Deliver On Your Podcast Mission Just Like Active Duty Podcast Host Travis Johnson , The NonProfit Architect

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazzard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors, and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the binge factor.

Hey everyone, Tracy Hazzard here and I've got an architectural podcast. No, not really. It's the Nonprofit Architect podcast. I love that name. It's really fun and unusual. It implies such importance to the planning and the architecting of your nonprofit. If you really want to make an impact, these are the things that you want to do. So I've got Travis Johnson here. He's the host of the Nonprofit Architect. Travis shares his perspective as the former vice president of Books by Vets, a board member at the Shine Foundation. He's donated over $30,000, volunteered over 1500 hours, and raised more than $500,000, helped start 6 NonPro event coordinate, and is also a published author. Plus, Travis is currently serving as an active duty officer in the United States Navy. He's married with two children and an aunt who his move number 50. This is a military for those of you in the military and military families, we all know what that's like. I was a military brat as a young child and we did a lot of moves. Not 50 though. So hats off to his family. His humble beginnings include 36 moves before graduating high school at 17, six states, five foster homes, and surviving having two murder attempts. You know, I didn't ask him about that on the show because he sent me his bio after. Now I wish I did, but I bet you out there there's got to be a podcast standard for you with Travis where he talks about that. So he although this was always rough for him, there was always a person, group or church willing to help him and his family. And now he's in a position to give back. And he made it his mission to help the help verse, which is why his show the Nonprofit Architect exists. He's doing some really deep dive things. I mean, he's talking about some issues that most nonprofits don't think about when they, you know, they think about the mission, the message, the impact that they want to have, but they don't always think about how am I going to structure this, how am I going to make it work, how do I Fundraise. How do I make these things happen? Those are the conversations that he's diving into on his show. And it's really interesting take and different from a lot of the other podcasts out there focused on the nonprofit area. So let's talk to Travis Johnson and hear some more about how he started and has continued posting with all that's going on in his life and continued publishing his podcast.

Travis, we're going to talk Nonprofit Architect today. And I love that title because it gives you so much room to go, gives you so many places you could take your show, different directions. And I love it when it has a nice broad term, but it also has an audience appealing term. How'd you come up with the name?

Well, I wanted something that would invoke Building Architect. Turns out you can't actually name your company architect unless you actually are an architect. And I went to the Oklahoma Board of Architects and they were like, no, can't do it. So my business name is some other nonsense, not related. But I can still have a podcast called the Nonprofit Architect. I really got excited about being on a few different nonprofit boards. And then when I got stationed at the Kingdom of Bahrain and I wanted to know how I could keep doing some nonprofit related stuff, someone's like, well, you do kind of have that golden voice. You could do a podcast. You certainly have the face for podcasting, to which I took slight offense. But I know I'm not the prettiest guy out there, but I wanted to keep providing value in the nonprofit world. And since I knew some but not all, I wanted to have other guests on that could teach you how to build a stronger nonprofit. And that's what we do.

This area of nonprofits, there's a lot of podcasts out in the arena, but there are, how do I say it? They're really focused on one side. You've decided to kind of be able to flip side side. So you're talking about the nonprofit organizers, you're talking about the boards, you're talking about the people who might be investing. So you've got a really broad range here, and that's really what a good name has allowed you to do. But is there a strategy to which side you want to talk to?

I really just look for people that want to share their how to. When I was researching different shows and trying to figure out what I would be focusing on, I know I wanted to provide legitimate value. I know there's so many nonprofit or there's so many podcasts in general out there, but like Getting down to really the core of the value of the episode. When I looked at the top 25 or the top 50, there wasn't a how to show among them. Not a single person was giving you the down and dirty how to do this stuff. And I think that's one of the places that nonprofits really fail at large. And I'm not saying failure like they're a failure, but they don't take the time to learn about the industry and how to do it better too much in just the complete slog of doing things and getting things done. And there's nothing really wrong with that, except for you never learn how to do it better except through your own experience. So if you're not learning different tips, tricks, trades, there's not a lot of, like, nonprofit industry shows out there or meetups. There's a couple of conferences that there's some people that do really good. But unless you're going to those, unless you spend the time to learn that stuff, you're never really learning how to do it better. You kind of just see what's out there. You kind of model something after it and you give it a shot. And there's probably the big reason for such a huge nonprofit turnover. Every 12 to 18 months, you're getting a new executive director, you're getting a new director of volunteers or whatever else because you don't have the time to invest in your people. And something like the nonprofit architect gives you the no kidding how to steps in order to build a stronger nonprofit.

