Podcasting Success for Authors: The Ultimate Trifecta to Become a Thought Leader

Hi larry. Hello everybody. Welcome, welcome. We are so glad to have you here. Thank you for joining our Book Launchers Live. I am Sarah Bean, marketing manager for Book Launchers and you know Angela. She is our head of operations here at Book Launchers. So we have some great guests today. I'm going to dive in, but before we get to that, I'm going to say go ahead and fill up that chat, let us know where you are writing in from. And yeah, I just want to know where everybody is because we get people from all over. So happy, happy Tuesday at everybody. Yes, thank you, Angela. So we are excited to have very special guests with us today. We are going to be covering a great topic podcasting success for authors. And so in order to really get the good information for you guys about podcasting, we invited Larry Roberts and Sarah loses see here. Co founders of Branded Media, which is one of the top voices when it comes to podcasting. So they are going to be giving you guys the skinny on getting that ultra ultimate trifecta when it comes to thought leadership, which Sarah and Larry and I discovered when we were at NSA a few weeks ago. Really the trifecta for anyone who's looking to dominate thought leadership is book podcast speaking. Well, you've got two out of the three here with our Book Launchers team and with Larry and Sarah here. So I'm going to dive a little bit into who they are and then I'll let them kind of get into some of their. You guys are always better at introducing yourselves than I am, but I'm going to give a little bit of a preview. So Sarah is a co founder of Branded Media and she is a storyteller at heart. Sarah and I've worked together for many years including on some of our Book launchers, books and also booking clients with Branded media. She has helped many, many experts, authors and speakers amplify their voice through smart story driven content. She's an award winning podcast producer and author of the book Open this Book the Art of Storytelling for aspiring thought leaders. And her partner here is Larry Roberts. I don't know, some of you may recognize Larry from the signature red hat, but he is one of the leading voices in broadcast, in podcasting and also AI powered content strategy. He's got over a decade of experience launching premium content for thought leaders and companies and Larry helps brands turn their message into movements. He's a national speaker, award winning podcast producer and author of under the Red Hats. So welcome you guys. Thank you so much for joining today.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, yeah. It's great. And so, as I mentioned, Larry, Sarah and I just got to hang out at the NSA Influence Conference a few weeks ago, where they had a booth there for branded media, helping speakers turn their messages into podcasts. And we've worked together for a number of years on different things with different clients, how to use books and podcasting to go together. So I thought you guys would be the perfect guest to have on today to talk about how to really leverage podcasts for success.

So, absolutely. This is something that we've been. You and I have talked about for years. We've been talking about it all together for years, and we're really excited to dig into it and see if we can answer some great questions.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I want to welcome everybody in the chat as all of our book Launchers followers know that we do different prizes throughout our sessions. And so, Angela, how do you want to kick off today?

Do you want to.

Should we start one now or do you want to dive in, let a few more people filter in?

Yeah, we're let. I. I think people are slowly starting to trickle in, so we should give them a little bit longer. But I can take this brief overview to. Or to give you a brief overview of the prices that we have. We are going to focus back again on books because I realized that I've got some books that I need to clear out of my closet. Sarah also has some books, and she has some that she wants to share as well. We have some from our authors, we have some from Julie. So I've got four different books right here. I've got one from Jordan Barber. Dr. Jordan Barber, Kelly Tuttle, Linda Magoon, and one of the older books from.

Julie brought more than cash flow.

Yeah, I've got actually quite a few of these. So if you are one of our lucky prize winners, you can email me with one of the books that you would like to receive and I will get it sent your way.

And actually, I have a bonus book to throw in there. I have extra copies of Sarah's book. Open this book.

I was about to ask and I. Can I get in on this? Like, I'll give away some copies of my.

Yeah, I have the prize of choice today, honestly.

Yeah, absolutely. So we will throw that in for the prizes. We'll do this two or three times throughout the session so people can definitely enter to win a copy of that.

Awesome. Yeah, go back off stage. But yeah, when you want me to come on, I can pull up the giveaway tool later and we can choose some winners.

Oh, Great. Okay. Yeah. Sarah, I was organizing my bookshelves the other day, and I realized that I have three copies of your book that are on my shelves, so I should share the wealth.

That's amazing. I went and was at a speaking gig near you, so I went and visited you and hung out and stayed with you. And I think I had extra copies mailed to your house. And then I was like, you know what these are? These are a donation to wherever you want them to go. I'm not putting these back in my suitcase and getting them back across the country.

Yep. No, this is. This is the perfect opportunity for that. So I think we lost Larry for a few minutes. Hopefully he'll pop back on, but his.

His computer kicked out his audio and video, so he is fixing that, and he will be back on as soon as he can.

No problem. Okay, well, we'll dive in in the meantime. So, you know, I want to get into a little bit of your history in podcasting, how you started in this business platform and this medium, and. And, you know, when you kind of realize that it was the way you wanted to go with your career focus.

Yeah, it's. It's funny because I think you kind of know the answer to this question, because it happened a little bit in tandem. I was working with one of your existing clients that we still have today, Eric Brotman. I'm still graduate, and I took over producing his podcast of the same name, and that was my first step into podcasting. I had no idea what I was doing, and just kind of learning as I went, and with your team, working with producer podcast and just getting that show moving and getting through a couple seasons, and I really loved it, but I. What I really loved was the guesting side of it, and I saw a lot of really great guests to that show. I saw a lot of really not great guests through that show. And I ended up launching my company originally to focus on teaching how to be a great guest. And through that, I fell into the strategy of it and the art of it and the storytelling and all of it, and it just. It consumed my life.

Yeah.

And I moved past the guesting to the launching. I met Larry Roberts on at a couple different industry conferences, and he is. If there's anybody that knows the industry, it is that man. And being able to feed off of him and learn from him, from the industry and the strategy side. And we joined forces, and now, you know, the rest is history. We've been. We launched branded media together early 2024. So we're on two years, and we won the Signal award in our first year, and it's been. And so much fun.

