How to Make a Podcast Successful in 2021 | The Ask Avi Arya Show

Forget the tech and just get started. So if you're thinking about starting a podcast, like, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to want to research microphones. You're going to want to research audio recording software. Like this setup that you see here, the camera. I'm using the microphone. This is not what I started with. Hey, guys.

This is Avi Arya, Father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer turned hotelier, now social media marketer and founder of Internet Moguls. Welcome to my channel. We have a community of people who are always striving to learn something new, to be able to grow their business online. And you've been able to do it successfully or multiple times. I always say, Tom, the shortest distance between two human hearts is always a story. You tell your audience a story and you win them for life. So before we start, I'd love for you to share your story with us.

Yeah, actually, I kind of incorporated my story in the presentation I'm going to do because it ties directly into like, why I'm even doing a podcast in the first place. Right. But just kind of a real, kind of short thing about me. I'm originally from Oklahoma, but I currently live in Maui, Hawaii. So it's just a little after 5:30 in the morning here. So I got up early to hang out with you guys.

Really, really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. This means a lot to us.

Yeah, no, I'm excited. I was glad to do it. It's going to be a lot of fun. That's what we do as entrepreneurs, right?

100%. 100%. Thank you. Thank you for doing that. So without further ado, let's, let's jump into the presentation then.

