Having strategies, tactics, and timelines in place are important when you start your podcast business. And when you’ve done it long enough, these naturally become part of your foundation. But what if there are events that ask you to move around your foundation? A movement or a cause that just hits a certain time in your timeline, disrupting your entire tactic? Should you change? In this episode, Tom Hazzard and Tracy Hazzard dive deep into what you need to consider when faced with such situations. How do you show up in the world? How do you strike that balance between keeping your foundation while still supporting a cause? Tune in to gain valuable insights into moving with the times and making your message heard!
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Watch the episode here
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Should You Change Your Podcast Tactic And Timeline To Support A Cause?
We got an interesting topic in this episode. It’s thought-provoking. It borderlines on controversy or avoiding controversy potentially. There is a lot to unpack here.
First things first. We are not making any political or social commentary. That is not who we are. It’s not what we’re about here. What we do want to say though is that there are considerations and things going on in the world. We’re having issues that you all are having to deal with in saying, “Do I post now? Do I not post now? What do I do?” We want to address that from a strategic and business standpoint.
One of the strategies is to take a look at this from a strategic fundamental of who you are and how you show up in the world. I’m going to start with that from us and why we’re bringing this to you, but why we haven’t changed our overall strategy to what we are doing. We had a masterclass and we kept with it. We didn’t block it. We didn’t stop it. We didn’t do anything like that.
We considered and talked about it. It’s like, “This is what they’re calling Black Tuesday and support for Black Lives Matter.” We’re very supportive of that in principle but the reality is, are we going to change and not publish our masterclass, which we had sent emails out about for weeks to our list that we are going to do this on this day? Do we change the schedule? Do we change what we’re doing or do we continue on? Even if we’re going to do it, do we need to make a live stream post ahead of time explaining why we’re going to continue to do it? There were lots of things we considered.
Many of you have been pondering it as you’re trying to decide, “Should I address COVID? Shouldn’t I address COVID? Should I start a new show with it? Should I do a new series?” We want to take a look at this from a strategic standpoint. What is this doing for you? What is it doing for your business? Because that’s how we show up in the world, are you also technically making sure that you don’t make technical mistakes that hurt you later? We don’t want to make the mistakes that cause harm to us when we’re trying to do good in the world. We don’t want to have those two things happen.
That’s how we’re going to address it. We’re going to walk you through a little bit of our thinking in the process so that you have a sense of how to process this for yourself. We clearly know who we are to our audience, whether it’s on our show, our coaching clients or all of you here, our done-for-your clients. We know our job and our role within that. It’s our mission. Our mission is to be obsessively focused on you as a podcast host and making sure that you’re getting the most from your content and value returns, rewards, monetization or whatever that is. That is our job to show up for that.
On the side of that, our impact on the world is to make sure that all of your voices get heard. When we talk about Black voices, Latinx voices or whatever that is, our job is to make sure that you know how to get your voice out there. That’s how we show up in the world. We don’t show up by not voicing. We show up by supporting voicing. Taking a look at and saying, “Going black and going silent,” I understand the powerful message to that, but it’s also against what we stand for here. Not the message of supporting Black Lives Matter, not supporting Black voices. That’s not what we’re against here. We’re for supporting that.
Our masterclass was on advanced referrals, how to get referrals for your business, and how to keep your business growing. That’s also in making sure that your voices are heard and get out there so that you are seen, heard and found. That’s fundamental to who we are. For us not to show up to make sure that we do that consistently and constantly was a consideration for us. It weighed heavily on us. I have to be frank about this that I grew up in South Africa at the height of apartheid in 1978 and 1979. I was a child there.
It was like growing up in the ‘60s and I saw violence, anger and bombings. At some point, my parents had to send us out of the country to live with our grandparents for four months before they could come home from the assignment and job that my dad was on because it was so violent in the cities and we were close enough. Looking at that, I understand it at a fundamental core level of both the need for it, the power of it, and the necessity to shifting change.
