Why Value Growth Of Podcast Is Important To Improve Your Marketing Strategies With Hector Santiesteban Of Marketing Your Podcast

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazard shares strategies, tips, and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors, and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the binge factor.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Binge Factor. I'm Tracy Hazzard, and I've got Hector Sante Esteban on my show and he's got marketing your podcast. He's a podcast producer, but more on the marketing side of things, and I'm so excited that we get to talk together tonight. He invited me in a women in podcasting panel on Twitter space a few months ago, and I so enjoyed the connections that he made and the type of the other women that he brought forward and the conversations. And we've since kept in touch and we've had a few LinkedIn interactions with some things that we were talking about. And really today I want to dive into talking about the value growth of podcasts and other things because he's got some background in that and we'll talk about that. So let me introduce to you, Hector Sante Esteban is the founder of Amplify Media, lead producer for podcasts at Scalable, and host of marketing your podcast. In 2017, Hector started Amplify Media, a podcast marketing agency, and has since helped dozens of podcasters in a variety of niches grow their show. The time that he doesn't spend podcasting or promoting podcasts, he spends cooking for his wife and corralling his two toddlers. I so enjoyed this conversation with Hector, and I know you're going to too. We're talking about the industry, we're talking about growth, we're talking about evaluating podcasts and how you market podcasts. Hector, so glad we're catching up. It's so funny because we met on your Twitter spaces and then I heard yesterday that Twitter spaces went down. Elon Musk took it down yesterday. I hope it's back up because I love it when you and others do Twitter spaces. I think they're fantastic. Yeah, he took it down because some journalists heckled him, according to the articles. I don't know what's true. I wasn't there.

Yeah. What an interesting saga that has been that is just there. It's gonna be one of those case, those business school case studies that People look back in, in 20, 30 years and I don't know how the ending is going to be written. These are the bullet points, for sure.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Blue check marks will live on forever.

Who knows? There'll be a time where now it's so muddied that it's where you actually. I saw someone post, Elon says that these people may or may not be notable. And so now there's just so much confusion. Did you get a blue check when you were actually required to be someone of note, or did you get a blue check in the two weeks that. That you could pay $9 and now all of a sudden they have to.

Keep you there and now you're still there? Yeah, you know what? I can't even say that I've checked mine to see if my blue check is back. I haven't even looked. I'm not a super big Twitter person. I do like Twitter spaces, but I don't. I don't love Twitter. Doing a podcast that way where you're in more places where you're recording it. What made you choose that sort of Twitter spaces model for some of your episodes? I know you don't do them all that way.

Yeah. I think that podcasting is great because of the depth that you really can go with a listener and the experience that you can create for them is really. I think it's unique in today's. We'll just call it tiktoky landscape, where people are getting someone to watch five seconds of a video is considered a good thing. Right. Or that's a long engagement. Whereas you have shows that are putting out 45 minute hour long, two hour long episodes and people are sitting there with them. And so I think that is. That can't be overlooked. But also it is very siloed. And that experience is very. As a listener, you don't know if anybody else is listening. And so although you're creating that deep connection with the host, a community is really built not only when you have a connection with the host and the listener, but it's also when the community is built between the listener and listener. And I think that's really hard to create through podcasting alone.

It's a passive consumption model. You're alone with your headphones on, maybe. So it's just. Yeah, it is really different. You're right. Yeah.

And I've always. I got my start in the Internet marketing space and kind of content marketing, doing Facebook lives. And so I've always seen the power of what's possible when someone is sitting there with you live. And the, the that pod, that relationship that someone can create on a podcast may take months or even years for that depth to happen, but when someone is on live with you, that can be condensed even shorter. And that same kind of depth of relationship between a creator and an individual can be created within a matter of minutes. And so I think that I've always tried to look for other ways to pull people into the community because you said that it's a passive. Podcasting is a passive environment. And so I know the power of getting people activated and having them being engaged in the process. I think that just that's. There's another level of, of depth there that's possible.

I think that you're the classic case of it in the services that you provide. And what you're doing on the sort of marketing and promotion side is that there's so many podcasters out there and this is why we have such a gigantic pod fade rate is because they think just if they podcast it, they will come and that will be it. That's all I have to do is show up and speak on this mic and I'm done. And there really is so much more on the promotion side, engagement side, making sure I have a website, making sure I have someplace for them to engage with me on. Or you're not going to be building in that sort of engagement piece, that community built piece. It's not there because they have no place else to go.

