Unconventional Podcasting Advice With Belle Robertson of the Belle's One Minute Messages (Podfaded)

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 a really, really different podcast to profile today and I'm super excited to bring her to you because I'm always looking for something that's outside the box, something that defies all of the guru advice out there because I want you to have some different views about how you can bring your show to success, how you can bring a different viewpoint in it, how you can make it a little bit more you. And this person has completely done that. Bel Robertson is a writer and sober coach with the website Tired of Thinking About Drinking. It's actually a blog. Originally she's written a book about how to quit drinking and has worked one on one as a sober coach with over 3,000 individual sober pen pals. As of today she has and such an interesting show. It's called Sober Insights, but she also has one minute messages, so there's actually two shows in one. So she's done well over 600 episodes if you count them both. She has a subscriber list of almost 25,000 and she emails them two to four times a day, which is very different than anyone else I've ever heard. And she's helped thousands of people and still earn a living with the freemium model, which is very unusual for coaches, as you all know. What I really enjoy about this conversation with her, and you are going to find it, is that there are so many unusual things she chose to do from the beginning and she chooses to do ongoing. There's a lot of work in what she does. It's absolutely imperative that she spends this time thinking through what's going to work with my audience. And she talks about that in the episode. So listen up because there's some really interesting things going on there. But before we start, I want to mention one really unique thing. We're speaking to Bell Robertson, but that's not her real name. Her show is Anonymous. She's Anonymous. This is a pen name, her podcast host name, because being Anonymous in her industry is extremely important. She is a sober coach for judges, psychiatrists, people who couldn't normally go to aa and they need the anonymity. She goes so far as to provide anonymity through her payment processing. Even so she doesn't have to know their name as well. So it's absolutely interesting that she's developed an entire model with this anonymous integrity built in place as well. So while we are speaking to Bel Robertson, that is her anonymous name. And so I want you to know that. But I have to tell you, like throughout the whole thing, she's Belle. Right. She becomes that person. She is who that is deep inside, even if that's not her real name. So I'm so excited to bring you a different center of influence, Bel Robertson. Bel, thank you so much for joining me today.

Happy to be here.

Yeah. So you are very exciting in Paris right now. Well, I'm calling, I'm over here in California, but I'm going to say our clarity of call sounds amazing.

Yeah.

And I love that about podcasting.

Well, I live here, so I have like a good microphone set up and I've been interviewed on the BBC, so I have decent quality stuff. I also record my own podcast from here, so. Well, I'm glad it works.

So. Yeah, so it works so well. And that's what I want everybody to hear. Like it does not matter where in the world you're talking to people from. Right. So I just wanted to point that out right away for sure. So you have a really interesting and different model of show and that's why I'm really glad to bring you here on feeder brand center of Influence because I think that it is a daunting task to run a show the way that in the topic area that you are. So your show is obviously in addiction recovery and specifically drinking. And your show's called Sober Insights. We find that many shows that are in that sort of self help area of addiction recovery and other things where it might be something very private to the person who's listening that there's more issues growing a show. And you seem to come up with some very interesting and unusual ways to do that. So I'm so excited to talk to you about that. Did you find that when you first started out that you couldn't get people to share the show?

Well, do you know what? When I first started, I made it paid right off the bat for my existing subscribers. So I had a mailing list of like 2000 people and I was sending out daily emails. This is something also that's a bit unusual. If you have an audience that pays attention to what you're doing and you're providing useful information to them. You can email them twice a day. I can email them three times a day. And during Thanksgiving or something's going on, like when there's a presidential election and the results are coming in, or anything else that might be triggering, I'll send out five or six a day. Tiny ones, little one paragraph. It's okay, you're fine.

Pay attention.

You know, that kind of thing.

Wow.

So what I did was I wanted to talk to people. Like I want it. Yeah. I think honestly when you said I was interesting and unusual, I'm going to.

Be both of those. I love that. That's why you're here, obviously. But you know what? That is so interesting. So now you started out, as you said, a listed 2000, but you have a well over 20,000 list right now.

25,000, but it's six years later. I'm seven years. I'm seven years without a drink. But after about a year is when I started the podcast. I had a blog, I had people following me, I had daily emails and I wanted to create some audios, but I was nervous that nobody would listen to them because what I did was just turn on the recording. And the way it started was it was Labor Day weekend. And instead of sending out the email that says, you're fine, it's fine, I wanted to say it. So I recorded a little seven minute message that just said, look, if everybody else is drinking on Labor Day weekend, it doesn't mean that you need to. You're doing what's best for you. And what happened after that was the feedback I got was, oh, my God, you were talking right to me. You were talking directly to me. And of course they were familiar with my writing, so they sort of knew how I sounded, at least by writing. But then when they heard my voice, then when they read my stuff, they can hear me, you know, they can replay my voice. So then I thought, okay, well, I want to do this more often, like two, three times a week. So I charged them for it because I didn't want to invest a whole lot of time in creating content that would have no market. Just exactly what you said. I didn't want to create it. Put it up and have seven people come.

