 Let's go ahead and get started. Thank you guys all for joining us. I'm to introduce myself. I'm Adrienne graves ever for the iSchools alumni engagement office, and I am so excited to introduce our host today, Danny Goldberg class of 2016 from the iSchool. Danny's had a lot of success in his professional career as an entrepreneur, creating and selling numerous businesses. He built a seven figure manufacturing agency that helped companies create and scale consumer products and his agency was the manufacturer behind the wildly successful Gravity Blankets campaign, which today is one of the largest kick starters in history, grossing over $4 million in just 30 days. But Danny's here today to talk all things podcast as host of his own podcast bits of gold. Danny's going to share everything that you need to know about starting your own podcast from the tech best practices building content marketing and more and there's going to be lots of time to ask questions as well. So without further ado, let me introduce you all to Danny Goldberg. Hey guys, thanks so much for joining for joining today. So I guess we can, we can kick things off. I'm really excited to have everyone here and to share a little bit about what I've learned in my journey and launching my own podcast over the last Launch my podcast a little bit less than a year ago. And really excited just to share all the knowledge that I have. I'm just curious, maybe like buy a show of hands for people that are on video. How many of you does anyone have a podcast already. Okay, some people that haven't and I'm assuming the rest of you are interested in maybe launching a podcast. Awesome. All right, so we'll jump in. I've prepared a little deck here. I don't know how long it will take to like work through but I really took everything that I wish I had known from the beginning, put it in this and at the end we could go into Q&A and, you know, hopefully that will help answer any questions but anyways, so let's let's jump in so today we're going to cover developing your show idea publishing your first episode, marketing and monetization analytics, the tools that I used to be successful. There are so many tools, so much software today as it relates to podcast and then we'll open it up for Q&A. So just a little bit about me before we jump in. A little bit about my background. I built and scaled several companies. Beyond some figures, started my first business at 14 selling boxing gloves. I ran that company from 2009 till 2015. Subsequently went on to sell it and since I've been involved with numerous startups. I love entrepreneurship, live, breathe it. I love solving problems. I love starting businesses and as much as I love business, I really believe that work is just one area of our life and that there's many areas in life that I believe are critical to building a life that you love and I'll get to that in a second but I really used to be like total workaholic. I would pass on adventures, experiences with friends, pass on going to my cousin's wedding that I'm so close with to attend a business competition and you know, although I'm still obsessed with entrepreneurship, I'm more obsessed with building a life that I love and that really became clear to me through a series of unfortunate events. At age 20 I lost my dad to cancer. At age 25, really just as I was getting my two feet back underneath me, I lost my mom to cancer in a matter of weeks. And through these life experiences, I lost a lot but you know, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I also gained a lot and through this experience I learned that each day is a gift, not a guarantee. And I learned the powerful teacher that, you know, we can't control how much time we have on earth and you know, the only thing we can control is how and where we spend our time and that's why I decided to start a podcast to inspire people to get out there and build their dream life to know that, you know, they too, you too can will likely face obstacles you're going to face hardship but I really believe that it's our duty to build your dream life no matter what. So, you know, I, that's, that's the premise of what inspired me to start my podcast, it was out of personal passion and my personal mission and inspiring people to get out there and build their dream life. So, why you start a podcast, it's never been easier than right now to start a podcast. As I mentioned, there's so much tools software technology that make it so seamless so easy today. People are looking for content there, especially like since COVID there. I feel like everyone and like my neighbor everyone, everyone has started a podcast in some capacity. It is great for marketing. If you have a business or you're trying to build your personal brand, having a podcast will only help you in terms of creating the image that you want connecting with people expanding your network so it's an absolutely it's an absolute amazing marketing tool. And if you have a message, a story, a mission, or something that you're deeply passionate about like me, podcasting is a perfect tool to get out there and share it with the world. So, this one might sound very obvious but you know I figured I'd share just the very simple definition of podcasts podcasting is a radio show you can listen to it anytime over the internet. You know podcasting really blew up. It's been around forever but it's really blown up since 2004 with the explosion of cereal I'm sure you know a lot