The Secrets of Podcasting Stars - Harry Duran

Speaking with TJ Walker, dissecting the communication skills and practices of world class leaders. So here's the situation. You're successful in your field. You're a thought leader. You've published one, two, three books. Your blog is popular. Sounds pretty good, right? You're asked to give keynote speeches around the country, around the world. But you dabbled a time OR2 with YouTube video. You bought a camera, it never really went anywhere. Now you're hearing about podcasting. Everyone's talking about, oh, it's the next new thing. But where do you start? How do you keep this from being one of these ventures where you spend a lot of time, energy, money, and six months later you're thinking, why in the world am I doing this? That's why I'm happy to have our next guest, Harry Durand. He is the founder and CEO of Fullcast, an organization devoted to helping thought leaders really harness the power of podcasting. Harry, thanks for joining us.

So glad to be here, tj, thank you for having me.

So let's hop right into the biggest problem I see with so many people, they kind of feel like, okay, yeah, I gotta be on Twitter. Yeah, I've got a Facebook page. Yeah, I've got a few YouTube videos. Do I want to start another thing and how do I do it in a meaningful way? So I'm not one of these roadkill statistics where according to Lipson and others, I guess half of all podcasts quit before the seventh episode and about 90% quit after the 23rd episode.

Yeah, that's correct. And the actual term that they've created for that is called pod fading. I don't know if your listeners knew that, but it's funny that they actually have a term for that. And what happens, tj, is that a lot of people who get started with podcasting, they get really excited in the beginning and they get really motivated and they spend thousands of dollars on equipment that they don't end up using and they put out those six or seven episodes and then they realize the amount of work that's involved in getting this done week in and week out. And so for that audience specifically that you just mentioned, it's really important to think about it strategically about what you want to accomplish by starting a podcast. Podcast. Because like you said, they already have a feel for what works and what doesn't in terms of their marketing outreach. Maybe they're doing a little bit of Twitter, maybe they're doing some Facebook. And like you said, they've, they've dabbled in YouTube, but if you don't have a consistent approach into how you're producing this on a week in, week out basis, you're bound to burn out because you feel like you're going to put a little bit into Twitter this week and then maybe next week you put a little bit into YouTube and then you read an article about podcasting and then you decide that content management is hot this week, so you need to write a blog post. And I think what's important, tj, is to step back and look at content management from a high level perspective and then look at all the different opportunities you have to repurpose content. So I'm a really big fan of creating content once and then using it in the, in a multiple of places because that way you get the most bang for your buck and the bang for your effort. And that's why I'm really high on podcasting as a start, because as you know, you can have that audio in multiple places, but you can also syndicate it out to different sources and also repurpose the audio and the transcripts. And what we do with some clients is actually make that into blog posts so it becomes content that's evergreen and content, content that can be repurposed in a wide variety of locations.

And Harry, we should point out, you're not one of these so called experts who says, do as I say, not as I do. You're also a podcast host. You are the host of Podcast Junkies and it's known as the Podcaster's Voice. You have done way more than 100 episodes. I've subscribed to it recently and it certainly appears to be a quality podcast. So you're not. I always get a kick out of. I get these emails from organizations saying, come to our webinar and we're going to have this fantastic video YouTube expert tell you about how to use YouTube to market yourself. I always go to their YouTube channel. Invariably they have four videos or fewer and about five views. So it's nice to see someone peddling some expertise when they actually are doing what they're talking about.

Yeah, thanks for calling that out. I started that in April of 2014 and it came out of a passion I had for connecting with people. I was at a conference called NMX New Media Expo and I originally went to support a mobile app I was working on for electronic music, which is another passion of mine. But then I realized there's a lot of people in this room that have a lot of good stories and I like talking to people and I like learning from people. And that's how it started. So it's a bit meta. It's a podcast about podcasting, but it's been a really interesting experience. I've gotten Marc Maron's executive producer, Brendan McDonald, which was a highlight, and some other well known podcasters out there. And along the way, what's happened, TJ is because I'm the guinea pig, I tested a lot of marketing strategies and to see what works, what doesn't in terms of getting exposure for the show. And as a result, that's what led into me starting my company Fullcast and using those lessons learned and continuing to use those lessons learned and applying those to help my clients out.

Now, you mentioned Marc Maron, the well known podcaster. I would put him in the category of almost a huge blessing and a huge curse. He certainly put podcasting on the map, brought attention to it to a lot of people. He's gotten President Obama on his podcast. On the other hand, I do think a lot of thought leaders look at that and say, well, that looks simple. He's just talking and he's got tens of millions of listeners. I hear he's making $10,000 an ad. Let me do a few podcasts and start charging $10,000 an ad. It's not that simple, is it?