Yeah. Oh, but you know, that's so fantastic that you had the confidence to try that, which most people don't. And I think it is a confidence thing. It's like, I don't know if it's of Any value. So I'm not going to try this. And immediately you said, I'm going to assess a value to this.

Right? And then what I did was if you were a subscriber for a month, you got access to all of those audios. And then if you join next month, you only get the ones that are released from the date when you join so that the people aren't penalized for having been signed up for two months or three months already. So you can't just sign up today and get access to the entire back catalog. You can get access to some. And so, but what happened then was the end of the month, random people would email me and say, did you do a podcast about relapse? Can I just get that one? So then I started to sell them individually. Like I have a list of archive podcasts and also for people who don't know me, that's how it started the idea of this. But then of course, what happens when you do this kind of work? When you work one on one with people, you get questions all the time and then you hear the same question ten times and then you think, okay, I'm going to do a podcast about having a prickly personality and being resistant to help. Okay, and then I'm going to do a podcast about how to have a sober Christmas. That one seems a little bit more self explanatory, right?

I did a podcast called Liquid Poo, which is basically saying, I hope I can drink and just keep all of my over drinking contained in this one little room. I won't let it affect my life. I won't let it affect anything. I just want to like over drink right here. And I compared that to Liquid Poo, which then spreads over your whole house. Like you can't contain Liquid poo. And. But that kind of an audio gets people's attention, right? And so something like that, I'll send it out for free to everybody because they all need to hear it really. Sometimes what I do too is I put it up on my blog and say it's available for 24 hours. Go listen.

Because if there's no deadliness, I love that listens, right?

There's no deadline, nobody goes. And then, you know, I did it like that for I don't know, a couple years, maybe two years. And then I thought I would take a little clip out of one of the podcasts, like just a little one minute section and send that out as like a teaser. Well then they love the one minute messages way, way disproportionately to in my case, what I thought was the value was completely not correct. So if there's a lesson in that, it's that your audience will tell you what they want and you can't decide for them. So I recorded 10 one minute messages and I sent them out 10 days in a row. Made them free. Anybody could get them. They were on my site and they were on Apple podcasts, itunes. On the itunes version, I said, come back to my site to get the rest of them. And in my own list I sent them out directly. But the one minute messages turned out to be this amazing opportunity for people to get to know me with no commitment and no overwhelm. Like it's a one minute message. So it's like one minute message about again, like about Labor Day or about vacationing or what do you say when the waiter comes to the table and says, what can I get you to drink? What I didn't expect was that anybody would sit down and listen to them back to back, which is what then turned out to happen. People would email me and say, I listen to them.

And I hate to use the word, but binge listening, right?

Listen to 51 minute messages back to back. And of course, and there's music underneath them. Like they're really kind of cheesy, in my opinion. In my opinion, they're cheesy little inspirational things that still have my tone of voice and my sense of humor. And they love them. Like, I still get emails all the time about. I did one about Julie from the Love Boat. You are not Julie from the Love Boat. You're not required to for any. To moderate anybody else's happiness. You're in charge of you, that kind of thing.

I love that this is so interesting because you also are discovering along the way the way people will listen, the way they're consuming content. You're discovering that at the same time that you were sort of discovering what works for you. But you know what I think is really also very interesting about the way is that you started out with a blog. You were a blogger first, so you had tired of thinking about drinking was the name of your blog, and you shifted into being a podcaster. As you mentioned is sort of the genesis of how that happened. What have you carried with you that has been so successful with what you learned in blogging that you keep doing today?

I still have the blog and I post some of the daily emails. I'll take some of the things that I share by daily email and post them back on the blog. The thing about emails is they're hard to search. The thing about Instagram is it's hard to search. Everybody's on Instagram. I get it. And I do share things on Instagram. You can't search it. You can't go back and look at what my day seven was like to see what your day seven is like to see if it sucks. You can't look at what my day. Because I started the blog because I was sober blogging. So I was a blogger who documented my journey to save myself. It wasn't intended to be helpful to anybody that came completely by accident. So like any good, I mean, people will say this, right? Like any good business idea is the one where it happens organically, where you create something and people actually like it, rather than you walking around saying, buy my stuff, buy my stuff.

