TRANSCRIPT: Become a Podmaster – S1E1 – Why People Podcast

[00:00:00] Hendrik: Okay, so here we go.

Episode one of a great, many, a few.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

That’s just stupid.

Let me say something else.

[00:00:08] Ethan: I’m keeping this in the podcast.

[00:00:11] Hendrik: So I was at the doctor yesterday and I was diagnosed with, um, I, I’m colorblind.

Yes, the news came completely out of the purple.

So this is the podcast not about lame dad jokes, but about podcasting.

[00:00:32] Ethan: The point of this episode is to figure out why people podcast, and I think ultimately why are we doing this exact podcast, but as a way to explain to you, the listener, why you should do your own podcast.

[00:00:45] Hendrik: So why are we doing this podcast?

[00:00:47] Ethan: We are a podcast production company and training company.

That’s what we realized quite recently.

[00:00:51] Hendrik: Mentoring company?

Mentoring company.

Mentoring.

Yes.

We, we are not coaches.

[00:00:54] Ethan: No, we’re not coaches.

We love our coaches, but we don’t think that word really applies to what we wanna do.

No.

Um, but we want to teach people how to podcast.

We wanna help them grow their podcast.

We want to produce elements of their podcast for them.

And we’ve gotta book that we wanna sell.

Become a Podmaster: Everything You Need to Know to Master the Art of Podcasting.

[00:01:12] Hendrik: Indeed.

[00:01:13] Ethan: If we want to answer the question, why we are doing this podcast series selfishly for our own business…

[00:01:19] Hendrik: it’s a tool to help somebody who wants to start podcasting to understand a little bit more what it takes to start a podcast.

It’s also a companion podcast to the book.

I mean, the book has got all the theory in it.

And the mentoring program that we do, the six week program, is the practical application of that.

We physically get to start your podcast, script it, figure it out and all of that.

So this is really kind of the examples because we spoke to some very interesting people who are podcasters themselves, because the book doesn’t have that.

I specifically left that sort of practical examples out of the book because I wanted it to be specifically about the podcasting theory really.

So, you know, I think the fact that we spoke to some interesting people would give you some insights into what other people think and what other people are doing, and some of the problems that they are experiencing and some of the solutions that they have found.

And it’s also been very interesting for me because, I mean, speaking to some of these people, like, my goodness, how much did we learn in some of these interviews?

[00:02:22] Ethan: Seriously, I think one of the biggest reasons we did this podcast, the way we’re doing it by interviewing a whole bunch of people, was to learn, like we have a lot of assumptions around podcasting.

Um, we have our own worldview around it.

You know, we’ve been doing it for a while, but when you speak to people that are actually a little bit.

Above our level, even ahead of us in the game, we realized, you know, we have so much more to learn.

So if we were to narrow down a few reasons why we’re doing this podcast for ourselves, a content marketing strategy.

Yes, we need content for our social media, for our website, et cetera, to drive people to sales and to drive people to us.

[00:03:00] Hendrik: Which means we’ll take some clips out of this and we’ll put it on the, on the LinkedIn and we’ll transcribe a little bit of it and make articles out of it, et cetera.

[00:03:07] Ethan: Repurpose it.

Do, yeah, we, we’ll, this is the core of our content bank.

That’s the first one.

The second one is as a networking tool.

So we got to reach out to a huge amount of podcasters and podcast professionals, people related to the industry, shot them a LinkedIn message saying, Hey, do you wanna chat to us?

And we managed to get hours of amazing recordings and amazing chats out of these people.

And now I know people from major podcasting companies outside of our country.

So that is definitely the second reason.

The third reason is I think, we as a podcasting production company need a really good example of a podcast that we’ve produced.

[00:03:49] Hendrik: Yes.

[00:03:49] Ethan: We have produced podcasts in the past and they’ve been cool, but they’re not quite at the level that we believe so, We want to be, we, we have, Let’s Talk Content Marketing.

Which is an interview style podcast.

