0215: The Real Audience Accelerator™ To Get Free Traffic From Social Media And Build An Audience That Buys with Best Selling Author, Speaker, & CEO Paul Colligan

This is Paul Colligan for the podcast partnership and you are listening to EA interviews, EA interviews.

Episode 215, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's expert Authority effect interview. Have you ever thought about starting a podcast? I know I have and that is why I am super excited for today's episode. I have none other than the Paul Colligan.

I have been learning from him for years. I consider him a mentor and a good friend and he's taught me a ton. And when I knew he was coming on, I knew it was going to be a blessing to you, Expert Authority World. He literally wrote the podcasting bible over a decade ago when podcasting was in its infancy. And he's going to be sharing with you what, what he's up to now, how you can help it, how you can use it to grow your show. And I know you're going to get a lot out of this. So I'm going to bring up Paul Culligan right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's free business book publishing course.

Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Paul Culligan. Paul, how are you feeling today? Hey.

I'm an acorn user myself, so feeling pretty good.

Excellent.

Fun to see them as a sponsor. Good job.

Thank you. It is an honor and privilege to have you here. I know you kind of led the charge on podcasting even when it wasn't really a thing, so to speak. But how have you seen it change over the years?

Well, it's finally legit. I mean, that's big issue. You know, you mentioned the business podcasting bible that actually came out two years before the iPhone did, which is kind of funny if you think about it. And it's funny, to this day I still get emails, people saying, I read the book. I love your vision. How come you didn't mention the iPhone? And of course usually it's something like, well, look at the front cover. Look at the ipod classic on the front cover of the book. You could tell a couple things, but yeah, it's gotten to where I knew it would be. It took longer than I thought it would, but it really very little has surprised when you can provide your content anytime, any place, anywhere, at a fraction of what it costs to send it out any other way. How's it not going to work.

It was neat to see Apple embrace it way back when. And then it was neat to see Apple do the app and see Spotify spend their money. And recently, you know, at the time of this recording, Amazon Music just added podcasts. So it's, it's neat to see everybody embrace it. And that's exciting. But, I mean, this is just the logical progression of what happens when there's nothing between us and our audience.

So let's foreshadow into the future because you always have your finger on the pulse and everything. And it's. It's astonishing to me because there's been many times I've seen you talk about stuff before it was a thing and then it becomes a thing and then everyone else is doing, you know, run their mouths about it. So obviously you've seen it grow over the last decade. Where do you see it going over the next five or ten years with, you know, I don't even want to lead that question. Where do you see it going over the next five or 10 years?

Videos can be part of it right now, you know. You know, like I said. Yeah, you're happy about that? I can see that video is going to be part of it because again, it's. It's not the issue of audio versus video or whatnot. It's the easiest connect between us and our audience. And right now our devices are set up for this concept of catching audio, but the media device is going to do that as well. Now, there's some strategy. When you do audio, there's a lot more chances to catch the customer than there is when they have to be in front of a screen. But we're going to see. We're going to see audio, we're going to see video become part of this, we're going to see VR become part of this. We're going to see some version of podcast and even of PDFs and ebooks and that type of thing. Just this leveraging the distribution channel of the Internet to get our media directly to our client. But nobody in the middle is going to take on all forms of media.

So what I love about everything you share, you kind of take a contrarian approach. And one thing that I remember seeing was it's not a podcast, it's a platform. You have all kinds of great quotes that I don't see anyone else sharing. And they kind of go against pretty much everything that, for lack of a better term, the gurus are sharing. Why do you consider a platform and not just a podcast?

Well, you got to think the end game, okay? The in game was always the easiest way to distribute media to my audience with nobody in the middle. That was always the end game. But I'll tell you a fun little story.

My dear mother, to this day, if you ask her what her son does, she'll tell you, it's something with Apple, I don't know. And you'll ask her, has she ever listened to it or watched it. She'll say, oh, no, the apple's too complicated. And you'll say, won't your cheap son buy you an Apple? And she'll, no, no, it's too complicated. But yet, about a year and a half ago, I was visiting her, and she had her Kindle Fire open, and somehow she had installed the iHeartRadio app. And I didn't know mom knew how to install apps, so that was kind of surprising. I asked her, mom, why do you have the iHeartRadio app? And she says, well, the radio told me there's a whole scary issue of that to deal with. But, you know, I said, mom, you know, I'm on there.

And she looks at me, you know, as only mom could do, and she says, no, son, this is just radio. You know, I'm like, no, Mom, I'm on there. And she goes, are you on the radio now? You know, you know, you know, there's this. There's this thing, like, she doesn't need to know where I'm at. She just needs to know that she can click a button and listen to me. Brought a recent client in. We're going through the process of kind of building out what we're doing for him. And it was funny because his demographic is entirely 60 plus. All of his demographic is 60 plus. So his question was, would they use the podcast and. Which is, you know, would they use the podcasting app? Would they do it on the iPhone, that type of thing? A very legitimate question. But it was funny because at the end of it, he said, well, worst case scenario, you know, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I said, no, worst case scenario, we have several CDs of audio content that you can give to your clients. Yeah. And that eyebrow thing that you just did is the exact eyebrow thing that the client did. And so when you start restricting it to just podcast, it starts to get really, really interesting. And it's funny because, you know.

I always have to be careful about these things. Bone to pick, but you can say it.

