How To Grow Your Platform with Tracy Hazzard from the Promote Profit Publish Podcast with Juliet Clark

Ready to become the world authority and influencer you have always wanted to be. Your ticket to freedom is positioning yourself as the go to expert by way of your personal truth. Welcome to Promote Profit Publish with your host, best selling author, platform building coach and publisher Juliet Clark.

I am so super excited today to have Tracy Hazard with us and Tracy is an Ink columnist and the co host of three top ranked podcasts Feed you'd brand Just listed As one of CIO's top 26 entrepreneur podcasts to listen to in 2018, the newly launched Expert Platform Product Launch Hazards and WTFF? Exclamation the 3D Print Innovation Start point featured as one of the exclusive live podcasts at the south by southwest 2018. With a constant stream of content and products from her authority platform reaching over 100,000 listeners and viewers each month, Tracy influences and casts branded content and $2 billion worth of consumer products and innovation around the world. Welcome Tracy.

Thank you for having me, Juliet. Excited to talk to your entrepreneurs?

Well, I'm sure they're going to be really excited to hear what you have to say as well. So the reason that I wanted to have Tracy on is because many people are out building their platforms for books and products and services, but they forget about the content. They think it's too hard, they don't want to do it. They share somebody else's genius and think that's okay. And you have such a genius way of getting it done and getting it done fairly easily.

Well, you know, I think, Juliette, I think the big mistake in most people's thought process is that a platform is just like a one time thing. But if you only have the money and the time to build like you know, a soapbox, right, instead of a full stage, right. How can you keep it so that it continually grows? And content is one of those ways that it can grow for you. So if you set the basic groundwork, the basic platform in place and then you continually feed it with great content that is strategically planned to grow you in the right areas, like on the Internet, on web, on Audio, on YouTube, wherever those places might be, that is going to attract the right audience for you. When it's building itself underneath you all the time, it's raising your platform for you and that's what you really want. I mean, if you're going to spend time and energy on something, you want it to continually grow you.

Yes, absolutely. Now, your specialty, I mean you have all sorts of modalities, but your specialty is actually podcasts. And I want you to talk A little bit about why you do it the way you do it, because you make it easy. I had my own podcast a couple years ago, and it was darn hard.

So I will tell you the firsthand, it wasn't easy, right? And so it's because it's not easy that I said, this is ridiculous. And we need to reinvent the whole process and we need to look at how it works and what we can do differently. And so we started a podcast that is that 3D print one WTFF. It stands for Fused Filament Fabrication. It is not a swear. And if you don't know that, then you're not the right listener. So we hit on something really valuable early on, which is that we screened out people before we ever even got them listening. So it became this attractor point. And so we started that about four years ago. We have over 535 episodes. And I'm just about to retire my role as a co host on it and turn it over to somebody else. And so, because I, you know, it's not a part of my core everyday business, so I'm going to turn it over to actually somebody you probably know, Steve Crimme. Oh, yes, I do. Yeah. Because he's doing some work with tom on a 3D print site. And I was like, it's logical. You guys should take it over and do it from here. So they are. But in it, it was, like, excruciatingly difficult. And so back then, also, it was a little harder. There wasn't as many, like, courses on how to podcast, and there wasn't as many blog talk radio packages you could buy. So I had to read all the books and read between the lines and figure out what they were trying to sell me and what I should just do. So this is kind of my specialty because I always joke that I'm a how to girl. Like, I like to figure out the how to, but I like to figure out the how to. And the fastest path, I call it the critical path, right? The least amount of things that you need to do, but the things that are most critical for the success, for the ultimate outcome you want to achieve. And so we did that, and we launched our podcast in six weeks. And then since then, we can do it in as little as two weeks. We've refined it down to this system of this is all you need to do. That's the perfect amount. And so people would come to me and go, will you just do it for me? Because I don't want to do it. And I don't want to read these books and I don't want to learn it. And you have a course, but I don't even want to go through it. Will you just do it for me? And so they started throwing their business at me and I said, okay, I think we should start another business. And that's how what we call brandcasters today came about. But one of the things that we did that was so different was we didn't just podcast. Because when I was reading between the lines, I realized that many of those early podcasters came out of the blogging world. And it really was the fact that they had these power blogs and Google ranked sites that was giving them the power that they needed. The podcasting was just, in fact, a lazy way. And for me, that was exactly the case. A lazy way to make sure that you're putting your content out there, that the blogs are coming out every single week. And sometimes in the case of Oui, we did it every single day. And then on the flip side of that, I was like, didn't really want to do video because I didn't want to have my hair done. And, you know, so like, yeah, so I was like, I was not willing to do a daily video, right? And so that was way too much work for me. So I was like, yeah, I can talk, right? You can hear it. I can talk about anything. And so it really became this, like, really lazy, easy path for me to do it. And so many people think that's what it's going to be. But if you don't have the infrastructure underneath posting the blogs and doing all that work for you, then it does become arduous. It becomes really difficult and time consuming. And the last thing you want is be editing audio or doing something like that. And that is not, you know, this is a case where you have to think about it as an investment in throwing a little money. And it doesn't have to be a tremendous amount of money, but throwing a little money so that you save a lot of time. And so that's where we make a lot of mistakes. We think, well, we have more time than money when we're starting up, when we're building our platform. But this is a case of there's so much information that you don't have. Editing your podcast and doing that is not the way to go. You could start it up yourself. In fact, we practically give our course away for free because we want you to start it up successfully. But don't edit it, don't spend time on that Use a service of any kind, even if it's not mine. So.