Not a lot of editing, not a lot of production value to it, but it’s good, chatting to a whole bunch of marketers.

Like the actual content was great, but you know, as a company that’s trying to sell podcasting production services, you kind of wanna show them like a bit of Hollywood, you kind of wanna  razzle dazzle a little bit.

[00:04:14] Hendrik: So yeah, I mean, mean, don’t tell them about them.

Show, show our listener what we can do instead of talking about it.

[00:04:21] Ethan: And then, I think this is also a bit of a self discovery journey. 

For us as podcasters, because we’ve always been behind the scenes quite a lot.

You more in front of the scenes than me. 

But generally, in our previous experience, you ran an online radio station.

There’s a lot of behind the scenes work and I think putting ourselves out there, putting our personalities out there, putting our thoughts, everything out there to this degree and being this vulnerable, might teach us something about ourselves and hopefully maybe even bring some people in and show them who we are.

[00:04:54] Hendrik: So indeed, and, and if you want to start a podcast, well then, You should talk to us.

There’s a great many people you can talk to, but I think you should talk to us because this is really what, where our, our niche is where, where we are putting our focus, is helping newbies start their podcasts.

So as you say, for us to do this ourselves gives us much more practical experience in doing it.

And so then we can help people to get going.

So podcasting in South Africa is still small.

[00:05:22] Ethan: Yeah.

We’ve gotta chat about the state of podcasting broadly before we get into why people podcast, because it’s an industry that, depending where you are, the industry is really different. A

nd what I mean by that is Australia, the USA, Canada, in my experience and the UK to a degree as well are the big podcasting hubs.

South Africa, where we are from, isn’t necessarily at that level.

However, there are quite a few people who have made it.

There are massive podcasts in South Africa and every single radio station, I can tell you, has a podcasting strategy, has a person whose whole job it is, is to monitor the strategy and launch strategies.

Everyone’s aware that this is where the future of “internet radio” is.

It’s not necessarily on internet radio streaming and you know, look, there are people who do have big numbers, but people have realized that instead of tuning into something that they kind of have no control over, they’d rather just download a podcast episode that speaks exactly to them and listen to that.

[00:06:31] Hendrik: So we’re talking about where is podcasting in South Africa specifically, and, uh, we spoke to Gavin, who runs Solid Gold Studios here in Randberg, in Johannesburg.

[00:06:40] Gavin: My name is Gavin Kennedy and I’m the founder and CEO of Solid Gold podcasts. I’ve been in radio and television for going on 30 years now, which really makes it sound so long ago, but it feels just like the other day.

I’ve been involved in starting community radio stations, commercial radio stations, community TV stations.

I’ve been in post-production, video production, all sorts of things.

I spent a lot of time building an in-store radio business, so we used to run radio stations for Edgars, Jet, Sales, House, Harmony Gold, companies like that.

I sold that business and went into other ventures for a few years, and then one day while driving around after dropping my kids at school, I noticed that I wasn’t listening to the car radio anymore.

I noticed that I was only listening to podcasts and that was, I dunno, half a dozen years ago or so.

And I thought that was interesting and it caused me to come back into this business, into the radio and TV and, and, and specifically podcasting business as a result of this.

Just something clearly had shifted in the world and instead of being distracted by all different things, we’re a hundred percent focused on podcasts and audio books now.

And that’s what we’ve been doing for about half a dozen years now.

The state of podcasting, there are a lot of people who are doing it for fun and then say, well, I’m hoping it’ll pop and it’ll go viral, and I can sell an ad.

You can’t do it for fun and hope it’s going to be the other one.

You’ve gotta build it with that in mind.

That’s gotta be your intention.

And if you’re building a podcast to build an audience, that’s different from building a podcast where you’re trying to sell to them and you would do things differently.

So in the state of hobbyists, it’s mayhem out there.

It’s the wild west there. Everybody’s out there making a podcast.

They’re pulling out their iPhone, they’re plugging it into Spotify.