Yeah, sounds good. And then we'll go through this. And then I thought we could do some questions if anybody has any questions, stuff like that. I have a lot of these shirts with these little sayings on them, you know, always hungry today. Like all these things to focus, you know, to remind myself, little reminders each day like, hey, this is what we do, right? We have to stay in the game. Today we're going to talk about how a seven figure entrepreneur, which, it's so funny, that still sounds so weird for me to say that. Like when you hear kind of how I ended up here, it's just an odd feeling, right? Like I'm still the same kind of normal person I always was, but I have this amazing business and we're gonna talk about how I became a podcaster And I'm the host of a show called what's the Secret Podcast. And we'll talk a little bit about that as we kinda. Let's talk about first before I get into kind of the details of this, like, why a podcast, right? Like, if some of you are on this call, maybe have a business, maybe you're just getting started, you're thinking, like, why would I want to do a podcast, right? Well, there are three main reasons that I got into this. One was to build out my personal brand. So we'll talk a little bit more about that, share how I was growing my online business. That's been an important part of the podcast and we can talk about that as well and expand my network, which has been an amazing benefit of doing the podcast. Right? But if you're going to do a podcast, like, the first thing is you have to have something to talk about, right? This is an old movie from the 80s here in the US called Look who's Talking. And it all starts with having something to talk about. My kind of journey, from where I started to where I'm at today has really been something that I've just wanted to get out there and share with people because I started off as a restaurant manager. So this is me back in 2010, I'm working as a restaurant manager in Oklahoma. But I had this kind of like this side thing. I didn't want to do that anymore, right? Like, I was working a ton of hours, you know, a minimum of 55 hours a week. I wasn't able to get holidays off, right? Like, I had no control my schedule. I was working a lot, right? And I desperately wanted to get out of that. And so I wanted to start some kind of business that I could do on the side. And in 2010, my wife says, hey, she actually lived in Maui before and she wanted to come visit. And I was like, hey, look, our kids are young enough that if we go there and we don't like it, we can come back before they have to start school. So why don't we just move to Maui, right? Like, I kind of had this idea that, look, if I'm going to be broke, I might as well be broke somewhere really pretty, right? And so we sold everything we had in Oklahoma and we're going to head to Maui. And my plan was pretty simple. It was like, look, I'll get out of the restaurant business, I'll get to Hawaii, I'll start my own business. Like, this is going to be the change I need to make the shift, right? But life kind of had other plans for me because a couple of days after we decided to move a big restaurant here on the island, put up a job posting that they needed a manager. And my wife was like, look, maybe you should have a job when we get there, right? So I went to the restaurant and I applied and I got the job, right? So I kind of get pulled back into the restaurant business. So we. We fly to Hawaii on July 4th. I do a final interview with the restaurant on July 6th, and I start work with them on July 8th. So it was like, bam, bam, bam. I'm right back into where I was in the US like, my location really didn't change much. I'm working in a restaurant again. It's super busy. I'm working a lot of hours, no control of my schedule, and I'm just not happy, right? But I didn't really know what to do because the. Because I didn't want to take this job as a restaurant manager. When they asked me how much I made, I told them, like, a lot more than what I was making in Oklahoma, thinking that they would not go for it. But they went for it, right? So I'm making pretty good money at this job as a restaurant manager that I hate doing. And then about eight months in, they fired me, right? And it was a really, like, it was an upending situation for me because I didn't know what I was going to do, right? I've got my family. I'm out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We've moved all this way now. I've been fired. I don't have this income. You know, what am I going to do? So I started collecting. I had to go on unemployment, right? So I'm getting unemployment. And I thought, well, you know, this is my chance, right? Like, this is. This is my today. Like, I'm going to go ahead and start a business. Like, I've been put in this situation. Let's just get this business off the ground. So I started looking around for ways to generate income, right? And I came across this. This guy, I don't know if any of you ever heard of him, Russell Brunson. And he had this book called Dotcom Secrets. And I thought, you know, this is it. Like, I can. I can do this. I can start, like, an online business out here in Hawaii. I can get it going. So I go to this webinar that Russell does, and he does this great thing. He's talking about this software, click funnels and doing all this stuff. And I'm like, man, I'm in. I want to do this. But the offer he has on the webinar is for like, $1,000, and I don't have $1,000, right? So I call up a friend and I borrow the money to get this offer that he made for click funnels and some training on how to do an online business. And so my friend luckily loans me the money, and I have since paid him back, so. So that's good. But I start trying to do these different ways to make money online, and I don't have. I'm not having any success. Like, nothing is really working, right? And I had. On the mainland, I had actually used some of my skills, like my ability to build websites, my knowledge of SEO, social media, things like that, to help some local businesses with their marketing. And so I thought, well, you know, this online thing isn't working. Maybe I can get some clients and just get some cash flow coming while I'm building up this online business, right? So I go out and I start trying to get some clients. And again, it's just not working, right? Like, I'm getting meetings, but I'm not closing any deals. And this goes on for, man, quite a while. About a year, right? And just when I'm coming up to the end of the year, I get this letter from unemployment that says, hey, look, you can't be on unemployment anymore. You got to do something else. So now it's like, it's pretty much my back's against the wall, right? I either have to get a regular job or I got to make this entrepreneur thing work. And I came across this idea a guy had on the mainland for doing this direct mail thing. And so I just put one together for Maui. And this is an image of the card I put together. I called it Dakine Coupons. And basically what I did was I just made a mock up of this card, and I just started walking into businesses, and I sold these ad spots on this jumbo postcard for 500 bucks a piece. And I didn't really know if it was gonna work, right? I just went to