You know, I love that kind of model because you need a collective learning, because when you have so much changeover all the time, you're losing that. So you need a place in which you can go and gather that rebuild again. You know, that's a big issue for a lot. I mean, you know, architects and I know a lot about it, but because industrial designers and architects have actually a similarity. But architects, you know, that's what they do. They learn from failure on buildings in the past. And what are they going to build better next time? So your name is just so perfect for the show. Absolutely love it. It's a great name. It's really attractive cover art as well. But you. So you named it, right? You did some of the things right at the beginning, but I can imagine it wasn't as easy as you thought it was going to be when you went to go start your podcast. So what did you find the most challenging?

Well, I thought it was kind of easy, except for I sucked, right?

Oh, no. In what way?

Well, like as a host, right, you don't know what the heck you're doing until you start. Unless you have some kind of interview background. I know there's a couple styles, right? You can do a solo show, co hosted show, interview show, you can do a panel discussion. But like I had never interviewed people before, right? And because I had interviewed people before and I also have never had my own podcast before, like the first 10, 15 episodes. And I'm pretty sure it's the same for just about everybody out there is you kind of suck. You don't know really your voice in the industry. You don't understand what you're really trying to say and pull out of the guests. You don't know a whole lot. Even if you're an industry expert, you still have a lot to learn from all the different people you talk to. So you're trying to build really not only who you are, but what the voice of the podcast is going to be and how to really fine tune your target audience. So if you go back and even in your shows, I'm sure back when you started at whichever podcast you started on the first couple of episodes, kind of crappy. I definitely know that mine were not for lack of fantastic guests, but I just didn't know, you know, how to interview people and how to do the right research and really understand like the gold nuggets I wanted to pull out of their story or out of the show to make that happen. I really, I started right away with a team doing the back end stuff because I knew where my talents lie and where they did not lie. Just like, I'm five foot eight, fat guy, I'm not going to be playing in the NBA. I know my talents don't lie there. I knew I wasn't going to have at the time, I'm still full time active duty Navy and not going to have the time to do all the back end stuff. So I hired that out right away knowing that I wouldn't be able to do that. But I didn't know how to book people or where to find people, where to find the right people or who the people I was looking for. I identified who I wanted my audience to be, but I didn't know if they were going to be listening. Right. So you have all these kind of unknowns, but the best thing I did for that was actually just start.

Just got started. Yeah.

Start doing the show even though you're terrified, you're like, how are people gonna look at me? Like, who am I to have a voice in this industry, whatever it may be, just getting started helps you figure out most of those problems.

Well, I don't think your beginning was so rough because I listened to. I always go back, listen to the first episode, listen to more recent episode. It's kind of my process as I evaluate your show, and I don't think it was that rough for a first interview at all. So that you definitely did a really good job there. And, you know, I think you have grown in terms of how you sh. It. Like, your most recent episode that I listened to was talking to a dog trainer, which just seems, you know, diametrically opposed to talking about nonprofits. Like, what does that have to do with anything? But you really angled it and really brought it in really quickly. And the guest did a great job too, you know, of following your lead. So, you know, your interview skills have definitely gotten better over time, that's for sure. So, yeah, not your roughest. I would definitely say not your roughest. I've heard some that are pretty rough at the beginning of not knowing how to interview. You don't have that. You definitely have some seamlessness throughout. Throughout the shows.

Well, I've definitely had the gift of gab for the vast majority of my life, so the ability to just talk to people and get into it and roll with the punches, BS when I need to. Like, I've had that for a long time, so probably that helped out quite a bit. And I even hosted trivia when I was stationed in Bahrain, so I was at a bar out in town. So I have that ability to interact with people and kind of play the crowd a little bit, but was not sure how that would translate to the podcast world and what that might look like. So it's nice to get feedback from another industry professional. Actually, like, hey, man, actually, your show is pretty good, so I'm glad. Thanks so much.

You got something good going on. Yeah, don't stress about it. Just keep going. You know, you mentioned time, and I really want to dive into that because that is such a hard thing for most podcasters out there. And you, your active duty US Navy, you've got nonprofit boards that you're on. You're, you know, sometimes not stationed at home, so you've got a lot going on. How do you manage to. Besides a team that is doing post production for you, how do you manage to find the time to even do the podcast?

Well, this is an important question. It really is, because in the beginning, I was in the Middle east. Right. My family was in the US I wanted to have something to do that would take up some of my time, like on purpose to make sure I was doing something productive. So that kind of that. When I started, it was almost easier to be in the Middle east than be in America because I didn't have to worry about grocery shopping for the family or getting a kid to a practice or to school or home or. Or coordinating my work schedule with my wife's schedule. I was really just doing work. And then I had. The rest of the time was free time to do whatever I wanted, which was nice. The hardest part was getting back to the States, trying to reintegrate with my family, do the Navy. As much as the Navy needs me, which they're pretty needy, they need me a lot. And to still be able to do the show. And one of the ways I started doing that was changing my schedule to only be available certain times. Initially it was open. Whenever I wasn't working, I had the wide open schedule. And being eight hours different from the central US I had to have early mornings and late evenings. I had to have available to meet with guests. I ended up interviewing a couple of people in Europe and New Zealand and different places, which is a lot of fun, but having the times right for the guests to get in there. And then when I got back to the States, my wife was like, look, you are doing this stuff all the time and the Navy had you for a year and I need you. I need you for our time and our family, which I agree.