From that, I want to support things. I get the powerful getting your message out there but I also know my role. That’s the strategy piece that we’re looking for. What’s your role? What’s your support factor? What’s your audience and what do they need the most from you? If it is taking a stand and making a powerful message, then go do that. If it is showing up, doing the hard work and giving them tools, then show up and do that. Wherever you can give them something of value, then give them that because that’s going to shift, make a bigger impact, and make bigger movements.
That’s our fundamental core thing that I want you to think about from a strategic standpoint, “Does this matter for my audience in terms of me taking the stand? Does it also matter at the soul to me?” That was the second part of what I was bringing up there. Sometimes our business choices and our personal choices have to be two different things. We have to take a stand because we feel very strongly about it.
Social media has complicated these issues so much. Facebook was my personal social media platform and LinkedIn was my business. I didn’t mix the two but over the years and being in business, those lines got blurred many years ago. I came to the realization that I cannot refuse to connect with people I’m in business with on Facebook.
In some ways, I have people from my personal life back from high school and even grade school that I’m connected with on Facebook that I communicate with differently than I do with people in business. That’s a consideration too for each of you individually and personally. Is your social media mixed between business and personal or can it be strictly one or the other? That plays into it also.
When you are talking about that, you can make a personal stand. People change their profile photos and things like that. Those are powerful personal stands and you can do that. If your job is to show up, provide content, and do the things that you do, that consistency and constancy are important to the audience. What we know is that when we show up week after week, we are making sure that all of you are supported when you’re sitting back worrying about this question.
Hopefully, it’s obvious or clear to all of you that Podetize is a safe space for free speech. Podcasting is a wonderful medium where you can publish everything or anything you want. The FCC is not going to care or pay attention. There is no regulatory body that is going to restrict what you want to say on your show.
It’s the content of what you want to say. They can restrict it if you don’t comply with the rating rules, but other than that.
Putting profanity in the title of your show, they won’t let you do it. That’s more of a platform issue like Apple and people like that, but the content or what you say in each episode, you are free to say anything you want. I fundamentally believe in that right whether I like what you post or not or disagree with it. I completely believe you can publish anything you want. Podetize is a very safe space for publishing your content.
That doesn’t mean though that these directories out there are. Keep that in mind. It’s like Twitter. There was an interesting post on Twitter. Someone went in and created an account that mimicked exactly what the President tweets. It was exactly the same tweet. It wasn’t a retweet. They would copy and paste the exact same thing into their profile and see if they got shut down and they did. Every week they’re doing new ones and they’re seeing what happens, within how long it takes them to get reinstated and everything. So far, everything that they’ve retweeted got blocked and they got delisted.
Every single time, it has happened so far. Keeping in mind, we’re ordinary people. Twitter has a statement about presidents and heads of state qualify under a different type of category. We don’t here. All of us as podcast hosts do not. The platform itself or the directory itself that is distributing your message out to the world have a right to shut you down if they get complaints. They will shut you down and ask questions later.
That’s if they believe you’re not in compliance with whatever their rules or guidelines are.
We can’t do anything about that on your behalf.
We can advocate for you. We can communicate with them on your behalf if we think that they’ve erred in their decision based on their policies.
A lot of times that does happen because they take you down and ask questions later. Some of them don’t even ask questions later. Facebook is difficult with that. iTunes or Apple is very easy to re-submit and fix whatever is wrong. Usually, they’re good about that. Keep in mind that we don’t control that here in Podetize. Your voice is still out there. Your audio file is still there. It exists. It’s going out on your website. It’s going out to everywhere that you listed, but if iTunes or Apple Podcast decides to block you, you are blocked. You are not reaching out there. A platform has that decision.
We do not here. Keep in mind that those things are a part of the strategy. Speaking of tactical and technical things, that’s why I was bringing up the Twitter thing. I wanted to make sure that you guys understand that sometimes there are technical consequences, and that’s our job here to show up and remind you of what they are so that you’re making an informed choice. It isn’t just a choice of, “Do I want to support the movement by doing this?”
