How to Turn Content Into a Real Business Asset | Nicky Pecone

Well, it's kind of funny because, as I said, I actually wrote a paper on this for college back in '06, and it actually became more of what it was envisioned as, I think, in the early years. Like, their idea was, we're just going to make these big long commercials for the, you know, whatever product it is, and we're going to put them out there and people can get a little download at frequency.

And, and so more like an infomercial.

Well, that's kind of the thing. What is— and while we don't think of it that way.

Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Wausau, Wisconsin. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Thank you for listening, even if I did mispronounce it. Joining me today, Nicky Picone of Iron Age Marketing. Nicky P, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me there, Christian.

Okay, so I am fascinated first by Iron Age Marketing. What does that mean? Why did you pick that name?

So I want to say this is probably about 3 years ago, this term started creeping out into, into the internet, this thing called the Iron Age of Media. And the whole concept behind it was, it was just kind of a niche thing happening out of the, uh, ComixGate movement. But it was this idea of kind of everybody, and maybe starting from one part of the political spectrum, but I personally felt it went much broader than that, where people are just getting tired of the everything by consensus, everything by committee, watered down, where you're going to read what we tell you to read nonsense. Going around. And you have a lot of creatives that were, you know, not fitting the mold. Like, one of my guests I had in the initial run of the podcast was actually a young Black woman who got told her story wasn't Black enough, so they wouldn't accept her to a publishing company. But the idea was, people are so tired of the corporate nonsense that the only way you're going to do out in is to go do it yourself. So we're here, we're at the Iron Age of media, you you know, the Golden Age, Silver Age, whatever. We're here where it's all DIY, do it yourself, and you're just— that's just gonna be the way you do it. And one of the things that I think we learned from that, like, whole process starting is everybody across the board feels screwed over by large companies. They've taken advantage of us for years. And in my business, which largely is podcasting, you end up One of the best things you can have is that face, that personality. Put that up front. And it works good that businesses, when you get to put a face to them and you don't get to feel like that mindless, soulless corporation, because, you know, in a world where everybody hates them, it's great when you get to be the person leading, you know, the charge, the person up front.

Okay. So, okay, let me, let me ask this because I'm not familiar with the term or the movement. Is, is, is that like going medieval, uh, or, or is that a common term?

To be more medieval, uh, not so much. It's more, it's more a matter of— I think that a lot of the guys that were creating were fantasy authors or aspiring fantasy authors. And so to think, you know, uh, Iron Age, it's, it's in line with their sword and sorcery kind of aesthetic they were going with. And I I'm a Dungeons Dragons guy myself. Part of my whole reason kind of getting involved with those people is because I'm a fantasy and science fiction kind of guy. So if I can help people create more books that I'm interested in reading, then by all means, why wouldn't I? Sure. So I just kind of took it on myself when I was coming up with a name for the company, like, all right, well, let's go with Iron Age Marketing.

Okay. So you did that about 3 years ago is what I heard. What did you do prior to that?

Prior to that, I've worked as a side musician for a number of years. I've been pseudo-professional for probably 25 years now.

If you get paid, you're a professional.

Well, that's the way I've always treated it. I would get paid since I was 17 years old doing it. Never been my full-time commitment, but it's been, you know, the part job. Other than that, I was actually I work, I work in electrical maintenance, we'll say, for a lot of that time, uh, which was working in air pumps and vacuums for a number of years. I also worked for an ATM company in a bank vault for a number of years, which I actually ran a bank vault for a couple years in there. Okay, so I've done a number of things, and then, yeah, some things moved around in the economy, things, and I found myself on a job and I'm like, well I picked up all these skills from, you know, being in bands. And I don't know, probably about 10 years ago, I got really interested with the podcasting movement and marketing and started podcasting, started getting really into marketing. It's like, well, let's throw a shingle up and kind of see what can happen with that, you know.

Okay. All right. So what instrument did you play?

Um, I played everything but drums at this point.

Yeah, okay. What's your preference?

I'm— well, you can't tell, I'm coming up, coming outside of some bronchitis here, but I'm a vocalist by trade. If I were to pick the second favorite, it's always, uh, bass.