of you are familiar with cereal have listened to it etc. But that's really how podcasting got its start today larger companies are investing to buying up shows so right now there is never been more like there are so many companies individuals that are starting podcasts, especially since COVID. In terms of where people listen so this is totally shifted. Since pre COVID, you know now majority people are listening at home while they're doing work post COVID. Sorry pre COVID tons of people were listening to podcast on their commute. But now a lot more people are listening to podcast at home. Pretty obvious for obvious reasons. So, some popular podcast categories that you know I just wanted to pull some of the chart topping podcast genres. You know our comedy educational news sports. You know there are, there's probably a podcast and just about every genre today, but this, I just thought this was an interesting slide to show what the break sort of looks like in terms of the popular podcast today. So in terms of just getting back to it a little bit more. I thought it would be interesting to just talk about, you know, for individuals that are trying to start a podcast, and I get into this a little bit later as well. It's especially an interesting platform probably one of the most interesting things. You know my podcast has nothing to do with my businesses, but probably the most interesting thing that I've learned since starting the podcast is it is an amazing tool for networking. There are so many people who have had on that in any other world where I didn't have the podcast if I asked them for 15 minutes 30 minutes an hour of their time to pick their brain or to hear more about their story etc. I would probably say, you know, go, no go kick rocks who are you to me but you know now I've created this platform, and what I bring to the table is, you know, growing audience, people that want to hear that person's story. And now that person is more likely to give me, you know their time and I'm able to grow my network as a result and really help share this person's story. So, it's really interesting to see the power that podcasting has had for me in terms of it being a networking tool building my own personal brand etc. I also know tons of companies and you know they're massive corporations like the New York Times Forbes Wall Street Journal that are building their own buying up other media companies that are have a focus on podcasts. And it is an incredible marketing tool. I know a lot of small businesses that are now, you know, harnessing podcasting. Someone I'm friendly with, she has a business she sells plants for your house. And she decided to start a podcast that's hyper focused around how to how to plant at home. And she's probably the number one podcast now for plants for planting at home, all the how to she brings on other experts and it's really helped her business, and she really leverages it as a marketing tool. So how to develop your show idea. So there's a few things that I have here in terms of questions that you know you might want to think about, as you start to plot out and figure out what your show will be about. So one of one of the big questions, what's your theme, most podcasts do need a theme, and you want to ask yourself you know what is your compelling theme what do you want to speak about. These were sort of the questions that I asked myself, and I still continue to tinker with and go back to the drawing board to try to hone in my theme I think it's very important to have. You can, you can obviously have a show that's pretty broad. But typically speaking, those shows are a lot harder to get traction if your theme is very niche specific. You know in your audience knows exactly what they're getting prior to the podcast. That's sort of what you want to create the idea of having, you know, a very focused theme and narrative that the guest knows they're going to get. Each, each time they come in and listen. Some other things, you know, why you why the show as you think about you as the host. You know these, these, these are just questions that I asked myself in preparing my own show. So you know why you why, why are you going to be the best host of this show. What is your experience, what knowledge do you have that you can share with the world. You know why right now why are you starting the show right now why, why this show in particular is related to a recent news event is it something that has impacted you personally. For me it was like my personal life experience that led me to starting the show for others. You know they're using it more as a marketing tool as a way to reach customers etc. What problem are you solving. So, you know, their podcast about everything today is your podcast going to be an entertainment show. Is it going to be about true crime. Are you a new show and you're giving people an unbiased take on the news. Are you passionate about sports and you're giving people a new look behind the scenes look at the news. So you know you want to think through what problem you're going to solve for your audience. And again, these are questions that I jotted down. And after I created like an elevator pitch about what my show is about. You know and my show is simply about inspiring people to move forward through adversity, and hopefully help people build their dream life so these were sort of the questions that I asked myself to try to create that singular message that I try to get