Yeah, that's incredible. So that people that are watching can kind of understand who are the types of people that branded media helps.

So, yeah, we. We wanted it to be pretty clear from our name. We are branded media. We are branded content. We are branded. Launching podcasts, not so much for the hobbyists that want to talk about things that they do for fun. The books that they love, things that they are kind of just, like, on the side of what they're doing. They're like, they're fun topics. We wanted to work with people that wanted a podcast to go along with their business goals and their brand goals. So we work with a lot of authors that want to have a podcast to go along with their book or to build an audience before they launch their book.

We.

We work with a lot of speakers who want to expand their stage and get more stages. We work with small businesses, financial advisors, realtors, anybody that really wants to leverage the power of audio, the power of video storytelling, that connection that it comes with, and use it to move their brand and their business forward.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that is aligned with a lot of the people that book launchers helps as well. And a lot of the people that are going to be viewing this.

This.

Larry's back. Welcome, Larry.

Thanks. I'm trying to be back. I am having some serious difficulties here today.

Oh, no, it's no problem. It's no problem. Well, Sarah was just giving us a little preview of branded media and kind of what you guys do, but I want to get into. She gave us a little bit of how she got into podcasting. I want to hear a little bit about how you started in podcasting.

Okay. Well, you know, it's a little different in the fact that I just kind of stumbled into podcasting. A friend of mine at work kept trying to get me to listen to the Joe Rogan podcast. And I was like, dude, I don't have time to listen to some silly podcast thing. And he just kept on and on, and I finally gave in, and I listened to an episode, and on that episode, there were a couple of comedians, and they were reminding me of the comedians that I grew up with in the 80s. And I was like, oh, my gosh, you can say this on a podcast and not get in trouble. So as soon as I. I found that out, I. I was in. So I went out and got. Got a really, really bad microphone and found me a co host, and we Sat down and we did our best to start a podcast, and it just went from there, and it just evolved over the years to where I'm at today.

That's amazing. So I want to get into. Sarah touched a little bit on this when you were offline, but I want to get into podcast guesting because it's an area that I think a lot of authors want, but don't really fully understand exactly what it entails. You know, and even for someone I've been on podcasts, I pitch podcasts all the time, but there's always some nuances to it that I want to get into. So I want to get into what are some of the mistakes that you see authors or just podcast guests in general make when they land an interview? And we're going to talk a little bit, too, about how to get into the interview in the first place, but I want to get into some of the mistakes that you see and what people should avoid when they are guesting on a podcast.

Yeah, I think the first. The biggest mistake that we see is people going into it with the wrong mentality. They go into it with the mentality of, I want to sell, whether that's books or services. They go into with the mentality of, I want to use this as a marketing tool. And while it is a marketing tool and it's a great one, and it's not the mentality that you need to go in with, you need to go in with the mentality of, I want to share value, and I want to offer value, and I want to bring something. And authors specifically, I think we see almost like the. The lawyer answer or the politician answer of, well, that's in the book, and you'll have to read the book, you'll have to buy the book, and of course you want to talk about the book, and of course you want people to buy the book. But you only have about 30 minutes. Usually with this interview, there's no way you're going to give away all of the amazing content that's in that book. So I think people are afraid to really share some of the stories from their book and some of the content that's found in there, just because it's like they're devaluing because they don't need to buy it anymore. We already told you what's in it, but there's so much more in it. So don't be afraid to actually really dig into those questions and prove that you know what you're talking about. Prove the. The value of the content that they're going to find when they actually do buy that book. And I think that's kind of where you start.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it isn't like an interesting balance between I want to promote my book and make sure that they go pick it up, but I don't want to give so much away that they're not going to then be interested. But at the same time, I don't think I've ever really heard an author give away everything.

Exactly.

It's never happened.

Your podcast interview is 30 minutes. Your book takes a whole lot longer than 30 minutes to read. And yeah, if you've done your audiobook, which I still am putting off and I got to do that, but if you've done your audiobook, you probably know it's, there's hours of content in there, so there's nowhere. You're going to give it all away.

Yeah, yeah, no, you're never going to give it all away. And at the same time, if you're really delivering value, all you're doing when you are giving those interviews is just giving them more and more reason to go buy it.

Yes, exactly.

You know, you're giving them more and more to, to go out there. So. Okay, well, on the flip side of that, instead of, you know, things that they should avoid, what are some things that will make them a really memorable guest? What are some tools or tricks or, or whatever you say to, to make them, you know, someone that those podcasters want to have back again?

Yeah, I mean, I think it comes down to what Sarah was alluding to is delivering value with everything that you're saying, you know, you, you don't want to go on mindset of selling books and you know, to, to expand on that a bit, the hosts don't want you to come on their shows to sell your book. You know, they're, they're podcasts, aren't infomercials. So people don't tune in to be sold things. They tune in to get a value proposition back based on that particular show and what that shows unique listing proposition is. So one of the cool things that you can do is make sure that you have a in depth understanding of that show and that show's audience. You know, I'm not saying sit there and listen to every episode that they've ever recorded, but at least go through the description, maybe listen to the trailer of that podcast, maybe listen to an episode or two and understand the cadence and the rhythm and the flow of the show so that when you can go on, when you do go on the show, you have that opportunity and you understand the environment and you can deliver value with each and every question that they ask you.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's. I mean, that is something that we talk to all of our authors about, is being able to really prep by getting to understand that show, what their goals are, and then who the audience is. And I tell this story at our media training all the time that a number of years ago, I had gotten an author on a show that was actually doing fairly well. But the. Maybe it was my fault. Actually, no, I had told this author this. I had prepped them by saying that the format of this podcast is they ask every single guest the same five questions. They asked the same five questions of every single guest. And then the author that I put on got really mad because there were no questions about the book. There were no questions about what they were doing. It was just these five questions. I'm like, dude, if you had just read my instructions and then actually gone and listened, you would have understood what this was doing for you.

