Increase Your Visibility And Create A More Authoritative Podcast With Alastair McDermott of The Recognized Authority

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 to the Binge Factor. I'm Tracy Hazzard and I'm excited to bring you Alistair McDermott today. He is the host of the Recognized Authority and the Specialization Podcast. The podcast, the Recognized Authority was formerly marketing for consultants and so I love that he shifted his show and that there's so much to talk about there. So let me tell you a little bit about Alistair. Alistair McDermott helps invisible experts love that term, to remove their cloak of invisibility and become the recognized authority in their field so they can have more impact and command higher fees. Alistair is an author, consultant and business coach who hosts the Recognized Authority podcast and the Specialization podcast. And you know, a lot of times here we don't talk enough about specialization and niches and I can tell you from personal experience, when you have a dialed in niche podcast, it works better. So he and I are going to talk about all things authority and all things niches and I just love that we're going to have this conversation right now and have the combination of the two because this is one of the ways you really take your podcast to that higher authoritative level. So we're going to talk all about that today. So that's hear from Alistair McDermott.

Alistair, so thankful to have you here and I think you're staying up late for me, so I'm even more thankful for that. The Recognized Authority. I love that title. And it wasn't your first title. So your first title was Marketing for Consultants and then you switched that to the Recognized Authority. What made you change your mind on the title?

I was drilling down. So marketing for Consultants is branding done by an engineer, which is how I did it. Marketing for Consultants was. It was me saying, okay, this is roughly where I'm going. I'm not quite sure yet. So I'm just gonna say this is what it is until I figure out just which aspect of this I wanna focus on. I realized that the part that I was really interested in was the building of authority through creating content, doing, basically doing inbound marketing for experts. That's what I wanted to do. And I played around with a lot of different ways of saying that. And there are some other people out there with podcasts. There's one called Micro Famous, and that's an interesting way of saying kind of the same thing, virtually famous. And there's lots of different ways. You can talk about being a thought leader, or you can talk about being an authority, which are similar but ever so slightly different. And I really think about thought leader, but when I was looking at that, I was thinking, okay, the recognized authority. I'm really interested in the recognition part, in the visibility. And the marketing side of that thought leader is more about developing the thinking, and it's less about the marketing side. Even though it's kind of the same thing, they're ever so slightly nuanced. There's a bit of difference there. And so I decided the recognized authority was the way I wanted to go. That was why I picked.

I think it's interesting because you talk a bit about invisible experts, and that's where so many people find themselves. So I tell the story that I was a ghost designer, which is an unusual thing, like a ghost writer, but I was a ghost designer of products, and until I started my podcast, nobody knew who I was. It is that kind of thing, that recognized portion of it. You can have authority in a digital sense, but until that's recognized by your industry or your niche, it's really not helpful for you.

Yeah, if nobody knows, it's not really authority. If nobody knows that you're great at what you do. What you are is you're an expert, and nobody can take the expertise part away from you. But unless you actually start to show and demonstrate that you're an expert and become known as an authority, I think that's what it's all about. It's becoming known. It's kind of demonstrating and showing. And that's what we're doing by creating podcasts like this one is we're actually showing that we know what we talk about. We're teaching people about what we know. And so we're demonstrating that we can do what we say we can do.

And I think it's so important that we look at this from a content perspective. And that's why I love how you framed up what your show is about, is that the content perspective gives us the digital authority. Because we have to have digital authority and real authority. Right. We can command our subject matter, but we have to have both today because there's so many bots, there's so many stakeholders that control the Access to people that are all, I'm going to say, not real people. They're all search engines. So content is such a critical part of that.

Yeah, I see content fitting into the kind of the journey. I think of this as journey to authority that people go along. And I see that there are certain kind of inflection points along the way. And I'll take you through this. Four stages, really, that I see. So first off, everybody starts out as a novice. And at this point, you may be really, really smart, but you're just not very experienced. And so you need to get experience to move on to the next stage. So people follow a kind of a broad, winding path to get experience in different things, figure out what they like to do, figure out what they're good at, start to develop a point of view and all of those different types of things that you do. And the next step there is being this expert, this invisible expert. And I call it a generalist, because at that point, a lot of people, they do a lot of different things for different types of clients. And so they're not really specialized at that point. And a lot of people, in fact, Most consultants, about 95%, I would say, actually stop there. And they don't want to go on to the next step, which is to specialize. And you can have a really successful business if you stop at that invisible expert stage. And the way that you get your business, the way that you do business development, is you network. You get most of your business from word of mouth and referrals. But if you want the next stage, which is kind of the path to authority, what you need to do is, if you go to the phrase the recognized authority in your field is you have to choose your field, so you have to niche down. And the problem with this is niching down is terrifying because what you're doing is you're choosing one thing and saying no to everything else. So you're kind of turning away opportunity in order to say a bigger yes to this tiny subset of that opportunity. And it's really difficult to do that now. Some people kind of stumble into specialization maybe along their career path. And so some people will find it that way and it won't be difficult for them to do. But for other people, where they have to make a conscious specialization decision, it's really difficult. And our little crocodile reptile brain, it's holding us back. It's terrified.