Say whatever you want.

Thanks, man. You know, people laughed at Me and whatnot. You know, one of the things we would always say is also podcast is platform and channel, you know, and sometimes it's okay to podcast things that weren't a podcast originally. No, no, no, that's terrible. You got all the podcasts. And it's funny because a couple of months ago, Oprah Winfrey put her entire back catalog available as a podcast. Oprah Winfrey took her TV show and made it available as an audio podcast. You know, and that's where. That's where this world is. And so, you know, it's. It's a platform. Half the world, pretty much. Exactly. Now, half the world knows what a podcast is, half the world doesn't.

Or has ever used it, ever interacted. They probably. Yeah, I've heard that term kind of thing. But if you look at the numbers, half the world's interacted with the podcast in some way. Half the world hasn't. Here's the thing. Everybody in the world's interacted with audio. So if you make it about the podcast, you cut off half the world. You make it about audio. Now you got everybody. You know, what if I tell you I've got a podcast with Mario, then what's a podcast? But if I say you can get Mario anytime you place, anywhere. Oh, cool, sign me up. And so it's always been about the platform, always has been this just a distribution mechanism. You know, Seinfeld, you know, in the 90s, created a show. Seinfeld, you know, he recently rented his show. Rented his show to Hulu, who doesn't even get an exclusive right to it for four years. Like a half a billion dollars. It's crazy, you know, and so, you know, he created an asset, not a TV show, and that's what we should be doing.

I loved hearing you say that. Not in that much detail, but it always had me thinking, you know, what can you do? And one of the things, since I do video and audio, I kind of depending on what I'm doing. Stop calling it a podcast. If someone asks, yeah, it's a podcast, but I have the audio experience and the video experience. And I just started saying, enjoy the show.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Had a client who came in. It was really funny. We were just assessing where he was at, what he was doing, and CrossFit Space. And about 10% of his audience was watching the podcast on YouTube, even though the YouTube episode was just the graphic with that squiggly line, you know, and it wasn't even really well done.

Oh, geez.

Who make really fancy now but it was, you know, but here's the thing was interesting about an hour plus show and people were consuming. You know, we're talking about a thousand plus episodes per. So not, not a weird number.

Just from an audiogram, from an audio.

From an hour long plus audiogram. But they were consuming from an hour long plus audiogram more than they were consuming video of an hour long plus. In the CrossFit space, the guy's client, the guy's content was that compelling that people were doing it. And you know, we could sit around and we could say that's not optimum or that's not ideal or that's not this or that's not that, or we could just go, you know what? A thousand people are downloading it on YouTube, you know, which is awesome. And that's the approach that we need to take to all of this.

So let me ask you this then because.

I can relate to that because I am almost always doing something video related or I'm completely away from the machines on the lake doing something like there's no machinery around. But when I am, I definitely have YouTube with stuff playing. So I. Do you think that YouTube is just so convenient for people, whether it's audio, video, whatever, where they just. Maybe I don't need to watch it because, you know, you can be doing other things, but it's just a convenience factor where you click, click, boom. And it's there.

Yeah. And it's YouTube. It's ubiquitous. It's everywhere. My mom knows what YouTube is. You know, my mom doesn't know what a podcast is to this day. So maybe she gets it by. By YouTube. And the thing is, the power of this is, is we can be on YouTube. You know, we can be in the podcast directories, we can be on the website. You know, when you and I met back in the days of.

We're back the old like, like a decade ago.

Yeah. You know, back when I can't remember the thing that distributed the videos. Oh my goodness, I'm going blank. I'm starstruck being on the show here. What was the thing that distributed the videos?

Trafficizer.

Thank you, Trafficizer. You know, Traffic Geyser would distribute. So, you know, you know, for you kids out there, Traffic Geyser was this system that would give it a video and it would publish the video everywhere that would take it. And one of the things that was funny was I used it everywhere I could. And the decision making tree for which platform I published on was. Was this a platform that Traffic guys would publish to that was the platform. And what was hilarious was there one of the platforms. I don't know if you remember this, Mario. One of them was called Stupid videos dot com. You know, it was a place where people would publish stupid videos, hence the name. Good, good title. Well, I published my show on stupidvideos.com because why not, you know, and the funny thing was I had a dozen viewers on stupidvideos.com and who am I to say that that's the one place for them to consume it?

You never know where someone's going to be watching it. When I first did this, I was hesitant to go onto Twitch because it's traditionally for gaming and stuff. But I was like, hey, it's another platform and it's totally legit and everything and there's some good stuff on there. But at the same point, it's a business show on entrepreneurship, this and. But you know what? If people can watch it, people can watch it.

Exactly. Do you know what, do you know the name Ijustine? Yeah. Okay, so. So Ijustine. So again for you kids, Ijustine is a. She's a media figure. She's one of the original live streamers. She streamed her life and that kind of stuff. She's now more of, more of a media player. And.

