How To Effectively Inject Podcast Business Growth By Making A Difference To Your Market With Adam Hommey Of The Business + Passion Podcast

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, welcome back to the Binge Factor. I have a podcaster today who also has a podcast system. He calls it the Reach System and we're going to define that while he's here. Adam Homey, I was on his show. That's how we connected a I'm going to call it a massive amount of interviews at once on his podcast. And he called it the Brilliance plus Passion Project because it was just that, a project that he got going. Plus he has a show that he did before that for quite a number of years. He has over 450 episodes there, the Business Creators Radio Show. So Adam Homey, I'm so excited to have him. He is a speaker, author, trainer and consultant with nearly 20 years experience helping business creators like you win at the game of business and marketing so you can thrive from your intersection of your brilliance and your passion while making a difference difference for your community, market and audience. He is the author of Groundhog Day Is an Event, Not a Business Strategy and a contributing author to Journeys to Success, the Millennial Edition, both international Amazon bestsellers. He has spoken on stages around the country for many years and is sought after expert on podcasting for entrepreneurs. As the creator of the Reach System, Adam helps exponentially reach more profitable customers. So I was just intrigued by all of the different things that Adam puts into his thought process and into his show. His Reach system is hundreds of pages like it is a very, very thorough system. He gave me a sneak peek into it. So there's a lot of, I'm going to call it definite deep substance and thought process and experience that he's building into the podcast, looking at podcasting like a funnel or like a marketing system and that's what he approaches everything with the systems mind and you're going to get that in this interview. So let's hear from Adam Homey, the Brilliance plus Passion Podcast and the Business Creators Radio Show.

Adam, so fun to have you on the flip side of this and now getting to interview you and talk about the Brilliance plus Passion Podcast project because that was quite an undertaking. You Did. But I want to start at the beginning. What made you start your first podcast? What made you start Business Creators Radio?

Okay, so we have to rewind to 2012. I created something called the Business Creators Institute, which, in its original conception, was going to be a center through which I promoted recorded training programs. So the first and what turned out to be the last training program I did was something I sold from a few stages of some conferences I spoke at that autumn.

And.

And it was basically about how to understand the technology behind your business so that you could either do it yourself or, if you were hiring somebody, have a sense that they actually knew what they were talking about. I needed a demo for the how to build a website on WordPress thing, and I came up with the idea of doing something called the Business Creators Radio show, which was vaguely going to be a podcast. So I set this thing up as the demo. I let it sit there for about eight months, and then I remembered that it existed. I decided to go ahead and try this podcasting thing just to see what happened. And I didn't know 1000th of what I know today.

I thought that you either got approved for this thing called itunes or you didn't exist. So I submitted its RSS feed to itunes, and I was told to take about 30 days to get approval, and then it happened 24 hours later. In the meantime, I had no episodes. So already we're starting to see some of the things that manifest in terms of what we look to solve when it comes to helping entrepreneurs launch their podcast. Now, fortunately, I had some existing recorded audio trainings that I could just simply switch the beginnings and endings of. And I immediately announced that there were new episodes coming soon. But right now, tune in for some of our greatest hits.

I love it. You had great assists before you had a show. Such a great strategy, you know, fly the plane and build it while you go.

And since then, we've had an episode every single Tuesday for almost eight years without one miss. In fact, sometimes it gets so busy, we have to increase the frequency to twice a week. We may be going into that right now, actually. Just it kind of ebbs and flows a little bit. There are rare occasions where we almost have to go hunting for guests, but most of the time, we have such a backlog. We sometimes have to increase the frequency just so somebody's not waiting six months for their brilliance and their passion to be shown to their community, market, and audience.

Yeah, well, so before we talk about brilliance plus passion, I want to talk a little bit about the original show just to give because you have, you're an advanced podcaster and so we don't often get a chance to talk to someone who's got more than 300 shows. And so 300 episodes and you've got 450 plus by now, plus you've got 70 on the new one. So we've got kind of a crash course in some of the things that work and don't work. And so I want to ask you some of those questions first before we move on.

Please don't.

It seems that, and maybe it's just the way I was viewing it, but it seems that you didn't choose to do volumes here. So your business creators show you've got 450, but you haven't selected to move them into volumes. Is there a reason for that choice?

No, there was never even any thought about that. What happened in my business is I went through about a three year period where I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. It's like I love the clients I had. I tolerated the work I was doing with them, but I didn't want to grow it. I didn't see it as my future. And when I looked down in the future, all I saw was a blank screen. Now, in the meantime, that meant that I really had nothing to promote, nothing to market, and no answer to the question, well, what do you do? The Business Creators radio show was my salvation. For three years, every week, every Tuesday, there was a fresh new episode for my audience. For me, there was a fresh new conversation every week, a new opportunity to explore a new avenue, an opportunity to make a connection that could lead me to something. I continued to get new clients. I just didn't really have any concerted campaigns to do it. I hit it off with some people. We ended up doing some business together. What was fun about that and is I got to test doing a few things without officially announcing I was in that business. So some of the things that I did during that three year period are things that I would never say publicly that I did simply because it falls into that same category as sometimes you see on social media, people will start a viral post that says post. That weird job that nobody would believe you actually had. I had a few of those.

So you're not going to share it with us?

No.

You all are going to have to listen to his show and try and guess which one.

Good luck.

Right.

Good luck.

Especially seeing their 450 shows. So that's a lot to go through. Yeah.