Uh, yes. Well, uh, I, uh, yes, I think the, um, whole musician thing is, is fascinating. I had a friend when we were in high school, he got his first guitar. I remember sitting in his room and he's kind of picking at it and he goes, "You know, you play keyboards. We should start a band." And I'm like, "Mm, no, no, no thank you. That sounds like an interesting gig." And he went on and had a successful music career for a while and tour, and then, you know, eventually kind of became a music producer as a side hustle. But I, I don't think music ever leaves you. Um, it, it's one of those things that I, I think it's more, uh, interesting when you can play with others as opposed to just playing by yourself. Making music with other people is, is a thrill I miss, honestly. Okay, so What attracted you to podcasting?

Ah, oh goodness. Um, well, if it's not obvious, I am a bit of a talker, and so any excuse to get out there and talk with more people. Honestly, a lot of it for me initially was, um, I had a newborn kid and kind of found myself having a lot of political issues with things that were going on in the country at the time and kind of fell in with this group of libertarian podcasters and made a bunch of friends there. But then like my interests started going well beyond just the politics. And I've had everything from environmental podcasts to music podcasts, eventually podcasts about podcasting.

Yeah. Were you, were you a podcast listener when you started or no?

Uh, you know, it kind of feels that way. Podcasting's been this weird thing in my life where, uh, when I was back in college, I think in 2006, actually wrote a paper about the future of advertising, this thing called podcasting. And then I don't think I thought about it again for another 10 years. But that's, you know, I started seeing a lot of my favorite comics, uh, were starting to come out with podcasts and Big Jay Oakerson, stuff like that, and started listening to a lot of those guys. The Broken Lizard guys were doing that. And so I'd find myself just kind of entranced by these long conversations where you really get to know people. We call it, what is it, the pseudo-social relationship now or something like that. And to me, it's always funny because in marketing, it's like the best secret weapon in the world is to get people to think they know you really, really well when they don't necessarily know you really, really well. If you're going for that KLT, a pseudo-social relationship is the best thing you can have.

Yeah, it is interesting because I didn't— I mean, I started a podcast. I started two podcasts two years ago, and I had never listened to podcasts. I was not a connoisseur. I had listened to talk radio when I was younger, but I don't know if it's because I quit driving as much or what, but I just kind of stopped listening to it. But it is that social connection, which is asynchronous, you know, it's one way, but you do feel like you're part of a community. And, you know, you even go back to the old radio station days, you know, pre-Sirius and all these things, that those local radio DJs were like icons in the community. And they, they, and to your point, like when you actually met them, they looked nothing like what you thought they looked like from listening to their voice. I do think it's interesting as I've kind of been working in the podcasting space and talking to a lot of folks that, that have done podcasting a lot longer than I have and much better than I have, how it shifted as, as a, as a marketing advertising medium from, you know, having a podcast that was interesting enough to attract sponsors and advertisers to monetize it to more of a way to build credibility in the community that you're wanting to talk to. Can you speak to that in your experience?

Well, it's kind of funny because, as I said, I actually wrote a paper on this for college back in '06. And it actually became more of what it was envisioned as, I think, in the early years. Like, their idea was, we're just going to make these big long commercials for the, you know, whatever product it is, and we're going to put them out there and people can get a little download at frequency. And, and what—

when it began, so more like an infomercial.

Well, that's kind of the thing. What is— and while we don't think of it that way, most businesses that are using podcasting today That is kind of the idea of it. Now, they're maybe not being saying, oh, look at how great this product is. What they're really relying more on is the connection and the personality to build that know, like, and trust for the people that listen to them, would be perspective. Now, there's also the big thing I always say podcasting is that there's, there's what you get, and then there's what you actually get. For me, like when I pitch it to people, the big thing is like, Everyone's always like, oh, I need more social media, more social media, more social media. And if nothing else that you can get out of podcasting, it's like, people like, oh, I don't have a million people listening to me. Podcasting to me is more about your email list. It's ensuring that you have something to send to your people every week and something to put on your social media every week, because podcasting forces you to always have content. It is a content generation machine. And it's not poor, kind of like, oh, you could be sitting there manufacturing memes for the next 6 months or coming up with these great stories that the algorithm does not care about. It doesn't care about your text. It does not care about your little image. Maybe you'll be lucky and catch something that for some reason goes viral, but it wants to push video. So you, you want to do things that are going to help feed it video to send out to people.

Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. Yeah, that, that's, that's also an interesting shift from strictly an audio format to a video format, uh, and I'll put a pin in that as you were and come back to it. As you were talking, I, uh, read a Substack article, um, about how the, the death of streaming is imminent, and it, and it went through the technology platforms, Apple, Spotify, etc., and Prime, and talked about the business model behind it. It was like, the author is a guy in the music space, um, and but it got me— one of the, one of the quotes in there that I found fascinating was that none of the, uh, streaming platforms, which, you know, include podcasts, allow for the facilitation of community. Like, there's no way to connect or engage in those platforms. I know Spotify has added some comment features, but it's just not— it's not really a great medium to connect community. What do you see from your side?

I mean, that's actually a really, really good point. All of the really big good communities I can think of— and I'm thinking of like the No Agenda guys, um, they have a massive audience that is very, very connective. They're doing actual meatspace meetups every, you know, month in a lot of places. But to do any of that, you have to go off platform. Um, in their case, that's why the Podcasting 2.0 thing has been a big deal. Like they're trying to generate actual commerce and actual interaction through podcasting with Podcasting 2.0. Now, right now, most of the stuff involving that is so, uh, technical that I don't know when we'd ever see adoption. Um, there's certain other things that are cool, like if you, you set up with a Lightning wallet, you can actually directly send Bitcoin to your favorite streamers and things of that nature. But To me, it has always been short-sighted that you have to go off platform to interact with people. Like, why doesn't Apple Podcasts have some feature in there other than terrible comments, right, to go and interact with you? But I think it's because they don't care. No, they don't. There are things— the attention is good. You do what you're on their platform. Why they've never tried to maximize— they'd rather maybe you just had to go to the next podcast. That's what they think.

Well, that was what this Substack, uh, author was saying, is Apple just has music to sell iPhones. They don't care about the, the content. And Prime is essentially the same thing, is to get you to renew your Prime membership, keep you in their ecosystem. So they're, they're ecosystem plays for Prime and Apple. And Spotify, Spotify is the only independent one, but they're, they're screwed because their margins are fixed. They add more content, they pay out more dollars. Their margins are fixed, essentially. So what do you see works as far as creating community in these podcast communities?

It kind of depends on like what, what your people are, what your audience is, who you're trying to reach. Um, some, some people don't even understand how they've built the communities they've, they've done. I had a guest on my podcast a couple weeks ago who's got a podcast about logistics, and that's how he sells his, his, uh, business. And I'm like, I, even after talking to the guy, I'm still kind of a little like I don't understand how that works, but yeah, if it's working for you, buddy, congratulations. Uh, but you know, the people that manage to take advantage of, you know, things, usually it's like so through Patreon is where you'll get people that'll kind of show up. Um, YouTube is actually probably the only one that is pretty good at fostering like in-house community, like good chat threads. I mean, on the negative side of that, you'll get people that do a lot of brigading and, um, you know that kind of stuff. But any way you can keep people there kind of talking. I think another thing on the podcasting 2.0 is like you can actually leave— like some of the apps have where you can actually live chat during the podcast and things like that, or interact in some sort of like— all of the chat, all of the chats are timestamped to it. So while you're listening, you can kind of be interacting with people who talked before you. About the podcast, similarly to how it works with YouTube. So it's, uh, I guess it is from the mechanical perspective. I'm always a matter of let's get people back to email because email's super personal. Like, interesting, they've been saying for years it's gonna die. You remember the whole Apple thing, like, oh, they're, they're making it so now you can conceal your email. This is going to be the death of email marketing. And that was what, like 2019 that happened. And it's, it's still the best way I know to own your list and reach people without question.

Well, yeah. And that you own it, you're not beholden to a platform that can, you know, turn you off at any moment.

