Why NOW is the best time to start a podcast with Lloyd Knowlton

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Podcast. We're in season eight, episode 26 and in today's podcast I want to talk to you about why you should start a podcast. I have invited on Lloyd Knowlton of the Knowlton Marketing Agency and you may be thinking, well, what has that got to do with hospitality? Well, most guests that I invite on around the world of hospitality, but this is more for me, this one and I'll tell you why, and you'll notice why, because I'm a bit of, a bit of a fanboy of Lloyd and his brother Dan and his new podcast called the Business Anchors Podcast. Now there are only five episodes in and so they are very fresh in what it is like to start a podcast. The the creative thinking behind it, the struggles that they thought that was going to be before you start a podcast and how actually simple and easy it is. And my goal of this episode for one person that is going to listen or watch to take action and create a podcast on the back of it. If you want to go find out more about Lloyd and Dan and their podcast, just type in Business anchors on wherever you do listen to your podcast and obviously as well, whilst you are there, type in Boost Hospitality podcast, give it a rate, give it a review and a subscribe. We are currently at the moment in the top 17 in the UK, which is fantastic. Thank you very much to everybody that has helped us get there. We are going to be very soon passing 20 downloads which is also amazing. Thank you very much. This podcast is brought to you by our sponsors which is hostfully. If you haven't checked them out, you should know them by now. Digital guidebooks that you can get for free. All you've got to do is go to hostfully.com you get one free digital guidebook. If you want to upgrade and go for their premium options, then all you got to do is type Boostly B O O s T L Y 2M in the coupon code and you get two months free. This is also brought to you by the Book Direct Membership, which is Boostly's book Direct membership. For only 9.99amonth you get social media content provided you for Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. All the copy, all the design. You also get listed on the Book Direct Map and you get over 80 hours worth of training videos that will help you increase your direct booking. And the best thing is is it's guaranteed results. If you fail to get a return of investment, you get all of your money back. Nobody else is offering that because nobody else has got a big enough mouth. As I to shout out about this, I'm that confident that it will work. So without further ado, I'm going to pass you over to Lloyd of Knowlton Digital Marketing and he going to give you some fantastic advice on why you should start your podcast.

Yes. So I'm Lloyd, I have a creative social media marketing agency called Knowlton and we, yeah, we use video and creative campaigns online on social media to promote people's services, products, that kind of thing. We work with FIFA, Nestle, Eurotunnel, lots of weird and wonderful brands, big businesses, small businesses and as Mark said, also the co host with my brother Dan Knowlton of the Business Anchors podcast, which that we're really enjoying at the moment. And I'm coming at you from Margate in the UK at the moment, Sunny.

Margate, as we like to get started on these podcasts. A nice little easy intro. How are you going to save the world? How are we going to save the world, Lloyd? What are we going to do to get around to around these crazy times?

Do our best, Mark. There's a lot that needs saving, a lot that needs changing, but we can definitely give it a good go.

When you were growing up, did you ever want to be a radio dj?

No. No. I mean, if you've listened to the podcast, you'll understand that I don't like radio DJs but, but I do tend to weirdly go into the radio DJ voice during the podcast. It just comes out. I don't know, I don't know what happens.

It's my favorite bit, My favorite bit. I the first episode in and you busted it out and I had a little chuckle to myself. So tell us a little bit more then about the digital market around Nolten because it's gone through a couple of name changes. Like how did it, how did it end up. But you ended up working with your, your brother Dan.