And podcasters are one of the only places that's not built in for them. If you get into being a YouTuber, the YouTube algorithm, you can really lean on that. You can really lean on YouTube's AdSense and their monetization. And there are creators who their sole form of promotion is creating better content. And that unfortunately is not possible for podcasters, at least right now. And it's weird that the apps haven't really caught up and the apps haven't really done a good job with discoverability. It seems like there's a lot of attention or need from the industry for that. But it's one of the few platforms where promotion is almost just as important as the content. You can look at TikTok, in some.

Cases even more important because otherwise you're creating this great content that nobody's listening.

To and nobody will listen to. Yeah, it's like putting out, building a great restaurant out in the middle of the desert and they're not building any roads to it. It's like you can have the greatest menu, the greatest food if there's no way for A, people to get there or B, people to even know that it's out there, they won't go. But another thing is like, you think about like Burning Man, I don't know how familiar you are with that. That whole festival I haven't been, not because I don't want to, but kids came along and it's hard anyways. If you think about it though, they've got, they found a way to get people literally to go out to the middle of the desert because there's a reason. So it's not that it can't be done and it's not that you can't get people excited to go find something. It's just that it has to be part of the process. Whereas TikTokers don't necessarily have to do that. Instagram influencers didn't have to do that. YouTubers or even bloggers, there was an engine that you could play to, you could play to the Google search engine and that helped bloggers. Whereas with podcasters there's just like you said, promotion is more important, if not as important as content is.

Yeah. And this is, you mentioned the apps and the discovery issues that we forget. And I think there's a lot of people out there who are so quick to say I'm just going to head on over to Spotify and I'm going to join them because they care about podcasters. But the reality is their app is just not built for podcasters. It's built for music first, and so was Apple. So like they were built for music consumption. Podcast became a secondary stepchild. And so there. It's not built for that. And because it's not built for that, it's not built as a social platform first. It's built as a single solo consumption platform.

I am encouraged though, because I do, I haven't, I don't spend a lot of time on the Apple app as much of late. I try and taste as many apps as I can, but I do enjoy Spotify's recommendation. There's a few, they started to have a on their panel, a tier that said listeners of this show that you listen to or subscribe to also like this. And some of those shows were actually are shows that I listened to and I thought that it was one of the few instances a podcast app specifically recommended another show that I was actually interested in. It wasn't just some celebrity filled podcast or some featured podcast that Apple had chosen, that there was actually some engine behind it that was caring about me. The Podcast listener.

Yeah. It's you focus, it's profile focus. And that's the way their music system works, right? Playlist listing and community and then doing some tracking based on that is really powerful. But I agree with you. When you base everything on downloads and charts, it's just not viable to you as an individual. It's not relevant to you. At the end of the day, I.

Think that I am challenged to also commit to podcasting as a sole medium in the sense that people always ask, can you make money as a podcaster? And it's, you can make money podcasting, but I don't know that I don't. That's a great shin, right?

Do you really want to do it? Yeah.

Yeah. I think that there always has to be something else behind it, whether it's a business, a service, a product, a brand, something else that makes the podcast worth it. And it's a very good driver for a lot of those things. But I think that it has to be put in the right context. And too many people, for some reason, it got made into this gold rush or this opportunity to make money. And I don't think it's that either.

You know what? It's I think, look, I love him to death, so this is not a criticism. But I gotta blame Pat Flynn because his podcast was named Smart Passive Income, but it was really about blogging and Internet marketing and a broader thing. And then it became about podcast. Podcasting is not a passive income environment. It really isn't. And. But I think the name association heard it and I think that's actually how it happens, because so many of us became podcasters because of him. And, you know, that's out there, but it was never a passive income model.

I run into Pat a few times. I would never say that we are friends because he would not know who I am. I run into him enough where the next time I see him, I'm going to tell him.

And I said that I'd be happy to tell him. We've had each other on each other's shows and talked about this, but I think it's just this association that has been created that isn't really real. It's not how it works. And I think that marketing your podcast, which is your podcast name, and I think that's really a critical aspect of it. And I think there are three things that you're doing that is really brilliant. And this is why someone should binge your show. It's your binge factor. It's that it's not long we're doing like 15 to 30 minutes in there. It's easy to consume. It's one topic. We're getting really niche and narrow, and we're really talking about going beyond the podcast, but how it ties to what they're doing in the podcast. And I love that that's the kind of aspect that is happening there for you. And really its emphasis is on what are you going to do now that you decided to do this podcasting thing.

