Building a Brand Using an Underground Channel 🤔

This will probably be the best audio you've ever heard me on because we're actually in our podcast recording studio booth, and I'm here with Kane Barron, who is the host of the Podcasters Podcast, and he's going to be interviewing me on how I built one of the most successful business podcasts in the UK, which is called The Disruptive Entrepreneur. Kane's just launched The Podcaster's Podcast, which is an exciting launch. Kane, how many episodes?

We have now got 7 live.

7 live episodes. Boom. And so we're doing a bit behind the scenes here for you. You've probably not seen me with a pair of headphones on in the studio. Kane's just there behind. I won't bother turning the cameras around because it's taken me ages to set them up. But yeah, just going to give you a bit of a behind the scenes insight. Into building an audio brand using the platform of podcasting, which to be honest is sort of a bit the forgotten social media channel, isn't it? You know, TikTok, we're all on TikTok, we're all on Clubhouse, Facebook and Instagram are huge, YouTube is huge, but I don't think people are using podcasting anywhere near enough. So sit back, enjoy the show, and take my word for it that Kane is there Do you want to just come around and jump in and say hi on these? Um, you won't see Kane when he interviews me. Go and get your head in on there. That's it. Um, but Kane's going to be interviewing me for The Podcaster's Podcast. Make sure you go and grab on iTunes, Stitcher, wherever you listen to your podcast, Spotify, The Podcaster's Podcast. Um, Kane, over to you.

Fantastic. Let's get started. Thank you very much for joining me. So welcome back to The Podcaster's Podcast, everyone. Today I'm joined by none other than Mr. Rob Moore, the host of The Disruptive Entrepreneur and The Money Podcast. So thank you so much for joining me, Rob.

Always a pleasure, never a chore. Podcasting, it's, it's where it's at.

Absolutely. So speaking of which, where were you before you started your podcast, and what caused you to think, look, this is what I'm gonna do? Because no one was doing a podcast podcast 7 years ago? Not really.

Yeah, so I suppose I'm like a podcast granddad now. In dog years, I'm like 112. But I was actually listening to Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, James Altucher, and other podcasts like that, really enjoying the content as a business owner entrepreneur. But, you know, I was then doing a fair bit of content on Facebook. I just probably launched Instagram and YouTube. So I was a bit like, man, there's so many social media channels, it's a bit overwhelming. So part of me was like, I could really see myself being a podcaster. I get so much content from these podcasts I'm listening to. Imagine if my community got the same value from me. Imagine how that could be for my business and my personal brand. But then on the other side of it, I was like, man, social media is overwhelming. It's another channel to start. It's more content to create. But, you know, fast forward to now, I've done about 1,000 episodes. On the Disruptive Entrepreneur Podcast and on my money podcast. It's helped me build a global brand. I'm listened to in pretty much every country in the world now, 204 different jurisdictions I'm listened into, which is a pretty amazing thing. It's generated millions of pounds, but without ever running ads. I think, in fact, I don't think I ran my first ad until maybe 500 or 600 episodes in. So, you know, the many millions it's generated has been from just people getting to know me and who I am and then finding my companies and my courses and my mentoring, etc. It's great for me because it's almost like a way of therapy as well. So I was quite a repressed kid. I held a lot in. And so creating content is a way to express the repressed. I also believe that once you learn something, it's almost your duty to teach it. And a podcast is a great way to teach it. Podcasts are probably the best piece of content for accountability. Because for example, you know, I'm actually— I don't know if I should say this on the podcast, but I'm gonna say anyway. I'm live here on TikTok as well as Facebook. I can go live anytime. Anytime, doesn't matter, go live, don't go live. But if you don't do your weekly podcast episode, you know, that's a— you miss a couple of episodes and you can just completely lose your engagement on a podcast. So having that commitment to go every single week, a bit like having a personal trainer every week, helps you really step up with your content creation. Now back, like you said, nearly— wait, I think it's 6-year anniversary now. Back then I would only do podcast content. Now we're doing this podcast. I'm also living out on my Facebook channel, which means your podcaster's podcast is getting exposure on my social media channels, on TikTok and on Facebook. And it means that my Facebook community can tune into this content too. I might even publish this as a bonus episode on the Disruptive Entrepreneur Podcast, which means your podcaster's podcast will get exposure there. So you can now use your podcast as your PT instructor for accountability to go to the gym, i.e., your content. But then you can go live on multi-channels. Now, the reason I started was one, Joe Rogan, James Altucher, Tim Ferriss, etc., inspired me. Two, because I think if you want to be a content creator and an influencer, it's kind of like, you know, it's a bit like you're a billionaire but you drive, uh, you know, a Ford Fiesta. I shouldn't— I probably shouldn't say because people, listeners might drive a Ford Fiesta. Nothing, nothing against the Ford Fiesta, but I guess if you're a billionaire, you wouldn't. So if you want to be a creator, you know, you want to reach your ideal client, you wanted to inspire a lot of people, then I don't really think— I don't think you'll be taken seriously if you don't have a podcast. All the big influencers and creators have podcasts. Most, many celebrities now have a podcast. So I thought, well, if I want to be taken seriously as a content creator, I've got to get over my own fears of, oh man, more content, man, more channels, man, more responsibility, uh, I haven't got time, and just bite the bullet. And here's the thing, because you know this, Cain, because you won't mind me saying, you wanted to start earlier. There was always a reason you couldn't start this week. Oh, you'll do it next month. Oh, you'll do it next month. Once you're live and episode 1 is live, then you're committed. And then actually it happening every week is nowhere near as hard as you think. The other reason I started my podcast is because I'd retired for about the third time. I wrote a book called Life Leverage. I retired and I thought, well, now I've got time, I should invest some time back into being a creator, way before we were called creators. So, um, those, all those forces came together to create my podcast Disruptive Entrepreneur. And who'd have thought 6 years later that I've done over 1,000 episodes, generated millions of pounds, reached in 204 countries. I think we've got tens of millions of downloads if you look at our data of our podcasters. You know, most of those are mine. So yeah, it's been a great thing, my podcast, and actually it's probably been the best thing for my brand, I would say.