Six years ago now, Dan actually decided. So he did a marketing degree, did a couple of jobs that he hated for a while and then decided he wanted to give it a go on his own. I was in a job, kind of marketing department of an English school for international students near Margate, where I live. And it got to a point where I was in a job that I didn't like very much. Dan was starting his thing and it looked much more exciting than what I was. And we kind of looked at it and I think Dan was about six months in. I was helping out here and there behind the scenes. But we kind of realized even though we're brothers, we've got completely different skill sets. So we started talking about how we could potentially work together and we realized basically all of our weaknesses we had the other brother kind of complements that. So I already, just from kind of a hobby, had some skills in video and photography and that type of thing. And that really went hand in hand with the social media strategy, social media campaigns that Dan was starting to work on in the business. And so that's where it all started. And as you said, we've gone from working with some sort of really small local clients as KPS Digital Marketing, we were called back then. Very exciting. Yeah. We've rebranded probably close to a year ago now to Knowlton and our kind of branding is much more colorful, fun, more us. I think it suits our business a lot better because we're a bit weird, a bit different to your classic kind of corporate marketeers and that kind of thing. So. So, yeah, that's the basics of the story.

So when you say that you've worked with, say, FIFA, for example, being a football fan, I see that FIFA thing in the background. What was the exact job would you say that you did for them? How did you have to pitch them? Did sort of they come to you? How does that sort of thing all work in this sort of level?

Working with FIFA, that was. There's kind of two sides of our business to communicate to everyone. There's the kind of training with businesses that we do so to teach businesses how to improve on getting their word out on social media, getting the word out creatively, their products, their services and how to do that kind of thing using video and everything online. And then there's a side of the business where we produce kind of video campaigns for those big brands, social media campaigns. So they come to us, we come up with some great ideas, video, some stuff, making it sound quite simple on a video, some stuff, work through that strategy, get them more customers, sell products, services, whatever they're doing. So with FIFA, it was on the training side. So Dan actually went out to Dubai. He got flown up by a company out there and did some training. There was. There's sort of three or four very big brands in the room that he was training. I think it was over a week, kind of did course and it was more on social media strategy, online strategy. And the person from FIFA that we were working with there, I think was working on the FIFA Club World cup and kind of how to promote that more creatively online, using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, rather than the more traditional ways that the companies have worked in the past. So that's the FIFA story.

What was the idea of creating the podcast? Like, where did the. Who had the first conversation? Like, what was the idea behind it? Sort of. And then from the idea to implementation, like, what was that sort of process looking like?

Definitely came from me. I'm very much the creative in my business. I'm the weirdo, basically. So whereas Dan comes up with a lot of more traditional business ideas, sensible ideas, I'm usually the one throwing weird ideas about that don't sound great at first, but they usually work out. Yes. So I like podcasts. I strangely, I know most people like to listen. I really like to watch podcasts. Bit of escapism, that's my kind of thing. I don't normally watch kind of standard tv. It's the sort of thing I'm really into. And so for a while I'd be thinking, I think we could do something around a podcast. I think with our kind of style of being more entertaining rather than just educational, I think it suits the kind of format quite well. But when we were thinking about it, the main thing, if I'm completely honest, Mark, is when we started talking about it, we thought it could be something that we would really enjoy. And I think in our business, again, a bit different to other people starting businesses or marketing agencies or, you know, small businesses, whatever. We don't want to be the biggest business in the world. We don't want to be the richest people in the world. We want to. We want to grow a team. We want to be financially okay, so we haven't got worries. But really we want to try and make sure that we enjoy what we're doing because we're going to be doing it for a long time. We're lucky enough that we work with each other as brothers and we're building out a team of lovely people. But yeah, we want to enjoy ourselves. So the first thing is we started talking about. We realized it could be once a week, we could have a great time for an hour and that would be a nice highlight. And it's definitely. That's definitely happened. We're really enjoying it. The other side of it was our skill set. So we create videos for our clients. So we've got all the kit to do it to a high standard, much easier than a lot of people. So that made it an easy decision. But. But the third thing, and I think the thing that makes sense most business wise, is we wanted to get the kind of awareness in the traditional marketing funnel we talk about quite a lot. You got the top, which is awareness of just getting you, yourself, your business out there in the world, spreading the word a bit like I am to your audience now, most of the people watching won't have any idea who I am. And now they do. So that's a bit of awareness, the kind of first stage and I think especially with stuff going on now in the world, a global pandemic where a lot of us can't, in our businesses can't really put out stuff that's that kind of further down the marketing funnel content of actually selling, you know, like click this button and buy this now, book it now. Perfect time to get that awareness out there. And for us, the podcast is that just getting more attention on us and our brand and people getting to know who we are. So when, you know, in a few months, weeks, months, years, whenever it'll be, when it gets back to normal, there'll be more people that know about us and can potentially come up to us and say, we've got this idea, we'd like to work with you on this, this and this.