Yeah. I have had the fortune of or the opportunity of working with a lot of other shows that are much bigger than mine and hosts that are much better than me and really thinking about how do we grow a show? And what we were spinning our wheels with was that there were all these tactics that we could be. There are all these. These not even strategies. There were all these platforms or ads or all these different tools or methods that didn't actually focus on making it a better show. And in addition to all of those shiny objects and Facebook ads and platform and episode swaps and all these different methods that someone can go out there and market their show. One of the best things, one of the ways that we found the best ways to grow a show was just to make a better one. And so much of it has evolved into that, because I think that is also a critical part of growth, is the evolution of a podcast.

Yeah. And I think that's the other part, is that there's someone spinning out all these tactics all the time. The reality is that there's a time and a place for them. And you may be. I always say to my clients, you haven't earned the right yet to do this. You haven't earned the right to ask to sell something. You haven't earned your right yet. You've only done three episodes. Get into it, show them how great it's going to be, and then you have an opportunity to ask for that. And that's where I think that. I know you think with this, because I listened to some of your episodes and really got to this is that you believe that 25 episode is a tipping point. And I do, too. It's. It's the numbers all point to that. There's those that don't pod fade, go 25 episodes or more, and those that do are 11 episodes and less. And that's the average there. And it's a significant difference in who makes it and who doesn't. And 25 episodes is a tipping point for that. So I think that it's as much on the listener as it is on you. You've got to prove yourself. You've got to get into a system. You've got to get your show to the quality level. You've got to get enough recordings under your belt. But those listeners have to go. And that guy's gonna stick around for me. Yeah, I'm gonna give him a chance.

That 10 episodes or that 11 episodes thing is interesting because we always recommended people to have 10 to launch with 10 episodes, and people got scared at that number, so we backed it down to five. But we still. If we had our druthers. Right. Forget. I think I had a teacher who used to say that. But if we had our druthers, then an ideal scenario, we would launch with 10 episodes. Because I think to your point, that already builds up so much momentum, and when you launch with that, you start to see results and in downloads and things start to happen. There's some energy. And so I think that you're much more likely to stick with it.

We like clients to have 10 in the can. They don't. We don't necessarily launch with that, but we like to have them, like 10 done and ready to go so that they're at least two months in.

Exactly. That's exactly. If I wasn't clear with that. Yeah, that's what I meant. The second thing is that we also talk to people that are starting shows about the evolution of the show, both from them as an individual and how they're going to evolve with their confidence and their voice, but then also the evolution of the actual show and letting it. I see a lot of people, they want it to be perfect from the start. There's no way to do that, because you're gonna learn so much over those first 10, 25, 50 episodes that by the time that you get there, you're gonna learn things that there's no way you would have learned without those experiences. And I think people have to have. Have those expectations. If they have those, they're much more likely to stick around.

And I had to say that I think the listeners are really forgiving. Like, they get that really binge listeners, ones who come and listen to a lot of shows and are always looking for the next best show. And really out there, they're more than willing to be a little forgiving in the beginning when the host is a little hesitant or it builds up to what it should be, they see when you've got a catalog that's bigger than that, they're like, they had to have gotten better, and so they give it a chance and Then when I talk to binge listeners, one of the methods that they do to check that is they go to one of. They go to your first episode and your most recent episode and they check the difference between the two. And if you've seen marked improvement, they are willing to binge through the rest of it to get there.

Yeah, that's a great point that I think not a lot of people think about that. If you're. They're so concerned about their first episode being perfect, that binge listener for sure is going to find it. The vast majority of listeners are only going to see your most recent episodes. They're not going to make it. And if you've got enough to where it's hard to get to episode one, then you don't have to worry about that as much. So if you keep publishing, you don't.

Have to worry about it at all. I don't even think I want to listen to my first episodes again. Yeah, look, it just isn't it. The flexibility and the media type is so amazing to me. It's one of my favorite parts about it because if it's really irrelevant or it's really wrong, you can always delete it or replace it. It's not a big deal. It doesn't change anything in this course of your show. And the fact that you can have a very different show in your current show than you had at the beginning, that's also amazing because your fans just come along with you or they just are like I'm. And that's okay too, because you flexed and you've moved. How many times do we have to start over something completely? We can't merge our audience. We can't take them along with us. It happens all the time.