out of every single So what type of host are you. There's three, typically there's three types of hosts for podcasting. There's an expert host where, and this is very common where you're a business owner maybe your health professional. Maybe your podcast is about diet nutrition, and you're the expert and you share the expertise you have. I'm an interviewer. This is more my style show. I have guests on I explore the different topics. I pick their brain. I share their story. You know, and I'll take, I'll take my guests I'll interview them, and I'll share their story from beginning to end, and then there's the journalist which is really more. There's a lot of new shows that take this approach for obvious reasons. They share a story through the lens of a journalist. You know these are more shows where the host is sharing a story that happened in the past. Another thing to consider that super important is will you have a co host. So, lots to consider here partnerships can be very difficult. Probably the most important question to ask, if you're considering having a course is do you have a shared vision. It's really so important if you don't, it will be incredibly challenging to work with that co host. You know, and this is probably the single most important thing that you'll want to consider. If you're having conversations with a friend or someone you're thinking having a co host with another thing is also do your schedules line up. I have some friends that have started podcasts with co hosts, and they can never find time to get on the podcast together to record together. So this one might sound like super obvious but I do know podcasts that have fallen apart because they just could not find the time and also didn't commit the same level of time to that show. So you want to make sure this person is truly complimentary to you. And with any show you want to know that the host is complimenting you your show and just think through what they add and bring to the table. So what's your format. And you know this is another thing that you'll want to consider. You know will you tell one story throughout a season. Will your show be standalone where at any point a listener can jump in. Some shows follow that season so you know you can come and listen to a podcast they're going to get eight to 12 episodes and it's all sort of about the same theme that season one and then you can start jumping to season two three four etc. And other shows are more like mine where, you know you might just listen to one episode never come back again you might listen to, you know, a handful of episodes that are about a specific theme you like. So you know this is up to you, obviously you can decide how you want your show to go. So all the time. If you are sharing a specific story and it's very long like serial, it will be broken up into, you know, seasons, and you'll have to follow each episode by episode. Other shows, like Joe Rogan's podcast is standalone, you could listen to anyone and you know you won't miss out anything from the previous episode. So do you want guests without it without a co host guests can really help enhance your show. You know with, if you don't have a co host. Definitely having a guest will help engage your listeners keep them engaged and listening. In my show in the past I've done both solo episodes that are pretty short. And typically the ones with the guests do do better they get more downloads because, you know, it mixes it up it gets another personality on the show. So there are a lot of perks to having guests. The other thing that's really interesting and we'll dive into this in a little bit from a marketing standpoint. And really help with promotion. The episodes that I've created that have the biggest downloads have always been the shows with have always been shows with with my guests, and especially guests that you know cooperate and share the episodes so you know normally a guest will then take the episode share with their network and it really helps in terms of growing the show and getting more lessons and downloads. The way your shape your show is through listening and looking at what your competition is doing. There's a lot you can learn from your competition you can use their success to figure out how you want to make your show great. You know some things you can sign on your own is trying to figure out is their frequency good and how frequently do they drop a new episode. Some podcasts that I listen to that are similar to mine. They drop a podcast every single week. Some drop multiple episodes throughout the week. So there's a lot you can learn from your competition that regard. Also what what topics that they cover are their topics consistent. And how does the episode differ episode to episode as well what similarities are there between each episode so in some of the podcasts that I've done. I really try to follow the same storytelling technique throughout and try to keep my theme consistent in every single episode. There are other podcasts that have a similar theme but you know maybe it's more free form or maybe it's more. They're trying to take the audience through like a very specific narrative story so there's a lot that you can learn from figuring out what your competition is doing what you like what you don't like what you think their audience likes and doesn't like and then other things you can do is look at how they got their listeners how do they market today. What makes their show