Podcasting Your Way To Note Investing With Scott Carson of The Note Closers Show 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 noise with the binge factor.

Hey everyone, welcome to Feed. You'd Brand center of Influence I'm Tracy Hazzard and I have another influencer to talk with you today. And this is unusual because I don't think I've written an article about the real estate industry yet. So my first real estate influencer and of course it should absolutely be Scott Carson, the note guy. So Scott, I mean we've been known each other I think three years, maybe.

Almost about four years now. Yeah.

Yeah. And so you have been an active real estate investor since 2002, so quite some time ago. And you've been through the ups and downs in the industry which seem to be rumored that we might be heading into again. So tuning into your show would be ideal. You have the no Closer show, as you can see behind him if you're on video. So Scott does a lot of video audio blogs. He's got the whole thing going for him. And you've got multiple shows which we'll talk about in a little bit. But you're all everything is@weclosenotes.com and so that is an Austin, Texas based real estate firm and you purchased over half a billion dollars in distressed debt for your own portfolio and purchases assets in over 30 states across the United States. So you have a lot of experience in different jurisdictions and other things and you've helped thousands of other real estate investors make money along the way. You are highly sought after speaker on distressed debt marketing and raising private capital and you've been featured in Investors Business Daily, the Wall Street Journal Inc.com and Scott is also the host of the popular podcast, as we said, the no Closer show, which has a couple of spinoffs which we will talk about. You have a YouTube channel, Facebook and growing social media channels everywhere. You are an avid sports fan, which I know because you and Tom always have to have some kind of rivalry when it comes to baseball and football and you also love pets. So Scott, thanks for joining me today on the center of Influence. And I mean, I can't think of someone who's been more adept at marketing in the real estate niche than you have. So I'm excited to talk about that in specifics because it's a little bit different. There's a lot of people marketing in here that are big, big companies, and then there's also a lot of scams.

Yeah, there is a lot. And it's. We see a lot of that in the real estate side of things too. Flash in the pans. People that aren't really. They're not walking the walk before they talk to talk. You know what I mean?

Absolutely.

Like I said, I've been around since 2002. So we, you know, we had the, as I like to say, the mortgage run up. I owned a mortgage company for years, was an active investor, and then of course, the music stopped in 2008. And I got off the mortgage thing as the markets crashed and jumped on to the just the buying the distressed debt side of things. And it still is a very Nichy niche thing, but it's. There was nothing really around for that niche that opened up. It's a true secondary market. And so I was fortunate long ago. I had some good mentors, I think. I don't know if you know this, but Roland Frazier was a mentor of mine long ago. Roland's a good guy, so he helped change me a lot, changed my mindset a lot. Something I was in the real estate side. I realized that really was in marketing for the most part, and that we're all in the marketing phase. I know a lot of people like to go, no, I'm in sales, or.

I'm, everybody's in sales. Right. You're always selling somebody something, whether it's.

Exactly ABC or kids, right? That's right. Abc. Always be closing, whatever.

But you have to always be marketing too, right?

Abm. Abm, exactly. Always be marketing. So I've always embraced that aspect of things. I mean, I went to school for Mass Con to begin with before I got into business. So I kind of like the whole idea of that. Video and webinars that we've done for years has helped us kind of grow our niche because there was really nobody teaching my little niche thing of distressed debt over the last 10 years. So we've really leveraged media webinars, really embrace the podcasting thing in the last couple years to really hone in and own our niche of distressed debt. I mean, there may be 10,000 true note investors in the country out there, and there's a lot of other real estate investors, but I've always believed that we run a media company now more than Anything else?

What made you decide to get into podcasting as a part of it? Had you been listening to other podcasts or had, you know, had you been watching that? I know we might have pushed you a little bit, but.

Pushed a little bit, but that's okay. But. So we had a couple students that started a podcast that was one of the few note investing podcasts. Some of my really good friends, previous people that worked with me, and I was really excited about them starting new things. Like, oh, that's their thing. It's not that many. I don't want to step on their toes. Think I'm copying. I was just really proud of them and then found out that they were stopping the podcast because the two guys were going their separate ways. I was like, whoa, that's silly. I think we should really do. And I see an opportunity there. Let's jump into it. And of course, I'd met you guys a few months earlier and we were talking about that and you were doing podcasts for somebody else, I was like. And then when Tom told me that I didn't have a lot of extra work above and beyond what I was already doing as far as regular videos, regular content, I was doing Facebook lives on almost a daily basis already. And he's like, oh, I gotta do all this editing. I'm a one take guy. You know, like it or you don't for the most part. He's like, no, well, there's what people that can do that. I was like, what? I don't have to do it all my staff, let's do it.

I don't have to do it all. And you can leverage what you're already doing and maybe just shift it a little bit. Right, you pivoted a little bit.