Yeah, no, I agree. I think the most time consuming part of mine was when I would invite guests on the lack of a media kit that we could work with. We would get things piecemeal. Like, we give them a list and we get a bio shot here. Oh, I have to go write my bio. And it was like, are you kidding me?

So. Well, I mean, this is where you pick better guests, number one. Right. But we use a calendar form, and basically we don't let them opt out of those specific topics. So they have to put a bio in, they have to attach their headshot. It goes right through the calendar form. And they can't even book their interview with us if they don't. If they don't have it. So you will have a few people who drop off before they ever book with you. And that happens. And usually I find that the people who. They just need a little more time and maybe they'll book for next month and not this month. So I always put out about. Because I like to do four interviews a month minimum. So I always try to schedule at least six or eight. And that way I'm a little ahead on my podcast if I need to be. But I also know that if a couple people drop out and we rarely have had it in, I mean, I think I've done out of the 550 episodes or something I've probably done. Oh, I'd say 300 of them are interviews. So there's a lot of interviews in there. And so I'd say I probably lost maybe three people who got sick, emergency happened, and they didn't record on the day. But because we're not airing live, if you got a few backup, you're good.

No, I definitely agree.

I always try.

My calendar is always two months ahead.

Yeah, that's the way I like to say. Two months. Three months makes your guests feel a little like, wow, they're never getting to my content. And so they don't promote enough because they sort of lost the momentum from it. So we try not to do that that often with our guests. Right?

Yeah. And the other thing too is sometimes, like the market, like we're coming up on Facebook's making changes a week from now, and it's gonna be revamped and all different. So if I had done something Facebook related three months ago, it would be useless. Yeah, obsolete. So kind of silly with that. So tell us a little bit about how you got into what you were doing, how you did this. And you work with your husband too. How does that all work out? Cause I know there are a lot of people out there that are like, oh my God, I could never work with my husband.

Oh, I get that all the time. Right. But Tom and I met in Colle. We met at our very first day of Rhode Island School of Design. So we met at design school. Yep. He insulted me, called me a bally girl because I was from California and he was a snobby New England boy. And so, yeah, I mean, we've enjoyed working together over the years and so it's been very logical. But it's because our skill sets are, I would say we're the perfect partners for each other. Right. Our minds kind of intersect at the right places, but really are different at where all the good places that we need it. So our jobs are very diverse and very separated. And that. I think that helps a lot. But it's not for everyone, I can tell you that. I mean, and on top of it, my daughter is my COO, my 23 year old daughter. So a lot of my clients know her and they get to know her more than they get to know me some days. And so, yeah, so we truly have a family business here. And there's always tension. Yeah, it's not easy.

I have to tell you, back when I was married, we actually were in the same office, my husband and I, and in our home. And I came in one day and I was like, I'm done. We're building an addition on the house so I can have my own office. Like, I can't share this with you anymore.