It's stopping us from niching down.

It's pressing all these, like, fight or flight buttons. It's saying, hey, don't do this, don't do this. This is wrong.

You might have less business. That's what it's freaking you out about, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And there's the old joke, double my price is, oh, my God, I'd lose half my clients. So niching down and losing some of your clients sometimes is a good idea. Having less clients or having a smaller target market and being a more desirable option to that market. That's what we're really talking about. Because what you can do is you can then start to build your authority and credibility in that niche area. That's the hard thing. You can look at the process of specialization. There's a lot of logical stuff you can do to kind of audit your client list and all this kind of stuff to figure out your specialization. But the real decision that you have to make is you have to push through the fear that's associated with that. But if you can do that, when you get to the other side, you can actually become an authority. And that's when a lot of other things open up to you. That's why I'm really interested in this whole kind of problem area. To continue on the four pieces, we got novice and then we have this generalist invisible expert. You can go through the specialization step and then become a specialist. At that point, you're a specialist, but you don't really have much visibility. So the next thing to do is to actually start to build that visibility by publishing. And that's much easier to do because you've got a focus area, so you have a specialized area to publish and create content around. So that's the part that really interests me.

Publishing side. And when you say publishing, you're not just talking about putting out a podcast, you're talking about really publishing in kind of all realms of content, right?

Yeah. So you can try and be everywhere and you can put content everywhere, and people do eventually get to that stage, you'll see that there are authorities out there and they're on every single social network. Usually they have a team behind them, even if they've got a personal brand. But I suggest that people start out small, start out posting on one social network, one primary social network, and then maybe have a primary and a secondary. And then we've got things that are a bit longer form, like podcasts, and then we have things that are short form, like social media posts, like 500 word LinkedIn post, for example. So you can kind of mix up those.

Or TikTok.

Or TikTok.

Or really short TikTok.

Yeah.

We recommend the same thing. I think we're really aligned here because getting used to the social media platform and using it to its advantage is really difficult if you're trying to do all things to all people in all formats, on all channels, without a full team. I mean, you can do it easier with a team, but even still, you have to have a large enough team because you end up specializing there as well. Right. LinkedIn is very, very different from TikTok.

Yeah, absolutely. And you can start off and one of the things that I find is that there's all sorts of options. When you look at all of the different options when it comes to creating content. We have long form, we've got short form. There's another form I would call, which is your signature content. So that's like if you create a book or something like that, could be a documentary or feature film or something like that, but something that is years worth of work. But for the most part, on social media, we're posting long form and short form content of various different types and all the lines are blurred as well. But there's so many different options when it comes to that. We've got, is it audio, is it video, is it text, is it graphics? And then do we go live or do we publish, do we edit?

There's too many choices.

Yeah, there's so many choices. How do you boil it all down? So I think that people should start simple. It's like if you're spinning plates, start with one plate, then add a second. Don't try and start with 10.

I recommend that people start with a platform where they think their specialized customers are. Right, their best customers are. But so many people start with this platform that they feel most comfortable in. That's their platform.

Yeah, it's an interesting one because if you start where you're comfortable, you're probably going to be able to create more content there. You're probably going to be more comfortable doing it. Like, there are plenty of CEOs on Facebook and there are plenty of CEOs on TikTok. Like, if CEOs happen to be your target market, everybody is everywhere. But the numbers that we're talking about, I think that you could choose pretty much any platform and start there, but it probably is better to start where you think there's going to be a higher concentration of them. So for me, I don't like Facebook, I don't like using Facebook, I don't like the ethics of the company. And so I don't hang around personally on Facebook. So I Don't use it much. I wasn't much into LinkedIn, but I've started using it more. I like the fact that there's less religion and politics on there than in other places. So all of the kind of stuff that we. There's probably a bit less angst and it's not as fraught. So I do like that part.

I think they've done a better job of fending it off because their advertising is so much more expensive than the other platforms. So they've kind of prevented that grouping of people that come in and kind of ruin the platform or those companies that come in and just inundate it with ads and content. And it doesn't have good intentions, so it helps.

I think it also is kind of seen as a little bit more boring. I think.

A little bit more boring.

Right. So it's definitely seen as the workplace. And I've seen people giving out about people posting personal stuff up there and what's appropriate, what's not appropriate. But I think it's a good platform, particularly if you're targeting any kind of business people. So for me, it's my primary. And it's interesting. Where does a podcast fit in the mix? Because it's not really a social platform, but it's this content that you're creating and it's got its own kind of distribution system, but you still have to advertise it in other places. So it's really interesting. Like, I'm trying to categorize. You can tell I'm a software engineer. I'm trying to put everything in its correct box. But the problem is all the lines are blurred.

So I look at podcasting as the vehicle. It's just like video. Video is the vehicle. And so where are you going to park it? What road are you going to drive it on? Like, where are you going to use that vehicle? And that's how I look at podcasting. So I don't see it as the end, I see it as the start.