special is the content is the host is their format so there's a lot if you're going to start your own podcast I highly recommend looking at you know what your what your competition is doing and see what you can learn from that. So once you establish your theme. It's time to publish your first episode, I guess before we jump into more of like the mechanics. I guess we can open it up for like a short Q&A as relates to establishing your theme and anything we've covered thus far. Feel free to use your camera and microphones to ask questions or if you're, if you'd prefer you can use the chat feed as well but I'm assuming we're all going for starting a podcast. My name is Timothy. I was wondering if, can you like create a podcast that just be like, without promoting a business or anything just be like a chill like, like, you know, listening experience. Yeah, so absolutely my podcast has literally zero to do with my business. I don't promote my business in my podcast is so far removed and. Absolutely you know if you wanted to start a podcast just talking to a microphone and upload that and share with the world, you can do that if you want to have a friends on or guests on. You know you could you could do that that's very like, I'll just use Joe Rogan as the example I listen to his podcast all time. I feel sort of today at their several times we just brings on, you know a friend or someone and you know they talk for an incredibly long time but you know they're not necessarily talking about something in particular, or it doesn't have to do with the business or the news or anything like that so absolutely. All right cool thank you. No problem. And what would it be the top three platform for a business to utilize like a small to middle sized business to utilize for in terms of promoting the show. Promoting and recording it's both. Yeah, so I'll get into that in a little bit I guess when we get into more of like the mechanics of how to actually record etc. I'll get into it a little bit. Once you start finding a host without getting too technical, a good, a good hosting platform will distribute it amongst all the feeds so you'll be on Apple, Google, YouTube spotify etc. So we'll get into that in a little bit. Danny I have a question for you, and maybe it kind of bounces off the Timothy's that he asked. Do you have to be solving a problem, or can it just be a sharing of ideas or thoughts. Yeah so I think what's what's really neat about having a podcast is that there are like no rules you know. If you want to have your share your thoughts or it's really up to you as the host to decide what you want in your show to be. And you know you have to. You'll have to decide what the purpose of the show is is this is your show going to be focused around. You know this is a hobby this is a passion project. I want to sit down and share my thoughts. You know I'm just using this as an example but of art or sports with the world. I don't care necessarily to grow my show to have 10,000 listens and episode there then absolutely you could do exactly what you want. If you are more focused around tying this maybe to a business. And again my show isn't tied to a business. You might try to figure out hey what is the audience like etc but with that being said like my show is not tied to. It is not tied to my business. I don't really try to solve a problem trying to share stories to inspire people to go out there and build their dream life. I'm sure in some ways you could say is a problem but you know for the most part. Since I launched I really did try to figure out hey what does my audience want to hear. You know because of course I could I could talk into I could post episodes and let's just say I'm doing it for myself and I don't care so much about the result how many people listen to it of course you can do that but probably once you get started. You know I try to figure out hey what is what is my audience want to hear and then start to cater your show more towards them but absolutely you know you definitely don't need to solve a problem. I think a lot of really successful shows don't solve problems they you know they have an interesting host that shares either a wealth of knowledge or interesting stories or an interesting take her perspective. Absolutely. Okay, so if if there's no other questions about how to like think through your theme etc will jump into probably the more technical stuff which is probably what you're all looking for anyways. So, once, once you establish your theme will get into a little bit more of how to actually record etc. So microphone microphone is definitely not needed, but I personally highly recommend it. I use a blue yeti microphone. I put the link here and I could, I could share this after so people can, you know access the slides as well but I use a blue yeti microphone it's pretty it's a pretty popular one. I recommend if you're going to be recording to have a professional audio setup you don't need to be in a studio but having a mic is important. You really want to, you know this is your product your audio is your product and I'm sure I'm like many of you, if you try to listen to anything that's on the radio or something with that audio. It's annoying and you might be more likely to turn it off. But I actually found more important the microphone itself is the environment that I record in. You know so you want to avoid echoey rooms like recording in an open kitchen could be really bad recording in a