just do
- 1:54:21baked in. The difference is programmatic means you're just doing your setting markers and inserting
- 1:54:26across your entire catalog. Baked in means you're literally just when you're doing the edit.
- 1:54:30You're inserting like a 30 to 6 second ad like in the actual video and audio before you export it
- 1:54:37and then upload it to your channels. And just for context, baked in is going to be worth more
- 1:54:41because it's there forever, programmatically. You can change after 10 weeks to the next
- 1:54:46programmatic one. And after that, then you have to report on downloads or listen. So I would say
- 1:54:54for like, again, most creators are not full time when they start. I don't think they should be.
- 1:55:00So I think agency's help. The issue with not having agents, by the way, you still sell on your own
- 1:55:07because you don't need to, I would never sign exclusivity. Some people will try and get you to
- 1:55:11sign exclusivity. I don't do exclusive unless they can guarantee me revenue. They can't guarantee me
- 1:55:17revenue. I don't sign exclusivity agreements. And these are just ad agencies. We haven't even
- 1:55:20talked about networks yet. But that's the ad agency. That's my recommendation for how you monetize
- 1:55:26and if you want to sell deals on this. No, no, no, sorry. I'll talk about networks in a second.
- 1:55:31But if you want to monetize, go through ad agencies, go through podcasts ad agencies. And if you
- 1:55:36want to sell because you're not exclusive, you can still sell on the side. And then the other thing
- 1:55:42that you'll encounter when you're building a podcast is networks and networks are like the HubSpot
- 1:55:46podcast network. There's other ones as well. I'm part of HubSpot and networks do a couple things.
- 1:55:52Sometimes they'll find advertisers for you. Networks are usually more likely to ask you to be
- 1:55:56exclusive to them. They will definitely not want you in another network. But for example, with HubSpot,
- 1:56:02they don't care if I sell ads on my show. They just don't want me in another network obviously.
- 1:56:06And they'll do other things. So they'll support creators. They'll help them understand with
- 1:56:13emerging podcast trends. They'll do collaboration with other podcasts in the network. Sometimes HubSpot
- 1:56:20doesn't find ads. HubSpot is the advertiser and the network. A lot of other podcasts,
- 1:56:25networks like, for example, podcast one or young and profiting. Those are two other podcasts.
- 1:56:31There's a lot of podcasts networks. Other podcasts networks will find you advertiser. So they
- 1:56:39kind of act as a network in an agency at the same time. So the lines are kind of blurred. And when
- 1:56:44you get to this point, you'll start to learn. You'll start to look at what I've made a little bit
- 1:56:50of money through agencies. Do I want to join a network? Our network is approaching me. Is it a
- 1:56:54good deal? Is it a bad deal? Creators will be careful because a lot of networks are not
- 1:57:00for earlier creators is a really good chance that if you don't know what you're doing,
- 1:57:06you could be getting taken advantage of. And I'm just a caveat. HubSpot is the best network
- 1:57:11I've ever seen. And I have nothing but good things to say about them. But I'm talking about
- 1:57:15other networks that I have been approached by that are asking for unreasonable terms. And if I wasn't
- 1:57:23more confident in auditing contract language or whatnot, then I'd get myself into like a less
- 1:57:29than ideal situation that I would have a hard time getting out of, again, not HubSpot, other
- 1:57:35networks. Not sale networks are bad. Just make sure that this is like the classic thing,
- 1:57:40like even as if you were an influencer or a creator on Instagram, sometimes brands, agencies,
- 1:57:49take advantage of creators that don't know better because they're not business people.
- 1:57:53They're creators first and business people second. And I've seen in circumstances,
- 1:57:58bigger agencies and brands take advantage. So just be careful if you start to engage in
- 1:58:02contractual obligations with people that it's, you know, to your benefit and talk to people that
- 1:58:09have either done it before or just talked to people. If you are a creative first and you don't
- 1:58:15get business quote unquote, if you're not like a business minded person first, you don't have
- 1:58:22experienced reviewing a contract. Just speak to people before you sign anything. That's my advice.
