Podcast Wins: Celebrating Milestones and Moments to Keep You Energized Now?

Podcasting provides tremendous value across the board, and if you keep your passions, expect that you will be rewarded. In this episode, Tom Hazzard shares the podcasting wins that passionate podcasters have achieved. Some have built an audience of loyal and raving fans. Others have made legitimate business leads that have led to creating new customers. While others converted prospective clients into paying customers. Tom also shares the value of Podfest and the importance of using the right audio equipment to ensure consistent quality. Whatever wins you achieve, it only inspires you to work smarter and keep reaching for your podcasting goals.

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I’ve got a special guest I want to share with you. This is our new office pup, a new member of the Podetize family. Her name is Lucy. She’s a resident here in the office now. This is the February client call. We do this on the last Friday of every month. I want to share with you some podcast wins. A lot of you are newer podcasters. A lot of you have experienced doing other things, maybe radio shows in the past or things like that. It can be helpful to have an idea of what some podcasting wins are. From our experience, podcasting wins are different for everybody. Podcasting is a wonderful thing and tremendously valuable across the board. Everybody has a different way of measuring success and evaluating what a win is for them. I’ve got five or six examples I want to share with you. Some are very recent and some are have-been wins for a year or more but continue to be. One I wanted to mention right off the top is one of our relatively newer podcasters.

We have clients who are cohosts on a new show called Adventures In Health. Sean Entin and Taylor Smith are the hosts. Sean has quite a personal story of a near-death experience. He should not be alive now. He has come back from the edge. Their show launched on January 1. We found they were being featured on iTunes in the new and noteworthy section in their main category, which is alternative health. That’s what they talk about. It’s stories of other people that have had near-death experiences. It’s not just near-death experiences but also people who have come back from that to triumph in some way to have success. It’s a good show. If you haven’t listened to it, you may want to check it out. This is a big win for them because their show is getting a lot more exposure from iTunes, which is great. It’s also a big win for all of us. I want to explain why.

New And Noteworthy Sections Of iTunes

For almost two years, you see the new and noteworthy sections of iTunes most often when you go from your desktop or laptop iTunes app on a computer, not just your phone, and you’re searching through the different categories. Once you choose a category, it refreshes the page. Right at the top is this new and noteworthy section. For about two years, new and noteworthy in every category in iTunes had not changed at all. It was to the point where there are some companies out there who are marketing companies that are trying to sell paid marketing programs. I don’t know how they do it as I don’t think they should, but they guarantee that if you pay them a certain amount of money, you’ll get up in new and noteworthy. It is a big marketing campaign to build awareness and get people to watch your show. I’ve known that those promises were misleading and probably straight out fraudulent for those companies that do it because nothing was changing in new and noteworthy. The reason was that iTunes at Apple is a bit of a stepchild of a business unit because it was created out of necessity. It’s ironic because Apple gave birth to the iPod and the entire podcast community. Apple doesn’t make any money on it, other than some advertising. It’s very little. It used to support the selling of iPods. They don’t do that anymore. It’s only the iPhone now. They sell a lot of those.

There were a lot of employees that were required at iTunes and very little direct return on that overhead expense for Apple. We had heard that Apple had let go of every employee, except for five, that was dedicated to iTunes. They only had five employees in its entire massive company, one of the biggest and most profitable companies on earth. There are only five people dedicated to iTunes. That sounded about right once we heard that. Even when we launched a new show at that time, it was taking about seven days for a new show launched on iTunes to get approved. It also made sense to us why new and noteworthy hadn’t changed in so long. We have a couple of clients who have had been in that new and noteworthy section in their category for almost two years and they had no idea why. They were publishing one show a week and didn’t have a dramatic number of downloads. It’s a good amount and a good show, no question, but not huge downloads. Why would they be in new and noteworthy? They were neither new nor particularly noteworthy in terms of being dramatically achieving more downloads than other shows or having a bigger audience than other shows. I think it’s because new and noteworthy at the time was not driven by an algorithm. It was staff picks of new shows they thought were worthy of recognition and would put them in there.