bathroom could be really bad. You could also hack together, you know studios by putting a blanket over themselves and their computer and recording that way because you want to, you know minimize the echo. You could definitely save bad audio through editing etc which we'll get into shortly. But I do recommend you know good quality mic recording in a smaller room carpet is definitely helpful. I'm trying to go for the place with a crisp clean noise. I will say though, you know, don't let lack of microphone or the audio deter you from starting. When I first started, it was pre COVID, and I said I wanted to record in a professional studio, and I probably delayed launching my show by like a month because I had to figure out how to find the studio. But it would happen and I said cool I need to keep recording so you know I shifted to a blue yeti mic and honestly it was a lot easier and a lot simpler. In terms of recording and editing so audacity is a super popular software. It's free. It's very simple to use. If you go on YouTube there's tons of tons of tutorials on how to use it. It's similar to garage band I think it's a little bit more old school. So this is great if you're recording in person and directly on your computer. You know, however, if you, if you will be having guests. I don't recommend audacity or garage band it makes it a lot more complicated you need to have. It's a different setup you need to have two microphones, two sets of headphones a splitter. So, especially now with COVID and people like not getting together. Most likely if you have a guest now, you're going to want to use different software. So I'll get into that so how I personally choose to record I use a software called squad cast. You can use that software you're able to both see see your guests and it records the audio it does not record the video today. That's what I use. If you wanted to use something that's even simpler anchors great anchors are great tool it's free you can download on your iPhone and you could literally start recording, you know, right after this. I send a link on anchor to your guests and you basically record on the same line so anchors and an incredible tool. If you want to do something it's a little bit more like lean mean fast approach. However, I use squad cast on squad cast you can go in. You schedule you schedule your time you can record and I actually record my solo shows also in squad cast and then download it. I find that to be much simpler than using garage band or audacity. But these are squad cast and cast or an anchor are like three of probably the most popular tools for recording today. And we can get into when we open a backup for q amp a, you know, we can get into any particular questions around that software. And that's how I edit so there, there are a lot of people that will want to edit themselves. And in terms of editing yourself. If you do want to do that garage band or audacity will enable you to do that. And again, we can watch tutorials that are probably less than 10 minutes and it will show you how to chop up the audio improve the audio quality etc. However, from a time management standpoint. I just hire someone on Fiverr Upwork. I don't know how familiar people here are with with either of those platforms so we can get into that in a little bit as well. But they're both freelance websites, you know, Fiverr you could find most things done for around $5. I put two links here with both audio engineers where you can find someone. I found someone on Upwork that basically edits all the audio files and I pay them on a per episode basis. And I find that's a lot more efficient than me chopping up my own audio via audacity. Most likely you're going to want to have show music and intro for the intro for the outro. For me, once again I leaned into, I did explore hiring someone on Fiverr for the show music. I got an audio for like $5. My friends are a musician though so I had him ultimately make the audio clip that I use today. I also included a link here. Again, we can send this out after you know with audio technicians specifically for show music for podcasting. Show art Fiverr or Canva are going to be your best options in terms of or any freelance site really. But I would say the biggest thing that I wish I knew when I was starting in terms of show art was don't overthink it. There are so many copies of different artwork. The artwork ultimately will not really change the amount of listeners that you get in your show or out of your show. You know, so totally up to you, you can always change it. It's not forever, but Fiverr or Canva is going to be a great tool there. And then for hosting, so basically you'll need to use a service to host the RSS feed and the RSS feed just basically is the place that your podcast will live. And your hosting service, whichever partner you work with, that will host your podcast. And the host services that are the most popular are probably Libsyn and Acast. So I got, I have a code. I use Acast. I don't use Libsyn. A lot of people like Libsyn. They both accomplish essentially the same thing. Acast is a young company. They are growing pretty quickly and I actually found a lot easier to use, which is why ultimately went with them. So going back to it in terms of working on Acast. Acast in particular, once you upload your podcast, you basically just with the click of a button once it's uploaded, it will go to the different platforms. So it will go to iTunes, it