It's so important though that you have recognized that searchability as the key criteria. Because what I see again and again is that same thing. The ones who started out as bloggers or were digital marketers and understood that sort of search criteria and the way people were utilizing content did better coming into podcasting from the beginning. So they actually are more successful at the beginning of it. Now, whether or not they keep it up or they abandon it, that determines their long term success. Our platform and everyone that we worked with and do it are obviously it's a key portion of it. But most of them didn't start as bloggers to begin with. We've added it as a component later because they were finding that they weren't having the success they expected as a podcaster.

Right.

We bring that component in later. So it's a little bit backwards, but you've hit on one of the key to success is that when I'm a listener and I'm in desperate need and you have a program that is just all about that deep need that happens at two in the morning when. Whenever it occurs, right. That I need to be able to search and find the information that I need at that moment.

Right. And so on my blog I will do a mixture of text and long audio and short audio and photos and some of the things that I post on Instagram, some of the little images, they end up there as well, but also in the daily emails. So the daily emails are the more direct way that I contact people like daily. But then I've even been able to take a series of daily emails, put them together in a booklet and sell it.

I love that.

Like I wrote something that took six separate long emails to write. It was about the voice in your head that thinks that drinking is a good idea that I call Wolfie, which is another whole story. But anyway, there's a voice in your head that says, drink now. What about now? Where's the waitress? I could have another one. It's only Tuesday. I could probably have two more. And then all that noise, all that thinking about drinking. And so I wrote a booklet. I wrote six emails in a row saying, here's Wolfie, here's how you identify it, here's what the voice says, here's how you know, here's what you do to get it to stop. And at the end of the seven days, I said, you know, emails are kind of hard to keep track of. Why don't we take this? Why don't I take this? No, I didn't say that. I said, what do you think about me taking this and putting it into a PDF, a Kindle single, a print booklet? And I got hundreds of emails saying, yes, because again, I'm not going to do it if there's no interest. So then I go into my page layout software and I lay it all out and I upload it to my very first Amazon single, Kindle single, upload it, number one bestseller in sobriety and blah, blah, that day, you know, then I record an audio of it. Again, this is still just the emails that everybody got for free. Then I record an audio of each of the six days and release those to the podcast subscribers and make them available for sale separately.

And, you know, you're pointing out something that I think is so misunderstood in this marketplace that we think, oh, we're giving all this content away for free. But there are other opportunities that are much more convenient, as you pointed out, to people that are much more useful to them, that they are more than willing to pay for and consume in that way, because they need it in these other formats too, in order to be able to utilize it to the full. They've been given that taste for free and they're happy with who you are and what you do and what you're going to bring to them. Now they want more.

Right. Well, there's something else that we didn't say about me, which is that 80% of what I do is free.

That's right. And that was what I was going to be bringing up, right, that most of what you're giving out there is free. But remember, it's all over the place, as you pointed out.

So it's on medium, it's in a podcast, it's on daily emails. Then there's emails directly with just one pen pal. But if I emailed just one pen pal and there's something, a nugget about how she dealt with her husband's over drinking in relationship to her own sobriety, then I'll pull that out and share it with the whole list. So there's like this whole and then if it's a really good one, I'll put it on the blog. And then sometimes I'll go back to the blog and find my day 14 and then I'll share that tomorrow. Like if I have nothing to share tomorrow, I just go back to the blog and pull out. Here's what day 14 looks like. It's terrible. And yet here's what day 40 looks like. It looks better.

That's right. So this sounds like a whole lot of work. This is what I get from a lot of people out there who are thinking about starting a podcast and they just thought, oh, this will be easy. But what you're describing sounds like deep thought to everything. You're pulling out, everything that you're looking at, you're concentrating on it. You're thinking about what's in the best interest of all of those subscribers of yours who find you so valuable and who needs you. So you must always be thinking about what's in the best interest. What's in their best interest, for sure.

But you know what they tell me? Like when you have a large list and you make a mistake, they tell you. And if you're narcissistic or self centered, they'll tell you quickly. So I generally get corrected by my audience when I do something dumb. And some of the mistakes that I've made, like not having good quality audio when I'm recording outside, it's like I don't have a microphone, portable microphone, and it's too windy, that kind of thing.

Yeah, you got the clicking thing going on and they have a fit about it. I totally get it. Yeah, we hear that all the time, right?

But I think that they're also depending on the message, very forgiving about an echo or about me doing it. Like I've turned on my phone voice mem memo and recorded on an airplane because the kid in front of me was doing something that reminded me of something that I could relate to sobriety. And so then I just turned it on. But the reason, I think for me that it's not hard. Well, there's a couple reasons. Number one, I don't have guests, so I don't have to schedule anybody and there's no time Zone shit. And I just, I swear, I swear. And there's no time zone stuff. I just turn it on when I feel like recording and I promise them one to two new audios a week. But I don't have a schedule because to me, as soon as it's Tuesday, Friday, I don't want to do it. That's just me personally. I'm very drawn to doing it exactly when I feel like it. And I seem to be feeling like it enough that I don't have to like force myself. And when I get really behind, I'll go to a Facebook live from six months ago and pull the audio from that and make that a podcast.