So, yeah, let's just go around the creative aspect because obviously being part of an agency, do you feel under pressure that whatever content you and Dan put out, whether it's your personal or as a brand, do you feel under pressure to create like really good content? As in the camera has to be spot on, like the pixels and all of us respond, it has to be well lit and everything. Or because of how you take yourselves, you know, and how you present yourselves. As in, you're very fun. Do you feel like you've just been able to just run with this? Or do you really plan out every podcast what you are doing? As in, do you have a plan for the next sort of say four, five episodes? Or is it just a case of, well, you'll hit record, we'll start talking. If it's funny, it's a bonus, I.

Think, when it comes to the kind of process we, I'll be honest, we don't have a plan of the next three, four, five episodes. We know roughly what we're trying to do. We're trying, like I said, we're trying to get attention from the right people that could become customers of ours in the next six months, year, two years, five years, whatever that is. But we don't have a plan for lots of episodes in the future. But what we do is we really do plan and structure every episode before. So it's probably three or four days before, before we're recording. We'll have a session. We'll plan the things that we want to talk about. The idea is basically we'll. We'll plan it and structure it so that so easy and relaxed because we know what we're doing, that it looks like it's completely unstructured and not planned at all. That's kind of what we're aiming for. I think it's like, you know, you watch your favorite TV shows, even if it's reality tv, I mean, it's all really planned and it's all very structured and that's why it's enjoyable because so structured, you don't realize it's structured and it's really interesting to watch listen to at the same time because like I said, we're weird and creative. We go off on very weird tangents. You know, I'm not. In the last episode, we spoke about a time that I ended up in AE with Trapped Wind, which I won't go into the details because you'll have to listen to the business anchors podcast. Obviously that's not relevant to business. It was just a funny story that we kind of went off on a tangent and told. We don't plan stuff like that. But there is a structure and. And yeah, yeah, there definitely is a lot of planning that goes into.

Would you also say with a live video like this. So if anybody who is watching as a hospitality owner, we, you know, I. And everybody encourages hospitality owners to do more live videos, to be able to show off their business, show off their brand. Because with a video and with a live video, you're able to sort of show so much more. And obviously the algorithms. Facebook loves a little live video at the moment. So would you say with that before somebody does go live, they have an idea in their head or they've structured it in their head on what they're going to talk about. So it would mean that it. It is more sort of laid back and more enjoyable when it actually do hit that red button.

Yeah, I think so, 100%. Because I think some people watch people that seem very natural on camera doing these live videos and they think, I wish I could be like that. Like, I find it really hard to just off the cuff talk about this stuff. And the reality is most of those people you're watching that seem like they're doing it off the cuff, they're not. They've planned what they're saying and that's why it seems so relaxed. And I think you don't have to do crazy planning. But especially for live video, I always kind of say Just have in your head how you're going to start the video and introduce it because that's the first thing people are going to see and you don't want to just be kind of like, you know, they're just going to switch off straight away. So have your intro planned, three to five bullet points of what you want to talk about or show in your video and then have in your head how you're going to end the video. I mean, that's as simple as it needs to be, but it's a structure there that your brain kind of goes through. Oh, I was going to talk about that. And there's reasoning behind that rather than just going off talking about anything and people getting bored really.

Well, I think planning prevents piss poor performance.

Yeah.

And again, it's totally. And again, like everybody who watches these Boostly podcasts live, you will know by now that I always send the questions pre to guests. And you know, we've got a bullet points that we want to talk about quick fire questions as a pre bullet. But we, you know, we do go on tangents, but for the most part it is structured. That's why we look so smooth when we are chatting.

