#42 - Podcasting 101: Leveraging your Expertise to Build your Practice, With Marissa McCool, Part 2

FAKTR, spelled F-A-K-T-R, stands for Functional and Kinetic Treatment with Rehabilitation. Over the past decade, this unique approach to treating pain and dysfunction has been utilized by healthcare providers on 6 continents. Serving as a framework that guides clinical decision-making in patient visits around the globe on a daily basis. With this podcast, our goal is simple: to bring the best and brightest in clinical education to the forefront and empower practitioners with cutting-edge, evidence-based content that improves patient outcomes and inspires healthcare providers to continually evolve their approach to treatment. In each episode, we will feature a training or interview with some of the top minds in healthcare in a short format that is easy to consume. to digest with actionable information that you can implement into practice right away. Let's get started. Hi guys, welcome to a new episode of The Factor Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Riddle. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome and thank you for listening. Today we wrap up part 2 of our training, Podcasting 101: How to Leverage Your Expertise to Grow Your Practice. So you may be asking yourself, how could a podcast help me grow my practice? How will that bring patients in my doors? Or maybe you have some concerns about developing content or the technical aspects of podcast production. See, you have an expertise that your local community needs to know about and a business you could promote easier by making it more accessible to the public. So it's definitely worth taking the time to learn how and get started. It's a lot easier to create a podcast than you might think. In today's episode, we will discuss how to take your idea for a podcast and turn it into something that can be published. We'll also discuss the terminology and specificities of recording a podcast, as well as distribution pointers and the dos and don'ts of this process. And who better to step in front of the mic and teach on this subject than our fabulous and incredibly talented producer and editor of The Factor podcast, Marissa McCool. Marissa McCool is a podcast host, editor, and producer, as well as an author, semi-pro women's football player, photographer, and performer. She's a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Augsburg University. She's been hosting podcasts since 2016 and has posted over 550 episodes of content, including 2 shows that have gone over 200 episodes respectively. So if you've been looking for a highly effective way to establish your expertise in your local community and are considering launching a podcast, you've come to the right place. Let's turn up the volume, cue the intro music, and dive in.