15 years ago or in the early days of this, I published an article and it was really interesting article because I had access to some tools that could show the penetration of the stars, the video stars across the different platforms. And it was funny because you could look at like this star was all YouTube, you know, and this star was all Vimeo or that kind of thing. And what was amazing was Justine, if you looked at her, she was almost exactly 20% around the top five. And I thought that was brilliant. And you only get that by absolutely, purely, completely calculated, you know. And I mentioned that on the blog post. I said we need to be more like Ijustine. And because we do. And at that time we didn't know YouTube was going to be. I think that might have even been pre purchased by Google. So, you know, you know, it was not clear that YouTube was going to be the big star, but anything was. I did that article and like five minutes later there was a comment on the blog post from Justine saying thanks for noticing because, you know, she was on top of it. And 15 years later, you know, she's still playing the game and a lot of the other popular podcast, you know, the popular video types at the point at work. And I was watching as much of A season of. Of Cut or Chopped, that TV show where they. And they had these stars of the Web. And all of a sudden, Justine walks out. It was so good to see her, you know, and so that's the. That's the game. You know, it's not about.

Any platform. It's about our content. And so we become the platform. You want to hear a crazy idea I'm working on?

Absolutely.

Okay, so you remember the old days, I used to get the audience in a tizzy, right? I would do this whole thing. I'd pull up, I'd, you know, I'd make all my points, and then I'd, you know, be all profound and pundit like. And I would say something along the lines of sort of, when you think about it, who's the media? You know, and then. And then they point to you are. And then I go, no, you're the media. And then we do this whole thing back and forth where person A would look at person B, who is the media? And then they'd say, you the media. They'd say, no, you the media. You know, and it would be fun, and everybody'd be happy about it, and that kind of stuff. And that inspired a lot of people. I'm sure you remember that a couple of times. Here's my idea. And the auto camera. Look at that. It's. It's trying to figure out where I'm going. We can talk about the auto camera in a minute if you want. But yes, friends, I am actually testing something on Mario here. I would normally do this, but it's Mario. I feel comfortable, and it's a good test. So it used to be who's the media?

I think it's changed. I think it's who's the network?

I think HBO is our model, okay? I think Game of Thrones is the show. And there's a lot of people who have Game of Thrones, Blu Ray, who bought Game of Thrones on itunes. You know, I think there's even been times where HBO has given away Game of Thrones. A free episode here or there. You know, you can download it from your Xfinity box or that kind of thing, but it leads them all back to hbo.

Everything leads them back to hbo, because that's where HBO makes the big money now. They license Game of Thrones to other people. Yeah, that kind of stuff.

But at the end, it's still their content.

Right? But HBO's gone now. They're doing the next thing, and they're able to survive the next thing because these are the people who brought us Game of Thrones or who brought us, you know, whatever show, you know, from their long history that you want to think of. But the idea is now be the network. So HBO doesn't care. You know, I'm on this, I'm on this Facebook portal device right now with the tracking. I'm giving this the big test. And they announced actually this morning that they're going to put Netflix on the Facebook portal and be able to click a button, watch Netflix. Well, you know what that means? That means in a couple of days, you know, somebody at HBO is going to fly down and give the Facebook guys some money and say, put HBO on there as well, you know, and, you know, and so HBO is going to be there. And so we want to be hbo. We don't want to be the expert authority effect. We want to be, you know, marionette, you know, or, you know, whatever the bigger idea is. And I think that's the next step. So we're on YouTube just like HBO is on YouTube. We're on podcast just like HBO is on podcast. People might order our stuff and download it just like people order and download other stuff. You know, there will be books about it, there will be different things, music, soundtrack, the whole nine yards. That's what we're doing.

So you're in a nutshell. You're saying don't limit it to just YouTube or any one channel or be a YouTuber or a podcaster.

Yeah, don't limit it to anything. Why limit it? Be like making a TV show that only works on Sony televisions.

Right?

Yeah. And now, and now it's, it's not even device dependent like you're saying you can have it on Facebook, portal, your phone, the TV monitors, multiple monitors, laptops.

I actually changed my company name in 2012 because I was saying when we're doing marketing with holograms, I don't want to be tied down to any. You know, my original company name was Imicpa Entertainment and then web design. And I'm like, this is nuts. So I just was like, it's gonna change the next 10, 20 years. And I knew I'd still be doing it.

That's why I'm called calligan.com.

We can do a lot of things with that idea.

So do you see over the next five, 10 years.

Bigger businesses coming into the space and pushing indies out? Or do you see indies getting so big they're working with the larger companies?

See this, I'm glad you asked this question. Is a big pet peeve of mine because the math's wrong. Okay?

This is the beautiful thing about what we have here is the good indies are never going to get pushed out.

It doesn't matter how many Olive Gardens are built in Portland, you know, the good Italian restaurants are still going to be around, you know, and, you know, Mama Leone is. And I'm just making that up because that's a cool sounding Italian restaurant name, you know, Mama Leone's has nothing to fear from Olive Garden.

Period, you know, Now Mama Leone's needs to never think about being on a supermarket bolad, you know, Mama Leone, you know, shouldn't have dreams of going public. But that's not why Mama Leone is there, you know, and so, and I'll chat to the kids. Mario's little inside baseball here.

There's this idea that, you know, we made podcasting great. And so now the big people are going to come in and they're going to, you know, they're going to fight for, for competition. They're going to fight for eyeballs, they're going to fight for earballs or, you know, whatever. You know, there will be some of that, but the good stuff will always go down.