Office Max. I had a designer kind of make a little thing like this. I laminated it, and I was just walking in. Well, in seven days, I sold all these ad spots, and I generated about seven grand in revenue. Four thousand of that was just pure profit, right? I then outsourced all the work. So, like, I hired a designer to design the ads. I had a printer do all the printing and the mail. Like, I didn't have to do Anything. Basically all I had to do was the sales. And so that was like really my first taste of success with entrepreneurship and generating money on my own. And so I'm like, I'm off to the races now, right? So I use this card, I continue to do it, and I use the card and the clients that I pick up through the card to build up a six figure digital marketing agency right here on Maui. And as I'm doing that though, you know, I'm still in the back of my head like, what can I do online? How can I grow this even bigger? How can I? I mean, I like working with clients, but you know, is there a way that I can build a business that's not dependent on clients? Like, if a client leaves, it was a, it was a, I had to get a new one, right? It was like I couldn't lose a bunch of clients at one time. Is there some way that I could really like secure an even better kind of business model? So I'm doing the agency thing and I start thinking like, hey, you know, I've got this clickfunnels thing. I bet I could teach people how I do this mailer and I can make a course around that. So I shoot some videos, I make a little course on how I do the mailer, and I put it up on a platform called Warrior Plus. And I sell 2,000 copies of this thing like it was, it went, it goes really well. So I'm like, man, now this is like this, this is awesome, right? How can I grow this now? Like, is there more things I'm doing in my agency that I can make courses on? What can I do? So I start to get into online course creation. But after that first course, I realized it's a lot of work, right? So I find another guy here on Maui who also has a digital agency and I say, hey, why don't we team up and put out these courses about how we're growing our agencies? Luckily for me, he agrees. His name was Nick Ponte and we started this company called Offline Sharks. And you can see there's one of the slides from one of our things of how I leveraged $74 and 96 cents into a six figure local consulting agency. That $74.96 is what I spent to get all the mock ups made and stuff, right? Then this is a picture, kind of a dopey picture of me and a shark suit doing a webinar for our community. So we go with this name, Offline Sharks because we're here in Maui. And it really just starts to take off right over the next little bit of time. We do over 20 online courses. So this. We started offline sharks in 2016, so we do over 20 online course launches. We have a monthly membership site that people belong to. We do webinars to sell our core programs. So we have an advanced version of teaching people how to do this mailer. We have some software that we developed that goes along with that, that we do as a webinar. We go around, we do those, we roll out a private coaching program, right? So from 2016, where we had zero income coming in, to just last year, we did just a little over $2 million in offline sharks. Now, that doesn't count our agency. We still have an agency here on Maui that we work with clients with, and that's entirely separate. So everything we teach at Offline Sharks is real world stuff that we're doing inside our digital agency. We just bring that out to people. So as we've been growing this, we've been really focusing on building our community. We have a really thriving Facebook group. We've got a great email link, just a really great community of people. So we're looking around at other ways to expand, to bring more people in and to get the word out, right? So my business partner, Nick, he launched a YouTube channel. And I was like, why? Didn't want to do another YouTube channel? So I thought, well, I'll just do a podcast, right? So I launched what's the Secret? A little over a year ago. And, you know, it was really a place for me, one, to talk about how we're growing Offline Sharks. Because, you know, inside Offline Sharks, we focus a lot on growing a digital agency, how to do those things, SEO, social media management, stuff like that. So I wanted a place where we could really talk about how to. How we were growing Offline Sharks. Like, what were we doing, how were we structuring our webinars, how were we running our promotions, how are we setting up our launch funnels, how are we doing all that stuff? And so the podcast gives me the ability to talk about those things kind of outside of the market we're in, which is that digital agency marketing niche. Also, the podcast grows my personal brand, right? Like, everything's going really great at Offline Sharks. We expect it to grow great. But I think when you're in a partnership, it's important that everyone kind of has thinks about, well, what if things were to go wrong, where would you be at? Right? And I've seen a Lot of people that are partners in a business, and they're just so focused on the business that when the business separates, they're pretty much just starting from zero. Right. And so, you know, we don't. We don't want that to happen. Right. So Nick and I do put some time into building our personal brands, doing things like this. Right. So if something were to happen, we're not just. We're not starting from zero. Right. And then the other great thing about the podcast that I kind of mentioned in the beginning is the networking has been unbelievable, right? Like, some of my biggest guests have been the easiest ones to get on the show. Like, they've either reached out to me, somebody's reached out for them, or I just sent an email and, like, they. They just came on even when the show was brand new, didn't have many episodes, and, you know, I thought there would be this thing of where, you know, the big names that only appear on the big shows, and that hasn't really been the case. Most people are interested in being on a podcast and talking to you and sharing with your audience and all those kinds of things. And so we've been able to kind of expand our network and make connections with other people outside of our market that we wouldn't normally be able to make. Right. And as a result of these things that we did in Offline Sharks this past Christmas, there's a picture there, and you can probably see it on the wall back here. We actually got a 2 comma club award from ClickFunnels. So, you know, this. This software that I had to borrow the money for to get in the beginning, you know, now we get this amazing award for doing over a million dollars with a funnel from Click Funnels. And it was a really. It was a really awesome moment for me as an entrepreneur because, you know, I really didn't know what I was doing. I just sort of jumped in and started doing things one thing at a time, right? And it changed. It changed my life. Right. Like, entrepreneurship has changed my life. So. So let's talk a little bit about some tips for podcasting, if you want to start one off. And then I thought we could do a couple of questions, we could do some Q and A. So just a few.