Well, I mean, that's quite a statement bearing in mind you have heard hundreds of thousands of followers on multiple different channels. So that's a big statement. And one thing I want to pick up on is you were worried to begin with that it was too much content. You didn't— it was— you were overwhelmed. But now having your podcast has actually eased your workload on your other platforms. Do you want to talk a little bit about repurposing? Because you're— I mean, you're live on 3 channels now, including this podcast. You're the king of repurposing. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about how you've done that and some of the benefits of repurposing content?

Yeah, so podcasting is probably one of the best media platforms for actually creating multiple pieces of content. One, because you have to do it every week, so it's got the commitment like I said before. But two, you're talking on audio like we are. It's very easy just to record yourself on video talking on audio. That's very easy. So I'm live here on TikTok, I'm live here on Facebook. Now, I probably wouldn't have gone live on TikTok, on Facebook. Now I just go into meetings and do my usual daily stuff, but because we're doing this, it gives me opportunity to create more content for Facebook. By the way, my Facebook Lives now, I get ad roll revenue. So more Facebook Lives I do, more ad roll revenue I get. What I notice on TikTok is the longer I'm live, the more followers I get. So I just got about 100 followers for being live for 35 minutes in the studio there. So I'm live on TikTok meeting new people, you know, hopefully creating new followers and fans and community members. The longer I'm live on TikTok, the more followers I get on TikTok. The longer I'm live on Facebook, the more people I connect with, and then the more ad roll revenue I get. And we were doing the podcast anyway. So we're in this little studio that we've got. We've got quite a decent studio set up here in our offices, but we've got a couple of little booths, and we're in this little booth, and all I've done is put a little Joby £15 stand here. I've actually got this new fancy one for £75 as well, which sort of stabilizes itself. I think I've overkilled it. Just get the £15 one, don't get the £75 one. Get the simple one, get the easy one to use. But we've just put it on the desk here and we're living in while doing podcast content. Now, as long as I'm focused on you and I know that I'm supposed to be delivering podcast content, 'cause if I started going, hey Jackie, Hey, Slim Shady, and talking to everyone on the live, that's gonna make a crap podcast. So I'm, in my mind, I'm like, I'm here to record a podcast for you and give you really good content. And hopefully the people who are watching on Facebook and TikTok get a good voyeuristic experience, but I'm not actually live specifically to them. Now, if I had another phone here, I'd go live on Instagram. Now someone actually said in the comments, you have multiple devices then, this is important on content repurposing. Back in the day, you'll remember we were using StreamYard. Stream out to Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. You couldn't get it on Instagram, it just wouldn't hack into Instagram. And actually, 2 years ago, it was really good, and that was the perfect tool for multi-streaming. What we're finding now though is that, um, third-party platforms for streaming the reach on most of the channels doesn't seem to be very good at all. So what I do is each time I upgrade my phone, I just keep the old one. So I will actually risk lifting this up, but you can see that, that phone is cracked to bits. It's absolutely smashed to bits. It's just some old phone I had a few years ago. So every time now I upgrade my phone, I keep my old one. I don't like upgrading phones because I don't like moving all the data over, so I generally tend to have old phones. But now I have 3 iPhones, so I can go live on TikTok, live on Facebook, and live on Instagram. Now if I had 4 phones, I could also go live on Clubhouse. So that is 4 pieces of content in one. So it's great leverage of time. Now some people would be like, oh man, it'd be so scary and overwhelming. I've got to do this podcast. How do I go live on all these channels? Well, in that case, if you don't— if you're a bit worried about going live, start by doing the podcast and recording it, but not live. So I was just saying to Cain, we should have like a little wall mount set up up there in our little studio booth here. Or you could probably actually, I'll tell you what we could do, could get some GoPros. GoPro in the corner there, GoPro in the corner there, GoPro there. And then we can go live and just talk. But with those GoPros, we're recording from different angles. And then we've got the video and the audio. So the audio goes on the podcast, and the video can go on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook. Now, there's more of this because content repurposing is actually quite a sweet little tool for leverage. Americans call it a hack. I just like to call it a leverage tool. So now when I do the podcasts, about two-thirds of the way in, I sort of stop and say, are you ready for our quickfire round? We've got 8 questions, 15 seconds per answer. And I ask them 8 questions driving for a 15-second answer. Because each one of those 15-second answers becomes an Instagram Reel, a TikTok, and a YouTube Short. So you can either do live repurposing like I am now, or prerecorded repurposing. But the trick is, how do I do one piece of content, this, and then get it on short, medium, and long form and multimedia? So this will be Reels and TikToks and Shorts, which are short form. You could take 5 or 10, 10-minute excerpts, which would be sort of mid-form. Then you've got the whole episode. And this can go on YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. In theory, if we'd have, um, if I hadn't been in another room, we could do a Clubhouse at the same time and we get the, um, podcast recording. So in theory, we could have 25 pieces of content out of this. So that's kind of how it works.