You might be causing detrimental damage to your overall marketing plan, mission and message that you’ve been working on for so long by making choices like that. There are two things. Tom, first, I want you to talk to me about the article that you read about what happens when we put all black squares into Instagram feeds and other things. This goes to a fundamental understanding of the hashtagging importance.
This is not about your podcast, SEO or your visibility in the charts on Apple or anything like that. This is about social media. There was an article that came out because an awful lot of people had been changing their profile pictures to be black, and then with #BlackLivesMatter and other related hashtags. The article was not taking a political stance or was not trying to promote any ideology or agenda.
What it was raising was the awareness about the reality of the computer algorithms that are in control of what we all feed in our feeds on our different social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, etc. What they’re saying is that by so many people putting black images as their profile picture and hashtagging Black Lives Matter, it did an unintentional significant disservice to the movement because there are people that monitor Black Lives Matter in their feeds all the time or in Twitter.
Make sure you show up consistently so your voices can be heard. Click To TweetThis is a journalistic technique when you’re trying to monitor a topic, especially if it’s your beat. I would do that occasionally if I was writing about innovation or something like that. I would use the hashtag technical innovation, technology innovation, AI innovation or other things like that. I would use that hashtag to find information quickly. What happens is when you’re hashtagging Black Lives Matter in this particular case or you’re hashtagging COVID-19 and all you get is black, you don’t get any information to utilize. The people who are putting out legitimate information about what’s going on in a particular city are being buried under the inundation of the black images. It’s hard to find information.
It was clogging up the hashtag and all the feeds and information. We understand a lot of empathy and support for the cause on that day, but it hurt the actual dissemination of information to those that use those hashtags in the way that most people do to monitor that type of information. It had a negative impact.
To use COVID-19 as an example, what has happened is there are so many people who post #COVID-19 because they want to tap into the trend of it. They’re being opportunistic about it. Their episode isn’t all about that in a podcaster sense. There are no health experts. There is no real opinion. It’s just that we’re talking about it. You put #COVID-19 at the bottom of it, what happens is that Google has had to shift their algorithm. They’ve had to degrade anyone who uses the COVID-19 unless they come from a legitimate medical source, government agency or something like that.
It’s not even serving you from a technical standpoint because an inundation and misuse of a hashtag for those purposes don’t do you any good. You think you’re tapping into a trend and the reality is your voice isn’t being heard anyway. Think about how you’re doing it. Use it when it’s legitimately important for a searching capability. You’re doing your business and listeners a service to find it because otherwise, you’re buried anyway.
Let’s talk about a choice that a lot of podcasters have been faced with or considering and that is, “Do I pause publishing new podcasts because of unique circumstances around COVID-19 and the stay-at-home orders and people being out of work? Do I publish more episodes? Do I address and podcast on more topics specifically related to COVID-19?” We’ve heard a lot of those questions.
You may consider the same thing under a Black Lives Matter model as to how you want to address it. It depends on your show and what you’re doing. We want to be supportive of you and how you do that. There are a couple of podcasters out there whose shows are not about that subject. The two hosts of White Tiger, one is a former White police officer and a Black former NFL player. They work together. Their synergy together to working through what happens after you leave the industry that you’ve worked in for so long, that you are passionate about and love, and their support of each other. What power could they have, even though it’s not what their show is about. Their show is about sports, commentary about that and transition.
They may make the choice that’s right for them but they may say, “I want to shift and talk about this.” It’s perfectly relevant for them because of their backgrounds, history and how they are together. It’s a great idea for making that shift. If we were all of a sudden shift to talk about healthcare when our show is about how to podcast, is that the right thing for us to be doing, even if we care passionately about it and what we do?
Podcast Tactic: That’s how we show up in the world, ensuring that we don’t make technical mistakes that later hurt you. We don’t want to make the mistakes that cause harm to us when we’re trying to do good in the world.
Only to the extent that we’re talking about it right now. We’ve got a lot of podcasters wondering about should they publish relevant to COVID-19 more or less or otherwise.