So do your homework.

Do your homework. Right. If you're going to be on there, do the homework.

And that, too, would have given that particular client an opportunity to craft their message in a way that answers the questions and still refers back to their book and still delivers the value that the host is looking for.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I think one of the biggest things that when it comes to guesting that an author is really looking for is how can they use that particular interview to leverage sales, get book sales, or build their email list or whatever else? What are some strategies that they should keep in mind that will actually equate into measurable results?

I think the one that I've used the most is. You want. We've touched on this. We're going to say the word value and lead with value. We're going to say that over and over and over again. It's basically tattooed, and you want to be leading with value. So you never want to be asking something of the people you want to be offering things. So instead of saying, go buy my book if you create a free version or some kind of free lead magnet. And so for me, my book has journal entries as writing prompts because it's all about storytelling and writing your story. So I took the writing prompts from the book and I just removed them and made a PDF that you can print out, you can download, and you can start writing your story. You don't need the book to do it. So instead of me going on these Podcasts and saying, now go buy my book. I can say, go download this free journal that goes along with my book. And I'm not asking them for anything. I'm not asking them to spend money. I'm not asking them to do anything. I'm offering to give them something for free. And when I do that, of course I get their email address, they get on my mailing list and then I can send them emails with some reasons to buy my book and other other content. More value episodes of podcasts. I've done that, I talked about it, to give them some more insights. So you're able to just continue offering more value and in exchange eventually ask them to buy the book, Buy the course that goes with the book, be part of your, your membership group, whatever it is, you can add those in as you go. Yeah, but you're not hitting them right out the gate with a request.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because, you know, I do get a lot of authors that are like, oh, I want to be on podcast, because that's going to contribute to, to sales. And I almost hate to burst the bubble a little bit and say, you know, one podcast interview is not going to have you see a huge bulls boost in sales. Unless you're doing, you know, the Lewis Howes and the, and the Joe Rogans and the like, huge, huge, huge ones, you're more than likely not going to see a massive spike in sales right away. But you can drive that traffic to somewhere. You know, just out of curiosity, out of the different guests or shows that you guys have worked on or seen, have you seen some examples of authors or guests who've kind of leveraged those podcasts and really interesting ways to get some kind of results out of it?

Well, I think one of the most interesting ways is they repurpose it. You know, one of the things that you can do to compliment a podcast host is to actually share the episode on your social media. You know, make be proud of the fact that you were on that show and share that with your audience. So not only are you leveraging the podcast host audience, but you're, you're leveraging your own audience as well. Then you also have the opportunity, if you ask for a copy, the copy of the episode. And most podcast hosts are more than happy to give you the content. You have the opportunity to repurpose it. So there is a ton of content that you can utilize in each and every episode of a podcast that you're on, whether it be taking out clips for reels, whether it Be taking out quote cards, you know, for creating social media graphics. There's a whole variety of things you can do there from a repurposing perspective that will allow you to reach an even deeper audience. So it's really just taking the opportunity to maximize the effectiveness and the impact of every show that you're on.

Yeah, and that actually leads into some of my other questions, which are, I mean, and Larry, specifically for you, knowing your AI background, are there specific tools or strategies AI powered that you would recommend for authors? Now that didn't exist a few years ago.

As, as in what regard? In. In getting on podcasts?

No, in repurposing that content and being able to leverage that content. Because, you know, you were just talking about how, you know, you can take that and use it for a lot of different things. But I think for a lot of authors, that feels really intimidating. They're like, I'm not an editor. I don't know how to, I don't know how to cut videos. I don't know how to do this. So what are some of the tools or strategies that they could be using considering what's out in the AI market now?

Yeah, there's a variety of tools out there. I mean, descript is the leader in the industry when it comes to AI powered editing and, and editing just by word. You can literally edit a text document and it edits the video for you. There's opus clips that's out there that will help you produce vertical videos for you to share. It's also got a cool feature where it ranks the videos and shows you which ones are most likely to go viral. Not sure how accurate that is in all honesty, but it's a cute little feature. Cap Cut is another great one. And it's an app that is right there on your phone that does a tremendous job with a to ton of built in AI features right there as well. I mean, the list goes on and on, but those are three just off the top of my head that are very, very effective. Oh, there's also Cast magic. I mean, Cast magic is great as well. You can load the episode up into Cast Magic. It'll give you transcripts, it'll give you clips, it'll give you really anything you want. You even have the opportunity to write custom prompts within Cast Magic to get whatever kind of content or whatever kind of summaries that you're looking for. It's a great tool as well.

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I actually wrote all those down because I don't use any of them currently. And I want to turn them over to some people. So, I mean, when we talk about repurposing content, I want to get a little bit more clear on some of the ways that people can use. Let's say they get that podcast episode from a host. They've got 60 minutes of either audio or video. How would you use that content? What would you use it for? Would you turn it into video? Blog post? Like, what would kind of process be around that?

I would totally turn it into video, you know, and right now we're seeing videos in the 15 to 22nd range that are getting the most attention. So I would slice and dice it up just in a way that really, really captures that value nugget that's right there in that episode. And, and that's one of the most effective ways to do it. Sarah, I know you had something there. I didn't mean to cut you off.

Oh, no, you're good. There's always, whenever someone asks me this question, there's a suggestion that I make that blows people's minds and it makes me really happy. And then I see them telling everybody else. And so now people may have heard of it. Go and make a Spotify playlist.

Oh, out of your podcast episodes?

