Shift Your Show Format to Create Social Media Growth and Funnel Lead Generation - On-Air Podcast Coaching with Chris Larsen of The Next-Level Income Show

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 the Binge Factor. I'm Tracy Hazard and I am doing one of our live on air coaching. We're taking things to the Next level today. We're literally taking things to the next level because I have the host of the Next Level Income show, Chris Larson today. He is a client who's been working with us for most of this year, half of this year I think, and he has a podcast show focused on investing and growing your wealth and as he puts it, making, Keeping and Growing Money. Chris show has about 45 episodes or so. So he's been doing a little while and he's been cranking shows out, doing lots of great interviews. His interviewing skills are really good. You'll get to listen to that when you check out the Next Level Income show. Let me tell you a little bit more about Chris. Chris is the founding and Managing Partner of Next Level Income, through which he helps investors become financially independent through education and investment opportun. He's been investing in and managing real estate for over 20 years and during his subsequent career in medical device, he explained it into development, private lending, buying distressed debt. So he's got broad real estate and investing experience. He began syndicating deals in 2016, has been active and involved in over 150 million of real estate acquisitions. In addition to real estate, Kris has invested in equities, oil and gas and small business lending as well as being active in Venture south, one of the nation's top 10 angel investing groups. Chris lives with his wife and two boys in Asheville, North Carolina, which is such a beautiful area. We were just actually talking about that, you know when you get your show to a certain level and you get past that startup stage, that stage of going from past the first dozen episodes, past 25 episodes now you got a full feed and you're halfway through your first year likely and you're looking at that and you're thinking, okay, I can do this, I've got this, I'm good at this. But then when you start to hit that one year mark, you start to hit that I've gotten 52 episodes under my belt. And so I'm heading into that next segment of the show. That's when you start to think about up leveling Next Leveling, as I'm going to call it today. And so we're next leveling our podcast through various different ways. And let's talk with Chris today. So Chris Larson from the Next Level Income show about how he wants to Next level his show.

Chris, thanks for joining me today. And we're going to talk Next level podcasting for Next Level Income. I love that. All right, so you started the show 45 episodes ago, more than a year or about a year. Right. And how is it going for you? Why did you start it?

Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to answer that question, Tracy. So, yeah, we started in 2019 and next level Income, our goal is to put investors first through education and opportunities to achieve financial independence. And every week I was fielding questions via email or phone or text, and investors or wannabe investors were asking me, hey, how did you do it? And I was typing out these emails or I was typing out X or I was getting on the phone and I just, I don't have enough time in the day to address all these questions. And I realized after typing the same email for the sixth time, I wanted to curate this. So I started to write blog post, like blog posts, blog articles. And my partner Caleb, who was on the first half episodes up to this point of our show, he came up with the idea. He's like, you should start a podcast. I'm like, I don't really know about a podcast and time commitment and really hard to say no to a lot of things so I can focus on the right things. But after thinking about it, I thought, you know what, we should start a podcast. And the podcast was designed to curate information and it's to help people make more money, keep more money, and ultimately grow their money. So whether you're in college or coming out of college and looking to optimize your job search, whether you are a high income earner that's looking for a tax strategy so you can keep more of your money, or you're somebody that's looking for ways to invest and grow your money, we have guests on that can help you. So originally it was just there to curate the information when we started, Tracy.

So most of your episodes are interviews, so they're not solo shows. You're not talking about topics. Is that on purpose at this point?

Yes, it is on purpose that we have guests on every show, actually, as we roll into 2021. We're going to be launching coaching feature with next level income. As we do that, we're looking to potentially have some shows that are dedicated specifically towards strategies where I may be doing almost like a coaching call for the audience in general.

Well, we'll model that here and see if we can get through something that works for you. So how has it been? Do you feel like the podcast has achieved the sort of initial goals you set out for it?