Exactly. And so that's what we did. And oh my gosh, it just took off. Took off like crazy. We have been. We own our niche basically more than anything else. And it's done so much good stuff for driving in listeners and people to our workshop. For people that want to invest in deals or people that want to buy deals, that's helped us out tremendously that so much that we've really changed our focus. Instead of it being the wcn, the We Close Notes brand to really being the Note Closure show is one of our most focal and out there brands that have really helped us grow and spreading the word on what we do on a regular basis. Because I do almost a daily podcast episode at least usually three episodes a week and we've got to 500 episodes in our first three years and we've gotten, we're just south of 400,000 downloads. We're now in 17am FM radio stations across the country and we've embraced that media brand and really try to leverage every facet that we can to help, as I like to say, spread our note web across the country.

So now you had a pretty decent sized list before you started. Have you seen some changes in that? Have you seen lower attrition rates? Or what have you seen in sort of nurturing that list for yourself?

That's a great question. We've worked hard to build that list and honestly we didn't buy a list. It's all been from like my 10 years of blue collar going out and speaking 30, 40 times a year at different real estate clubs or sponsoring different conferences and doing that. I've actually seen a couple good things have happened as the markets change and rebounded. We've had a lot more people coming in that have found our information from our videos and from our podcast episodes or me actually appearing in other people's podcasts. So that's. We've seen our opt ins increase dramatically. We've seen the people that subscribed to our YouTube channels and to the podcast really kind of exponentially grow. Because the fact is that we, we've added another whole nother channel with the podcasting side to really where people were looking for stuff, you know, and then. And the engagement. We've always done really well in our YouTube videos as far as engagement and average times. But it's really amazing to get phone calls from people saying, hey, I heard you on somebody else's show. I binged your six months of videos and your episodes and I'm ready to sign up for your coaching program or I want to put 100 grand with you. I'm like, whoa, whoa, hang on, slow down a little bit, let's talk go from there first.

Well, you know, you were the first person I ever heard who uses this term, which was coopetition. And you have a lot of your competition on your show and you believe in that. And I think this the model of that. I mean, podcasting is kind of known for that. It's known for us all like, oh well, you have a marketing company too. Come on my show, like no big deal. So that's really interesting. Has that kind of helped that relationship, building that community?

It's hard to say there because it's worked pros and cons. One big pro is people have always known me. I've even had my, I Guess you could say my rival say, yeah, Scott Carson, he knows how to market his students, how to close deals. And I chuckle, because we do. And that's what you should be, if you're in the real estate business and education side of what you're doing, closing deals. And the people you teach should be going to do the same thing as well. And that's what we've always pride ourselves on. So it's people who maybe discounted me earlier on. I've been like, well, okay, yeah, we can't ignore Scott now, you know, And I laugh.

He's everywhere now. We can't ignore him.

Exactly. Or they've come to me and said, hey, we'd like for you to help us market. I'm like, whoa, wait a second here. Am I about to be punked? You know, is the actual future going to jump out? But that's been a good thing. And then the reverse side is that we've also had. We've grown in other places. We built a name for ourselves. And whenever you have any type of success where you're doing things that others won't do, this is something that's a lot. I've seen a lot of our peers and entrepreneurs struggle with that. You're not gonna make everybody happy. And luckily, I've had some great mentors along the way that taught me that I'm not gonna make 100% of people happy. I'm gonna make, you know, I get the 33% of people that are gonna love you no matter what you do. 33% of people are gonna hate you because they don't know you. They don't know what, they don't care. They just got a dark soul for a hole, a heart, basically. Okay, and then your focus should be on the 33% of people that you love. And then that middle part that don't know you.

You know, that's so interesting because we both know the Young, so we know Erin Young and Michelle Young. And Michelle once said to me that one of her mentors, who is a psychiatrist, was telling her that in school they were taught that there's going to be, you know, a third of the people who are going to be successful no matter what you do. Your job is not to get in their way. So you got to, you know they're going to be successful. They just, for whatever reason, believe they need a guide. There's a third that will never be successful. No matter how hard you work with them, it's not going to happen. It's the ones in the middle, that third, that you can take action with something you say something, you do something, you provide them is the catalyst to move them into the top third. And that's the biggest role that you have, is what do I need to be for that player, what kind of information do I provide for them, and how can I move them forward and how can they move themselves forward? And that's one of the reasons I love podcasting, because in a way, it's. It's passive. You start wherever you are and you move yourself to where you need to go by what you consume.

I love the same thing, too. What's funny is if you look at people that have been around as educators in the real estate space or the notes space for a while, it's kind of the two schools of thought. One is the old school thought where I'm going to hoard all the secrets I'm not going to share. I'm going to give you a little bit and then blow smoke up your tail to get you to sign up for a big run to the back of the room, sign up for the credit card, for a big coaching program. It doesn't deliver anything. And then the new school is. Which I believe in, is I was very fortunate enough to have mentors that helped me out early on in the notes space. For years. I've always believed that if somebody's really, truly hungry and you give them the tools, they'll, like you said, they'll go in that middle 33% and then they'll move to the top 33% and you win because success breeds success and the cream rides at the top. And that's how we've just focused. I mean, that's what we've always done with our podcast, is give a little nugget here, a nugget here, nugget here. And it's kind of like a chain. We give a link to the chain each day with either the people that we bring on or some rivals, which is great. Fine. Well, I'm fine to have them on. Doesn't bother me. Hopefully they'll market it and share that episode so I'll get more subscribers is the idea. Right. But the thing, too, is that I give away a lot of content that most people have never given. And they're like, why would you give that away? I'm like, why not? It doesn't do me any good. I mean, I'm using it for my business, my students. If somebody else is going to see the value in it, they're going to realize, oh, that Scott Carson might just know what the heck he's doing talking.