I'm sorry, but this is me time.

Yeah, this is me time. You had you time. I need me time. And so I quit doing any weekend scheduling events. And then I stopped doing the afternoons. Only the mornings on Mondays and Wednesdays is what I got down to. That's my dedicated time for the podcast. You're going to be able to meet me there to do a pre interview. I'm a big fan of the pre interview. I know a lot of people are not because it just takes up time. Right. It's another time schedule. It does. But if you have a dedicated morning or two where you can interview a bunch of people, two, three, four interviews. You have all of your stuff done for the month. Like right now, we're recording this, it's the 30th of August, and I have enough episodes recorded to take me through Christmas.

That's great. Yeah. See, you're banking them up. You're staying on schedule. I love it. So it keeps it easier to be committed to it when you're not behind.

Yes. And that happened to Me, right? That's part of the learning process. Like I had a bunch of episodes come out. I had them recorded. I was doing them probably week to week, trying to figure out how to do some kind of schedule. And then my family flew out for Christmas to Bahrain and we did New Year's in Dubai, which if you get a chance to do that, highly recommended. Do New Year's on the beach in dubai. It's like 75 degrees. Everyone's excited. It's a lot of fun. But I didn't have enough banked up episodes. So my numbers took a hit in January because I didn't publish anything and learned that if I'm going to be doing this, I have to, you know, meet my mission thing. And if I say I'm doing a weekly show, I've got to have them, you know, recorded up. Like right now, if I get in a car wreck and I'm in the hospital for three months, my show is going to keep on producing itself. My back end team is going to do the editing. I've got all the things in the files that I need to. They've been trained, trained over time to do what I need to do and do it the way I want it done. And now it runs like a seamless machine. I give a little bit of tweak, right? If you're in the aviation world, a little bit of stick and rudder. If you're in the ship world, you know, a little bit left or right. Hey, come right, you know, three degrees. Just a little bit of guidance to keep them going down the track I want them on and everything runs smoothly.

That's really good. Well, let's jump into some of our three things that we talk about. So you mentioned refining over time your guests. So how do you go about getting great guests? What is your process right now?

Well, there's the biggest thing that I care about is are they going to provide value to my audience? Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. Have to meet that metric. If they don't meet that metric, why would I have them on the show? Are they going to be able to teach something or get down into a topic? I'm going to make sure that they're meeting my mission statement of the podcast. Whether that's the name, whether you have a separate mission statement, whatever that is, that's the promise you make with your audience on the product that you're going to deliver to them each and every week, day, month, depending on how often you do your show. I went initially to where are my nonprofit leaders at? Because I interviewed Nonprofit leaders, business leaders and consultants. So I reached out to the groups I was already a part of. Right. For the nonprofit world. There's groups on Facebook and LinkedIn that deal with this sort of things. And there's people in there that are in there learning. Right. Some nonprofit leaders, some startup leaders, there's consultants that are in there that have their expertise, that they teach. And then I'm into veteran entrepreneurship groups and I know they can teach leadership or they can bring business into the nonprofit world. So I'm a firm believer that businesses should be more like nonprofits and nonprofits should be more like businesses. So the only way to bridge that gap is if I have the right type of guests, wanted to come on and share their expertise. And since most of the people I've interviewed in the past aren't regularly scheduled guests on other shows, I have to do kind of a pre interview to find what their magic is. Can I keep them on message? And I've had a couple times that I've had to re interview guests. Like we got through the thing and they just got so excited that they went way off the rails and I wasn't yet a good enough host to kind of rein them back into the message. And the thing we want to talk about one very much. In my first season, within the first 10 episodes, she just got so excited that we had to reschedule and I had someone this season that's not yet out yet. She's a professional, but she normally speaks to other professionals in her industry. So a lot of the episode was filled with technobabble that's industry industry specific speak for whatever they're talking about. As we got done with the episode, I said, hey, we had some bumps in there that I want to re interview with you. And she was very gracious to hear some feedback because I want to sure that her message wasn't lost on my audience simply because they didn't speak the same language. Right. An engineer can talk about resistance and electronic circuit using ohms, volts and amps. And everyone that is everyone's eyes roll.