No, it's a little bit of cart before the horse. And he does receive, really make it simple. And obviously it's Hollywood. So you see him in there fiddling with the mixer and the microphone and the headphones in his garage and people get the impression that, oh, that's all I need to get started. What they don't realize is what's happening behind the scenes. And I had the benefit of talking to his actual producer, so I get a feel for who is the actual person putting together the podcast for him. But what's important to remember is, is what he's doing is really in the line of an entertainment based show. And because he's so popular, he's able to command those high prices from sponsors. The most popular model for sponsorship is what's called cpm. The CPM is cost per thousand impressions. And the M comes, I believe, from the it's mill and comes from the Roman numeral for a thousand, which confuses some people. So it's how much you would get paid per every thousand downloads. And if you do the math, you realize in order for you to make a living off a podcast, you start to have to need to get into the tens of thousands, 50,000, 100,000 downloads per episode, which is really hard to do and it's not something that most people will do. If you listen to the feed, which is Libsyn's podcast, they do it every two weeks. Libsyn is one of the biggest podcast hosting companies out there and Blueberry is another big one.

But Lips and Disclosure, I host with Libsyn.

Okay. Yeah, so, so the feed is really good and I listen to it and I think you, you may have listened to a couple episodes as well. You can really get a feel for what's the dominant source for, for downloading podcasts. And it's mobile, it's about 75%. And what are the average download numbers? Because as podcasters, we're always really curious as to what our fellow podcasters are doing. And you'd be surprised, I believe that if you're at about 170 downloads, you're better than 50% of the podcasts out there. And then you only have to go to the couple of thousands to get into the top 20% of all podcasters. So that's good for you as a podcaster to feel that you're doing well, but then you quickly realize you're not going to be able to monetize sponsorship at that level in a way that's going to help you support your business. And so for the folks that I work with, what I have them do is really, it's a mind shift in saying instead of trying to think of it from a pure downloads numbers perspective, think about it in terms of the value you're providing week in and week out. And is that something where people would be interested in looking for ways to continue to work with you or to inquire about your business? Because that's really where the benefit is for the thought leaders that I work with that are clients, what's the unique call to action that you can give to people at the end of each episode where they can say, this is something that I really want to get from you, a download or a PDF and figure out how I can learn more about you and about your business.

Give us an example. Certainly I can imagine if I were an expert on helping hedge funds raise hundred million dollar plus from billionaires, I wouldn't need to have an audience of millions listening to each podcast if I had an audience of one, but it's the right one, I would have all sorts of hedge funds loving to hire me as a consultant or advertise or anything else. So quite often it is about the uniqueness of your audience, your relationship with the audience, and give us an because we hear all this attention of Marc Maron and Tim Ferriss making tons of money just off of their their huge audience. But I want to hear about people who have small audiences, but it's really helped build their business. I want to hear about that in just a moment. First, you're listening to Speaking with TJ Walker. Please subscribe if you haven't already subscribed like us on Facebook. Share it and please leave a review now. Full Disclosure this is a learning moment for us. I committed a fundamental blunder I urge other hosts not to do I did not ask Harry how to pronounce his last name. Am I pronouncing your name correctly? Is it Duran?

It is. It's just like Duran Duran.

Okay, so I did guess correctly, but now I'm racking my brain the whole time worried about, oh, I'm mispronouncing his name. Always ask your guest, and I typically always do. We had a couple of technical problems before we started today and it upset my natural routine. No excuse. My obligation is to make this as interesting and as helpful and as accurate as possible for the audience and to make it as pleasant an experience as possible for the guest. And I tell you, guest can't stand it when their name is mispronounced. My name, TJ Walker, is pretty easy to pronounce, but I have a friend, former Bloomberg anchor and comedian on the Onion. His name is Bowden and invariably he is introduced as Bowden when he's on some shows and he just does a face plant each time. So I don't want to be guilty of that. So Harry, onto the specific example of a client of yours who is not getting tens of millions of downloads but is still really using the podcast and a meaningful way to build the business.

Yeah, one of my earliest clients, his name is John Livesay. He's he has a podcast called the Successful Pitch and his original business is coaching startups on how to pitch better and how to he works with them on their presentation deck. And because he's got experience working at Conde Nast in advertising for 20 plus years, he really knows what and apologies.