Well, that's really smart. Let's repurpose.

Right?

But you know, I think that's really an interesting thing that, that I think that some, there are so many, I'm going to call them gurus, advisors out there who tell people, oh, you have to be on schedule, you have to be consistent and constant. It has to come out every Tuesday morning, whatever that is. And I think there is something to be said for that in certain marketplaces. And there's another, which is what I think you've hit on is that those people who are subscribing to you, they, when you need them, they need you. And that's really important. When you're ready to reach out to them, it's because they needed you. You have an energetic thing going on. Right. A passion about it going on. And it would be much better for them to wait for you to be in the moment than it would be if you felt forced to be recording.

Yes. And I've explained it to them too. Like I've said, because when you're self employed, you get to make these sorts of decisions. And to some extent I'm modeling the fact that if I know what my own work style is and I have the opportunity to cater to that, then this is what I'm going to do. I'm self employed, so I have the ability to set my own schedule, which is to not have a schedule. I feel better that way. I'm more productive. That's just me. But when I explain it like that, nobody gives me a hard time because they're still getting what I promised, which is one to two new audios a week. I don't say two, I say one to two. I love it. Sometimes it's only one and then sometimes there'll be nine days between them and then you'll get three in a row. And it just. So I don't want them clinging to Tuesday morning at 6am because then I think actually it becomes mechanical. And people also record six months out. And then it's not topical. Like today in Paris, there's an event happening that I think would make a good podcast to do with catastrophizing and the way the media presents difficult situations. And so when there was a fire here, when our church was. The big church was on fire in the summer, I turned on Facebook Live and recorded for an hour what the news was, what the truth was, how to process this information, not to assume that it's all bad, to make it topical. So if, like, if something's happening with the President of the United States and it's triggering my group, then I want to record a podcast today.

Well, you know, and that's also another thing. Most of the podcast gurus out there are like, don't create something that is set in time, that isn't evergreen. But in your particular case, it's absolutely a necessity to be set in time because it's the most helpful thing I need in this moment.

Well, here's the thing about authenticity and any of the mental health coaching stuff. If you queue up your podcast to go out every Tuesday morning at 6 o' clock and there's been an earthquake the day before, and your podcast comes out and it's talking about how to make homemade lemonade as a replacement for champagne, yeah, you've missed it and you've missed your group and you've just delivered garbage. Yeah, you have missed the opportunity to turn on the microphone and say, I'm here in my pajamas. I'm recording this right now because. And then send it out. But the other thing that I do is I use mixlr M I X L R, which is an online broadcast radio station, basically, where you can turn on the microphone and broadcast live. So I can send out an email to my whole list, say, I'm gonna be online in 15 minutes, they'll all come over and then I'll record a podcast, but with an audience. Now, they can't speak, but I know they're there, and they can chat and send emails. So then I can get 60, 70, 100, 400 people, depending on how far in advance I advertise it.

We do that something similar, but it's more scheduled only because of the way that we do our topics, but we do something similar. So one of our podcast is Marketing Monday Mixer. And on Mondays, I'm live on Facebook for a half hour and we're talking about some whatever the marketing Topic of the week is. And it's usually related to something that, like, algorithm shifts, something that happens. So it's more timely and it allows us to have an audience at that point and have feedback. So before I put it up as a podcast, if I need to add like another couple of minutes to it, we'll do it. Right. And so. And I think it's really valuable for you to have that audience sitting there for you.

Oh, yeah.

And there's an energy in that, too. It's better because of that.

Well, they submit questions, like I can, like, for my. I've done an event, for example, my own soberversary. Like, my anniversary of being sober is July 1st. And so two years ago, I think, or three years ago, I did a live show on July 1st, because it was on a weekend, it was three hours long, and I just turned on the recording and I made it live and I recorded like five podcasts back to back. Well, if you were there listening live, you not only got to listen to it for free, but you got to participate, right? You know, submit questions, but then if you missed it or you had to walk out or your kid was crying, you get the recording later. I then turned that into live events where I now go, like to London, put 30 people, sell tickets, put 30 people in a room and record a podcast in front of them. And if it goes an hour and a half, I can record three episodes back to back with a live with people laughing and, you know, with an actual, like a radio show, basically.