Now a couple Other things that are interesting about it is, up until it was either earlier this year or last year, my shows didn't even have intro and outro bumpers. You know, it's one of those things that I just never got around to. So they're just plain narratives where it starts with me speaking and ends with me speaking. And I use the excuse for the longest time that, well, I want to show that you can be as gorilla as possible with this and still make money. So I reframed it as me setting the example of doing the most guerrilla podcast in the world and having it be a centerpiece of my marketing and having that be a good thing to inspire the person who is right now under the impression that they have to spend $20,000 on audio equipment, possibly even add an addition to their house with soundproof insulation, and they have to spend $15,000 on marketing and branding before they even answer the question, what kind of podcast do I want to do?

I'm so glad you said that. Right.

So I wanted to. I wanted to do the absolute diametric opposite of anything that holds anybody back from getting into this modality.

Oh, I so, so, so agree. I. You, you and I both know.

But after a while, it got to a time where I thought to myself, come on, man, you can't do intros and outros. So we did them.

Yeah, let's upgrade a little.

You know, it was nice for me because it saves me five minutes each time.

Yeah, let's upgrade a little so I do a little less work. Right. Actually, that's the great part about it. So at some point along the lines, you figured out what you wanted to do, so what is it that you wanted to do?

Well, podcasting is where I ultimately found my love. Originally, we did a pilot of a guest booking agency. Now I still, and I have people on my staff who can work with you to get you booked on podcasts. We have all kinds of connections that are not available off the transom. We do work with some clients on that right now. I did a pilot program on that, and it went pretty good. What I'm seeing these days is a swing in the pendulum. I've been predicting it for two years, and I think it's pretty much happened where the power in the relationship has shifted very much to the host.

To the host. I agree with you.

It's to the point where some of the agencies that used to foist their applicants upon my show, trying to get as many of them booked as possible, have simply gone off the air. And I'M now seeing more folks participating, and I belong to some of these groups on LinkedIn and Facebook with titles like Meet a Guest, Find a Guest, Be a Guest. The entire premise is you do the same thing through networking, right?

Absolutely. Relationship building through podcasting. Imagine that.

Whoa. There are still some agencies that are doing very well, and what distinguishes them from some of the other agencies is, as I said about my own, is having access to relationships and opportunities that simply cannot be found off the transom. The agencies where their primary modality was, well, just send pitches and we'll fill out application forms. Those are the ones I think kind of fell by the wayside in order to be successful as a booking company. It's really about those relationships and the ability to create connections, which is, to me, what podcasting is really all about when you get down to it.

It sounds like it's your favorite part anyway.

Yeah, the hosting part is my favorite.

Yeah, absolutely. So you started the Brilliance plus Passion podcast or project, really, which is a podcast, and you had 70 on before you even. This is like you did it all, recorded 70, and then launched it. Yeah. So let's go through the model of what you did, because it's really interesting and it. It follows a little bit, but you've got some really nice twists in. It follows a little bit of what we would have called the virtual summit model before, but you're. You've really put that podcast twist on it. So what'd you do here?

Okay, about a few months ago, I can't remember exactly how long ago, and since this is going to be on the air for a long time anyway, I might as well not say a number. So let's just say back in the day, I started a group on Facebook called Everything Podcasting, which was and is the foundation of my community around discussing Everything podcasting, hosting, guesting, and interest thereof. I got more and more members. We crossed the 300 threshold fairly quickly, and I was determined as much as possible to have a personal connection with every single member of that group. Now, I had a few ways of going about this. I could do the free strategy session model.

Okay, yeah, that's a lot of work. Yeah.

I could do the thing where I connect with people on social media, then I immediately send them these really long messages in their DMS that are all about me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. Would you like to schedule a demo? And then I'll circle around and follow up every week until. Until I find out that my messages are being screenshot and made fun of in coaching groups.

Yep, that's right. We don't do that.

I didn't want to do that either. So I thought, okay, this is a group about podcasting, so I'll start a podcast about this. Now, I could not put it under the Ages of the Business Creators radio show because those episodes are really. They're one hour private mastermind sessions. The listener feels like they're tuning in on a private mastermind session. The avatar for that type of. Of show is somebody who is probably doing it while they're running, jogging, or otherwise spacing out. So it's audio only, which is great because I'm not going to hold my media post for an hour. Get that?

But on the other hand, the Brilliance plus Passion episodes were designed to be my way of connecting with people and opening conversations that could lead to closed deals, expanded opportunities, what have you. I engaged somebody to assist me in connecting with all the members of the group. We still haven't gone through all of them. There's still so many to go. And then there's my LinkedIn tribe, which has thousands and I have so many unopened conversations there. This project may never end.

That's right. That's how we connected. So one of your team members reached out to me on LinkedIn because we were already connected over there.

Exactly. So she started her work and I thought, okay, I'll get 10 or 15 of these in a few weeks and then we'll put this thing on the air. Then I blinked and I saw I had something like 56 interviews scheduled. It was a point where I was seeing I had 14 of them lined up on one day.

So that's a lot of interviews in one day.

So now imagine what that did to my need to manage the rest of my life because my other businesses interests didn't go away, my clients didn't go away, my other marketing didn't go away or anything like that. I had to find a way to make all this work. Plus all these opening conversations were leading to more follow up conversations, putting even more weight on the calendar. So, yeah, it took a while to get us to the point where we had to sort of draw a line and say, all right, we gotta launch this. We had a few people who kept asking when their episode was gonna go by, which is a fair question. You do the interview you, because you do it from a sense of altruism and you want to be as helpful as soon as possible. And so what I decided to do is we actually picked 60 is our cutoff. But again, it was Going so fast to kind of zoom by me. And you did.

You had a 10 extra went in there, right?