That’s where I say, “Shift your language.” Don’t shift your show, shift your languaging. Being sensitive to this but also remember that bingeability happens. The other side of that though is when you’re looking at shifting your language and not shifting your entire show, it becomes a regularly occurring thing. That’s great but it has to be evergreen at the end of the day because one day we won’t be in mid-COVID. I don’t want my shows to not be bingeable anymore or to not be something of value in the future.
When we use that language, we will say, “COVID-19 or the trend for more people to work from home, which is going to continue.” We’re referencing the event but we’re using it off as a jumping-off point. We used to do this a lot on our 3D Print show. Unfortunately, things would happen like we would have shootings and 3D printing guns.
There were things in the news about the ATF classifying 3D printed weapons or banning them or things like that. There were very touchy subjects.
They were also timely subjects. We wanted to address them but we needed to put it in a context of how you look at that because what happens the next time something gets confiscated or they changed the law and it completely reverses everything.
It was the bump stock. It was a big one because there were a lot of 3D printed bump stocks after you could no longer buy them and they were banned. They ended up banning them, even if you print them yourself. It was a touchy stuff to talk about because we were trying very hard not to make a political statement or take a political stance but talk about the impact on the industry.
Here is the case of what happened. My sister was at Route 91. She managed to escape with her life. She was very stressed and traumatized. It was awful. My family is from Newtown, Connecticut. Guns were a sensitive subject matter for me. Our brother-in-law owns guns and he is in Colorado. He is a hunter. All around, we were torn over the subject as well, but to not address it on our show because it was a political hotspot wasn’t good for our show. We decided to address it but we decided to address it in a way that was authentic to Tom and Tracy that pointed out the sensitivity of our viewpoint on it and the transitioning of our viewpoint on it over time because of the events that had occurred.
Our business and personal choices have to be two different things. Click To TweetWe did that and here is what is interesting that happened. Our listeners responded well. We never had any nasty comments about it. There would be the occasional people who would point out where you could find the 3D print gun libraries. It’s not my favorite thing but they have a right to post that. We weren’t going to argue with that. One time we were working with this agency and they posted something. It wasn’t clickbaity but it had something about guns in it. Our listeners noticed and they started tweeting and messaging us wherever it was posted across social media saying, “I think you got hacked because this would not be you.”
They knew our voice. They knew what we would tend to post or not. It wasn’t in alignment with that and they were right. We appreciate it and we took it down.
We fired the agency. That’s what we did because they didn’t get it and our audience did. This is where you showing up and being authentic to who you are, to your messaging and do what you do when you don’t then do something that they want you to do. That’s also important. They’re going to reach out and touch you. If you have an ability to soothe people, to help them through transition periods, and you don’t go and address maybe the stress going on during COVID-19 or the loneliness and it is in your subject matter, then they’re going to notice that too. Please make sure that you’re thinking carefully and strategically about your show at all times. If it needs to shift, it needs to shift.
Fundamentally, now that we’ve got a couple of months behind us of people working from home more, being forced to and all that, we have seen a trend of listenership going up overall with few exceptions but in general, listenership is up. It seems that people have been longing for more human connections. It’s been a good time to reach people. We’ve had opinions like, “We’re not going to stop our publication schedule. Why would we stop? We’re going to continue.” If anything, we published more during this time.
I’m going to give you an example of another customer. Jesse Cole is the owner of a Minor League baseball team in Savannah, Georgia called The Savannah Bananas. He is a great guy but his podcast is about business. There is another podcast more specifically about the baseball team. His business was negatively impacted. Nobody in the stands, no baseball season and no revenue.
That’s the innovation that he brought. He’s made going to Minor League baseball games exciting and fun again. People wanted to fill the stands.
He has a very good business. It’s been harmed by no sports, no gatherings of more than ten people and all that. He recorded a series of podcasts, five of them, specifically related to business, how it’s impacted by COVID-19, and put out one per day in this special bonus series of episodes for a week. He felt it was the right thing to do for him and his business and for his mission with his podcast.
Podcast Tactic: You can make a personal stand, but if your job is to show up and provide content, consistency and constancy are really important to audiences.