On the other side because they're like, I don't know what that meant.

Right. But I can explain the same concept. Talking about water flowing through a garden hose and how if you kink the hose, everyone can understand the concept. I don't have to use industry specific terms. Right. To make sure everyone gets the message.

Yeah. You know, this was a challenge when we had our 3D print show. So I totally understand that, that it is a challenge that sometimes you have to step back and explain it. In our case, we were lucky because Tom spoke the technobabble, but I spoke, you know, the human language at the end of the day. And I would say I didn't understand a word that guest said. Explain that to us. And so it worked out great. But yeah, you do have that issue. So I'm so impressed, Travis, that you would re interview and that your guests have been so gracious to do that. So few people do that that I've come across here. So that is a sign of a really quality show, what you're putting together here because you are being very curated about what your audience is receiving.

Oh, absolutely. And I really want to make sure I cover different topics. When you talk about the nonprofit world, you've got some things that are standard. You've got boards, you've got fundraising, you've got events. Those are, you can get those. But how do you do those things differently? Like next week, first week of September, we've got my interview with Steve Sims. Now Steve Sims is not a nonprofit guy. He wrote the Art of Blue Fishing, the Art of Getting Things Done. And it's an amazing book. If you haven't checked it out, please check out Steve Sims book. But he does world class events for millionaires and billionaires. In fact, he runs Elton John's red carpet event, Oscar event, every year as a non profit has a fundraising event. And we walk through what it looks like because he's done events for both millionaires, billionaires and nonprofits. Like what are they doing right and what are they doing wrong and to really get kind of an almost like an outsider's opinion. He's British, but now has his American citizenship to get his perspective on what's working and what's not working and why is world changing. I've had people come in and talk about how to create partnerships with businesses that aren't just putting their logo on a website or on a T shirt, actually creating value for all sides involved. How to create a website in such a way that it drives content and people to raise between, you know, three, six or nine bucks. But he's got three nonprofits making $200,000 a month automatically recurring without doing fundraising. So talking about all these different concepts that show it differently than everyone else is doing it to have new things to try, I think that's where we're really meeting our audience's needs and also getting to showcase different things in the nonprofit world.

Wonderful. Yeah. You're putting so much thought into this front end. And I think the Net result is so good because of that. And I'm sure it's why your audience is just loving the show and coming back for more. That's why you got binge listeners there. So let's talk about those listeners. You know, you said you weren't even sure if they were going to be out there. And listen when you started the show, none of us are. Right. We put it out there and we just hope they're out there. But you've obviously had some time in here. What are you seeing that is helping you increase listeners over time? And how are you encouraging engagement with that audience so you can find out that they're out there?

Absolutely. So what I found, I took Russell Brunson's advice. He's the co founder of ClickFunnels. You've got to get in groups where you've got a million people that you care about. That might be one group, that might be three or five or ten groups of your core audience. Like, where does your core audience live and how can you engage with them? If you're local, you're going to be at bars and pubs and clubs and the Rotary Club and the chamber of commerce and the school board and all those organizations. Right. Where do your people live? So I found that nonprofit people congregate in different groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. And I go in there and I engage with them and I answer questions. And then I add the people that are engaging the people that are asking or answering questions, because I want them to see my podcast type stuff. I don't say, hey, check out my podcast. Right. Unless I've talked to the owners of the group and they say it's okay to promote. Some people are, some people are not. And if you get kicked out of a group, then you don't have access to those people. Right. So I go in there and provide real value. Every time I do an interview, I learn something. Right. It's like having a private masterclass with the expert.

That's my favorite part.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, I got Steve Sims on, like, let me ask you about all this stuff.

That's right. And then you get to apply it somewhere else and share it with others. Right. So that's what you're doing in that group dynamic is you're sharing this. Like, I heard this when I was interviewing him, you know. And so, yes, it's mentioning your show, but it's really also sharing what you learned.

Oh, absolutely. But when you provide value without expectation, it has all these unintended consequences. The vast majority of which are positive, right? People are like, man, this guy's here. He's actually giving. He's not here just promoting his stuff. I'm not one of those guys that posts online like, hey, buy my stuff. Buy my stuff. Oh, did you hear that? You should buy my stuff. Or hopping in people's DMs and doing all this stuff. Like, I'm building a real relationship with them. I'm providing them value. Then when they land on, like, my personal page, they see that I post one of my five pieces of pillar content, right? I care about nonprofits and podcasts and my family. I care about asking the people in my sphere of influence about them. Like, hey, tell me something. Even if it's not related to any of my stuff. Like I had last year, I was like, men, keep it PG, but tell women some relationship advice. Right? Like 500 comments. Oh, then the next week, ladies, keep it PG, but tell give men some. Some advice. And you get some interesting comments. And there's a little bit of sniping in there, but nothing too crazy. But you're actually caring about the people in your sphere. And then you end up funneling them into, like, I have a Facebook group, which I don't know how much longer it's going to be on Facebook, but we'll still have a group where people can engage. I've never invited anyone to my group. I don't want a number of people in my group. I want the people that want to be there because they want to be there. All right? Having 10,000 people in my group doesn't matter if I get three likes and one comment for every post, it doesn't matter.