We got a 70. So we put a brief pause on doing the interviews. And I decided to use it as an opportunity to once again demonstrate the polar and diametric opposite of some of the misconceptions about podcasting. And I wanted to create a model that shows that you can actually launch this, have it be six, have it be a successful launch, do an ungodly number of episodes, and still have a whole bunch of stuff go wrong in that process and have it happen in record time. Here was what caught us in our model for launching podcasts. We encourage our clients to, at the same time they launch their dedicated website for their podcast, launch a companion video channel. You know, YouTube is the most common one, but if they have an objection to YouTube, they can use Rumble or something like that. It doesn't matter. Just pick one. Right. Because they all show up in search engine results. On search engines, we. I had never thought of this because I just never been in that situation. You know, when you start a new YouTube channel, you're limited on how many episodes you can load per day. Yes. I had this vision of just. I validated the YouTube channel by having it text me the number and everything. I thought, okay, so now my. My length limits are off. And I went to the directory on my hard drive where I lined up all 70 my MP4s and just clicked Upload. And after it got to 11, I got the big red alerts.

Right?

So there's some things that we don't realize are going to happen to us when we do these things, right? We think, oh, we've got a brilliant model and it's going to work.

I mean, I had it all set up. We even create a master document of the content of all the blog posts for the website and the YouTube episodes. Even a little note that says, this one only goes on the YouTube episode, this one only goes on the blog post, etc. And so I thought, okay, we'll get these uploaded real quick and then I'll give this to my assistant. It'll take her two hours to copy paste, because I set up. So it was literally a copy paste for each one. No big deal. That didn't quite happen. Now, I wasn't rescheduling this, so we just went ahead with a podcast that didn't have a companion video channel. We embedded the episodes directly into the post, which we're eventually going to undo. But a reason I share this in candor is Because I want to show people there's always a way.

There's always a way. That's right. There's always a hack around, there's always a workaround. And you know, this is the thing is also sometimes we think we know it works and then it doesn't work the next time. So, like YouTube changes their model, which you could have done as many videos as you wanted to five years ago. It would have been fine. Right. If you had done it then, but you do it now and it doesn't work. And so this is just the model of things that shift over time. And that's why when you do something new and you're testing it out, you're so much more valuable resource.

Right, right. Well, and you know, and that's part of what drove me to create what's called the Podcast reach system. That's really a compendium of my years of experience and experimentation on this and looking at podcasting from a different model than some other folks may view. But we hear a lot about get all those listeners and downloads and all that. And my view on that is if you treat getting listeners and downloads as a result rather than a goal, you will not only achieve it faster, but you'll achieve it more sustainably. Because when you focus on the actions that get that for you, you're creating a sustainable engine rather than a pump and dump.

Right. So there's a couple of big distinctions that I want to talk about about between the business creator show and Brilliance plus Podcast passion. And so you've done this thing where one's a short format. The Brilliance plus Passion is a short format. It's predetermined questions. So you, you go through the same set of questions each time. And your business creators radio shows now are long lot more in depth, as you put it. It was a more of a mastermind that people are getting to listen into.

Exactly.

Did you find over time that you were attracted to one model or the other? And are you finding any more success? Success one versus the other.

They both have their place. So to say that one is better than the other, one is more successful than the other. This is another misconception that we see sometimes out there. That you are living proof is a fallacy that you can only have one podcast. You get one shot at this. No, you want another podcast, start another podcast.

So I have six. So here we go.

So they have different goals. One has one certain goal and the other has a different certain goals. We've already discussed. So the Brilliance plus Passion project is a Networking tool. I mean, they're legitimate interviews and they get all the same promotional consideration as episodes on the Business Creators Radio show. It has its own marketing engine behind it and everything else. However, the main conversation happens with brilliance plus passion is in the follow up.

Yeah.

Whereas with the Business Creators Radio show, often the primary conversation is the interview itself.

Ah, yeah. So there you go. So completely different like approach to it. So strategy differences.

Exactly.

You know, you've mentioned the REACH system twice now, and I want to make sure. Because REACH is an acronym. So what does REACH stand for?

Okay, so originally we weren't sure if we were going to call this Reach or React. We knew that we needed an acronym because acronyms are a great way of explaining things. And we went back and forth between Reach and React. So the R stands for represent, reinvent and reverberate your business and brand. In our VIP level, we work with entrepreneurs who are using the podcast to speak, spearhead their way into a market that they haven't played in up until now and help them achieve notoriety and fame quickly as the host of that show. As the conduit of information is the credentializer for those they interview. E stands for engage your ideal prospects, clients, customers and business allies. We've seen statistics that show that offering free strategy sessions can lead up to a 50% no show rate of the people who actually schedule the free strategy session. With scheduling a podcast interview, you have a 99% yes show rate. So it's engaging a achieve greater presence and make a difference. So you use the new media to credentialize other influencers and thought leaders.

Authority building, that's also an A.

And transform them into unpaid evangelists for your business and brand. The C stands for close more deals and create the business and lifestyle you deserve. So it's really about accelerating the know, like and trust continuum. And the H has two meanings. Harmonize with your market and become the hunted, not the hunter. So instead of begging others for a few minutes at their time, inspire them to bang down your door and demand you admit them to your prospecting funnel. I have an article out, if I may. It's on the Reach Systems website that has the title candidly launch your podcast and get free business coaching. Yeah, let's think. So let's think about this. I think you get it, but I'll explain it briefly for your listeners. How many folks out there would you love to just have a conversation with?

And you want them to ask you to have the conversation with you, Right?