Well, for us it's really not a matter of like, I can't be in the office with you anymore. It's a matter of we're all on a call or an interview or doing a webinar all at the same time. Because it's constant here. Like, I pretty much talk all day long and so it's so constant that we're like, yeah, we all need separate office just so we can run. Because Tom just had to leave the office so he could go have a call. So he went downstairs to the other location. And so. And it's not pretty down there yet. And you know, I need a nice backdrop like yours, so I'm going to get him one of those for when we're down there. So at least it, you know, hides, you know, a few of our book. We have these great book cabinets, but other than that, it's like, what are those books in there? They're the oddest mix of books, but it's just too much. Yeah, it's just too much of the content generation for us has taken over the way that we operate our business. Because it works. It's working. It's allowing us to network. It's allowing us to produce the technical stuff we need to grow. And it's drawing so many client referrals and client requests in that we're on sales calls as well. So it's working all around for us. And that's the fabulous part about it. So now I get to do what I really can do, is to talk.

All day, and you do it well.

Thank you.

So how did you get started in this?

Yeah, so we built this podcast, this very early 3D print podcast, and it was really hard. And then there was all this. We were like, we have to put this information on our website. And it was taking so much time and energy that I just built a team for it. And before I knew it, there were other people going, can you do this for me as well? And I was like, well, we've got this team, and they're underutilized. Why not? And so I took on a few clients, and in the process of doing it, we also. Because Tom and I are never good at settling for the tools and things that are out there. We like to. We reinvent things when we see a problem or when we see an opportunity. It's kind of. This is what we do in the product world, so why would we do it in the software or systems world? Right. And so as we were doing this, it got to be. We were about six months into our podcast, and we had gotten our requests to have an advertiser on our podcast. I mean, they just came to us and said, can we advertise? You guys are, like, all the rage in the 3D print world. It's a small community. Everyone's talking about it. Can we run. We've heard about this podcast advertising thing, and we don't know if it's any good, so we'd love to run a test with you. And we said, well, we only have 25,000 plays a month, and of that, only our most current episodes, that if you wanted to advertise on four of them, that would only represent maybe 5,000 of those plays, because the plays are across our whole entire catalog. So when someone finds them us, they binge listen to us. They go all the way from the beginning and listen all the way through. And at that time, it was probably about 100 episodes. And so we said, can we do something different. So we ran the ads, but it kept us thinking. And we said, you know what, we really need to invent something where we can run an ad across all of it. And when I started talking to my audio team, they were like, well, we have to re edit everything. You lose statistics. This is, you know, it's time consuming. We could never run it quickly to get you up and running. And I said, hmm, that's not good enough for me. Let's see what we can do. And so it took us another about four months, but we invented a way to add mix on the fly so that you could instantly add ads into it. And one of the things that we wanted to do was not stream ads. So if you've ever heard of like, you know, Netflix does this, they put an ad at the front of it, YouTube does it, and you have to wait till that's done before you can listen or watch. And so we said, that's not good enough because the ads that get traction are the ones that are in the middle, the ones that I record on behalf of whoever my advertiser might be. And so can we do it that way? And can we add it in and take it out? And so we developed it and we invented it and it worked. And it took us about a year in beta to make sure it was really working well and could be used and how people would use it. But it came out of beta last year and we have clients who use it every single day. And so instead of advertising and taking in what would have been 5,000, and let's say you charge them, the case of what we did, we charged them $3,000 for that because we charged a flat rate. But it was stuck in those ads. We're stuck in those podcasts for life. Right? You could take a 30 day set of ads for a specific amount of money, knowing that it would get your full place. So the 25,000 over the course of that month. And so it made them very satisfied. And then in the process, we discovered that we had 37% conversion on the call to action from our ads. So we had a huge transaction on it. And because of that, they came back and advertised again and again. And it's worked out really well for us. We actually don't really take ads for anyone who doesn't either seek us out or we feel like they have a really great program and we want everyone to know about it. And so then we will do a co partnership. So we advertise as much for alliances. If you want to Call them that or partners or affiliates and sort of using a very web digital marketer term. But we only advertise mostly for those because we know there's such a good return on investment. Why not make more than just the ad dollars? And so that's how we do it for all of our podcasts. But many of our clients just do straight ads.

Nice.

Very nice.

Talk to me a little bit about what you guys do as far as when you're setting it up, like all of the things you do and then why it's so important to have that transcription you guys do into the.

