Ep 8 Your Excuses for Not Doing a Podcast

Question. If NBC came to you and said we want you to be on the Today show five minutes a day for one week and we're going to give you six weeks to get ready, or if CNBC came to you and said we want you on every day for a week, just for five minutes in six weeks, would you turn them down?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life, Speaking with TJ Walker.

I ask you that question not because the CNBC or the Today show is likely to come to you with that offer, but it's because if you say yes, and most people I know with businesses, whether you're an author, expert, big business, small business, if you had a chance to talk to a huge audience every day for a week, that would be great, you would be crazy to turn that down. You'd say, of course I will do it, especially if I've got six weeks to prepare. If you say yes to that, then it begs another question. And that is why aren't you doing a podcast, a daily podcast, or not a daily podcast, at least a weekly podcast? Well, There you go, T.J. that's different. No, it's not. Yes, I understand the Today show may have a larger audience than you're going to than I have right now, or that you could have on your podcast initially. But I can tell you there are a lot of very famous consultants, authors like Tim Ferriss of the Four Hour Workweek who will tell you they actually sell more books appearing on certain podcasts than they do all the Today Show. And I can tell you, I mean, I've been on the CBS Morning Show, Sunday Morning Show, a lot of shows with huge audiences didn't sell that much. But communicating with people regularly through podcasts, through social media, through your own show can in the long term have a bigger impact. So that's what we're going to talk about here today. I want to give you some things to think about. So if you aren't already doing your own podcast, audio or video. Now I do this program in both audio and video. A case can be made that audio is really the better medium because audio podcasts are exploding in popularity, shows like Serial, and that it's so much easier for people to absorb content because they can be going for a run, working out at the gym, on a treadmill, they can be on a train, a plane, a subway, they can be driving to work and listen in a way they can't watch video. I buy all that. The reason I do video is because my subject matter is about speaking. And what terrifies people about speaking so much is that people see you. So I feel like I have to demonstrate what I'm talking about. So that's why I do video as well as audio. But here's the thing. If you could go on the Today show and Matt Lauer interview you about your business for five minutes a day for one week, then why wait for Matt Lauer to ask you those questions? Why don't you ask yourself that question, have another colleague interview you if you don't want to do it like I do. I'm just talking right to a camera, which isn't hard, but it seems hard to people. But you could have a colleague interview you. You could have a family member interview you. If you're a one person business, if you're a CEO of a company, have your head of investor relations interview you. And the whole key is create interesting, relevant content for the people you care about. Your customers, your prospects, your clients, people in your industry. The show I'm doing right now that you're watching is not ever going to be as popular as serial. It's not ever going to be as popular as Netflix on House of Cards, which is a great show. Both the old version and the new one doesn't have to be. I'm not trying to reach tens of millions of people or hundreds of millions of people. I want to reach the tens of thousands of people across the world who really care about spoken communication, about public speaking, speaking to the media, communicating effectively to the media. That's my audience. And I can frankly reach them a lot more effectively this way than going on the Today Show. Now, I've been on the Today show very briefly and I've been on thousands of network TV shows, and I certainly won't turn it down if I get the occasional call to do so. And I do interviews from time to time, but it's no longer my focus. I'm not waiting for that big break, for the executive producer of the Today show to call and say, tj, come on down, we love you so much. Be a regular. I can be a regular right here, right now, and so can you. You simply have to create your own show. We'll talk about some of these elements here, but the hardest part, frankly, of podcasting is just making the mental decision you're going to do it, as opposed to, well, that's something. Five years from now would be a great idea if I only had more time or if I only had $50,000 for a big TV student. No, you don't need any of that. So we'll talk about that in much, much more detail. But first, let's take care of a little business.

For a free, no obligation online public speaking or media training course, go to mediatrainingworldwide.com and start learning.