Exactly. So there's so Many ways you can do it. You can graze around their social media like you're flirting with them and hope that they eventually notice you. Or you can keep that going to the point where you feel comfortable DMing them and saying, hey, I love what you're talking about. Can I pick your brain? Ain't nobody picking my brain. You ain't shoving stuff in my brain. Or you can get into situations. And my good friend Miguel de Jesus met Daymond John at a traffic and conversion summit, I believe it was, and he posted a meme of himself with Daymond John. And the caption said, I want to talk to you, but I don't know what to say. Ah, right. So we want to meet people, but we don't really know what we want to speak with them about. Having a podcast and offering the opportunity to have a conversation with you answers that question. It's all about creating the framework for an initial conversation, if you're using it for relationship building purposes. And as far as become the hunted, not the hunter. So instead of, you know, thinking, well, how can I reach such and such a person? I would just love to have a conversation with them. I don't know what I want to say to them, but I want to have a conversation with them. Well, if you show up at their doorstep, rather than asking them for something but giving them something, you're going to get a lot more yeses very quickly.

Now, you said it might have been react. What was the T if you used T instead of H?

Oh, God, I don't know. We didn't use it.

You didn't use it? I love it.

I love it.

I had to ask. Right, okay. So we have our three questions here that we like. Well, they used to be five. We have now shortened them to three in this set because we have just passed our 100th episode mark and you're in our second set. And so we now have three questions instead of five because we found that some were overlapping so much. So we've made it more concise.

Yeah.

So our three sections and three things that we want to ask you about is, you know, getting great guests. So you had tons of guests on here. Did you find that there were factors and things that you wished you had shifted so that you could get better opportunities? Was there some criteria or any kind of screening that you started to refine over time?

Well, actually, the first 70 episodes, the first 70 some conversations were a great market research experience. Ultimately, and I'll be completely candid with this, the purpose of the brilliance plus passion project is ultimately to find entrepreneurs who want to launch your podcast and want to hire us to do that for them. So I got some priceless education on who I should really be scheduling follow up conversations with. I won't give any details about that because I don't want anybody to feel that they're more or less. And that actually goes to the second learning experience, which is what are other offers? What are other opportunities to work together? What are other benefits that we can experience together? I mean, you would.

I should not have been in your funnel, right?

No, no, no, no, no, no.

We had a great conversation.

No, no, that's actually where I'm going with this. So you are unlikely to be a client for the podcast reach system. However, the conversation that actually opened that we have sort of on an ongoing basis is we could potentially be mutual resources for each other. We're still in a process defining what that means. But the fact is, is I don't really believe there's such a thing as competition per se, because even if we, you know, you gave me a Checklist of the 12 things you do, and I gave you the checklist of the 12 things I do, and they were all the same 12 things. We still serve different markets, we have different personalities, different styles, different types of clients and situations we work best with. So there's something that you don't do that I do and there's something that I do that you don't or whatever. And vice versa. But you get the idea.

Absolutely. Well, that was why I went on your show, so I wouldn't have gone on because I recognized it for what it was because I'm in the business. Right. But I was like, I'd like to talk to Adam. I'd like to get to know him, because I'd like to find out, because I believe in, as our good friend Scott Carson calls it, co Op edition.

Yes.

And so that's what it is. It's like, why shouldn't we be a co op and competitors at the same time? Because there's so much room for that. We can raise the industry in general. And I, you know, I'm here. I just want more podcasters in the marketplace. And if you're going to build them at them, then all the better. So great. So, but now that you've gone through that 70, what definitions and how would you start to really define in. If you were one of your clients who is really just saying, I need to have conversations with potential clients, what kind of criteria would you start to screen for?

I wouldn't change a thing.

You would still keep it open because.

The original purpose is still the same. It's my modality for opening conversations. It doesn't have to have one perfectly defined outcome. So just because somebody may or may not be I will prospect for the podcast reach system doesn't mean that there aren't other opportunities. For example, I've been getting more bookings on shows like yours than I've ever gotten before at a faster rate, simply because I put reciprocity up front. Sometimes the end game is you get an additional media exposure opportunity for yourself. I was on a podcast. This was Andy Grant's Real Men Feel project. And that wasn't really about podcasting. It was more about what it means to be a man. Basically, I've been dying to have a piece of content I can point to that explains my thoughts about being a man.

That's awesome that you got to have an opportunity to have that conversation.

I probably accelerated the likelihood of that even being possible by a factor of 15, because if I had just randomly approached it, and he's a really nice guy. But let's look at it from the podcaster's point of view in general, I could have been the 95th person to email him yet another pitch, and he would have taken one look at that and said, oh, this guy selling podcasting services, I don't need him next. However, because I opened that conversation with him, we found ways to be mutually supportive of each other's brands.

Right.

That's just one example right there. So look at it. And I've said this so many times in my live streams and in my teachings, is if you want to get booked on more shows, more podcasts, get booked on more stages, find yourself being invited to more virtual summits where you're the person who actually gets in. You're not the person who's sent to jump through the flaming hoops that are set up for you to fail because they don't actually want you. You're the one that's actually in the summit, and I think we all know what we're talking about there.

That's right.

Yep. This is a great way to do it.

Yeah, absolutely. Opens more doors when you make more offers, right? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, engaging and growing your listener base. That is the second thing that most podcasters come and say. I need to engage more with my audience, and I need to grow my listener base. What are some things that you do on the post production? Like you're done with the show on the promotion side of things, that help you do that?