Yeah. So this isn't out of like the file they give you. Actually go onto Spotify and search for your name and under podcasts and you'll probably get a list of the podcast episodes that you've been on. Create a playlist that's just like mine. Is Sarah Losey on podcasts. And every podcast that I've been a guest on is on that playlist. That playlist is now embedded on my Media Kit page on my website and I can send that to people. Like, that's one of the questions I just saw in the chat was how do you get on more podcasts? That's a great way to leverage your past one so they can see other shows that you've been on. They can see if you have a good mic, Is the audio quality good? Are you. Are you just selling or are you bringing value? They can go through that almost like a little audio resume and find out more.

That is a great idea. And that's a free thing that you can do that you can easily put together in one place. If you have a few different episodes, you can put it all together in one place. You can add that link to that to your website. You can use that as a calling card. And honestly, I would think I would use that quite a bit because when I'm pitching authors for podcasts. One of the first questions you get is, where have they been featured before? Where, what episodes have they been on before? What are they? What are they? You know, what's kind of their experience and background on podcasts. And the same goes for speaking as well. So that's a great idea. I'm gonna start using that one. I'm gonna steal that one.

Sarah, do it. Oh, my God. If. If I can see every single, like, author and speaker have a embedded Spotify playlist of their podcast, I will be so happy.

Yeah, you need to get a Spotify sponsorship for that. And I bet they'll no doubt.

Come on, guys. Spotify.

Well, I'm going to shift gears into how authors can use pot, can start their own podcast. But before we do that, I do want to dive into some prizes. So we already talked about, we're going to give away some of our book launcher author books. And we also have Sarah Losey's book. Open this book. I wish I could grab it. It's in the other room. I show the. The COVID for you. Oh, you probably have it. Yeah, I was gonna say if you didn't, you wouldn't be doing your job. There you go. Open this book right there.

Okay.

So in order to win this prize, I have a question for you. This is a really simple one. What is your favorite podcast that you listen to regularly? What is one that you listen to regularly? So everyone. And use the hashtag favorite podcast. Hashtag favorite podcast. And then drop the title. Not only will we, you know, hopefully that'll get you entered to win a copy of Sarah's book or any of our other books, but then we might even learn about some podcasts that we didn't know about before. So. Because there are so many of them. So. So many of them. Yes. So put in that hashtag favorite podcast. And yes, don't space out the words and then drop those in the chat. In the meantime, I want to ask you guys another question about podcast guests testing before we move into some of the other things. So I. There are. We've talked about some of the big podcasts that are out there, right? You know, those are the ones that are. That everybody wants to get on Lewis Howes. Everybody wants to get on Joe Rogan or they want to get on, you know, Super Soul Sunday or something. And then there's the smaller, more niche podcasts, you know, that maybe have smaller downloads, but the audience is more unique. Now, I know the answer to this, but I would love to hear it from you to the experts, what do you say to someone who is just aiming for those big ones and doesn't want to, you know, waste time or whatever on maybe a smaller podcast? Like what are the value in doing big, small, niche, general. I wanna, I wanna kind of see what the, what, what, what we can help people with when it comes to some of that mindset.

Larry, you want me to go first? You want to take that first?

You go ahead.

All right. I think I have a few different ways that I talk about this. And first is we want to be thinking about the audience. And if you have a show that has millions of listeners, but it's a very general show, you're talking to millions of listeners, but you're just another guest on the show talking about a topic that they may or may not be interested in, versus if you have a very niche show, you know that every single person listening to this show is interested in what you have to say. So they are a lot more likely to really dig in and pay attention. And when people look at audiences as being small when it's on a podcast, I think it's because of the, like the Joe Rogans of the world. And we see shows like that. I know the Taylor Swift episode of Travis Kelsey's podcast has, I don't know.

A billion this week. That was insane at 3 o' clock.

In the morning, but it has like a billion views probably. And you're not going to get that.

That's.

Larry likes to call it the Joe Rogan delusions of grandeur. But if we're, we're thinking of podcasts in that mental space of this is what it should be. And it's almost like we're trying to do like a stadium tour and we're trying to do the Eras tour. And if you have a show that has an audience of 25 people that are really dedicated, but you see them sitting in the audience in a football stadium, that stadium is empty. It is crickets. You are speaking to an empty house. But think of it instead as being like a podcast is an opportunity for really intimate and personal conversations. And that's what this should be. So think of those 25 people sitting in your living room and having a conversation with you there. And that is standing room only. People are knocking into each other. They just spilled their wine on your brand new white couch. You are losing your mind. That is a lot of people to be sitting in your, in your living room having a conversation. So if you stop thinking of it as like, I need to be doing these stadium tours and think of it instead as who can I have these genuine conversations with? And like, who would I want to welcome into my living room to have this talk with me? I think it kind of helps reframe that mindset a little bit. And instead of looking at it as a small audience, you look at it as a very niche, dedicated, intimate audience.

I love that 100% that. And I just thought of as you were speaking, I'm like, here's Sarah's cap cut of like her perfect answer to things. Larry, what, what about you? Do you have anything to add to that?

I mean, she was very, very thorough in her response, but it's very accurate and it goes beyond just from a guesting perspective. I mean, we're literally seeing a shift in the industry to where the vast majority of podcasts, they're not getting the thousands and thousands of downloads anymore. Now, sure, your big celebrities, they're, they're still doing their thing, but from an independent type podcaster, which, the vast majority of the shows that we go on are probably going to be indie shows. You know, they're averaging anywhere from 100 to 125 downloads per episode. So regardless of the show that you're on, it's probably not going to be massive. And something I want to throw out there, as you want to avoid this at all cost, you may be tempted to buy your way onto one of the bigger shows. Bradley, right now, he's got one of the biggest podcasts out there in the entrepreneur business business, bro space. And he, excuse me, he's actually running ads to have you come on his podcast. But you have to buy your way on there. You have to pay to be a guest. And that's just something that I've never gotten behind is paying to be a guest. Because now you literally are an infomercial. You're not really there to deliver value. And going back to your audience, you're not necessarily talking to your audience. Because if we think back to that old saying, if you're talking to everyone, who are you talking to?

No one.

