Turn Text Into Talking Gold

Did you know that if you're just relying on text on your website, you could be losing up to 30% of your potential customers? And it's not just about doing podcasts. If you've got long-form content, articles or blog posts, there's actually a way that you can have real-time audio players embedded on your website. How do I know this? Because I've done it. I was looking at my blog posts and I was going to read them and I thought, oh, this is getting a bit boring and monotonous for people listening to me. And I found Trinity Player from Trinity Audio. And we're very, very blessed because I followed the breadcrumbs back to the founder, Ron Jaworsky, who's joining us today from Tel Aviv. Ron, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much. I'm super glad to be here.

Well, you know, I think that what you're doing is amazing because you're enabling entrepreneurs like me to have real-time audio played out against text that we've written. So it's just liberating a lot of the content that most of us have already produced on our websites at really— well, you've got a free embeddable player, but also very, very low cost. So we're going to talk about Trinity Audio, the role that audio plays, and we're also going to deal with the thorny issue of AI and voice cloning. And as an entrepreneur based in Israel, we're also going to talk about how you've managed to get clients which include many of the world's largest newspaper groups, which is actually how I first saw Trinity Audio. So Ron, introduce us to you and then introduce Trinity Audio, if you wouldn't mind.

Um, so first of all, thank you very much. Uh, for the kind words and everything. So my name is Ron Jaworski. I'm married to Inbal. This is my wife's name. And I have 3 kids, a dog, and a cat. And as you said, we live here in Tel Aviv. I'm the co-founder and the CEO of Trinity Audio. Prior to that, I had another company that was active in the edtech space, which was called Meme Global. Mainly focused on the video side of things. The Trinity Audio story, the fairytale story starts with a need. I was reading an article in the elevator, got into my car, it was 2017, and I thought to myself, it doesn't make sense that I don't have a simple solution where I can just press play and listen to the article. And this was the eureka moment of Trinity Audio. And this is how it started. I think like many other stories of many other companies where the founder had a problem that he wanted to fix and then understood that there are a lot of other people that might be interested in the same solution.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. When was this then, Ron? When did you start the business?

2017 was the This is when the event took place. We actually went live with our first publication in Q2 2018. At the beginning, we had a lot of drawing and thinking and thoughts about how we're going to do it, not only on the technical level, but also on the business level. Because as I mentioned earlier, I come from ad tech. This is what I've done for years— advertising, publication, users. Consumers of content. So we try to understand what would be the best manner to offer it. It was clear for us from the start that publication need to have this type of solution on the webpage for everybody, basically everybody, not only publication, but publication was the obvious first use case for us. And by the way, the reason it's called Trinity is that we believe that within the World Wide Web, and it's growing in years, you need to have value within these vast ecosystems of website and content creators and advertisers and users and all of that. And we said that if you bring value for the three pillars of the internet as we see it, advertisers, publishers, and users, you check all the boxes, then you are valuable to the ecosystem and then basically you can be a part of the ecosystem. So hence the Holy Trinity of the internet and Trinity Audio. So that's one thing. Of course, we have jokes from time to time that people said that a couple of Jewish guys decided to have a Catholic name for their startup, which is also good.

I thought it was coming from The Matrix because obviously the heroine is called Trinity. That's where I thought it came from. But you're right, Holy Trinity. And I can see, Ron, that you've got those organizations that are kind of text heavy. So you've got accounting firms, you've got newspapers and so on. Could you just explain for people that still maybe haven't quite visualized this, what's happening for the user? Just to help us to understand. And then for those people that want to go to my YouTube, they can see also the screenshot. That's @JimAJames is the YouTube. Just explain, Ron, the user experience, if you can, please.