Harry, some of our listeners may find that name very familiar because we had him on as a guest on this program just last week. Please continue. He was a great guest, by the.

Way, so he's been just a pleasure to work with. So as some might remember from the interview, he's really good at what he does and what we did when we started working with him. It's really interesting, TJ because he had no idea where to start at all in terms of a podcast. He said, harry, this is not my forte. I don't know what microphone to use. I don't know where to post it, where to publish it, what to do when it's done, how I should sound, and how to do an interview. What was really interesting as we were getting started is I told him, john, you know what? You don't need to know all that, because that's not your expertise, that's not your genius, which is a phrase my coach uses a lot. I like to have people focus on their genius, which is really that sweet spot of the things that they. They're an expert at. And everything else is where you should really be looking for help. So over the course of the setup and as he started interviewing people, what he did was bring people on, that highlighted what are the key points that people who work with him need to understand or would like to know in this startup world. And he started providing value to his audience. And over the course of the first 20, 30, 40 episodes, he. He began to build up this bank of knowledge of people that could go and listen to the interviews. They were short, maybe 30 to 45 minutes. And here that he was really asking great questions. He was really following up in a way that made sense, and he always kept the listener in mind, which is really important. Tj A lot of times podcasters, whether they're recording a solo show or they're doing interviews, they just think about themselves or the person they're speaking to, and they forget that there's this other person in the room who is the listener, who's listening intently and seeing if this is something that provides value for them. So what he started to do is, in the beginning, when he was working with prospects, he would say, well, I have a webinar. You can watch my webinar. What he started to do is say, why don't you go listen to episode two, episode seven, and episode nine? And these are really great interviews, and they really have a lot of key points that you would find relevant as you start to put your deck together. The added benefit, tj was the fact that he was moderating that interview, and so people were listening to him and realizing that he really knew what he was talking about. So by the time they were listening, they finished listening to the episodes. By the time they finished watching the webinar and then they would get on the sales call with him, he was halfway to three quarters of the way. They were already, you know, sold on the benefits of working with him. So it's really interesting because we had a couple of conversations as the podcast was picking up steam, and he said, harry, I had my first prospect. Tell me. I heard you on the podcast. You really sound like you know what you're talking about. I really would be interested in working with you. So that's a really clear example of something where they hear you over a period of time and they come to see that you're the expert in the space. So you have to really be sure you're adding value every single episode, tj, which is really important. There's this interesting arc of what happens in the life of a listener when they find a new podcast. First they have to. You may have heard this before, but first they have to know you. They have to figure out who you are. They've never heard of you before. Then they have to like you. And that becomes from listening to you week in and week out, do I really like what this person is saying? Does it resonate with me? Is he adding? Or he or she adding value? And then they have to trust you. And that comes over time as well. And so at the point you start making a call to action and say, please go to my website. I've created a PDF just for this episode of the three points that were discussed here that my guest mentioned. And you can be creative with how you do that. Then they'll start to follow your instructions because they've gone through the process of acclimating themselves to who you are and understanding that, in fact, you are someone that is providing value to them. And so naturally, they'd be inclined to take the next step with you.

And speaking of call to actions, if you want more information, check the show notes and you can go to Harry's website, Fullcast co. No, it's not a typo. It's conot con. Harry's also been nice enough to provide a special page for the listeners of Speaking with TJ Walker and harrythat's Fullcast co. Tj, very simple. And what are they gonna find on that page?

So I think what's for your audience that the audience that you mentioned at the top of the show where they've had an interest in podcasting or have heard about podcasting, or maybe are just finding out that it may be something they would be interested in? I think what would be important for that audience, cj is to have a bit of a cheat sheet that says this is what you can expect to need to start with. These are the basics in terms of equipment. This is where you should be hosting. This is how you would get an episode onto itunes. Because these are all the questions that I'm asked from people that are just getting started. Where do I put it, where do I market it? And so I think putting this together in one or two pages, that's something that's nice for them, that they can print out and have at hand on their desk, I think will be really handy for them. And as they start to work through this process to see if in fact this is something that they want to.