Fantastic.

Yeah, perfect, perfect. So a couple of tips. One is forget the tech and just get started. So if you're thinking about starting a podcast, like, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to want to research microphones, you're going to want to research audio Audio recording software, like this setup that you see here, the camera. I'm using the microphone. This is not what I started with, right? Like, I started with a very. A very simple setup. I don't do video on my podcast, so I didn't need a camera. I just started with a relatively inexpensive, good microphone. There's a couple out there. One. There's one called the At Shoot. I forget the exact name of it, but it's only like 20 bucks and it has great sound. There's the rode podcaster USB, which is, I think, only like a hundred bucks, maybe a couple hundred bucks. That's the one I started with. And you don't really need any complicated software, right? There's free software out there that you can use to record the podcast. So don't spend a ton of time on the tech and all that stuff. Just get something that's good quality and just get started creating, right? Be consistent. This is one of the. I think this is one of the biggest lessons I've learned in entrepreneurship is that it's not really about having the best plan. It's not really about being the smartest person in the room. All those things can help. But the real secret to most of the success I've had is just that I've shown up on a daily basis. I've been consistent in the little actions that most people don't want to take. So, you know, when I first started the podcast and there wasn't that many people listening, like, I still made episodes, right? I produced an episode every week, no matter what. And, you know, I had to, like, for myself. I just never really looked at how many downloads I was getting. For a while, I didn't even want to know because I knew that if I looked and there was only a few downloads, I might get discouraged and I might not continue to produce the content. So I wanted to just. I wanted to produce the content and get it out there, right? Especially because of everything that was going on with the pandemic. Like, I just felt like people, you know, I'd been able to, you know, generate income through an online business, and I thought people really needed that information, right? And I was kind of in a unique position to start the podcast because I didn't need. I don't need the podcast to make money, right? Like, I have offline sharks. That business is going amazing. We do a ton of stuff over there. So the podcast doesn't really need to generate income for me. So I can just focus on talking about things. I want to talk about bringing on guests that I want to bring, on creating content that I want to create, and I don't really have to worry about the monetization of it or anything like that. And that has allowed me to. To talk to that audience in a very different way. Because, you know, if you go to, if you go to tomgattis.com where I talk about the podcast, like, there's really nothing for sale there. You know, there's an opt in for a free report thing that I put out on a method I use for developing courses and stuff, but like, it's not part of a funnel, it doesn't lead to a sales, but like, there's nothing to buy there, right? It's just purely value driven. Because what I'm really trying to do with the podcast is build an audience, because building the audience can be the most difficult part. But once you have the audience, there's lots of ways that you can bring value to that audience that they'll be happy to pay you for, right? Remove yourself from the technical process as much as possible. So if there's any other. I'm sure a lot of you on here are busy entrepreneurs, right? You have a lot going on. That was certainly the case with me when I started the podcast. You know, running a thriving business, having all that stuff. Like, for me, time is super, super critical, right? So, you know, I had messed around for a few months of trying to do, launch the podcast and do it all myself and do those things, and it just wasn't getting done. So I just, you know, I just called in some help, right? I hired a podcasting professional to help me organize the launching, the getting the show together, mapping it all out, doing those things. And I'm really. It was probably some of the best money that I spent because it took me out of the technical stuff, right? Like when I do a podcast episode, I basically just have to record it and then I send it off to the team, and the team, they do everything else and I get back this finished episode that's like, hey, it's on your website, it's ready to go. So it doesn't take a lot of hands on things for me to implement the podcast, right? So remove yourself as much as possible from the technical stuff, the all of those things. Like, I know as entrepreneurs you want to have our hands in that, but you just have to step away, do what you do best, which is create the content, talk about the things you want to talk about, and let other people handle that other stuff so you can stay focused on the important Things like, you know, growing the base, doing those kinds of things. Another tip, you know, talk to specific people, right? Like, I kind of had this idea when I first started up, what's the secret? That I'd talk to this different audience that we talked to at Offline Sharks, and there, you know, this thing would just grow kind of separately and independently. But what I found is, you know, when I do a podcast episode, for me, I need to be talking to almost like a friend that's come to me for advice, right? Like, they've come to me and they're like, hey, Tom, I see you've got this online business. I see you do this stuff with your digital marketing agency. Like, how are you doing all that? Like, what would I need to do if I wanted to get something like that started? And so when I record episodes and try to think of content that I'm going to put on the podcast, I think about that situation. Well, if this person were in front of me, what would I want to tell them? Or what do I, you know, what would they need to know if they wanted to try to do this as well? And then I just create content around that. But I'm not really trying to create content for everybody, right? For everybody. I'm not a big audience, just, like, thinking of one person at a time. I think one of the biggest things is being authentic, right? And that is just being yourself, kind of the good, the bad, the ugly, everything, right? Like, so we don't always talk about all good stuff on the podcast. Like, if. If I'm trying something and it doesn't work out, we talk about that as well. I talk a lot about sometimes the struggles of what we go through, right? Because I just did an episode that hasn't gone live yet. That's on handling the unexpected, right? Because unexpected things come up in your life, and how do you deal with those things when you're in the process of starting a business or you have an already business, or you already have a business running, how do you, you know, entrepreneurship is already super stressful. How do you deal with those things on top of that? And so I think talking about that stuff is super important, right? And one of the keys to us growing offline sharks has been, you know, when we started that company, we let people know, like, we're not gurus. Like, we don't have this all figured out, but we do know, we do know one thing really well, and that's we know how to get clients. And so, you know, when we put out a course at offline sharks. You know, we're usually talking about those kinds of things, like showing people exactly what we're doing in our agency. We're not trying to build it up and make it seem like it's bigger than it is or it's, you know, or something like that. I hope that kind of makes sense. But, you know, I think you don't have to be the guru. You don't have to be the superstar expert. You just need to be a little bit ahead of where the people are that are following you. Right. And so, you know, if you can create a course and a product and things around or a podcast around your experiences of doing this thing that they want to do, I think there's a lot of value in that. And we don't have to try to, you know, we don't have to try to be the next Gary Vee or the next Russell Brunson or the next this. We just need to be ourselves and talk about our experience and how we got through those things. And I think that resonates even more with people than when they hear somebody like Gary V. Or Russell Brunson. Cause it's really easy to look at those people and be like, I could never do that. Right? But if you just seem like a regular person that they can relate to, they can go, oh, I could actually do this, and I'm gonna give it a shot. Right? Last is I had this idea when I first started the podcast that I would create all the content, right? I wasn't gonna have any guests on this show. And a friend of mine actually started recommending some people as like, hey, my friend has a podcast. You should go on a show. They started reaching out to me. So I finally said, look, I'll start interviewing some guests. And probably one of the best decisions I've made. If you start a podcast, even if you're gonna do the content yourself, I highly recommend that you record some interviews that you could roll out. Because not only are the interviews super fun and you learn a ton of stuff and you build your network and you're able to make connections with people that you wouldn't normally be able to, but they are also a lot less work than creating episodes yourself. So I always like to have a few interviews and stuff in the bank. So if I can't think, think of something to talk about, or maybe I'm having a particularly busy week, and I'm like, I just want to be able to kind of put the podcast on autopilot. Having some interviews and things going allows me to just run those episodes, and then I don't have to spend as much time creating content and all those kinds of things. So I think regardless of what you do, I would try to do that. So now on my podcast, that's what I do. I create episodes myself, and then I interview guests as well. And I just kind of go through depending on what I feel like doing that week. So. So if it's not working for you, right, don't give up. Just adjust. And what I mean by that is, you know, maybe your topic, your thing, whatever, just doesn't resonate, right. And, you know, the listeners aren't coming like you thought they would. And I think a lot of people tend to stop, right? Like, oh, well, let's stop and rethink this. But I think you can just adjust, right? Like, I have, you know, I adjusted with what's the secret one, When I was putting out all the content myself and then decided to do some interviews and things like that. Right. Another thing that I was doing on what's the secret that really wasn't resonating was I had this idea that I would do everything in seasons. So I'd have a season, it would be on one topic, it would be easily organized, but listeners just really. I didn't. I just never noticed that listeners even really cared. Right. And it made it hard for me to adjust my content if I needed because I was already in the season where I was forced into this topic. Right. So I just changed that. Right. So recently we just started doing. We're just publishing episode after episode, and if I want to do something on a topic, then what I'm doing now is I run what I call a special series, and it may be 3, 4, 5 episodes all around a topic, and we just run them as a series instead of a season. That way I can continue to do that other stuff. Right? So if something's not working or you feel like you're not getting the listeners you need, you know, don't give up. Just adjust. Maybe test out talking about some different content ideas, play around with, you know, your. Your target audience, all those kinds of things, but continue to do it consistently. I think that's the really the key there. Yeah. So that's pretty much what I had put together for the presentation. So I thought maybe if you guys want to do some Q and A or something like that, we can do that.