Definitely. I think that is the most valuable piece of advice someone can give when someone says, look, I want a personal brand. And it's really, really common that people spend a lot of time on their social media, which is fine. But as we're telling people constantly, you do an Instagram or Facebook post in 24 hours, no one's going to see that again. Whereas a podcast, not only do you get a really long tail on the podcast— I mean, your first ever episode is your most downloaded one, so you get a really long tail— but you also get to use all your social media content because you have to do that even though you know it's going to disappear in a couple of days. So really, really good advice.

Just jump in on that real quick, Cain, before you go to your next question. A lot of people think you need a massive video team, and I get that. Now, I'm fortunate we've got a whole agency, and we've got, you know, we've got Rob Casey who's just TikTok editing, we've got Harry who's just YouTube, we've got Ben who's just podcasts, you know, we've got you hosting up the Podcasters Podcast. By the way, if you're tuning in on these lives, make sure you download and subscribe to the Podcaster's Podcast. Um, but actually all of this content now on video and audio and live, I have. So let's say there was just me. Well, I just— you're going to give me the SD card after this for the audio. On my Facebook Live, I can actually take that recorded video now and have it as a— take the live and have it as a pre-recorded video And TikTok content goes, stays on your phone for 90 days. It's there recorded. So actually, just from this, without any team, I have all the formats because I could also get it transcribed. Now let's say I literally didn't have any money. I could go and edit this myself. If I've planned the questions and I've planned the content, I know I'm doing my 15-second cuts at the end, so I can just go at the end and go cut, cut, cut, cut. I mean, even I can do that on my bloody iPhone. You know, in iMovie on your iPhone you can do that. Now I recommend people get a little VA or audio or video editor. You could get them on Fiverr or Upwork or onlinejobs.ph or wherever, and get someone for $10, $15 an hour, whatever, to do that for you. And just, you know, you might pay a few dollars here and there for each bit of content. and then you can just upload them onto your social media. So you can start yourself if you want, or just with a little outsourced editor for just, you know, not really many dollars a month.

Amazing. So I want to talk about big name guests. So as you've already mentioned, you're helping the Podcasters Podcast massively. We can leverage your name when we upload it. You're obviously living it out. You might put it as a bonus episode. On The Disruptive Entrepreneur. So we're gonna get loads of traffic off of having a big name on the show, but you've had big names. So how important are they to growth and how do you secure some of these like really big names?