Take on and the process can be overwhelming, it's nice to have a guide. Libsyn has a pro level service that I use and the lead guy there, Rob Walsh, is very useful, but he can't sit there and spend hours with you, walking you through every step. So people do need a guide and I guess that's where you the niche you fall into. I do think that more and more businesses are going to see the need to podcast because it's how you get into people's heads. I notice with my own audience, I've been doing videos, I've been doing videos in one form or another for 30 years, but on YouTube for 11 years. It's very difficult for me to get anyone to watch YouTube video for more than about 3 minutes and 38 seconds. And YouTube does a great job of giving you the analytics. But when I switched to or added on to the videos by doing audio podcast, I found I had clients who would tell me they listened the entire way to work and if it's a 40 minute drive, they're listening for 40 minutes. So I've gone from three minutes of mindspace to. To 40 minutes of mind space, which is obviously highly significant. I'm one of these podcasters. I might not ever get millions of downloads every show, hope to, but I'm going into this with the idea that it doesn't really matter if I ever do, because I'm reaching the audience I care about, my prospects and my clients. My first six months, while my audience is, I guess, technically larger than the typical podcast audience, it's still not huge. But I have gotten a couple of clients who hired me in part because of listening to the podcast and what I'm doing. And that's five figures there. Again, I'm not making millions, but it was more than enough to offset the time expenses of getting going. Are you finding more people who fit that niche?

Most definitely, tj Because I think what's important is really the quality of the people that are listening to your show. And not being so focused on this quantity number and downloads number. And it's really an education process because when people first have a conversation with me, a lot of times they think in terms of downloads and they say, okay, how do I get to 10,000 downloads? Or how do I get to 20,000 or 50,000 downloads? And I said, well, we need to think about why it is that you want to do that. And if it's strictly from a monetary monetization perspective, then let's dial that back a little bit and think about the services that you provide. Ideally, if these are thought leaders and they do have high ticket and premium priced offers, and it's really a function of getting people into your funnel and showing them that you're the person that they need to be working with for this specific show. And then we think about what type of show and what type of format makes the most sense so that you're really, really dialed in and that the people that are listening to you know what they're getting. You don't want to be a generic show for everyone. You don't want to be a generic business show. I know specifically in your audience, you know, you want to teach people how to speak, pitch, present. And I know that one of your models is this idea of people wanting to be remembered. So I believe that tj, as you do every show, you have that in the back of your mind in terms of the value you want to provide in your guest selection, in the topics you pick, and in the commentary you make throughout the episode. And as people listen to that, they really resonate with that and say, well, week in, week out, TJ's providing value. I really need to find out who this TJ guy is and learn more about him. And the idea they get to your website and they do that and you've demonstrated that's worked for you. And it's really the same approach that I take with prospects to have them think about who is their avatar, who they would like to work with, and, and how do you start to build content in a way that really speaks to them? Because there's nothing better than listening to a podcast episode and feel like, wow, they really answer that one question I have that's been sitting in my mind about how to move my own business forward, or this is really that one conversation that I really felt like I needed to hear at the right place at the right time.

So let me put you on the spot. You've had a show now for more than 100 episodes. Has it resulted in business for you?

Yeah, a lot of times people try to equate a one to one fit a one to one correlation between like, one person listened and then they called me and they gave me, you know, $10,000 or something to that effect. But a lot of times, as you, as you know yourself, tj, it's a matter of building up history and experience and trust over a period of time. So as a result of people listening to my podcast, I've helped them. I volunteer my help a lot of times because for that specific audience. For podcast junkies, it's a lot of people who are in the hobby podcast sphere, but they also are getting started with their own shows, and so they have questions. So I add value all the time. I've grown my exposure and my visibility in my podcast to the point now where I go to one of the biggest podcast conferences out there, podcast movement. And I go there and people I've now spoken a podcast movement. And as a result, because I've spoken there, I can let people know that I do this for people on a business basis and I help people get started with there directly as a result of monetizing that show. That hasn't happened, but I continue to have it because it's a great way for me to have exposure. I had no Twitter following when I had started, no Facebook following. And two and a half years later, I have a decent presence. I believe it's up to 5,000 followers on Twitter now. And so that gives me a platform to talk about the topic of podcasting. And as a result, I can also introduce my business. All my profile information on LinkedIn shows that I have a business that does this for people. And I have had conversations with people that have turned into clients.