Yeah. And I'm a huge fan of podcasts. I've listened to podcasts since, I think, 2004. I was trying to figure out back when I had to copy MP3 files over a USB connection onto my Creative Zen. There's some people out there who haven't got a clue what that is.

That's really old school. I'm just going to tell you that, like, that is even before me. So if it was that much work, I never would have done it.

Yeah. It's like trying to get podcasts onto Vinyl or something, you know. Yeah.

Although we're going that trend. My 13 year old just got a record player for her birthday. That was what she wanted. And she has a bunch of 80s albums because I'm an 80s mom and then she has a bunch of Beatles albums. So like she's really going old school.

That's cool.

I think we're going back to classics again, so we'll get there. Maybe we will have our podcast on vinyl, who knows? Well, I think it's really interesting. I want to talk some more about specialization because you talk about that frequently actually on your show. And I think it's really important that people start to understand what that means because it is a decision to specialize, it is a decision to niche down. But you come from the engineering world and it's even more important there where you see the value of specialization because you can truly become expert at something. You can truly create innovation, you can create more by specializing in engineering and design world. Because that's what I come from too.

Yeah, I think it's really interesting because my clients are professional services people. They're typically independent consultants of some type. And I started out in the world of software engineering and I got into doing search engine optimization and web design. And as I was doing web design I had more of kind of a consulting focused business. And so when I would be working with my clients, what I found was a lot of the website problems and marketing problems that they came to me with actually business problems. And so I started to kind of veer into the world of management consulting and getting into working with people on their business. It became a big part of what I was doing. So I have this kind of connection with people who do management consulting. So I'm really interested in what they do. But in the world of professional services, management consulting is very interesting when you compare it to doctors and you compare it to lawyers. Doctors and lawyers both as professions have really embraced specialization, whereas in the world of consulting they're much more very general. Very general. And it's really interesting to kind of look at that split because it's totally the opposite when you get into those other professional services and smart people, they genuinely can solve all of these different problems for different types of organizations. But when you start to get into specialization and you start to actually niche down, if you can get past the kind of the initial resistance that you'll have to it, what you find is that you start to develop a much deeper expertise in what you're doing because you're facing the same problems from the same types of clients over and over again, and you start to be able to do a cold read, as Jonathan Stark calls it, where you meet somebody and you already know what the problem that they have is just from the very, very basic information they've given you. And you can actually read the problem and diagnose it and prescribe a solution, even without really talking to them much about it, because you're just so expert at that point. But you only get to that point if you're working over and over on the same problems and you've got this pattern matching that happens, which as humans, we're very good at. Pattern matching.

You're absolutely right. Like, there are so many patterns to podcast failure. This just people who don't succeed in their podcasts, usually they pod fade. They quit their show before 25 episodes. And so we saw so many patterns going on there, and we were plugging those holes so successfully with our own clients to doing the reverse. So we ended up with, like, less than a 7% pod fade rate in a world that's 73 or 75% pod fade rate or more. And so we were looking at that, and we were like, what are we doing that's so different? And when we started to look at the patterns of that, and you're so right about that, that's the idea, is to look at the patterns of it. We actually developed a couple of algorithms that allowed us to quickly assess something just from their feed. We can tell from their feed alone, their podcast feed, whether or not they're going to fail or succeed without intervention. I mean, if they get intervention, they're going to be fine. But without intervention, if they kept along as it is, they're likely to quit. All the indicators are there without ever knowing, because you can't tell from the feed how their numbers are. So without even knowing their numbers, we can tell whether or not they will fail or succeed from the feed. And people are, like, astounded. The fact that we can tell that so we can look at something. And I'll go, oh, yeah, you probably have less than 1,000 listeners a month, right? And they'll be like, how'd you know? Well.

You really don't know that you're projecting it, but you are. Isn't that interesting how those patterns can emerge, though? But this is so true. When someone specializes, they see and can diagnose faster. Like a doctor, they know exactly where the risk lies. As a lawyer and when you're out there and a management consultant, I think the hardest part about that is that you don't know what to say to the person you're about to pitch until they start talking and you go through that. So by the time you're done, you've put in a lot of time actually nurturing your sales because you have to. Because you don't know where to take them.

Yeah. And you don't have a body of work, which is the other interesting thing that happens when you start to publish. You don't have a body of work to lean on. You don't have a body of work to demonstrate and to do that sales pitch for you before you even get on the phone or have a meeting with them. That's the huge advantage as well, of doing all of this publishing on this focused area, this really consistent, focused publishing that you do after you specialized you niche down. All of that content is relevant to that ideal client. So they can binge read, because we're talking about binging. Right.

They can binge read and binge consume content.

I've had clients come to me for coaching where I said, okay, so I want to tell you a little bit about what I think about the journey to authority. It's one of the things I talk about. I say, oh, no, no, it's fine. I've listened to 65 episodes of your podcast. I know what you're talking about.