So we have common speech tics, of course. Background noise, balancing the audio. Sometimes, once again, you are going to have different volumes and not just with yourself, but if there is more than one person and one of you has a mic and one doesn't, if one of you is in a different place, if one of you is staying far away from the microphone, you gotta balance the audio. If you've ever been listening to someone speaking quietly and then someone comes in with a booming voice and blows your speakers out, you wanna avoid that because if that happens, people probably aren't gonna listen to you anymore. So it's good to get people coming back, not just for your content, but for ease of listening. And ease of listening can be with content, with accessibility, but also sound quality. If you're difficult to listen to from an audio standpoint, it can ruin even a good informational podcast. Once you have your podcast episodes and once you have recordings and you're ready to go, there's also distribution. Pretty much everybody knows what a podcast app is. A lot of people with iPhones just have it there. There are other services that you can get podcasts from, but you also have to have a service that hosts them. And there are various ones. I use an app called Spreaker, and that allows me to upload the podcasts, put in all the metadata, the episode information, the tags, different things, when I'm going to release it. And that helps the podcast get found, but you also have to have a place to send it to. And every different app has its own little thing. And that's another thing that I like to take away from people who are busy and just want to get their podcast on the air is I will use the services for them and put them through to Apple Podcasts, to Spotify, to iHeartRadio, to international podcast apps, and usually make it so that that process is seamless. Because if you've never had to submit a podcast to Apple Audio, It's a pain and there's a lot that goes into it and it takes a while. So that's something that I had to learn on my own, and I would like to help people not have to go through it themselves if they don't want to or need to. And then of course we have advertising. Some people, most people who listen to podcasts, if they aren't, say, Patreon subscribers or paid listeners, hear ads at the beginning and sometimes in the middle as well. And it's important to not rely on that for a sole source of income. Even if you're getting a lot of listeners, that's not a great source of money. And if you put in too many, that's another thing that might make people tune out. But you can also get paid advertising. Anybody who's listened to a podcast, especially one that has millions of listeners, has heard ads for Casper mattress or HelloFresh or anything like that. It's slippery because sometimes it can make you money. Other times it can turn people off. And sometimes the good thing to do is offer the paid subscription service like Patreon so that you can give them an ad-free experience if they don't like it. But you have to be careful when you're approaching advertising on your page and on your episode, because some people do not want to hear that and they may tune out. So I'm not saying don't advertise. I'm saying be conscious of how much you're doing. And if it's not something you would want to listen to, As many people don't, it's also important to know how much advertising you're doing on your podcast. And that does not include for your own business, of course. If you're doing a podcast about your business, that is advertising, but we've all heard Casper Mattress ads and most people skip through them. And sometimes people use them and you can get a spiff out of that. But if you're turning people off with too many ads, it's essential to not overload people with that and to keep the focus on the content. People who really enjoy your content, people who really enjoy what you're putting out. If you have a Patreon service, if you have some kind of paid opportunity where you can get ad-free or early episodes, a lot of people will subscribe to that if they get into your show. And that can be a better source of income than telling people how to get a discount code for HelloFresh. So to get a little more in depth, some podcasts do weekly, some podcasts do daily, some do monthly. Whatever you're going to do, it's important to be consistent. If you say you're going to be there every Tuesday, be there every Tuesday. And that doesn't mean record every Tuesday, but it means have material ready to go so that you are putting it out on Tuesday. If you say you're going to be there Tuesday and you don't post till Thursday, you may lose listeners and you may have people who do not trust you to post something consistently. As podcasting is such a saturated market, you need to be consistent because so many have come and gone. People want not just good content, but they want to know it's going to stick around for a while and it's going to be consistent and posted when they say it's going to post. People have a lot of choices. It's important to give them good ones and to give them a reason to tune in. And I always advise people to start with less and work their way up. So if you start with daily and then you decide to go biweekly, probably not a good sign. Probably not a good way to hook people in. But if you start with once a month and you move to weekly, that's a good thing. That's more content. That's more that the person can download and listen to. As opposed to, I got used to daily and now it's every other week. I'm probably not gonna stick with it. 'Cause they're probably just gonna go away. And not just with when you're posting it is important to be consistent, but it's good to be consistent with how long it is. And this doesn't apply to all podcasts, and it certainly doesn't apply to the minute or the second, but It's good to know how much time you're going to invest. If one podcast is 28 minutes and the other one is 2.5 hours, it's difficult to have that kind of consistency. Sometimes it's just good to break those up into several pieces, as we have done here with The Factor Podcast. Some of these webinars, most of them are split into 2, some are split into 3 to try to keep that consistent length. People want to have consistency in how much time they're going to invest, and it's good to have that kind of pattern so that people know what to expect when they listen to your show. If you break it down into blocks, say you have an intro, a main section or an interview, and then an outro, just make sure that's what you're doing for most episodes. And if you decide you're going to change that, it's good to let people know why. And it's good to work that out in some of those practice episodes we talked about. So you may think that you want to do 4 different things, and then you get to recording and You're not feeling it, or maybe you feel repetitive, or maybe something doesn't sound as good as you thought it would. That's why it's good to practice and know what you're doing a little bit before you start posting episodes, because if you put out 2 episodes and then you decide to change a bunch of stuff, that's also not a good sign. People are really pattern-based, and they want to have some sort of expectation