And while two and a half years doesn't sound like a long time, that's practically a generation or two in podcasting time. Things are moving so quickly in so many different directions. The podcast app built into every iPhone, now built into new cars. That's actually a long track record in the world of podcasting. And I'm ashamed to say I used to have some of my old videos converted into audio uploaded to podcasting 9, 10 years ago. Had staff doing it at the time. I never paid any attention to it. I don't even know when it stopped, but I never paid any attention to it until January 1st of this year when I launched the show. You mentioned funnel. It's time for us to take just a moment to funnel some people right into my own little funnel here. If you are about to go on as a guest on a podcast or a regular TV show broadcast, or do any kind of media interview you think you might want to prepare, rehearse, maybe learn a few tips at no charge to you. I'm happy to send you my online media training course as well as my online video based public speaking training course. All you have to do is click below in the show notes and I'll send you, absolutely no obligation, several of my public speaking and media training books, plus the online video based course and you can start learning right away. Our special guest today is Harry Duran. He is the founder and CEO of Fullcast, which is an organization devoted to helping thought leaders really get into podcasting in a meaningful way. Harry, let's give our audience some tips on how to rise above the clutter. Because some people look at it now and they feel like, oh, it's too late in podcasting. You got Malcolm Gladwell jumping in. Tim Ferriss is stealing all the limelight. There are certain people, famous comedians like Marc Maron, Joe Rogan who've been at it a long time, but already they've had their own cable TV shows, broadcast shows, they're dominant. You have wildly best selling authors like Malcolm Gladwell now getting in and really dominating with podcasting and Tim Ferriss, same thing, wildly best selling author. But you do have people like Jordan Harbinger of the Art of Charm, as far as I know, was not famous from anything before he started this, but just plugged away week in and week out for 10 years and now has a huge, huge audience and seems to be wildly successful too. How do people listening, how can your thought leaders position themselves as the next Art of Charm guy? Because we can't all be Malcolm Gladwell's or Tim Ferriss before we start.

Yeah, that's a great example. And I actually interviewed Jordan Harbinger on Podcast Junkies early on. He's a great guy and we actually became friends as a result of connecting through the podcast and then again at a podcast conference. And he actually just recently got engaged. I saw an update on Facebook, so congratulations to him. But what's interesting, what Jordan does is he started out in the field of relationship building and I think what's been helpful for him is just to be consistent over time and learning along the way and really investing a lot back into himself so that he can become a better and better interviewer. And you can see the arc in terms of the experience that he's had. And I've seen him speak publicly as well and I just feel like he's really taking this seriously. He studies the masters. We've had discussions about Larry King and how he does what he does. And I think he really understands that for him to grow his brain, he needs to bring out the best of his guests and he needs to have his A game on all the time because it's just better for him as a brand. And if he's in the space of letting you know how to be a better communicator and how to interact better with people, how better than to show how he's doing it himself with his guests. And that's why it's really fantastic and working for him really, really well. To your question about how people can get started and make the most of of their opportunity, I think the really big thing that people don't take into account is the fact that you do have to invest some time in the CJ and you have to be consistent. A lot of times we spoke about the idea of pod fading early on and how people can drop off if they're not interested. I think if listeners are interested, if the thought leaders who are listening to me right now are interested in doing this, I would really ask yourself how much of a commitment you're willing to make over the next three to six months to podcasting, because there's a really good way to approach this and think about it as a long term play. You're not going to turn on the microphone and record five episodes and all of a sudden become podcast famous, if you will. It's going to take time for people to know who you are. And so you have to produce on a regular basis and then you have to do the work to get the message out. A lot of times people record an episode, they put it on itunes, and they think that's enough. And while itunes is really the 800 pound gorilla in terms of discoverability of podcasts, it doesn't end there. There's 30 to 40 podcast directories you should be submitting to, and every week you need to communicate your episode to every single platform that you have at your disposal. If you've got a Twitter following, you should be creating a post every week. When we release episodes for clients, we promote them on Twitter for the first whole week. A lot of people think, I can't post too much on Twitter. I think the average life of a tweet is about seven minutes. So if you think you're posting too much on Twitter, you're probably not posting enough on Facebook. Since we post the audio to YouTube, we syndicate out the content to YouTube that gives us a video file. We take that video file, we post it into Facebook natively. Facebook loves native video, and that's another way to get your episode available. If you have an account on SoundCloud, I would post there as well.

Now, that's a lot of extra steps, time consuming, because if you use an account like Libsyn that will automatically convert your audio into a video, post it on your YouTube page, you're then talking about downloading it from YouTube and then uploading it into Facebook. Is that correct?