I have to say, Mark, I was very impressed because some, some of you know, when you go on podcasts and things like that, some of these things you kind of go in blind and you think, okay, well hopefully this will be all right. When I got that document through, I thought, this is my kind of guy. This is what I like to say.

Well, I actually learned this. There's a lady who I will give a shout. She's called Elaine. What? From the HLS podcast. And up until the point of being on her show, I had never ever written down questions before. But she sent over a Google Doc and it was all laid out and I was like, this is amazing. So again, I got it from her and just. Can you just lay out how easy it is actually to go from a recording to getting something out there online and what sort of hospitality owners or just anybody who is watching this wanting to do a podcast, how the simple steps that they need to take.

I know obviously Mark's making this look very complicated. You think he's really clever with this podcast, but the reality is, and I know this now that I'm doing a podcast, it's so simple and it's like that. Yeah, it's like everything. When you see other people doing stuff, you think, oh, that must be really difficult to do. But you get into it and it's really not so I, although I'm into video stuff and that kind of thing, I had absolutely no idea how podcasts worked probably two to three months ago. Not a clue. Firstly, YouTube is your friend. So I basically just typed into YouTube, like how to start a podcast. And obviously now there's just so many people telling you for free how to do it and it's so useful. The reality is, so you need to record some audio and if you do that on your own, it's really simple because you just need something you can speak into. And most of our phones can actually do that now. So that makes it really easy. Once you've recorded whatever audio that is, there's a host. So you kind of, you find hosts online again, Google it. And there are loads of hosts you can upload with and you just upload that file to a host and then there's a few kind of, of steps to make sure it can get seen on in the various different places. But it's all step by step stuff that you can go through with the host that you choose. And then after that it's just about promoting it and talking to the right people, sharing it with the world and getting people to listen to it. But honestly, YouTube is your friend. I had no idea how to do anything. And now I'm happy to say we've got a podcast we're really proud of.

What have you personally found the main benefit of starting the podcast? The conversations that have come on the back of it or any opportunities that have come on the back.

Firstly. So we're five episodes in now. I think this was very much a long term play for us. So we again, like I said before, it was for awareness. So not kind of converting customers. I'm not expecting to say on the podcast, oh, here's a link, go to this and buy this thing. But we were really aiming for the awareness. The top of the funnel. Five episodes in, we've had two. So I think the phone rang once and one online lead where people, especially at this time when it's, it's getting harder for us to win business because I didn't expect it to, for us to have any, anything like that happening yet. So the fact that we just, we're putting this stuff out there, it's taken an hour of our time to record it and we've already, you know, the phone's ringing with someone wanting to work with us and we've only done five episodes. Yeah, I just think that shows us and at the moment with podcasts, it's where there's so much attention. And it's attention that you can get fairly simply if you do the right things. Because people are getting more and more into podcasts, they're getting more and more popular. And I think what I love about podcasts is people find a podcast that they like. They might have been, you know, you might be watching this and then you're going to search for the business anchors podcast. Make sure you do. But you might listen to one, the latest episode, think, I like that. And then people go back to your first ever episode, or they go back 20 episodes and they line them up and whenever they've got a free moment, they listen to the ball. And I just think that's such a good way for people to consume your content, have the messaging that you want them to hear, and kind of build a relationship with you and your business over time. That I don't see as much with YouTube. I think it's harder to get a YouTube subscriber that will watch you every week or every day or whenever you put out a video. Whereas podcasts at the moment think in the world of business and marketing, stuff changes all the time. But it does seem like the attention is there and it. And it's easier than a lot of the other ways at the moment to get that attention.

Don't underestimate it. And I think with a podcast, people will treat it almost like a book where if they discover a good author, they'll go and maybe buy three or four of their books and they'll just read them one after the other and they'll do that with a podcast. If anybody wants to go and find out more about the podcast, about Knowlton, give us a couple of links before we go into the quick fire. Questions please, Lloyd.

So firstly, knowltonmarketing.co.uk so Knowlton is spelt K N o W L T o.