Yeah, so I will say it has. It was certainly very modest. And, you know, when you learn things, I forget you know, what the statistic is. But no, most podcasts don't get past the, like, 10th episode or it's a pretty small number. So we hit, you know, I heard that statistic. I'm like, we're like 36. So I guess we're good. I guess we're doing okay. You know, better than average. That's right. Everybody wants to be better than average. I want to be a little bit better than that. But so, yeah, we had pretty modest goals initially, and it was really just to cater towards, you know, our audience. We have about 2,000 subscribers now that goes out to every two weeks. Every week. Every two weeks that we're sending content out. And again, it was pretty modest goals, but I've learned a ton over the past two months as we've expanded the show.

That's great. So new goals, we've got new outcomes. What would you like to achieve next with the show?

Yeah, so the past year has been, I mean, this is how we've gotten connected over, I'd say, the past year. So as we've recorded more episodes, as we've had more content, I've learned about things like marketing LinkedIn, like putting stuff on social media. I didn't have an Instagram account before I came up with this, but when I realized you can use the content we produced to share that on a regular basis to show people. And that's how I've seen podcasts pop up on a feed like in LinkedIn or somewhere that were four years old, and I was very thankful that I heard those. So same thing. What I'm doing is, again, our goal number one is education. So if I can take something that's been out for a couple years and republish that, and it might catch someone at the right time and help them at the right time of their life get to where they want, that's goal number. That's something that I've learned going forward into 2021. The goal is to expand. We've done a lot of networking through the podcast universe and really help make the podcast part of our. What we've now built out to be a marketing funnel, so to speak.

Okay, great. So what are your biggest challenges in that?

Yeah, so biggest challenges are keeping up with really relevant content. So we want to have very high quality guests that are coming on the show. So it's a challenge to always be looking for the right guests that are going to fill a listener's needs or fill a listener's interest. I found it's very easy, Tracy, to go out and, for instance, find a bunch of other people that focus on, say, multifamily syndicates, which is a big focus for us. I could have 12 guests on over the next month or two that focus on that. Be very easy. And people reach out to me every day, say, hey, have you considered having this person on your show? So the biggest challenge is saying no to the guests that not are wrong, but just aren't. It's not a good fit at the time. And then continuing to find guests that are a great fit for the audience and to continue to build out the value for them.

Interesting. So what would you like to accomplish in our session here? So what can I help you the most with?

Yeah, so I think, again, anything that you found has been successful on a repeatable basis from show format, for instance. So I think something that I have not been doing, I record the intro, I record the show, everything all at once. I would love to look at potentially having a separate intro outro.

So open and close. Because intro and outro gets. Yeah, think about it like open and close. I'm opening my show. Right. Because, you know, it's like that opening monologue on the Late show or something like that, Right? That's your role because somebody else is introducing you. So that's your official intro outro, or your bumpers, as some people refer to them in the industry. But think about it like you're opening and you're closing. So you're setting up your show and you're wrapping it up, and that's your curation process. Actually, that's the best role for you as a host. So when I listen to your show, Chris, the couple of things that I missed the most was I didn't get a lot of you, but you're the gatekeeper here. So I want to get some more out about you. I go to your website and I see your about you, and it's a nice little paragraph. And you've got experience, but I don't still have enough about you. Why are you doing this? Why is this topic important today? You're not getting to those things because you're not actually putting yourself at the forefront of that. You're serving your audience almost too much here. And that's not often. It's usually the other way around. So I'm presenting that to you as a thought to start thinking about how can you bring more of you into the show. And that open and close are a perfect time to do it because you're not taking away from that interview, which from the way that you interview, you're very sensitive to your guests wanting, making sure that their expertise is shine, that you ask them the right questions. All of that works well. You have great interviews. But if we could set them up differently and close them out differently with your thoughts on it, I think your audience would like that. They chose the show because they do like you. They do like the curation that you've created. So let's do more of that.