[Speaker] Okay, so guests, interviews, and collaborations are probably your fastest way to grow without having a massive ad budget. You know, so if any of us had 100 grand or 500 grand to dump into ads, we could obviously hack the growth of, all of our socials, but most people aren't there. So I reckon the best way after that to grow is by doing collaborations, interviews, and getting good guests on the show. Now, a collaboration can be either where I interview you for The Disruptive Entrepreneur, and then in return you interview me for The Podcaster's Podcast. That could be a collaboration. Or we could both just go live and have a conversation on all of our socials, and then I publish it on Disruptive Entrepreneur, and on the same day you publish it on the Podcaster's Podcast. So that's two different ways of doing a collab. One is a joint episode and one is one each. Now, anyone listening or watching can collab with anyone slightly below their weight, on their weight, or even above their weight. So if you have 5,000 followers on Instagram, reach out to anyone between 0 and 50,000 followers and request a collaboration. Now you can do collabs with people in your niche or industry, or in niches or industries which are— they're different, but they sort of dovetail. Like, let's say I could get the CEO of Blinkist or the CEO of Zoom. Or the CEO or the head of marketing of Audible or something like that. They dovetail because we use their products and services. And, you know, in the audio space, they're similar to podcasts. Now, old school people think, oh, they're competitors. No, they're not competitors. You can collaborate with them. Now, my biggest guest today has probably got about 100 times the followers that I do. I.e., probably about 100 million on all platforms, because I've got over a million on all platforms, not including my email database. So, um, I've sort of punched way above my weight there. Now, if you don't get much joy out of punching above your weight, stay in your weight class and do collabs with people sort of on your level. Now, what you can do to make this a more interesting proposition for them is as long as they're savvy on this, you could go live on Instagram as a split screen and record the podcast. So if we decided to, Cain, we could have my Instagram phone— let's say we put them all up on the wall, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. I can actually patch you into them all because we can split screen live on them all. So what happens is we're recording for the Disruptive Entrepreneur Podcast and the podcaster's podcast, and we're split-screen conversing on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, which means we're infiltrating each other's audience. Now, I don't mind you infiltrating my audience as long as I equally infiltrate your audience. Now, what you find with collabs is the more you do, it pushes your following up and up and up. So the more you do, the higher weight class, as I'm calling it, you know. So you get to 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, and so then it becomes easier to collab with people at your level. That being said, big fish, here's what I'd do. Number 1, who is prolific across all social media? If they're prolific, they're probably going to go on a podcast like yours. So Grant Cardone is everywhere, and I think he's a tiny bit more choosy now, but he would pretty much go on most people's podcasts. So someone like him. So find someone who's prolific across all social and punch above your weight there. Grant's a friend of mine, by the way. Number 2 is you can go to someone who enjoys doing podcasts. So for example, Tyson Fury hates doing podcasts. I actually interviewed his dad, John Fury, and we had, we had a good chance to get Tyson, except he hates doing podcasts. Whereas other people, like I think someone just said here, Gary Vee. Gary Vee probably loves to go on a podcast. So someone who's big across all media, someone who likes to go on podcasts, how do you know who they are? Listen to a load of podcasts in your space and see who's on them all. And if you know, you listen to someone like they're on most podcasts, you've got a very high likelihood of getting them on yours. The next way is when they're launching a book. So a lot of big-time players will go, no, no, no, or they'll go, yes, when I'm doing a promotion, and they'll stay away. And then when they're doing a push, like Will Smith's doing a push for his book at the moment, Mel Robbins just did a push for, for her book, and I'm seeing them across loads of channels, probably being interviewed in places they wouldn't normally before. So they're probably the top 3 ways. Um, I also like to handwrite letters to people. Because it's very personal. If you take some time to find out about your guest and send them, you know, essentially some fan mail, but not too fan-like, but reasonably fan-like, and then, you know, you say, hey, look, I'd love to have you on the show, you get full editorial control, we can do it at any time or place of your choosing, then, you know, that often works as well because You know, the more personal the invitation, the more likely you're going to get a yes. Find stuff about them. I'll give you a random one here. I like following Kevin O'Leary. I like following many of the Shark Tankers in, um, in America. And he's a watch collector, as am I. And he had a watch on this morning called an FP Journe. Most people do not know what an FP Journe is. I do because I'm a watch collector. If I got in touch with him and said, hey, look, I love your FP, he'd immediately be like, well, you know what an FP Journe is? Because 99.9% of people do not know what an FP Journe is. So when you care enough to find out something very specific about them, like extract a bit out of their book that's very specific and say, I loved page, you know, 132 in your book when you talked about X because I'm really into that, it shows you've taken the time and care enough about them rather than just go, oh, come on my show, and you, you get more of a, um, you know, you'll get more people on your podcast and you'll punch more above your weight. Now someone has said here, what's the benefit of collabs? I would say one, you infiltrate their audience. Two, it's fun doing content together. Three, you can create more content. Um, and four, you'll grow faster.

Definitely. So I think in the case of the podcast apps—

It's bloody hot in this studio, isn't it? It's really friggin' hot.

As well as cameras, we need fans or something.

Yeah, but I guess you can't have aircon in here because it'll make a noise.

Yeah, definitely. Not too long anyway.

It's cool.

It's all good. Yeah, so one of the things that kind of sucks about the podcast apps, there's no organic way to find someone. In the same way as YouTube where it's constantly suggesting stuff. So the power of having a great guest is anytime someone's searching for that guest, you have the chance of coming up.

Well, that's it. I was researching to listen to some NFT podcasts and I just searched NFT and Gary Vaynerchuk's NFT episode came out. Now, Gary V doesn't do an NFT podcast, but that came up. So actually, you're right, search is harder on podcasting. Certainly for organic reach. But if you're smart and you do episodes on a subject you want to get searched for, that just interested me. I was like, oh, NFT, Gary Vee. Although Gary Vee's everywhere, isn't he?

But, um, yeah, he is a lot like yourself.

So you mean Robbie M? I should call myself Robbie M. There you go, rebrand.

Um, you mentioned at the beginning a little bit about some of the benefits you've had from podcast, millions in revenue. Obviously you've grown many channels, social media channels, but what are some of the main benefits? And feel free to go in as much detail as you want of sort of things that have come directly from your podcast. I think, and I'm sure you'll go on to talk about trickle-down revenue, a lot of people don't actually track that sort of thing and they don't realize they're getting a lot of benefits from their podcast.

Yeah.

When, 'cause I know that you did a little bit of research to find out actually a lot of your revenues come from podcast fans that have found your services. Yes.