That’s very different from how it used to be even a few years ago. It was algorithmically driven for the most part. That had changed. It was clearly staff picks. When there was no more dedicated staff responsible for it, as you can imagine, these people have too much to do, they weren’t going to pay attention to new and noteworthy. Now, we’ve seen direct evidence. We see new and noteworthy in every category on iTunes changing daily. That indicates it’s either being driven by a new algorithm shift that is automated and somehow is determining new shows that are achieving a certain level of audience and they’re giving them a little exposure, or they’ve got staff who are responsible now to do it again. Either way, it doesn’t matter to me. It’s all great. This is great for every show. It’s an opportunity for more exposure and it freshens up iTunes a bit. That’s a big win. Congratulations to Adventures In Health, Sean Entin and Taylor Smith.

The New Trust Economy

A big win that’s pretty close to us here in the office is that Tracy launched a podcast, the first one I have not done with her. We’ve been cohosts on many of our podcasts together. She launched one called The New Trust Economy in mid-ish January. This is a podcast that talks about all things blockchain and a little bit cryptocurrency. It’s more blockchain, tokenization and things like that. If you’re interested in that subject at all, I would recommend you give it a listen. That podcast is a good example that you don’t need massive downloads to achieve a win. They’ve had reasonable downloads, a couple thousand in the first few weeks, not setting the world on fire in terms of downloads. It’s not about how many downloads you have. You can have a small audience. If you have a very focused audience of raving fans, that’s better than having a huge audience of people that maybe are casually listening. The New Trust Economy debuted in January. They’ve had several, good big guests on there.

Because of Tracy’s exposure on there and somebody she interviewed on The New Trust Economy, Tracy was asked to be on a panel of people discussing blockchain on Larry King’s show. She was interviewed by Larry King on his program, which is an internet-based interview-style program, very much like Larry King Live used to be on CNN. It’s on RT.com. We’ll push that out and make sure if anybody wants to watch that they can. It’s on RT.com and also on a lot of the streaming services like Roku and some of those things that stream video to the TV through those internet devices or portals. That’s another big example of a big win. This podcast is not incredibly established yet, but it’s because of the networking of Tracy being a cohost on that show. She has an interesting format. She has a cohost. Her name is Monika Proffitt. She’s in New York. Tracy’s here in California. They do some episodes together, discussing subjects as cohosts. They each interview people separately. Monika will interview guests alone sometimes. Tracy will interview guests alone sometimes. They come together and do shows together. They talk about each of the interviews they had independently. It’s an interesting format. Because of an interview Tracy had, she got this opportunity. She was invited to be on a panel with Larry King. That’s a big win.

Everybody has a different way of measuring success and evaluating what a win is for them. Click To Tweet

The other big one that Tracy has gotten through podcasting was her Inc. column. She got sought out from the very first podcast we did. She got a speaking opportunity on stage. The editor at Inc. magazine happened to be in the audience. He saw her speak there and asked her if she wanted to write a column for Inc.com. She’s been doing that ever since. That Inc. column has continued to lead to more wins for her. She was invited and paid to go speak on stage of Amazon sellers in Hong Kong. They paid to fly her over there and put her up. She got to speak in front of all these Amazon sellers who were at this conference over there. It’s another example of a different win that podcasting led to.

Expect Miracles

Next, I want to highlight Dr. Kevin Pecca who has a podcast called Expect Miracles. He is a chiropractor in a very specialized field of chiropractic called the Blair Upper Cervical Technique. If you’re interested to know more about that, I recommend tuning in to Expect Miracles. Listen to that a little bit and check it out. Through a different doctor out here in Southern California, I’m a Blair Chiropractic patient. It’s fabulous stuff. Kevin’s win is that every month, he gets several and up to a half a dozen new patients from his podcast. Because a lot of people are skeptical of chiropractic and don’t usually know much about the Blair Upper Cervical Technique and what that means for your entire body health, he knew patients often come to him with a certain amount of skepticism and doubt.