Yeah, it's one of those extra steps that people, you know, some people may want to take, or they could have their virtual assistant or their team work on that. But that's some of the things that we've tested that I see gets more engagement, because in the past, people would just put their YouTube link on Facebook. But Facebook loves when people use their platform natively. The other thing that if you're in this space of being a speaker or a podcast host, you should naturally already be comfortable in front of a microphone and hopefully in front of camera as well. One of the things we ask clients to do, tj, is actually promote their episode on Facebook Live. You should have, if you're not comfortable doing it to the broad Facebook audience, you can create a Facebook group for your specific podcast, which I highly recommend I do that for my show. And so every time your episode is live, just, you know, record five minutes and say, hey, guys, I'm really excited about the conversation I had with TJ Walker today. We really went deep into the benefits of podcasting and why it's important to be remembered and how to speak and pitch and present properly. And I really think you're going to get the value from the episode. The link is here below. Again, going out of your way to let people know, don't always assume that people are on the platforms that you're on. We cross post content onto LinkedIn, we cross post it onto Instagram, on Google. Obviously, you want to be on a Google platform every chance you get. We even take transcriptions, we re edit them and we post them on medium.com, which is a really popular, highly trafficked blog platform.

Now, Harry, you just stepped on a tripwire for me. As I got right into. You just said something that really stands out. You said, hopefully you're comfortable in front of a camera or a tv. And certainly my whole business, my whole existence, is premised on the idea that 99.9% of people aren't. That's why they actually need media training. I get frustrated, but it's a fact of life. People will spend six months and $8,000 on equipment for a podcast and spend nothing actually making them sound like a real person. And so I guess the good thing about podcasting is you can practice on your audience because your audience is so small and you. You can't get fired. Whereas traditional media, if you're going on a book tour and you're really awful and you're on the Today show, you just never get invited back. So the stakes are higher. Do you recommend that people just practice on their own audience? Because that is essentially what happens.

Well, that's a great point you brought up, tj, and I think it's definitely worth diving into. I mean, I myself, I didn't know of your services earlier on, so maybe I would have worked with you if I had the opportunity. But when I got started, I was really conscious of the fact of how I sounded, and I really wanted a professional's opinion. So I worked with someone who's a friend of mine now, and he's got 25 years in the broadcasting business. And so I hired him as a coach, even. I think I was into episode maybe one or two when I started it. And he did give me some interesting tips about mic technique and how you sound on the microphone and obviously for the people that you work with, even things, I think people take it for granted that they're going to shoot something like, even, like a YouTube video or a Facebook Live, that they don't need to think about. Some of these techniques that I'm sure you teach about how to look on camera. And I think people think of this old way of thinking about camera being maybe in a professional studio. But I'm sure there's things that you teach that would be applicable for people who are shooting themselves at home or having friends shoot them in their own mini studio. And so I'm always a fan of learning and understanding what it is that I don't know from people that have been there, people that can help me shortcut the process to how I can sound and look better on camera or behind a microphone. So, yeah, I fully support getting training. The example that people love to use is even Tiger woods has a coach, right? So even if you think you know everything there is to know about a specific topic or about how to look good or sound good on camera, there's always something you can learn.

You can reach Harry Duran on Twitter, his handle isullcastco, and we'll post that in the show notes as well. Harry, I'M going to anger some of my friends in the traditional PR world with this question, but I have to ask. Here's the scenario. Let's say I'm the head of a small medium sized financial services consulting firm. Let's say it's a 10 person firm. I am grossing a few million a year. I currently spend five to seven thousand dollars a month on a traditional PR firm and I go on CNBC once every two, two months. I do some financial talk, AM talk radio. An occasional blog post gets picked up here and there. If I really add it all up, I can't really quantify the results I'm getting, but I kind of feel like, well, everyone else is doing it. I need a public profile. I am spending, let's say 10 hours a week on things related to getting my ideas out to the broader world through my posts, talk radio appearance, traditional AM talk radio appearances, and other things. Now talk to me. I come to you and I say, okay, if I get into podcasting, give me a realistic expectation. How much time do I need to put in? How much time of my staff time and or how much money do I need to spend on an outside service to do all these other little doohickey things you're talking about?