Okay, great. There's loads of benefits of having a podcast. I actually put in the headline on the Facebook Live, you know, the more underground social media channel. 'Cause you know, when you think social media, I bet you if you did a poll and said, right, tell me the first social media platform in your head, I bet your podcast would be less than 5% voted. Some people don't even realize it is a social media channel, although it's more media than social media. So here are a lot of benefits that people don't realize. Number 1, when you interview guests, you get connected with, with really amazing people. So, you know, I've interviewed 16 billionaires. I've got my first billionaire S coming soon. I interviewed Floyd Mayweather twice, the biggest actress in Game of Thrones, all sorts of crazy amazing people. And I'm connected with many of them now, not all, but many. So the connections you get is massive. Number 2 is, it's pretty well known in the media buying world that a podcast listener is the, the highest or one of the highest quality followers. So, you know, a new channel, maybe like, I don't know, TikTok or Instagram, you know, your revenue per follower would be much lower. Because they're shorter form content. They come— like, I watch sometimes on my TikTok Live and someone will come up and then in 10 seconds they're gone. Whereas when people listen to a podcast, they listen to an hour's episode or a 90-minute episode. So Clubhouse and podcasting are two forms of media which create a very loyal, well-invested— because they've listened to you a lot— audience. And so they are biased. So the, what's called CPM in the industry, the cost per mille, you know, the money you can get per 1,000 downloads, views, etc., for podcasting is way higher. Now here's the interesting thing. I haven't done these for a couple or 3 years because of COVID and semi-retirement. But what I used to do every year is I'd go to Cayman Islands for a month and I'd do some mentoring. I'd go to Dubai for a few weeks, maybe a month, and do some mentoring. And of course, I have a high-level mentoring program, a mastermind where people pay tens of thousands of pounds to access me as their mentor. And when I'd go around the table and ask, where did you find me first? Where did you find me first? Where did you find me first? I would say 90% of the time it was either one of my books or my podcast. So Money or Life Leverage or The Disruptive Entrepreneur, time and time again. So that really high-quality, high-spending client is coming from podcasts. And here's a few reasons why. Number 1, podcasts are really easy to consume. So someone actually sent me a video series, I really want to watch it, but I haven't got around to it. Because I have to take 10 hours out of my life to watch these 10 1-hour or so videos. Whereas if they'd have sent me 10 podcast episodes, I could put them on while I'm driving, walking, running, in the gym, I could put it on 1.5 or 2x speed, I could have gobbled it up in a couple of days. So podcasting is a really convenient media. It's also very intimate. You know, someone said on this live that the audio quality is very good. We're actually in a sort of a professional booth here. But it's very intimate. You know, you're listening to people talk to you through the microphone. Generally speaking, the audio quality on a podcast will be better than the audio quality you watch on a live, because obviously there's sort of more fit-for-purpose equipment. So it's intimate, it's quick, it's easy to consume. You're going to get the highest quality of client. Here's another thing: you can go to number one in the charts in podcasting quite quickly, and no one sees your download or your subscriber stats. In fact, I can't even see my subscriber stats. It doesn't even tell you. I don't even know how many subscribers I've got. So you could go on my TikTok Live and see, oh, 2 people are watching Rob Moore. He's not a very big influencer. But you can go to the top of the charts with a few thousand views. You've always got that top of the charts badge. And because people don't know how many subscribers or downloads you've had, you can keep that private. Therefore, you can have quite a big perception of having really good reach and not have to have millions of followers. So I like the private nature of the data, whereas obviously on Facebook, you can see how many followers, see how many viewers, see how many comments. By the way, introverts, podcasting is perfect for because you maybe don't like to be seen, you don't like to go live, you don't want, you know, any criticism. For example, someone said, I hope your kids get cancer on one of the lives I just did. I thought, I know, but like, it doesn't bother me, you know, but that's gonna upset some people. But you never get that on a podcast because there's no interaction. You create the recorded content and then it gets uploaded. So There's so many reasons and benefits there for having a podcast. Also, when people see that you've got a podcast, then they want to do other things with you— collaborations, business partnerships, etc. I get recognized more down the street now for my podcast than I do any of the other things that I've done. In fact, the only thing I haven't done is sign anyone's breasts. That's pretty much the only thing I haven't. Other than that, podcast's been of great benefit to me across the board. and maybe millions of pounds.

That's always a bonus.

Yeah.

And I think that's really important that introverts— something that I talk to people a lot— you don't have to do all the repurposing. It definitely helps. But for a lot of people, you know, there's no comment section and you can really grow your business just by having a podcast. Obviously it helps if you do the others, but very underrated thought.

Yeah. Well, if you want to be a podcaster, do a podcast. If you want to be a creator, do a podcast and then create that, the other content from the podcast. Who's not mega confident, who doesn't want to be seen on camera, who doesn't like social media, who wants an easier way to get into the world of content creation, to build a brand, to reach customers, to make a difference. Podcasting actually is the best place to start. If I'd have known about podcasts 5 years before I did, I think all my other channels would have been a lot bigger.

100%. I mean, everyone that started then, which pretty much was just the Joe Rogan, the Tim Ferriss, they're on a different level than no one can catch now.

Joe Rogan, $100 million he sold his podcast to Spotify for. Tim Ferriss gets about $53,000 per sponsor, and he does sometimes 2 sponsors. On a podcast. Someone has said there I can sign their breasts, but I think they're male. So I'll know I'm made when I've done that. But it's the random thing. You know, I built a £20 million a year training business. I built a multimillion pound property portfolio and would get recognised twice a year for that, like sometimes at an airport. And now 2 or 3 times a day I'll get recognised locally or, you know, globally or nationally. I went down to Simon Cowell's charity ball. I got recognised by about 9 people. And it's just crazy. And it's because they can't even see who I am on a podcast. So it's amazing the reach and the infiltration you get with a podcast. It's very, very valuable resource.

Definitely. And you must really believe this because you were crazy enough to do a second one. Do you want to tell me a little bit about Money, the podcast, and What's the main difference between the two podcasts and why you even thought to do another one?