Business Leaders Podcast

He uses the podcast to his advantage this way. He says to these prospective patients, “I respect you’re being cautious and you’re not so sure. Why don’t you go listen to a couple of episodes of the podcast?” If he has one in mind because of what ails them, he’ll say, “Go listen to this episode and this episode of the podcast.” Once they do, they almost always sign up with him. That’s how he’s using his podcast as a big win for him. It has continued. He’s been doing that for more than a year. In his first 90 days of launching his show, he got a dozen new patients. The win for him is longevity. He continues to interview great people and put out great episodes. It continues to help lead-generate for his practice. The next two are the last two that I want to talk about. There is quite a contrast between the two of them. One of them is Bob Roark who has a podcast called Business Leaders Podcast. Bob is a successful financial manager. He manages the money of usually the high net-worth individuals that have sold a business and want to grow that money. We’ve read a lot of people in financial industries like that. They stay far away from podcasting.

Bob Roark of Business Leaders Podcast does not care how many people listen to his podcast. It’s syndicated everywhere. It’s on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart and everywhere that we put podcasters. His entire goal is to lead-generate for his business. He’s professionally managing the money of high net-worth individuals. In order to stay away from FINRA regulations and having to have everything approved, he doesn’t talk about managing people’s money. His entire podcast is focused on that guest. There is always some successful business leader, somebody big in business. He reaches out to them and tells their story. He asks them questions about their story. It’s everything from biographical, “Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? How did you get started?” and their philosophy on life and how they made it successful in business. It’s nothing about investing or managing their money. He doesn’t have to worry about FINRA. His entire podcast is a VIP guest strategy. This is different from about every other podcaster we produce the show for. Most of them upload the raw audio to us. We produce it. We get the audio ready. We convert it to a blog post, do all the graphics and all the things like the SEO work we do. We put it out and schedule to publish on a certain day.

He doesn’t work quite that way. He has us do all that work and let him know, “It’s done in the draft.” He lets that guest review it to make sure that they’re happy with it. If there are any changes that they want, he gives us feedback and we make the changes. He indicates, “You can publish it.” He publishes on random days. It’s all about the VIP guest strategy. It works for him. It works so much that he’s been doing it for several years and he’s committed for more. We have a very special package we’ve done for people that are committed to doing this long-term. They want a bigger discount. This is not sales in any way, but my point is this worked so well for him. He bought an unlimited package for two years, which is not even something we advertise. It’s something we have offered to those individuals that would make sense for. If you’re doing anywhere between three and five episodes a week, it probably makes sense for you to do that. A win is about lead generation for his business. When he lands that type of client that are the profile of his guests, it’s about $200,000 of revenue to his business for a year usually. The time he’s spending on doing the episodes and the money he’s spending on producing it is well worth it. That’s a different win. I thought it’s good to highlight something different.

We Close Notes

I want to contrast that with another longtime podcaster with us, Scott Carson. His win is he tipped over 250,000 downloads on his podcast in February. Scott is all about major exposure, being everywhere and making that content available in multiple different mediums. He records it as a video. It gets put out on YouTube. In his case, it’s Vimeo. It gets put out there. That way, it gets converted to the podcast, to the blog posts and all the graphics. He records his live over Facebook as well and then posts it to the video. We take the audio track and do the podcast and all that. His business is being driven by marketing. His major marketing method is his podcasting. Binge Network is a new one that Scott has started. That’s also available on the Roku downloads and things like that. He’s putting out his content in multiple different mediums to try to be everywhere and capture as many people as possible. Scott has, just from podcast listeners, gotten several hundred thousand dollars of investment.

Scott’s podcast is about distressed real estate note investing. He invests other people’s money into distress real estate notes. They get quite a good return. It’s a great niche of real estate investing. He has had many hundreds of thousands of dollars. People have called him up to invest that money with him from listening to him on the podcast. That’s a little different win. The volume of 250,000 downloads is in about eighteen or nineteen months since he started his show. Not everybody is interested in downloads. Bob Roark doesn’t care if one, two or three people listen to his show. It’s all about the guest VIP strategy building that rapport and lead-generating for business through them. It’s an ego strategy. Highlight the client. Talk about what’s great about them. You build that relationship. Scott is all about the volume and the downloads being everywhere, exposing his business and getting lead-generating because of that. That’s it for the examples of podcast wins I wanted to talk about.