They’re recording and publishing.

I love it.

There’s just, just a plethora of content, but there’s as much chance of those podcasts becoming number one hits as there is of a person opening an Instagram account, taking three photographs and hoping to be an influencer.

It would just be sheer luck.

It would be a lightning strike if it happened.

And the hobbyist thing, South Africa’s exploding.

Uh, there’s hundreds of people starting podcasts every day. Busy, busy, busy.

When it comes to building audiences, we have very, very few podcasts that generate big sellable audiences in this country.

We’ve got Gareth Cliff, we’ve got Mac G.

There are a couple of others.

But when it comes to, okay, this is my number one media choice, we don’t have a lot of those.

Not for no good reason.

It’s hard to do.

It’s hard to get somebody to not watch Netflix and instead listen to your podcast or to watch your YouTube.

And then the third one, is the branded podcast, the Tribe podcast, the sell-to audience, where you’re building a relationship of trust and so forth.

That one’s the bread and butter.

That’s the mainstay of our business.

That’s what pays the bills, and that one’s doing very nicely.

Thank you.

It’s doing very nicely because businesses go, well, I’ve got this need to communicate.

We’re making a podcast.

We’re emailing our client list, saying, here’s the podcast.

It’s not popping up in the Sunday Times saying, here’s the top 10 podcast you must listen to.

It’s never going to be there.

It’s not intended to be there.

So the, the podcasts that are doing well and succeeding and paying bills and achieving conversions and results are the ones people don’t necessarily hear about unless they are in the target audience.

[00:09:57] Hendrik: We are training somebody at the moment who’s doing coaching, leadership coaching.

And her podcast is all about aspects of that and drawing clients in to come and do the, the things that she does with them.

[00:10:07] Ethan: Yeah.

So this podcast is gonna focus quite specifically on the business podcasters.

We are going to look at all the other kinds, but I think if you are listening to this, and if you found us, especially through our website or our LinkedIn, then you are most likely someone who it has a business and needs to generate marketing and needs to generate leads and get maybe some networking going as well.

We’re hoping that by showing other business podcasters, telling you our story as well and how we are developing our own podcast, it’ll give you a really solid idea about how you can think about your own.

The hobbyist podcaster is kind of one of my favorite ones, to be honest.

And the reason for this is that it’s truly only driven by passion.

They’re really passionate about something, they’re really excited about it, and they just wanna talk about it.

They have very little ulterior motives.

They don’t really have a strategy necessarily.

[00:10:57] Hendrik: They don’t want to sell anything.

[00:10:59] Ethan: They usually say one day I’ll put some ads on my podcast. Some of them do.

Like there are like, I would say for example, like some of the improv comedy podcasts that I’ve listened to, they sell ads.

They’re usually like just straight entertainment style podcasts.

They don’t really have product they’re selling or anything.

So in terms of content, some of the hobbyists can really be.

Like on the cutting edge, doing something completely new, radicalizing the format, like I, I believe the hobbyists are kind of where the heart and soul of podcasting is.

The problem with hobbyists in general, and the problem with most podcast is, is the whole podfade thing.

So if you don’t know it’s a industry term or term that’s become popular.

Most podcasts don’t get past like what episode five?

[00:11:43] Hendrik: Yeah.

Episode 3, 4, 5.

And then it’s like too much work.

I was talking to my friend Tom, and we are having these in-depth discussions about life, the universe and everything in between uh, after dinner every night when he’s here.

And the other night we said, well, this is so interesting, the chats we are having, we should be recording it.

And that’s really where, where most people start their podcast, isn’t it?

[00:12:02] Ethan: We were on a call a couple weeks ago and he told me that, I was like, that is the most podcaster phrase I have ever heard.

Oh my gosh, me and my friend have the most exciting conversations.

Let’s record a podcast. Unless you are completely okay with this being a passion project that will never bring in any revenue and that will cost you money, but you’re doing it because you love it, like it’s an artistic project at that point, then it’s fine.