Like I've had personal friends that like were running multi-million dollar, multi-million person, Facebook pages back in 2016 that just lost them overnight. Facebook said, "Nope, boom, you're gone." Now they don't answer you. Like, it's been almost a decade and they've still never gotten an answer as to why their page was nuked. It just was. Some of these people were actually running businesses off of these pages, right? You know, it's just, it was, they thought, "Oh, here's this wonderful stream of people coming directly to me." Well, then Ultimately, Facebook put the kibosh on that and managed to suck all those numbers up. Well, if you're not paying, you're not going to show it to anybody anyways. So yeah, I don't know. For me, I've always felt like the social media companies have been very short-sighted as far as what they're going to do long-term. I mean, maybe I think all internet businesses in that case. Uh, I was listening to a conversation the other day. I don't— it seems inevitable now that I've heard that it happened. But the, uh, the idea that people are, what am I really getting out of my return on Google anymore? Because the user experience, like, like going there as a person who's just going to Google has become so garbage. Like, I don't get, I don't get to search for the things I want to search for. All I do is get the list of crap that Google wants to tell me to get by because somebody paid for the advertising. I think is no.

Well, and, and after the AI answer, you know, you, you've got to go way down to even find the original source searches, right? Exactly. Beyond the sponsored and beyond the—

so it's like you're, you're now— you're, you're— people are paying crazy amounts of money to an audience that's kind of fine. How much longer are they going to be here before they find something that actually meets their needs better?

Hey creatives, Delaina Ely here. I have a question for you. If you could pay yourself more, why aren't you doing it? For real. S corp is an option for you, the creative entrepreneur, to move your business to the next level, to pay yourself more, and to cut your tax savings down. Yeah, less money to the IRS. We want that, right? So why haven't you done it yet? What's going on? The reality is, is you probably have 50,000 questions in your brain. You don't know which way is up and down. And you're still too busy to do all those things plus also create, right? Well, the good thing for you is that Core Group is actually the place to be to get that S corp election rolling. Yeah, we have an assessment. Let's see if you qualify. Come chat with me. Core Group, turning passion into profit.

So I'm gonna pivot. I still haven't gone back to the, the point I put a pin in, but I'm going to pivot. Tell me who your target customer is. Who is it that you help?

So, so as I said, when I started, my initial thought was I want to help all these comic book creators and authors and, you know, creative types go out there. And because a lot of those guys are, they're guys like me, they're, you know, dads in their 40s, don't have a lot of experience, don't have a lot of money. And wanted to help them kind of find out how to reach their audience because these guys don't have any sense of what's going on. After a few— I mean, after a year and a half of doing that, I realized, oh, these are not the people with any money to pay me, and I've got, you know, kids to feed. So ultimately, my ultimate pivot was to, you know, solopreneurs, um, people that are in like coaching spaces and things like that. Where they don't have big teams of people. They've got small businesses. They're working on creating, you know, a modest podcasting, you know, collective. And that's kind of found my niche there, you know.

So when you say modest, you know, what, what—

I'm not looking for, you know, people maybe— you honestly, usually beginners, even at that. People, you know, a couple hundred to a couple thousand followers. They're trying to figure out how to do this, be a little bit more professional, and most probably not have to do everything themselves. Basically get set up for the big boys club, as it would be.

What do you, what do you find the most common mistake that they make as podcasters?

Um, I hate the word mistake in that, uh, in that sense.

Opportunity that they have not taken advantage of.

How about that? Well, eh. This is the opportunity. Maybe the silliest thing I might say is that people don't understand enough of what they're really doing because they don't understand marketing enough. And what is, what is this podcast? What is its goal? People don't think, what am I trying to do with this? And anything that you approach without having a, even if it's wrong, but having some sense of what you believe the the return is going to be on something. Um, a lot of, a lot of times people will find that the real value in their podcast isn't what they want to do. So many people go like, all right, well, I gotta find out how to monetize this thing and get a million people, they're gonna listen to me and are going to— and if that's something you want to shoot for, by all means. I'm not the guy that's going to help you get 10 million people watching you. What I will show you how to do is how to take the audience you have, get them to know you better, start building slowly while maintaining the top-of-mind presence. It's really what most people are after in business. The internet moves so fast that I think people think, oh well, I've got that like, it's all done, you know, I'm— people are gonna know to come to me whenever something happens. But the bottom line is, you know, even, even with email, people get added to the email list and they don't hear from you for 6 months. And when they don't hear from you for 6 months, you don't exist anymore. They're going to get that first email like, who, what is this thing that I signed up for? Unsubscribe. And that's going to be the end of it.