No one. So that's, that's, that's the big thing. So don't fall prey to those guys that are out there that are charging you to be on their high profile podcast, it's just not worth it.

I think we can even jump back to something we were talking about before. And being a guest on a podcast, there's strategy to it. There's something, it takes experience to be able to really lead with the value and, and really Use it to its highest like capabilities and you're not going to be a great guest on the first show that you go on. So aiming for those smaller shows is a really great way to get your reps in and to practice. So that's another way to look at it as you don't want to start. Like, the first podcast I guessed it on was one of the biggest finance podcasts in the world. And I, that was very embarrassing for so many reasons, mostly because the topic was a really bad tattoo.

I'm figuring out how we can get this story into this interview.

No, no, you're not.

Yes, I. Oh no, I'm not. Yeah, it's not stories.

No, it's fine, it's fine. No, it's fine, it's fine. I don't, I don't even know you, but you, you want to get on the smaller shows, especially in the beginning, so you can practice, you can get those reps in. But also we were just talking about the importance of repurposing. So it's not necessarily that you're going on the show just so that you can talk to whoever their audience is. You're getting that content, you're able to share that out on social media. You're getting stuff for your, for your speaker reel, for your podcast guest reel, you're getting stuff to add to your Spotify playlist that everyone is going to go set up for themselves and you're able to really repurpose that content and you can make yourself look like a real pro just by saying that you were a guest on a podcast. If you share like I was a guest on this podcast talking about this. No one has to listen to that show for people to see that and immediately think, oh, that person must be the expert on that topic.

Exactly.

They wouldn't be asked on this podcast if they weren't like top tier on this topic. So it really isn't about the audience size. Sometimes it's just about what you do with that content afterwards.

I think it, yeah, 100%. I'm going to go along with everything you just said, especially the fact that if you're starting out, you got to practice somewhere, you got to, you got to get your points down, you got to make sure that you're flowing well. On the non sexy side, doing lots of different podcasts is going to help you with SEO. It's going to help you with authority on who you're, you know, what you're talking on. You're going to be constantly associated with your key words. I Mean, one of my favorite things to do for authors after we've booked them, you know, six, seven months into booking, and they've been on dozens of podcasts at that point is just to Google their name and start to see all of those different links that are tying them directly to their topic, which I think is just huge. So, okay, we were in the middle of giving away a prize, so I'm gonna bring Angela back up here to go ahead and grab all of those hashtags. Hashtag favorite podcast. And we. I saw some really interesting ones in the chat. Angela, why don't you go ahead and.

Yeah. Do you want to do the. The spin, where it chooses anyone who did that? Yeah. Or were you choosing your favorite.

No, no, no. Do the spinner. Okay. The spinner.

Okay. Let me just put the giveaway tool on my other screen.

Have you guys seen this? This giveaway tool on Stream Yard? It's kind of fun, no? Yeah, you put a pot. You put a hashtag in the comments and then it'll pull everybody that put that in there and enter them to the win. You get a nice little spinner.

That's super cool.

I've seen third party tools do that, but never did. I didn't know it was. They had it in Streamyard.

Yeah.

Yeah, you go to streamyard.com forward/giveaway, and it'll.

It'll do it.

And you just choose whatever stream you're on. So that's us right now. So, favorite podcast.

We've got some great answers here. We've got Mike Rowe Gun talk, script notes, My quest for the best online business for Christian women. I love it. Kevin Hall. Yay, Kevin. Congrats, Kevin. Kevin's one of our YouTube besties. He is here often, and this seems like a great time to answer Kevin's question. We talked about it very briefly before, but let's go ahead and throw that up.

Sure.

Yeah. And Kevin, you know the drill. I imagine you would actually want Sarah.

Sarah's book.

So if you do want that, or if you want one of the others, just email me and we'll get that sent your way.

My feelings will be hurt if you don't choose mine.

Well, there you go, Kevin.

It was chosen for you. So.

So Kevin's question. There's a question. First, some background. I've been a guest on almost 40 podcasts. Been asked back six times. My question is, do you have tips to get on more podcasts?

I. I have one tip and I heard Sarah. I heard her lips part. I'm pretty sure she's gonna say the exact same thing, so go with it, Sarah.

No, no, you didn't want to see.

Okay. All right, well, I'm gonna have to say Pod Batch. You know Pod.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Is the number one site out there. It's basically a dating app for podcast hosts. And podc, you go out there and you fill out a profile. Basically, you create a one sheet that's online there for Pod Match, and it gives you the opportunity to peruse over 16, 000 different podcasts for you to potentially be a guest on. So it's a great site, very inexpensive to join, and one of the most. It's. It's just so streamlined, and it's. It's one of the easiest ways to get on other podcasts.

Thank you for that. I just dropped our Pod Match. Oh, there it is. Okay. Angela, did you get it? Yeah, we got our Pod Match link right there in the chat, so you can.

Oh, you beat me to it.

Yep.

We are big fans of Pod Match. We've known the founders there, Alex and Alicia, for a long time. I met them at different conferences. Book Launchers was actually Pod Match's first agency account. Yeah. So. Because when he started it, I was like, dude, this is great, but I gotta create 20 different accounts for, you know, me to do my job. And he's like, let me see what I can do. And so they created their agency account. Now we've got all of our authors up there, and I agree, it is such a great platform. Kevin is already on there. That's great. Good job, Kevin. Yeah, I'm a big, big fan of them. I want to switch gears a little bit from guesting to hosting. I get a lot of authors that come in and they have great ideas. They. They think they want to know what they want to do with their brand and their thought leadership, but they're like, is a podcast right for me? Should I spend the time and energy to launch a podcast, which I would equate to launching a book in terms of dedication time, all of that. So what would be a reason someone would start a podcast? Why would they make that, you know, decision?