Right? It's that engagement that counts, that activeness in that community, because that's going to be a give and take between the two of you. And that's what we want with our listeners as well. We want active listeners. Like, you know, the numbers don't matter for a lot of my clients and for all of my shows as well, because I just want the ones who are there to really get, gain something, learn something, and go on and share that with others, right?

Absolutely. But then once they've got in my group, I have now permission to market and sell to them if they're. I have something I want to market and sell to them. It's very interesting because people talk a lot about ads and monetization. Like, that is the lowest amount of monetization takes the longest to figure out out of all monetization avenue.

Oh, my God, you're just Transitioning to my third section. So let's talk a little bit about monetization. And really, I like to put it as return on investment in time, because that's really what most of us podcasters are looking at. Do we get a return on investment from the time we spent? Because the money. Well, yes, we're spending money, too, but the money is not as big as the time that we're putting into everything. So, you know, what are you seeing in terms of ads are not that critical, but what are you seeing for you is the biggest return on investment benefit?

Yeah, so I've had a couple of paths of monetization. I had a Patreon early that was getting more than a hundred bucks a month coming in, which was kind of nice. Helped kind of, you know, cut down the costs of the initial work there. And then I had T shirts. I was taking a quote from every episode that I thought was valuable, putting in a T shirt with my logo on it, and then always the person that you interview into buying one. So it's a couple of dollars coming in, and then usually they promote it to their fans, and you might get, you know, three or four or five sales or whatever. Thing is, I realized it was. It was nice to do, and it was nice to have, but it was a lot of, you know, pulling out a quote and then putting it on a T shirt to send to the T shirt guy for him to add to the website, too. Like, there was a lot of things in that chain.

And I decided, yeah, a lot of processing.

Yeah, there was a lot of stuff in there. And then, you know, listening to my audience, I got a lot of nonprofit questions early. And then after about a year or so, I started getting more podcast questions than nonprofit questions. So I kind of changed what I was offering based on what my audience was telling me they wanted. So I bought a how to podcast guide like everyone buys. It was like a podcast marketing guide. And I was like, you know what? This guide is not the best. Right. I feel like.

So that. Yeah. So the story goes here is that when we started our first podcast, I read a dozen books because that's who I am. I like to do a lot of research, listen to about as many podcasts sent Tom, because he's a video guy. So I sent Tom all the videos about the equipment and stuff, because I didn't really care about that part. And there's probably at least 20 of those. And so by the time we were done, we consumed all this stuff and thought, you know, there's so Much junk here. Like, this is not the important part. And so we navigated our way to exactly what the result was. And then that's actually why people came to us and said, would you start my podcast? And for me, rather than, how do I do this? Like, that's how it ended up happening on our end. So I can see that there's a lot out there that just. It's not useful.

Oh, there, there is. And, you know, the couple of steps, like, figure out your target audience, make a name, get cover art. Like, you can find that on any website for a couple of clicks for free. You know, here's a couple of pieces of equipment that you could, you know, get involved in. Like, if this is video, you'd see my in front of me and all the whatever. But, you know, when it gets down to it, like, that really has almost nothing to do with podcasting.

No, it really doesn't. That's the interesting part. It's a business and a relationship building exercise at the end of the day. And if you've already got those, you can handle this.

Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I was bellyaching to my friends. I was like, I can't believe I bought this thing. It was so many dollars ahead. I mean, there was a couple of nuggets in there, but by and large, I was, I was upset that I had purchased this thing. And, well, someone's like, well, you're always a doer, right? So if you want to be Mr. Entrepreneur. Right. They're jabbing me a little bit. If you're going to be Mr. Entrepreneur and get things done, why don't you write a better one? I was like, you know what? I will. And it took about five weeks. I researched some of the regular, you know, the stuff out there that, that fills up content or whatever. And then what was I really doing differently than other people that had the results I had? So I started putting this thing together. Took me about five weeks, and I started selling our ultimate complete podcast guide for 27 bucks. And I have made thousand upon thousands of dollars of this thing. It hasn't even been released for a year yet. And immediately people are like, hey, where's the course? Where's the course? So I'm building the course right now. I've got a team. I've got a team that's building this and we're getting it accredited for college. So we're going to have the first podcast course at the university level anywhere.