So I think a few things. First of all, and you actually mentioned it at the beginning, 30% of the users are auditory, meaning that they consume content, or at least their memory can categorize the content that they are consuming in a better way if they consume it in an audio form. Just in general, there is somewhere between 40 to 50% which is reading, 30% auditory, and then 20% that are both, either auditory or textual. So the first thing that we need to understand is that we are wired to consume audio, a lot of us. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that we are getting busier and busier. On one hand, we want to be more and more efficient. Lazy, you know, you can choose whatever word that you want. And audio definitely offers that, you know, it's like, you know, when your eyes are busy or you're just tired. And I'm not talking about the accessibility aspect of it, which is also super important. But at the end of the day, most of the people are either want to be super efficient, super lazy. So for them listening to something instead of reading, it's an easy choice. Let's call it like that. And that's what we are trying to provide to the internet at large, our mission in life is to audify the internet. Any textual content, by the way, doesn't really matter if it's, as you said, content firm, publication, it could be a small blog of somebody that talk about cooking or his favorite soccer team or whatnot. All of them are content creators. And if you want more engagement with your content, you have to offer your content in more manner than one. So we started with text, of course, everybody, we have newspaper, but also the digital. Landscape started with text, then we added video, and now it's the renaissance of audio. We see it in podcasts, we see it in tools like Trinity Audio is offering, and we also saw it with some social networks that were also audio-oriented. So I think we are in a time where in the last 5 years there is a huge renaissance of audio. And due to that, and I think that's also super important for all the content creators that are listening right now, and doesn't really matter if you're a CEO of a startup, you are a content creator. If you're an accountant, you're a content creator. Why? Because this is your marketing tool to bring more clients. So we need to understand that users, clients, everyone, people are reading less and listening more. And this is what we are trying to do. We try to cater for the needs of those who want to listen.

Ron, I think that's amazing. And also having tried the product, because you have a free trial, which I've embedded onto my blog at theacademy.theunnoticed.cc. So you have a free trial of 5, I think, articles. So recommend everyone tries that. It's trinityaudio.ai. And what you do is You basically get yourself an account and you put in the URL where the article is appearing, if I'm not mistaken. And then you embed the player into your website, really easy, just with a little bit of an iframe. And then people can click to listen, in my case, to the article that I've written on my, on my blog, or to listen to it or to read it, or both. So what we're also doing is really helping those people that, as you say, maybe prefer Audible, but also there are those people that don't have the choice, right? For example, people that may be visually impaired, as we've got older and older generations, or those people selling products and services to people that have disabilities, opening up the audio content is really liberating, Ron, as well, isn't it?

100%. 100%.

So we've got a couple of things going on. One is that the reason I wanted Ron to come on is because for those of us that have got content on our websites, and as Ron said, really, we all have content on our websites now because inbound marketing is actually the solution to, to sort of winning the Google, uh, game. But if it's all text, no one's got the time or they've got to be on their phone or on the desktop. But with Trinity Audio, what you can do is then make that content audible, quite literally, so people could open the website and listen when they're driving, as Ron was wanting to do, or traveling in some way on a plane and so on. So that's brilliant. Ron, in terms of the kind of scalability of Trinity Audio. If someone has got a lot of content on their website, um, and they maybe want to start to compile that in some way, at the risk of getting too geeky, just tell us what's the path? Because I've just got like 5 players on 5 articles. If I wanted to then scale that across all of my content, how would I do that?

Um, so And also, I just want to mention something that is related to what I just said previously. I said, and I think it's important, people need to understand that audio stands for new time throughout the day where you can consume content. And I think that's one of the magic about audio. So that's just a thought that I wanted to share. So in regards to your question, so first of all, of course, we have two business models in Infinity Audio, one which is pure SaaS. In regard to scale, there is no issue.

We have—

we are working— I can give you an example— working with Fortune magazine that publish hundreds of hundreds of different articles on a monthly basis. We are working with Wattpad, which is a literature website with millions of stories. So in regard to scale, we have no problem with scale. It's just a matter of deciding on the business model and then decide on the pricing. So As you can see, the pricing is quite straightforward. You have annually, you have monthly, like any other SaaS solution. You can choose based on the amount of articles that you are generating on a monthly basis. You can choose if you have several domains also. That's another thing that you can take under consideration. Of course, if you have a large archive of content, maybe you posting only 10 articles on a monthly basis, but you exist since 1990, so you have thousands of articles, that's also something that we can handle with custom packaging and things like that. But I would say that the way we envision it, and as I said earlier, our mission is to audify the internet. We believe that our component should be on every website to have the option to consume in an audio form. In regard to the integration, integration is the same and just changing for packages. So for example, for you, if you will just change the package, it will be available on all of your website and this is it. So it's quite simple, quite straightforward. And I guess as you mentioned, integration was quite easy. So I guess we are up to what we promised.

And I think that's, I think Ron, that's really why I was excited to have you on the show because with Trinity Audio, it really is a plug and play. And you know, you know me, for anyone that's listening, I will be as honest as I can about the ease of use of technology. But also you You don't have a credit card requirement to start with. So it really comes across for the user as your mission to audify the internet, which I think is great, by the way, is a genuine one, right? And then you've got 56 supported languages. So that's great if people are working across domains, geographies, and so on. So that's perfect. And what you also have at the moment, which I, which I like, was you currently offer AI voices, Ron. And I like that just because it creates some diversity. I think, you know, for the user experience, I have a podcast and then we have the written, and people may probably are getting tired of my voice, but it gives people the opportunity to engage in my content with a, with, if you like, a different personality sharing the content. Ron, what's your view from where you're sitting? Should should people be using cloned voices? Should they be using AI voices? What do you think is best?