I'm ready.

Okay, just do it. We can move on to the next step.

Then the sales closes faster. We have the same thing. Exactly.

And it's not even a sales pitch. Like, it's just, how much is it? And how do I pay you?

Yeah. How do I start working with you?

Right, yeah. Like, particularly for people who are maybe introverted or don't like doing sales, that is a game changer. That is massive. I'm not particularly great at doing sales. I'm more of an introvert. It may not come across that way, but, like, I'm a natural introvert.

There's a lot of podcasting introverts. I have met a lot of them. I'm not one of them, but I've met a lot of them.

Well, for me, this, like, what that does for my sales process and makes those sales meetings so much easier. Like, I don't have that natural. I know there are people who can. They're just brilliant at naturally selling. I'm not great at selling myself. I don't want to be pushy, and so I tend to err on the other side and I'm not salesy enough, as some people call it. But I think that's what the content and that's what all of this allows you to do. And the other huge thing is you're not learning on every single project when you're specialized, because that's typically what you are doing is if you're a generalist, every single project is different. So what happens is you're learning on every project so it's less profitable, it's more time consuming, it uses more of your own personal energy. So everything becomes easier when you specialize, even if you don't build your authority, which is interesting.

Yeah, that is very, very true. I love that you talk about that. So let's talk about some publishing best practices, because you're talking about publishing as your sort of final stage of becoming a recognized authority. What does publishing mean to you?

Publishing, for me is creating any kind of content that is relevant for your ideal target market and helps them with the problem that they have and just putting that out into the world. And that could be the different formats we talked about, like short form, long form, some kind of signature format like a book. It could be audio, video, text, graphics, could be a webinar. It could be some sort of regular office hours that you do. There's loads of different ways to do it.

Do you have some best practices or rules that you abide by?

Yeah. Start simple. I think that there's a lot of parallels between building authority content and going to the gym and doing some sort of exercise routine. If you go to a trainer like I did, I had a back injury from playing sports, so I went to a personal trainer. And for the first three months we did stretches and some very easy machines. And it was only after three months that we moved on to using some of the dumbbells and barbells and things. And now a year later, I'm doing deadlifts and squats and all sorts of things that he never would have allowed me to do 12 months ago.

You'd be re injured and unable to pay him again.

So, yeah, this is what it's like when you're starting to create content, because it's not a natural thing, particularly if you haven't been writing and producing content a lot. It's hard at the start. There's a lot of different things that go into it. So start small. Start publishing one post to LinkedIn every week. Start thinking about, if I was to make a podcast, what would it be about? Who would be on it? Would I interview people? Would I do it solo? And start to think about that and plan that and just start adding Bits to the mix, start adding a bit more each time, and then start to create some kind of longer form content like podcast or YouTube channel or something. But start small.

I love that. That's such great advice. I found it so interesting. So you said something. I don't know whether it was like in your very first episode when you were started talking about the show, because I listened to quite a few episodes. That's kind of my model here, as you know. So you talked about wanting to not have invisible experts, but you want to have invisible marketing that you aspire to have invisible marketing, which is probably that same thing about, like not wanting to have a pressure sales process. You don't want to have to have a hefty marketing process. And that's the beautiful thing about authority that really does create that invisible marketing arm that you don't feel like you're working hard to market.

For me, it's not really marketing, and it is, but it's not like it's teaching and learning. That's what you're doing. Like, I wrote a LinkedIn post today, and I wrote it in 10 minutes. I'd say it was about 500 words. It was near the character count for whatever that was. So it took me 10 minutes to write it. But I was thinking about it since this morning, and I knew that there was a particular topic that I wanted to address, but it was very easy for me to write it now. I wouldn't have been able to do that. I wouldn't have been able to Write it in 10 minutes a year ago. Would it take me a lot longer? Because again, that's one of those muscles that builds over time. You just get more used to what you're doing. But the writing of that LinkedIn post, that for me was both teaching, so I was teaching something I was thinking about, but for me it was also learning because I was also kind of formulating my thinking as I was writing it. And that's the part that gets really interesting because it's making those neutrons connect to each other in our brains as we explain things to other people, particularly through writing. For some reason, it tends to reinforce it for us and make those connections. And so what you're doing instead of marketing is you're learning more about what you're doing and you're teaching it to other people.

You're figuring out how to format it so that someone else can learn from it. And that in and of itself is really creating a better sales process, better marketing, messaging. Like all of those things are just happening Naturally in the content creation process.

Yeah, I really love that aspect of it. So for me, that is not logging into Facebook Ad Manager, that's not trying to make Google AdWords work for your business. It's writing about something that you really love and trying to help people that you like working with.

You took your podcast episodes on specialization and you created kind of like a nine episode series. What made you want to do that?

Very simple. I didn't have time to write a book.

So you just used your podcast. I love that.