I like that. And also, if you're a listener of some of the shows I've heard, it is nice to hear. Hey, this is something about the guest. And if you do it, you can do it after the show as well, if I'm hearing you correctly. So you can talk about, like, what to listen for. Kind of prepare the mind of the listener, if you will, to be fertile to get those seeds that are coming in right.

For instance, here, I've just brought you in. We just came straight in. I actually will do your introduction afterwards because there's an excitement level of having just finished up with you, and now I know a little bit more about you. And so when I genuinely, when I introduce you, there's a genuine energy to that as well. So not only did you know what to highlight that you really got out of it, but you have that energy level of now you know someone. So there's an intimacy there.

I like it. I like it. Is this an appropriate time to talk about the mechanics that, like, how do you do a separate audio files and how does that work out logistically?

Yeah, so I'm a fan of separated audio files and lots of people don't. Like. I have some people who just pause the recording, say goodbye to their guest, and then turn the, you know, just unpause and keep going. I'm a big fan of separating it because I need more organization in my mind. Like, I'm like, I did the open, I did the close. Like, it just happened that I did. I have been on the end of these coaching, because of the way that they go. I tend to close them out with you on the air because I want to give you your final thought. Right. So I want to give you your action items. So I usually now close them. So it's an interview plus close. And I panicked when I went to load up my episodes the other day because there were only six files, not eight. And I was like, there's something wrong. So I'm comfortable in this idea of having. Because I do video and audio. So if you got all the files going for yourself, that's an interesting way to do that. So I like the energy of being able to have, like, it's stop, start. I'm doing this section, then I'm doing that section. So that's also something that I try to do as well.

I like it.

And then I think for clothes, you simply. I make bullet points. So I might give action items. I might give bullet points. I have something that I'm making notes on the side for myself so that when I do that close, I'm really comfortable with it. Just in case I have to run off to something. Right. I also don't want to forget what I wanted to say. So I do keep notes on that. But, you know, logistically, turn the audio on, turn it off, just make a separate file. I mean, you know, you have production editing, so moving them together is easy. Transitions gives people a sense of timing. And then eventually that also gives you a nice breaking point for some promotions and ads. So you have this breaking point between the introduction and your interview. And you also have the breaking point between the interview and your closing thoughts. And people will come back for your closing thoughts where they might skip your outro, but they will come back for your closing thoughts because they know it's valuable.

Gotcha. Now, that makes a lot of sense because we do with, you know, with the partners that we work with, we do have sponsors for each show. So I would love to dive into best practices on all that.

Yes. So some of the things that we should do in the best practices is you've got their bio. Right. And a lot of people, you need to read it. You're not going to memorize it. For each person you're going to, you know, you have it on your phone or have it printed out or whatever you have that you're going to do that with. The best practices, though, is to highlight something that you get excited about. Oh, this book. This is a great title for a book. It's really intrigued me. It's Right in line with what we're going to talk about today. So picking something out of the bio as you're giving the bio as to highlight what you then talk about, that's always a great way to tie the two things together and make it not so pedantic, like you're reading it. Right. You know, you get that I'm a broadcaster reading the prompter kind of attitude. You mix it up by adding that little piece in it. So that's what I usually do is I usually just pick one thing that I want to highlight that they don't want to miss. The probably the most important thing. And usually that comes to something that's in their expertise. So if I can tie their expertise to something that they're going to say on the show, then I bring the two together. You're not going to want to miss this. And definitely you're going to want to go back and read this book afterwards, too. And so that helps. That makes them feel really good because you gave them kudos for their background or highlighted what they're selling right at this moment, whether it's a course or book or program.

Gotcha. So then you do a break. You do your sponsor for the show.

Well, in our system, we mix those in, so you don't need a break. It's going to naturally happen. So if you want to, if you were going to, if you're someone out there who's recording these and you want, you need to record them live. So if you're gonna record them in a series to make sure that you have your file and you don't have to do any editing. Okay. If that's how you're gonna record it, you're gonna turn your, your recording on, you're gonna record your intro, you're going to pause, do your ad, then you're gonna add your, you're gonna have to add it to your interview. So in our productized system, of course, you can mix those things easily. Right. You don't have to worry about that. And if we're editing for you, you don't have to worry about it at all.