Listeners want to hear that. This is what I guarantee you. His core value listeners know what he has done and understand he is got to be struggling here, “What is he doing? I want to know.” By him putting that series out but segregating it, the way that he did, is a great way to do it because he wanted to make it right. He didn’t do it immediately. He waited until he had good information to share and then he put it out there. Other things that I want to point out because we do have some technical things. There are others who have their production schedules already way ahead in advance.
They have their episodes going out and they don’t want to appear insensitive. By adding a little advertisement clip by using our ad mixing system, they were able to add in a little ad piece that says, “Everyone, I know that a lot of you are sheltering in place and experiencing some tough times. This episode was recorded two months prior to that so we don’t discuss it at all, but I wanted you to still hear this because this is someone successful who you can learn from, and maybe that’s going to help you through these tough hard times, but I want you to know that it’s different.” They’re referencing the fact that it was recorded in a different time and space.
Also, doing a lesson that was recommended to us many years ago in business and that is when there is an obvious situation, you’ve got to address the elephant in the room. Do not ignore or pretend it’s not there. You’re being more real with people. I like how some of our podcasters have been doing that either by creating a new intro for their show or adding in a little segment using our ad insertion system right after the intro and before the main episode. They start saying this, that then later on or a few months from now when it’s all blown over, that can be removed. At that future point in time, people are going to think, “This was published right in the middle of COVID-19.” They can take it out as if it was never there.
To those of you using the DIY system, you can use the intro/outro auto add to do that so you would load up that special thing as an extra intro. You can check the button and automatically add it to the very front before your whole show plays. You can utilize that on the DIY side as well. If you guys need help with putting these things in, please reach out to our team. We’ve been doing it for other podcasters and we’re happy to help you do that because it makes your show more relevant to your audience. We want that because that will attract more listeners.
I want to go back to what you were saying about the listenership growth on the platform. I’ve been doing a lot of interviews with many podcasters. I interviewed Dr. Mark T. Wade of The Virtual Summit podcast. He and I mentioned Scott Carson, who was on his show as well. Scott was mentioned in his one-year anniversary episode. A couple of our clients were mentioned there. There are a couple of you out there who have been on his show.
It’s interesting because this is something that when I went to go look at the stats, ratings and stuff, he was saying when he first started the podcast, there were no other podcasts on virtual summits. Now, I pop up and everyone and their brother has a podcast about virtual summits, an entire show on it not just an episode. They’re everywhere. There are shows popping up left and right.
He started a trend.
Podcasting is a wonderful medium where you can publish everything, anything you want. Click To TweetHe already has 150 episodes.
He has been committed. He has been doing three a week.
It shows and the content is fabulous and well-informed but it is for his business. He has a software as a service called Virtual Summit software. That’s powerful and it is working, but for the ones who are popping in and popping out or don’t have the background or history and didn’t have the platform before, it’s not happening at a steady. It’s not like all of a sudden, there is a spike in listeners and they’re listening arbitrarily to any show that shows up. They’re not like that. They’re specifically listening and they’re still being discerning about the shows that they choose.
This is the episode that I also want to highlight for you on the Binge Factor. I interviewed Jennifer Otto. She is a binge listener. She is not a host. I interviewed a binge listener to get her perspective. She clearly goes through the outline of how she decides that she is going to listen to a new show. One of the things she said and she confirmed what I’ve been saying for so many years. It’s that if I want to deeply learn about something like if I want to learn how to do a virtual summit, I want to learn it now because I don’t have time. I want to crash course it.
I’m going to pick a podcast that has a minimum of 25 episodes or more. She confirmed that. This is where you just starting up or switching completely to a brand new show might be a mistake in terms of addressing only something that’s COVID-19. It’s one thing to address a broader subject but to only address that, I’m going to go to the more tried and true longer. That’s what listeners are going to do too. Keeping consistent with that is important. She gives great shout-outs to Jen Du Plessis. Jen’s podcast is about real estate.
The Mortgage Lending Mastery is one, but she has two. She has another show.