Yeah. One thing that came up on a. We call them podcast AMAs, but they're like a virtual podcast mixer. Is he was concerned about how do you make adjustments or improvements to your show while you're in the midst of this production rut? Right. You're just. You've got templates and you're just pumping stuff out. Because a lot of, especially solo podcasters, I know our clients have a little bit of a luxury to not have to be doing everything. But if you're doing all the parts of podcasting, it's hard to then improve or be creative or to test and experiment and try things. And so we just recommend that in those instances that testing with small things, adjusting small little bite size improvements all the time is a way. We found that it's a little Easier than doing wholesale big changes.

Yeah, I agree. I always talk to my clients, especially when we're talking about, like, social media promotion and other things. I tell them to start with one channel, they hate that. And especially social media experts hate that. They're like, no, you need to be everywhere. And I was like, no, you don't understand. You can repost it everywhere, but focus on one channel and one thing at a time, because otherwise you don't know if it's really working or not. So our video memes working. Let me dial down do video memes on LinkedIn, because that's where I want, where I think my audience is. I'm going to do those until I feel like I got that right length, I've got the right type, I figured them out. And then I'm gonna go try it and see if it works on Instagram because now I got a new variable. But you get design of experiment. We gotta change one thing at a time, right?

Yeah. Otherwise you don't know what's working and what's not.

Right. And you rely on anecdotal information, especially if you're only doing one episode a week. We had the luxury when we started our first podcast of doing five days a week. So we had basically a mass amount at once to be able to see what was working and what wasn't. And it actually was created this quick adjustments to our show that were great for us, which is another reason for your idea of making sure to record 10. And if they could launch with 10 and have 10 under their belt, they already have a sense of what felt good to them before the audience feedback starts changing their mind.

Yeah, it was really great how you were saying how awesome my show was earlier. So I want to go back to that, of course. Oh, no, I was just. I was thinking that we spend a lot of time trying to think about the experience that we're trying to create for our listeners. And you said, my show is 15 minutes to 30 minutes and it's really topic oriented and it's. You're in and out, you've got something to run with. And I think that's great for me. But I also want to say that's not great for everybody. Right. And there are. There is so much nuance in podcasting that should be accounted for. And there's no one size fits all and there's no box, there's no quote unquote right way or this way. And so I just also want to address that too, because that's going back to. Well, that's what we wanted our people. And I'm glad that you recognize that because that's something that we've tried to adjust, is we didn't want these really long episodes. We didn't want these things that were muddled or that you were trying to figure out what was about or extract any value or actionable takeaways. So we try to do the opposite of that. And I think that if you start there, then you can, and you know what your listener wants or you know what you're trying to provide them, then you can build a show around that experience or emotion or feeling or whatever it is that you're trying to provide.

I always like to look at patterns in the market. It's patterns in whatever is being done and having the benefit of a platform where I can check the data and I can see that it's a benefit for me. And one of the things that I see, and that's what you're doing right in your show, is that when we're talking about marketing concepts, marketing tactics, marketing things, it's too much to go into all this esoteric depth about why we do things. It's more of what do I need to accomplish and what will take me there the fastest. That's the answer that they're looking for when they're looking for marketing content. It's just simply that. So you're delivering what that marketing content is that listener is looking for. It's aligned and it's matched. I interviewed someone who was running the Buffer podcast way back when. And when they first started, they had a 60 minute show. It was like very talk show ish and it was following a lot of the podcasting models that were out there. And they quickly found like no one was listening. They were crashing out after 15 minutes. So then they said, what if we created a 15 minute show, one thing only. And that was it. And the show just took off. And they were joking that it was because they felt that marketers who were really the people listening to that show have the attention span of a gnat. But it's really, it's more than one concept at a time for marketing is too much to absorb.

Yeah, there's times where I have to stop an episode and I don't, I can't. I need to go do this. Like you're talking about something. I know I need to go do what you were just talking about. So. Yeah.

And then I'm ready for layer two and layer three and. Right. It's a very layered and nuanced and I think that's what we don't really think about it. And I think those who are bloggers and you said you came out of Internet marketing. I think those that had that background have an advantage because we understand layered messaging.