when they download your episode, because there are plenty of episodes that they can choose from. There are plenty of shows that they can choose from. Now for costs, of course, equipment costs money, and that's part of the reason that I don't advise people to go out and buy the most expensive mic before they get started and decide it's something they're going to stick with. You can get a Yeti mic, like I said, those cost— well, at least when I bought them, I got one for $140, and that's a much better startup cost than buying a $1,000 mic and then deciding you don't want to use it. So... That's one of the costs. It does cost money to host podcasts, to get them on those distribution networks. But that's one thing that I do for my clients is I take care of that. I put their hosting to the side and I put it on my network so they don't even have to think about it. But if you're going to use a Spreaker, an FM, any kind of those distribution models that we talked about, those cost money. And generally there are free ones, But if you're going to have longer and more content, if you're going to have a daily episode, for instance, you're not gonna have enough space to do it on the free plan. The one that I'm on, and that's from years of podcasting, both my own and from hosting and producing other podcasts, I believe it's 1,500 gigs that I have on my plan. And that costs between $50 and $60. So that's important to keep in mind. If you're posting once a month, you'll probably be more likely to get away with a free plan. But it really depends on how much you're doing and how often you're doing it. Some guests that you're going to have want to be paid, and that— it really depends on how much you want them. It really depends on how important it is for you to have them. And sometimes it's nice to just pay people for giving you their time. Most of the time it's not. Most of the time I've been asked to be on a podcast, I have not been paid for it. But kind of like I said earlier, people who are hearing you on someone else's podcast may have not known about you before. And even if they're just coming to listen to your podcast now, that's one more that you didn't have. And it can be different. It can be about your business. It can be about your work. It can be about your book. But even if one new person hears it, that's worth the investment in my opinion. And a lot of people don't have time to do all of those things. And that's what I do. I work for people who either don't know how to or don't have time to do a lot of these things. Editing, most notably, as I've said, it takes the most time, and producing to help people get started. But there are also people who are not savvy with social media, and they hire people to just run the social media for their shows. I have some friends who do 4 weekly podcasts, 4 different ones. And they have a person specifically to run all of their social media. It's important to have a presence on social media, even with Facebook that is now syncing podcast releases with the page itself so that you can listen to podcasts straight off of Facebook. It's important for getting the word out and it's free. So any advertising that's free, anything that gets the word out there, even in a saturated market, is good. And of course, the other Cost is time spent. You put a lot of time into it. It varies depending on how much you're doing, but that is a cost for people to consider is how much time it takes and how much time you're willing to put into it. So some practical advice from these years of podcasting, not only do a few practice episodes, but specifically do a few episodes and then delete them. Do everything and then just delete them. Your first episode is going to be terrible. Or at least bad. And that's okay. Episode 1 should not be that good compared to later episodes because you're going to develop your styles, you're going to develop your taste, you're going to develop what works and what doesn't. It's okay that it's not good. But if you practice a few times and then start over, it's going to be a lot better than the first time you get onto a mic and letting everybody hear it. It's once again important to listen to yourself, to know what you do, to know how you talk, to learn your voice habits. And it's also important to know that— this is something that I've picked up personally— it's important to know what other people's habits are. So if you hear somebody who says you know 48 times a sentence, there's also a good chance that you're going to start doing that. People tend to adopt the speech tics that they're around and do it without noticing. And also, regardless of what the speech tic is, if you're saying it 48 times a sentence, that's more difficult to listen to and can be annoying for some listeners, and that's important to keep in mind. Everybody has speech tics. Do not feel bad if you do them. I'm not judging you. I am not saying you're a bad speaker if you do them. I'm saying be aware of them. But I also edit a lot of them out because it's easier to listen to that way. For some people— I'm autistic, so I tend to get stuck in patterns, and if I'm hearing something a lot, It becomes the only thing I can hear. So if somebody says something 487 times in an episode, which yes, I have counted and that has happened, it's going to be the only word that I hear. So you don't have to edit to that extreme, but that's important to keep in mind. Don't try to be anybody else. You're you. You don't want to go on there and try to be your favorite podcaster. You don't want to go on there and try to be someone you're not because People can sense authenticity, and it's important to be who you are, to find your own voice and your own style. Not to steal, of course, but try what works, see what works. Some do, some don't. And just find what works, find what people like. Take feedback when you get it. It may be slow coming, as listeners are, but any chance you get that someone tells you genuinely, as opposed to— Any comment on YouTube ever, for instance. It's important to know what's good feedback and what's people just trolling. And at least in this section, in the medical section of podcasts that I've edited, I find that very rarely compared to other genres in the podcasting universe. It's good to find other podcasts that are within your field or within your topics of interest to try to not only have them come on your show, because that's free cross-promotion, people who Search for a podcast they like, search for guest episodes that they may have been on because they want to hear more of that person, but also to possibly get on their show, have something to offer, have something to promote. And the number one question I've gotten for, how did you get to talk to X person? Or, how did you get on this show? Ask. It's really that easy. Some people aren't going to answer you. Some people are just overwhelmed with the amount of emails that they get or people who want to be on, but a lot of them will respond. A lot of people will come on your show, and most people will not ask you for money for doing so because it's free promotion. They spend an hour of their time, and who knows how many people they'll reach out of it, but if it's one, it's one person they didn't have before.