We encourage them to share their episode. And I specifically tell them that if they remember to tag me, I will jump in and help them algorithmically by commenting on it, by adding it to my social media threads and what have you to get them more hits. And I don't come out and say this, but in terms of other things I may do and you know, in terms of deciding what my greatest hits are and things like that, whether or not they promote it is candidly going to be a consideration. I mean, that's. I'm just speaking real world here. Now, this sounds like grade A level stuff, but it's what it is. It's really the basics. You can come up with all kinds of fancy schmancy, algorithmic, wonderful technological stuff. But it really comes down to creating a great experience for the guests where they really enjoyed being on the show, where they felt it was an opportunity for them to really show their intersection of their brilliance and their passion. They want others to see it and that they want to proudly say, this is an example of one of my great episodes. So as the host, we create that experience for them as much as possible and that will encourage them to do it, plus giving them support along the way. Some basic swipe files. I sent you guys an extremely basic swipe file. In fact, you probably looked at it and thought, oh, what did he get this out of a kindergarten coloring book? But the thing is, people are moving very fast. They have a lot of things they're being called upon to promote. And I left it very simple so that this was something that they have to think very hard in this one. All they had to do is put in their own link and put in their own title. And some of the many people who shared when we launched it just use it word for word. Just paste it in their link and paste it in their title. So some of them added a paragraph where they shared some of the great things and what have you. And also was kind of surprising because there were a few episodes where I didn't think I was going to hear from the person. And they went around banging the drum like they were leading a band promoting this thing.

Yeah, well, so I'm going to make sure that everyone gets linked to. So I will drop into the blog post for this episode. I'll drop into the promotional post that I created for it, because we did a custom one, of course, but so you can see. Yeah, so you can see the differences to what we did. But it still has some of the basic of information that you Provided in there. We just put our twist on it because we do this every day. Right. But I'll drop that into this post so people can see what that looks like, what a good promotion of an episode that you've been on looks like. So we'll add that in.

Now here's another thing. Whether or not you're on two social media networks, one or 50, there are some that you really care about that you're actually going to spend time on and some that are probably repeaters you've delegated to. Others what have you. Be clear as much as you can with your guests about which are the ones that you are actually on. I mean, for me, it's LinkedIn and Facebook. Now I may have a couple profiles set up in a couple other places. They're mostly there just so that nobody takes my name. There are two networks I play on and that's it. So those are the ones I can help you on. I had a few folks say, hey, I put it on Instagram and I couldn't find you. Yeah, you're not going to find me on Instagram. I'm not on Instagram. But thank you so much for the share.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the thing is like, you know, where you participate is one thing, but where your guests participate, you know what, that's an added exposure. So it's great when they're sharing you somewhere else, even if you don't exist there. Right?

Yeah, you can hit them all. And also doing this on an ongoing basis gives you intelligence on maybe, maybe there's somewhere else you should be or maybe there's somewhere you are right now where you're really just spinning your wheels. So every little thing you can do to gain marketing intelligence that helps you optimize your efforts is a good thing.

And that's going to engage more and grow listener base. So that's great tips there, Adam.

Thank you.

So let's talk about monetization and definition of success. I like to use definition of success instead of monetization because it's not always a straight line to, you know, the money making efforts. Right, right. It might be authority growth or whatever for you, let's talk business Creators radio show first. But for you, what is the definition of success for that show?

The definition that success for that show was when, again, I think it was an episode of that show, but it could have been me appearing on some other podcasts. It's when somebody appears on your schedule saying they heard you on the podcast and were so intrigued by what you have to say. They want to have a conversation about having you help them bring their startup into revenue, and you sign a 30. Sign a 30,000 deal off of that based on that type of thing happening. That's how I got one of my clients. Now, she swears to this day that she knows somebody who referred me, but she can't tell me who that is.

It's probably herself listening to your show. Right.

That's kind of where I was going with this. But I remember at the time, her saying that she had heard me on a podcast and thought something I said was interesting, but couldn't say what that was. What I believe happened is that just like I believe there's no such thing as a truth, I believe that there are facts we interpret through the lens of our own way of viewing things. I believe that she believed she was referred to me because I was either on another show or it was my own show. And whoever the other person was did a really good job of saying, you really need to speak with Adam. He's really good at this. So that counted as a referral.

So, yeah, so you had it. Had that referral happening on air. That's fantastic. That's really great. Now, what about the brilliant passion's just gotten out there? What do you define its success as? Because I know it's such a different model.

More reachers.

More reachers.

More reachers. And more podcast juice for me. I mean, these are two things we've already covered. Now, I think it was you I actually had this conversation with. You know, people think of podcast monetization, they think of finding a sponsor who's gonna pay me per download or what have you. Okay. And if you want to go on one of those platforms that does that, where eventually you'll make $25 a month, you know, more power to you. I believe that there are really two great ways to monetize, one of which is when you get clients, that's number one with a bullet. And the other one is when your show gains so much popularity in a scene as such a beacon of knowledge in whatever industry, market, or niche you're in, that some whale comes to you and says, we want to sponsor your entire show or we want to sponsor 100 episodes. Yeah. Now, I think it was. It might have been used, or it might have been somebody else. And I'm gonna genericize this because I don't know how much I'm able to say if it was you, but I remember hearing a story of somebody who had a podcast that they had actually kind of abandoned. It was on a very niche topic.

Oh, that's mine. You're talking about my 3D print show. Yeah. And.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we can't say it. So I think what I think you said is if Hewlett Packard came to you and said, we want to sponsor your show because we spent a year trying to knock your show out of the rankings, and since we can't beat them, we thought we might as well join them.

Yep, that's exactly what happened. Yes, it was me.

That's what I mean by a whale. I have a client who charges $500 to sponsor one of her episodes, and she gets that amount paid because there'll be a company that will be willing to pay $500 to sponsor one episode so that they can point to and say we sponsored it.