That was fantastic. Thank you very much. You know, you had me at. When you said I moved to Hawaii, and I said, if I have to, if I have to be broke. I want to be broke in a pretty place.

Yeah, well, why not, right? I was living paycheck to paycheck. Might as well be somewhere where it's good to look.

But how does it feel now to be successful in a, in an awesome place like that?

I won't lie. It feels really, really good. Right. I mean, the most amazing part of it is, you know, just my wife, like, my wife was there for all the bad stuff, Right. And now she's there for all the good stuff. So just being able to, you know, provide for the family and live in this beautiful place and you know, it's still like, Hawaii is super expensive. And we don't, we don't live on the beach, we don't live in a big mansion on the water. Right. Like, we're in a, we're in a pretty much a three bedroom, you know, little family house. And you know, sometimes I think, why do we live here? Because if we live someplace else, we could, you know, we could have a bigger house, we could have all these things. But we love it here. Like, it's a great place to raise the kids. The people here are, you know, super, super tight community. So, yeah, so for now, we're here.

So I'm in Vancouver, Canada, and I read in the papers about a month ago, they said if you have plans to work from Hawaii and transfer your online business to Hawaii and work from there, they were giving free tickets.

Yep. They wanted people to come here and work remotely. Yeah, yeah, we get a lot of people. Yeah, we get a lot of people from Canada here. The only, the only thing that's not good is like just the other day, I actually just saw this article. I think this just happened yesterday. The Hawaii government, they, they passed one of the highest state taxes in the United States just yesterday. So that's kind of made it where now I sort of have to like revisit. Like. Well, okay, is it like, is this where we want to be and is it, is it going to make financial sense for us to stay here? Because, you know, it's already expensive to live here. And when you're, you know, when you're shelling on a big chunk to, you know, the taxes, it can make it even more difficult.

Puerto Rico, I think that John Lee Domos made that famous move.

Yep. Puerto Rico is a good place. We're, we were thinking maybe some, if we were to go, we'd probably say someplace on the mainland, maybe like Nevada, because Nevada is pretty central. We can travel. We could do, we could have Live events there for offline sharks. Right? Like, be nice.

Excellent. Excellent. That Tom was fantastic. Love the story. Loved how you said you don't need to be a Gary Vee or a Russell Brunson. You be you. Because it's easier for people to relate with somebody who's just like them. And just right off the bat, you said entrepreneurship could be many other things, could be motivation, reading 20,000 books, going for an MBA, doing whatever you want. You said your definition of entrepreneurship and success was love of the family backing you and just get started so it can't get more real than that. Love what you said, and thank you for saying that.

What important tools are required to start a podcast? Second, which channel is good for podcasts? Spotify or Anchor or another? So that's a great question. So there are really all you need is a microphone and some type of software to record, right? And some people, just to get started on their podcasts, have even just recorded them on their iPhone and then transferred those files and use those, right? So microphone recording software. I think the free software that a lot of people use is called Audible. I believe it's called Audible. I actually use Adobe Audition. It's not Audible. What is it? Hold on, let me find it. I forget the name of it.

I like the Shure mic.