Because I'm an idiot. So the problem with me is I like to do lots of things. And so I'm probably not wise to copy unless you like variety and you need variety. But to be fair, we were what, 3, 4 years in maybe? I can't remember, but we were many years in on The Disruptive Entrepreneur before we decided to launch the second podcast, Money. And we took our time and thought about that long and hard and didn't just bang it out. Now, the reason I started a second podcast is because by the time I'm 50, which is 7 years from now, pretty much, I'm gonna be 43 in a month or two, my brand of money I think will be way bigger than my brand of disruptive entrepreneur. I like to make these long-term strategic plans. And over decades, brands change, personal brands or business brands. And you know, so maybe a year ago I was mostly known for entrepreneurial content. But a lot of my money-related content gets really good engagement. It gets people discussing, debating, arguing, criticising. It's more polarising. It's actually more people are interested in money than they are being an entrepreneur. And so we decided this has not been majorly announced. It's a bit hot off the press, but we decided that we're going to move my brand more towards maybe 80% money-related content. I wrote the UK's best-selling book on money called Money. I'm now over 200-odd episodes into my money podcast. And as you know, we're getting guests on money now, whereas we never did guests on my money podcast. So I started it in the background because I thought, you know what, my money brand could grow. I love the subject of money. My personal vision is to help as many people on this planet start and scale their business and get better financial knowledge. But yeah, I think fast forward a year or two or five or seven, I think my money-related brand will be so significantly bigger than any other content that I do. I think that will end up dwarfing it.

I think that's, first of all, incredible foresight, but it's very wise. So a couple of the clients on our agency recently have been doing sub-series and things like that, and when they do really well, a few of them have now started a second podcast. I think that's quite smart to see seperate it once you know you've tested it and it's doing really well, because you could have a whole new opportunity. Because sometimes guests don't want to come on your show because they don't think there's a lot of synergy there. But if you sort of are doing other content, obviously, um, I know you're an entrepreneur, a business owner, but you're massively into rock music. And if you suddenly said, oh, Dave Grohl, can I interview you on my entrepreneurial podcast, you'd probably say no. But if it was one dedicated to, you know, rock music and things like that, he'd probably say yes, you've still got the platform, you've still got all of the downloads and sort of the clout, but now it makes sense for them to do it. And the same goes for sponsors. Sometimes they don't see the synergy there. So I think that's really good advice. What's one thing you would do differently if you're starting again today?

I would definitely start my podcast way earlier. I mean, I started it 6 years ago, but if I'd have started it 9 years ago, I'd have one of the biggest podcasts in the world. Just like if I'd have started TikTok 3 years ago, I'd have— I'd be a big TikTok creator. Same with Facebook, you know. I, I've made myself a little rule now. If someone I respect tells me about a new social media channel, I will go and test it immediately. So, um, Twitter Spaces, someone tipped me off, is pretty good. I'm going to jump in on that. There's one called Clap. There's one called Wisdom. There's one called Green Room. There's all these new channels all the time, and go and test them early. Yeah, 4 out of 5 might flop. But 1 out of 5 will go big, and you get in early. And so I'm one of the most— the 100 most followed people on Clubhouse. I didn't get in early early, but I got in early enough, um, probably second wave. And that's how I'm in the top 100 people followed on Clubhouse in the world. By the way, Clubhouse and podcast dovetail really well. I know you often go live on Clubhouse when you do your episode of The Podcasters Podcast. That's very wise. Many of the Clubhouse followers of mine listen to my podcast, and many of my podcast listeners now come and listen to me on Clubhouse. Because why would a podcast listener come and listen to your podcast? Because it's live and they could ask a question and get brought up onto your stage. Why would a Clubhouse listener come and listen to your podcast? Because you've got a backlog of loads of content and you've got a vault, and it's specific, you know, as in it's a niche episode. So they, they dovetail really well. So I definitely would have started sooner. And I'd probably be more prolific in, prolific in reaching out to guests. Because I don't know what our conversion rate is of requesting a guest to getting the guest. Let's say it's 10%. So if it's 10%, and I've interviewed 200 people, then I must have reached out to 2,000 people. But what if I reached out to 20,000 people? And I think sometimes I'm like, oh well, they're a bit too big for me, or is that quite a fit? Or maybe just didn't do enough research. So for example, let's say I wanted to interview someone on about TikTok. I just go and find anyone who's got more than 10 million followers and reach out to them all. I might end up getting 3 really good guests. So, um, that's another thing I would do differently. I would reach out to more guests.

Definitely. So I, last interview I did was with Stephen Bartlett's producer, and I said what was the one thing that has basically got him to where he is, and they said they were non-negotiable on the caliber of guest. And he said it is rough because you are talking to a lot of people, you're getting a lot of nos, but a no doesn't always mean no forever. It might just be not now. And as you mentioned, sometimes as soon as someone wants to advertise something they're doing, they will come and knock in.