That's a great question. I want to say that I think for the first stage, use the AI voices that are in the market. If you choose Trinity Audio, of course, there are many different voices. I'll just correct you. We support a little bit more than 140 different languages and a bit more than 600 different voices. So for example, of course, for English you have many, many different accents and you can also choose gender, female, male, kids' voices as well. So for the first stage, I would definitely suggest using AI, a voice that are in our library, so to speak. But dependent on two items, I would definitely move to AI voice cloning. First thing, is how is your voice? If your voice is appealing, I will definitely clone it. If you know that your voice is not the one that everybody likes to listen to, for example, I don't think that my mother, for example, needs to clone her voice in AI. It won't be a great experience.

But let's hope she's not listening to the show. I'll edit that bit out, Ron.

No, that's fine. I already told her. That's fine. But again, maybe it's my personal experience also. But if you have a relevant voice and again, the content is relevant to be consuming a more, I would say, personal touch that is related. For example, we work with government websites. Okay. So I'm not sure that I will suggest the supervisor of the Israeli IRS or something like that to record his own voicing when he's talking about, I don't know, taxation or something like that, some article about taxation. But definitely if you are If you are a journalist that people consume your content regularly, the connection for the readers, for the listener, at the end of the day when he's listening whether to the AI voice of you, the journalist, the connection is closer. It's obvious, we are emotionally more connected to voices that we are familiar with or with people that we are familiar with. And that creates a greater connection. That connection is will increase engagement, which is at the end of the day what you're looking for to generate. And I think it's similar to, for example, for your blog post. They know you, they listen to the podcast and they consume the content. So having the same audio experience with your AI voice over your blog post, that would be amazing. Again, it's costly. It's not something that you will see the pricing on the website. You need to contact us. There is a recording. There is some work needs to be done. Not much, but still there's some work.

Okay. So I think a couple of things in there, Ron. One is that we've got the importance of engagement, that if you want to engage with your audience, you want your own voice. But in some circumstances, engagement may be less important than information. For example, like tax, right? And especially when it's in like public information services, bulletins, or for example, banking or somewhere, in a way you want to, is it anonymize it, de-anonymize it? You want to make it less sort of identifiable to one person and to be the organization speaking, which point using the AI clone voice is more than adequate. And I think also what I found is that The voices that you've got on Trinity Audio, they're really nice.

They're warm.

And I think also what I was impressed by was that they articulate the sentences with tonality and cadence, which means that then I don't have to worry about people turning off and thinking this is actually a dull rendition by AI. Actually, it was very listenable. Which ultimately is what really matters, isn't it? Is that the content is something that someone will listen to or not. And my young people, you know, I've got a 14 and a 16-year-old, they are so used to consuming content that's read to them with AI voices that I think for them now it's transparent whether it's the individual or an AI. It's quite interesting.

Music to my ears.

Thank you.

Should I say audio to my ears maybe? Audio to your ears.

Audio curious. So Ron Jaworski, the founder, co-founder of Trinity Audio, you've built this amazing platform, which I say I've already integrated and I really like, which is why I wanted to have you on the show. Let's just also talk about you as an entrepreneur, that you've been building this company now for, I think you said 6 or 7 years, you've got literally thousands of clients, a relatively small team of 13 or so, 15, so you're managing to get that really nice leverage going on. How have you managed to build the brand of Trinity Audio other than people like me sort of following you? I tracked you down from the article on Fortune actually and then followed the link to you and then to the website. But how are you getting noticed other than the kind of the sleuth podcaster?