PDZ 27 | Podcasting Wins

Podcasting Wins: Having a very focused audience of raving fans is better than having a huge audience of people that are just casually listening.

 

Podfest

There are a couple of things I do want to mention. I don’t know if any of you are in Florida. I know Tim Bush is. Alexandra and I are going to be in Orlando. We are exhibiting, showing at Podfest. I’m also speaking at Podfest. I’m speaking on stage with Scott Carson for part of it. I have a little stage appearance myself. Podfest is a wonderful conference. In 2018, I attended a whole lot of different podcast conferences to try them all out and experience them. Of all of them, I thought Podfest was the most fun and the most valuable as a podcaster and also as a podcast business owner. It’s a very cooperative environment. It has a lot of great networking between different podcasters and also sharing best practices and opportunities. Scott Carson did an episode of his show interviewing Chris Krimitsos who is one of the cofounders of Podfest.

Podfest not only is a great time and a lot of fun but I always learn something new. Everybody gets a lot out of it. Compared to some of the other podcasting events, which are either a little more corporate or a little more self-serving and trying to sell you something, Podfest in and of themselves are not trying to sell you anything. Their ticket price is $300 if you pay full price or under something like that. They’re not trying to upsell you on anything while you’re there. It’s more cooperative, shared learning, shared experience and a great time. There are vendors like us who are going to be there to introduce ourselves to people that don’t know us. We’re doing a big push. We’re a gold sponsor. Every badge at the show is going to say Podetize right on the top of it. We’re doing a big push this year trying to build that brand awareness and get more customers hosting on our platform.

Q & A

I would like to open the floor to anybody that has any questions or comments. This is a great opportunity for you to ask questions of me. Usually, Tracy would be with us. She is at another event up in Los Angeles called the City Summit. She’s speaking from the stage, although she was pretty sick and lost her voice. That’s why she couldn’t be here. Podcast Wins was her little idea. That was a lot of fun. Tim said he’s going to Podfest. That’s cool. That’s easy for Tim because he lives in Orlando. Tim has a great show. It’s called On The Shelf. If you’re interested in ever selling any physical product at retail or learning about that, he’s got a great show you should go listen to. Art is asking a question about server speed, “Does anybody else have a problem with slow uploads of episodes?” Do you mean about your specific podcasts being served, or are you talking about something else?

When I go to upload my episodes or information into the dashboard, it’s slow. I’ve got a fast internet connection and a lot of bandwidth and all that, but it’s slow.

Are you uploading your raw audio to Dropbox through our portal, through the window? 

Yes.

Is that the process that is slow? 

iTunes at Apple is a bit of a stepchild of a business unit because it was created out of necessity. Click To Tweet

When I finish it, after I uploaded and submit it, it’s slow.

There are a lot of processes going on there at once. It does depend on how many people are on the system at the same time. I’ve experienced some of that myself. Tim Bush said he’s had it happened but not that often. A major initiative for 2019, we are completely overhauling the entire backend system and, more importantly, separating the front end sales side of our site from the backend podcasts serving part of our site. It’s all about speed and efficiency. On the dashboard on the backend of the site, it loads slowly. Part of that is overhead because while it’s heavily customized and hacked, it is using WordPress as a backbone. We need to get away from that because every little page you load has to load WordPress, which is overhead. That’s part of why. I apologize for that.

We are on the fastest server where we are right now that we can be on, but there are many other things structurally and systematically that we know we can and are implementing, especially as we’re pushing to get a lot more people on the platform hosting, although hosting is one matter because you’re uploading episode requests. That’s a different process. I understand. I’ve heard that. I always look into trying and making it faster. I apologize for any latency you have there. I do appreciate your patience. You will see it improve as we go on here. We’re also making some improvements to the front end of the site, like when people need to replenish their episode package. Right now, our shopping cart, you have to click through three steps to be able to purchase something. There’s no reason for that. We’re streamlining that so you’d have one step. Certain things, we’re always trying to improve it and reduce the number of pages loaded for each individual, which should speed it up for everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you for your question. Tim has a couple of questions on equipment. What’s your question about equipment?