Sure. I mean, one of the reasons they would do it is because they want to build a bigger audience. You know, they want to leverage the power of the book that they've already established and then allow that momentum to continue to grow and potentially reach new clients and new listeners and readers as well. And something that I saw in the comments earlier, too. I'm trying to see where it was. Audrey D. Mentioned Something about the relationship building. And, you know, I, I think that's massive. It's such a great opportunity to build very true, long lasting relationships that provide value in both directions. You know, that's one of the reasons that I quit my. One of my last podcasts. It was called you're Boss. And it got to the point where people were just coming on to pitch their course or here we go pitch their book or pitch their website or whatever it may be, and then they were gone and I would never hear from them again. And it really lacked that relationship building. So it's a perfect opportunity for you to not only grow your audience, but also expand on the relationships there for you as well.

And I would add, so I want to give an example. I know you asked for examples before, and if anyone is familiar with Laura Cathcart Robbins, she is, she's, she's amazing. And she is the host of the Only One in the Room podcast, which is very successful, award winning, all of, all of the everything. And the only reason she ever had a podcast was because she wanted to write a book. And she wrote a memoir. And her story is fascinating, but it's really hard to sell a memoir. And she was sending it to all of the big publishing companies and that's the feedback she was getting. Well, mostly was just crickets, but the one person that responded said, no, but it's really hard to sell memoirs. You need to have an audience, go launch a podcast. So she launched the only one in the room. She built her audience, she built her community. And when she was ready to launch her book, New York Times bestseller. Yeah, it, it really does work for building that audience. And whether that's before your book comes out or once your book is already out, you build an audience, you build a community, and you build those relationships. There's something about just having someone in your ears, like not even being able to see them, but they're just talking to you in your ears, that you feel like you're part of that conversation and you feel like you're friends with the host. There's people come up to you and say, like, oh my God, like, it's so good to see you. And they act like they know you and you're like, oh, you listen to my podcast, it feels like your friends and you don't get that level of intimacy and connection from any other media.

Yeah, so I literally had that happen last night, just like 12 hours ago. I mean, it happened.

We were also with Alex and Alicia last night too.

Alex San Felipe.

Why does that not surprise me. Anytime you're with Larry at a conference, it's like trying to cross the floor with Elvis. It's just. It takes an hour to get from one place to another. We.

I would have to build in, like, extra time if I'm like, okay, we have to be there in an hour. Let's leave now to walk across the room.

So anyway, starting a podcast is an excellent opportunity.

I'm just remembering. I think. I forget which conference. It was probably podcast. And I was sitting, having lunch and just getting some work done, and Larry was like, oh, I'm just gonna take five minutes. I'm gonna go sit down at this table over here, get my homework done. And I watched over the course of an hour as everybody came up to Larry saying hello, and he was like, I'm not gonna get anything done. I gotta go upstairs.

He's the mayor of podcast.

Yeah.

Just to show a little bit of. Of Larry's clout in the. The podcasting world. So I want to get into, you know, most podcasts. I forget how many that are out there now. It's some astronomical number, Right. Six million or something. Probably the same number of books that are out there. And a lot of them die on the vine. Right. An author might start one. They might get a couple of episodes under their belt, and then it goes nowhere. What are some of the reasons for that? What are some of the mistakes that people make when they're starting a podcast that, you know, caused that to. To happen?

Yeah.

I think if we jump back to what the Larry's Joe Rogan delusions of grandeur. Yeah, we. There's an industry term as pod fade, and it's very rare that people get past episodes seven through 10. I think at this point it's even shorter. Now we're at, like, episode three to five that you don't get past because you think that you. If I build it, they will come. And I created a podcast. So now where are my listeners?

Right.

I'm here waiting for you. Like, yeah, that's really not how it works. And we were just having this conversation with a client earlier today, and they're asking about their numbers, and we're like, you're only on episode 11. We don't really start digging into those numbers and those statistics until, like, episode 100. This. This is a slow burn. This is a long road. And if this is something that you just want to do for an episode or two and see if it's skyrockets your career, I can tell you not to waste your time, because it won't. But if you're dedicated to it and you keep doing it and you get those few audience members that start coming in and you dedicate yourself to them and to giving them value, whether it's five people, 25 people, 500 people, you just want to continue making great content for those few people. And then those people are going to grow and they're going to continue to grow. And as long as you keep at it and you stay consistent and you stay delivering that value, they will continue and continue and continue, and you'll build that community. You just have to be very long sighted in it and dedicated because they also, they're only going to come if the content is great and the content's not going to be great. If you go into it thinking, I want to sell this book, or you go into it thinking, I want to get advertisers. No, you go into it thinking, I want to make some great content for my listeners and for my audience. And that's what you're going to do.

That's great. Yeah. Larry, anything to add there, considering how much, how many podcasts you've been on and seen over the years and everything else?

Well, it's interesting because I was literally just pulling up a presentation I gave last week, and just to give you some up to date Numbers, as of July 2025, there are 4.6 million podcasts that are out there. But, but here's the kicker. There's only 10.2% of those are active, meaning that they've released an episode within the last 60 days. So a lot of people think, man, the, the market's just flooded. There's no opportunity for me out there. I cannot get a podcast off the ground. Well, really, there's only about 450, 460,000 of them out there that are even active. Then when you start looking at the fact that there's 110 different categories for podcasts and you start putting those in those categories and those subcategories, odds are, depending on what your topic is, you got a pretty good chance of being discovered with a podcast right now because we saw a massive influx of COVID creators, and then we saw a massive fall off of those same Covid creators, and that's why the numbers appear to be so inflated. But there's still a tremendous opportunity. And, you know, you were asking what was one of the biggest mistakes, and I think the biggest mistake is starting a podcast without a plan and a purpose. You know, you have to be strategic with what you're doing. And I know you guys do the exact same thing when you're launching a book. Well, it's that same plan, that same stretch, that same strategy, those same goals that we need to outline specifically for the show as well, that allows us to create content that's consistent with our message, consistent with our goals, and will get us where we want to go in a certain amount of time. I want to go back. You know, it's not going to happen overnight, even if you do have a plan and a purpose. But you're gonna. You're gonna streamline things and you're gonna see that the content is starting to make an impact a lot faster than you would if you just. Just nimbly Bimbly started a podcast.