Yeah. Oh, I love that. You're doing so many out of the box things, unusual things in the way that you're doing it, and it's working for you because it's such a right fit to your audience. So it says to me that you have such sensitivity and you're really, truly listening to what they're saying to you, what they're needing from you, and you're coming up with great ways to provide that that is also authentically you, that you feel you can deliver because it fits you and your lifestyle and your business.

Right. Well, part of that is also because I'm anonymous. And so when I started this, I sort of made a deal with myself that I would be 100% me because I was anonymous. I could walk right up to that ledge in a way. In a way that I thought might have been more difficult if I wasn't anonymous. But it also then turns out that since 2012, when I started this, like you said about bloggers, if you look at the last five years, Authenticity has turned out to be really important. And if anybody was a coach, therapist, any kind of coach, not just mental health coach, a fitness coach, if you just turned it on and talked, if you just turned it on and said it was hard to get up and go to the gym today, people like that, if you created a live event and you had everybody calling in with their problems and you were troubleshooting them on the air, it wouldn't matter what kind of coach you were. You could be a marketing coach, you could be a sober coach if you actually, like, are open to hearing what your people want. Because, I mean, you have to actually be one willing to listen right to what it is that they want, which is different than what you want to say.

So now, Bel, you've obviously made a great show here. You've made great website, you have a nurtured list who loves you. What have you been able to do with it? How has this helped you grow a business? Have impact?

Well, the podcast itself has paid subscribers. Like, there's a free set of audios and then there's a paid set. And so often people will participate only in the free stuff, or they'll participate in the free stuff until they get to know me well enough, and then they'll do some of the paid stuff. But one thing about my audios is that they're. Because they're not interviews. It's me talking directly to you. And that has a stronger impact than you might think. Like an audio, a pretty personal thing. You're listening to it alone with your headset. It's not three people in a room watching television. It's one person with a headset is a podcast. So if you actually talk directly to them, if you're doing an interview, they're listening to you talk to someone else.

Right.

They're a bystander. If you talk to them, then you can connect with them in a totally different way, but it builds that relationship much more quickly. So if I say right now, pretending like I'm talking to my audience, you being sober is how you take care of you. You know, you've messed around with drinking before, you've tried it, it doesn't work for you. And now you're trying something else. And if I say that and it gets you on the right day, people will be crying and will email me and say, that really got to me.

Yeah.

And they'll say, it sounds like you're talking directly to me, because I am. So because of that, then all of the things that you want to do with, like Facebook lives in terms of engagement and building relationship quickly. Much easier with audio because audio is portable and video is not.

Right. We use a quote here all the time about how you think with your eyes, but you feel with your ears. And it's a quote from Malcolm Gladwell on the Stephen Colbert show at one point when he was talking about why he did a podcast instead of a new book. And I always think about that. You feel with your ears, and it is so true because it hits so much deeper into the corner core of who you are and what you're thinking about. You bypass that.

Right. So, I mean, how does that build your business? It builds your relationship with your people, your free people, your many thousands of free people who may then turn into a $2 client, who may then turn into a $3,000 client, and you don't know who they are. And so you deliver the best stuff you can to everybody. And, I mean, I know and I encourage people to consume only the free stuff because, I mean, I grew up in a family that didn't have a ton of money. I understand what it's like to not have a lot of money. I could just put everything behind a paywall. You don't even get the free daily emails. You have to pay for everything. But then how would anybody get to know you? And it's something like, sensitive, like sober coaching. They have to know you, and they have to know that you're not full of crap. Like, they have to know. Well, and in my case, they want to know that I've actually done it.

Mm.

Like quit drinking. And then they want to know that I've worked individually one on one with 3,000 people over the last six years. Individual, not group, coaching. One on one coaching. So I've heard this stuff.

Yeah.

You lied to your husband. I've heard that. This doesn't scare me. You're in a polyamorous marriage and you're having trouble with your drinking. I don't care. It's got nothing like it unless it impacts your drinking. I don't care.

I love it. I love that you've been able to tap into that so deeply. Well, every time we do this show, we tap into some lessons learned, and obviously we are going to touch on some of them, and a couple of them aren't going to apply to you, and I love that because that will give us an opportunity to talk about something a little bit different.

Okay.

Our lessons on your experience becoming a podcast center of influence about the best ways to do these five things. And the first one is book great guests, but you've obviously chosen not to. And so what I love to talk about here, rather than how do you book great guests is how do you decide you don't want them?

Well, you have to be able to open your mouth and speak, which I didn't know I could do until I started doing this. I was always a writer. I have a master's degree in creative writing. I was always a writer. I wrote blog, I wrote emails. I didn't know I could open my mouth and speak. So you have to be able to open your mouth and talk about a subject with anecdotes, come back to the main topic, and be compelling. Part of the way I find that's easy to do is with a little bit of humor and to talk directly to people. But also you have to be a bit of a storyteller. You have to be able to tell the story about liquid Poo and have it not just be revolting, but have it mean something. Or to tell the story about how to be sober for Christmas and not just have it be top 10 things. Number one, bring your own drink. Number two, go in your own car. That's not a podcast.