Mine is rudimentary. I still record on my portable recorder that you and I talked about, the Zoom 5. It does okay, but I’m looking to get a new mic. It’s not one that plugs directly into my computer. It needs to plug into some amplifier. I’m looking for suggestions. I don’t want to spend $1 million. My portable is still good when I go to trade shows and whatnot, but I’d like something more permanent.

What are you trying to achieve?

PDZ 27 | Podcasting Wins

Podcasting Wins: Highlighting the client and talking about what’s great about them is an ego strategy.

 

It’s you not calling me back saying my audio got a problem.

What software are you using to record? Are you using the Zoom device?

I record on Zoom 5. I was able to get a cover for it so we didn’t have as much popping. It records in waves. It’s a pretty good recording. I’ve had no issues with it, but it’s sitting on my desk. It’s rickety.

Do you have a microphone plugged into it?

No. I’m using the mic on it. It’s got the bi-directional mic on it.

Does it have XLR ports?

It does.

Podfest not only is a great time and a lot of fun but everybody gets a lot out of it. Click To Tweet

Your quality would increase dramatically by getting a mic unlike this, which has the XLR port on it. It also has USB if you wanted to go directly in your computer ever. The little mic is built-in to the Zoom recorder. I don’t think it’s going to give you quite as good a sound like another. These mics are about $80 on Amazon. This is the commercial model. It’s an ATR 2005. There’s also an ATR 2100 as the more retail version. I liked the commercial one, 2005. This is the one we send people when they start their show with us. We send them a mic.

I wouldn’t have to get a booster. Could I just plug that mic into my Zoom 5?

That’s correct. I believe your Zoom 5 has an XLR port on it. I provide these to our customers. We buy them a little cheaper. That will take the other end of this plug from that mic right into there. I would start there. That Zoom 5 is a great device if you’re happy recording on that. If I sent you the mic, if it’d be any cheaper for you. It’s probably about the same by the time we ship it to you. You might as well go prime.

You don’t need to bring it to me. I’ll pick it up from you.

I could bring you on when we come out. That’s probably what I would do. We’ve been developing our own microphone. We do provide people with the Zoom H6 sometimes, an upgraded equipment package if they are always going to record people in person. The Zoom H6 has four of those XLR ports that go in. The great thing about that device is it records a separate audio track for each mic that goes into it. If you do a lot of in-person recording, we have an upgraded recording equipment package people can buy. It’s overkill for most people. I’ve sold six or seven of them total, not a ton, but it’s very good, high-quality recording equipment. It’s great equipment, but it’s a lot to deal with. Tracy took a Zoom H6 to a conference and recorded a lot of people there live. There are two microphones and two cables to that device. I’ve got to make sure all the buttons are pushed, you’re recording everybody properly and make sure it’s on. You can’t hold it. You’ve got to put it down on the floor. She was frustrated. She was like, “I’m not doing this ever again at another trade show.” There’s too much tech to deal with. Because of dealing with all of that, she had one interview with Gary Vaynerchuk that didn’t get recorded. It’s horrible. That was where she had an interview with Steve Wozniak, Molly Bloom and some other people. It was great. She got all those. That one with Gary Vee got lost. It’s because that equipment was so complicated.

We’re developing a microphone that not only has a mic flag built into it. We send these to all of our customers. Everybody should have gotten one. It has a mic flag built in to the mic, but more importantly, it records to an SD card right in the mic. If you are out at a trade show and you want to record an episode, you don’t need to have other pieces of equipment. There are no cables. It’s battery operated and records right to the SD card. We’re also doing it so that if you plug it into your computer to use over Zoom. Zoom records. Zencastr and certain other programs do that. We’ve also seen that they have glitches at times. Either the audio is out of sync or some of the audio doesn’t record well. At a minimum, it’s a backup recording. It’s also recording wave format. It’s higher quality than the files Zoom natively records. If you plug it into your computer, it’s going to record your guest on one track that’s coming from the computer into the mic. It’s going to record you into the mic onto that SD card as a second track. The second step to that is another mic. If you’re at a trade show and you want to give a mic to your guest and a mic to you, you’ll plug the guest’s mic into this mic. It will record their track here on that second track on the SD card.