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I said before, everyone has speech tics, and I don't just mean ums, but I've listed, I would say, the 9 or 10 most common that it's important to know if you have. It's not judgment. It's not saying that you're a bad speaker if you do them. It's just good to know that you do them. The, the ums and the uhs, the excessive likes, the you knows, the starting every sentence with so or now or Saying, I mean, or qualifying everything with kinda sorta. All of those things are not bad inherently, but if you do them hundreds of times, people are going to notice. So it's just important to be aware of what they are and how often you're doing them. A few stories that I have from 6 years in podcasting. I've hosted a couple of live events where I've been on stage and talked to People who have been willing to travel. Most notably, one of my favorite football players came on my interview show in Pennsylvania. His name is Chris Kluwe. He was a punter for the Minnesota Vikings, and he came the whole way up from California to be on my 100th episode of my first show. That was one of the best experiences I've ever had. Same with another show I did in Chicago where I had 3 different guests who were willing to come on, and I interviewed them in front of a live crowd. That's obviously something you don't have to do. That was just something that I was able to do at the time. And I was really proud of it and had a lot of fun, and it gave me a lot of chance to meet people who, for some reason, listen to me. I don't know why anybody does it, but they do, and I'm happy about that. The biggest name I've ever gotten to interview outside of Chris would probably be Dr. Noam Chomsky, and that was because I had a professor who went to college at the same time that he did and gave me an in route to connect with him. Although apparently enough people have done that at this point that he no longer takes those. So it's not always a success, but it was really cool to interview Dr. Noam Chomsky back in, I believe it was 2016. I met my partner via podcasting. That was neat. I met them because they heard me and they came out to see me at another event that I went to as a guest of another podcaster. So. That was obviously very important. I've started more than one show with other people, and it's kind of like tattoos. It's once you get started, everything becomes potential material. And I've started more than 4. There have been 4 main shows that I've done. 2 of them are still active. One of them is dormant. One of them I finally retired after almost 250 episodes. But they're a lot of fun and it's one of my favorite things to do. I like hanging out with my co-hosts and whatever we do, whatever we come up with. And the more I do it, the easier it gets. The more I do it, the more valuable it is to me. And it's a good way to spend an hour and it's a good way to make a lot of new friends. And I've also gotten to meet a lot of podcasters. I've gone to their events. I've been guests at some of their events and spoken with them. So those are people I may not have gotten the chance to meet, let alone work with, had I not started doing this. But one of the most valuable things I've ever had the opportunity to do that actually didn't end up being a podcast was another podcast that I produce. A former guest on one of these webinars, Dr. Melissa McDonald, I've edited and produced her podcast for over a year now. She had a guest on who was really happy with the way I made her sound through editing. And she reached out to me to edit a few conversations that she recorded with her grandmother who had passed. And that was way beyond the scope of what I ever thought would happen from editing the ums out of a conversation. But it wouldn't have happened if I didn't. And it was quite an honor to get to do something like that for somebody. This is what I do. I am an editor. I'm a producer. I'm a podcast host, and I spend hours a day doing it. Sometimes it's spend Something I've made money off of. Sometimes it's not, but what I've gained in experience and things I've gotten to do because of it, I have no regrets. And I've gotten to help a lot of other people get started, including The Factor Podcast, for which I'm grateful. And I wouldn't know them otherwise, and they're lovely people. So I'm really happy to have been here to talk about this today. And Jessica, if there are any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