So, as I mentioned, the whole media landscape is changing dramatically. I believe that one of the most significant events happened about a year and a half ago when Apple put its podcast app built in on everything. I mean, you can't even get rid of it, as far as I can tell. That instantly made apps very. Excuse me. That instantly made podcasts very, very easy to get. People didn't have to go into an itunes store and click this down button and search and boom, it's right there on your iPhone. It's on every iPhone. It's on every iPad. That just made it so much easier for people to get the podcast they care about. These days, people are frankly sick of traditional broadcast TV and cable tv. Jerry Springer, another cooking show. If you're not that into cooking, why not watch exactly what you want? I know my own media diet has changed radically in the last year or so with more podcasts, more of just what I want, more blogs of exactly what I want, as opposed to looking at all the headlines on USA Today that aren't that different from all the headlines on the New York Times. So I find a narrowing of mainstream media sources and a broadening of niche content I care about. That's going on with your customers, too. That's going on with your industry, that's going on with your prospects. So why not reach out to them now? I've got a little bit of a fancy studio here because I'm doing media training and I have experience, expensive cameras and lights, but it's not that expensive. My whole studio costs less than $5,000. If you're doing an audio podcast, you can get going for a couple hundred dollars. So you can't tell me that you can't afford to do a podcast. I'm simply not buying it at all. We're seeing increasing fragmentation in the media world these days. As people like Gary Vaynerchuk says, every company is a media company, every company is a content company. And it's not just Netflix, it's not just Amazon, which now creates a lot of great original shows like Transparent. But it's snowmaking companies, snowshoe companies and ski companies are creating massive amounts of video. The, the energy drink companies are creating their own channels and their apps are probably already on your tv. Everyone is getting into the content creation business because the old gatekeepers simply don't work. It just doesn't work in a modern media reality. Get rid of the gates, start communicating with your customers directly. Now. You can always spend a fortune, hire filmmakers, do everything with storyboarding, and spend massive amounts of money. I'm not opposed to that, but I just want to give you the simplest way. Talk. Talk to people, whether it's an audio podcast or a video podcast, as if you were talking to one customer, as if you were talking to one prospect. People say, well tj, how much time do you spend preparing for your shows? You put out a lot of content. The reality is, on the one hand, I don't prepare at all for the shows and what I'm saying now, on the other hand, I've been preparing every day for 30 years because what I'm sharing with you is what I've learned working in the trenches, giving speeches, doing media interviews, and coaching thousands and thousands of people for 30 years and one on one workshop seminars, group seminars. So I'm sharing with you real experience. I'm sharing with you the very same things I share when a client is sitting across from me one on one and they've asked me a question. I'm sharing with you the same things that a prospect who calls me over the phone and is asking me questions, what I would tell that person over the phone. Chances are you already have a lot of content ideas, messages that you talk about every day. If I said to you I can deliver an ideal prospect to you who's in the market for your product or service, has money, is bringing their checkbook, they just want to talk to you, would you figure out a way of talking to them for 20 minutes today? I guarantee you you would figure out a way to find 20 minutes to talk to them. Well, if you've got 20 minutes to talk to them, why in the world won't you just spend 20 minutes talking to perhaps a bigger audience? Or maybe not even that much of a bigger. Maybe it's five people, but they find you through a podcast, through a video program, whether you're promoting it on YouTube, iTunes, Vimeo or all of them. Why not talk to people? That's the premise behind this show. And it is a frequent question I get from clients whether they work for the United nations, federal government, state governments, big businesses, or one person consulting shops. And that as I'm thinking of doing a podcast, should I really do it, I would recommend just hop in. Yes, there are some technical things to talk about. We'll talk about that in just a moment. But the biggest piece of technical advice is just start doing it right now.

Technology insights.

So there's what you want me to tell you about the technology tips, and there's what I'm going to tell you. What you want me to do is spend the next half an hour telling you about 50 different cameras and a hundred different microphones. And here's the absolute best one that you have to buy before you start. And I'm not going to do it because I don't think that's good advice. I don't think there is one perfect camera or perfect microphone. It's like saying, what is the best way of sending of writing an email to someone? Well, if you're out for a walk and it's urgent, it's just typing on your cell phone. If you're at your desk in front of a desktop, it's your desktop. If you're on your couch and your iPad is in your lap, it may be your iPad. There's no one perfect way of creating an email or a text and sending this to someone. It's whatever is most convenient for you right now. And that's kind of how I feel about so many of the technology aspects of doing YouTube videos, podcasting, audio or video. Just start doing it. You can start refining it. There are some of you who might not like my backdrop, for example, or every part of my sound effects or graphics. I could have spent another two years testing it and tweaking it and redoing it. Instead, I'm just putting it out there. I'm listening to you. I want your feedback on what you like, what you don't like. I'm going to try to tweak it and get it better. But I'm building audience right now. I am building mindshare. I'm building brand right now by talking to you with my little show and my title and the fact that you can find me in iTunes. Audio. ITunes. Video. Video. You can find me on Vimeo and you can find me on Facebook. Video. You can find me on YouTube, you can find me and you can find my ideas and insights that may or may not help you decide to ever hire me. But it sure increases my odds. My question to you is, what are you doing to increase your odds now, folks, I have looked at a lot. I've done the whole Google AdWords thing and you can buy billboards. There's a million different ways of marketing yourself these days. I believe the most effective is to produce interesting content for people. The beauty of podcasting is that people can actually hear you and if you're doing a video podcast, they can see you. What's the significance of this? I always ask people, if you had a choice between sending a direct mail piece to a prospect and having them read it, or having them come in and talk to you for half an hour, what would you prefer and what would be the greatest chances of them actually then hiring you or buying from you? And every single time everyone has said, oh, much better in person than having them read. Having your prospects see you and hear you is the best way for you to make a sale, not text. Why spend more time creating more and more blogs, more and more webpages, more and more white papers? You got to do some of that, folks, and I still do some. But if the most effective way for you to make a sale or build brand is for people to hear you speaking, then please speak. For goodness sake, speak. And there's a much greater chance that people will hire you for whatever you do, even if it's something like this.