I asked Jennifer Otto, “Have you listened to every one of Jen’s episodes?” She said, “I have.” I said, “When Jen starts up her new show, even though it’s not about real estate, are you going to listen to it?” She said, “Absolutely.” There is a power in terms of if you have the binge listeners for them to come to a new show with you, but remember it’s the general listenership. If you were expecting that launch boost, it’s not there. Your binge listeners will come with you. One of the things we technically recommend is doing what you were talking about Business Done Differently. It’s doing a series within your show and then if you want to spin it off later into its own thing, do it that way. You’re going to have more power to it.
Podcast Tactic: Make sure that you’re thinking carefully and strategically about your show at all times. And if it needs to shift, then it needs to shift.
You can even leave it in your normal show feed. It can stay there forever but if you have a special series, you can highlight it and move it over into its own. That way, people who are newly finding your show and want to binge through that subject area that is focused in a micro-niche of your genre can do that easily. It doesn’t cost you anything to put it out that way.
We have multiple feeds here so you can do it when you’re ready. When you disrupt the consistent and constant plan, when you’re being consistent, you’re posting every week at a specific time, for those that were on Tuesday, it was an unfortunate choice to be making for many of you to decide, “Do I not air something because the musicians are going off-air? Do I not air my podcast on Tuesday?” We didn’t have to make those choices because ours are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. We’re at later in the week.
I have a podcast that publish on Tuesday. Even though we published it on Tuesday, it doesn’t mean people listen to it on Tuesday. It gets pushed to their phone and their device. They might get to it Wednesday, Thursday or the next weekend. To me, as a podcaster, it’s very different than if you’re like the Tonight Show. Jimmy Fallon went on and his intro was voiceover, no music because the whole music industry is supporting Black Lives Matter by not playing any music. There is a show that does a live recorded show but does a new show every day. It does air at a particular time on that day.
It didn’t mean that they didn’t air. That was a choice that many had to make. I know She Podcasts and a couple of others decided not to post at all. There are choices to be made and innovations to be had, but when your audience counts on you to show up consistently and constantly on time, that can be a detriment to your business when they say, “You’re more worried about something else than you are worried about showing up for me.” Think about that.
I don’t say that doing it for one day is not going to hurt you, but if you were to do it and shut down and not record anything during this whole COVID period, that would have been a shame for you not to show up for your audience because you were caught up in what’s going on. Legitimately, people pod faded during that period because their children were home and they had to deal with homeschooling. They got sick.
Their business has got so negatively impacted. They had to lay people off and do a lot more work themselves. Again, be the chief of everything officer or maybe they weren’t. There are legit reasons why some people don’t have enough bandwidth to do it during this time.
Our recommendation for that is to go on, do one single episode and explain that. Don’t pod fade and have people wondering what’s going on with you. If you came out and I was listening to your show and you told me, “I’m having a hard time and here is what’s going on and I hope I can come back to you because I love the podcast, but I can’t. I’ve got to take care of my family. I got to take care of my employees. I got to take care of my business.” I’m more likely to not unsubscribe you. I’m going to hang out and wait and see what happens.
When what you're talking about isn't aligned with how you show up, your audience will know that it's not your voice. Click To TweetI’m going to be eager when you come back to listen to that episode and find out what happened to you and what was the story during the whole time. Making sure that you’re out there messaging about that is technically important. Also, keep in mind that if you go an extended period of time without posting, without putting out blog posts, without doing this, without doing it in social media, the AI or the artificial intelligence or the box that controls your ranking, your authority or value and whether or not you get served up will be negatively affected if you are not consistent about what you go through and what you do.
Keep that in mind that it does have a technical effect. This is an example outside of the podcasting industry. We used to work in the product industry. We support a lot of Amazon sellers and brands. I had some conversations with top big brands who were choosing to send the limited inventory they had to Amazon and not to stores and not to their own website sales. You would think, “I’ve got inventory. I should sell them on my website. I’ll make more money. The margin will be there. It will be better for me.” Instead, they made the choice to send the inventory to Amazon and make sure that their product never went out of stock on Amazon.