Yeah, the Shure. I just got the Shure SMB7 Mike. That's a really great mic. You know, they're a little more on the expensive side. I kind of built up to this, right? Like, I started with a Rhodes podcaster, which is like a USB mic that you just plug into your computer. It had really great sound. A lot of my, you know, my first 15, 20 episodes are done with that microphone. And I think it sounds good. I do think the Shure sounds better. But, you know, the thing I want to say about that is, like, you know, just get whatever sounds good for what you can afford, right? And then just start recording. Like, it's more important that you start creating content and putting the episodes out than have the best microphone in the world, right? So you can always upgrade and build into those things as you get going. Oh, the name of the free recording software is Audacity. So Audacity is one that you can use. And then there's also GarageBand, which comes on Macs, Right? That's another good one. And then as for a channel, like, I think what's important with the podcast is that you're on the channels where the people are, right? So Apple Podcasts, Spotify, you know, now Amazon is Running podcasts. So, like, my podcast is on Audible. You can find it in the Audible library. Google podcasts. Then there's a lot of other, you know, smaller platforms that you can be on there. You know, when I talked about removing yourself from the tech, this is where my team comes into play, right? So the team, they do. They handle all that for me, so I don't have to worry about that stuff. They just. When there's a platform, they just get me on it, right? So, yeah, but I would definitely do the big ones. You know, Spotify, Apple, Audible, Google Podcasts, for sure.

Got it. Mohit says, I'd like to know this. How do you make money from a podcast?

Us? So there's a couple of ways that you can generate income from the podcast. So one is for every episode that you do, there are show notes, right? And show notes are like, they're where the episode lives on your site. There are links that you put in. So sometimes you can do an episode, and the links on the show notes could be to something for sale. Like, for instance, I did an episode on how I did the mailer, right? I did an episode on how to. How I put the mailer together, how I did that on the show notes of that page. There's a link to the course that I. That we have on how to do the mailer with a special discount for podcast listeners. So sometimes people go there and they buy that course because they're like, oh, this sounds like a good business idea. I want to give it a try, right? So that's one way you can do it. Another way you could do it is like, in your episodes themselves, you could send people to something. Like, you know, if you have a course or something that you sell, you could record the podcast episode and then the intro and the outro, direct them to where they can go, get more information and buy this thing, right? So, you know, there's ways you can monetize it internally that way, talking about your products, your courses, sending people to those things. Another way to do it is outside, so you could get a sponsor. So once you start to get some listeners, you could reach out to companies and be like, hey, I have a podcast. I get, you know, X number of downloads every month. I think, you know, my audience would really resonate with your, you know, whatever it is you're doing. Like, if you. If you had a podcast on, you know, sales, then you may reach out to a company like Salesforce and ask if they want to run a commercial during your show. And so they would Pay you to run the commercials. Right. So the sponsorship, just doing things, you know, for your own products in your podcast. And then the third way would be if you bring guests on, and maybe they're going to give a link at the end of the podcast, sometimes for the courses and things they create. Sometimes those programs have what are called affiliate programs, where anybody you send their way, they'll pay you a portion, like a commission. So sometimes you can ask your guests, like, hey, if you're gonna put a link at the end of the show, do you have an affiliate program for that and can I sign up for it? And that way if anybody goes and buys, then you'd make money that way.

Fantastic. Fantastic. The idea is to keep marching, keep going, get interesting people, get the conversation, build a community around it. And sometimes the most obvious ways of making money don't happen. And then you get people saying, you know what? You launched this new $10,000 program. I heard about you first on the podcast. I didn't buy anything from you, but my friend has now just recently bought your program. So things work in mysterious ways. Your, your, your. As entrepreneurs, I think we just need to keep on creating. And. Yeah. So Mr. Prabhak has a very good question. He says the transition from employee to entrepreneur was a choice or circumstance driven. You already answered that. But the second part is very interesting. How vulnerable did you feel till you tasted success as an entrepreneur?

Yeah, you know, for me, one of the things I like to say all the time is entrepreneurship for me has been. It's been a process of becoming, like, I will be really honest with you guys. When I was trying to get my businesses off the ground, I was a really shitty entrepreneur. Like, I just. I did just about everything you could do wrong, right? Like, I would. I'm trying to think of a good example. Like, I just wasn't. I wasn't. I didn't have the discipline that you need as an entrepreneurship, as an entrepreneur, right? Like, I didn't. I didn't treat it seriously for a really long time. And what I mean by that is, like, when I had a regular job, like, I wasn't late for my job because it was my job, right? Like, when they asked me to do something, I did it because it was my job. Like, when there was a deadline, I usually hit the deadline because it was my job. I didn't want to lose my job. But when I became an entrepreneur, like, I would always like, oh, well, I'll just do that tomorrow. Like, I didn't treat it like my job. And So a real eye opening thing for me was like, I got out of, I got into entrepreneurship, so I didn't have a job, but I had to treat entrepreneurship like a job to be successful. Right. And so it's this kind of paradox. But on the flip side of that, like, the, the benefits of it are so much better with, you know, like, I can control my schedule, like if we want to take trips, like, I can be around for my family, I can be around for the things for my kids. I can, you know, if something unexpected comes up, I can, I can pull back from work so I can focus on whatever that thing is with my family or whatever that is. And so, yeah, that's a really great feeling. So even though I probably work more now than I did at my regular job. Yeah. You know, getting those, that. Having that success definitely helps. And I will say, like, getting that, getting the ClickFunnels Award, the 2 comma Club Award was particularly sweet for me just because I had to borrow the money to get that thing. You know, it was like, oh, my God, like, I can't believe I did this. But again, like I said in the presentation, through this whole time, I'm still me, right? I've gotten better at doing the entrepreneur things, but I'm still myself. And I think that's a good sign for anybody. That means anybody can do this, right? Anybody, if they're willing to just focus on what they're doing and put in the effort and be consistent, I think can do it as well.