- 1:58:27But yeah, so that's sort of the the ecosystem of who supports podcasting. And again,
- 1:58:34none of it, I don't want to make it sound bad or I don't want to scare people off. I just want
- 1:58:38people to get into situations that they aren't happy with. But there's a lot of agencies and a lot
- 1:58:43of networks that are phenomenal, like the one I'm part of. And you can use them strategically.
- 1:58:49And you don't have to go and sell your own ads, but also you can. It's just a time thing.
- 1:58:54If you add a limited money and resources, you could just go sell your own ads, right? If you could
- 1:58:58go hire a salesman, maybe you just sold a company for a hundred million dollars. You don't
- 1:59:01want to deal with agencies. You want to go to higher salesperson. Okay, that's cool. But I don't
- 1:59:04think that's the majority of people. I mean, people need a little bit help. Yeah, yeah. Okay,
- 1:59:09so basically if you're starting from scratch, step one is get to five thousand downloads a month.
- 1:59:13It's as quickly as you possibly can in step two is use once you're at that point, try and then find a
- 1:59:20go talk to agencies and just find an agency and get them to start bringing in revenue.
- 1:59:25And that's probably the quickest way to monetize. And you might be able to make at that point a
- 1:59:30thousand to two thousand dollars a week, maybe on on ad reads. I say a little bit less because
- 1:59:37your fill rate won't be a hundred percent. Yeah, you'd probably be a little bit less than that.
- 1:59:41But still, you'll make some money. You'll make some money. It'll cover the cost at least. Exactly.
- 1:59:46And then you can make any extra money. And again, this is not going to be like your retiring money.
- 1:59:52But if you make any extra money, then you can start to roll it back into ads and you can advertise
- 1:59:56on like player FM and cast box. And you can even advertise another podcast. And I've basically
- 2:00:02tried everything. Well, let's talk about that as well. Yeah, so
- 2:00:06right now I'm about to start like a Facebook Instagram YouTube ad budget just to try it out.
- 2:00:16Advertising on the podcast, advertising the podcast, how to do that, where to do it, what you found
- 2:00:22had the best impact. So I've tried everything and I've tried Facebook and I've tried Instagram.
- 2:00:27And I found that it's just very expensive because you could target the right
- 2:00:31avatar of the listener, but it doesn't mean they're a podcast listener. So I could line up
- 2:00:38everything perfect, US-based, English speaking, 27 to 37, works in tech, like all the demos that fit
- 2:00:46my audience profile. But maybe they just don't like podcasts. Maybe they read newsletters. So then
- 2:00:50wasted money. So I have a pretty strong view on this. If I'm trying to advertise and market,
- 2:00:58especially when I'm just starting out when there's I'm not needing to look for additional
- 2:01:04audience, like I can spend the money that I'm spending. It's not like I'm trying to find 10 million
- 2:01:11people. I'm trying to find like a thousand people. Yeah. I only market on the medium
- 2:01:19of that particular thing. So I'm trying to grow a newsletter. I'm only spending ad money on
- 2:01:23other newsletters. I'm trying to grow a podcast. I'm only spending ad money on other podcasts
- 2:01:28or podcast hosting platforms because again, I don't want to convince you to listen to podcasts or
- 2:01:34to read a newsletter. I just want you to listen. I want you to already like podcasts and like I
- 2:01:40put my hand up and say, hey, check my nose. Are you doing that ad raid? So what does that actually
- 2:01:46look like? Okay. So it depends. But so it depends. So if you are going to advertise on cast
- 2:01:54box or player FM, which are podcast hosting platforms, great places to advertise, this banner ads.