Yeah.

Whereas the, the relationship that you're building through the email list, usually starting with, you know, the, the topic that you have for your conversation is you know, so much of maintaining and keeping and growing an audience. And when people go into this, they, they, they're usually like, well, how can I make a million dollars in podcasting, as opposed to what can this really bring to the table for me? And a lot of, a lot of the times people don't, they completely discount. Uh, for me, like, partially because of what I do as a business, it's been the, the meeting people part of it. It's, it's the relationships that I've developed over I mean, I've been actively podcasting since 2017, so the number of people I have met, built relationships for, and then word of mouth becomes, you know, eventually becomes the sales for me in a lot of ways. But right, that's probably one of the biggest things that I think a lot of people get out of it. You go on one podcast, somebody sees like, hey, I saw you and so-and-so, I think maybe you'd be good over here talking to this person. I'd love to hear what you guys would have to say. And I know it works because as a, as a listener of podcasts, man, there's so many people I'll like send an email to. They're like, hey, I just heard you over here talking to so-and-so, and man, I, I personally want to hear this conversation between you and this guy. If there's any way to make that happen, I think you may have a really cool conversation and draw some eyeballs for what you're trying to do. Um, it's just not understanding which direction you want to take your podcast from the beginning and is one of the biggest problems, I guess. I don't want to say a mistake because I think the whole idea of podcasting is a certain amount of growing, learning. What works for some one person may not work for you, you know. You have to find the way that you fit into that. Like, some people are really good at the— you, you're very good at the, the guest host conversation style podcast. Some people are just really good at giving a monologue. And, and you don't know until you're, you're there doing it and you kind of, kind of find out what the thing is. Moreover, just because you like doing it or good at it doesn't mean that's going to be what your audience is going to gravitate towards, and you don't know that until you start doing it.

Yeah, that's a good point. I, I think I've probably only had, uh, 2, uh, solo episodes out of, uh, 150. I mean, like, I, I, or, well, but between both podcasts, it's probably closer to 200 episodes, and only 2 of them are monologues. And, you know, there probably is some more space for that, to be honest with you. I do like what you say about the community, though, because I find I'll get different— I'll connect with people either via podcasting or in person. Not like, oh, I met somebody on LinkedIn because you don't really know that person, right? So podcasting, I have a conversation with someone, I get an idea of what they're about, what they're trying to do, whether they're an asshole or not. And then I'll go and I'll make that connection between— I can think of one recently where it was just like, you two need to know each other. I can see where you two have some synergy. You're talking about the same things, you have the same interest, you know, etc. And I find that, you know, I actually like doing that. I like making those connections between people that don't know each other. And I'm like, how do you two not know each other? You're in the— you should be in the same circle, right? But I I love that about community because I think that's, you know, whether that's actually the podcast community or not, it's building the ecosystem.

Well, just to boost your point there, my initial exposure to you was I watched you and Vince Quinn have a conversation together of SBX Productions. And I thought it was a great conversation. I think I reached out to you and said, hey man, love what you're talking about here. Something to that effect.

I love Vince. I love his voice. He's good.

He's an excitable man.

Yes. And he's actually one that I have connected with others because, you know, this whole podcasting agency thing where people are working with business owners to use podcasting in a broader marketing not marketing the podcast, but using the podcast as part of their marketing is kind of a new thing in the last, I don't know, 3, 4 years. And so I guess it's still, everybody doesn't know everybody yet.

I mean, I've been doing this, been literally podcasting, and I have a very similar background in that. I like, I was educated to become a radio personality. Didn't end up doing that, thankfully.