Awesome, Marissa. Thank you so much. This has been a great, great conversation, and I think you've covered a lot of bases here, but I do have a few questions that came through.

Mm-hmm.

In regards to the different platforms to publish on. I know you mentioned a few tools that you use that kind of help with distribution into Apple, to Spotify, to iHeartRadio. Is there— and obviously there's been a ton of new platforms that have popped up in recent years— is there one platform that stands out that still is kind of like the gold standard in terms of you have to have your podcast on Apple, or you have to have your podcast on Spotify? What are your thoughts on the differences in these platforms and which ones should you really make sure you're going after?

Number one, Apple. Regardless, you have to be on Apple. I believe the number is 75% of people who listen to podcasts do it through Apple. That is number one. If it's nowhere else, have it on Apple. A lot of other places, it's really easy to get on. Sometimes you just have to send them a link, but Spotify has an audience. iHeartRadio has an audience and people are creatures of habit. So it's important to get them as to as many places as you can. And some, not all hosting services will have those set up for you. So all you have to do is press a button to say, put my podcast on XYZ, and it will. But Apple is not one of them. You have to go through a few steps in order to get it on there. But if you're going to have a podcast, especially if you're brand new, It has to be on Apple.

Absolutely. Great advice. I know you talked a little bit about the different genres of podcasts, and I know that you've been involved in some that are interview-based, some that are training-based, kind of like ours where we take recorded content. And then I know you also produce one that is a bit more like an audio play, so to speak, or production with characters and scripting. What do you feel like in terms of the industry Is there any specific format that's really growing and in high demand and really popular right now? Is there still one that kind of reigns supreme in terms of this is the most popular type of podcast format?

The most common is interviewing. The most common is interview podcasts. One or 2 people sit down with the guests of the week and they have a discussion of some kind. Most podcasts that I've ever heard are this way, where they have guests come on and it's a different guest every week. And then the informational, the tutorials, the almost the audio TED Talks, I would feel are a good way of putting it. A lot of people are really into those and a lot of people really like to indulge in them. History podcasts or specific eras of history. For instance, I've been listening to a Civil War podcast since 2013 and they're on episode 400 or something like that. And I grew up 40 minutes from Gettysburg. I can't help it. I've always been into that stuff. So there's that. Fiction podcasts are extremely popular. Welcome to Night Vale, for instance, is one of those that really kicked off what podcasting could be beyond some person comes on to show and talks to some person, or some person rants into microphone. But fiction has really taken off, kind of like the old radio serials, except they're a lot easier to listen to and you can do a lot more with them. So Podcasting as a medium in general has really taken off. Back when I got started, some people knew what it was, but I ended up answering that poll question a little differently than I do now. So as it's become more popular, more types, more genres, more ideas of what a podcast can be have come about. And I do multiple different kinds of podcasts, as you said. And I do the fiction ones because I'm a theater nerd at heart, and it's been a way for me to work with a couple of my favorite actors. But also I enjoy fiction and writing it in script format and editing and doing a lot of fun things with audio. That was definitely a passion project, but it's important to have some ideas. Like anything, if you're starting a band, you want to know who your influences are. If you're starting a podcast, it's good to have some ideas and for what works and what doesn't. But fiction, informational, interview, I would say are the 3 most common. But if you can imagine it being in an audio context, it's probably a format somewhere.

Very cool. Are you seeing a lot of podcasts that also have YouTube channels or video components to them? I know Zencastr now, every single time you go to record, pretty much asks you, do you want video for this as well? Is that becoming more popular to have it in dual mediums?