- 2:02:01So banner with your show shows up at the top of their app. And then they suggest that they obviously
- 2:02:07have a whole bunch of podcasts listeners. They suggest that people go listen to your show. If you
- 2:02:11are going to advertise another podcast, I have done both. I have done my own ad reads. I have
- 2:02:19asked the host to do the ad read both work. I would say I would prefer the host to endorse me
- 2:02:28than me endorse me because again, you have to think about who the audience trusts. Another kind of
- 2:02:33ad that I like to do with podcasts is feed swaps or like feed drops where I take a whole episode
- 2:02:40or even a part of an episode. But it's usually a whole episode because I know that there's alignment
- 2:02:44with their audience. And if I do a swap, I'll take one of my episodes. I'll take one of the other
- 2:02:50podcasts episodes. And I'll put I'll record a little bit of an intro. So like what this is. Hey,
- 2:02:55this is, you know, this is X podcast with this host. I speak about this. If you like this episode,
- 2:03:00go subscribe here. This is a sample episode. Hope you enjoy it. Literally, that's it. Append it to
- 2:03:05the front of their episode. Put it in mind. They do the same for and then you basically just give
- 2:03:10your whole audience a sample of the other person's podcast. And then if they like it, they can go
- 2:03:17download and subscribe. So I like doing that as well. I think that's a great way because they get a
- 2:03:21then you really get and you can use chartable to track conversions on that as well. And there's
- 2:03:26a couple other analytics tools that you can use to track conversions you don't have to. But I mean,
- 2:03:30it's helpful if you, if you have a, if, for example, if I have a million downloads a month and
- 2:03:37you have like 10,000, technically, I could still do a swap with you because I could even take it
- 2:03:43out after I hit 10,000 downloads, right? And it could still be valuable, right? So that's a,
- 2:03:49that's a, that's a, in my opinion, I like that way of advertising because when you do swaps,
- 2:03:54it could actually be like a free, it could be free exposure to another person's audience if you
- 2:03:58don't, you're not even paying for. Yeah, that's a good idea. I didn't, I'd never thought of the
- 2:04:02podcast swaps. Yeah. Trying to think that's pretty much that those are kind of like the main ways.
- 2:04:08And then you have all the traditional marketing, like you said, you're running paid ads on Facebook
- 2:04:11and Google. And it'll work. Organic matters. Or getting pros, but they have almost no outcomes
- 2:04:17when it comes to no, you know, going viral on like it doesn't really need to think about. Okay,
- 2:04:23so what? And you also want to just not, you just don't want to drive people who download an
- 2:04:27episode once because a lot of services who just focus on getting people to listen to one episode,
- 2:04:31and then they're like selling downloads and they'll basically optimize so that somebody who's a,
- 2:04:38like if it's like a hosting platform, somebody who uses this hosting platform, this app,
- 2:04:43they'll go in and they'll listen to your episode one episode. But then there's no real pathway
- 2:04:48for them to become a subscriber. So great. Now you boosted your downloads on this one particular
- 2:04:52episode. But if churn and of those people is like 99%, it's really not. Doesn't help you. Long
- 2:04:59doesn't help you. It's useless. So you want, you want people to subscribe. You want to bring people in.
- 2:05:05And if you can find a way to do that for cheap and optimize it and you can pay a couple bucks per
- 2:05:10subscriber, that's not bad. And you just want to keep driving that cost down. And you do that by
- 2:05:15testing different, again, this is business, not just podcast, test different creative, test different
- 2:05:20messaging, test different targeting, test different platforms, test, test, test, test, test,
- 2:05:24and then triple down on what works. Okay. And my last thing for this deep dive, which has been
- 2:05:30amazing, by the way. So thank you. I think we're good. I've got one more thing. And if you
- 2:05:35would start, I thought of one thing that we left. Go on. Yeah. Go. But I wasn't sure what you were
- 2:05:40going to go. I was booking. It was booking guests. Oh, yeah. We spoke briefly when I did the
- 2:05:47code email thing. So I thought I kind of touched on that. If you've got something to add on that,
- 2:05:52yeah, go ahead. So when I started booking, so booking guests is just another sales process at the
- 2:05:58end of the, like, it's just a sales pitch. So when you're starting out, there's something in sales.
- 2:06:06Well, there's a couple of things in sales. But when you're selling something to somebody,
- 2:06:09first of all, you're always solving a pain point. That's number one. That's just a general sales
- 2:06:14concept. And second of all, how do you make sure the sale closes quicker? And there's something
- 2:06:21called intent and sales. You mentioned this before, there's intent. So there's intent for the buyer
- 2:06:27to do something. I'll give you a non podcast example. If I have a cyber security breach,
- 2:06:32there is intent to upgrade our security software because I just had a breach. If somebody hits
- 2:06:38me up and they're like, Hey, you want a social media scheduling tool? And I already have five
- 2:06:43people scheduling my social media. Maybe, but I wasn't looking for it. So that's the difference.