Right. Bite sized pieces. Whereas I have clients that they want to put. We're like no, 15, 20 minutes. There's one show that he was started out as a daily podcast. We've shrunk down to three and we might even go down less. And we're trying to fight with them because the idea was it for it to be daily bite size, wisdom and information. And the challenge was, is that he. His episodes were 20, 30, 35 minutes. And like that's hard to do on a daily basis. And so if we can. There's two or three episodes in there. And he's a, he's an author, he's a writer, he's a.

That's the difference, right?

Yeah. Right. Big idea. How do I put this big idea into this one piece as opposed to what are the small granular pieces that go into that and then create an episodic structure so that people consume them or binge them as they see fit.

I think that's probably a lot of pod fade issues. Right. There is a mismatch between what they feel comfortable with as a host and what their audience actually really wants to consume. It's just. And It's a mismatch 100%.

And it's also hard because even in this particular instance when we were launching the show, the host was getting feedback from their family, which is very standard in most things that you do. You ask your family. But the problem was that their family was not the target market and was not. Didn't fit their idol list. In fact, they were the complete opposite. We were targeting 30 to 40 year old men who have beards and actually probably shouldn't say too much, no, you're not gonna listen to this. But. And they're asking their high school daughter's opinion. And so it's just there's a mismatch, a misalignment and giving too much into that. And that's an extreme, extreme example of that. But not caring about your listeners, caring about either yourself or your wife or your spouse or whoever it is that you're trying to pander to as opposed to the people that are actually going to be listening to your show.

No, it, that's so true. That is the. Like I, I always see the authors who will go out there and post their covers of their, like their Proposed cover of their book. And they'll be like, what do you think? And I'm like, oh, that's the worst thing you could ever do. Because it's just first off, it's blown up. So it's way too big for what you're going to see in the little thumbnail on Amazon. And it's. Do you. Does your. Is your family really the people are going to read this book?

It's a good point. Yeah. And it's good to. To get the word out. And the whole build in public thing, I'm a big advocate of that. But yeah, putting too much stock or too much weight or all of a sudden just saying we had 60 votes here and we only got 30 votes here. I don't know that you should just take their word for it.

That's right. You should be really sure. We used to, when I did a lot of product design and development, we used to go, if you're selling to mothers of preschoolers, then go to a mothers of preschoolers group. Like, just stop talking to your family who's got teenagers. It just doesn't work. Yeah. Let's little bit about scaling value because this is something that I think you and I reconnected. Even though we did this Twitter space. It wasn't that long ago. It was in September and months ago. We did this great Twitter spaces. And I really applaud you for doing that for women because I think it's so easy for us women to go, hey, look at us women in podcasting. But the reality is when a man puts us out there, that's actually really great. It highlights it in a very different way to a different audience who does need to hear it instead of talking to the converted. And so I think that's wonderful. So thank you for that, number one. And then because of that, we become friends and we see each other's posts. And I saw this great post where you were talking about created value in a show and you were shocked at the value that was created for a client. And I think that's really what is missing today is this understanding of where your value really is. And it's not just your downloads.

No. Yeah. There's a big misalignment between people thinking that the more downloads that they get, the more money that they're gonna make or the better it is. It couldn't be further from the truth.

They don't correlate.

Yeah, it's helpful and it's affirming to see that more people are listening and of course that it's great that you have a larger audience, but they're not. It's not indicative of it actually being valuable. And so you mentioned that there was a podcast recently that as of this recording is like right in the middle of closing for right around a half a million dollars for a show. And I was, yeah, I was shocked when I heard that valuation and I was even shocked when I heard that the person was going to. Was going to pull the trigger on it because it's just a really weird situation. But in talking to the person who's buying the show, they kept saying over and over again, it makes sense for our business. It makes sense.

It's a match. And that's a big difference.

Yeah, he was talking and he brought in his cfo and they're a multimillion dollar company. And he's. It's not a change in the couch cushion, I think is how he said it. But it is something that is a worthwhile investment. And I think that when positioned the right way and when aligned the right way with the business, yeah, it can really make sense. It's not its own entity. It's not a business in and of itself, but it's a great media property that this particular show has a ton of ad revenue that's. And a ton of sponsors that have been loyal and excited. And so there's a larger demand for ads than there is supply that we can put on the podcast. And there's a ton of opportunity to sell services and products and all the kinds of things that business businesses do. So, yeah, it was, it was surprising. But when you look at it, it can make sense if you do it the right way.