Yeah. So what I did was I wrote an outline for a book about specialization and I've been trying to guest on more podcasts because I think it's a good way to grow my podcast is to guest on other people's podcasts. So what I did was I took the outline that I had for the book and it was nine chapters, or it was eight chapters, I think. And so what I did was I created a new podcast called the Specialization Podcast. Because what I wanted to do was I, in part, I wanted to have something out in the world that associated me with the process of specialization. And I knew that I didn't have time to go and publish a book on it. So I figure, okay, if I record this as a podcast and put it out as an evergreen podcast, eight episodes, it's probably going to add one, maybe one every quarter. I'll add an episode to it.

Well, you did, that's why there's nine. You added one of your guests that you had on that really talked about specialization specifically.

That's right, yeah. Like a case study. Yeah. But it's this evergreen course that's sitting out there. And the first person I saw do it was Seth Godin. He had startup school and I think he put it up in 2011 or 2012. And it was just the recordings of a workshop that he did. But it is sitting out there generating leads for him and he hasn't updated it in 11 years or whatever it is since then. He hasn't touched it, he's just left it up.

But it generates leads all the time, right?

It's generating leads for him all the time. And so I thought that was genius, but so I wanted to do the same. But I also wanted to have something where if you were introducing me on the podcast, you'll say, hey, this is Alastair, host of the Recognized Authority and the specialization podcast. Because I wanted to get that specialization bit in there so some people would be introduced by the book name, author of the specialization book or whatever it is. And So I wanted to have that kind of idea that I would be associated with the concept of specialization. And so this, for me was an easy way to do it. I took the outline of the book, I drilled down a little bit further. Right. Kind of. I went a bit more granular on the points. Then I just turned on my camera and I actually recorded as a video as well. I just spoke to each point as an outline and then I topped and tailed it. I actually took them all. I did each one in a single take. And if I messed it up, what I do is I just deleted and started again. But it took me about a day to do that.

Wonderful. And this is one to listen to all of you out there. Because if you really want to understand what Alastair is talking about in terms of specialization and what it really means to niche down, this is the podcast to listen to. It's eight episodes, easy for you to take and consume. Understand what that really means, especially if you're afraid. If that whole idea of niching down just scared the heck out of you, then go listen to this and you'll start to understand more and start to see where the value impact is. That's what drives that back. I bet you anything. As that goes more and more, as you get more exposure to that, this is where you're going to get more and more client leads, right? They're going to come from this.

Yeah, I hope so. And I also want it to be out there because I know how hard that specialization process is, and I would just love for people to go through it and just help them and never have to contact me. Just be able to do it based on that. That would be awesome, too. So, yeah, it's great to have something like that just out in the world.

Well, let's talk about our three things, because that's what we always do on the show, and I want to do that before we end here today getting great guests. You have some really interesting guests, and they're not the guests that have been on every show around there. And that's probably because you have a region that's new to me.

I'm from California, so I don't necessarily get to hear the people who you're connecting with, which is amazing. But how do you find those great guests and how do you vet them to make sure that they're right for your show?

What I do is I try and connect with interesting people on LinkedIn and I look for who they're talking to and commenting, and I'll look for people who look like they could be interesting guests. And some of my guests are really well known. Like I had Alan Weiss, who's written 65 books in the world of consulting. He is super well known in that world. Also really polarizing character, very interesting. And I've had David C. Baker, who wrote the Business of Expertise, and Chris Stoe and Marcus Shert and Marc Shaffer, Rochelle Moulton. So I've had some really high profile people in the world of consulting. But then I've had people, and it's literally the first podcast they've ever been on. And I found a guy who's a really interesting character, Norbert Schwartz. And this might be interesting for you. He's a provost professor, which is a professor of two fields in marketing and psychology. And he did a study with his colleague where they took audio and they degraded the quality and they tested whether the degraded quality impacted how people thought of the people who were speaking. They did the same with video. And what they found was that if you had better audio or video, that people would see you as smarter, more likable, and that your work was more important. And so, I mean, who wouldn't want to do that?

So let's not put out crappy sound, everyone, as we're doing our podcast. Right?

Yeah. Right. So we both have put a lot of work into our video and our audio here.

We were talking about it before. Yeah. Because of our cameras.

It's something we care about. And everybody listening to this, who's thinking about doing a podcast, you should be thinking about this. It's more important probably than you think. And I know everybody says, hey, you know, you just gotta start. I think there is a part to that. You do have to just start. But spend a hundred dollars on a decent microphone. Don't use like your iPhone or something like that. It's not a huge amount.

It's going to make a huge difference.

Yeah. So anyway, I found him because I heard of this study through another podcast that I listened to, but they hadn't interviewed him. So I said, okay, I'm going to go and interview this guy. So, yeah, I find. Guess I don't want to run this too long on you, Tracy, but I find good guess by kind of looking through LinkedIn.

But it sounds to me like you're really finding them because you're interested. You're interested in having that conversation, which is really great. I mean, I think that's one of the best ways to keep yourself energized, keep yourself going on your podcast, is to be interested yourself.