So, I think there are two main things that help grow Trinity Audio as a brand. We do the usual marketing stuff. We have our newsletter, we go on LinkedIn and social in general. Let's call it like that. We go to conferences. But I think the main thing was the fact that we we understood from the start that we need to educate people. And so every call, you know, if it's a large client or small client, doesn't really matter for us, we'll take the call because we want the word to spread. Okay. Remember 2018 when we started it? And I actually have a story. When I thought about the idea in 2017, I went to a publishing conference a few months later in Vail, Colorado, and I showed some publication, an example of what I want to do. There was player was less slick than what we have now. And when you click on play, you listen to the article and things like that. And most of the people looked at me like the strange guy in the room and didn't understand. So I understood, it was obvious to me that this solution needs to be on each and every website across the globe. And the way to do that is to start educating. So we start really to educate a lot, a lot, a lot of the brands mainly publications about why it's important, why people need to listen, why people enjoy listening, how it will help them with engagement, how it will help them with monetization. Actually, I didn't mention it earlier, but for publications, large publications, they have a lot of content, but also a lot of traffic. You can actually monetize the traffic and the solution will be for free or for a small cost. And because you use ads, embed ads within the consuming of the content. So that's one thing that was super important for us. The second thing, which is related to the first one, is that we understood that actually the publication that's going to use us, that we are now educating for them, that's the best marketing dollars that we can invest. Because as you mentioned, you went to the website, you read, you listen, sorry, to the article, you enjoy the experience. And below that, there was the Powered by Trinity Audio. You said, I like what they are doing. I want to contact them. So I would say those are the two main items. Understand the target audience. And in our case, we needed to educate them. So that was one of the missions that we set, which is hard. Everybody told me, don't do it. Education is a mess. It will take you longer than you ever expected. But we still, we believe that this is the right solution. So we brought to the market and then use those clients. Those publications, those partners, as basically our marketing budget, so to speak, saying, look, this is our solution, here we are. So hope that answering the question.

Yeah. So education, as you say, and going to Vail, Colorado, there are worse places to experience rejection. I would say, to be honest, having been to Vail, I mean, there are where you could have been somewhere a lot less glamorous. So you picked the places to fail. With some skill there, Ron. So you've managed to get your name on the player and the genius there is that you've done that, right? That you've managed to retain your brand identity on those players and that no one tried to remove the branding. And I think that—

They are trying from time to time.

Yeah.

But I think that— But we have to insist.

But as an entrepreneur, to think of the fact that your client will be displaying your product. Lumen5 does this as well. I have Michael Cheng on the, on the show, and Lumen5 enables you to add text and you can create video from the text. It's very powerful. But they have as an end frame powered by Lumen5 unless you pay to upgrade. So He has over a million subscribers, many of whom are promoting Lumen5 because they make videos with an end frame. So this idea that you're giving value and that the consumers can see the value and come and find you is, I think, a really wonderful, wonderful method. Ron, if there's a, if you like, a mistake maybe, or a learning in the 8 or so years of building Trinity Audio from a marketing perspective, what would that be?

I think that one of my mistakes was a little bit when I used a black or white strategy in regard to what works for marketing and what not. If you send a newsletter for 2, 3 times and nobody replied, then it means it doesn't work. Or on the other way around, if you, I don't know, did some campaign on LinkedIn which worked magnificently, then now it will work forever. So it's never the case, it's never the case. And we need to look at small improvements. I would say that especially with marketing, it's small improvement. Try to understand where did you, is your SEO a bit better right now? Do you get a little bit more inbound? Are there a bit more replies to your outbound attempts? You will, in most cases, you will never reach a solution that will, you know, snap of the fingers, whoa, amazing. I have thousands of clients on a daily basis. Everybody's paying. There's no issue with billing. So I think we need to look at small changes, especially in marketing., to drive our company forward.

You know, the idea of incremental change and incremental improvements is really a good one because reassuring as well, isn't it, that you won't find one thing that makes the wholesale change, that it is the incremental moments. But I found, for example, like putting Trinity Audio into my blog posts That for me was like a whole quantum growth. That's a whole new category of content consumption. So I think we can look for those moments like Trinity Audio being put onto a website that can take our content to the next level. So lots of incremental, but every now and again, sort of a quantum change is probably the term I'm looking for, Ron, which is what you're bringing to Anyone with a lot of text on their websites.

Look, I think that you mentioned correctly and I think that it's not only that. For example, due to the fact that you have audio, people will stay and listen. If they will stay and listen, in most cases, by the way, we see it a lot. We do a lot of, we check the average time spent on site with SimilarWeb and then we look at our system and see how long user stays. And in most cases, x3, x4, x5. So you are not only giving them the option, they are engaging more, they stay longer on the website. And that caused another effect because if people are staying longer, Google likes that and it improves your SEO. By the way, they like rich media, which is audio is also rich media. So it does also improve. So then all of those, and then if you play on that, you use the other link and you start to roll the ball. At the end of the day, you have successful company, but never try to find any one solution that will solve everything. That's a 99.9% will be a failure.