So I love what you said, Tom, and you said that the start is always messy. When you feel you're not regular, you're not consistent, you don't know what you're doing, you're just pulling and being, pulling, being pulled in different directions. That is normal. All of you people who are starting off or finding yourself in a messy situation, like Tom said, as long as you're marching every day, as long as you're doing something every day, you'll figure it out. Just don't stop. Momentum seems to be one of the biggest keywords over here. Just don't stop. You know, many. We write a diary, we have a calendar, we have a plan. And those plans are meant to fail. So that. And that's what entrepreneurship is. How many failed plans can you rise above? That could be the title of my next book.

Yeah, well, one of my other favorite sayings is never let failure go to your head.

Lovely. Oh, I love that.

Never let failure go to your head.

Lovely. Every goal and the journey is a process of becoming in anything that you want to become. The only thing, like I said, like what Tom said was, that was fantastic. I think that should be the highlight of the show. Don't let failure get your head. And also, if it's messy and just keep marching.

How do you continuously generate new ideas for your podcast? Mind if I answer that one?

Oh, please, please, go ahead.

Yeah, yeah. So that's a great question. And one of the things that I do is, like, I am just always on the lookout for, one, what am I going through in my business currently or in my life? And then two, I'm always looking around for ideas from stuff. So, like, if I'm. I might be watching a TV show and all of a sudden I'm like, oh, that would actually be an interesting thing to talk about on the podcast. Or maybe we're dealing with a client in the agency that's a particularly difficult client, then I might use that as the thing I'm going to talk about. Right. So I try to pull it from experience as much as possible. So, like, I did a special series recently because we were doing a product launch, right. So I just talked about what we were doing in the product launch and that whole process. If I can do that, that's my first choice, right? Like, well, okay, is it something that we're doing in our business? We're utilizing all that stuff? If not, then I try to look around for, okay, well, what's a book I'm reading? What's an idea I'm thinking about a lot, what seems to be coming up in my business a lot. And then I'll do a piece of content around that as well.

I have two questions.

Sure.

One of them is that when you. So podcasting is great to build a community every time. I'm enjoying building a relationship with you. And till a few months ago, I used to do one on one podcast, and then I used to put it on my YouTube channel and my Facebook group and all of that. And then recently I said, why don't we do it together with a live audience of 40, 50 people? It makes it even more fun. So you keep. Somebody was asking, what are the creative elements you keep on improvising and seeing. Does it make value for your guests? It's more exciting for a guest to have an audience of 30 people over here. And then we repurpose it. So instead of just repurposing it, we sort of have a live audience. So continue bringing in value in terms of, you know, making sure that your guest has a. So one thing that I like to do. And Tom, you know, would love your comments on that. I'm always on the lookout. If I have a guest, I may not reach out to them right away until they have a book launch or a new podcast or a new course coming up, because that's when they're in marketing mode, and that's when they're more receptive to say yes. What do you say about that?

Yeah, no, that's a great tactic, actually. That's smart. Because you want. Like, that was, you know, when I talked about how easy it's been to get guests on the shows. One of the things you don't realize is, like, a lot of those people are looking. They want to go talk about their book, especially if they have a book, right. And they're launching it or they have something new coming out. So I think, you know, doing that as well. Like, and even when I talk to my guests, when I'm interviewing them now, even though I'm not doing it live with an audience and all that stuff, I still ask them at the beginning, like, before we start recording, they're like, is there anything you want me to ask you about? Like, is there anything you're working on? Are there things you're doing so we can make sure to talk about those in the episode? Because you're. You're right on the money. It's. It's about the value for the guest, right? Like, we want to bring value to them, and. And that will bring value to us.

Perfect.

But I'm. And I think your thing on repurposing just, you know, just, you're. You're right on the money. It's. It's about the value for the guest. Right? Like, we want to bring value to them and. And that will bring value to us.

Perfect.

But I'm. And I think your thing on repurposing, just, you know, just a quick comment on the community stuff. Like, you know, we have a offline sharks. We've got a Facebook group. We've got all this stuff. One of the. One of the things that we started doing is so many people post things in the Facebook group, and we post some. We have a lot of content that goes in there. It gets pretty busy, right. And it's easy to miss stuff. So we started. We started pulling out all of the best posts from the Facebook groups, and we published them in a PDF, like a newsletter, so people can get it, like, as a digest. So, like, if you don't want to just hang out in our Facebook group all the Time you can just get this digest and it'll show you, like, all the stuff we were talking about, all the things. But it's got two things going for it. One, it's curated. Right. Like, we're. Like, it's already stuff we're doing. We're just putting it in a newsletter format. And of course, over the time that we've been doing it, now it's gotten, you know, like, we've of course improved it and done things, and that's a great looking little valuable thing that our members get. So we actually added it as a benefit to our monthly membership because people liked it so much. So, you know, you should always be looking for ways to do that. Always look for ways to use things you're already doing and maybe package them in a way that you can either sell or use to bring value. That way, you know, you're. You're doing more without actually doing more.

Right, Absolutely. That's fantastic. Who's your favorite and why?

Oh, oh. I like the Hulk because I love Hulk Smash. Right. Just barrel ahead. Whatever's in his way just knocks it out of his way. Right?

That's exactly why I like him. There's no problem too big. All righty. I hope that was not too much of a.

That was great.

Alrighty. Okay, we'd love to stay in touch. So where can. Our audiences will be watching this live right now and all the others who see it later, where can they follow you? You have an online course coming up, a book. Tell us something about how we can start working together.

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So there's two places you can go. So one, if you're interested in kind of like the online business side of and stuff like that, definitely check out the podcast. It's@tomgattis.com I have a little guide on there. I have this thing I call the Milk it method. It's basically the strategy I use to build all my online courses. And MILK stands for market idea, launch, and Kaching. So I think that little PDF is super valuable for people if they're trying to do that stuff. Right. So. So I would encourage you to check that out. And then if you're an agency owner or you're a freelancer or you do anything in that space, definitely check out offlinesharks.com. we've got a ton of stuff there. We have a great Facebook group you can look up on Facebook. All people talking about how to grow successful agencies and what that takes and the services they're doing. It's a really great community And I love the names.

I love the, you know, what our company is called. Internet moguls. And after 11 years, I'm still in love with the name. But offline sharks online sharks. Just fantastic.

Yeah. It's so great. We get so many people in our group like you. You should see the shark memes are like, through the roof. Like, people, like, everybody, you know, people are people in our community. They say things like, fins up and always hungry and like, they're always posting their wins and stuff and, like, another shark attack. It's like, it's really great.

It's awesome to watch a true community being built there. Yeah.

Well, I think that's another little kind of hidden lesson, right? Like, if you can give your community some, like, a name, a thing that they can be proud to own and have fun with, they'll do it. Right. Like Russell Brunson did the Funnel hackers. Right? You're a funnel hacker. Like, he had all that thing, right?

I know it's ridiculous how you're proud to wear funnel hacking T shirt and I don't even understand that logo. I love the company. I love the guy. I don't understand the logo, but people are so proud to wear it all over the world. I am a funnel hacker. And it's just that, you know, when. When they say when the name of a company becomes a verb, a doing word, I'm Googling. I'm, you know, I'm. I'm. I'm online sharking. A doing word. When it becomes a verb, that's when you know that it's gotten into. Gotten into people's everyday lives. And that's when community starts happening. That's fantastic.

Well, it. Yeah, it is an important piece of the community. You know, giving them that kind of identity, that thing, even if it doesn't officially become a word, they like, you don't. You don't need a huge community to do really well, you know, like, it doesn't take a lot of people behind your brand to be pretty successful.

So Facebook groups have worked for you to build communities and stay in touch.

Yeah. So, yeah, we started our Facebook group right from the beginning, right? So we. And typically, by the way, the only way people could even know about our Facebook group or get into it was if they bought one of our products. So we are always like, one of the first things we do in the welcome videos and all that stuff of all our courses is like, hey, you should go join our Facebook group. And so we, you know, now we have a little over 10,000 members in the group, which isn't super big, but most of them are people that have bought our stuff. Like, there's a big difference between having a group of buyers and having a group of people that have just requested to be there for free, right?

100%. And so the next series of hats are going to be with sharks.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. They should be. Yeah. This is the. Yeah. Yeah. Not this one yet.

Tom, on behalf of all of us over here, all the Internet moguls over here from different parts of India and some two people from Vancouver, we thank you very much for your time. Thank you for waking up for us early in the morning and.

Oh, man, thanks for having me on, man. It was a real pleasure to be here. Had a lot of fun. Great questions from everybody. Have a sharp group. That's always good to see.

100%. Thank you very much, Dom.

Aloha, everybody. You find me loser send me free? You make me win every way you show me how to spread my way.