About and there might be more there, right? Exactly. So normally I ask everyone what interesting or funny things happen to you, but you kind of had some not funny things happen to you recently. So, you know, it's actually really more common. I did a whole episode on it, on being trolled. And so I get trolled very frequently as an in columnist when I write about women in tech and I if I write about women in gaming, it's even worse. And I get trolled on Twitter and I have actually had to have people shut down. But we get podcast trolled as well. And you've been more than that. You've been completely social media trolled. So you want to tell a little bit about how those things happen and then what have you been able to do about that?

So this is a big thing, any type of investment. Things don't always go right. There's sometimes they go good times, they don't go good. The beautiful thing about what we have done is that we have done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of deals and being through an up and a down and we always know that, hey, keep rocking along for it. So we've had a couple of deals that have drugged out a lot longer than expected because we're busy foreclosing and a variety of things. We've always taken care of our investors, even if it did go south. I wrote a check out of my own pocket to take care of. Well, we've had a couple investors that didn't want to agree to payment plans or other things like that to be made. So they decided to take their voice to the public to go on, you know, go online and share. Oh, hey, Scott's behind and he's been sued all these times. I kind of chuckle like, yeah, I've been sued. If you're in real estate, as our buddy Aaron Young says, it's not if you're going to be sued, it's when are you going to be sued. But we've always taken care of our.

Talk about product design. Same thing, right? Yeah.

It's not if, it's when. And I've always, always pride myself, even from the downturn over a decade ago, we've always taken care of our investors. You're not in business for 10 plus years if you haven't done that. Okay. Unfortunately, in today's social media, you got one troll and then you've got anybody who dislikes you, anybody you've had as.

A client, anybody who's just a little Bit jealous of what you're working on and your success?

Yeah, yeah, We've had a lot. We've had people jump on and it's just. It's very. It's been very kind of stressful the last couple of weeks, but that's okay.

I mean, yeah, but, you know, and this is the thing, is that what always shocks me about it, Scott, is that there are people there who don't even know you. They have no experience in that. We have that. We just had popped up our page and we had somebody on it, like writing us a bad review and they weren't one of our clients. And unfortunately, the social media tools have these ridiculous recourse, like you can't even get through the process to get stuff pushed down and removed. And for the most part, it's really, really difficult to even make any of that happen.

Yeah, and that's the thing is we've had people that have reached out that wanted to get my opinion on the thing. Like, great, I'm glad to comment to you. I'm not going to go onto a social media and get in a fight, a mudslinging contest, because that doesn't win. It only makes you look bad. And we've chosen sometimes a difficult thing because sometimes you want to fight with somebody. You know, we're in Texas, so not threatening anybody, but I know what I'm trying to get out here is that we've taken the high road. We've talked to our council, talked to stuff like that. We're doing the right things. Just keep doing what you're doing. People will say ugly things. And then that's the thing that you realize is, like you said, people get jealous. People aren't going to do the things that you do. People would rather throw mud than actually do the work. And that's what we've seen. People that don't know me, never taken a class from me, never invested with me throwing mud. And I just have to sit here and just kind of chuckle.

So I work with a lot of Amazon sellers, so we see this happen all the time. We have lots of counterfeit products and people pop up and bad reviews. And then now the big thing is good reviews. They write overly good reviews, which trips the algorithm, which sounds like you bought your reviews and you get shut down. So it's like, you know, it's crazy, like the stuff that they've managed to come up with. So this is all going on here. But I think the point that I also want you to just talk a little bit about is that you do have to also recognize that you have some sponsors on your show. And that costs you. It costs you your sponsors, whether it's temporary or permanent, you know, still too early to tell. But you got to communicate with them as well. And. But they have to protect their brand. That's what they do.

So that's the thing that we did immediately. I mean, I reached out to our closest allies, our closest friends or sponsors, you know, and communicate, hey, I've got this going on. We've got a couple deals are dragging on. Here's where we'll be done with this in 30 days or 60 days. We did have one sponsor cancel with us, and they're like, hey, we're canceling this for a while. Get cleared up and we'll talk about coming back on after a while. And they appreciate the fact that we've always been, you know, we've helped grow them dramatically over the last couple years and been their biggest refer of new accounts and things like that. But it's just, you know, I want to reach out to them, say, hey, here's what's going on. I think that's the biggest thing that people to realize you want to communicate that with your close friends or close sponsors, the people that are helping out with that so that they know what to expect when a troll pops up. Because people will say, and I have to laugh, like, man, this is a good work of fiction that these people are saying. Because they're saying all sorts of things like, that's never happened. That's never happened. And just you have to realize people will throw that. You don't want to get in a much swinging fight. I had a friend of mine who literally was all excited, got on there like, dude, I appreciate it, but I don't making it worse for you.