I love that. That's great. Well, congratulations on that one. So really, you Put the Ultimate Guide together. I love it. Well, let's give us some tips. What are some tips out of the Ultimate Guide?

Oh, not prepared to answer this one. I always, like, have the guide up in the background and I can kind of refresh myself, you know. Oh, man. What are my good tips? Here's the deal. You're going to make the most money from listening to your audience and providing something that solves their problem. Whatever. The thing is, if that's an ebook or a course or a program or stuff that fits into that realm, that's where you're going to make the most money. I've made a little bit of money advertising. Not from the standard, like $20 per thousand downloads, right? It takes a. It takes a while to build up that kind of audience. But I inter. Or I provided advertising for a guy that was doing an event very specific to my niche. So I provided him, you know, 80,000 emails. And I provided him. Well, I didn't, you know, give it to him. I sent out his stuff to our audience. Had a couple people in the industry that piled on and helped with that.

And, you know, we ran it for the show or a specific number of weeks based on a price tag. So I made money for a specific event. That was really nice. We do audiograms using Headliner, like most people do. But I take out, you know, five clips. So I have something every day to use to promote my show. And I make sure that when I anyone that I talk to, either as a potential guest or anyone in the nonprofit world, I'm sending them.

Episodes that meet their needs. Right? I've got like a How to use the Google Ad grant. How to get, utilize and maximize a Google Ad Grant. I've got a guy that teaches you how to use turn your website into an active employee. This is how you use blogs, vlogs, or podcasts to generate content on your site. Because most nonprofit sites are really just a digital brochure that has no value other than here's our mission statement. Give us money. So how do you actually drive traffic to your website? Like, if you. Right now, if you stop listening to this and you Google Nonprofit Architect podcast, you will find that me or some of my stuff is the first four and a half pages of Google. The first 45 results are me. And we show you how to do that in the guide. We use our sphere of influence and the people that are connected to us to help be part of our marketing solution. So every time I talk to someone, they get eight recommended podcasts that are Going to help solve their problem. Then when we have a guest on, I make sure to send out where all the links are. Right? Here's the link on Libsyn. Here is on Apple, Here is the YouTube which I use Repurpose IO. I also provide the live video, the fully. I put the unedited raw version. You get to see all the outtakes. Which is a funny way to say that I didn't take any time doing any editing. Right?

So hold on a second though. I just gotta. I'm gonna step in here, Travis, because that actually is a non authority building model that we don't teach here on the binge factor and feature brand on my shows. So don't use your Apple link, don't use your Libsyn link. Don't you. You should never use your host link. Definitely not. It has no value to you at all. It only gives them power, not you. So if you're a nonprofit, if you're whatever it is that your website, if you've got a website strategy, you should always use the link from your website for everything. At the end of the day, it will add to that power that Travis is talking about, that Google power. It will add to it, to the. To add a higher degree and create greater cross linking and greater cross cross checking in terms of people like cross clicking, clicking into you. And that is going to be the highest power because also there's too many other links like do I choose Spotify? Do I choose Apple? Do I choose like where do I choose? So if you keep it to that one thing, you're actually going to power up exactly what Travis is talking about here, which is so important. You've got to make sure that your guests are sharing you. Right? I mean, if they're not, then it's not working for you, right?

I have an eight times higher view rate on guests that share than guests that don't share. Right.

See, that's great that you have that stat and you're checking that stuff out. Well, Travis, before we go on any further, I gotta ask you, did you know at some point you had binge listeners?

Yes, absolutely. So we migrated our website. We had it hosted on Libsyn. We had my URL nonprofitarchitect.org linked basically to the Libsyn page, right? The podcast page. When we migrated that page over to its own independent website. This is a note for you people. Sometimes your RSS feed actually changes. And I didn't know this. So on a lot of my output, like I'm on like 50 podcast channels, like, most of us are right on my outputs. Because the RSS feed changed, they stopped getting populated. So the places that these people were listening to, they were like, after a couple of weeks, they're like, hey, man, did you stop your show? Because I'm not getting any new content, and because I had those binge listeners that were listening and following me on different channels, they were able to alert me to the fact that our show wasn't being published. Even though we were still publishing a show every week, those channels weren't getting updated.

Yeah. So this is just for you guys out there, don't freak out. This is a common Libsyn anchor and soundcloud problem with those companies. When you start to shift and make changes to your website URL, it is not a common problem across every hosting platform. It doesn't happen in Podbean very often. You'd have to really break something over there. And it definitely doesn't happen here on Potatise ever, because we're always monitoring and making sure your RSS feed and your website are connected at any given time. So you. It's a. It's a technical hosting problem that Travis is talking to, but so grateful that your audience, like, reached out and said, hey, it's not working, because otherwise you might not have never known. So.