That's a great question, tj. I actually have a client who has a financial services firm, so it's really relevant. And what's interesting is it's a great subject area that lends itself well to providing really good information, snippets of information week in, week out that's actionable. And that's what this one client is doing now. His name is Paul Adams and his podcast is called Sound Financial Bites. In terms of the investment of time, what you want to think about. Again, this comes back to this issue of focusing on your genius. As the head of a financial services firm, your genius is in spending the time thinking through what are the ideas, what are the topics, what are the issues that existing clients are struggling with. And they constantly ask me for information about or prospects. Come to me and say can you, can your firm help me with this? And so that that real content map lets you know what you're going to hone in on week in and week out. In terms of the amount of time. I'm a huge proponent of batching. Batching is when you take for example, recording episodes and you put them all in a specific day on the calendar so you know that Thursdays, your podcast recording day, if your episodes run about 30 to 45 minutes, it's really easy to knock out four episodes. If you're really aggressive, you can maybe do eight episodes, and there you've got two months worth of content. So to the extent that you can do that ahead of time, that's something we work with our clients to do because you never want to be scrambling. And tj, I'm sure you can relate. You don't want to be in a point where you're saying, I've got an episode coming out next week and I haven't recorded. I have no idea who my guest is going to be. And I know podcasters that have gone through that. And early on I had a couple of situations like that, and it's not fun, and it's additional stress that you don't need. So planning that and batching it really, really saves you a lot of time. I know you mentioned the 10 hours a week some people are spending with their current approach, and it's really not anywhere near that if you really batch your time accordingly. And that's the beauty of podcasting, because you can preload all of this work ahead of time, and in this case, it's either your solo show or your interview with your guest if you plan it accordingly. And in terms of the investment, for example, to get a lot of the services done, you're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe about $2,000 a month. And that's full service, top of the line, done for you. A lot of times people try to piecemeal it and they'll say, well, I'll have someone just do the editing and then I'll take it back and I'll do the rest. And a lot of times they're not going to do the rest and they're not going to take it to the the extent that it needs to. So that's why a done for your service like the one that I have with Fullcast is really helpful because not only is the recording done for you, but the recording is edited, a full transcription is done, the show notes are posted to your page, tweetables are created and posted to your site as well so that people can click on that and share your content immediately. There's timestamps, the transcription is reposted to sites like medium.com and then the marketing kicks in. And then all your content, every episode is promoted on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google, LinkedIn, and then the communication that goes to your guest. Let's say, for example, tj, that you had Oprah Winfrey on your show. We would send you an email that says, hey, tj, Your episode with Oprah Winfrey is now complete. Here's the email draft that you're going to send to Oprah. And in the body of the email, it would say, hey, Oprah, thanks for coming, coming on the show. Here's the show notes link. Here's the link to itunes. Here's a clickable tweet that you can share with your audience. Here's a sample of what you can put on Facebook. In case you're wondering, and you'd be surprised, tj, at how happy guests are that they don't have to do all that extra work. And if you make it really, really easy for them to share content, they will be more than happy to share that content with you. I recently had Mignon Fogarty, who's been podcasting for 10 years. She's otherwise known as Grammar Girl. And that's exactly the email I got back from her. Thank you for making this so easy to share. So as you're thinking about the time and your original question about how much investment of time, you want to put your focus on the time that is really your genius, where you're the expert in that space and then let the other people do what they do best and really be your support team to help you succeed.

And Oprah better be promoting me if I give her my huge audience now.

I don't think.

I don't think she's going to be worried about that. I was once taped for a segment on Oprah. I just happened to be in Chicago at the park on a family reunion in a little store buying some water. The producer comes up to me, oh, can we ask you? I don't even know if they were asking me questions or they were filming and had me in the background and wanted my permission, but I didn't make the cut. So while I've been on shows like Montel Williams and others, I'd never made it on Oprah.

You know what's interesting there, tj Just building off of that, one of the things that's starting to happen for people that have been clients with me is that you're starting to build up this really rich, rich repository of evergreen content in your past episodes. And so what we started to do is look at how we can repurpose that content. And some of the clients are now taking those old interviews and packaging them up into a book. And they're taking the book now and. And working with people that I have relationships with and using that book as a calling card to start to get on talk shows. And so if the topic resonates and if it's something that speaks to a wider audience and by working with the publisher, we figure out where, what are the chapters in there that we can pull out and have something that would be an interesting two or three snippet segment, we start to do that. And really, it's really interesting to see that if you didn't have any content before or you were struggling to figure out how to put together your book, if you've had a podcast for a period of time and you've had these great conversations with guests, it's really a two or threefold benefit because not only are you not having to create content from scratch, but if you think about it, TJ, if I'm reaching out to my past 7 to 10 best episodes to those guests, and I'm saying to those guests, hey, we're always trying to get your word out. We always trying to promote this episode. And now what I'm doing is writing a book and I'd like to include you in the book. Would you help me promote it? You can bet that most of the time they'll be really excited about appearing in a book without having to do any extra work. And when it's out, they'll be one of your biggest cheerleaders.