Don't defend me. Although I love it. Thank you for that.

I appreciate it. Love you deep here. You know, we're boys. Take it down. I don't need you. We'll handle it. And that's what's happened, is that people had their 30 minutes of bashing and trying to take a pound of flesh. Just sit there and keep doing what you're doing. We've kept doing episodes. We've keep closing deals. We're kind of business as usual because we know we'll work it out. We've communicated with our closest allies to say what's going on. And that's the thing is it's not fun. You know, spouses.

Happens. Yeah.

Can be very stressed out.

We had that happen, actually. With a couple of guests. So we've had some guests on, and their spouses, like, write nasty notes and reviews about what a scam this is. And, you know, it makes you think as a host, you. Makes you worried. You're like, did I just bring someone on that wasn't ethical? I thought I did some research on them. And then you come to find out it's just a nasty dispute in the background that has nothing to do with business. And so I'm like, okay, we don't have to take this down. Right?

So. Right. Well, it's the thing too, is what's funny some of these posts is that people have reached out to me and say, hey, we read everything. That just sounds like business is normal is what happened with you. You're going through. And you can see that people will crazy themselves. The crazy people will crazy themselves. Even if they're, you know, like today people are creating fake profiles and fake Twitter account, and they'll just go, but sad. And I chuckle. I laugh. I absolutely laugh at this. And this is the only thing you can do. I have to laugh at the effects that some people will do who will hide behind fake stuff trying to bash it, because that means they're not closing deals. That means they're not the ones that are working the work. And so we're just gonna keep cranking out and keep doing our stuff. And I talk with Steph, who's my spouse, and say, listen, in six months, this is not gonna make a dang bit of difference. In 30 days, we'll be on this and be rock and roll and be better and have a thicker skin for the better part of it. We'll make some changes, obviously, business wise, but it's okay. I mean, I'm not a crook.

No, he's totally not, guys. He's the opposite of that. Scott is super genius.

If I was, I would not be where I'm at today. I'd be.

No. I've met so many of your students who rave about every. Even if they're not good at it. Like, even if they said, at the end of the day, this is not for me, I could never do what Scott does. But they rave about the service that you gave them in the interim. So. Yeah. So, absolutely. Well, so let's talk some little bit more about podcasting. So what's some advice you have to someone who wants to start out, who thinks that this might be good for their business?

I will tell you this. It's good for every business. It is good for every business out There. Like, I'll give you an example. What we've done, we've inspired my trainer to start his own podcast. We've inspired. Steph is actually doing her pet podcast and doing more episodes.

I'm so excited. I heard she's done some new episodes. So Fur Babies podcast three episodes in.

The last three days. We're excited about that. Wow. But that's the thing, is it works for everybody. Because what happens more than anything else, especially the real estate side, people like, oh, I'm a Keller Williams agent, or I'm a JB Goodwin, or I'm a REMAX agent, nobody cares about the brand. They care about the person. And we joked earlier about how we're all in sales or we're all in marketing, we're all in media. Podcasting gives you, the listener out there, you, the person that hosts, the opportunity to really share you, your image, your message. What makes you different than just a Billboard or A1 video here? Because your listeners will listen to you. And I'm not for everybody. I'm the first one telling everybody. I am not always everybody's cup of tea. And I don't take offense to that. But I know I'm not going to make everybody happy. But the thing is that 33% that will love you, they'll listen to it and they'll love you even more because it's such a great way. As long as you're honest and you're not sitting blowing smoke up and being fake on a podcast, being who you truly are will help every industry. In the three years I've been podcasting, I've really worked and talked with a lot of people at different podcasting summits. And if I find out that people have a podcast, I asked them about it and what goes on with it. Just be yourself. And it's become one of the most valuable things in their businesses because it does drive business. And we were just at. Steph and I were just at a big podcasting event. They were talking about how listeners of podcast consume 86% of the content, where it's like 11% for YouTube videos are like 1% is like a Facebook Live thing. And that's the thing. You got to realize you're in the media business. You want to be where the ears are at. And more and more people are coming to the ears to listen, to get more stuff done. So podcasting, look, don't wait, just do it. And it's a lot easier than I ever expected. It's a lot easier. Most people like to overthink it. They think it's a lot of editing a high tech. It does not have to be that way. I mean, we filmed one episode last night just with my phone for Steph and uploaded to YouTube. Very simple technological things. Thank God we've got good production staff.

We'll make her sound good no matter what. Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

You know, you're in a really crowded market. I mean, real estate has some of the most amount of podcasts, but they also have a lot of pod faded, mind you, as you mentioned in the beginning. Right. So, you know, how do you really stand out there? And was your strategy to utilize multiple shows, like you have your, you know, different Note Night in America and other things like that, Was that part of the strategy for how to stand out?