Nimbly.

Blimbly Nimbly Bimbly.

I mean, I think. I think the message I'm really pulling from this, too, is that consistency is key. Same thing with authors. Same thing with launching your book. If you go and you only market it during launch and then do nothing afterwards, it's gonna. It's gonna launch, and then it's not gonna do anything. Same thing with social media. You may put out a blog post, and then if you don't do anything again for three months, you're not going to see any action. So, you know, I think between podcasting and then being an author, consistency is going to be key to attracting that. That key audience. I want to hearken back to our title of this episode, which is the Ultimate Trifecta for Thought Leadership. Okay, so we have talked about podcasting. We have talked about books, we have talked about speaking, which is where we all, you know, sort of saw each other most recently? I. What's. Why are those three things the trifecta of thought leadership? How do they play together? How do you see speaking and books and podcasting work together?

Larry, this is your thing, and you're gonna. He's actually going to correct you. Well, not correct you, but he. He has a fourth. He has four.

Oh.

Oh, what's the fourth?

Well, I think you also need a website with your domain with your name as your domain.

So, like LarryRoberts.com that sort of part of the overall brand. But yeah, you could. You could. I would say we would call that the digital marketing aspect of it.

There you go. There you go. But yeah, you know, as far as the other three, it gives you an opportunity to present your message in a consistent and coherent fashion in front of a variety of different audiences. Some people are going to listen to podcasts but they're probably not going to. Or they may not read books. Some people may read books, but they don't ever see anybody speak on stage. Somebody may see you speak on stage. Now you have an opportunity to plug your book and plug your podcast. So they really are just a cohesive unit. When you bring the three together, it gives you an opportunity to tap into so many different audiences at different levels at different times. So that's why I always say that you have to have that trifecta.

Yeah, I mean, I. I think there's. I think it goes back to. To that idea of repurposing content. Right. You can take. You can take a book and turn it into a podcast and turn it into a keynote speech. You can take a keynote speech and then expand upon that in a book. In. In a podcast. You can take a podcast and use the episodes to turn it into a book, which then helps you refine a keynote. I mean, they all play off each other quite a bit. And if you have. And I'm answering my own question here, so I apologize. I just realized I'm interviewing you guys.

Me.

You're also a thought leader, so this is great.

Well, I am. I am contributing thoughts in a leadership fashion. But I would say that I love it when we can work with authors who are able to say, okay, we've got all this great source material in the book. What are the elements of this book that can turn into a good podcast? Okay, now that we've seen how your audience plays off of your ideas, how can we turn that into a keynote speech that can then be marketed further? And I think all of them sort of lean on each other as well. You can use your podcast to promote the book. You can use your keynotes to promote the book and the podcast. You can use the book to promote, you know, either of these pieces. So they do all kind of lend each other. But I would say, Larry, instead of maybe a square of thought leadership, I think we've got a trifecta and an umbrella over it, which is the domain and your website and all your digital marketing. It's like that all exists under your umbrella.

Right on. Yeah, I. I'll buy into that.

Yeah. Okay.

All right.

We need a diagram.

But, yeah, I mean, we could definitely put something together after this episode to go along with it. I think that.

Yeah, I think so.

I think I'm actually inspired to create that diagram. Yeah.

Yeah, you're gonna need to share it with me.

I say that all the time. I mean, Sarah can attest to the Fact that I literally say that everywhere I go, that you need those three things if you really want to be a thought leader. So, yeah, maybe I do need a graphic to show that. That'd be kind of cool.

I think you do. I think you do. You can have me on your podcast to talk about it.

There you go.

Okay.

I don't know if you have. You may have another question in mind, but I see JW over here, and I wanted to give people a resource. Oh, cool. Excellent. So, JW asked, what are the top one through five best podcasts for picture books and picture book authors? Well, regrettably, picture books and picture book authors isn't necessarily a category within one of those 110 categories that I mentioned. However, there is an excellent resource, and it's called Listen notes dot com. And so what I did was while we were talking there and I saw JW's question, I went out to Listen Notes and I simply looked up picture book podcasts, and what came up was, we have one here called the Good Ship illustration. It's a top 1% podcast that's probably in the top five borrowed and returned. Another top 1% podcast, also probably in the top five Picture Book Summit podcast, top 3 percenter. So here's an opportunity for you here to go out to Listen Notes. Really type in any subject that you want to find episode, or find shows that may have an opportunity for you to guest on.

I love it. Yep, I was. Listen Notes was exactly the resource I was going to point people to. I think it's a fantastic one. There's another resource that we use quite a bit, Pod Change Chaser, but that is a paid service. Listen Notes is free. You can get a lot of good info from that. But we also use podchaser just behind the scenes, especially when it comes to media pitching and getting contact info and that kind of thing. Well, we've only got a few minutes left, and I want to make sure that we give away at least one more prize to our audience. So I. We have two. We have two.

Because Kevin would like for us to redraw because he was being ever the gentleman. However, Kevin, I think you should still win a copy of Sarah's book, since you did say you wanted it.

I think he should definitely have a copy of Sarah's book if Kevin would like it.

Just like exploding with books, and he's like, no, no, no. I think you should definitely get a copy of her book.

Yeah, I think we should, too. But I want to do one. One more question. Okay. This is this is another question about podcasting. For those that are listening. If you could be a guest on any podcast, which would it be? And just use the hashtag guest and hashtag guest and I'll put that in the chat. Whoops, that's not the right one. Guest. So put that in the chat. Which podcast would you want to be on? Who would it be? What's your dream? And then use that hashtag guest. Okay, so in the time that we have left, I would love to hear from Sarah and Larry. When people are thinking about doing a podcast, they're, you know, we've already talked, it's gotta, you gotta do consistency. Look at the long game. But what are some of the other things that they should be considering before they jump into the podcast? What's the prep work work? What are the steps?