So.

But there's. Yeah, you don't have to worry about any of that. So. Yeah. So just keeping those clips separate. Separate ads. Like, I like relevant ads. So not even mentioning, not even doing the transition to the ad at the point of your opening, it just gives you more time and more. You don't have to worry about anything. So when you record the promotion or the ad, that's when you say, because you know this ad's going to go before an interview or this ad is going to go before my close. Then you always say, we'll be back in a moment with this interview. But first I want to mention how great our sponsor is today. So you kind of are giving that break. We'll be back with the interview in just a moment. You know, obviously you're not going to say the person's name because you're not going to make create custom ads for every single show, but you can create that transition. We'll be right back. But first, I want to share this with you. Or my favorite is Tom. Tom likes to do it this way. He goes before we get to that, you know, it doesn't matter what it is. That way it's breaking in. It's going to be like whatever that was you're breaking into. Before we get to that, let's talk about our sponsor or something like that. So he'll do it that way. If I'm going to do it before the close, say before I get to my closing thoughts on today's interview. And so I do it a little bit more seriously. I'll be right back with those closing thoughts. But first I want to tell you about. And so kind of just creating that little bit of transition into that ad promo part makes it easy. But even still, many people are used to just straight commercial interruptions. So when you close an interview and you say, thank you so much for being on the show, there's a natural pause and a little bit of transition. Music is all you need there. It doesn't need to be as structured as. It doesn't need to be as structured as radio.

Terrific.

Your listeners are comfortable with that and they're happy for your sponsors because it means you'll stick around for more episodes for them.

Right?

Right, Exactly. So this is what we hear again and again from our clients and from our listeners, binge listeners especially. They're happy when you get a sponsor and they try to use them if they can because of that exact fact that you're been giving them and serving them, and now they want to serve you back.

Terrific. Great to hear.

Yeah, So a little bit of mechanics there on that. Super simple. I think it's going to be a great addition to your show and a way to get you in without having to do solo shows if that's not what you want to do. Another thought for you, Chris, that I have is that thinking about having an editorial calendar and plan. What you said at the very beginning was you were answering these faq questions and you were answering them again and again. Are you sure you've addressed that list of FAQ questions? Are you still sending the emails anyway? And if that's the case, then maybe we need topic based shows so that the topic's right up at the beginning of it. So if it's multifamily syndication, as you mentioned before, maybe you could have a panel of experts on. And that allows you to get multiple people sharing your show for you. It gets you more assets out there of what to share, but it allows the show to be focused on one particular area and that can do a great service to your audience.

Yeah, I like that and I certainly do. I come up with a list that I keep of topics that I want to have and I kind of space them out so they have a reasonable cadence to them, if you will, and do that. So I definitely have the topics. Although if I do get a very interesting guest, I may consider being a little more opportunistic with that.

And you should, and you absolutely should, because your listener base doesn't want you to miss a great interview. Right. If you've got something that would pique their curiosity, you definitely want that. So having the flexibility in what you need to do, you also have to serve partners that sometimes than others, like advertisers, things that interest them or would drive the right listenership so that those partners are served as well. So having a topic list is great, but how are you using that topic list throughout everything? Are you using it as what we call focus keywords for our blog posts? Are you using it as hashtags on social media? So let's have a more concerted strategy coming up and see if we can create that. So when you come up with that topic, and it might be like we said, multifamily syndication is easy because it's a long tail, focus, key word. Right. But you could say and have a word on the front of it. Think about it like profitable multifamily syndication. Like, what is the difference between how you're going to talk about this subject and how everybody else is talking about that subject? And so we want to add that word in there to one side or the other, to the beginning of the phrase or to the end of the phrase. We would want to keep multifamily syndication in its entirety because it is a searchable term.

Gotcha. Gotcha.

Keeping your edge to things matters, Right. What is the perspective you want to bring on it? And that in and of itself should help you pick your right guests. Right. I'm sure it's the way that you're already deciding. Are they talking about the same old thing that everybody else is doing? Are they talking about it at a higher next level success? Right, right.

Yeah, absolutely. I like that.

So anyway, so having that strategy, then having a hashtag strategy will especially help you on Instagram, which you said is not new for you, but it also will help you in LinkedIn. LinkedIn is using hashtags more and more. So those two places will really help you amp up how you do it. With LinkedIn. You put three hashtags at the bottom of your at the end of your post. Like, don't put them at the beginning, don't mix them in like you do on Twitter. You put them at the end so your three hashtags. And don't bother to use your name as a hashtag or the show name as a hashtag or podcasting as a hashtag. If you use podcasting as a hashtag, it gets people who are interested in learning about podcasting, not people who are interested in your world. So what I like to do is pick the one that's my focus keyword and then I have a list actually of 10 or 12 that I rotate through because I don't like to use the same one every time I post. It can hurt you in Instagram, actually to be posting the same hashtag every single day. If you repeat it, your viewers get lower and lower and lower. So rotating amongst these hashtags. And I don't do it that it's like, I don't do it every Monday. These hashtags go, I don't do it like that. It's just a list. And you use the next ones down on the list. My social team will just go to the next ones and if they're inappropriate, they'll skip them. So like in your case, you might have one hashtag, Real estate investing or hashtag wealth building. Right? You might have those hashtags that you're using, but real estate may not relate to today's topic. So you would skip it and go to the next one on the list. And so just always having that list of very relevant hashtags. And what I suggest you do is have someone or you do this where you search in LinkedIn, search in Instagram and see what the trending ones are and use those for the everyone but the focus keyword one.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. And you have a team that does that for you. You have a social media team that's doing that.

So I have my own Internal social media team. We don't do this in the company for others, we don't post for others. But what we do is create all the assets, right. So we create instant audiograms, quote graphics, ecobait, as you know, which is the ones for the guests. So we can create a full suite of graphics and video clips and all of those things for anyone. But at the end of the day, you have to post it because you are the expert in what you do. So someone. So getting an assistant to do that, finding someone who's a strategist for you, that's what I recommend. And that's why we refuse to the service, even though people ask us to all the time.

I talked to somebody two hours ago to work on doing that for me.

Okay, good. Yeah, great. But you need to guide the strategy. What I found is too often is if you leave it up to them, they'll use the trendiest things that are out there. And that doesn't always dial in and help the relevance with your audience. So always thinking about like, is my audience really typing in passive income real estate or passive income investing? Maybe not your thing. Right. It may not be quite right for your audience. Right. But because it's a high trending keyword in the category, they try to use it and it draws the wrong kind of people to your show. So you know, at the end of the day, you have 2,000 subscribers or more. And those subscribers, you want them to stay connected, you want them to not quit your show, you want them to recommend to other people who are exactly like them. I'd rather have a low number of really active subscribers than I would have a high number of people who are just not going to come and do business with me. I want them to benefit from my show. Right. So the relevance factor is more important than popularity.

Sure.

So now a strategy for content building and a strategy for what works out there in social media. Like, because that's your end goal now, like you have a more outcome driven of creating the community and building the word of mouth around you through a social strategy. Having those things go hand in hand is important. So talking with your getting your social team involved early on can be very helpful. So I'm going to share with you how I do it here, but there are lots of other ways to do it as well. But from what I do it here is from the moment that the host notification from our internal team says your episode is ready to review, which is usually for me about two to three weeks at minimum, usually a month ahead of My of it actually publishing because of how I record. So that gives me plenty of time. So then the host notification comes to me to review the episode. They know that it's coming up in a few weeks and so they can start planning it into their calendar schedule. So that way, if Thanksgiving is happening on top of an episode launching on the day before, they could shift things and move it around and make things work within what's going on in the world at that moment in time. So they can work with the schedule. And so that's helpful for them to plan. Plus, all the links to all the assets are there. So the only thing they have to wait for those is those things to be live to post them so they can already see what they look for. It helps them write the posts. It helps them come back and ask me questions because especially in LinkedIn, I care about how I sound like I care about how that reads. So if they are uncomfortable with it and they're like, I didn't get this show. I don't know what it's about. I don't understand. It was like way over my head. Can you give me some insights? Did I write something for you that is relevant and. Or here are the three hashtags I'm thinking, are they okay? And so they can reach out to me. And there's plenty of time to ask that, especially in the early days when you're working with someone new who doesn't know you yet, who doesn't know your business yet is learning it. So if you're working with an agency or even someone independent, that can be. You got to give it some time. Right. And so they're going to make some mistakes. They're not going to get you. So the more you can allow the planning part of the process and the review part, the better off you are.

Okay.

You know, this is the thing I think most people are like, expect them to read your mind. Is not going to happen here. They are not going to be you. You have years and years of experience knowing what's important in your interview, knowing what's important in what your audience wants to hear as well. So that has to come through in an education way of a feedback loop that you're giving them. So that's what I found works really well. And then what we do is we also then take those things and put them into a rotation. So we use a tool called MeetEdgar. We used to use Buffer, but we use MeetEdgar now. And the reason we use MeetGar is because it has an evergreen Tool. So once we've posted something, it drops into the evergreen, which is where we're able to do what you just noted earlier, bring up old episodes and bring them back up because they're relevant. So we could actually search in the Evergreen and say, oh, we need something that's focused on distressed notes because it's in the news again. So what episodes did I do on distressed notes? You can find them. You would say, oh, these ones. Okay, we're going to bring these episodes and share them again in social media today. I have, like, every year on a specific date, I wrote an article about a woman who is basically a real. She's an educator about space. Right. And so she's. So every day on May 4th, may the 4th be with you. I share her article and I have another one that I share of the people who actually helped produce the 3D imaging for the film. So I'll share those two articles on that day because those days are relevant and so they're already preset to be shared on those dates. So you can really control that evergreen content, making sure that you don't miss these opportunities to be relevant or miss these things that are trending and happening. You're easy to search through them and reshare them. You don't have to go, remember, what episode was it? Which one do I want to share today? Like, and they don't have to figure.

It out for you and use Edgar, you said for that.

Neededgar, it's called. Yeah. And there's a free level and, like a more advanced level, so.

Gotcha. Because what I use right now, I just. I do a spreadsheet and I drop my new content in the spreadsheet in a rotating schedule. And then my assistant, she can just pull the quote, she could pull the link and she can post it through hootsuite, but you use a little more targeted technique.

It sounds like, yeah, this is all set up within the tool that's going to do the sharing for you. So it's like as if hootsuite had it built into it. Your spreadsheet built into it.

Really?

Yeah. So wouldn't that be cool? Yeah.

Wow, that's phenomenal.

You mean you still have to drop in your new episodes, but everything else when you want to reshare and all that is there.

Oh, I'm getting. I'm upgrading to that.

Yeah. I think it's a great idea. And, you know, but have your team make sure that they really understand how to use it. This is not something like, I can go into it and look at stuff. But beyond that, I don't mess with the schedules, I don't mess with the calendar. I let them handle all of that. And so yeah, real super simple for me to just review something, but that's it. And then the other thing is thinking about what types of content you're sharing. The podcast is an audio format. But are you, you're recording video too, I believe, right?

Correct, yes.