Well, not really. It's turned into the strategy. It was just like, let's just get it up there. So we have the main 50,000 blowtorch, the Note Closer show. It's basically three to five times a week, 500 episodes. But one of the things that we've always done, I mentioned earlier, we were doing webinars back to 2011 almost every Monday night we were doing a webinar. And so we rebranded it a couple years ago from just being on the Monday note to Note Night in America. Like Football night in America, Baseball Night in America, Hockey Night in America.

That's right. This has got to have something on Monday night. Right.

Gotta have something on Monday night. So we, we did Note Night in America and it made sense to create its own separate podcast because it's a different type of show where we'll bring on vendors or more specific deep dives of at least an hour in content on that until we just decided to add that. And then we did a special purpose like a three day workshop called Note Camp or four day workshop. And so we just decided we'll make each other speaker that spoke on there its own special episode in that special purpose event. And we've done that event three times now where we're getting ready to upload another 27 episodes to it because it's been its own kind of thing and people like that because they can listen to that content. But it's also become a marketing ploy. So if somebody types in Scott Carson looking for it, not only is Note closure show showing up, but I own their screen now.

Yes, they do. Multiple shows really help.

Those multiple shows help. And it's not been any more work than what I would have done already because we were doing an online event, we always recorded it it just cost us some money to create it into its own podcast. Same thing with Note 9America. They don't have the massive amount of downloads like we do for the Note closure show, but it's still substantial enough that people love it.

I would think it's a good taste of. Do I want to take your boot camp? If I check out a couple of episodes, I'd be like, yeah, definitely want to check this out. So it also probably helps close sales.

It does. People will never, ever accuse me of not delivering content.

That's right. It's always there. So you know that. I think that's such an interesting strategy, though, for you in particular, because no Night in America is a little bit more. I'm going to say it's like a little more advanced. So, you know, people who've probably done a deal or more, you know, and that kind of thing. And so you are able to help different levels of people through that, where your bootcamp is more of a one on one and get started.

Yep, I totally agree to that. It's usually people that are on Note Night in America that are listening to that are those that have been listening with me for three or four years and it was an opportunity for them to listen to it. And so it's like I said, it may not have the huge amount. It doesn't have the main amount of episodes, but still averages, I think, more per episode because we do it, you know, once to twice a month now, and it's still average, I think more per episode because the very serious people that listen to that, if they miss the actual.

Yeah, they don't want to miss that. So, okay, let's dive into our five tips. So these are the ways that you've maybe become successful. And we want to look at different ways to do these from different people's perspectives. So I've been asking every podcaster that I interview these questions. So what are some of the best ways you found to book great guests?

Oh, book great guests. Listen to their show first is the most important thing. If they have a show, but do some due diligence, talk with them first. I mean, if you get a chance to meet with them and talk with them, I think it's important versus just blindly booking them for the most part. If they've got a media one sheet, that obviously comes in handy. But I always like to say, hey, you know, see what other shows they've been on. And that's pretty easy to do by just jumping on itunes or any of the podcasts and type in their name and see where they've been guests on and listen to how they've approached other shows. If it's the same content, saying like regurgitated questions, I'm kind of hesitant to have them on. Or I'm like, listen, I've heard you on other shows, great stuff for you, but we're going to do something different. I don't want it to be the same over because that doesn't do me any justice to my listeners. I want it to be.

No it doesn't. I'm so glad you mentioned that.

Listening to people's interviews, if you got a podcast where it gets pitched on shows. I turn down a lot of people that want to be on my show because they don't fit my niche. So I am not a podcast prostitute. Just opening up my show for everybody. Okay, that sounded really bad. It sounded better in my head when I said that.

We get it though.

But there's a lot of people that do especially see that in a lot of real estate shows. Oh, we're gonna have anybody on and that confuses your audience. My show is niche on the note side. So people don't fit specifically into my niche. I mean I'll bring on some entrepreneurship and business and market. Like I just had a young guy who's got a book coming out called Decoding YouTube. He's a friend of mine. But like that's a valuable aspect to my audience. But somebody coming on who's a financial advisor when I've already had two people on the last six months, that doesn't make sense. That's not a helpful. Those shows didn't draw as well as other ones. So be protective of your audience. It's important to do that. You know that people say, hey, we'll pay to be on your show. Like eh. It doesn't. No, I don't want to.

I just actually did a whole webinar on that this morning about how that at the end of the day it degrades your show and loses value.

Listen, don't just open up your show to anybody else.

That's right. What are some ways that you've been able to increase listeners?

Kind of a two part is, I'm a big believer that you should share your show everywhere. All right. Share it everywhere. If you're not doing video, add video because that's where everybody's doing. And you'd be silly not to add video to have Google and YouTube, the two biggest search engines in the world, not be able to find your content. Alright. So sharing it everywhere. Is one of the biggest things you don't have doesn't mean you have to create new content. Everything. You can take one episode and reshare it in seven or eight different ways and shared across different platforms. And you never know where a listener is just because you're on Instagram and you've got an older audience, maybe they're not on Instagram, so maybe you need to spend more time on YouTube or Facebook. So that's the biggest thing is knowing where your audience is and then going to those platforms that they're at, to the engaged aspect of things. Like, we do a lot more on LinkedIn than we do ever on Instagram, for the most part. I mean, we do have an Instagram account, but we get more engagement from where we're at, where our listeners are.