You know, I love a good burger, you know, but I've never gotten up in the morning and said, let's go to McDonald's, you know, and now have I ended up at McDonald's? Yes. You know, not the last four or five years, but, you know, that's just where we're at. So there's the room for the big guys, there's the room for the little guys. But what's cool? Cool is. What's cool is. Whereas Mama Leone's is in some. Boy, what a great name for a restaurant. I, I should, I should hire somebody to open it up. Mama Leone's where she is in this obscure alleyway somewhere in downtown Portland, probably too close to the riots, you know, and you gotta really be really specific to go eat her rigatoni. You know, with the podcast, we're in the same directory as everybody else is. Any attempt at a podcast directory that smushes out the little guys is never going to win by the very nature of what it is. And so that's how it's so fantastic. So if the indie has the right attitude of what it means to be indie and what makes indie so freaking cool, we're going to be fine. Now I think there is one argument that has been made by, I think the biggest proponent of this is Merlin. Man on five by five and due by Friday. And some of the other shows, Merlin says that some of the big names, Spotify specifically is kind of like Walmart. You know, they'll come into the space and, you know, they'll make it all shiny and fancy, and then if they decide it's not good, they'll leave and leave. Podcasting as a ghost town, it's just not gonna go. It's not gonna become a ghost town. It's too big and it's too massive right now. So I'm not worried about that in the slightest, you know, and not worry about that in the slightest. You know, I. Couple days ago, I ordered some coffee, you know, and I knew I could click a button and I could have some good coffee coming to me from Whole Foods via Amazon. I'm a big Amazon user. I mean, very few days go by where I don't have, you know, the Amazon box on my front step or the ding on the phone that Amazon has arrived. I'm not an anti corporate guy, but when I ordered the coffee, you know, I ordered it from someplace else and I knew it was going to take seven days to get here, and it was worth it. Have I ordered a coffee from Amazon? Yes. But will I always order coffee from the indies? Yes. So we're gonna be okay with how.

It'S growing and knowing we can all be in the same directories. What would you say are some of the best ways to promote it? Because if there's a million people in the directory, it's a level playing field. But obviously some shows are going to get more or airtime, watch time, eyeball time, whatever you want to call it. What have you found is the best ways to promote it?

Well, the thing is, we got to stop pretending like the directories are worth anything is the first step. Nobody, Mario, nobody ever, ever in the history of mankind went to Mataleone's because they went to the phone book, searched for Italian restaurants, and found that tiny little listing that says Mama Leone's one block away from the riots. Ooh, that sounds tasty. Nobody ever did that in a million years. People went to Mama Leone's because some walked by Mama Leone's and they smelled the garlic bread and they said, oh, man, this is me. You know, some people posted to a friend on Facebook, man, I want Italian food.

You know, can't go wrong with Italian.

Yeah, yeah, I'm a. I'm in Portland, Oregon. Hence the riot jokes. For anybody who didn't catch that, you know? You know, I want good Italian food. Who's got it? You know, friends in you know, and here's what's funny is a friend would post that, you know, a Mama Leone's downtown Portland. But what's funny is somebody, you know in New York would post something else, and somebody in Florida would post something else. And even though the person posted in Kansas, none of these are viable. You know, that's the way the indies get found. You know, there's a little indie band that I really adore called over the Rhine. And it was funny because I basically had to drag my wife to the first one because it was just the whole idea, even an indie band. And the club that we went to was just, you know, we had to stand and it was just annoying getting too old for this kind of thing. But by the by, we saw him the second time. You know, Heidi's like, you know, when are they coming back? You know, and so the way the indies work is it's not that nobody's going to Mama the onlys because of a listing in the phone book, and nobody's going to your podcast because you're listening in Apple, period. So how are they getting there? Word of mouth value. You know, I'm trying to figure out how to use, you know. You know, I'm trying to figure out how to use authority in my marketing, and I'm trying to figure out how to use the fact that we're so far, you know, I couldn't fly down to where you were and give you an hour, but I can do this. So somebody's trying to figure out how to make sense of this. They search your show. How many episodes you got live right now?

150. Some.

Exactly. So anybody who looks at this, you know, goes, okay, he's not playing around. This is not somebody who's done three, you know, and so, you know, they search for this stuff, that they find this stuff, and they realize that you're here to play, you know, and that's. That's the game. So we have to stop marketing thinking that people are going to a director, because nobody is. You know, we got to start market thinking because you make a good product, people know about it, and people go from there. Now, on occasion, you know, someone will. Will. You know, I'm trying. I'm going to take this Mama Leone's idea a little bit. It's probably too far. So I'd be staying at a hotel nearby. And, you know, they asked the concierge, where's the closest Italian restaurant within walking distance, because we don't want to get firebombed for the riots. They go, mama Leone's is around the corner. Never been there, but you might want to give it a try. You know, they go to Mama's, Mama. The only. Might get a drive by now and then. But that's a bad business plan. That's a really bad business plan.

I love that you're using it. And there is a couple of points where I was like, man, I should check it out. I'm like, wait, he just made this up eight minutes ago, right?

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Doesn't really exist, guys. Although it sounds like a really cool restaurant.

I'm also thinking, which one of us is going to get the domain first?

Right?

So with what you're saying about the directories being useless, basically, I got a great.

Basically to keep going on.

A segue.