No, no, it's not. But you know what? As a writer, coming out of it, it's like so much of our writing that's out there, and articles are like that, and that's where everything's falling flat. So I love that you've chosen to go this much more personal, deep connection route and really be true about what you want to convey to people. And it's coming across because it's what they need to hear as well. So I love that you've chosen not to do guests. I think it's very, very successful strategy for so many people that I do. They overlook and they don't.

It's way easier. Then I use it as a differentiator, where I say to people, I'm the one who talks directly to you. Because then they'll still say, I've tried the other sober audios. There's always two people. There's always two or three women talking, and they're talking about stuff that's not relevant to me.

Yeah.

And so if I talk directly to you, I have to make it relevant to you. It's not just what do I want to talk about, it's what do they want to hear.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, most people choose to do guesting strategy because they opt into what the gurus are telling them, and they say, oh, you need that in order to increase your listeners because you got to borrow other people's audiences.

Right.

And so that's our number two thing. What are some of the best ways to increase listeners? Because now you don't have this crutch of the guesting.

Right. Send out lots of stuff for free directly to your really large email list that you've maintained all along, as your primary contact with people is email primary.

And how do you grow that list for yourself? What are some ways that you do that?

Most of the people who sign up for my free daily emails have typed my name into Google. Type my name or typed Tired of thinking about drinking. The online world for sober support is relatively small. If you're part of one forum, someone will mention me. If you're part of something else, someone will mention me. Some of my pen pals who are successfully sober have gone off to write books about being sober and mentioned me in them, that I was their coach when they started. So that those. Then you'll read that book and come back to me. For example, I publish on Medium. I publish on the blog. I do the free stuff they're on, like the Apple podcast. I keep wanting to call it itunes Apple Podcast. But also I will be a guest on anybody's podcast. Been guest number 17. I've been certainly a guest where my audience is larger than the interviewer, I would say most of the time I've done Christian men podcasts about how to be a better father and husband. And if you want to talk about that directly, we'll talk about quitting drinking.

Done.

Iconic mom podcasts, like, how do you be your best you when you're a mom with three kids? Because the message is similar. Right? Right. I don't say no to podcasts. I even had one of my own subscribers start a podcast and want to interview me. And I just said yes. Now, the reason I do that is because they may have a fraction of an audience. Right. May become famous later. And then someone will go back, especially to early our catalog and go back to their. I mean, being episode 17 is actually great because nobody goes back to episode 241. They go back to the beginning. And listen, I this is what I.

Tell people all the time. I'm so glad you said that, Val. Because I was like, so many people are like, oh, I don't want to be this podcast might not be any good. I don't want to be one of the first few episodes. And I was like, it's a risk. Yes. But if you are, if it's good in any way, shape or form you.

Are going to be one of the.

Most listened to episodes ever.

But then I take the audio from their Apple podcast stream and I download the mp3 and then I re upload it to my list and I say I was on a podcast. So then it becomes an episode of my podcast that I was interviewed by the BBC on the radio or that I was interviewed by Back to Manhood or that I was interviewed by Thrive Global.

Well, we're good. I'm actually about to do an episode on that for everyone. So it's going to be coming up in probably following this episode. I'll try to make sure that they come out in the same week, but I'm doing one about creating a best of kind of series and how you and what some ways to do that because it does sound self serving but at the same time it gives people such deep aspects to you that they wouldn't hear on your show normally.

Right, right. And you know what, if you've done a lot of content, your audience will tell you which are the best ones. In fact, if you have a mailing list of any kind, you simply send out an email that says I'm giving away $20 worth of homemade cookies to the person who submits the top 10 list and off you go and 100 emails come in.

Hmm.

I mean, I wouldn't pick my top 10.

No.

Because I'm not the audience.

Right. And I think picking your top 10 based on numbers alone isn't always a good idea either because those may be the number ones over time or the top 10 over time. But whether they're the best ones to start with is a totally different thing.

Right.

And so yeah, that's absolutely it. So. Well, my number three on the best ways too is produce it in a professional way. And you've mentioned audio as one thing, but what are some other ways that you make sure that your show is much more professional?

I actually don't focus on that too much and I'm okay with there being background noise. If I record it at the market, I just tell them where I am and why I've turned the microphone on. But when I record at home like I am now, I have a quality microphone, I have quality headphones, I use decent Adobe software to edit it. I had a bit of music written for me at the beginning that I use at the beginning, like the intro music. I don't have Outro. I have intro music though, you know, in a decent quality export from your MP3 file.