You can probably tell, but I really love this stuff, so I find it really interesting. So, yeah, that helps. I try and keep a gender balance on the podcast as well. I try and keep it as close to 50, 50 as I can. It's not always easy. And sometimes I'll have a run of male guests and then sometimes I'll counterbalance that with a run of female guests on just to kind of try and keep that 50, 50 ish. And just keep trying to make sure I don't end up being one of those mantles.

Well, you know what, you're doing a good job because I hired some great women on your show as well as men, so all of us run into that problem. I usually end up with batches too, because I'll sometimes go at a women's event and then I'll end up with a bunch of women who booked on my calendar at once. So it happens like that to all of us. But let's talk listeners, because listeners side, I know is the hardest thing. And you said you were going to be. You're reaching out to more podcasts to be on because you would like to increase your listener base. But really, is there anything that you found that works for you and where you start to see spikes of listeners?

No, because I haven't really looked at the stats too closely.

Ah, you're one of those. I love it. You're Zen about your stats.

I'm trusting the process. I figure if I make the best podcast that I can. And by the way, I think there's something important here. And maybe you'll agree or disagree with me on this one, but I think the people who listen to a lot of podcasts make for better podcasters. I think that.

I think they do too. And I can't tell you how many people I've interviewed on this show who don't listen to podcasts at all. And I can tell the difference in the content. Like it's not the sound of it or anything or the format. Like people always think, oh, it's like, oh, I must be following a show format model. If I listen to a lot of podcasts, it's not that at all. It's the sort of the direction of the content is so much more listener focused.

And you can tell, yeah, that's interesting. I didn't know what it was. But I do have a pretty singular focus on trying to make it as good as possible for the listener. Like, that's what I do for growth, is I try and make it as good for the listener as Possible, because I figure if I focus on them, then the rest should follow. I know that's not always the case, but it should follow. And yeah, I am getting a more podcast. It is tough to reach out. I don't want to use one of those numbers game kind of guesting services. So it's kind of asking individual people, but it's starting to work. The numbers are okay at the moment. Now after about a year, I'm at. What's your guess, by the way, just before I tell you the numbers for my guests.

For what?

For downloads.

For your number of downloads. Oh, I think you've got to be in the thousands by now. You know, it just doesn't make sense that you wouldn't be because of the number of episodes you have and because of the quality of the content. It's a really good niche area. Right. People are interested in learning more about it. So it's a searchable area. There are a couple of little things that you can do to improve it, but we can always talk about that at any time, right?

Yeah. So you're right. By the way, it's at around 3,000 downloads a month now, which is, I think as we record this. I've just published episode 72 and it's just over a year because I started, I launched with eight episodes and then every so often, like probably once a quarter, I've added an extra bonus episode. So it's at about 72 or so right now. And I'm happy enough with that because I think it's quite targeted. I think it's the people who are listening.

It's very targeted and that's why it works. And you know what? I have a couple of clients who shows never come out, never exceed 5,000amonth, and they're okay with that. I have even some who never exceed a thousand a month, and they get more business from that than they know what to do with. So it just depends on where you are and what your client follow through is on that. Like, are they reaching out to you? Do they feel like you're accessible? And so let's talk about that monetization. What is your monetization strategy and plan for the show? Is it just to create the content and let everything else in your business do it, or do you want to have money made directly from the show?

Yeah, I guess this feeds back to the kind of singular focus. I hate listening to podcasts where there's like eight minutes of sponsor stuff at the start. I get it. I understand. And like having sponsors pay your Mortgage, I can imagine is really nice. But I know some shows and like I will click the forward button in Overcast. I'll click that like six times because I know that will skip to the end of the sponsor readouts. I kind of made a decision and maybe I'll change my mind, but I made a decision a while back that I wasn't going to have sponsors, that it was just going to be promotion of the guest and what they do and then of my own stuff. So I would do promote my own stuff in it with a call to action at the start and end. And some of the things that I promote in those CTAs, they are like free content for people. But that's what it is. And then I monetize through coaching services. So I do one on one coaching and I've just started a group program as well.

Yeah, interesting. Well, I think that's a good choice for your show. I mean, I just really think that it would lose something in its service and in losing something and sort of getting too over advertised. Right. Even with your own promos, I've seen people who take it way too far. And so even with that, I really think that you've got a really good balance between letting people know what you do and making sure that you're being so listener focused. Right. It's really the driver. So let's talk about your binge factor real quick. So I'm listening to your show. What I found really is that the waves of impact that you're creating on your show is so interesting because you've decided to specialize and I love that you've, you've niched down your own show like by shifting it to the recognized authority. I can almost watch the process of your content getting more and more specialized and refined as you go forward. And that is something when I can see what you do in action. I know that you're going to be a good coach. I know you're going to be a good consultant. I know you're going to be good to work with because I can see that process happening and you're willing to say it doesn't have to be one way. And that says I'm shifting with what's going on in the world. I'm shifting with what's going on in my business and I'm shifting with what's right for you, my listener and my potential client.