If you don’t really have any other strategy around it, you can be a hobbyist.

There’s no problem with it.

There’s some great benefits.

You can meet amazing people.

You can have a lot of fun with it.

[00:12:37] Hendrik: So,  talking about a hobbyist, Logan likes movies.

He and his friend have been talking about movies and have started a podcast about that, and they have faded a little bit because of various reasons, but, maybe we should just ask Logan why he started these podcasts.

[00:12:50] Logan: The one podcast I work on is Cinema Suitcase, which I actually, um, my co-host with my, with a friend of mine who I went to film school with.

It wasn’t like a situation where we wanted to, you know, you know , get famous and earn the big bucks and just, you know, earn millions and everything like that.

We did it because we really were passionate, like I’ve been passionate about movies ever since I was a kid, and yeah, we just do the podcast we’re really passionate about..

You know, it’s a podcast of like me and me and him sitting in his office at his desk across from each other and we sit and we just talk about a movie or whatever.

And yeah, and it was also just a way for us to also sort of, um, uh, expand our skillset a little bit.

Cause um, we could sort of learn a bit more about lighting.

Cuz at that point we’d already finished college.

We’d already and I both graduated, but we wanted to work on it, just sort of hone our skills and everything like that.

[00:13:38] Hendrik: So business podcast, this is where we are really trying to put our focus.

I mean, if you’re a hobbyist and you just want to start a podcast, please come and talk to us.

We can help you and, and put you on the right path so you don’t fade after a few episodes, but, we are really focusing our attention on, on people in business who want to start a podcast for the sake of promoting their business or networking or creating content.

[00:14:01] Christine: So I am Christine Campbell Rappin, and I am a business mentor.

I help service-based entrepreneurs, often creatives, create business; essentially by helping them be the must hire choice, and that results in consistent client growth.

My podcast is called Amplify Your Marketing Message, and the goal behind it was to help people actually figure out how do you build an audience?

Because here’s the hint that nobody knows: for far too long as a business owner, your business will be built on strangers.

So how do you actually get in front of them?

And the podcast is designed to help people who are all in sequence of what, uh, you know, ultimately the ultimate success line looks like, so that we see more people succeeding.

I thought that the wrong conversations were happening in the business community.

People kept coming to the marketplace saying, you know, there’s one way to build a business, and I don’t believe that.

And I know it’s not true because I’ve helped more than 400 businesses create a billion dollars in revenue, and we didn’t do it one way.

And so part of the conversation was a recognition that the right conversations weren’t being had.

And so the answer to that was go create the conversation.

And so that was originally started as a masterclass series that I ran all of last year.

And the shift became if we create a destination of an ongoing conversation and we bring people who are truly great experts at what they do, together we can collectively amplify and get more airspace to strategies that are actually gonna help you get the results you want, and it wasn’t happening elsewhere.

So the genesis was, if it’s not there you go create it. And that’s what gave birth to the podcast.

[00:15:37] Ethan: If you were talk strictly about like your marketing plan, how does the podcast kind of fit into that?

[00:15:42] Christine: It is integral, and this is where I think a lot of people get podcasting wrong.

You know, I looked at it from, if I have to create the conversations, who do I wanna create a conversation with?

And what’s the purpose?

I spent a lot of time thinking about was it better to be just a guest?

Because I have been guesting on podcasts for years in my business.

Speaking is one of my core strategies of getting in front of new audiences.

It’s the fast accelerator.

But I thought, well, if I’m going to create a show, and lots of people told me, no, don’t do it because to do it well and actually create profit is rare.

And I thought, well, how do I create profit in it?

And I was really intentional about what is the purpose of the podcast?

Where does it fit strategically, and how much capacity do I have to stay the course?

Because most people you know talk about podcast fatigue and the fact that most people don’t get past the first dozen episodes.

Well, I’m at episode 20 and I feel like I started a nanosecond ago, and so I thought really strategically.