That was critically important for them. Why? Because the minute they go out of stock, all the other products come in above them and it will take them 3 to 4 times the amount of money, effort and time to recover from an out of stock period of time. That’s all algorithm. There aren’t people there making those choices. Using that as the example, the same thing happens on Apple Podcasts, on their search engine, on how they do it and how they deal with subscribers.
Also how you a chart in your category.
You may get back to a new level but you may never get back to where you were. Making this choice of not podcasting or not publishing can have a long-term negative effect if you do it long-term. Keep that in mind. One day is not going to change that. That one day is a blip. Our job is to protect you on the technical side and remind you that your decisions have technical consequences, the choices that you make in your strategy.
We have a lot of things going on, on our platform and on other things. We can always talk about that too. You can check the masterclass on replay. It’s about advanced tactics for referrals. I’m talking about lead referrals and lead generation. We have 21 different concepts to think about and key factors to generating leads from your podcast, and referrals from those podcast listeners and clients that you may already have.
We use the term clients throughout the masterclass for a reason because we want them to turn into a business. You can drop in the word listener in your mind and start thinking about, “How do I get listeners to refer me? How do I get them to share my show?” It’s the same thing. Referrals work in the same way. It was good. We had a lot of great feedback.
Podcast Tactic: Keep in mind that if you go an extended period of time without posting, the box that controls your ranking, authority, or value will be negatively affected.
I enjoyed that masterclass. It is very useful.
Our goal is to bring you more.
If you have a business that in any way would benefit from referrals, it’s probably worth your time.
We shared some insights into how our business works, how we use referrals, and how we apply them. The power that they’ve had in growing our business over the years is tremendous. We can’t thank all of you enough for referring us and that’s how we’ve grown. We’re going to do a pod to publish to audiobook. The masterclasses are on Tuesdays at 1:00 PM Pacific Time but they’re not every week. They’re a couple of months. I am thinking about having Dr. Mark T. Wade come in and do a Virtual Summit masterclass. It would be fantastic for all of you as well. We’re going to have Teresa DeForest to come on at some point. The social media masterclass is coming up.
We have been rebuilding and reprogramming from the ground up our Podetize dashboard. We are very close to testing that ourselves internally and hopefully, rolling it out to everybody at the beginning of July 2022.
When I was talking to Mark on The Virtual Summit, they’re going through a technology shift as well. Both of us were like, “It’s so painful. It takes so much longer than you think it’s going to.”
We made a calculated choice. We thought the majority of our customers would appreciate us continuing to show up for them and not pausing or delaying because of everything that was going on.
Think about it this way. The music industry makes a choice and they can make a choice because they’ve gotten tons of plays. Their music consumption has grown. Their business has been disrupted on the creation side so the creators are home. They had a lot of time to think about what they were doing on social media, how they’re presenting, what their messaging is, and what they care about out there, but not everyone has that luxury. Many of us are in type business. We’re struggling day to day and cranking it out and doing what we got to do. We got to show up and do that. It’s a different choice to be made.
At the same time, you think about, “What are some creative ways that I could support if I want to support a mission, if I want to support a messaging, if I want to support Black Lives Matter? What could you do?” What I’ve been doing is I have pulled all of the Black podcasters who were featured on my podcast, which has been quite a lot. I had one interview that I did. I pushed her up in the schedule because I felt what she was podcasting about was critically important too. I also thought that she puts out a very smart and wonderful value-based view of a Black woman in business.
I wanted her view to be heard because she is powerful and amazing. She amazed me. I talk to podcasters every day and every time I go talk to one, they amaze me. I want to share them more. I move them up in my production schedule. Those are choices you can make to be better about supporting. If you haven’t had enough Black businesses represented in your podcast, then get them represented. Do that. That’s a way you can help support to make it go out there. If your job is to support the underlying fears and anger, go and support that in whatever way you can.
We hope this discussion was helpful. Thank you, everybody.
Keep podcasting.
Important Links:
- White Tiger
- The Savannah Bananas
- The Virtual Summit
- Jennifer Otto – previous episode
- Mortgage Lending Mastery
- Business Done Differently
- Masterclass