Yes.

But again, if you make a mistake with that they'll tell you.

And I've also taken the audio from a Facebook live where I'm saying things like, there's the dog. And so what I do is at the beginning of it, I say, what you're going to hear now is the audio from a Facebook live. And the reason I'm sharing it is because I ended up talking about this, about how to deal with difficult people who challenge the fact that you quit drinking. Your best friend who says, come on, come on. And so what you're going to hear now is the video. If you'd like to go see the video, then I put the link in. Otherwise, just listen to this. And then, you know, you can hear ducks. And I'm at the duck pond and all the dogs and everything. No one complains about that. In fact, they asked for more audios recorded at the duck pond. So then I created a separate free series called, wait for it, Duck Ponderings.

I had a feeling that was what was coming, but I love it. I'm glad you went there.

But I didn't name it. One of my subscribers sent me the name. I didn't name it. I didn't even have the idea. Why would I think anybody wants to hear me talk at the duck pond? Again, all generated by. If you have a relationship with your list, they'll tell you what they want and they'll tell you when you're wrong.

I love that. I love that. So you obviously have a private topic, right? As you said, you do one on ones with your clients. But one of the best ways questions that we normally get are what are some of the best ways to encourage engagement? And that's a public thing. If you're doing it over social. So what are some other ways that you get them? Do you get them to email you? Right, right.

Yes. I don't do social because it's not private.

Yeah.

So not for this kind of engagement. Now, if I put up a piece of writing and I want people to comment, I'll put it on my blog. If I put up a piece of writing and I think the emails that I'm going to get are controversial or difficult, then I'll ask them to email them to me. Then I will curate them, then I'll post them. If I send out an audio, I'll say, right in the audio, let me know what you think. Or I'll record an intro that says, in this audio you're going to hear and what I want you to do. But sometimes what I'll do too is I'll Ask them for topics at the end of the audio, which will then get them to email me. But I've also done things like contests where I'll send out a podcast that says in the next 24 hours, when you listen to this, I want you to find the three minute segment that really encapsulates the best part of this. Or I want you to find a bumper sticker moment where there's like a phrase that would that. If you just only picked up that one phrase and then they're listening to the whole audio, trying to find the T shirt moment, the bumper sticker moment, then they submit them all to me. Then I don't do anything with them. Just send me your bumper sticker moment. Then, you know, maybe I might use them in the promo information or I might mention it in another email a week later. But then people want to tell you what they think. You just have.

So you got to give them an opportunity. Right.

And when I ask for the best three minute segment, someone will do that. And then that becomes like one of my one minute messages. Somebody's just given me, like literally from this second to this second. That's the best chunk of this. I don't have to do it. I mean, I had somebody volunteer to transcribe my audios as a gift because I do so much for free. Somebody wanted to do something in return.

Wow.

I don't say no to that.

Yeah, absolutely. Love that.

Well, the last one we go over for our best ways to. And this is so many people who want to start a podcast. This is the first thing they go to. And what are some of the best ways to monetize it? And you actually started out by saying, I'm going to monetize it from day one. So you have a little bit different view on that.

If I was starting a brand new podcast right this minute, I would probably use Apple podcasts. I would release only 10 and I would put the back catalog in a paid thing like this American Life. I mean, that's an example of. I think you can listen to this American Life online, but if you want to download the MP3 files, you have to pay a dollar or something. I can't even remember. Yeah, I think that's what I would do if I wanted to monetize. Now the reason I've done that is what most people want is a really large audience so that they can get sponsors. I don't want sponsors because the messaging will not be clean. I don't want a beer company.

Right.

And I don't want to be selling my people mattresses.

I agree. You don't want to sell out your audience for what is small amounts of money. At the end of the day, I think most people don't understand that until I've seen it again and again. And if you made $200 a month off your show, that's good. And that scares me for selling out an audience.

Right. But if you provide good, quality content to people who want it, like, again, it's not just you waxing poetic about the Smurfs. Nobody cares. Because what happens is people think they want to start a podcast, so then they start a podcast about Smurfs, and then they try to find an audience instead of already having a sense of what somebody might like to hear. And again, it sort of goes back to scratch your own itch. Like, this would have been the kind of thing that I wanted to hear, something that was relatively positive and upbeat, even though there were some scary and sad stories. Like, I had a pen pal who died from drinking, and her mother emailed me to tell me. And then when that happened, I asked her if I could share that, and her mother said yes. And so then I shared the history of the. I mean, with no names, but, like, the history of what had happened with this girl. And it just made it all more real. And then I end up crying in the podcast. You know, all this kind of thing. It's real. Well, it's really real.