N. And that's a little bit of radio voice coming out there.

Yeah, a little bit. I noticed that. Yeah. So that's our business. You can have a look at what we do and that kind of thing. And then for the business anchors podcast, you can go to Bit ly Business Anchors podcast and you'll find somewhere to listen to it there. Search for the Knowlton YouTube channel if you want to watch the podcast.

Again, something that a lot of people don't realize as well, because this is a, this is a live video, this is obviously video content, but it is. The cool thing about this is as soon as we save this onto the computer, you can just take the audio and that becomes a podcast. The good thing about podcasts is that I found personally, it's been a great way, and it's opened so many doors from just reaching out to somebody like Lloyd, like with Noah Kagan, with Janet Murray, with Jessica Lorimer, and, you know, loads of people off top of my head that I've just sent a message to saying, would you like to come on the podcast? And again, because it's mutually beneficial for both parties, then they obviously love it because they can open up maybe a new audience. But as well, it can help educate our current listeners and for me to have a conversation with them, like people that I followed and known and liked and just ask questions that I would love asking as well. It ticks so many boxes with a podcast. So as always, we like to finish with quick fire questions and, as always, put it in the comments, your answers to these same questions. All right, Lloyd, are you ready? So if you could be isolated on lockdown with one celebrity, who would it be?

I'm not into kind of celebrity culture much. I'm not. I'm not. Not that. That kind of person. But I have to say, I was thinking a celebrity chef's got to be a good idea, right? At least they can keep you entertained and keep you fed. And I was thinking Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, they'd be too annoying. I'm gonna go with Ainsley Harriot, because I think he seems like a right laugh.

That would be a lot of fun. You had a second person. You had a second person to say a celebrity chef. Noah Kagan was your one. He actually. I did. I did miss out. I did miss out. It could be dead or alive. Because he went, Anthony Bourdain. Whether it's Netflix or Disney plus or whatever, there's always a watch list that gets built up. So have you had anything that has been on your watch list for a while now, and have you had a chance to watch it and anything you can recommend to the people that are.

Watching the Godfather films? Because I'm into film and that kind of thing, and it's kind of one of those classics that I still have never seen. So I need to get around to watching that at some point. But I've been watching the heist at the moment, which I think is actually Spanish, but on Netflix, it's dubbed over with English. And that was on the watch list for a while, but I've started now, and it's really good.

When we're not on lockdown in Scarborough, we actually live in Javier in Spain.

So do my Grandparents.

I know. I've been trying to dan about this.

I love this part of the world.

Yeah, it's an amazing, amazing part of the world. And we've got friends that watch it on Netflix. They rave about it. So yeah, good recommendation, good recommendation. What is the one thing that you've missed the most since being on lockdown?

The one thing is my little nephew Brody. He was born in November, so he was only little. And you know they're at that cute stage, they're changing every day and they're this little bundle of joy. So I miss giving him a cuddle but I also miss beer gardens as well. So one of those two, I suppose.

What has been your favorite purchase under 100 pound in the past? I'll say six months, but in the past year. So the best purchase under 100 pound in the past six months.

This is something that was actually only about a month ago, so it was 90 quid. And I've got this like standing desk converter thing when I thought I was going to be working from home a bit more. I don't, I'm not. I'm not one of those that has a house with 20 rooms and got. So I was like, I don't have an office or anything so I thought I'm gonna have to work from like the bedroom or the kitchen or where am I gonna do this? So I got this thing that kind of you can put a laptop and keyboard on and it changes heights and you just put it on top of anything basically standing up working. And for some reason I find myself so much more productive.

This is the Yorkshire version of a stand up desk. And I'll tell you what it is. So you've got the normal work surface. Yeah. And then you go to IKEA and buy their lack table for a fiver. So the Ikea lack it's like the coffee table size. And then I basically just buy a little laptop stand which costs 15 quid on Amazon and that is my stand up craft. I have it. So that is my version which is all in all about 20 quid. Right now I'm sat down, so I'm not being the best, I'm sat down. But I've got like a couple of bookcases here which is where the laptop is balanced on Right now. Do you have a favorite podcast or YouTube channel or anything? Like any favorite podcast or a YouTube channel when you're not listening to yours?