Oh, absolutely. And then I had, like, I had friends that are not in the nonprofit industry at all that started reaching out to me with questions and different things about my show. I had no idea they were, A, listening. Right. B, they're not in my target market at all for what I'm talking about. Even though my show really translates to not only startup nonprofits, but startup business as well. Almost every single episode translates over, which is wonderful. But, like, people like, I never expected to be listening were like, hey, remember when you were talking about this? I was like, you're listening to my show? Like, this is so cool. Like, I had no idea. They're like, oh, yeah, yeah. I can't get enough of your voice, Travis. And I was like, I actually had someone, like, book time with me and get on my zoom, right? We were chatting in, like, 20 minutes in. She's like, I kind of have a confession to make. I was like, what do you. Confession? Like. Like, what are you talking about? Like, completely blindsided. She's like, I wanted to see what you looked like. And I was completely shocked and blown away. That's just not how I think about myself. You're not. I'm walking around, like, I got to.

See the face that goes with this voice. Well, I think video might be in your future, Travis.

You.

You may actually have a face for video.

Yeah. So, you know, do you have any idea what your binge factor might be?

I don't know. I don't know. Between my voice, I've been told I have a voice for asmr.

With asmr, I do know exactly what that is. Yeah, we have quite a few people who talk about that here who have different podcasts that are related to that. So, yeah, it's sort of that soft.

Voice, smooth, sultry, buttery voice.

Yeah, exactly. Anyway, I mean, you have a great voice. There's no question about that. But that's not the reason, because, you know, it'll only go so far, someone just listening to a voice that they like. Right. I mean, it might work for meditation or something like that, but it's not gonna work for something where you're. You're gonna Invest, you know, 45 minutes to an hour of time a day or a week. And so, you know, what is that binge factor? And how do we do that? And what I see in your show, clearly. So, Travis Johnson, you' architect show has a mission. It is clearly decided. You have clearly decided that you are going to really provide extreme value to all aspects of the nonprofit marketplace and in it every week by the guests you choose, by the topics you focus on, and by the way you curate that you are delivering on that mission. So why wouldn't people want to show up to something where someone says they're going to do something and then they give it to you? Right. That's just logic. We want to go to people we can trust to deliver for us. And that's what you do week after week after week on the nonprofit Architect.

Well, thank you. I really appreciate that feedback. I was going to say, I know we have engaging conversations. I know we get right into the meat and we distill it down to exactly what the thing is. Like, I had a conversation that's not published yet, but we talk about cryptocurrency and how nonprofits can use cryptocurrency, how they can accept it, what it is. And it was a lot of technobabble. So we spent a lot of time dissecting and boiling down the key factors of cryptocurrency. Words like blockchain and coin versus token, and what this looks like, how you can accept it with a crypto wallet, and then how you can either hold it or convert it right to dollars to put in to work in your nonprofit.

Right away that's such a hot topic, too, in any business. Like, I could see lots of other of your startup business going. Like, I need to learn that, too. Not just the nonprofit, right?

Well, this is. This is like any business or nonprofit. If you don't have the avenue to accept the money the way that people want to pay you, you've lost a customer or donor almost instantly. Like, oh, hey, do you have the cash app? You have Venmo? No. Do you have. Do you do business at all? The 21st, 20 century?

Wait, wait, do I have to fax it to you?

Yeah, I'm just going to avoid that completely. That's one of my hot button topics.

Me, too.

I can't. No, I'm not going to dive into it. I've decided I'm going to leave that one alone. If you have a nonprofit and people want to give you something, they want to gift you stock or they want to gift you crypto, want to use the cash, and you don't have a way to accept it, they're going to go find someone that meets their needs. You have to have the ability for different generations to interact with your nonprofit or business in the way that makes sense to them. Like, oh, yeah, you know, well, it's on my website, so they're going to hear me, and then they're going to go to my website, and if they have questions, they can call me. Who has time to do that? No one has time. I don't have time to do that. Of course. I'm in the Navy full time. I run a podcast. I have a family. Apparently I have friends and hobbies, too. So, like, I don't have time to do that. Like, who is going to listen to your speech and then take the time to go to their website, and then if that also doesn't answer the questions, they're going to call you. No one, not a single person is going to do that. If they can't find what they need in three clicks, they're done. You've lost them forever. They're on to the next thing. In fact, if your website takes three seconds to load, I'm already not looking at it. Most engaging copy ever to get me to click on something takes three seconds to load. Obviously, they don't know what they're doing.