- 2:06:49So how does that plan to podcast guest thing? So podcast guests, finding them and getting them to
- 2:06:55come on your show is really just closing a sale. So when I started the podcast and as you get bigger,
- 2:07:00it's much easier because they come to you. But when you start, obviously no one comes to you and
- 2:07:04you have to sort of sell yourself. So to sales process. So first, I look for intent because I know
- 2:07:09if there's intent to come on to a podcast by the guest, then that's going to speed up the sales
- 2:07:15cycle and increase the chances of them saying, yes, how do you find intent? The easiest way I found
- 2:07:21is to go on Amazon and you look for people in your niche that are releasing books and you rank it
- 2:07:27by popularity and by time to release and upcoming books. And then you go reach out to those people
- 2:07:32because they're already doing a PR tour and there's already intent to create some buzz around this
- 2:07:37new book that's coming out. So for business podcasts, literally go to Amazon, go to Up and Coming,
- 2:07:43best selling authors and all these different filters and rankings and then find like the top 10 people
- 2:07:48and then you can use like rocket reach or any male finder or any of the other tools to find their
- 2:07:53email addresses or their publisher's email addresses because I mean the bigger ones are going to be
- 2:07:57Harper Collins or Simon and Schuster or Penguin Random House. There's only so many people you
- 2:08:01have to reach out to. And then first of all, now you've established intent, so you know there's
- 2:08:06a book coming out. And then after that, you're going to solve the pain point. What's the pain point?
- 2:08:10The pain point is exposure. So I would have some sort of subject line that would create intrigue,
- 2:08:16highest, historically the highest subject lines that I've ever used. You can put other, you can
- 2:08:24put other guests in, it's not even bad. It's just funny yet how people respond to just certain
- 2:08:30copy, but you can put other big guests in your subject line if you like because that does help
- 2:08:36it sort of create some credibility. The best subject line that I've ever used and this is not my
- 2:08:43idea and I can't remember whose idea it is, but I tried it once after I watched a YouTube video
- 2:08:46and it worked very well and I just kept going with it was first name, last name, line and then
- 2:08:52cell phone number. Dude, I did the exact same. It worked so well. It's so good. Yeah, my
- 2:09:00little is first name dot, dot, dot, we need to chat line my number. Yeah, it works very well.
- 2:09:07So that'll get you like a 35 plus percent open rate. And
- 2:09:12I'm dead. And I'm like, is he going to say it? He's going to say it. Yeah, whatever.
- 2:09:21It's just so, I guess it's just so intriguing for people like who will kind of crazy fuck put
- 2:09:24certain cell phone number in the email subject line and they open it and then then you have to tell
- 2:09:29them like, okay, who you are? What reach are you going to give them? You know, who are they in
- 2:09:32the company of? Who are the other guests? What are the parameters of the recording? Like
- 2:09:38zoom, super low effort. We do, you get the final say on the on the edit, sort of reduce the
- 2:09:44chance of them saying something stupid. We create all these clips. We license them to you kind of
- 2:09:48like we just mentioned before we license it all the clips. You can use them for your social.
- 2:09:53So again, intent plus plus good copy, high open rate plus solving a pain point, which is really
- 2:09:58then getting publicity around their book plus reducing the friction of making it an offer that
- 2:10:02can't say no to this will get you guests. Like you don't have to over this whole framework.
- 2:10:07He's got me. Yeah, so it'll work. It'll work. It'll work. Got me Grand Cardone, Guy Kawasaki,
- 2:10:13Anthony Scaramucci in like the first 15 episodes, which is stupid because I was not ready for those
- 2:10:19interviews. I was so surprised, but it works. And after you get some big names and you can put
- 2:10:28those in your emails, I hate these guys have been on the show too. Yeah. Yeah, so good. That's a
- 2:10:33banger. So the final part of this is if you were to be starting again right now, day zero, no
- 2:10:40following your men with a with a market dream. Where are you focusing? Where are you focusing your
- 2:10:48energy in 2024? YouTube. It's very it's a very easy answer for me. I would have I would have
- 2:10:54spent more money quicker to up the production of the actual podcast and focus on YouTube.