And I actually think a no is better than not hearing back. Not hearing back is like it doesn't exist in the universe. It's a void. But I've had many people who've said yes after the third time after the first no. At least when they said no, what did they do? They probably checked you out because they had to decide to say no. They know about you. You can go back to them. So I actually prefer a no to not hearing back. And it is just a numbers game. So, I mean, many people listening will get way better than 10% conversion than, than I am. Um, and you can be more creative with your guests. So for example, um, you could do a Google-related search or LinkedIn-related search. So let's say, um, you wanted to interview me, Rob Moore. Well, if you saw who, who else is like Rob Moore in the business entrepreneur podcast space on a related search on LinkedIn or, um, Google, you might find my business partner, Mark Homer. So smart, so wise. As much experience in business as me, maybe a little bit more. Most people haven't heard of him compared to me, but you just found him on a related search. Now you— there's all these people who aren't celebrity famous, but they've got an amazing story. So for example, some TikTokers aren't celebrity famous, but they're TikTok famous, or some YouTubers aren't celebrity famous, but they're YouTube famous. So you can go for the celebrity famous, you can go for the social media channel famous, But then you can also go for the amazing story or the expertise in a niche. So for example, there's just been a piece of news come out that apparently it can hinder a woman's career if she works from home. And I'm not an expert on that, but that's a subject I definitely want to address because one, it's going to get a lot of engagement. Two, it's important that women are empowered equally as men in business. Now what I'm going to do is go to this woman who wrote this article. Now she's part of the Bank of England, but no one's heard of her really. But I'm much more likely to get her than go to Oprah Winfrey, who's the top, you know, female influencer, for example. So be a bit creative of who you go to, send more requests out, um, do more related searches, uh, and you'll, you'll get some really good guests.

I think there's a twofold benefit to that as well. Sometimes when you go for the really big guest, they might have loads of following and you'll get organic reach through people searching their name, but you won't necessarily hack into their audience because they're too big to share it. But sometimes when you get a smaller person who's an expert in the industry, not only is the quality of content amazing, but generally they have a smaller following and they're less protective over their Instagram grid and they're happy to promote it. If they've got a really engaged audience, then you'll probably see a larger spike on the day that episode goes live than you would if you interviewed, you know, somebody celebrity famous. So I think that's definitely worth considering. Everyone thinks they need the A-listers, but sometimes the people in your industry are just as good.

Yeah. Another little tip is let's say you've got a business. You could find out who your ideal client is by just going through your client list and going, okay, this kind of client pays quickly. You know, they're, they're good customers. They don't complain. They refer people. And actually you could create a podcast in your industry and go and interview people who your ideal client are, and you can end up getting clients. So, you know, you have a podcast agency, Cain, and Cain manages what, about 200 podcasters and content creators and content repurposers. So what Cain could do is go and find content creators or influencers who he believes don't have a podcast but would want one, or have got a big name but aren't that massive on content, or are only doing content on one channel, you could reach them out, invite them as a guest. So for example, you know, my friends Neville Wright, Alfie Best, people like that, I mean, worth $100 million, worth $700 million, massive names, but not really yet prolific on content repurposing or on their podcast. So you reach out to people like them, you get them on your podcast, more likely to say yes, and then they could become a client.

Definitely, because it's very rare that you can— somebody at that level, you go, 'Oh, can I just take an hour of your time?' Because they're very busy. But there's something in it for them when you're doing a podcast because you're giving them a platform, and maybe they want to promote things, and maybe they want to grow their brand through someone else's platform. And then once you've had them in a room for an hour and you've built that rapport, then definitely you can convert a lot of people. So last couple of minutes, Got a couple of questions for you. So what is your single most valuable piece of advice for the average Joe who's just starting their podcast? They haven't even recorded episode 1 yet.

I would say create a little folder on your phone and on your laptop with the Notes app or Evernote or something and just call it my content and Every time you get in the shower or leave the house, or you're just going about your day and you pop an idea, an idea pops into your head, just quickly go and put it in your content folder. Don't have to do the full download, but just stick the idea in. And you'll probably collect 3 or 4 a day. I mean, how many butterfly thoughts come in our mind? And then I get so annoyed when a good idea comes in and then it it disappears. So when the idea comes in, you have to quickly stick it in a content folder. And then what you do each morning, or over the weekend for an hour or whenever, is you go in and you take those bullets of content ideas, and you create a 3, 5, or 7-step list on how to do that content. So for example, I could— how money really works. You know, I think to myself, people don't really understand how money works. Um, you know, money is the root of all evil. Well, no, it's not. And, um, they don't really understand. They think money and currency are the same thing, but they're not the same thing. It's actually 5 main differences between currency and money. So I get these ideas, and often I get the ideas watching other people's content or being in meetings, and just stick the ideas in the folder, and then I spend 15 to 30 minutes couple of times a week, beefing that out, and then all my content comes from that. And so much so now, I reckon it's not an exaggeration to say I've got more than 500 pieces of content I haven't even caught up with yet. I mean, those guys, um, in our studio who've been doing my recorded TikTok content, I reckon they've got 25, 30 pieces of content in the bank for me. I think Harry has got 20 pieces of content for Money in the bank. I.e., you know, scheduled to go ahead of content. Because when you're behind on content, it's a bit stressful. Shit, tomorrow I've got to do my podcast, haven't got any content. And what can happen is you end up creating a piece of content that's just a bit below par, or you get a guest. You know, I'm the same with Stephen Bartlett's team. I am— I will not interview anyone unless I think they're really good value. I won't just get another guest for the sake of it. Um, but if you're really behind on content, you end up having to make sacrifices and your quality is not as good. So I would say that's my top piece of advice for people starting or scaling a podcast, because probably what stops most people is having enough content. Because if you haven't had enough content, you would start. Then the next thing, I'll just add you one more, is keep it really simple. So get a Zoom H1 or a little Olympus recorder. Don't have to— I mean, we've got here some fancy Zoom there and fancy little studio booth here, you know, but we've been doing this 6 years and we have an agency. But just to start with, keep the editing and the recording really simple. So for many episodes, probably what, 200, 150 out of all the ones I've done are recorded on a little clip-on microphone on a Zoom H1. And we don't really edit me because I'm free-flowing, so I can record it anywhere, anytime on a $100 device, and I can send the memory card to you and you can bang it straight up. Whereas if I'm trying to get fancy equipment, costs money, takes time, messes up, do loads of edits, it just slows the process right down. Then once you're rolling, then you can buy slightly better equipment. and then you can do a little bit more funky editing. But that'd probably be my two, um, things that would just get people started much quicker.