Yeah, that's really real. Wow.

Then in the next podcast, I'll do something like Liquid Poo, where it's just sort of an ongoing hilarious joke, and they will just tell me that, like, that audio flipped a switch where they went. Okay, all right.

Yeah, you're right.

You're right, you're right. And I don't know which one of those audios. I don't know what's gonna hit people. I don't.

Yeah, well. And it's probably gonna be different for different people. And that's the wonderful thing. You've given them such variety as you've done so many episodes here. So the last thing before we go, I always ask, is there any piece of advice for someone who wants to start a podcast, especially one in a sensitive subject area? And I think you would be great as an advisor of someone who got started in something that you weren't an expert in when you first started writing your blog, for instance. So if it's something you're especially building expertise in.

Yeah. I would take advice from your potential listeners. So if you have any kind of mailing list, any kind of blog, any kind of forum, or you're part of a group, ask people what they'd like to have answered and then answer them and then, you know, let those people know that you've created the Q and A. You can interview your own subscribers as well. I have done that. When you don't have a guest, you interview your own subscribers, get them on, and do live coaching or live Q and A with people, have them submitted by audio. I've done that too, where they submit the audio question and I just dub in that little audio and then I answer it live. Or you can do it with submitting it by email. If you have something to sell yourself, any kind of product, small or large, or you sell the back catalog of the audios, then that can be the way that you monetize the podcast. Like if you have a book and you're selling your book, if you mention the book at the end or it somehow gets worked in, or even if just because they love you, they know you wrote a book. I do one on one coaching, which is the higher end of what I do. And then I sell $2 PDFs of collected emails and that's the lower end of what I do. I'll mention anything in between there and then. Lots of times I mentioned nothing. If they're listening to your stuff back to back, they hear enough ads, they know who you are. You want to be the person that they think of when they want the solution to this problem. Right. You want to be front of mind, Right. How do you be front of mind? Authentic. Not selling the mattresses. This is my opinion about the mattresses. Now, you know what? Maybe if you could make $30,000 a month and you had sponsors where you sold mattresses, okay, fine. Most of us aren't going to have $30,000 a month in sponsorship money and it's going to come with so many strings and obligations that I just wouldn't want it because then they're going to ask for how many episodes a week. They're going to ask for a bunch of other constraints that I perhaps don't want off. But also then I get to use that as my differentiator. I get to say I'm the one with no ads.

Yes, absolutely. I love that. Yeah. You have such differentiation and in everything that you do, bel is why you are binge listenable. And this is a good thing. And this is the only good thing to binge on, right? Yes, yes, absolutely. And I think that's what makes you so unique and I am so glad you came on the show today. Just give us an insight into how these things came about and what you've done with them and how you've served your audience in such a great way.

I appreciate it. Thank you. It's actually been like an interesting back and forth. So I was worried, you know, I was worried it was going to be boring, but, you know, this was, like, really interesting.

Well, I'm so glad too, Bel. Thank you again.

Really great.

I hope you found that as enlightening as I did. Bel Robertson has really done some unusual things with Sober Insights with Tired of Not Drinking. Her blog post originally, and I think she's really got an unusual model that we all need to take a look at. I would check out her website, definitely listen to her show, check out the way that it's structured, and really start thinking deeply about this connection between your show and what you're doing online, what you're doing via email, how you're providing feedback to your audience. I think that her insights into all of that is just so deep that we all need to really look at the way that we structured our show and saying, is this really serving us and our audience in the best way possible to create a conduit for healing, for impact, for whatever it is that our goal of our show is to begin with? She's really got me thinking about all kinds of different ways we might structure our show in the future as well. So I hope you enjoy this. And as always, and Belle mentioned this, if you have a show and you'd like to have her on it, reach out, as she mentioned there, I think we should take her up on it. She's been guesting on show. She's happy to, because if she can reach any segment of that audience and help them out with how she serves, she wants to do that. So let's take her up on that. So if you've got a show, even a startup show, she said she'd be willing to go on that as well. Reach out through the blog post for this episode at FeedYourBrand Co, and there'll be all great connections straight to Belle Roberson, straight to her website, straight to her podcast, Sober Insights, and we'll make sure that you guys get connected up and you can have her on your show as well. So everyone, if you have anyone interesting, anyone who's doing some great things, if you are becoming a center of influence in podcasting and you want to reach out to me and not only be featured on the show, feed your brand, but also get featured in our Authority Magazine and buzzfeed roll ups that are going on as well. I'd love for you to reach out to us too, and you can do that anywhere on FeedYourBrand. Co. And you can also do that on social media and reach out to me there. Eedyourbrand so thanks again everyone for listening. This has been Tracy Hazzard on 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.