But that's a tough gig.

Well, exactly. And I kind of grew up in a place with a very small, like, radio market, like one or two stations. And right, was never going to be for my personality type on either of those particular two stations.

So, well, you never know. Look where Rush Limbaugh started. So it can happen. True. It can happen.

You know, as, uh, I think from Harold and Kumar, I tend to find the universe unfolds as it should. It's the line.

Yes. Yes. Okay. So when you work with, uh, other business owners, what do you have, like a menu of services that you offer, or is it like a customized consultancy? Like, what does that look like?

Customized consultancy would probably be the best way of putting it. Like, because why do you— like, it could— everything looks different for everybody. And because the types of podcasts can vary so much, we're trying to decide, like, what, what do you want it to be? How often do you want it to be? What are the goals? And what are you capable and willing to do? Um, one of— I, I work in-house with a, a good friend of mine I've known for years now, actually from the podcasting space, but We, uh, his business— I actually host his business's podcast, and part of the reason for doing that was as, as his host, he doesn't have to— I, I can be there so he doesn't always have to. I can bring on other members of his business, so he's got to leave town, he can't do something, I just bring on one of the other guys. We never lose time, we never lose focus. But the other issue is that We found that he's, he's going on doing a lot of podcasting and he was having difficulty. He's in the finance space and he was having difficulty, I think, because he's not terribly interested in a lot of what mainstream finance people are interested in. It's like, we've got to cross this bridge. We've got to make, make you at least seem like you're more knowledgeable in the general finance space than, you know, where you are. And so it gave me a reason to have a weekly conversation with him about like general finance knowledge. Okay. And it gives him the weekly chance to show people that he actually does know what he's talking about. He just doesn't always like talking about it. And so it's a way to, you know, as you would say, like prove your, prove your expertise. You're out there trying to show, hey, I know what I'm talking about in this space. I, I'm not an idiot, just because I— just because he'd rather talk about video games than talk about finance. And it would eventually— that eventually works. We do the podcast, but he eventually started, as I've been pushing him to for years, combining his love of video games and the finance world by— like, he— we had a video that we put on his YouTube channel a couple months ago on, uh, was one of those, uh, video games. I think it's the one where like you have the dogs on the island or something, and, uh, something happened where they gave you the economics of inflation essentially. Okay. Or he did one a couple weeks ago like on people who— on the idea of Valve being a greedy monopoly. Yeah, even like, you know, the, um, but let out there, a monopoly, like the they're probably one of the best-run companies in the, like, the entire video game space. It's hard to, like, hard to hate them. It's like the quote-unquote greedy monopoly.

Yeah, I, I, I think I find that, that guy's story interesting because, like, I, I tell people that I have a podcast and it's, uh, about, you know, turning passion into profit, creative entrepreneurs, et cetera. And they're like, well, what do you do? And I'm like, well, we have an accounting and finance firm. We do those kind of services. And they're like, well, you don't talk about accounting? And I'm like, no, that absolutely sounds awful if I were to talk about the nuts and bolts of our business. And maybe that's why I haven't done a lot of monologues, because the two that I have have been specifically around, you know, tactical topics, which is fine. And maybe that's what people would want. But I started this podcast because when I wrote my book, I went on several podcasts to promote it, and they were fine shows, but they weren't having the conversation I wanted, which was the business aspects of, you know, a creative professional, a creative business. Um, and that's why I created the show was to have the conversation I wanted, which, you know, back to your point, what, what was your expectation? How was that going to work out? I still haven't figured that out. Like, I'm still like, I really don't know. I have started to see where we've, we've had people come in. That have listened to the show. And so clearly it's having an impact. But, you know, if you put the screws to me, I would say that's not why I do it. I do it to have the conversations, to expand the community, to expand the awareness and knowledge of people out there that, okay, if you're passionate about something, it may seem like You're, you're odd and no one wants to do it, but there's absolutely a way for you to make money with it. Um, so anyway, I'm just rambling.

Well, and I, I got excited. I have a friend, personal friend, who has been podcasting for going on 9 years.

Okay.