That's such good advice. I so appreciate you saying it that way, Travis, because, I mean, that's great business advice, it's great podcasting advice, and it's great nonprofit organization advice as well. So we need to make this all frictionless. Right. And that's the ultimate ideal. So before we go, I want to just ask you, you know, what's next for you and your show? What do you want to learn? What challenges do you want to face for yourself in your podcast next?

Ooh, that is a really good question. I've been considering starting another podcast or two or really changing the way that this one interacts with people. There's a lot of conversations I want to get into that I don't know, are nonprofit specific specifically. You know what I mean? Like, really been spending the last year, this 2021, worrying about mindset being focused on abundance. Mindset of people versus people that are in scarcity or they're in survival mode. Like, if you're in scarcity or survival mode, like, I already know that I don't have time for you. I don't have time to work in your nonprofit or in your business because you're not willing to listen to me anyway. So why would I spend any of my time with you? So what does that look like to go into the abundance mindset? How do we use that really to fix all of our problems in society? Because I believe firmly that every problem that we face is based on scarcity mindset. If you look at the political spectrum, pick a side, right? They say that you're worried about your future because of A, B, and C, or the other side is a different A, B, and C. All that is scarcity. Like, someone's going to take your job, or they look different than you, or they have a different political view than you. So you're under fire or you should be scared, right? That is just scarcity. I grew up in trailer parks and foster homes, and that could be the same as the barrio, the ghetto, the trailer park, the foster home. All of those curate the same type of mindset. And there's no reason, if you look at my stat sheet as a person, that I should be anywhere close to where I am, being a commissioned officer in the Navy, flying for them, have a successful podcast, top five in five countries. Like, it shouldn't be possible, but it was very not easy for me but very logical to get to where I am. Whereas some people in that mindset, they think it's absolutely impossible to get to where I am, and they've decided in their head, in their mindset that they're not worth anything, that someone else is responsible for the problems and they'll never be anything in life. Well, who the heck decided that? You know, if. If someone else is responsible for your problems, good Luck getting the rest of the world to go to therapy to fix your problems. Good luck.

I think spinoff shows in your future, Travis. I even have some name ideas which I won't announce on the air because we don't want somebody to take it before you do. But I'll tell you off air, you know, and it's just. It's just got me thinking that, you know, really, your. Your gifts are broader than just the tactics that you can provide to nonprofits. The growth ideas. Travis, I am so glad you decided to start podcasting. Share your gift with all of us, and thank you for coming on the show and sharing the nonprofit architect and everything that goes on behind the scenes.

Hey, thank you so much for having me on the show, Tracy. And due to your advice, find out more about us@nonprofitarchitect.org don't go anywhere else.

There you go. Good advice. Bye.

I said it when I talked about his binge factor. Travis Johnson has a mission and delivers. Right. The nonprofit mission is so important to him and so important to get them to plan and look at things differently and think about things differently. And he is delivering on that with every single interview that he does. That's just amazing that he can do all of that with everything that he has going on in his life, with all the moves, his family, all the juggling, active duty, all of those things going on. So I kind of think if you're sitting back here, you're got to start thinking to yourself, I don't have an excuse that I don't have time to podcast. I think this is the theme of the month as we go through. We just had Karen Bond's podcast, and now we're, you know, get off the bench. And now we're talking about this. You guys have no excuse out there if you're not podcasting. And you've been talking about it and researching and listening to my show to get your show started. There's no excuse. Travis just puts that right in perspective for us. There is no excuse. If he can do it, you can do this. Absolutely. So go on out and get your podcast started. Take some inspiration from Travis Johnson. I did. And, you know, I realized I'd been kind of holding off on our six podcasts, and because of the interview. And I, you know, of course, recorded this quite a bit, but we launched our six podcast. I was like, that's it. It just needs to get out there. I need to push myself to make sure that I keep up with the recording rather than bank them up. I need to force myself to keep up on it. So my six podcast is launched, the Next Little Thing. So you can go check that out. And that is all because Travis made me Travis and Karen Vaughn, both of them made me get off the bench, get my podcast moving with no excuses. You guys need to do the same thing. So thanks everyone for listening. I'll be back next time. Remember, you can find Travis Johnson, the nonprofit architect, everything about all of our podcasters, you can always find that@the Bingefactor.com and you can also find the Next Little Thing at the Binge Factor. So we're going to be having both sites mixed together, so you'll be able to find the new podcast there as well. I want to thank you all for sending me feedback, for sending me suggestions of podcasts. I really appreciate that. Keep that up. And when you start podcasting and you get your, you know, get your feet wet, you get some ground under you, message me. I'd love to feature your show as well. So thanks everyone for listening. I'll be back next time with another Binge Factor success story.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and videocasting success tips and tactics, please go to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feed you'd brand. If you'd like to be interviewed on this show as well as featured in training Tracy's column, please go to thebingefactor.com guest and apply.