For some people, especially for famous people. I believe Kevin Smith and some of the other really big names of the podcasting world also have audio components. It's really about whether or not that's something that works for you. I'm not someone who particularly likes to do podcasting on video, though I like doing it in person, which is strange, but it's a different medium. And when you're just doing it audio, you focus on the content, the sound, and what you're presenting. When you're on video, you have to think about, what do I look like? What are my facial expressions? What am I doing with my hands? Things like that. So it's good cross-promotion. The more mediums you can get on, the better. But it's a different medium and therefore comes with different things you have to worry about, different things you have to learn. You have to have cameras, you have to have different focus, you have to focus on many different things when it comes to video as well. So You can do it. I don't think you have to do it. And if you have guests on, you better hope they all have really good internet, because if people are dipping in and out of connection and recording, that can become extremely difficult to listen to and very difficult to edit. So my advice would be start with one and then expand to the other if you want to. But there are hurdles you have to jump and technical difficulties depending on who your guests are. So if you're having people call in or having people over Zencastr or something like that, there's a chance that they may not have as good of internet as you do, and it may become more difficult once you turn on the video. So those are just all things you have to consider when you decide whether or not you're going to do video as well.

Oh yes, absolutely. I know bandwidth is, is really crucial and important for that. Another question that was submitted was discussing length. Like, is there a sweet spot for the right length of a podcast? I know there are some that are very popular, like Tim Ferriss sometimes has episodes that go 2 hours or more, but then I've heard of others that are kind of short and sweet, 15 to 20 minutes. What is the sweet spot and what should you be targeting?

I generally advise people to go for 30 to 45 minutes, especially if they're starting out. The reason some of those people can go for so long is they have an established audience who wants that content from them. But if you're a new show, it's really difficult to ask people to invest 3 hours of their life. So that's something you have to think about. How much time can you fill? If you're going to fill 3-hour podcasts, can you do that consistently? It's important to find what works for you. I wouldn't say there's a sweet spot. There's some podcasts I listen to that are 9 minutes long and some that are 2.5 hours long, but I expect those from them. And that's the kind of thing you expect from a podcast when you get into it. You know what it is, you know how long it is. But if you're going to ask people to spend 3 hours with you, you better know what you're doing and you better be able to do it consistently. Now, some podcasts vary in length, but they have earned the ability to do that. Even a few of my friends who have a movie review podcast, sometimes they go an hour and sometimes they go 3.5. But their first show that they started is exactly 1 hour on the dot, and they edit it specifically to do that. So they expanded out to doing more long-form and doing things that they, they earned from having an audience who listened to their 1-hour show. So the more time you make your podcast, the more time you are asking people to invest. So it's important to keep that in mind, especially when you're just starting out. If I've never heard of somebody and they've asked me to listen to their 3.5-hour podcast, that's a tough sell. If you ask somebody to listen to their brand new half-hour podcast, that's a lot easier to get people to tune in. It depends on the topic. It depends on what you're doing, and it also depends on who you are and what your audience is.

No, absolutely. I can attest to that and agree with that. It's a lot easier to sell people on the shorter form to start with, and then always room to expand. You mentioned that as well when it comes to consistent scheduling. You said that essentially start out with what you're most comfortable with that you can absolutely commit to, and then you can increase the frequency from there, but not necessarily go the opposite direction. In our industry, there's been a few podcasts that do seasons, so they'll have a number of episodes. It's kind of season 1, they'll take a hiatus for a while, and they'll come back with Season 2. Have you encountered that a lot, and how popular is it to have these hiatus or breaks, kind of like in the television industry?

It's both a benefit and a risk. So it's important if you're doing that to let people know that's what you're doing. If people start listening to you and all of a sudden you're gone for 3 months, that's not great. But if they know there's 10 episodes, kind of like a TV show, if there's 10 episodes to expect And you listen to 10 episodes, then your expectations were met. So it's important to communicate what you are and what you're doing so that people aren't caught off guard. Because if you disappear for 3 months, most people will assume that you quit or that you're canceled because so many podcasts just disappear. If you look at any kind of podcast and you find any topic, look up a TV show, look up a sports team, you will find Dozens of podcasts that once existed and lasted for 2 weeks, for a month, for 3 months. And people don't have that long of attention spans. And if you break that consistency and break that expectation, it's a lot harder to get them to come back. So I do know shows that do this. I do know shows that post for 10 episodes and then go away. And I do know shows that post multiple times a week. It's important Just to be consistent and to let people know. So if you're going to do 10 episodes and then you're going to come back in 3 months, let them know on episode 1 or 2 that's what you're doing. Because if you don't tell them that, you run the risk of losing all or even most of them. That can hurt. So communicate your expectations, communicate what it is you're doing, communicate what you want people to know, and think— If I was listening to this and they disappeared for 3 months, would I come back? Or would I want to know that that's what they're doing? And that's usually a good way to figure out what the right course is.