That's, that's a great question. We have like a, a seven step framework. We call it capital. It's concept. Audience. I'm gonna try to do this off top of my head. Proposition. Larry, help me out.

I'm looking it up, man.

Identity, technology.

Audience. There you go, there you go.

Audience. No, we said audience already. Something. And launch.

Action.

Action and launch.

Okay, let's go over those again. You need an audience, you need a proposition, you need to have an identity, you need to get the technology, you need to develop a call to action, and then you need to launch the show. And that all comes out to capital. So that's something that Sarah came up with. I think it's brilliant and, and we've used it since she, I mean, she came up with it about a year or so ago and I just loved it. So I think it really drives home everything that you need.

Yeah, I would say the one that we really focus on and that I think everybody really, I mean, you have the list, but what do they actually mean? The proposition one is the, really the most important. And when you think of like, if you've ever worked in sales, unique selling proposition, we say unique listening proposition. What is the unique listening proposition of this show? Like Larry said before, there's 10, what was it, 6 million podcasts out there? 10% of them are active. How is yours going to be different? What is it about your show that is different than everything else on the market? What is it that's different than everyone else talking about the same topic as you? And when you can really hone down what that piece of just unique value is, you're going to weave that into all of your content. You're going to title your show to Communicate that unique value proposal proposition. You're going to title your episodes and plan your episodes around that unique value proposition. Write your description to identify that unique value proposition. Everything is going to tie back to it, because it becomes the promise that you make to your listeners every single episode. If you listen to my show, this is what you're going to get. So I think that is out of all of the capital, the P is very, very important to think about first.

Run through that acronym one more time, because that was gold. I want to get it again just one more time.

I want to see if I can do it. I want to see if I can do it.

Okay. See if you can.

Okay. Concept.

Okay.

Audience proposition. Identity technology. Ta. Action. And launch.

There you go.

Love it.

Give it up for Sarah.

Thank you.

Thank you. She remembered her own.

I remember the thing I made up.

She remembered her own acronym. That's amazing.

It makes me laugh, though, because when I. When I speak at conferences and do workshops on this, I always get to make the same stupid joke, which it takes capital. So everyone pull out your wallets and pass them forward. Just kidding. Not that kind. And it's. It's dumb every time, and it makes me laugh, and that's all that matters.

That's awesome. All right, well, we just have a minute or two left. Let's go ahead. I only saw a couple people that entered that hashtag gas soul.

Boom.

So. So I'm gonna throw Kelly Renee in there as well. I think she meant to put guest instead of favorite podcast.

She might be not watching live. That might actually be. Which will actually work because I do still need to redraw someone from favorite podcast, so she does technically have a chance to win.

All right, well, go ahead. Let's do that. Let's do that.

Yeah. So I'll do it twice. So I'll do this first one for the second half of the one that Kevin won and he kindly shared, and then we will do the guest. Guest one.

Sounds great.

Let's do it. Last couple seconds to get that in there. Get guest. Hashtag guest.

And what did Kevin win again?

No, no, this is the same thing from earlier.

Kevin wins everything.

He does? Yeah, he does.

He. I think he. He said, I won't use the hashtag on his last comment. So I think he might be. He might have the most book launcher swag. Aside from me.

I think that's a podcast. Kevin wins everything. Yeah.

Yay.

There you go, Kelly. Good job.

Perfect. So, Kelly, I will need your mailing address, and I will need to know.

Which book you would like, if you'd like. Sarah, if you'd like one of our authors.

So please email me at team T A M book launchers.com and let me get this other one in here so that we can start to wrap things up. So it was hashtag guest best. So let us see, only three. So the. The things are low since some people.

Didn'T use and one of them's us.

Oh, yeah, the comment that you made. Okay, well, then we can't have you be the winner, Sarahs.

I already have Sarah's book.

Oh, that's funny. So, Gary, an unbreakable tv.

What's it coming down to? Congrats.

All right, Gary, well, you should know the drill as well. Please send me an email for which book you'd like and include your mailing.

Address and unbreakable tv. That was way too close. So if you also want a copy, send them your mailing address and I will send you a book.

Everyone's a winner today.

Everyone's a winner.

Well, we are gonna wrap this up. Thank you so much to Sarah and Larry for joining us. But before they do, Sarah has sent me a link that I thought was really valuable. This is a. A link to recommended resources for podcasting. There's equipment recommendations on there, which I think is really important. We didn't talk about it today, but if podcasting is part of your marketing strategy, and it should be, then you want to invest in some good materials. So there is all sorts of different cool stuff on there. There's links for things like Pod Match and Cop cut, some of the things that we talked about today in terms of. Of clips to repurpose your content, business management tools, and you can get copies of Sarah and Larry's books right there on that link. So please check that out. Are there any other links to check out more on you and Sarah and Larry? Anywhere else that you want to drop?

That'll bring you to workwithbranda.com so you can see everything on our website, all of our services, and everything that we do. And if you go under, launch a podcast, we actually have a page just for authors. You can learn a little bit more about how we work with authors, how authors can launch podcasts for their books, and there's even a free ebook you can download to learn a little bit more about how book could help podcasts and help grow your book.

Fantastic. Well, thank you guys so much for guesting today and and chatting with me about podcasting and authors for our followers. There is another YouTube Live with Julie. That is going to be this Saturday, August 23rd, and that is at 3:15pm Eastern, 1215 Pacific, so be sure to check that out. But in the meantime, really appreciate you guys spending this hour with me and getting to know some of our YouTube besties.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah.

Thanks, everybody.

All right, everyone, have a great afternoon. Good to see y'.

All.