Yeah. And this is the thing. Look, we look at a lot of shows and we call them reverse mergers, where you buy a show and maybe you put your show on top of it like that. That's a model that we do. And no, most of them don't go for a half a million dollars, but they do go for 50,000. That could easily happen. And so when we look at that is the residual value in your show. If you did a consistent and constant job of keeping your audience growing and that.

Even if it's just small, but it's incrementally growing month over month. Those listeners don't disappear because you want to stop your show. Now's the perfect time to sell it before you stop and it does drop off and it's harder to get back up again. That's the perfect time when you're getting a little tired of your show. And you're thinking about who is my competitors in the space that I might sell my show to. And it could happen that there's somebody really ready to take on that audience, add their ads to your show, or reverse merge into it and start a brand new show with a built in audience already. There's so many ways that could be valued.

Yeah. So it's happening more and more actually, now that I think about it. I had a good friend that bought a show. He's, for lack of a better term, he's an influencer in the health and wellness space and saw an opportunity to buy a bigger podcast. And it's been great for his brand and he's really been able to leverage that as a. I always think of him like in Mario Kart, those red and yellow little booster turbo things that. It can be that. Right. Because if you're able to pick up and transition that audience from one. One entity to the next and you, you can. There's. That's a challenge. Right. But if you can do that successfully, then yeah, it can be worthwhile.

And I've seen it happen where somebody sold their company and they didn't value their podcast within it and then they lost the right to be able to continue the podcast at the same time and they didn't get any money for it, like an asset. And I thought, oh, you had such a huge miss there. And then I've seen it the other way where they actually brokered the podcast separately. And you know how sometimes you go with the company. The only thing that they went with was keeping the show. And so they stayed the host of the show, but they were now paid to do it as a part of the buyout. And I thought that was great. He got to do what he wanted to do and he got paid for it.

Yeah, it's happening more and more.

There's so many ways. Yeah. I think we solely. And that's the problem that I see is that you're so quick to be like, I'm done, I quit. And not really thinking about what you built.

Yeah, it is a building. Right. It's a, it's definitely a building process. And, and there's. I think it's hard because in those moments it's. You just kind of throw up your hands and you're oftentimes at the end of your effort, you're out of any effort that's left. And if you can have some foresight and this, in this particular instance, these people were ready to throw up their hands and they were just going to throw. Throw the show away. And there was someone who came not by the grace of whatever, but came.

Out and it's just, hey, wait. Yeah. Thank goodness. The timing was good. Yeah. So before we started recording here, we were talking a little bit about how you're doing a lot more of group coaching and masterminding. And I really want to talk about that a little bit right now because I think that's important, that there's a definite need for this. Why do you think that sort of mastermind, ask me anything model is really necessary right now?

First, it's just not there. I came from the kind of the marketing entrepreneurship world, where that's very prevalent, and the. The cross pollination of ideas and the cross pollination of connections that, you know, the things that come from that cross pollination is so important and vital to that and collaborations and business partners and clients and stuff like that. That. That doesn't have. Have. We don't have that in podcasting. And what's interesting is that there's so much talk of collaborating with other hosts and working with other people to grow your shows and cross promote and whatever, but they're the infrastructure and there is not there. And there are some people who are doing some great things and there are some great tools out there to be able to do it, but there's not a ton where you can just get the chance to connect with other podcasters, to get feedback, to ask questions in a safe, ish kind of space. Not ish, but like in a safe space where there's no dumb questions. Right. It's hard sometimes to put yourself out there, there.

And they can be a little bit customized because that's what I think is missing is like some of the advice out there is so generic and you don't know, does this fit my model? Does this fit what I'm trying to accomplish as. And there's no ability to expand on it. You just drop in a little question into Facebook and say, what do you all think? What should I do? And then it's just generic answers from there.

Yeah, there's not that depth of one of my mentors, John Berghoff. He highlighted something that he says, wisdom can come in four ways. Right. Wisdom is. Can come like by yourself out in the woods or on a rock or meditating or whatever. And that's great. And you should definitely do that. It can also come from one on conversations or people might call it a coach or whatever. Like, the idea of being a podcast coach is always weird to me, but I think that there is value to that or that consulted kind of role where you're asking questions and getting direct feedback. There's also equal value in doing it in small groups. And so being in a group of three or four people where you can get different perspectives and that cross pollination can happen, that I think is just. It's really hard to do with and for podcasters because they're in their own studio, they're siloed very in their own thing. And they can be, because podcasting is great, because you can do everything from your studio. You don't need to talk to anybody or connect with anybody if you don't want to. And creating those real opportunities to connect and get feedback and ask questions, I think is A, it's not there and B, I think that the answers that emerge out of those types of things are often much better than what can happen happen from just watching a course or reading a book on your own. There's just, there's so much more possibility when you have multiple people's ideas and perspectives.