Yeah, I love that. And I guess I hadn't really thought about the fact that I specialized within my own show, but yeah, I guess I Did. Yeah, I did tighten up the focus. I was thinking of it more as rebranding because that's what I did. The kind of the mechanics of it. But, yeah, that's what it was. It was actually tightening the focus.

Well, but some people rebrand to rebrand. Like, they throw out the old and they bring in the new, but you're not doing that. You're refining as you rebrand, which is really, I think, personally, that is the way that you should rebrand. If you hire a branding expert and they take out and they throw everything away, they're just leaving their mark, their style, their viewpoint onto you. They aren't learning anything about from where you are. Refinement and rebranding, it's really not done often enough.

Yeah, I think it really worked for me. And apart from like, the graphics and all that, like, that stuff is important, but I think it's really like the message and the focus, that's really what it's about. And that was. I'm really happy with how that worked out.

Now, as you're moving forward, where do you see improvements? What are you going to be working harder on coming up in the next six months, and what are you going to double down on? Because it's really working for you?

Well, we may touch on workflow if we have time, because it'd be interesting to see.

Well, let's talk about that if that's what you.

I think I have a pretty good workflow.

So you're going to double down on your workflow. I love it.

Yeah, I think that I have a pretty good workflow. I'll connect and schedule with the guest and all of that process is automated. Once I send them the invite. And I have one button, I have a stream deck that I can click a button and it'll paste in the invitation and the FAQ for the guests and then where they can schedule. And so that process is not quite automated, but as close to being automated as you can get. Then they'll schedule and we'll turn up and record it. And then from there, I don't have to do anything until it's ready from the editor. So all I have to do is I have a meeting with my assistant. We call the podcast production meeting, and what we do is I'll write the show notes, we will get the guest intake form. We'll use that to create the title. The title used to take me 10 minutes to do. Now we have the guests apply it most of the time, unless we want to rewrite it. But mostly it'll be suggested by the guest and then the show notes themselves. Probably takes me about 35 minutes to write. Based on I'll be looking through the transcript of the call, sort of the interview, and looking for what was really important, what stood out. And then I'll pick two quotes as well. So I'll give the show notes. So I have a template for those. I give that to my assistant, Aiko, and she'll take that and she'll take the two quotes and she'll do all the graphics and everything and that's it. So for a 45 minute interview, I have one hour call with the guest and then the production process takes me probably just under another hour. So it probably takes me two hours for every episode. So I'm pretty happy with how that goes.

I love that. That's pretty good. I mean, you know, if it's a one hour show and it takes you twice as long instead of four times as long, you're doing really well. That is a good workflow and a good process.

Yeah. And the other thing is right Now I have 10 episodes in the can ready to go and I have another six scheduled. So I'm actually scheduled like right up to, I think, November. So I've got plenty. I was thinking about switching to two a week, but I think that would be hard to pull back from that if I wanted to. So I'm going to stick with one a week. But what I might do is record some more solo episodes and stick them in there.

Nice. And do little bonuses now and again.

Yeah, because one of the things about authority is it's interesting, like, depends on. Depends on how you approach it. But when you were interviewing a guest, typically you're showcasing their expertise. Now sometimes you'll have a back and forth conversation. In particular, you do that a lot on this show and so you showcase your own expertise as a host. But depending on the guest, like for example, I had Alan Weiss, he wrote 65 books. He's not going to have a back and forth conversation with you.

It's going to be very one sided.

Yeah.

And deservedly so.

And I'm okay with that. Like, I have huge respect for his knowledge and his body of work. He's just done so much, written so much. But other guests will be willing to have a more conversational back and forth. And I would like to move to having more of those conversations because it's my podcast and I want my listeners to see me as an authority as well, particularly new listeners who haven't listened to me before. If they're meeting me for the first time. I don't want it just to be me kind of worshiping at the altar of the guest.

Right. The reality is there is this perception, audience perception that's going on, which always says, whoever the host of the show is, they are an authority. There is this recognition of the person asking questions is always at a higher authority level than the guest because you get to choose who comes on your show. So that is in and of itself a power position. Right. And so I always love that. It's like Oprah Winfrey interviewed hundreds of celebrities who had more celebrity than her, but she had way more power and in the end more money. So, like, let's look realistically at what that means for us, Right. As the host. It's okay to be a host, but I do love that idea of having your audience listens to you. They love you and they love your viewpoint. They love what you bring to the show. They love how you ask questions or they wouldn't follow you. Right. I mean, there's a reason they're there for you. So having a show where you can drop in and say, here's what I learned and here's how I applied this, that's a powerful episode that they're going to not skip.

Yeah. So I've been thinking about doing that as an out of sequence episode, like as a bonus, because my podcast typically drops on a Monday morning, 6.01am Irish time. That'll be like 1am for East coast and it's probably the day before for you.

The day before. It's still nighttime, but I want it.