And speaking of major appearances, mark your calendars. You can see Harry Duran as one of the featured co stars the new documentary movie the Messengers, which is all about experts in podcasting. So I'm looking forward to seeing that movie. You mentioned Grammar Girl, and I have listened to her podcast. She does a great job. I've heard her talking on other podcasts just recently. I forgot which one. But what surprised me was how she talked about how it basically just took off. She claims she did nothing all way the, the things you're doing. And a lot of us do. It sounds like, and I may be wrong, it sounds like it's a function of she got in really early, maybe had some luck because it's kind of a plain vanilla show. She's not bringing on Obama and Robin Williams and big name Entertainer. She's just talking about grammar and she's got a huge audience. Is that, is that even possible today? Or have we passed the days where something like that can take off?

It is a function of being in the right place in the right time for her. She started out, she was a science writer and it was really interesting to see her arc and she got into the subject because she did study English literature and it was just a passion for her. And all good podcasters when they start, they do something that they're passionate about. But I think she just rode a wave of the beginning point of podcasting, when there weren't a lot of options for people to listen to that type of content. And as you might have mentioned, she's one of the only podcasters, actually. And tying this back into Oprah to appear on the Oprah Winfrey show, because there was someone on Oprah's staff who was a fan of her show and recommended her show for coming up on. I think it was on. I imagine it was on the subject of grammar. So she's been at it for a long time. She's been incredibly consistent. According to her, she's been recording a weekly episode every week for the past 10 years. So when you think about consistency, that definitely comes to mind. And it's really being super niche, because when you think about that idea, like, I imagine at the time she was the only podcast on that topic, I really think this. There's still an opportunity for people to go niche. And by niche, for people who aren't as familiar with the term, it's really diving down and being the subject matter expert of a topic that feels like it has such a narrow audience that you wouldn't think anyone would be listening to it. But you'd be surprised at the podcast that are out there and the people that are really hardcore fans. I. I just interviewed someone whose podcast is specifically on. On trivia, and. And every week they just handle trivia. They have a trivia challenge every week, and. And they've got a huge following and they've got past Jeopardy. Champions now listening to the podcast, which is really interesting and fascinating. And so I just heard of another podcast. It's called the Welder show, and it's about welders, and it's created by welders. And it's for people who are welding on the job to have something to listen to, which I thought was crazy because there's really an audience out there for everyone. And I just give you those ideas and you're listening to those ideas to really help them think out of the box. And it's sort of what Minion was doing when she started her show. What is something that I'm passionate about that I know there are other people who are passionate about that specific topic, and what can I do on a regular basis to provide value to that audience?

And it's such a beautiful niche in that everybody has to use grammar every single day. And yet there's never been, and probably never will be a half hour hour long grammar show on cnn, msnbc, Fox, or even anything that's prominent on their website. So it's a perfect niche where everybody needs it and yet you can't really find it anyplace else. I want to leave by hearing from you people that you think are just great hosts. They could be clients, they could be anybody that you think people should listen to even if they're not interested in the subject just because they're so good at hosting. We had a guest on earlier in the week who talked about his role model growing up was Bob Costas just because he was so versatile. One of my heroes from quarter century ago was Bob Berkowitz who was a host, primetime host on CNBC and the old Financial News Network. I just liked his style and, and he was also a recent guest on this program a few weeks ago. Who do you like is just sheer, talented, likable host where you listen to them no matter what they talk about.

I think it depends sometimes on the mood that I'm in. I'm obviously in the podcasting space so I like people that take their time or invite people on where they have a good relationship with them so they know that it's going to be an engaging conversation. One of the ones that comes to mind is here's the thing with Alec Baldwin. Obviously he's got a great voice, but he just seems to ask the right type of questions. He's got a really good rapport and I think he just does a really good job of bringing out some of these stories. He's had Carol Burnett on this show and it's really fun to listen to and it really gives you the opportunity to be there. And I always like interviews to have this experience of you being like a flow on the wall and listening as if you were just sitting there eavesdropping on the conversation. Another good one is the moment with Brian Koppelman does a really good job. You mentioned Jordan Harbinger from the Art of Charm. Tim Ferriss does a really good job and I always like to watch people outside the space as well. I always look at what Charlie Rose is doing and how he conducts interviews.

All classics, all great, fantastic, good role models for us. I've recently started listening to Alec Baldwin and do find him fascinating. My biggest criticism of his show is I just wish it would be more frequent, which is if that's the biggest criticism a host has, you're probably doing something well. Harry, you're doing a lot well. Thank you so much for being our guest. Today Again, you can find out more about Harry Duran and his services by going to fullcast code that is 3ws fullcast co. You can reach out to him on Twitter fullcastco. Harry, thanks again. Thanks for listening to speaking with TJ Walker where the communication skills and practices of world class leaders are dissected.