And I think this is the sort of protectionist view when you sit in that world like you and I. Look, I mean, our businesses aren't completely isolated and separated. There's a little bit of overlap in the kinds of clients we might have. But the reality is if we didn't have these kinds of conversations and say, and come to say, yeah, hey, this is working for me, this will work for you too. If we didn't have those kinds of mind share conversations, then we're not going to get to a place where we can all make sure our clients are moving forward. And that's not sustainable as an industry.

Yeah, it's not like there's a certain right now, at least for us. And I've spent a lot of time thinking about specifically both you and I have podcast production companies. And so in typical industries we might be competitors, but I don't think that there is enough. The pie is constantly getting bigger where there's not enough of us to go out and adequately serve the pie for us to be worrying about who's getting more of the pie than others. I think that, and that's something that maybe is unique to our industry, maybe it's not, but I think it's more at least a mindset that I feel is just helpful.

I agree, I agree. And I think that it doesn't happen enough in some other industries and we're lucky that we can share it here. And we do. And I think that kind of mastermind model though, really helps the Whole industry. It's not just, oh, I'm. It's going to help you because you're participating in that. It's more than that. It helps change everything in the industry because now there's ripples of that information, information that keeps getting out there. There's five other people. You're going to pass on what you've heard, even if it didn't apply to you. That's really great. It amplifies that to go with your amplify media.

That's funny. Before I got into podcasting, I joined R. I bought a lot of courses and there was a lot of experts and gurus in the Internet marketing space. And I've always been turned away from that. Maybe it's my imposter syndrome that has always felt weird about ever calling myself an expert. But a thing that we have at Podcast AMA is we don't have any individual. Individual gurus or there's no individual, but the group collectively is the guru. And that's something that we remind people of, is that you never know who's going to have the right answer. And the right answer might come from someone that you might least expect. And that's the power of being in a collective and being in a group. And so I think that, once again, that's hard to replicate virtually through Twitter or Facebook or if you're not there engaged with a person, it's hard to do those things.

Well, in an AMA and in a Mastermind are a little bit different in that you can get the experts together to start to converse about, hey, what's going on in the industry and what are you doing to handle this and what would you do? And I've got this challenge, so you're kind of brainstorming and masterminding together on that and sharing stories and ideas. But when you open up and ask me anything in coaching model, you get a lot of the same questions that we all get all the time and we're constantly answering. And it doesn't help move you forward. It's just, okay, now I have to sit in my role of the expert instead of being the learner.

Yeah. And the AMAs, I was just trying to think of what was a catchy name that I could think of that would makes sense. And so we've had to morph it around it. But in the sense typical AMAs are what you think of on Reddit and people or some people do in Slack or whatever, where there's an expert and you ask these questions and you know the answers come Underneath it. And I think that what is. Those are great. And having that expert is fantastic to give that perspective and that experience. But what is missing from those experiences that we incorporate is, okay, that expert or that whoever just shared whatever they shared, shared. Now let's go talk about how this actually applies to us. And the action and the activity of talking things out creates so much more clarity for somebody than just listening to something, even taking notes, and then having to go process it on their own. And so what I. What we really try and do is, okay, we listen to someone for, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes or whatever. They gave some great ideas. We take the next 15, 20 minutes to actually go into small groups, and we do this on zoom. And so there's about three or four people where now they're talking through. How did this apply to me? How does this apply? And people are able to ask questions or get further clarity, and they're really able to, like you were talking about with the workshops, able to do. They're able to have some sort of. Of effect or some sort of change by the end of this. Alcohol.

Yeah, I got an action item of something I can take away and try and do, and then come back and say, hey, this didn't work for me. What did I miss? And you've got somebody to go to before we end here. What's next for you? Where do you think the podcast industry needs to go?

And where are you excited about this, this whole idea of podcast ama? I had been hesitant to do anything in the kind of group coaching and mastermind kind of space, because a. It just sounds weird to call anything a mastermind. I put it out on Twitter and I said, are there any good podcasting masterminds that are out there? And people thought I was talking about, like, an evil genius, like Dr. Evil or something. Like, they had no concept of what I meant by that. And so that was the first thing for me that kind of stood out.