Right? Yeah, absolutely. So different models. You know, I'm. What I'm really interested to see here is because you are you just like we are absolute promoters of, you know, the trifecta or the triad of podcasting. So the podcast, the video channel and the blogs. Right. To have all of the website and everything together. So I'm interested to see how your. Your shorter format show with the shorter blogs do versus the original show blogs that used to do or you'd still do on your business creator show, and see if you see that kind of. Because you did 70 at once. Like, if you see that absolute boost in the same way that you normally from your weekly show.

That's something we're still in the process of discovering. So this will be an ongoing.

Forward to hearing that. Yeah. So I'm gonna have to have you back on so we can talk about that. That sort of retrospective. Because there are technical things that you've done here, Adam, that are really interesting. And dropping as many as you did, that's about. Even the most aggressive podcasters typically do 25. So you've outdone yourself there. You've almost done three times that. Right.

We tell people to Launch with between 8 and 12. The number varies depending on what the industry standard is. I can listeners, one real quick tech tip if you're interested, please. Okay. So we had to create all these fancy schmancy graphics to give to you and the other 69 people that you could put into your social media posts in your emails. And you're thinking, okay, so we have to use canva and create 70 files, or we have to go into Photoshop and we have to find a way to duplicate the tab 70 times. Okay. We use PowerPoint we have that new version, the one that streams it off the cloud, that allows you to save things as high density PNG images. So duplicate, slide, paste in picture, change name, change title, change link, output them.

All as PNGs, do it 70 times.

And then you can save the entire deck as a collection of PNG files. Then you just simply go in and rename them. Oh, and here's one other thing. When you rename your files, whether it's your episode images, your video files, your audio files, be consistent with a pattern. When we added 70 episodes to our WordPress website, we use the PowerPress plugin because we. We stream it directly from our site and Amazon aws, and we use that to feed it to syndicators. If you're doing the save as on a blog post, do you really want to have to go back and look up the name, look up the file name every time, or do you want to know that all you need to do is click the thing where it says edit, type the guest name in all lowercase letters with no spaces, and hit save.

Yeah, yeah. Such a great tip there. Such great tech tips. Wonderful. So let's talk binge ability, Adam.

Binge ability.

Yeah, let's talk binge ability, because this is a binge factor. So we can't leave without talking about binge.

Of course not.

Right. So do you have an idea of what might make the Brilliance post Passion podcast bingeable?

Oh, there's some controversial stuff in there. Or that some people might find controversial. I have. In several of the episodes, I use an analogy intentionally because one of our questions is, if you could go back in time and change one thing you've experienced or one thing you've done, what would it be and why? Our most popular answer to that, by the way, is, I wouldn't change a thing, because what happened is what got me here. So I'll use an example, and I've been sharing this for years. My intellectual junk food is alternate history. And one of the big scenarios you see in alternate history is somebody goes back and kills Hitler before he had a chance to get started, or make sure he was never born. And you're thinking, okay, all right, we saved 15 million lives and the world's gonna be utopia now. So they go back and they make sure that Hitler was never born, or make sure they never went to politics or shoot him in the head or make sure he dies in a war injury in World War I or what have you. And they go back and go back to 2020, say, okay, oh, shoot, Everything shifted. Because Hitler was a fantastic orator. I mean, he had oratorical skills. He had the ability to create something that already existed and focus it. The ideas, as sinister and disgusting as they were, existed, and they were not exactly in a vacuum somewhere. He simply created a focal point and a wedge. That's all he did. He was crap for a military commander. So what happens with a lot of these scenarios, I've read over a dozen of them, is because he wasn't around somebody who actually knew what they were doing in a war was, and they won.

So it got worse, not better. The future. Yeah, we don't know what our outcome, our alternate outcome is exactly. Once a show. Yeah, there's a bunch of shows that are like that out there. That. Gosh, there was this great Fox TV show.

Yeah.

Oh, what was it called? And they were like always doing the alternate universes. And it was so good. I'll have to remember the name of it. Anyway. Yeah, you know, that is such an interesting. So that you have a question, then opens up these interesting options. And then because of that, I want to hear what the next person says and the next person says, and the next person says. So you created this binge factor throughout that model of doing it.

And see, for me, it's the idea of having conversations and going somewhat tangential sometimes on things that are just beyond the typical business talk and looking at some of the pop culture things and some of the things we discuss outside of business, which shows is just, you know, it's really just fun and we get to explore a bunch of ideas. You know, you remember another one of our questions is, if you could meet somebody famous, alive or dead, who would they be? And what question would you have for them if they had the opportunity? And, oh, boy, did we get a range on that one.

Well, you know, that's a funny thing. It's like. So I was listening to more of the show because I always listen right before I do interviews and I'm listening to what other people say. And I was like, what did I say? And I had to re. Listen to my own episode because I was like, I know. I think I know what I said, but did I say that?

Exactly.

And so, yeah, you had to go back and listen. So there you go. Even I had to go back and listen to my own, which is a good thing.

Right. I've been sonded a bit myself because I just like to go back and check it out again. Some of the really funny stories and some of the interesting things that have come up in the conversation. So even though it's a very short format, I designed it in such a way where Even within that 15 minutes there is flexibility.

Right.

And it's important to have flexibility because whether the host is supplying the questions, you're supplying the question, or the guest is supplying the questions, or it's a hybrid of the two, or it's just a natural conversation, which really it isn't. It's actually planned out even if the listener doesn't think it is. You're going to get that guest where you ask them one question, they take the entire 30 minutes. Then you get that one where you've asked all your questions, it's four minutes in, they give one word answers and now what do you do with the rest of the time? Right. This is where storytelling, seed based marketing and your ability to make use of analogies and metaphors makes it a more interesting experience. And to me that's what makes it bingeable.