We were trying to simplify the equipment, especially for people recording in person or wanting a backup recording, people that travel a lot. It’s going to be $199 for that recording mic. I went and found the same manufacturer over in Asia that makes this ATR audio technique on mics that have been so good. They came to the US and I met with them. This has been a project going on in the background. It’s going to be fantastic. We’re very excited about that. If you have that equipment, we’ll bring you a better mic and start there. We’ll try your audio. It’s probably going to be a lot better. It gives it a little better action on mics that’s built-in. Thank you. I’ll see you out in Orlando. Does anybody else have a question or anything they would like to share with the group or discuss? Does anybody else have a different win?

PDZ 27 | Podcasting Wins

Podcasting Wins: If you’re going to be podcasting a lot, you might want to get a decent microphone.

 

I’m going to be a guest on a podcast. I don’t have any tech other than my computer, microphone, etc. Have you listened to my voice through my computer and see how you thought it was? I have a little lapel microphone. I know I can practice with some people, I don’t know if I want to have the full-on look with the headphones microphone. How do you think the sound is?

It’s not the best quality sound over the computer. This session is being recorded. Fast forward ahead to this point in it and listen to it yourself. Try the lapel mic. See how that is. Your headphones might be okay, probably better than the open-air mic. If the room you’re in has a lot of hard surfaces, if there’s no carpeting on the floor and it’s got windows where there’s no drapes on it or anything, if you can be in a room that has more soft surfaces, it will cut down a lot of that.

It’s a loft office.

Your equipment can help that. If you’re going to do this a lot, you might want to get a decent microphone. It’s on Amazon for about $80 prime if you’re a prime customer and no shipping. It plugs in with the USB directly to your laptop. I know you don’t like the big over-ear headset and that’s fine. I like the way it sounds better. I do this a lot so I use it. You need to at least use earbuds to listen to whoever’s interviewing you. Plug it into your computer. You don’t have to use that mic in the earbuds. You can use this mic or the lapel mic if that sound quality is better if it plugs into your computer. The quality issue is you are listening to me coming out over your computer’s speaker in the air. Your microphone will pick up my voice coming over your mic and make a bit of an echo. What the earbuds do is separate what you hear from what the mic hears. Tracy never used to do it. She didn’t like it, but she found the quality also to be so much better that she wears earbuds with every interview she does. If you’re going to do a lot, get a good mic. They’re not too expensive.

Maybe I’ll get rid of the Golden Gate Bridge. I’m not sure.

They probably want to see more of you. It’s interesting. It’s almost like you’re on a green screen.

It’s supposed to be on a green screen. I was playing around. If I was on a green screen, you wouldn’t see it.

If anybody is interested or can get to Podfest, that’s going to be a great time. Corey is saying he wants to thank you for all your hard work. Thank you, Corey, for being a customer. Alexandra would speak to you but she lost her voice. I’m very excited about your show. It’s launched. It’s The Successful Thinker, which is a modern business lesson Napoleon-Hill-inspired type of thing. If any of you are interested in that, you might want to check that out on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts because it’s everywhere. We put it everywhere. We’ll be excited to see what your wins are going forward, Corey. We did talk about all different podcasts wins, what they are to different people and how different podcasters measure success. That’s going to be a wrap for the February edition of the Podetize Brandcasting client coaching call. I’m going to Traffic & Conversion, which is a great digital marketing show. I’ll probably have some great things to share with you next time about that, some new tech tips, tools and things like that. We’re always looking out for you and making sure we stay on top of it all here. There’s a reason you might want to come back. Thanks very much.

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