Brilliant advice. And we actually do a whole episode that's already, um, recorded and published on the Podcast of Podcasts about kit and setups, and the Zoom H1 is one of those setups. Like you said, we have about 200 clients in the agency, and pretty much 75% of them have that setup. Because it's probably the most versatile and the best quality of audio for sort of the minimum investment. And yeah, 100%, really good advice. So last couple of questions: what is the future for podcasting? And that can be either the industry or for your podcast specifically.

Okay, well, I'm just going to keep doing 3 episodes a week on The Disruptive Entrepreneur and 1 episode a week on money for as long as I can. I think the future of podcasting is bright because it doesn't seem to be overly affected by changes in channels. So, you know, TikTok comes along and then Instagram launch Reels, Clubhouse comes along and Facebook launch audio rooms, and there's all this scrapping going on between social channels and podcasts just sits in its background doing its thing, staying out of trouble. Because it's just a fairly simple, logical, undisruptible media. So get consistent because it's probably not going to be disrupted. So it's probably going to be here for a very long time. Audio as well, I think, has got big growth. So 5 years ago, maybe 6, 7 years ago, I don't know, but whatever. We were moving more from image-based content into video or word into image into video. And videos evolved now such that even many image-based platforms like Instagram are more video. But now we're moving from video to audio. Why? Because you have to sit down and clear your day in your diary and watch a video. Whereas you can walk, run, train, exercise, cook, clean, garden, do pretty much anything you want and listen to audio at the same time. So who's getting less busy? No one. Who's getting less overwhelmed? No one. Okay, some people are going into minimalism now, but I reckon if you're into minimalism, probably a cool thing to do is to sit looking at the sunset, listening to a podcast. So podcast, probably the most convenient media now. And I think that there's gonna be way more social media channels and there's gonna be way more overwhelm. And there's gonna be way more sort of mental health related issues because of that. And podcasts always gonna be there as an audio platform. Clubhouse launched as an audio platform, obviously went pretty viral pretty quickly. And that sort of boosted podcasting up. And as everyone competes with Clubhouse, like Fireside is and Greenroom is and Facebook is, podcasts just keep getting bumped up. So they seem to, you know, the slow and steady horse that always wins the race.

I very much agree. So I think over the quarantine, most people thought podcast downloads would go down because people aren't commuting, gym, whatever. But I think Clubhouse and all the audio versions of Clubhouse massively helped podcast downloads. I think you're very, very right, is everyone else is going to help podcast downloads go up and up and up because at the moment not many people actually listen to podcasts. 25% of people in the UK, 45% of people in the US. That's not that many people.

Yeah, because what percentage watch a YouTube video or have been on Facebook? Probably 65%. So yeah, definitely.

So final question, what is your favorite podcast? What would you recommend?

Oh, this is tough because, um, the— I heard James Hetfield, the lead singer of Metallica, be interviewed. I can't remember if it was Tim Ferriss or Joe Rogan, and that was like one of my favorite episodes. Um, the, the lead singer of Tool on Joe Rogan, Henry Rollins on Joe Rogan, he was absolutely brilliant. Um, but there's a lot of stuff on Joe Rogan. I'm not really into MMA, you know, that form of comedy that they do is not really my thing. Some of the alien or the random stuff is, is not not so much my bag. So I'm probably more about episodes than I am podcasts. But I think what Joe Rogan does is great, and he should get a special mention and a hat tip because his questions are very thought-provoking. He's prepared to go into a debate or even an argument or disagree. He gets really good guests. He gets a wide berth of guests, which I like. I like a wide berth of guests because I want to learn from successful people, not just from successful business owners. Um, I was actually in talks with Elon Musk, and he went on Joe Rogan, then he smoked the joint, then he went a bit underground. So I also am pissed with Joe Rogan because he might have ruined my chance to get Elon Musk. So on the balance of everything, because Masters of Scale, um, is a really good podcast, I love businessy podcasts, um, but yeah, I'd probably have to say Joe Rogan's the daddy.

Definitely, he's the granddad. Alright, thank you very much, Rob.

Cheers. So if you're watching on the live, I've been interviewed by Cain Barron on The Podcasters Podcast. So make sure you go and download The Podcasters Podcast. Is it on Spotify as well as iTunes? It's everywhere. iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, you name it. If— look, if you're thinking about getting into podcasting, you can't afford not to listen to The Podcasters Podcast. Save yourself a load of time and a load of mistakes. Make— simplify the process of launching a podcast. You'll never look back. And thanks for having me on the show.

Thanks, Rob.