I was like, okay, your average person doesn't call it that.

Yeah. And most podcasters are not coming from this Internet marketing space where they've seen the power. And so a lot of times it's just. It's so hard to tell someone, you know, what's gonna happen or what they're gonna experience. It's just. Just show up and you'll see. Because oftentimes it's so different for people. Everybody has a different experience because of the way that's formatted and because of how engaged and interactive it is. And so I'm really just excited about growing and continuing to scale that. We've had three such of those experiences with. We call them experiences because I don't know what else to call them. But they're just zoom hangouts basically. And we're gonna keep doing that. We've got some more kind of intensive programs that go deeper a little bit that we're launching this. This January. Just really my goal is to provide the resources and community forecasters that wasn't there and got started and still doesn't seem to be there. There are a lot of people who telling people how to do things, but I don't think that there's actually a lot of people helping people to do those things.

Oh, that's so true. A lot of talking about it and.

Not a lot of do a lot of that. It's not hand holding, but there's almost a walking with that needs to be done. Not a. Okay, let me yell at you from where I'm at and tell you how I got here and hope that you make it, because I think that's what too many people in the podcasting industry do.

Oh, I think that's so true. And we always say to our clients, we can't make you record. We can do all these other things. We can design cover art and we can record intro outros and do all this technical stuff, but I can't record it for you. You still have to do that at the end of the day. And if you're not invested in it, you're just not going to do it. You're not going to succeed. Yeah. So true. Marketing your podcast. I love the show. It's got some really great ideas in there, really great guests on there. What's. Are you going to continue that in the same format? Are you going to shift it? Like I always make a shift at the end of the year and we're right at the end of the year. Are you going to shift for next year?

We're heading into. This will now be our third calendar year. We just about finishing up our second year. And what I'm really excited about is really just continuing to do more of the same thing because we're only about 85 episodes in and I say only, but I feel like there's so much more opportunity to highlight some of these things that people are doing, some of the ways that people are growing their show. I think that's one thing that we really try and do is expose people to the options. Right. If they want a menu, they can go through our show and find out what are the different methods in which someone can do. And then I think if we're going to do anything different, one thing, thing that I also want to try and highlight is less quote, unquote, podcast experts, because that's who a lot of them have been. They're industry experts. They're people who do these things a lot, oftentimes for clients. And that's great, but that's a different kind of perspective. What I'm going to try and do is feature more just podcasters, just almost that entrepreneur on model, where it's not a loaded kind of perspective. It's really just they're just sharing their experience and case studies. And so we're going to try and do more of that heading into or as we start this new year. But otherwise, otherwise we're excited about hitting episode 100. I think that we're going to try and get to 200 before the end of next year.

Ooh, so you're going to double down?

Yeah, we're really just trying to scale up the content. I had spent the last couple of years, I had the show going, but I devoted a lot of my time to working with clients and working on the shows. And there's a lot that I've learned over the last couple years. A lot of people that I've met, like yourself, that the world and the podcast world needs to know about. So I'm excited about that as well.

Me too. I can't wait to hear more of marketing your podcast. Hector, thank you so much for being here today. We really appreciate you holding up your end of the podcasting market and spurring people on to do better.

Thanks, Tracy. This has been fun.

That was quite a different discussion than we normally have here on the Binge Factor because we got to go a little deeper, dive into some of these other things like marketing, producing and the behind the scenes stuff that we don't always talk about. Because my role as a producer and Hector's role, we just have this different viewpoint and like more of a mass view of things. Right. These patterns of things that are working where here on the Binge Factor, we tend to dive into one single show, one single concept at a time. And I think when we're wanting to talk about where the industry is going and what's happening in the industry, especially here as we're starting this new year, I wanted to make sure that you really got this perspective from Hector and really dive into this idea that masterminding that continual growth, that those kinds of models are perhaps exactly what everyone needs in order to for the podcasting industry to grow and for your your podcast and your show to grow because you don't really know where you are in that podcasting ecosystem, where you are in that process yet until you experience it. And then you go, ah, this is what I need next. So I'm so glad I could bring Hector to you. I'm so glad we could have a review of that show and check out Marketing youg Podcast because it's also got some great information that you might find really valuable. I'm Tracy Hazard and I'll be back next time with another podcast host here on the Benchmark Factor.

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 the bingefact guest and apply.