So you're going to spend your energy where it matters. So. So that's actually another one that I usually ask, which is Encourage Engagement. So you're saying that with Encourage Engagement, you really look for the platform that makes the most sense for your audience to make sure that that's where you personally show up and participate.

Yeah, you have to be in those places. What's also been helpful is I set a goal, and you know, this at the beginning of the year, to get booked on 100 podcasts 2019. And that's helped tremendously because we've actually. I've got an assistant that helps me out with that. She reaches out books, we send a short video kind of what I talk about my expertise so that those that are looking for guests, they see get a little bit of my energy because it's a video versus just a media one sheet. And I'm glad to talk with them on a variety of things. So I like to. That's been helpful, getting more listeners because they hear about my energy and they see what we're doing and then they end up checking out the show. So it's kind of a twofold thing.

Yeah. Wonderful. So producing in a professional way. I mean, I know you guys, you got us, but, you know, what do you do on your end that helps you produce it more professionally?

Well, I'll tell you, this is I take it serious. I think the most important thing that you have to do is take it serious. So every day when I walk in the office, we spend an hour of marketing, and a lot of times that's either A, me recording an episode or B, me appearing on somebody else's podcast. So that's the first thing. We take it very serious. That is a focal Point. It's not a side thing we do. We do it daily. It's a big focus, and that's why it's done well. We've treated it as a business. Second part of that, I would say, is that with us getting ego bait in and other things in from, we don't just let that sit. We take that and we repost it ourselves across our buffer accounts, our social media accounts, our staff. Shannon, my marketing gal, she takes the blogs that you guys write and shortens them down a little bit and then reposts them to LinkedIn as its own separate media piece with links back to the audio back to our website. So we're taking it, regurgitating a little bit of it, tweaking a little bit, and making its own unique content across our social media platforms to help drive engagement out there as well. I mean, we'd love it, everybody, if all of our guests shared that stuff, all their ego bait. That doesn't always happen. So then we make sure and take that extra step. Let's go ahead and share it, tag them in it and make sure that people are being seen. And even if they don't, if the name is the email, they're just not willing to share, that's fine. We'll go and share it for you.

Yeah, that's right. We'll make it happen. Love that. Lots of repurposing there. So what are the best ways to monetize it? And, you know, it doesn't have to be the show itself, but it could be, you know, in your business.

So everybody talks about sponsors. Oh, my God, how many downloads do I have to have to sponsors? And so we've kind of taken the two type approach to mind. Well, really three if you think about it. One is we didn't want to wait till we had half a million downloads before we got sponsored. So what we did is we went out to our vendors that we are already doing business with and approached them with the fact that we, hey, do you want to be a sponsor for the podcast? We'll have you on on a regular basis. And one of the things that we did was that we directly affected how much they paid for a sponsorship by how well we did as a show. So we started people off, hey, $1,000 a month. You can get an episode, one episode a month with us because we're doing 20 to 25 and we get 10,000 downloads. Great. It's a thousand bucks in that month. We go to 20,000 downloads in the month, it bumps it up to two grand. If we get to 30,000, which we hit, 35,000 in July was our best month so far. It goes to 3,000 per month. And we have to maintain that for at least two months for that to take place. So it's not a flash in the pan. So they see value in that. We share all their information. And so we cross leverage our vendors who were already driving business. That was the easiest thing to get it. The second thing that we did that was just a game changer, is we realized you have, as a podcaster, if you're doing this on a regular basis, you have regular ears are listening to you. And as I was out talking to people about what they. How they're monetized in their show, and they're like, oh, I sell T shirts, like, at 20 bucks a pop.

Yeah. I'm like, I don't want to have an online, though.

I have to say, look, I do have some merch.

You've got some notes swag. Exactly. You got some notes swag.

And so I don't know. And if you haven't seen it on Instagram, it's actually the cutest thing. There's a picture of our puppy with her nose in the cup, and she was trying to find stuff inside of it.

Yeah, I see how you use it. It makes a good pen holder. But what we did is realize, okay, we've got our loyal listeners, we've got students that wanted to get a little bit extra more information, but they couldn't afford one of our 500 or $1,000 classes or coaching. So what we decided is we came up with, like, a membership, you know, like a WCN fan club, basically, with the Scott Carson fan club. So we basically said, okay, for $97 a month, each month, we'll send you out swag. It may be a T shirt, it may be a hat, maybe a coffee mug. It might be an arctic. Like, last month, we sent out arctics to everybody, which is really nice.

Yep.

You know, special T shirts, like the Game of Notes instead of Game of Thrones.

I liked that one. I saw you on Instagram in it.