Marissa, what is the best way for them to get in touch with you if they're interested in starting a podcast, but maybe need some help from a producing or an editing standpoint?

Email's the best way to get ahold of me, and that's riss@marissariddle.com. rismcwriting@gmail.com. R-I-S-M-C-W-R-I-T-I-N-G at Gmail. And I take people from step 1 if they have that. I take people who have started podcasts and have been overwhelmed, or people who just want editing services. I've pretty much handled all of the range of those. So if you have an idea and you want someone to help you develop it, I can do that. If you have somebody— if you want your podcast edited that already exists, I can do that. If you want all of that, I'm able to do that. And if you just want somebody to talk to and develop more of this and have more of a conversation about it, I'm free to do that as well. This is what I do, and I have— I can make time for people and any questions they may have.

I know that she has been, again, just super instrumental in getting our Factor podcast off of the ground. It was a dream and an idea that I had for many years. And always got to that place where I was stuck in the overwhelm of how do I even get started? I've seen all of these podcasters online with these giant mixing panels and I have no idea what I'm doing. And I consider myself a tech power user, but when it came to the audio elements and the sound mixing and editing there, I knew I was in over my head. So it really was a blessing when I spoke with Dr. Melissa McDonald. as Marissa mentioned earlier and asked her, your podcast sounds great. Who does that for you? And then she was able to connect us. And from there, Marissa, in our first meeting, really just set my mind at ease by telling me exactly how we needed to put it together. She listened to my ideas and my vision for it and then said, okay, awesome. This is how we're gonna do it. Here are the steps we need to take. Here's what I need from you. And she's done an amazing job of keeping me consistent with that posting schedule. Amidst all of the different balls that I'm juggling, it's, it's great when she sends me a little reminder, hey, I need this content and information. So that being said, guys, it really is a great medium for getting your content, your information out there. It certainly is something from a marketing standpoint that I can absolutely recommend for those of you that are building or establishing a practice, maybe even in a new area, or you're a new graduate and you're looking for a way to educate your community about who you are and what your expertise is. It's a really, really great way to do that. Likewise, I know that I've known of a few different healthcare providers that will interview businesses in their area or business owners that deal with their target audience or ideal patient. It's a great way to do some cross-promotion and marketing there as well. So, Marissa, thank you so much. This has been great and wonderful information. I think everybody can walk away saying they learned a ton today.

Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here.

That's it for today's episode. Be sure to tune in for episode 43, where we kick off a new training titled Neck Training Solutions with Iron Neck. You won't want to miss it. Episode 42 drops in 2 weeks. You can subscribe to The Factor Podcast on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or the podcast app that works best for you. Give us a 5-star rating to help us grow the show. Every little bit helps. And last but certainly not least, be sure to visit the show notes for a link to sign up for our special end-of-year deals. We're offering some pretty unprecedented savings on in-person and online course offerings, but only for those who take the time to click the link and get all the details. Don't wait. Visit the show notes now, click the link, and take advantage before the ball drops and 2023 arrives. We promise you'll be glad you did. We'll see you next time. Hey guys, if you like what you heard today, I encourage you to visit our website at factor-store.com. That's spelled F-A-K-T-R-store.com to find out more information about all that we have to offer. We have a variety of online offerings as well as our hands-on FACTOR Rehab System course scheduled in cities around the globe. Be sure to also check out our event calendar and bookmark any of these upcoming live webinar dates coming up in the near future so you can join us live. And of course, the biggest compliment we can receive is for you to help us spread the word to your friends, colleagues, and classmates. You'll find all the important links as well as info about our sponsors in the show notes, so be sure to check those out.