To hire TJ Walker as a keynote speaker or workshop leader for your next conference. Call 212-764-4955.

So that's part of how I justify doing my own podcast. It's not that anyone's paying me some big lump of sum or that I have advertising revenue that's so significant, or that every single day I get 50 new clients from my podcast. But long term, it pays off. I've been doing video how to trainings and that can be available in a sense of a podcast since about 2000. I mean, it was about six months after YouTube started. And I've been doing training videos since 1998. One of the best clients I ever got, a local PR firm in New York City. I put together a training video, a media training video. This is back. It would have been probably 97. I had no money. I had an old VHS camera and I did a training video that covered the basic concepts that I talk about in media training back at the time. And I copied the VHS on tape on VHS and I mailed it to every PR firm in New York City. Pretty much my life savings, which was about a few hundred dollars at the time. And I'll never forget one of the PR firms called up, said, hey, I received your video, come on in, we may have something for you. I went in, talked, they liked me, hired me. They still use me to this day. It's generated directly and indirectly, north of half a million dollars of revenue from this one client and one Time. About a year later, I asked the client, why didn't you hire me? What did you like in my video that I sent you? Because I know that's how we met. And she said, well, tj, I never watched your video. I just figured you have a video, you must be credible now. Times are different today versus 1997. It's so much easier for people to create video and to create podcasts. There were no podcasts in 1997. But most of your competitors are too lazy, too insecure, too bureaucratic to do a podcast. Why not cut through the clutter? Because all of your competitors are putting out press releases, they're doing Google Ads, they're putting out white pages. Why compete on their turf? So to me, that's the real beauty of creating video and audio podcast. And I say high quality, I don't mean expensive production. I'm spending after the initial cost of buying a camera, creating a few graphics. I spend $0 on the production of this show. Just being honest, full disclosure. But I think I'm giving you quality content for people who are interested in spoken communication. So that should be your focus. Give people quality information. The easiest way to do that is just by talking. You don't have to edit it, re edit it, spell check it. You don't have to take the ums out, leave it all in there. I'm giving you everything I have in a completely unedited format. You're getting this, I do it, once I hit stop, that's it, it's uploaded. So the idea that you have to spend hours and hours and hours and hours for every five minute podcast isn't true. If you're trying to do something a great work of art like serial, a great drama, sure, you have to. But if you are a business person or you're trying to communicate political ideals for a campaign, or change public policy, or sell your consulting services, you can simply speak. So my question to you, my big question to you for the day is what is it going to take for you to actually start doing either an audio or a video podcast? What is it going to do? You have to have every single one of your competitors doing it. Does your business have to be going out of business? What is it going to take? I'd like to know. So post your comments on Facebook, YouTube, wherever you're watching this or listening to it, and send me your comments tjwalker on Twitter or tjediatrainingworldwide.com and as always, send me any questions you have about podcasting or any other aspect of speaking to the media or live audiences, with a caveat of I'm not the tech person. I don't know a gigabyte from a hard drive, from whatever. So don't ask me and don't ask me about which camera. Get any camera. Just get something up and get it out there and listen to your audience and listen to what they think. Also, if you are a member of Amazon's Kindle Unlimited, as I am and I would recommend it, it's like nine bucks a month. You can just quickly read every single book written about podcasting, or almost all of them. They're all available in the unlimited section, so you can quickly read about 50 books on podcasting. They all have chapters on the latest of the equipment and this camera and this audio. That's not the hard part. The hard part is figuring out you're going to do it and getting it out there and just starting it. So please give it some thought and get going on that. I'm TJ Walker as always, may all of your speaking opportunities in life be a huge success.

Speaking with TJ Walker is the number one rated daily streaming TV and radio show devoted to all aspects of speaking and communication. If you received value from this show, then please please subscribe to it@mediatrainingworldwide.com Please review the show, leave comments and share it with your friends and colleagues. Today.