You know, I did another one just called. It looked like the Hustler teacher, but we called it the Note Hustler, which all the guys, even more gals like, I want that. Okay. We have different people on that have books as guests. So when people come on, they have a book. I'm like, hey, would you mind donating 100 copies? What we do is each month we send out a swag bag with a swag And a book or two in there. And then we also give. We reached out to our vendors or people, events that we speak at or other services. Say, hey, would you mind giving a discount code or a do an affiliate split with us? If you give a big discount that will go out to our loyal listeners and people is like, oh, my gosh, yes, you guys. Your listeners close, Your listeners show up. Your listeners do things. So that's what we did, $97 a month. And I always tell people, if I can't make you or save you $97 a month on your membership, I'm doing something wrong. So we, you know, first month we had 75 people sign up for. At $97, that's almost 7,500 bucks, roughly seven grand. We have a few people assignment. We have a few people to lose each month. But the average person has been there for over a year now.

Oh, my gosh, that's great. Well, but you keep serving. You overserve your audience if that. Like, that's a bad thing. It's not. It's a really good thing the way that you do it. So. So that's really good.

And that's just the thing. Just keep giving. Keep giving. Do we make some money off it? Yes. It costs us an average about 30 bucks per person to ship it. And if we have to buy the books, we'll buy the books that month or to get the T shirt, that's fine. But we're usually in that 30 to $35 range, so we're still netting 60 to $65 per person per month on.

It, which helps to offset the cost of your show and stuff. So that's great.

Yeah, it totally does.

So now, you said there was a third way, right? So that was.

Oh, yeah. Third thing that is easy everybody could do. If you start getting listeners, we do affiliates. We do affiliate splits with some of our people that we have on, whether it's our sponsors. If they have an event, we'll come on and help promote the event they're paying to be on. But then we also get an affiliate split. So if they sell tickets to people, sign up for their workshop or their coaching or whatever their training, we get a split of those sales. And that's a great thing that everybody could do, you know, make sure you get special codes. And so that's. I mean, I got to check in for $200 a day from somebody on an affiliate split, and I got an email alert that six people that signed up for somebody else's renewed for another month. So I got little checks that come in. But those little checks add up quite a bit at the end of the year.

I think more importantly than the money on it, like, this is how I always look at it. It adds up into helping you track your conversion rate. And that can be useful for talking to your sponsors in the future. You say like, hey, I do this little thing, and it's not even 100% relevant, which you are, to my audience. And look at the conversion rate on what's happening and actions that are being taken. So it is. It's testing that out, and it's a great, easy way to do that because there are lots of people out there looking to make sure that an audience sees their product or their service.

Yeah, you want to make sure that the product lines up with your listeners. I know some people that try to affiliate everybody. Everybody's digital product. You can't do that.

That was another conversation I had this morning in the webinar. I was like, yeah, you know, this is my thing. I have a red alert if someone says, oh, yeah, I would like you to affiliate my course, but then they won't share the course with you for you to even check it out. Like, that's a big red flag to me because I need to make sure it's right for my audience, that it's got enough in it and it's not going to be this, like, dead. And at the end, it's all sales and nothing. They learn nothing in the process. So. So, yeah, so that's a reflect to me. But thank you for saying relevance matters. So, you know, you've had a lot of successes. What's on the forefront, what's coming up? What do you want to do with your show next?

Oh, my God. We have had that question quite a bit here since we hit 500 episodes and figuring out, I think we want to want for sure, get to a thousand. That's the big thing. Get to a thousand episodes. As far as downloads, I don't know. You know, everybody likes to measure themselves. As far as downloads, I don't know.

I don't look anymore. Isn't that it's gotten to the point that I don't even know. I was like, somebody asked me the other day, and I was like, gosh, you know, I don't know. I never looked.

What I did a couple of years ago is I spent a lot of time on the road. You know, 50 flights and 45, 60 cities in a year drive you to be crazy a little bit. But we've thought we'd done such a good job the last year of doing everything online and moving everything. I think we might get back on the road a little bit here the next year.

I just looked at my fall because, you know, and we had this little like kind of friendly competition that we were going to each be on a lot of podcasts this year. And I fell off the wagon really seriously because I started doing so much traveling and it got harder and harder for me to put so many people on my calendar and so there's no way I'll make it. So you're totally beating me this year. You know, hey, but I have, I'm speaking from now until the week before Thanksgiving. I have a one week break. I may even speak on the week of Thanksgiving in another country. And then I'm until my, until mid December for my birthday. I'm speaking all through then. So that's when I'm done for the year. And I was like, how did I book up that much? And I didn't even realize it. But yeah, I really do see a lot more live events coming on the forefront. I mean I'm just doing so many more.

Yeah. And that's, I've actually turned down speaking events. It's in my regular events that I would go to because I'm like, there's nobody new there. I mean there is a small thing. So I'm always constantly like, let me go somewhere that I'm not at, whether it is to podcasting convention or a bigger summit or doing some other things. I think that's been important because I've turned down like, listen, it doesn't make sense for me to come to your event and just market your event when I'm not going to get anything out of it. You know, I love you, but yeah, I've worked hard for my audience. I don't want to let my audience down. And it's, you know, that's the thing you get realize you for putting all this work in and momentum. Yes, you want to help people, but at some point you've got to focus on just filling your cup and going that route. And so that's, you know, I see myself doing a lot more podcasts from tropical locations.