Well, that's a bit of shame you've mentioned that, because I was going to sell a ticket to an event which was called The One Thing You Need, Ron, for Success. But now, but now you've blown, blown that, that webinar idea out of the water, Ron Jaworski. I'm gonna, I'm gonna send you the invoice for the loss of income on that one.

I have a tip, I have a tip that, you know, that I, I can give you as, as the one thing that you need to consider when Okay, well, I'm going to ask you because, you know, my next question is going to be your number one tip as an entrepreneur.

What would you recommend?

I would say every entrepreneur or somebody that is considering to become an entrepreneur, you need to consider that it's a roller coaster. It's a roller coaster of ups and downs, of lows and highs. And what I'm trying to say to myself in the high or the lows and respectively. You are not that smart, that bright as you think you are, and you are not that dumb or stupid as you think you are. And this is a lot of entrepreneurs says that, you know, when they're on the high, they're sure that this is it, they conquered the world. Then a quarter later or a year later, something bad happened, and then they look at themselves, says, oh my God, I'm— I can't believe I didn't see it, why I didn't act accordingly, I'm not worthy of becoming a founder or CEO or thing like that. And We need to remember we are never as bright or as dumb as we think we are. We are somewhere in the middle, maybe a little bit more than others because we took one step forward to becoming entrepreneurs. But at the end of the day, you know, that's my tip for everyone.

Okay. So roll with the punches a little bit then, Ron, and enjoy the moments when you're on a high, right? I think that's also a thing to make sure you do celebrate the moments. When you're winning. Ron Jaworski, co-founder of Trinity Audio, what would be a book or a podcast that you would like to share that you find inspiring? And that may be one that you've actually read, or is it a book that you've then listened to on Trinity?

Okay, so I'll give one book and one podcast. So the podcast, actually two podcasts that I love is Huberman's Lab. I love it. I love the fact that you can program your body and your mind to become better. And by the way, another one that is actually a bit similar to that is the Diaries of a CEO, the OAC, which is also a great one. I really like, I really enjoy the conversation that they have. So that's in regard to podcasts. In regard to a book, I wouldn't go for a business book. There is a book by Hermann Hesse called Siddhartha. We talk about it. It's a little bit the story, it's similar to the story of the Buddha, about a rich guy that goes around the world and at the end of the day found peace and happiness in the simple things in life. And I think that's a message to us all about the importance of family and friends And, you know, it's great to be an entrepreneur, it's great to bring a solution to people and see them using, enjoy it, and even grow it. But I think at the end of the day, you know, the simple things are the ones that are making us happy, that look within and not without and not out, and family and friends. That's what I like about this specific book because turns you back to the main things, to earth, to those type of things.

Wonderful. So that's Siddhartha, isn't it? The Buddha and the Buddhist way, which is a wonderful book for you to share, especially as an entrepreneur, we have these ups and downs and the Buddhist philosophy suggests that we have the ups and downs as temporal moments and that we've always got our own being as the permanent that transcends all those. Ups and downs, right, Ron?

So true. As somebody that practices Buddhism and then do a lot of meditation, I couldn't agree more.

If you want to agree with you or disagree with you, Ron, how can they find you?

So I think the best way is LinkedIn, of course. Ron Jaworski at LinkedIn. I'm quite accessible through that platform. I think that's definitely the number one social. And of course, you can reach out to ron@trinityaudio.ai. This is my email. So both manners are acceptable. And of course, if you are in Tel Aviv, we can meet for coffee. Everyone, there's great coffee in Tel Aviv.

You live a bad life, Vail, Tel Aviv. I'm not feeling any sympathy for your down moments. Ron, Ron, thank you for joining me. Ron, it's a pleasure to meet the man that's helped create something that I've personally found so beneficial. Thank you for coming on the show today.

Thank you very much for having me. I really enjoyed this conversation.

Me too. So we've been listening to Ron Jaworski, who is the co-founder and CEO of a company called Trinity Audio. And that's as in the Holy Trinity, not the heroine from The Matrix. And you've been listening to me. And I think a couple of things. One is An innovation that gets spread through education is perhaps one of the key messages here. And also that rather smart leaving your logo on the product so that people can find it and find you when they've consumed it. And that would be a way of really getting organic, natural growth without any budget. And as you know, I'm a big fan of building a brand on a shoestring. Budget. So thank you for listening to me, Jim James, on this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. If you've enjoyed it, do please share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur and leave a review if you can, because it really helps me to know what you think of the show. And until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating.