Should I Do A Podcast? With Tracy Hazzard From The Speakers Who Get Results Podcast With Elizabeth Bachman

Are you a businesswoman who is finding it challenging to get your ideas across and make a point? Welcome to Speakers who Get Results with Elizabeth Baughman, a podcast dedicated to helping women get the visibility they want. Whether making a speech or talking in a meeting every week, get valuable lessons from Elizabeth or learn from her roundtable conversations with experts and speakers on how to make a difference, not just a point, onto the show with your host, Elizabeth Baughman.

Hi and welcome to Speakers who Get Results. I'm Elizabeth Baughman, your host and this is where we interview experts on how to use our presentation skills to get the results that we need. Whether you're standing on stage or you're in a meeting or you're speaking just to one influential person, there are hundreds and hundreds of tools that we can use to get the results that you want. Before we begin, I'd like to invite you to go to our free assessment. It's called the www.speakforresultsquiz.com that speak for results quiz.

And there you can take a free assessment. Takes about three minutes to find out where your speaking strengths are and where maybe you could use a little bit of help.

Now, I am so excited to introduce my guest. So there we go. Here is Tracy Hazard and she is the producer of this podcast. So I'm really excited to be introducing her here today. The official intro is she's an Authority Magazine Inc. Columnist. She's the co host of four top ranked podcasts including Feed you'd Brand, which is one of CIO's top 26 entrepreneur podcasts. And she's the founder of the largest podcast production company in the US As a content, product and influence strategist for networks, corporations, marketing agencies, entrepreneurs, publications, speakers, authors, experts, and probably the dog and the cat as well. Tracy influences and casts branded content with $2 billion worth of product innovation around the world. Her innovative potatoes method and platform provides businesses of all sizes a system to spread their content marketing message from video to podcast to blog. Growing an engaged audience. I'm all about engaged audiences and retaining valuable platform authority without a whole lot of time, cost and effort. So Tracie, thank you so much for coming to Speakers who get Results.

Elizabeth, I'm pleased to be here and I'm excited about your topic and your focus because you know, every speaker who comes in front of me, they want results. They want it to do something for them. And you know, I'm not one of those people who set out to be a speaker. It happened to me. So it's a Little bit different.

Well, I love the results.

That's.

My brand is strategic, speaking for results. And it's all about how do you get what you need done? And it was the same thing when I was working with opera singers. The result when you're doing an audition is to get them to hire you. And the result when you're on stage, the desired result is to make the audience cry or laugh, which is. Yeah, exactly. So, Tracy, before we get into content, I'd like to ask you the question I ask all my guests, which is, if you were able to share the stage with somebody from history, who would it be? What would you talk about, and who would you like to have listen?

So I've gotten to interview a lot of really interesting people, and for a really long time, my big get was Steve Wozniak, which I did get to interview. So when that happened a little over a year ago, that was like, the big thing. And so you really got me thinking about this. But when you say anyone from history, because I'm an art student at heart, like, I am trained in design and art, it gets me thinking that the person that I'd like to know the most about is Leonardo da Vinci. Like, we see all those beautiful sketchbooks and all these things, and I'm a process person. I believe really strongly in the sort of the process and people you put around you that makes such a difference. It's not all talent, and there's a lot of argument that he's not the most talented one out there, but, gosh, his stuff lasts. It's timeless. And we look at that and we go, that Mona Lisa is amazing. Right. You know, and so I think about that all the time, that I would love to tap into that and find out more. So I can't say I'd share a stage. I definitely want to interview.

Okay, okay, that's great. And would you ask him sort of how he did it or how many versions went into the wastebasket that we never saw?

Yeah, that's what I want to know. I want to know, like, was this hard? Was this easy? Like, for some people, they make it seem a lot easier than it is. And there's a lot of iterations and work that went into, especially art. You think about how many times you repeat and you train as you're doing music as well. Right. I'm sure your opera singers, they don't stop at 10,000 hours of expertise. Right, right, right. And so that's the way I always look at it. But I believe that there is a Way to shortcut your 10,000 hours. And I have actually kind of have a theory about it and I believe that there's a way to do it if you adopt the right process and if it's also something that's not like I've got to get a whole like different physical body to do it. Like. So if you already have the inclination of the training, you're like adding skill sets on. And that's where I think someone like Da Vinci was amazing because so here he is trained as a fine artist and he wants to add sculpture on or you want to add invention on. It's more logical because you have already have a design process and an artistic process. So you can shortcut a lot of the 10,000 hours. And you say, I've got this basis and I'm going to utilize that basis again. Now all I have to do is learn this new part of the thing that I don't know.

Yes, I love that.

And that makes for, you know, lots of innovation and lots of growth.

Yeah, it's really cool. And you have a product background, a product creation background as well. Right, right.

And you know, people ask this all.

The time, how did you go from.

Being a product designer and we were ghost designers, so you probably didn't hear our names before, but we were designing for Martha Stewart and famous brands and companies you buy all the time still today at Costco, Walmart and Target. But the reality was is that when we stepped out into podcasting, it seems so different to people. They're like, what's the deal? Like, why would you do that? And for us, it was a really logical way to step out from behind being a ghost. And so if you think about that from the corporate world, that's what you're one of many. Right. So how do you step out and become a thought leader? How do you move yourself out from being a ghost designer or a ghostwriter into someone who's at the forefront. And so that's what we needed to do in our business to grow into a different age of design, which was where designers were the celebrity, where Designers were creating one off pieces by 3D printing and all those things. So that's how we did it. But what we utilized was the same product launching process we'd use very successfully to do over 250 products. So we did about, we do about $2 billion at retail. That's what our clients do at wholesale, really what our clients do in the marketplace from those 250 products. So we know it works again and again. And so we took that same launching process and said, let's apply it to a podcast. Let's apply the same diligent, rigorous procedures to how we launch something to say, this is going to work. This is what goes into it. And that really was what separated us and what really made our podcast very successful when we started our very first one and made everybody want one. And. And so that's why they started asking us to do it, and we ended.

Up in a whole new business. Wow, you sound like my productivity coach. Always say, come on, Elizabeth, just follow the process. And, you know, don't just hold it in your head. Actually write it down.

There's something to be said for that. You know, there's all kinds of people. There are people who bring vision and all types of inspiration. Right? I love to speak. I'm fun on stage. I know that I'm entertaining, I'm articulate. I know all of that really works for me. But I'm not one of those, like, you know, lead them to tears and then laughter and inspirational speakers. It's just not my thing because at the end of the day, I'm a big believer in tactics and how to. And so I'm your how to girl. And so I accept that, and I say, let's embrace that and make it a part of who I am and what I do and what I provide to the world. Because there's lots of people out there who, no matter how much you want to get the how to in you, you are stuck on the visionary plane. And that is where you belong, because that's where your brilliance is. So if I can provide infrastructure for you, if I can provide systems and make it easy for you to do what you want to do, then I've done my job and I've made more people get their voice out, get their messages heard. I love that.

My dad always used to say, there are two kinds of people in the world. They're the thinker uppers and the getter doners.

I'm lucky to be both. But that's right.

You need to work together. So tell me, why should somebody do a podcast?

So not everybody should. I'm going to say that right there. Not everybody should.

Thank you for saying that.

There are people out there who think everybody should. We are not of that opinion. There are reasons for it, and I think that's where you have to sit back and say, what are my reasons for doing so? If you're in a corporate job and you have desire to retire and do something else, we have sports Celebrities, for instance, sports players who are current players in, like, the NFL and the MLB and things like that right now. And they're doing podcasts. It's not easy for them to get them recorded. It's a lot of work for them. But they're devoting their time because they know their career is going to be short, and they know that they want to have something after that that is valuable to them, that yields them, that gives them a mission and message. And so while they have an audience right now that loves them and will adopt them, they want to lead them into following them later because of their passion projects or because of who they are or because of the skills they want to adopt later. So that's a model, I think, that really would work for the corporate world as well. So those that are in corporate positions and want to move into the thought leadership, they want to move into speaking around the world, and they want their next stage of their career to move them into a different place. And so when you're thinking about that, that's always an ideal why, Right? So I have a why. I also have a goal, and so I like to put the two things together. It's not just why you want to do something, but what you're going to do with it that also matters. So do you have a plan for that? Is this something you want to do? There are people out there who want to start a podcast because they just want to see if it'll be fun. Go right ahead, go check it out. I'm all for experimentation, but don't have a high expectation that you're going to monetize this or just from having fun out there. You know, you have to put a purpose into place for things.

As with everything, any kind of presentation especially, you want to deliver value, right?

And high value at that. You know, we have some who their sole goal is to nurture a community. So they have a community, whether it's around a nonprofit mission or it's just a community that is they built for their marketing company or whatever that might be, they need to nurture that community and continue to provide them touch points and feedback and things to keep people active in that community, because that active engagement leads to more business or more sales or more things that they want to do in the future. So that's important, too. We have others who use it to make connections. So if I wanted to be a speaker on stages, maybe the thing to do is to get to know what event planners want. And my whole podcast could be around interviewing event planners and Understanding more about them. Now I've got a great database of them and I'm learning about them. So there's always a structure and a strategy that yields the purpose and end goal. But it's not always what we want to talk about and what we think. And I, I liken this to the authors out there who write, who know that they wrote the wrong book. At the end of the day, sometimes what we want to write about, what we want to speak about, what we want to podcast about, isn't necessarily the best thing to actually achieve the end goal of why we want to do that.

Yeah, well, actually it makes me think of rule number one for me in terms of any kind of public speaking or presentation is it's about the audience. Yes, you've got to make it about them. And one of the things I see with speakers all the time is somebody says, I have this great story of how I survived this or I overcome that. And yeah, great, that will help you once. It's got to be more than that. I'm sure you've run into that with podcasters.

Oh, I have. I mean, we get a lot of podcasters who are very self centric in that process and not consumer centric. And we come from a world of having developed all these products and your product's not going to sell off the shelf if it's not in what the consumer wants to buy. So I'm a big believer in making that product market fit or that message market fit, whatever that is, making that the essential. And so putting yourselves into your audience's shoes, understanding what their pain is, where they're searching, what they're looking for, and making your show about that, that's the ideal place to be. I really, we see it. I mean, we've produced over 300 shows, launch them. And what we've seen again and again is the shows that are named after the host, that are all about them at the end of the day. And it is an ego boost and an ego stroke, but they do not succeed without a lot of money spent or time and audience push spent. So in other words, you have to go out there and really seek an audience and use your community and drive that traffic all into you and into the show. Whereas if you name your show about what they're interested in learning and in experiencing and being a part of a community about, way easier to get them to try your show and then go, wow, and I really love Elizabeth. So this was awesome, right? I just found the great place and now I'm an Elizabeth Bachmann fan. Right. And so that's the way we want to do it. We want to build a place where when they're just searching and finding, they're in their own world, they're not in your world.

Ah, good. So clearly this is something that can be useful for entrepreneurs. And a lot of people use speaking to market their services. A lot of people use speaking for sales and to do products. So it is a different kind of speaking. What would you say to somebody who is. We've sort of touched on this, but what would you say to someone who's thinking about their first podcast? Where should I start?

Well, especially someone who may be, you know, it's not their day job. Right. It's not their core business, as you're putting it. So it's an aside, it's. I'm going to try this, I'm going to attempt it. I'm a big fan of hypothesis branding is what I call it, or hypothesis marketing. If you don't try something, if you don't go out there with the hypothesis of. I think I have a message that's going to resonate with a particular audience. Let me test it out. And that's really what we started with. So our very first podcast is very geeky. It's about 3D printing. We started it five years ago. And why would a couple of designers talk about 3D printing? Because we're really ideally suited to talk about it. Right. It's technology we use every day to prototype. However, everyone in the industry was talking tech and we said, I think that there's a play here to talk about the value of design. And if we can get the value of design, then people will get the value of designers. And now all we'll have services to sell and we'll have products we can sell. And won't that be great? It's a really good thing I did that. I chose to start a podcast to test out that idea versus build an entire company full of products and design staff to be able to Service and create 3D print products for people. I would have spent a fortune to find out. No one wanted it. And that's when we found out within five months of doing the podcast, no one wanted to buy design services, no one wanted to buy products that were pre designed. What they wanted was to learn how to do it. And they wanted to learn from people who knew what they were talking about. And that's where our value lies in educating. And so we had up to 100,000 listeners at the height of the shows. We have done over 560 of them. If you think you can't talk about something for a long time, you're really wrong because you will be able to. And that was such a valuable lesson. But if I had switched my company, I would have bankrupted. I would have changed the model of business in such a magnified degree that I would have like blown up my staff and done all of that and we would have found there was no market. So a great time is when you think you have this idea, but you want to test it. And how can you do it in a really low cost way that costs you a microphone and a computer you already have, and you just start talking. There are great ways to do that. Now you maybe don't need to go into full blown podcasting. Maybe you just livestream it and test it out and as it starts to get traction, you say, let me syndicate this live stream into a podcast and let me see if I can capture that audience and if there are listeners out there, because they are different. You know, some people are visual and some people are auditory and some people, you know, prefer the written word at the end of the day, some people still do.

So, so when you talk about syndicating a live stream by live streaming, I assume like a Facebook live or a LinkedIn live, is that what you mean?

Yeah, that's what I mean. I mean, you save the video and you strip off the audio and you start a podcast. You still need intros, outros, and you need some professional things, but it's not a ton of things. And if you've already started in the live stream, you've known, is this resonating with the community? And it's more than your mom and your dad and your friends and your, you know, your close family. It's that extended community of people, you know, the network you're in. And so if that is resonating and they're saying, wow, this is really valuable information, I'm tuning in. Every time you go live, you're onto something.

So if somebody wanted to do a podcast and make money with it, it's a different model. This is one of the classic questions, is how do you monetize your podcast? I'm doing this partly because I'm endlessly curious and partly because there are issues that I care about that I want to learn about. So I'm going to interview some really smart people around that. But my main work is business advisor, executive advisor, and helping people do speeches.

Yeah. So I think the question should more often be is, should you Monetize it. And that's the real question. Because monetization implies advertisement, right? That advertisement and sponsorship. We believe in alternative monetization. It's how we've built our whole system. It's why we train everybody the way that we do. We want you to get value in your core business or your core goal or core community growth. So we want those short term goals to start being achieved quicker. And that way you're starting to feel this sense of my community's resonating with me. There's engagement happening. I see my business growing, so something's working here. Or I see my mission growing and my Facebook communities growing. Like it can be that model. And so I see that I'm getting traction and things are moving here. But when you shift into advertising and sponsorship, you shift into this idea of selling out your audience. You start to sell other people's stuff, other ideas, other products, other. You distract. So unless it's truly core to what you're building, or unless you're building a true, I'm going to call it an influencer show and an influencer, the way that I define that is someone who is out there building community and relationship. Not things, not stuff. They're going to share other people's stuff, they're going to find the new latest thing in whatever the area. So 3D printing, for instance, we didn't have any of our own stuff. We were truly an influencer in that marketplace. We could take advertisements, but we were very careful and cautious with our sponsorship model to only take advertisements of things that we believed in and used because we didn't want to abuse the trust built in our audience and abuse that influence. We wanted to be true to it. So we didn't worry about making money in it. We didn't even worry about making cost covered because it yielded us a lot of intangibles, which I'll mention in a second. But that's the idea. Is that truly at the end of the day saying, is this serving my audience? And if it's serving my audience, it's time to monetize. And if it's not serving my audience, then this is not a right fit for me or for them. And so we look at that. The intangibles though is I have a speaking career I never expected and it came from that podcast. I mean, I've spoken on stages before. It wasn't like I'd never spoken before, did trainings, did other things, but it wasn't like a career path. It wasn't something I did I have been on the road since, for the last 12 weeks, speaking everywhere. And I have before the end of the year, I still have three more. So, like, you know, it's a little bit easier. They're closer to home at least. But, you know, it's. I never imagined that that's what my life would like. But what happened was, is I was asked to give a speech because they heard me on my podcast and said, can you give a talk? And I gave a talk about makers making money. I actually did. That was what the name of the talk. And so it was about makers and 3D printers learning how to sell product and what they would do and how they should price them. And Inc magazine's LA bureau chief saw me and she invited me to write a column for them about product design and including technology like 3D printing and other things. And I've been writing it in January. It'll be my fifth year doing that. And so that pretty much is the reason. It's the combination of the two. But the in column is a lot of reason why I get invites to speak places because it has a credibility, it has an authority weight to it that when you compare me against other designers out there, they're not as articulate, they can't listen to all my shows, know that I can talk to, I can do interviews. I can also answer questions off the cuff. They know all of that. They see that and they know I also can engage an audience for a long period of time because I sustained 560 shows plus some more, plus all the articles that came out of it. So they see that and they go, wow, weighing her against someone else, that's really. It's easy choice, right?

So just out of curiosity, since we're still talking about monetization, do you consider your speeches are monetization? What kind of results do you get from your speeches?

Yeah, so I'm not paid to speak, although I have on occasion been paid expenses to speak, like overseas and other places. So I do accept that. But I don't usually accept payment to speak because I know I'm going to sell now. I don't sell in a hard way. I've never done that. I don't believe in it. It's not my process. It doesn't fit who I am.

I don't think it works anymore anymore.

I went to go train to do it, to know that I. What I didn't want to do and what I do want to do. So mine's always an invite to connect with me at the end and it works incredibly well. So it's combination brand awareness, content awareness. I drive people to my show, my podcasts, and so our audience grows and builds and that gets into the community. But it really is a speak to sell model for me. And so, yes, it does convert. Am I careful about my choices of where I speak? I'm a little bit more off the cuff. If I enjoy the person who invites me and I think their community is going to be great, I'll give it a shot. So it doesn't matter to me whether there's 20 people in the room or there's 2,000 people in the room. I'll do either. And I find better traction personally, when it's around 50 people or 50 to 100. That's like my sweet spot. I think I usually do better in that size room for some reason because I can touch people and reach them more.

Okay, this is really fascinating. Do you consider yourself still a product designer or do you consider yourself a broadcast producer or a marketer or. Not that they're mutually exclusive?

No, I guess I consider myself an innovator. Like, whenever we approach something, we're always reinventing and innovating what's happening in there. So we've been reinventing the podcast market, we've been reinventing how podcasts are launched, we're reinventing how we produce cover art. Like every little detail about it. We're always at the like, minute level working on, say, is this working? What's not working? Let's throw this out. So we build a process for that continual improvement. But we also build process to say, this isn't working, let's hack the system. So, for instance, on advertisement, the average podcast that doesn't do millions of listens a month because there are very few of them, about only 2% of podcasts make decent money for their hosts. And when I say that they make in the thousands per month for their hosts, most others break even. But the average for everyone below that is about one to three hundred dollars a month. And I'm not going to sell out my audience for 100 bucks. Just not, not worth it. Not at the end of the day. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And so I said, well, this isn't working. And so we investigated and we looked at this and said, why doesn't this model work? And it doesn't work because they pay on how many thousands of listens? So it's a CPM model, just like you have in marketing everywhere else, like.

A pay per click or Something.

Yeah, like a pay per click. It's always per thousand listeners, per thousand readers on my ink column, like that kind of thing. So per thousand listeners. And so when you have a show that, let's say, you know, in my 3D print podcast, in the early days, like in the first six months, we had 10 to 25,000 listeners. So when we had 10,000 listeners, each individual show, though, the brand new shows that were going out probably only had 1000-1500 listeners. For those new shows that were being produced. Everything else was on our back catalog. So you're looking at that going, wow, all these shows back here, they don't have advertisements on it. But I built a lot of equity back here, a lot of information, and most of my audience hasn't caught up or they just found my show and they started the beginning and they're binge listening to me. And so I thought, this is a waste. Why would I want to only advertise on these four shows in a given month and give my sponsor, who I think is great and deserves awareness, only, you know, maybe 4,000 or so of my listeners, that doesn't seem to fit. So I said, this model is really broken. What can we do about it? And so Tom Hazard, who's my husband and partner, the two of us went and said, let's look at this differently. How can we advertise across the entire show catalog? Capture all the episodes, everyone, sell them on a monthly basis, not a CPM basis based on your over 100% of your listenership, give total value to the sponsor and to the podcaster so that if it is the right thing for you, you now make 100% of your potential value for it. So we took what would have been $100 a month and easily 10x that, if not 100x that for most people. And that's the model we do today. And then we said, okay, of course, now we got to remove those ads because we don't want irrelevant ads stuck in our shows. Right. We want to keep selling them new. We call it ad mixing. But it's our system that we invented and we're the only ones who do it this way. And it came early on, from our own view of saying, this is broken.

Yeah, I remember that you were talking about Leonardo da Vinci earlier, and I've often thought that he started to design the airplane because he was drawing birds. Yeah, he was probably sitting out in the meadow drawing birds, and at some point he. He had a dead bird and spread out the wing, and then he suddenly said, huh, I wonder how that works. I remember Isaac Asimov, I believe, was the one who said, great inventions don't come from a aha, eureka moment. They come from a hmm, that's funny.

Or they come from, yeah, I mean, there are two kinds of approaches that can happen that I found over time because Tom and I actually have 40 patents between the two. So the difference, though, for us is that our patents are all commercialized, so we have an 86% commercialization rate, meaning that they make money for our clients or for us. And so that's very rare because about less than 2% of inventions make money. So it's very similar to podcasts. Right. Less make money. And so when we looked at that, what happens for us is that same kind of thing is that there's amount of iteration over time. You come to say, wow, I've hit on something that now finally solves that nagging problem I've been having. Or you have it. My viewpoint is different, so that's one of the things that I prefer. So if I can bring out a broader viewpoint into everything that I do. And so I'm now looking at it from the view of my clients, and my clients are saying, I need to make more money sooner. I need to have a revenue stream in my business. And I'm thinking we can do that. Or they're coming to it from, wow, I really want everyone to hear about my great new course, but I only have my four new shows to put it in each week. That's not okay. So solving their problems, too, helps us bring a new viewpoint to how we can really innovate, really invent something, and really make something that is making everybody have a higher value and usage in the process. And so that's why we believe in high touch. That's why we have the services the way that we have, so that everybody. We're hearing from our clients. It's not a passive thing. You don't sign up and use the software, and then we never talk to you. Because I believe when you break down that feedback loop, that's when your product is no longer innovating.

Yeah, well, one of the things I love about this is I've heard you talk about how some things in marketing are working and some things aren't, and why podcasts are such a useful thing now. And I'm sure by the time podcasts become old hat and the market is saturated, there'll be something else. And I count on you to teach me to tell me what it is.

Tracy, because I think about all the. When you're talking about women who are experiencing the glass ceiling and corporate life or they're bumping up against. I'm not being heard, I'm not being seen, I'm not being found. That's what I hear again and again. And that's the perfect time for you to sit back and consider, is there something that I so badly have to talk about and share and say that needs to get out there? That would be valuable. That would change the way the world is working, change the way the system's working. And if that means I have to step out and be the one to do that, you know, maybe this is the right media for you.

So, Akshay, this actually brings me to a very interesting thing, because you don't necessarily have to have a podcast of your own. You could be a podcast guest. And how you get people to actually find you. That's probably asked Tracy Hazard about this.

Well, you know, that's a really good thing. So I always think it's a great idea for you to start as a guest. If you've never done a podcast before and you're thinking about this might be. The thing is definitely go and guest on someone's show just to feel how it is. Because you may find it just. You get, like, stage fright.

Right.

You may not be great off the cuff. And it is not a rehearsed thing for most part. There are very few podcasts that are that structured and they don't do as well. Frankly, the ones that are more ad hoc do better.

Yeah. Well, actually, that makes me think of. It's a lot of the work that I do with people who want more visibility is you can do a pro bono speech, figure out what you want to talk about, get the outline, and I would say rehearse your sound bites. So, you know, what are your nuggets that you're always going to make sure you're going to say the important parts. And I think of it as jazz. You think about speaking like jazz, every situation is going to be a little different. You know, maybe tonight you've got a piano and a saxophone and drums, and tomorrow night you've got a guitar and a flute.

So.