Well, so I want to make sure we mentioned podcamp because this episode will air before, although the article might come out after. So we probably will not have that in the article itself. But podcamp is coming up not totally tropical. I mean, you know, whatever fall in Florida is, I don't know if you can consider that tropical. I don't but you know, that's.

There's some palm trees.

I live with palm trees every day.

Yeah, we're excited about that. And that's kind of the thing too is bring in, I mean, you guys, you and Tom and us talking about this a while back and finally putting it into place. And so for International Podcast Day and the day after, we're doing a two day, kind of just a true podcasting roundtable. It's not like a pitch fest or a workshop. It's truly 50 to 100 podcasters of all different types getting together and really sharing best practices. This isn't for somebody who's brand new who hasn't started a podcast. This is for people that have a podcast, have been doing some stuff, and I'm really looking forward to that because I think that's going to help hone our skills. I mean, you guys came out to Austin last December and there was a small group of us and it was even.

Yeah, what was there, like 10 or 12 of us or something?

We just had.

Yeah, it was really small and it was so worthwhile. Was the best sort of roundtable mastermind that we did all year. And so we're looking forward to it. I know we'll be there, but yeah, looking forward to it because that is so true here. Like, I'm getting a lot of feedback from my column is that this is exactly what people are looking for. They're looking for ways to move themselves forward. And while they may be successful, they have a next tier they want to go. You know, they all are pushing themselves. And a lot of the trade shows that are out there are focused on the new people and not on the people who already have shows and where they should go and where they should move.

PodFest is great. Podcast movement is the bigger one, which is good too. I like Pod Festival, but better when Chris Chromosis is done there in Orlando. But I think that's the thing is I see so many podcasters out there and it's such sad to hear that you have so many people that start and fade off.

Pod fading is so high. I know, it breaks my heart. So I'm really proud of this, Scott. So we checked our statistics on our site. We have less than 2% pod fade for our shows. I'm so proud of that. I think part of it is that we provide a lot of coaching and support, so that's there. But I also think it's that we just don't just accept anyone. Right. They have to be. They want to work this Hard. They want to make this a part of their business, and so that. That's in there as well. And then, of course, we take a lot of the tech stress out. So, you know, maybe that. That kills a lot of people early on. But I think the people who pod fade after 100 episodes, it's not the tech that killed it.

It's.

It was the strategy. It was the lack of support. It was not really understanding where they were and what they were doing.

Yeah, I think you've got. It's the whole field of dreams. You have to build it, and it will come, but you got to put the innings in, you got to put the hours in to do this. And you realize it's begotten come from your strategy. And those that suffer from pod fade are the ones that don't make it a focal point, don't make it a part of their regular activities, and make it a habit. Oh, there you go. Hashtag, pod habit right there.

Pod habit. Ooh, I like that. There you go. Yeah. You know, I think you're very right about that, though. You know, integrating it into your marketing efforts or just shifting the ones that you do. That's really where I think you've been so successful, is that you did a little bit how you ran your webinar, changed up how you capture the information, but you didn't really change your content at all. It got more and more focused, but that was about it. And so that's useful. So thank you so much. I'm so glad, you know, there's so much knowledge that you have. I'm so glad you're doing podcamp. And thank you so much for coming on and sharing that with us. Is there any big name guest or anyone, you know, anything that you haven't been able to get that maybe some of my listeners might be able to help connect you up with something you'd like to do that we could help you out with?

I would love to have Warren Buffett on.

Oh, wouldn't that be amazing?

I would love to have Warren Buffett on to talk about the market and things like that. I'm one degree away from Seth Godin, who I'm a big fan of as well. You referred me to a guy who is putting me in touch with Kevin Harrington, who's been a good thing. But what I found, though, is I get better downloads from somebody who's not a big name.

It's so true. It really is so true. And I think people don't realize that until you've done both types of shows that that's really true. But I mean, hey, if your show can get you access to Warren Buffett, you should do it right? Just for your own conversation purposes.

Right?

That's how I look at that question and how I think about it. But what an original answer. Thank you, Scott. I really appreciate everything that you've shared with us and done and. And we love having you as a part of our network. So you are such a joy to work with and excited to see Steph moving forward with fur babies. I can't wait for that one as well.

Same here, guys. We love you guys. So great. And guys, if you're listening to this, you're not working with Potitize. You're stupid. Do it now.

Oh, thank you. I didn't pay him to do that. I swear I didn't. So, anyway, for everyone listening, this is Feed you'd Brand Center Influence. And I love bringing you new podcasters with new exciting features, new ideas, new new processes, just new methods that they're attacking the podcasting world. So I will be back next week with another one. This is Tracey Hazzard from Feed you'd Brand.

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.