- 2:11:00I would have done more in person on YouTube. I would have just gone to the I would have just
- 2:11:06just jumped right into the most extreme version of podcasting, which is in person in person production.
- 2:11:13Yeah. And if she didn't have I would have rented out studios and I wouldn't have bothered with the
- 2:11:18virtual. No, no, sorry. Should I just hang up through this all this? I would really. No, don't throw it
- 2:11:25away, but I would jump into it much quicker because I would have people like I mean, half the
- 2:11:34reason why we moved and I respect her opinion because she didn't want people. We had a condo and
- 2:11:38so we did Toronto. And I started the podcast virtual in Toronto, moved down to Fort Lauderdale. We
- 2:11:44had a condo in Fort Lauderdale. Gina didn't want people coming in the condo because there's
- 2:11:48like a small space compared to the home of Toronto. So like, okay, so let's move down to Miami. And I was
- 2:11:53trying to I was trying to look at places to rent to Miami and studios and there really wasn't much
- 2:11:57down here compared to like New York or even LA's wild LA has so many creative spaces. Now there's
- 2:12:02some, but half the reason why we moved down here and built it the studio is because like I'm all
- 2:12:08in on this and I wish I had done this and made these moves sooner. And it would have actually in
- 2:12:12for like I mean, we moved because I wanted to build a studio. So like it's informing like life
- 2:12:18decisions at this point because I want to take it seriously. I am taking seriously, it's a silly
- 2:12:24thing to say. It has been taken seriously for a minute. But yeah, I want to sort of take it to
- 2:12:28the next level and I want to have full control over it now. Not saying everybody has to move, change
- 2:12:33your life, build a studio, but I would jump into I would find a way to create a higher version of
- 2:12:41content and a content that has more of a moat around it than what the next guy or the next girl
- 2:12:46is doing immediately. And I think that YouTube is the most in person and the moats on YouTube.
- 2:12:55So what causes the YouTube moat is that just followers? It's organic reach. It's organic
- 2:13:01reach for something that has no organic reach. Are you focusing, you know, so how do you get more
- 2:13:09organic reach on YouTube? Are you focusing on thumbnail descriptions? What's important?
- 2:13:14It's all important, but the most important is I think the most important is being there,
- 2:13:22obviously. Good production, but it doesn't have to be overproduced. But being there,
- 2:13:29see yeah, my opinion is if you if you show up on YouTube and you prep, that creates good content
- 2:13:36and it will be found and discovered and you'll grow. I'm not a YouTube like I mean, I also
- 2:13:42leverage shorts. I turn every I use AI to take long form podcasts, put them into opus.pro and
- 2:13:48turn them into a whole bunch of short form reels and YouTube shorts and TikToks and Snapchat
- 2:13:53Spotlights and all that. But I think it's like focus on video first. That's that would be what I'd
- 2:14:00recommend. Cool. Yeah, that's that's where that's where my head's at and that's sort of what I
- 2:14:07I believe that that's the differentiator. I think that audio only you'll have some you'll have
- 2:14:12some people that will hit, but I think it's very hard. I think it's making something that doesn't
- 2:14:17it's already hard even harder. So that's why you asked me what I do. That's what I do.
- 2:14:23All right, thanks Scott. Any any closing statements before you wrap up?
- 2:14:26No, this is awesome. This is awesome. To turn this into a course.
- 2:14:31A little bit of bullshitting in between, but besides that, we can turn it into a course.
- 2:14:34Well, so yours, right? This is this is all your knowledge. So I'll give you the pace of content
- 2:14:40and get from it. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. Well, I just like I was like chatting about it. It's
- 2:14:46fun. I appreciate it. No, I have nothing else. If anybody has questions about podcasts. Yeah,
- 2:14:52we're going to send them in and we can do like a I was going to say we do part two, but I think we
- 2:14:55did a lot. We did a lot. They can find me. So the podcast is success stories. You go to successstorypodcast.com
- 2:15:02and then all the social is at Scott D. Clary. So it's super simple. Tom. All right. Thank you, Scott.
- 2:15:09Until next time. See you next time. Bye.