To be on People's players in the morning. And in fact, I have a regular listener in Barcelona and he listens first thing on a Monday morning on his drive. He's told me I've actually had him on the show, Joe Jacoby. He's actually an Olympic gold medalist of all things. So really interesting. Like this is the other thing about having a podcast. You get to talk to really interesting people, you know. But I know Joe is listening to the podcast like first thing on a Monday morning. So I want to make sure I have it there for him so I will not miss it. So for Joe, it's there.

I love that. That's so great. When you do know your listeners names or you have a sense of them, that changes the show dynamic. I think that's such a turning point in your show when you finally are like, my listeners are reaching out to me and now I know their names because I would start to See their faces or hear their names in my head and thinking, oh, I'm talking to Joe, I'm talking to Jennifer.

It was really cool as well. I just started a group for the first time, a group coaching group. And it was the first time I was doing a group coaching group. And prior to that I was working a lot, one on one with people. But it's really interesting because now I have several people on the same call and they're all listening to my podcast separately. That was really cool because just the dynamic was there. Like, I could see that they all had listened to the show. And there's something that you get from that, because I think that as a podcaster, I think that you can go through the dip where you start to feel, oh, geez, is this actually working? And I'm putting a lot of stuff out into the world. I'm not really getting much of responses like, are these downloads really people actually listening or is it just bots or something? And when you start to get that feedback, I think it really gives you energy, really gives you a lift. So I think that's really important.

Absolutely. Well, I was thinking about this as our final question here before we go, and that is that we don't really know you've been talking about your coaching business. What did you end up specializing in? Where is your specialty and your niche and your management consulting?

Well, it was first off, I had this generalist website agency called Website Doctor.

Which made sense back in the day, right?

Yeah. In fact, I still love that brand. The business still runs and I've got like hosting and maintenance clients and stuff. And actually it helped to fund the mission for my podcast, which is great. But it was the really generic generalist. I was all things to all comers. I had so many different types of clients. I won't list them. We don't have time. But what was happening was all of the content I was creating was terribly bland. So it was really boring. And it didn't really apply to anybody because I tried to make it work for everybody. And that was when I started to niche down and specialize. So that was when I picked, okay, I want to focus on people like me, who I saw as independent consultants. And I do want to focus on this marketing part. And so that's where the marketing for consultants came from, was me focusing on that part. And then as I niched down further, it became helping those independent consultants to become a recognized authority. And so that's kind of where it niched down to. That's specifically what I Help people with. Number one is the specialization stage, which a lot of people need help with.

They need to figure that out for themselves, right?

Yeah. And then the second stage is the publishing part. And the interesting thing about authority publishing authority content is there's so many different factors involved, but some people need help with that. And so actually what the. What the group I have right now is focused on is authority publishing. So that's what we're working on right now.

Well, Alistair, you have brought a great podcast into the world. I'm so glad and grateful that you're doing that. And I'm glad that you reached out to me on LinkedIn, because that's how we met. And I'm really glad that you did because this has been so much fun and such a great learning for me to listen to your show. So all of you out there, this is what I always say. If I can learn something from this show and you are looking at me as authority now, you need to transfer that interest over to Alistair and listen to the recognized authority. Check out the show and listen for yourself. Why there is so many things that you can learn from so many diverse views on building authority in podcasting and publishing in general.

Awesome. Love it. Thank you, Tracy.

Oh, my gosh, I enjoyed that conversation so much. I love talking to someone with that mindset that Alistair has. I mean, just thinking about, like, that niching down process and also about thinking about this as you want to come from behind, from out, from being invisible. Right? I joke about this, but I really was a ghost designer before I started my podcast. It's not a joke. It's exactly what I was like. So if you're being hidden in the marketplace, you're a hidden expert. That's not a place to be. That's not getting the message out to those that really need you. And that's, I think, the one thing we didn't quite say here, but that's what encompasses everything that Alastaira is doing is like, when we really look at all of this and we're really thinking about where we want to play in the marketplace, it's not about us being out there and being the experts. That's important, but that's for us. But there are so many people out there looking for you and they can't find you because you didn't do a good job of your digital marketing, of your digital footprint, of creating that authority digitally. So the search engines aren't serving you up and you aren't doing a really good job of creating that social proof. And that authority association that happens from guesting on shows, doing your own podcast, having your own content, having this authority platform underneath you and specializing down so that they know that when they need you for this, they can find you. So that's really where I think Alistair's like narrowing refinement of everything that he's done and the way that he coaches his clients is just brilliant. So you really need to listen to the show. It's fantastic. The recognized authority. Don't forget to go out there and subscribe, take a listen and of course, come to the blog post for this episode@thebingefactor.com where you'll be able to find and connect to everything Alistair McDermott works on. So thanks everyone for listening. I'm so glad you were here to hear this conversation and a great way for me to learn some more and network with other people. So you're coming along the ride with me. Wouldn't it be great for you if you were able to do that regularly? So thanks everyone for listening. I'm Tracie Hazzard and I'll be back with another podcast authority figure, another bingeable podcaster.

You've been listening to. 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.