But the tune's going to be the same, right? Maybe you're doing, you know, someone to Watch over Me or something like that. The tune will be the same, although the instruments are different. And then there's always a beginning and there's always an end, but in the middle you've got a basic melody to follow, but then you can improvise.

Right. And it is your ability to improvise and sustain an audience in that improvisation that really works for most people. They sit and are comfortable in it. It makes them the best guests. It makes them the best host at the end of the day. So if you can be truly listening and crafting your answers in a different way when you're a guest on. And I have this happen to me, a lot of PR firms will send me guests, and when I put them on my show and they do the same thing that they've done on 10 other shows, there's no value in that.

Yeah.

So getting someone to being a great interviewer, to be able to make them break their mold, that's important, too. But if you're on the other side and you're going and guesting, being able to do that is a sign of a great guest. And then you're going to get more press because of that. You're going to be invited to do more stages. Maybe you'll get to do a panel or something like that. One of the most challenging things I did in the last year, Elizabeth, was I had to moderate a panel. I've never done that before. I've done interviews where I've interviewed a couple of people at a time on my show, but I've never moderated a panel live. And it was the most challenging talk I ever had to prepare for. When it's myself on stage, I'm like, I wing it. I'm comfortable there. I know my stuff so well that I can do that. I can. I like to go to an event and experience the audience and say, oh, I'm going to tell these stories, because we've got lots of real estate people or we've got lots of speakers in the audience. So I rethink my talk as I'm getting to know people. But when you've got this panel that, like, you have no control over, I was like, I had to be prepared. I had to, like. It was so much harder than any other talk I'd given. But it really reminded me of how important that preparation is and how important it is to be able to, like, improvise when necessary. One of the panelists was really boring, and he was really interesting in person. So when I had talked him one on one, he was really interesting. I was like, okay, great. And I'd formulated a couple questions for him. When I asked him the questions, it's like he had stage fright. And he just, like, driest answers ever. And I was like, how am I gonna Pick up the audience after that. And I'm starting to think of, I'm in charge of the entertainment value now. So it totally changed the dynamic. But that's the thing. When you're guesting, when you're doing these things, there's so many ways for you to experience it and say, wow, what I have to say has value. What the audience is really interested. The feedback's really great. Let's continue to do this, and maybe now let's make it my own. Because the best way to move into thought leadership is to make it your own. I mean, Oprah's the star, even though she interviews the stars.

Yeah. So, Tracy Hazard, this has been so much fun. We could go on for hours. I know.

So I know we could talk about international and all kinds of stuff. Elizabeth, you are amazing at what you're doing out there in the world.

Well, here's part of what we want to do is, and we do have an episode scheduled for on speakers who get results about how to be a rock star panel guest and moderator. And I think I'm going to have a panel to talk about being on a panel, because it's not quite the same as giving a speech, but you can still get a result from it. You still need to think about what it is. Don't just sit back and ask. Let the moderator ask you questions. Really be strategic about it. So that's coming up. Just take a look, everybody. It's going to be as part of this. And meanwhile, Tracy Hazard, who is producing this podcast, thank you so much.

Thank you.

When I discovered that Potatoes was going to take care of all the stuff for me and all I have to do is talk, it's like, yay, I could do that. You know, for me, writing a blog is pulling teeth. So you'll see on the list that there are podcasts for this one that are things that started out as articles that I never finished because I won't do it. But if I Only need to Talk is great. So, Tracy Hazard of FeedYourBrand Co and Poditize.com I want to thank you so much. How can people find out more?

So, yeah, just go to those two places to poditize.com and feed YourBrand co. Feed your brand is our podcast for podcasters or aspiring podcasters. So we're always bringing them new information there. So that's actually the best place to kind of get your feet wet and get to know me better. Great.

So I'm just honored and delighted to have you on this recording. And this is Elizabeth Bachmann, your host. This has been Speakers who Get Results. I'll see you on the next one.

We have just concluded another great episode of Speakers who Get Results with your host, Elizabeth Bachman. If you got value from today's episode, please feel free to share us with your friends and colleagues. You may also visit Elizabethbachman.com for additional resources. Be sure to tune in every week for new episodes. And thanks for tuning in.