Question as far as apps go, do you? I don't want to name any specific ones, but there's one I'm thinking of specifically. As far as itunes, and everyone knows itunes. I'm thinking of a different one, but as far as the directory, you know, I think of itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Iheart, and all those. What about these new players that are like, put us on your exclusive app, and they're trying to get you off of itunes onto their platform, but it's you. You can only listen to the show on that app or that station or that website or that. Whatever you want to call it.

So.

There is a trend in the industry right now for platforms wanting exclusive content. We're trying to make this as evergreen as possible. But right now, the one currently in the news is Joe Rogan on Spotify. And, you know, if you want Joe Rogan now, at least at the time of this recording, I have some predictions of what will happen soon. But at the time of this recording, if you want Joe Rogan, you got to go to Spotify. Now, it's funny because everybody's like, oh, this is crazy. This has never happened before. This is nuts. It's funny because about, you know, 15 years ago, there's a guy named Howard Stern who left radio to go to Sirius. You know, and now you talk about my little pithy sayings and that kind of stuff. Here's a pithy saying for you, Mario. Don't count on the silly money, but if it comes, cash the check, okay?

Joe got offered insane money for doing something insane, and Joe said yes.

Period. Now, here's the other thing. There's some people. Actually, there are people more famous than Joe playing this game. There's this woman named Michelle. She had this husband, Barack, and They lived in a white house, and.

She was exclusive on Spotify. They took her off. She's now everywhere.

There's, you know, we talked about hbo. There's this company called Gimlet, and Gimlet kind of presented themselves as the HBO podcasting. I thought it was not a bad idea. Spotify bought Gimlet, and when it initially announced they'd had some shows that were out, so they were everywhere. But they slowly announced that certain shows would be Spotify only. And the marketing for Gimlet started to get kind of vague as to where you could get the show. Even though you could get it everywhere. They make it sound like it's only on Spotify. That's changing. So here's the thing. Content available everywhere versus content available somewhere.

That's the choice.

Everywhere is always better. Unless there's a financial reason to be somewhere and someone gives you some crazy money. Take it. I'm do it. But the power of podcasting, you never heard me say. You never heard me say that. The value of podcasting is ads. Like, you know, doing an ad for somebody else. Who cares? That's old media. Like, there's nothing exciting about that. It's the ad for yourself. It's the ad for what you're doing that gives you the opportunity to actually do something really, really cool. And an ad for your own stuff everywhere is better than an ad for yourself somewhere, you know, had a client, it was really funny. Had a client, it was a beautiful call. He's given me permission to tell the story. I have to be a bit vague, but client calls and says, so, hey, Paul, these commercials, how does that work? And I said, well, here's the deal. Commercials in podcasts are traditionally sold on what's called cpm, cost per milliliter. It's an old advertising term. And what it means basically for 1,000. And in the ad industry, it's impressions. So the idea is the Oregonian, the local paper of Portland. You know, how many people will see that ad is how many thousands of people see that ad. So 20,000 people see it, and it's $50 per cpm. It would cost you 20 times 50 to get your ad in the Oregonian. That's how it's figured out in podcasting. CPM is per the downloads, you know, as certified by, you know, the iab, which means North American downloads only and that kind of thing. It's basically, long story short, best case, you're going to get about 40 bucks. Best case, about 40 per thousand. By the way, your agent's going to get about 25% of that. You're going to get 30. They want at least 10,000 downloads before they even really take it that seriously. So the fact of the matter is, you know, you're gonna make 300 bucks from 10,000 downloads.

And if you can't make more than 300 bucks from 10,000 downloads, you're doing this wrong. And he goes, ah, nah, I heard enough. I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, well, didn't you tell me I'm only getting about 500 downloads per episode? Yeah. And he goes, so I'm far away from this, aren't I? Yeah, and that was gonna be my closing. But then he says, well, we're doing pretty good. Define pretty good. You know, goes, well, we're getting two or three leads a day. All right, define leads. Like is this five days a week? Is this seven days? Oh, two or three leads a day. Seven days a week. Great. What's your conversion? He says, oh, at least one. I go, good. Makes the math easy. So you get 365 new customers a year from your show. He goes, yeah. I go, what's the customer worth? Because, oh, first year the customer's worth $3,000.

So you're telling me 10 months into this, you are a million dollar podcast and you're calling me about mattress ads.

And you hear Malka pausing the other side saying, yeah, huh, that's kind of silly. All right, Paul, thanks for the call. You know, basically hangs up and goes through it. That's the power of podcasting. Now if you're Joe ROGAN and they can 8 trillion, you can just sloppily throw up an ad or that kind of thing. But that's an entirely different game. That's not the power of podcast and that's the power of being a media sensation. So I'm just not worried about it. And I think anybody who's strategic, you know, and that is fine and dandy and, you know, basically, if you could make a million bucks by being everywhere from ads and someone offers you 1.5 million bucks to be somewhere with that, enjoy. But do the math.

How many people do you think take a look at the math before they just start doing stuff?

Very few.

It's kind of sad. Well, this is the problem. One of the issues. One of the issues is podcasting is so easy. So there's this company called Anchorage, also owned by Spotify. There's this company called Anchor, whose promise is we're going to make podcasts, we're going to do for podcasting what YouTube did for online video. And we're going to make it free, we're going to make it non exclusive, we're going to make the software really, really easy. And so now anybody can download an app and they can have a podcast up in very little time at all. And the great thing, because it's a podcast, you don't have to worry about lighting, you don't have to worry about cameras, you don't have to worry about any of that stuff. It's not that big of a deal. So.