So you have video as well. Video clips do really well in LinkedIn. They do really well in Instagram. Instagram, TV quotes and like, I'm gonna say it like treating like quote, image, message. They do. That's a story in Instagram. Right. So you want to have multimedia, share assets from your show. So video, audio, quotes, imagery, header images, visual images. I like to have a quote of what you say and a quote of what your guest says. Do both. So yours is like a tip, theirs is like a testimonial. Right. Because that's how they're gonna share it. That's what a good ego bait is. And having these different formats also allow you to play with what's working with your audience. Are you comprised of a lot of video watchers? Is your audience comprised of a lot of readers? So my initial audience, because I was a writer for Inc. Magazine for a long time, my initial audience were a lot of readers, right? They were reading my column and they were my. They were my LinkedIn network. Eventually the podcast came in and I got a lot of audio only listeners. And then eventually I added my YouTube and now I have a good mix of all of those. So blog readers and video. But people have different media they consume at different times and different places too. What we see a lot right now because of the pandemic is we see a lot of people consuming audiograms or videos with the audio turned off. So anytime they can see the captioning. So you can imagine that playing the audio of your show. Not that you can really do that in social media without a video. You have to do it that way. But they wouldn't turn the sound on immediately because otherwise when you're scrolling in public with your family all around or with everyone with your office all around you. Right. It would be noisy and people don't do that very often anymore. So while the video images catch their eye, it is the captioning that's working right now.

Sure.

So keeping in mind. So even though I capture video this way, I also take it and turn it into an audiogram. I use the video clip and the audiogram and I use them in two different, separate posts because that way you're getting different types of things that might attract different types of people. Some people just want to see a person, and other people are just happy with the words.

That's me.

Just let me read.

Yeah, but if you assumed all of your audience was the same, you'd be making a mistake. So actually, this is really interesting. So I am a numbers person. I am a serious reader, but I obviously a podcast listener. I mean, I listen to hundreds of podcasts, but because I listen to so many podcasts as a part of my job, when I'm consuming news or anything like that, like, I'm like, oh, video, an audio. No, just give me the article. I want to read it. And so I get frustrated with the news nowadays because they're trying to do quick news. So everything's like a little. You click on it and there's a great title, and you're like, I want to know about that. And then it's a video clip. Like, darn it, I don't want to do that. Right. So that's one of the great reasons why sharing your blog post is so valuable for you, because you've got the video, the audio, the blog, all in one place. It means that I can go and consume exactly the way I want to today at my moment. So, number one thing is, even though you're sharing all of those different assets in different ways, at the end of the day, your share link is still that blog episode link because that gives them the most flexibility. Okay, cool.

I like it.

So, a lot to absorb, but planning, if you take your effort that you've been doing, keeping the spreadsheet and instead really thinking hard about those keywords and about the topics you want to cover, and then finding guests that are perfect for that, that are someone you want to be associated with. So this is the next leveling for you. So if you want to be associated with particular topic in the investment community, but it's not, maybe it's a new product in your services that you offer, go find someone who offers it as well, who's an expert in it, bring them on and have a debate or discussion about it. So you can have less of an interview and more of a. Let's discuss this as industry experts together. And that could be a really nice interplay for you.

That's great. The panel, the kind of maybe debate style, a little bit more pushing back and forth. And that's also very interesting from your.

Perspective, from a listener perspective. Right. Because so often we're just like we still got to get through the story part of people like, why did you do this? What's your story? Who are you? And they're like, and for some of us that we're really just wanting to consume something and learn something new today. And how can I do that quickly? Well, in that type of topic area, you can definitely, you can do a nice 20 minute long debate show on a topic or a 20 minute long topic in depth discussion. Those could be really interesting. They can be shorter, easier for people to consume, and you may find them spiking, which gives you a hint that those episodes people are skipping some of the interview ones and going straight to those when they don't have a lot of time, which is a really great understanding of your listenership. So sometimes we have listeners who stay subscribed to us, but they're not actually listening to our next episodes. And that's where we see we maybe have certain episodes that spike up to our 2000 and then we have some that level around 1000. That means about half of our listeners are not actually listening to every single episode.

Gotcha.