He's an architect. Hmm. And the podcast that he runs is very specific. It's called Inside the Firm. Okay, and it is a— basically him and his architecture firm have a weekly podcast. It's been in many ways so successful that 9 years into it, he, he has— he had Dell buy his entire team new computers. Okay, as a sponsorship deal. Okay, he's, he's made multi-million dollar deals out of the relationships that he's built from his podcast at the this point. And it's now just to get onto his podcast, it's such a, is such a difficult, so such a difficult task to go through all of the people that want to be guests on his podcast that he has to start charging. Like, if you want to be on the podcast, I'm sorry that it's going to cost you because I don't have the time to deal with all of the mail of people wanting to come onto the podcast. Now the guy's an architect. Yeah, but he's managed to, in, in about every way imaginable, found a way to monetize that podcast.

Did he start out with that intent though?

I, you know, I think when he started out, it's just because he felt like he had to have these conversations, much like yourself. I think a lot of us, you know, people that have been doing it a long time, that is why most of us started, is we just felt like these conversations needed to be had, and either nobody with the type of voice that you wanted to be having is having them, or they just didn't exist at all, right? Now, as much as people like, oh, it's such a saturated market, I hate to break it to you, it's, it's so not a saturated market because it just don't work that way. They just don't work that way. The idea of this is all so super niche, like, yeah, you're, you're never gonna be Joe Rogan. No, but you're not trying to be. No, it's— that's, that's not, that's not the value that most people get out of this. Um, I think one of the thankful reasons I do podcasts in general, like besides, you know, outreach, and is because, man, people can put a lot of words into your mouth. Well, I've got— I've been podcasting since 2017, and I can tell you this, there's so many hours of me talking that good luck trying to produce enough content to outweigh the things that I have publicly said to stuff any words in my mouth.

That's a great point. And it kind of cycles back to what you said originally about like putting a face to the name, even though it may be audio only. It's, it's the, the, the format lends itself to really diving into your thoughts, your beliefs about the subjects rather than just a blog post or an email copy. People engage with audio differently than visual reading for sure, and different than video. But to me, I still— and the reason why I went audio only from the gate was I didn't want the extra burden of, uh, you know, lighting and video editing. Not that I ever did the audio editing on my own. Um, I hired that initially. I mean, out of the gate, I was like, I'm, I'm not— I don't want to learn a new skill. Um, but this idea that you, you, you have to use your, your mind when you're dealing with audio only. It's the theater of the mind, and not that I'm doing a, a story, uh, production here, but it just engages your, your brain differently. You know, I don't know, that's why I'm just not real interested in like adding video just because the algorithm wants it, you know.

Uh, well, as a marketing guy, the first thing I'll say is, uh, YouTube's the second biggest search engine in the world. I hate to not be there.

I know I did, I did acquiesce. I had a recommendation from an SEO marketer and she said, uh, go into Google, go into Reddit, and, uh, just start typing some of the key topics and see what comes up in the search to see what other people are searching around that topic, and then use that as your episode title. And, you know, we did, we started doing that a few weeks ago and actually have seen a lift. I, I, I can't attribute it straight to that, but it, it, there is, I think, some correlation, um, of being found. Like, you, you've got to be searchable, uh, by the algorithms, unfortunately, or no one's ever going to find you.

Nope, absolutely. I, I have a fantastic podcast that I do with one of my bandmates, kind of talking about music and movies and our band. And I'll be honest, I haven't quite cracked the nut on how to get people to that one. I love doing it just because it's me and my buddy talking about the things we love to talk about. But, you know, it's— that's also a much harder pitch for me to make than, oh, I run this business and this is my audience and this is— I'm trying to talk to you because I— sometimes it's, who do you talk to as a musician? Who is this weird group of people that's interested in this particular genre of music, this particular group of movies, and a bunch of middle-aged dudes making it in Ohio, you know? Yeah, well, I mean, it's a bigger pitch.

Yeah, no, it is. It's just maybe it's not a bigger pitch, it's a smaller audience. Maybe. I, I don't, I don't know. But, you know, I think that's why Alex Sanfilippo with PodMatch does some interesting research and with his platform and, and, you know, his statistic was how, what few percentage, like 10% of, of podcasts that launch, maybe even less than that, that get to episode 100, which is, is either, you know, it's some time frame between 1 and 2 years, right? Depending on how frequently you're doing it. Um, I guess unless you're doing a daily show. But the point is, I think that a lot of people start out with misintent or unknown intent. And they don't, they don't take the time to figure it out. They don't take the time to like explore it and say, okay, well, what, what is, what is going to move the needle?

It used to be 7 episodes was the big thing. Most people never reach 7 episodes. And if you can do that, you're in the top 1% of 1% of podcasters. Right. I don't know how much of that holds true today, but Even if either you can— podcasting, even for me, is like when I say the word podcasting, it has a broader meaning to me because it's really about content creation. Because what's different when what we make our little shows about— sure, most of them are just talk shows, but if you remember Lore, I don't even know if it's still running, you know, but if they're doing these deep dives and these weird little, you know, stories and you know, historical items. That's not the same thing really as what I do, right? So why, why do I have to necessarily— and when the goals are the same as people who make YouTube videos, uh, to me it's two different ways of doing the same things. And maybe, maybe evergreen content on a YouTube channel is a better route for somebody to take than trying to do something topical, like podcasts are topical. Whatnot. Um, and when you're just taking it from— is the only thing that makes things, you know, is it a conversation? Well, anybody who does a monologue podcast, is that now not a podcast because that two-way conversation isn't there? I, I, I say podcast is the thing I'm the most familiar with, and personally, but it's really about content creation and meaningful content creation and what you do with that content. It's about, frankly, doing something to create a funnel. What are you doing to give people, to give them value, to put at the top of the funnel, to collect the email address, to get them into your world where you can have that communication and get them into your world as opposed to somebody else's? Uh, technically I do many of the very same things that, uh, Vince Quinn does, and I was super excited. He was on episode number 1 of my second season of High Needs Marketing, and I went that way because I think people get too— oh, these are my audience, I don't want my audience to know anybody else who does what I do. And so I purposely invited a guy that does almost the exact same thing I do on, because if that has nothing to do with that, what it has to do with is the people that like me are probably not going to be big fans of Vince. The people like Vince are probably not going to be big fans of me at a personal level because we're both very different guys. I, I love Vince, I think he's a great guy. But he's also probably not somebody that if I were to meet in any other context than this, that we would just spark up a conversation, have a lot to talk about because he's a sports guy. Other than the fact that I ran cross-country in college, I'm not a sports guy. I'm a Dungeons and Dragons and, you know, music kind of guy.

Yeah. And I, to that, I actually had another accountant on the show early on. And, you know, for that exact same reason, like, you know, kind of— it— that show was more technical probably than I would prefer, but it wasn't a very listened to episode. And so I didn't repeat it. But to your point, it's raising the conversation as a whole. So I agree. It doesn't— I would have accountants on here all day if they would, you know, have good conversations. But I—

well, it's like so much for me. It's like I'm not afraid of my audience because my audience is my audience and his audience is his audience. And if somebody prefers somebody that they'd rather do business with, absolutely. Am I to stop them from doing business? Exactly. I'm confident enough in what I do that you want to work with me, we can work together.

If not, There's a lot more to be had by cooperating than there is taking this fixed pie aspect and say, there's only so much pie we can divvy up and I can't give you any because— Yeah. Yeah. Nicky, how do people find out more about Iron Age Marketing if they want to work with you?

Easy. They just go to ironagemarketing.com and you can pick your poison. You can listen to the podcast. You can talk to me about actually improving your, or starting your business podcast. Or if you're really into Dungeons and Dragons, I have a book I'm working on finishing up right now, specifically geared towards teaching basic marketing to people that are into roleplay games called the Roleplayer's Guide to Marketing.

Oh, I love that. I love that. All right, listeners, we'll have those links in the show notes. If you like what you heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, hit that little mail message button, shoot us an email and tell us what you'd like to hear, and I'll get rid of Nagy. Until next time, ta-ta for now.