Because we can get in cheap and fast and easy, we're good to go, you know, and if you look at the numbers, Spotify is just. Or anchor has been like a massive amount of the new podcast. But the majority of them, you know, hello, I'm podcasting my first episode. Hello, does this work? You know, and that's the episode. And nobody cares, you know, and so very few people do the math. And what's sad is, Mario, a lot of people don't do the math. Deeper on, you know, I was speaking to a guy. 7 million downloads. 7 million downloads. Clarity on his mission and purpose. As if grandma had, you know, Grandma Leone, you know, the restaurant down in Portland. If grandma Leone had, you know, hand stitched the mission statement into a pillow that this guy slept on every night, you know, I mean, absolutely what he was doing. I asked him, how's it working for you? A decent question to ask, especially if he's gonna hire me as a consultant. I don't even, I don't know, you know, and so a lot of people don't know. It is so easy. It is so fast. It is so click a button and you're everywhere. That a lot of people don't look at the numbers. And that's where we make our money, is by looking at the numbers. And it's, it's, it's fun, the numbers there to look at.

Yeah. After I got my show up and running, I've always been doing it with live stream and video and other people reached out for, you know, hiring me for consulting on the video side of things. Well, the whole thing. But mainly because they were like, I want to do the video like you do. And I was like, all right, let's look at that. I've always, always, always taken any of my clients, whether they're author, video, whatever, marketing, and I'm like, what are your profit margins? What are this? Because it's business. If you don't know what your margins are, how are you going to be profitable with it. And it's astonishing to me when people are like, well, what plan do I need? If they're talking about a paid plan, they're like, should I get this one or this one? I'm like, it's $5 or $10 a month. Is this really a question?

I mean, you start talking video, it's like, this stuff wasn't free.

Yeah. What's funny is, you know, I bought the whole studio. Now what should I do with it? Maybe determine what you were doing before you buy the whole studio. You know, you got a great blue screen, green screen set up there. You know, I knew what I was.

Doing before I started.

Well, right. But it makes sense for what you're doing, you know. You know that folksy down home calling from the home office kind of portrayal that I'm trying to do right now, you know, if I was blue screened, it wouldn't. Or are you blue or green? What now? It's green. Obviously, with your background, your green screen.

You know, it's just. Just what are we trying to do? What are we trying to accomplish? And what's. What's the best, you know, item for the task?

Yeah. When we were talking about the destinations and everything, I had an idea. I go, if I have video, well, one, I'm more comfortable with it. It's my background with special effects, animation, all that, whatever. But I was like, there's nothing stopping me from getting it on Netflix, Amazon prime, every other video outlet that's possible outside of itunes. I was just like, well, I do. Well, you can do video. But I was just like, I need to get the show up and running. But, you know, I had plans, you know, 500, a thousand plus episodes down the road. I mean, there's really no platform. You can't go on. If you got audio and video.

Yeah.

Yeah. Just gotta decide if the juice is worth the squeeze. You know, we have a mutual friend who spent about nine months trying to get his stuff on Amazon, then realized it wasn't worth it. You know, Boy, that's nine months worth of wasted time, my friend. You know, so figure out, you know, what you want, what it would get you, and go from there.

Yeah, There's a lot you can do, but you just gotta pick one and run with it.

Yeah. And it's worth it. You know, if your goal is to make some money. Money and see some revenue from a strategic implementation of video, you know, probably would call Mario. You know, if your goal is to, you know, heck, I'm making you an ad Right now, my friend, you know, if your goal is to figure out how video works, you know, you know, download the YouTube app on your iPhone, like, you know, just what's the goal? What it is, what is it that you're trying to do?

When people are starting off their podcast, why do you think they don't put a plan or strategy together? Because I know a lot of what you do, and I'm not going to say anyone, but I've heard you mention them before. You're welcome to say whoever you can, but I know you work with really, really big name clients. Why do they see the. Why do you. Why do you think more people don't see the value in the strategy versus what mic should I use? What one of.

Well, the problem is this.

It.

As I spoke to earlier, barrier to entry is so tiny. Like you said, it's the $5 plan or the $10 plan, you know, and. And so the barrier to entry is so tiny. So what they do, you know, this is the bane of my existence. Since I was in web design, since I was an affiliate, you know, set seven, all this stuff, people don't know what they want is the first problem. So they have their assistant find five people and then they usually hire the one that's the not. They don't hire the cheapest one because they're not cheap, but they'll hire the one that's the second cheapest, you know, because they're, you know, wise with their money kind of thing. Never comparing notes, you know. You know, I remember back in the early days web design, there was a project we bid on and it was absolutely hilarious because we lost. That's fine. And I called the company and I said, hey, we lost. I get it. I just want to understand why we lost. For the future, could you give me five minutes of your time? They said, sure. And we were talking about different things. The guy says, well, at the end it was that they were less per hour than you were, which is a very legitimate issue. Very legitimate issue. And then I said, great, would you mind showing me what their cap was? You know, he goes, what do you mean? I said, remember that part where we said where we wouldn't charge more than $10,000 regardless of how long it it took? Is that. Yeah. What do the other guys say? Oh, I don't think they said anything. So they could charge you as much as they want. So at the end, theoretically, this could be ten times as expensive. I was literally trying to, to. To just get the data on why we lost the Bid and crap. You're right, you know, oh well, we're too late. And we go from there. So because it's so easy to get in.