And so when that happens, it usually is a sense that they're busy, they've got a lot going on and so they're skipping to the thing that they believe is the most relevant. Which is why it's really good you did your strategy. So when Chris came to us, for those of you listening out there, when Chris came to us to help produce his blogs and the other things, we shifted the titling of his episodes so you can see the distinct difference. I think it happened in July. You can see the cut difference because before you used to have the person's name and it said interview at the beginning of every single title that you utilized. Now it says a title and it says with and the person's name after it. And that shifting lets the topic lead, not the person.

Gotcha.

So now if you had Elon Musk on your show, lead with Elon Musk, as you would say, and we would change the title, we would say Elon Musk advises us on whatever it is. Right? Like that's what we would do, change the title. But when you don't have someone who has that type of name recognition putting them at the end, first off, their name is in there, so they're searchable. But you're letting the topic of discussion lead. So I know who this person, what they're about, right? Is leading. Now that's working for you. I guarantee you it is. It'll take a Little bit of time to flow through, but I guarantee you that's helping you more with getting more listeners on more shows.

Terrific, Terrific. Wonderful.

Yeah. So I gave you a ton of stuff here.

You did.

So we're going to see next leveling. So how does that feel? Does it feel like that's not overwhelming though? It's like I can just tackle this area and these things are technical and they just will get done. Or does it feel too overwhelming still?

That's what I'm writing down, so I will. Right now it's a little overwhelming, but it's a lot of great. It's like when you sit down and you look at a really big steak and like, wow, I know I can digest it. It's just going to take me a minute here.

So here's the thing. You are a client, so you have the benefit of first off, after this, I'm going to send you the video before everybody else gets it on the podcast because this may not air for a month and I don't want you waiting a month. So you're going to get it right away. You get at least the raw and then you also have the ability to call your client success manager and your team. The team here to say. Tracy said I need a better asset strategy. What's available to me? What can I do? Can I start to think about what I'm producing right now and shift it up? Because you have the ability to decide I want audiograms or I want video clips or I want this. There's add ons, but not even with spending more money. You don't have to spend more money. You can just shift what you're using to make it more useful for your purposes of LinkedIn and Instagram. And so we can dial into just those. We sometimes create like five different sizes of things because we don't know what a client's going to use. Instead of making different sizes, we could create a couple of different graphics, but targeted at the exact size for Instagram or the exact size for LinkedIn. So you have the ability to sit down and go, what does this look like? And how do I make this work for me? Now that I'd like to level up to that.

Okay.

And then of course, when you get a social media person all set in your system, we also have resources. So there are masterclasses on social media. We're going to be doing more. You're allowed to have your assistants invited into our groups so they can attend our coaching calls, they can ask questions there. You are allowed to have your team be a part of our team as well.

Awesome.

You just got to add their email address on and you're good to go. Right?

It works Wonderful, Tracy. Yeah, that's exciting.

We don't want the technical part to overwhelm the content part. The part I want you concentrating on, Chris is saying, I'm going to change my show format slightly and I'm going to test out a couple of these models because the panel might be too hard to handle. But the one on one discussion debate could be just easy enough because a panel requires you to get multiple schedules together. It could get just too cumbersome for you. But finding one that works for you, that's why I gave you a few suggestions. You test it out and go, that one's easy. I can do that one.

Yeah. I'll tick through all this stuff. This is fantastic.

Oh, Chris. Well, Chris, I'm so glad Alexandra served you up as being a great new show to come onto our and talk about our coaching here so that you could get sense of how strategic thinking works and that it's not just something you do when you set up your show, that it's something that you get to do and pivot as your show grows because new things are coming up for you, like your new expansion into social media.

I love it. I love it and I'm so grateful for this time.

Oh, you're welcome. You're welcome. So thank you, Chris, the Next Level Income Show. For those of you listening out there, especially if you're in looking into that next level investment area and you want to make money, keep money and grow money, then you're going to need to listen to Chris show. So, Chris Larson, the Next Level Income Show. Thank you again.

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.