So we call it brandcasters. That's the name of our business. But brandcasting, if you want to call it that, what we do is we really. It's the audio or the video, because you can start from either. It doesn't really matter. In fact, we do a lot of videos. So my whole I have product launch Hazards is another podcast. That one is completely video based. And so we do a zoom just like we're doing right now. And we start from that as the format, spin it off into a podcast, then put it into a blog post on a website that is properly configured, a WordPress website. I cannot stress that enough that we have tested out Squarespace and Wix and there's a bunch of like click funnel Y style websites that are out there that really make it very easy for you to manage your website. And I get that. But it does not have the same Google power. And so if you want to be found in search, and that is the key here, found in Google Search, which is one of the most powerful search engines on earth. So on an offer, because it's technically in the cloud, you want to make sure that you've got a site that just isn't blocking that for you. And that's what some of these other sites do. So we find that to be work the best. But you need to put those blog posts consistently and constantly to get Google's attention. And they also need to be long. And so the more you do that, the harder it is. That's more work for you. But if you can do this in a really easy process where you're repurposing what you're doing. So if you're taking this webinar, for instance, you're going to take this webinar, you're going to turn it into the podcast and edit the audio properly for a podcast because you know, people aren't seeing they're listening. So you have to be a little careful. With your editing. And then we go from there to a three level transcript. That's what I call it, human transcript. You cannot just have a machine do it. It's terrible. It makes you look bad. Like, just don't do that. You can start from there, but you'll spend hours and hours editing it. It's basically worth the effort because I think when you use the transcription services that are out there, it's like the different. It's like twice as much money to do the human version. But I'm telling you, it's 10 times the labor to proof the robot version. So do the human version first and then from that we go through it, we edit it and we make it. We edit it for like all the weird things that happen, like the ums and the ahs that gets tracked by the transcriptionist. And you know, the weird things when you repeat your words, because it happens when you're talking visually, when you're talking to someone, you tend to repeat words. And it doesn't really sound good when you're listening to it. And it definitely doesn't read well. So we try to edit those. And so you do that. And then what we do is we format it to look good, right? You want it to look good. I don't want to say. Juliet says, Tracy says, Juliet asks, right, you don't want it to read like that because Google's not going to like it, number one. But people don't want to read that. So we take and we'll put. Because Juliet's the host, she has the authority, she's the command. Hers will be in boldface and mine will be in lightface as the answer. And so that's how we format it so it reads really well. And of course make it look like a pretty blog post. Insert images and all the good fun stuff like that, Click to tweets, tweetables, all the things to break up. Because at the end of the day, when we've recorded this, it's probably about 6,000 to 10,000 words. So you do somewhere between 30 and 50 minutes, right? And so when you do that, it's a lot of words. And so you can't have that all just all be text. Someone's gonna look at it and go, I'm never gonna read that. That's way too long. And you can think that that is totally valid thought. But I can tell you Google reads it. And so whenever we're talking about platform or authors or podcasting and all of these things are being searched and categorized and tagged by Google. So that when someone says, I'm looking for this, I'm looking for podcasts for authors, they're going to search and they're going to start finding that through your information that's sitting out there. And most of our podcasters or videocasters have, I would say, 60 to 70% of, and sometimes even 80, a couple of mine have much more from Google than they do from YouTube or from the podcast itself, because they're newer. But 60 to 70%, on average, of their listeners, of their viewers, of their raters, of everything comes through Google and not through itunes. And that's where people fall off, because you cannot just stop at the podcast. It's not enough traffic. There's not enough listeners there yet. It's growing, and it's growing every single day. And we get a lot from there, but you're going to get more from the search.

Cool. Very cool. So you do a lot of other things when people buy a package, too, don't you create the artwork and all of that kind of stuff?