A lot of people don't think things through. You know, if you're, if you're going to build a house, you're going to spend years figuring out the exact house you want. If you're going to buy one of the houses available on Flint Avenue, you're going to see which the houses are made available on Flint Avenue and make it work. So because all the cool kids are doing it, they want it because the barrier to entry is really, really low. Just buy a microphone, start talking and buy the five or ten dollar account they're really in. Nobody takes the time to do it it right. And that's just, you know, you know, story of life. You know, a lot of people have kids without a strategy for what do you want to do with these kids once you bring them home. You know, a lot of people, you know, there was a, there's Mario, there's a living near this mall and it was new and it opens up and yay. And no Mama Leone's. But across the way from the movie theater at the time, the, the newest, coolest movie theater in town was a, I kid you not, a gourmet rice pudding store.

Gourmet rice pudding.

I'm sure it was great but never in my life have I ever walked out of an action flip thinking rice pudding time. You know, never, never before my wife had I gone to see a rom com hun. Let's, let's finish up this night with a, with a bowl of rice pudding, you know, and even if there was.

A little cinnamon on it.

Yeah, sure, I don't know, I guess, you know, and they were out there with the little cups with the little spoons and rice pudding, you know, it's just never in a million years.

Was I ever considering rice pudding as my post cinematographic treat, you know. And the problem is probably not have been the best rice pudding in the world. But the positioning was terrible, you know, and surprise, surprise not. They were the first store to go out of business in that mall, you know and, and I'm sure they're like oh, who would have thought, you know. Well anybody who does math would have.

Thought.

You know, I drove by, I grew up in Germany, my folks worked for, that worked for the US military and I grew up in Germany and I love European food and I was driving by a very standard strip mall kind of situation and nothing exciting about the place, and the store opened up. It was European deli, and I'm like, I love European food. So I go in, and it was a very specific type of Polish cooking that if you were Polish or had Polish food growing up, it would really make you feel good. And it's that home cooking, comfort food for a tiny demographic that does not exist in the strip mall that this European deli was located in. I'm sure the food was great, but it wasn't food that I was interested in, you know, and having driven by a couple times, it was food that nobody that I could tell was really interested in. And lo and behold, they went out of business pretty quickly, you know, and. And podcasts are the same, you know, but the thing is, at least with the deli, I mean, she had to buy some cooking equipment and sign a lease, you know, and with this. This rice pudding place, they had to set a big lease. This was. This was a frou frou ball. This is one of them fancy balls Mario, you know, and. And they had to put some money down, you know, but in podcasting, again, pick up that Spotify, you know, pick up that Anchor app. You know, you're on Apple in a couple days doing this. Hello, is this on? You know, and not wondering where, you know, money comes from, but that's just. Just the game.

Yeah. Because even with anchor, it's free. You don't even need a plan. And when you're saying pick up a microphone, a lot of people already have them in their phones or their laptops or whatever the heck. Yeah.

You don't have a microphone in your phone. You might want to take it back to the store because they typically come with that, you know.

Well, depending on who you ask, they might want to take the microphone out. Well, yeah.

And if anyone is wondering, we're making jokes about the five and ten dollar plan. I wouldn't recommend either of them. I would recommend Libsyn and one of their advanced plans. You can use promo code Shine.

Lipson's awesome. So use them. Don't use Anchor.

But let's give the real Libs and hack. Let's get the real. I felt bad sharing this hack until Rob came on my show, and then he shared the hack.

Oh, please share.

I feel fine. Fine. I feel fine sharing this. So here's the deal. Libsyn only bills on the first of the month. Okay? So if you were to sign up for Libsyn and to use the coupon code shine on November 2, they wouldn't. You get it free until December. First when they would bill you, and then they would see your coupon code, and you get it free for December as well. So that Shine coupon code literally gives you, you know, two months minus a day of free access.

Yeah, I've used them since before I got started, and I think they're awesome. And it's another common question with the anchor Libsyn, the 15 others. It's like. It's just part of it. Just focus on the content. Don't worry about it so much. So I got one question I want to ask you, and then we're going to go to the Wheel of Whatever, thank our sponsor, and come back for the imperfect action around the last question I had. I was going to ask for the Wheel of Whatever, but it's kind of. I don't think it's that good. But I did want to know the answer. How many episodes should you launch a podcast with? Why?

Well, what's the answer? And why would you say that over what the traditional one is?

You've heard too many of me. One launch with one. Your audience wants to be part of something.

They want to be part of something. So if you launched with one, they were there from day one, you know, and that's the audience that you're building out, and it's. It's absolutely brilliant. People say 5, people say 10, people say 20. Because they say that the downloads count, the downloads don't count, and they don't download, but other than that, you're good to go. Big hotshot name. I'm allowed to add. I'm allowed to share this one. JJ Virgin. I don't know if she didn't believe me or didn't trust me enough at the time or whatnot. She wanted 10, I wanted one.

She.

We compromised it. 3. What was interesting was if you took the amount of downloads of episode one and episode two, added them together, multiplied by them by 10, that was still less than the downloads of episode three. So it's just a bad idea.

Okay.