So I'm going to say that that actually, yes, that there's, there's the factor of how the show is run and what does that is absolutely right on with what you said. But there's also a factor that's very you, Adam. And in the process of it, what I found is from listening to both your shows because it's apparent in both the shows, what I found is that your ability to establish a very, very fast rapport because we don't, you know, these were not long interview slots to begin with that you gave us. Right. This was fast. We didn't have a lot of pre talk and we dove right in. We got a connection really quickly. And that is, I think your personal binge factor, Adam, is that your ability to make a rapport and connection and build that relationship fast and then pull it through the rest of that interview, even though there is that programmatic quality to it, your energy of kind of keeping that interest in building the relationship with us and understanding why we're answering, what we're answering and, and like being intrigued by those answers. That is actually your personal binge factor and what you binge ability that you bring to your shows.

Well, thank you very much. And you know, sometimes I, sometimes I say bad words on the business creators radio show.

I wouldn't worry about that.

I actually have people tune in to see if I'm going to do it. Now we address that inside the podcast reach this. In fact, one of the modules is whether or not you should use profanity in your episodes. Now there is, I mean you can take it from your own personal feelings about it, and that's the approach you want to take. That's fine. Some people just don't want to see that stuff. They don't have it in their own show. Great. Awesome. Some people like to take that edgy approach. They throw some in just for fun. Regardless of which approach you take, it's important to remember and this. And I'm going to give this. I'm going to give this to your followers. It's important to remember that it's a situational thing and you have to remember that other than your own efforts, your guest is going to have the greatest influence on whether that episode sees a light of day. So you want them to be excited. Now, if you check that guest out and you see that they themselves like to drop the occasional F bomb and you see that their social media is just kind of edgy like that and just real and raw, then you can go there with. With them. Usually now.

Yeah. So you're talking about like matched energy and match match energy. Yeah.

They'll share it because it gives them the opportunity to indulge in that without necessarily having to do it themselves. Right. Because I'll be doing it now if I'm seeing something that stayed installed or what have you. I might say golly G willikers once or twice.

I love it. I love it, Adam.

And again, I mean that seriously, because it's about making your guests want to share it. I mean, if you have somebody out there who's saying, I can't stand memes with profanity, and if you keep posting them, I'm going to unfriend you. Yeah. You're probably not going to get them to share too much of your episode if you go off on a rant, right?

Absolutely.

So for them, you go to the golly G Williger's rant.

Yeah. Matching your energy, matching your guests. I love that. That's a great tip.

And you can do that matching without losing your own authenticity. You're just being. I mean, think about anybody who's president United States, the way they speak at a campaign rally versus a State of the Union address versus a news conference, versus some meeting with a special interest group, versus a thank you meeting for their supporters. Five different tones of voice still authentically the same person.

Absolutely. You should do that. Well, Adam, I'm so glad you came on the show, but before we go, I want to make sure that you have an opportunity to address one thing that comes up. What are the biggest objections you get to people who are like still on that. We call it permanent potential here. Permanent potential. Unable to get off the fence and start their show. What's the objections that you come up against?

We have several of them, so I'll highlight just a couple for the sake of time here. A big one we get is, particularly when it comes to interview formats, the prospects or the, the permanent potential will say, yeah, but if I'm interviewing other people, then that makes it all about them. How is that promoting my business? Ah, so the viewpoint, we've already answered that it's about getting your guests so excited to share the fact they were on your show that they will credentialize themselves by saying, hey, look, I was on the bench factor. I was on the Business Creators radio show. I was on brilliance plus Passion. And combine that with, as a host, being able to use storytelling metaphors and analogies to get your own message into the conversation.

Right, yeah.

So that, that's one. And then there's another one that says, well, you know, it's. It's hard and it takes a lot of time. And I say that after you've done that raw recording, if it takes you more than 5 minutes to post produce, you got to look at your process again, it's taking.

That's right.

So you got to look at. You got to look. I mean, right now I'm working with one of my clients who has been really struggling getting her video and audio files created. It's something she ultimately intends to outsource. But at this point right now, she is not yet at the outsourcing point. And she also at the same time wants to have the process in place. So whoever she outsources to, she doesn't have to spend $1200 just to get a video created. Right.

She want to do it in the most efficient, cost effective way. Right.

So what we did with her is we looked at her technological setup and we saw that, oh, I'm not going to get into PC versus Mac, whatever. But I told her to get Camtasia.

I understand. Yeah.

And so now we're working with her to set Camtasia up. And I mean, that was also part of my secret of how we post produced 70 episodes in basically one day is we had our intros and our outros Pre recorded as MP4 files. Then we had the commercials that we insert and we stack those actually right before the intros. And if you'll give me one more minute at the end, I'll explain why we did that. And then we have the episode in the middle where we Snip off the little edges. You know, you're like. And if I had notes that there was a tech issue, I can, you know, go back and cut that. But drop, drop, drop, cut, cut, splice, fade, render.

And then super easy. Yeah.

And then produce special, go to same folder, give same file name. There's your MP3.

Well, you know, you just dropped a message about advertisements. Let's talk about that really quickly.

Okay, so when we were going into post production, our original plan is we were going to have them be intro, commercial, episode, outro. So I rendered one and I watched it and I thought I wasn't going to see content until my next birthday.

It just seemed like too much.

So I'm thinking, okay, did we overdo this? And am I going to have to reschedule this because I have to have the voiceover artist do this again? Are we going to have to deal with speaking speeds and everything else and what have you? So I had this crazy idea, okay, intro, commercial, commercial, intro. Now feels like it's pulling me in. Because think about it. When you watch something on any social media network that has a sponsored advertisement, do you see the content first or they usually make you sit through a commercial first, right?