Yeah. So we're talking a little branding here, because it is one of my favorite subjects. And one of the things is like, look, it's really important to brand you, right? To get you out there, have your face on everything, have all of that happen. But sometimes it just doesn't work really well in pushing out content. Because if I did it where every single time I put a piece of content that I was putting out, whether it was in a podcast or a blog or a video, and it was always just my face with the title, then every time you saw it, people don't read. They do not read. When you're scrolling through your feed at, like, you know, 100 miles an hour, you're going. You're going to go, oh, I saw that. I read that. I listened to that. It's a repeat. They think you're reposting. And so we're really careful to put a different trigger image that has something to do with what the content is, and it has a little bit of your brand in the corner, so it's still branded you so that they still know what your podcast is called or what your show is called on your YouTube channel. You want to make sure that they can still find you, but the image itself is a trigger for the content so that they will look at the title and go, I didn't read this. I didn't see this already. I didn't. Listen here. And they will stop. Our goal is to obviously give you so much information, but also Visual, audio, touching all of your senses in the process so that they can match to the one that suits them the best. Because it doesn't matter what you like. It matters what your core client, your listener, your audience wants. Right. How do they want to consume you? And every person has a different preferred method. I am a reader. I will read people's books. I actually do that before I interview someone. Most people do not do that today, but that is my preferred method. But I also know that I am so much better at communicating verbally and video. So I also know that I reach through in a different way than I do in the written word. So I write a column for Inc.com I write six articles a month. And I can tell you they don't get half the amount of readers that my videos and my podcasts do. They don't even get a tenth of it. And they're only 600 words. So, like, it should be easier to read. Right.

But they just don't span these days either, so that really plays into it as well.

Yeah. So you could, though, if you're a true author and you care about the written word, you can take from that very, very long transcription post, write your article. I do it all the time. It's always fodder for my article. It helps me get my thoughts out. And then I write a very concise 600 word article so you can repurpose it yet again and seed it out there into places and contribute articles in other places that lead back to your podcast, to your video, to your blogs. Very nice. Very nice.

You have a free gift for us today, don't you?

I do, I do. It is my media tip secrets. And so this is one of the things that I learned very, very early on. And I actually learned some of it from Karen Leland, who I know you've had on here. Right. And because she was my. When I first got my column, I went, karen, I've never written a column before. What do I do? And she's my friend and she was actually one of my very first podcasters ever on my platform. And so I went to her and I was like, in a panic. I was like, what do I do? And how do I make sure that I'm writing about good people? And so her tips are kind of included in it. But basically it is really how I. And how the media evaluates a good platform and decides if you're worthy of being written about or interviewed or whatever it is that they might put you on their video. Right. Put you on their television channel. It's really a way at which we evaluate and we look through that. And so that's what this is about. It's got a bunch of different articles that I wrote that just kind of magnify that a little bit more for you.

That's great. So, you guys, I'm going to be putting that in as a link down below this so you guys can get that free gift and learn more about Tracy. You know, it's amazing. I have a whole group community build right now, and I brought your name up last week, and it's so funny because a couple of them are already talking to you. They've connected with people who came back from CEO space this time, and they were like, oh, my gosh, you know Tracy, I need to talk to her about this. I have an appointment already. So I was really excited after I told you. I wanted to make that introduction to my audience, that some of the people had already taken those steps to connect with you.

You know, this is the thing, is that what we've built in here is an infrastructure and a system. It is not a program. It does not do the great things that you do. Juliet, you still need a strategy. You have to understand where your business is going, and you need to have a goal. Once you know what that is, we can put the infrastructure in place underneath you to support that, then keep shifting it. So my other podcast, which, you see the logo here, feed, you'd brand, I go places all the time. And they're like, I listen to your podcast. It was like, are you a podcaster? And they say, no. And I'm like, oh, I thought I was doing this podcast for podcasters. And really for my clients, it was like a way to push it out for my clients. And they say, oh, no, I'm a blogger, I'm a digital marketer. But the information you bring is so valuable because it's helping to move the needle up on what's working and how we can take the strategy to the next level and keep it going. Because you can't do everything at once, right? You have to build a strong platform underneath you. You have to build a strong stage and then grow that over time. And at each different level, you're ready for something new. And so that's what we try to bring, is we try to keep on top of making sure we're coaching and counseling and referring out to great people who can take them to the next level. Because I can only do so much with the infrastructure for you. I can turn that in and out. I can make sure my team has the best SEO tools and the best search into optimization systems and tools in place. But I cannot make it grow your business if you don't have the right strategy for that. That's really where we try to really support those that are out there doing that.

Fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on here today. I really appreciate it. And you guys again look down below. After we post this we'll go ahead and post the link so you can get Tracy's free gift as well.

Thank you. Thank you and good luck to you all. Build great platforms.

Thanks for listening. Don't forget to take our PromoteProfit publish assessment and see where your skill set needs work. Go to promoteprofitpublishquiz.com by taking the assessment you may be eligible for a discovery session with Juliet. Remember, by building your platform right you win, your audience wins, the crowd goes wild and the world is a better place.