And on another conspiracy theory show, we'll go as to why people say 10, but it's just really a bad idea. Launch with 1. I originally ask people what they thought of 1. Fix it. Number 2. Ask what they thought of 2. Fix it. Number 3.

So get feedback from the audience 10.

Times in a row.

So ask the audience and interact with them. Don't just keep putting stuff out. Yeah. All right, so here's the fun question that I think is better than that, because I kind of. Well, whatever. But this is the Wheel of Whatever.

Okay.

And I'm gonna spin it for your question, even though it's already my head. Okay.

Don't fall. Here we go.

Whatever. Oh, oh. Pick the right one.

What do you think it takes? What do you. What's that?

Go ahead.

Your question is, what do you think it takes to get to 300, 500, a thousand plus episodes? And why don't most people do it?

Well, it takes the recording of 300, 500, or a thousand episodes. And most people don't do it because they didn't have a plan at the beginning. They didn't adjust at the beginning. They're not there for the long term. You know, that's why. That's why they didn't do it. You know, it's.

You know, 300 episodes takes the recording of 300 episodes. It's just not that complicated, you know, and if you don't have a plan to get you to 10, you don't have a plan to get you to 100, you don't have a plan to get you to 300.

And you can change, you know, some of my favorite podcasts, Michael Hyatt, on his original show, which, the name escapes me at the moment, it was funny because we did episode 100. He basically told the world, yeah, the last 10 or so episodes, I've been calling it in, I've kind of hated this whole model. And so starting episode 101, we're going to start season two of the show, and instead of being a monologue, we're going to be a dialogue. Instead of the audio, we're going to be video. Instead of being 40 minutes long, we're going to be 20 minutes. Basically changed everything. And, you know, my initial thought was, can you do that? You know, yeah, actually you can. And because why? Because you're in charge. Because you're not just the media, but you're the network. And so, you know, it's just. Starting episode 101, he started with fresh, and I think he's in four or five seasons in right now and has made significant changes along the way.

But.

But he was just playing the long game, and people don't get it when they don't play the long game.

Excellent. Well, I appreciate that because I always. God gave me the vision from the start, and there's a reason I labeled my episode numbers the way I did, and. And it's been fun so far, but I'm not going anywhere and was just curious because I know after 100, 200, which I've passed now.

There'S not A lot of it keeps getting less and less for the number of shows that get to that point.

Yep.

Yeah, well, thank you for that. I love how you always simplify everything. I was half expecting a big altruistic like this big thing like I'm going to get some secret sauce here and what's it take to do 300 plus episodes?

Simplicity is sometimes the secret sauce, my friend.

All right, well, I appreciate that. We're going to thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it's true. And that's why you should visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went.

From having an idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published.

Or Catherine, thank you for making my.

Mom number one best selling author.

Or Mary Alice, what he got done.

For me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable John Cody. I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful and getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books.

Rocio, there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past, it didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele, if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficcini or Bill Benner. I can't make a higher recommendation for than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started now and I look forward to hearing your transformation as the next video success story. Once again, that's freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Paul, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Sure.

So I got a couple of questions. They're 60 second quick answers and the first one is what is the fastest path to the profit profits?

Giving them what they want and giving them what they want and are willing to pay for.

Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it.

No plan.

Making a plan.

All right, number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Find out what they're willing to pay for. Keep giving it to them.

Very good. What books would you recommend for Expert Authority World that have made a difference in your life?

I'm going to go with some of the non traditional ones. The E Myth Revisited.

A fantastic book, the E. Myth. It has nothing to do with electricity or online or anything. The E Myth is actually the entrepreneur myth and I'm going to pull one way back from. There's one called the Clue Train Manifesto and.

It'S an older book. It's back to this whole thing of why the indies will never lose to the big guys. Because the conversation that we're having with our audience is so very, very different. So those two, I'd recommend four hour workweek. Not necessarily because you're going to leave it with a four hour work week, but it's going to force you to think about work entirely different.

Excellent. Well, appreciate those and.

I've really enjoyed this. Where would you like people to find out more?

Either the podcastreport.com for the show or it's funny. Podcast Report is definitely one of those. Don't do as, don't model what I do there. Podcast report is my lab. Much like this video camera. Today was part of my lab. Learn some things from it, that kind of thing. But it's fun to see what I'm doing there. The other option, I would just say podcastpartnership.com it's what we're up to and what we do.

Excellent. And I love that you're always testing stuff out because there's a fair amount of people I've seen rant and rave about something. You know, time goes by and it's like they don't do anything new or they don't really, you know, they're comfortable and that's cool. I mean, hey, if you're going to get stuck at a level, congrats on making it a high one. But you've always been on the cutting edge well into this decade and I have no doubt you'll be doing it for another decade. So thanks for being you.

All right, man.

Enjoyed this a lot. Thanks again, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. God bless. How would you like to grow your wealth? Easier than you think. With the change you probably don't notice anyhow, automatically. That's why I started the compounding interest Snowball investing with Acorns and advise you do too. Get started simply and easily today@eainterviews.com Acorns.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate and qualify leads while increasing profit for you 247 and if so, how well are you promoting it? With the Expert Authority Effect publishing method, it's easier and faster than ever. Visit free businessbook publishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started now. Once again, that's free businessbook publishingcourse.com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.