Yeah, that's the way. Netflix, Hulu, all of them run.

Yep. So we made that one small switch and to me, it made it so much more bingeable because I matched it to the experience they're used to seeing. And remember, I've disclosed candidly, I don't, I don't really care about 20 cents at a time monetization. I'm not even going for it. So I look to replicate as much as possible. And I, and I follow some YouTube channels that have been demonetized because they don't make community standards or what have you. And I noticed that in fact, some that do documentaries and history stuff, the stuff that I binge on, that's actually part of the reason the stuff gets demonetized, because it might not give the version of history that somebody likes separate conversation. But what I noticed in their designs is they did get sponsors to just pay for that entire episode and they put the sponsor commercial first. So I just replicated the model. So look around and see what other people are doing and look at your own experience consuming content and notice the trends and match it. There's other people have done the research and figure out how it works.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Adam, so much for being so open and sharing and being such a prolific podcaster that you have such great information to share. With us. We really appreciate you.

Yeah, I look forward to sharing this with everybody I know.

Okay, thanks so much.

Some high energy there from Adam. Right. And he's matching my energy as we were just talking about the end. So we both have this kind of high hyper energy. So I'm going to definitely link the interview Adam did of me into the blog post for this episode. So you'll be able to see that right now, right here at this point in the post, and that'll give you an idea of how his show sounds. So you can check right out, check an episode, and you can see how he matched my energy and how he interjected stories into it. Because you guys know me already, so you know kind of what I would say amongst those things. And now you get to hear how he structures that interview with someone you already know. So that will make it a lot more interesting for you to check out his show from that perspective. The other thing is that, you know, there's some things that Adam and I absolutely are so aligned with, and there are others that we are just not right. You know, and that's because we're running very different kind of businesses. And it's always so good to get a broad business approach to double check and see what's going on in your mind. Such as, like that mention of putting the ad at the beginning. So I'm not a fan of the ad at all. Right. If your show is really an advertisement in and of itself, it's a network builder. It's a. It's this. There doesn't need to be an ad ad because the show is a draw for you. So there doesn't need to be an ad. But the idea of if you do need an ad or if you've got a sponsor and you're one running one of those things, putting that ad at a pre roll, a pre. Pre intro roll. Right. Is a different model of doing it altogether. It might work for you. It might be too pushy for your audience. It depends on your show. It works for Adam because of his personality, because of the type of business he's running, because he needs you to really think about what this show's purpose is. Well, so like, he needs to put that at the forefront there, and that really works for him. It might not be the right choice for you. And that's where strategy comes in to be thinking about what strategically is the best. What of these ideas that I'm pulling from listening to all of these experts that I have here on the binge factor, what little pieces I can pull together that are really going to make this work for me. Now, keep in mind, sometimes you drawing all these advice from all these different people and isn't always working. That's my role here as the host. Right? That's my role here as the curator and the editor. Because I can edit out things that I know might be detrimental to you. I didn't edit anything out of Adams that was going to be detrimental. Like that's not the case. I might edit out a few ums and ahs and awkward pauses, but I didn't edit out any content because I didn't need to. Right. Because his advice is really thorough and detailed and helpful. But. But sometimes you have to play that role as the host of editing and carefully curating. And sometimes it means not inviting a guest on that you think is going to be counter to the mission of your show. Keeping that in mind that there's always that option of recording a show and then saying, oh, I'm so sorry that it didn't work out. Like, the audio quality was so bad, I can't air that. Let's reschedule. At some point in the future, I'll reach out to you and then never reach out. You know, it will become apparent from the interview process if it's. It's not a fit. Adam, I knew, I knew he would be a right fit. And I very rarely, as you know, invite someone on who offers podcasting advice and podcasting services. Because I don't want you to have that. Not because I'm. I'm being. How do I say it? I'm being so competitive, as you know, Adam put it. Not because I'm being so competitive and controlling about who you get exposure to, but I want to make sure that you're not going to have too many coaches in your ear, right. With too many differing opinions. Because that can really hurt you if you take one little piece over here and then it counteracts with other pieces of advice I've been giving you consistently here or things that have been presented from successes that have been happening from the podcasters that are on our show here. So your job and your role is this tight curation of who comes on your show and what they get to say and what they get to share. Right. And how you direct your questions and how you control that interview in the process. So that's what happened here. Adam and I are looking at, maybe there's going to be a long term relationship because we're working on something pretty secret that we're going to launch later this year that we might have these deeper relationships with other podcast coaches and other podcast strategists because their view might be the one thing that you need. Their direction of creating a podcast funnel, creating a virtual summit into a much better podcast. These things might be more useful to you than just my straight services of what we do. We're still here on the post production. We're still here to provide poditized hosting like all of that still exists. And if we can compliment all of these coaches and strategists and other people out there and make the entire industry grow and make all of your shows better and better so that you don't pod fade, you don't quit your show because you didn't get the support you needed, you didn't strategically set them up to begin with, then I've really done my job of being the cheerleader for the industry, if that's what it is that my role is here. The cheerleader, the chief strategist, whatever you want to call me in this process. That's my role here. So remember that that hosting position is the power position in the whole thing because you control what people hear, who they hear and how that message comes across. So I will bring other podcasters back just like Adam Homing here, other views, other ways, other types of shows to take a look at other ways to podcast. I will bring you that every week here on the Binge Factor. Nothing's changing there. That will happen again next week on the Binge Factor.

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 Tracy's column, please go to thebingefactor.com guest and apply.

Sam.