I really like kind of more entertainment podcasts because for me it's a bit of escapism. So There is a couple of business ones I like to listen to, but it's more. More entertainment. So there's a new one called Cooped up with Robbie Knox, who is actually just a guest on our podcast. They're basically, while they're in lockdown, they've new podcast and they're just recording a podcast every day. And it's. It's a bit weird because they don't really talk about much. They just talk about what they've done in the day, which is never much because they're in lockdown. But they're two quite funny guys and they're entertaining. I also like the happy hour podcast, which is which Jackmate does. It's another YouTuber, but business wise is Diary of a CEO by Stephen Bartlett. And Dan was telling me to listen for months and months. And then actually since I've had a bit more. More time and I can't go out and do anything, I've started listening to that. And that's, that's really cool as well. So.

But if you could have any other guest then that on the podcast, I know, you know, it wasn't planned, but if you could, you know, say to Dan, listen, we should get him as a guest, who would that be at the moment?

You know, I don't think Robbie Knox has been on the other business podcast, even though he does run his own business and he has a YouTube channel, which I would say is a business in itself. But yeah, I think, I think more people like that sort of really entertaining, funny guests that have a business angle as well that you know what? There's not a name that I can think of, but Dan would go much more business. I think I said about Diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett, I think his ideal guest would probably be Stephen Bartlett. It's someone in the same kind of business space as us, that he's a really intelligent guy. So I think he'd probably go for that.

So what would be your number one advice to anybody listening that they could take away and put into their own practice to boost their own direct bookings, whether it be social, email, video content, audio content. What would be that one piece of advice that you could pass on to.

Anybody that is tuning in definitely for direct bookings? My one piece of advice would be start building up attention in the right places. So what are people and what and where are people searching for things where you could answer it in a blog or a podcast or a video. So if you've got some kind of hospitality business and you're near one of the best scuba diving spots. Can you create a blog about the best scuba diving spots? And what a surprise, one of them is going to be the hotel that you own or the scuba diving business that you own. I think it's a long term play, so you would need to do this over a period of time. But eventually one or two of those videos, podcasts or blogs are going to start showing up in search rankings when people are actually looking for places like your business to book directly.

If anybody wants to go and find out more via social media, where's the best channel to get you on? Is it Instagram? LinkedIn?

Yeah, LinkedIn will probably be the best. So yeah, Lloyd Knowlton or Dan Knowlton, my brother's probably more interesting on LinkedIn, but yeah, find me on there.

And obviously the business anchors podcast is available on every good place you go and get your podcast. And so just basically type in business anchors into any of your platform of choice, whether you're Apple, Android or any of those. So again, please do go check it out. It's my massive recommendation. I'm a big, big fan and I recommend everybody go and check it out when you're on your 30 minutes bit of exercise over the coming few days. Lloyd, have you got any final things that you'd like to say to people that are watching or listening?

Thank you, it's been a pleasure. Thank you, Mark. And yeah, thank you for being so well organized and structured. I feel like I need to show people this document to let them know how brilliant you are at this.

There you go on that end. Flattery will get you everywhere. But thank you everybody that has tuned in tonight live. We're doing this every single night during lockdown. We're coming into week five now. We've been doing this since the 17th of March, which was like the involuntary lockdown. Trying to give you help and advice, tactics and tips on what you can do to not only survive during these crazy times for the hospitality industry, but thrive on the other end. If you want to get a little nudge every day that we're going live, just go to boostly.co.uk dailyboost it goes to the WhatsApp group channel. Give you a little nudge just before we're going live. And if you want to get a five step guide to getting more direct bookings, go to boostly.co.uk five steps. Do me one big favor, Share this video. So if you're watching live or on the replay, hit that share button, share it onto your personal wall, your business page share it in a Facebook group. Spread the word, word about what we're doing because it is going to help. Even if it just helps one person, then that would be massive. But thank you very much and we'll catch you very, very.