Podcasting is gonna be one of the main platforms for two things: me to find and grow my network to get into the right rooms for growth in my own business.

And that’s referral partners.

That is clients.

But more importantly, I also thought, what do my clients need that I can give them access to if I create the conversation.

That makes me as their business mentor, highly valuable in their eyes, in ways they don’t yet know.

And so for me, it’s very strategic and it is one of the core pillars of the strategy to create revenue.

[00:17:14] Ethan: So as you can see, when you have a real strategy like Christine does, you can really be so specific about what you want from your podcast, what you want from your guests, what happens after the podcast launches; you can get a huge amount of value, but you really have to have that strategic edge.

You can’t just kind of free-wheel it.

[00:17:34] Hendrik: What did we learn here today?

[00:17:35] Ethan: Firstly, why do people podcast?

We’ve got three reasons.

Hobbyists.

[00:17:42] Hendrik: Yeah. So they just want to share their, their passion for something.

[00:17:45] Ethan: That’s an artistic endeavor.

We’ve got the business podcasters.

[00:17:50] Hendrik: People who want to attract attention to their businesses and sell their products or their services.

And the third one is those big names who, who are doing this because that’s their sole kind of income.

It’s a business for them, isn’t it?

Uh, podcasting as a profession.

[00:18:05] Ethan: They’re a professional content creator.

They’re becoming famous through their podcast, and then they are monetizing that podcast to sell.

A lot of the hobbyists have visions of becoming this third type of podcaster, but the reality is most hobbyists won’t get to that point cause it’s a lot of work.

And unfortunately the podcasters that have gotten to that level of content creator are probably already famous or have been going for years.

[00:18:29] Hendrik: Are we talking about people like Joe Rogan and, you know, the big names and Joe Rogan’s name comes up every time we talk podcasting because he, he epitomizes how successful you could be as a podcaster.

[00:18:42] Ethan: Look, content aside, we’re not gonna have value judgment about his content because there’s many discussions to be had there.

But in terms of purely a podcaster who has become at the top of his game, has been running for years, has many hour long podcasts, and has transitioned into video podcasting very, very well, which is a story for another day; that is the level that you can get.

But the reality is it’s going to take years.

It doesn’t just happen overnight.

Whereas if you are starting a podcast for your business, you can start getting results soon if you have a very clear idea about what those results are and results might be chat to five marketing CEOs this week on a podcast.

No one listens to that episode maybe.

Or three people listen.

But I’ve already won because I’ve chatted to that CEO of enter big company name here.

[00:19:31] Hendrik: That’s something we’ll talk about next time.

And also next time we’ll talk about how do you nurture those relationships, uh, through podcasting and, uh, different ways of using your podcast.

[00:19:40] Ethan: So we’ve learned why people podcast.

[00:19:43] Hendrik: Yeah.

[00:19:44] Ethan: Why are we doing this and what have we learned about our own podcast?

And maybe let’s distill what it is that we are actually doing here. We have a business.

[00:19:53] Hendrik: We have a business, we have a book to sell, sell.

So we’ve got product to sell, we’ve got services to sell, and it’s a way for somebody to, to understand podcasting a little bit better.

If you’ve read the book and you, you want some practical examples from other podcasters, this is what this, this little series is all about.

[00:20:11] Ethan: A lot of people who approach us haven’t actually listened to a lot of podcasts yet, so as a company, maybe it’s a good idea for us to give them a podcast to listen to instead of sending them everywhere else every time.

[00:20:22] Hendrik: For sure. So where do people get the book?

[00:20:25] Ethan: The easiest way to get anything that we do, it’s just to go to our website.

[00:20:29] Hendrik: And that of course is Baird.Media.

Not Baird.Media.Com. Not Bairdmedia.com. No. Https://baird.media.

And how do you spell Baird?

[00:20:42] Ethan: B a i r d. Like the word air? With a B and a D.

[00:20:46] Hendrik: Oh. Do you wanna go to Baird?

Baird Media? Okay.