will go to Stitcher, it will go to YouTube, Spotify, it will go to all the places that you want your podcast to go through just uploading. So Acast is like super easy to use in terms of distribution. And that's why I like them. They're building out more analytics tools as well, which is a really neat feature. And for anyone that doesn't have a host yet, you know, you could use the code Qspot and you'll get six months free with them. So I just covered this a little bit, but via your host, you'll be able to distribute to the different platforms. So with Acast with one click, you know, you'll be able to go to all the Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart, Radio, Amazon Alexa, Google Play, etc. So, you know, really your job once you have your all your tools set up. It's your job to become the best host possible. So if it's a solo show, you might want to figure out what sort of, you know, show your audience is looking for and how to best engage them. If you're interviewing your guests, it's your job to become the best interviewer possible. So, you know, there are, there's tons of resources online in terms of trying to figure out how to become a better interviewer. So those were, these are things that like, I definitely spent some time researching or just trying to get better at over time since I launched my show. A few quick tips as it relates to being a great interviewer. You know, research your guests ahead of time, read any previous articles, listen to a podcast that they've been on, learn more about them, hear some stories that they might share and figure out what questions they might not have been asked yet. I've found that sometimes if I listen to too much content from from a guest, then when I have them on I feel like I've heard their story so many times and I'm actually like less intrigued to, you know, hear what they have to say now I just listen to it on someone else's podcast several times over so sometimes I try to figure out what questions they haven't been asked yet. So determine what you can ask them to offer your audience something special. And more than anything I think being a great listener is key if you are going to be interviewing people. What I typically like to do is before I have any guests on. I schedule a call with my, with my guests and I sort of walk them through what my show is about in case they haven't listened to an episode. I walk them through the general flow that will take the interview, and we go through sort of beginning 10 what what the episode will be like prior to recording in terms of the marketing. You know if you're if you're the host, typically what I would do is just promote across all my social media platforms Facebook, Instagram. There are a lot of forums on Reddit, as well as Facebook like podcasting 101 or new to podcasting etc. So you can join other communities online on Facebook on Reddit. And those are places where you can actually submit your link and say hey I just launched my podcast etc. And that's it that's one way to get some initial traction. And also what I did at the beginning was text everyone I knew in my network and say hey let's do a new episode I just dropped but the the network of communities on Facebook Reddit. Those have been very effective as well in terms of sharing my podcast with new people and getting new listeners. If you do have a guest, you know you could share, you could send your guests an email, arming them with all the info they need to share. After every single episode when the episode is ready to go live. I'll send my guest and an email, typically the morning of, and I will actually give them links to share the podcast I'll give them a little snippet as well, a video to you know take take the podcast and share with their network and make it really easy for them to share. And then in terms of listeners, always ask them to rate review and subscribe helps. It helps from an analytics standpoint it helps boost your show and maybe get your show in front of people that don't necessarily see it, but probably been more so than that at the beginning. I would ask anyone who was listening to share with a friend. And that definitely helped in terms of getting people that might not have known that I was even doing a podcast to come in and listen. So how to get great guests might sound pretty obvious but I basically make a list of the people that I'm intrigued by and I send them an email, send them a message on on Instagram Facebook, and I simply asked them to be a guest on my show. So, this is just an example of the, you know what I would send them in some, in some regard. You know, I tell them that I'm a big fan of whatever if they're an entrepreneur. If they wrote a book. I sort of give them some some compliment just to get them, you know, because I'm trying to entice them to come on my show. And then I tell them you know that I'm the host of this podcast we're growing and I'd love to share their story on my podcast and I try to either share that you know that my audience would love to hear their story. If guests came out with a book or they're trying to promote something, you know I'd say I'd love to help promote your book or your product etc on my show so that's typically how I would go about guest outreach. There are platforms to find guests, but I found it though the platforms have been much more ineffective and the quality of the person that the, or the guests that a lot of the platforms have are not necessarily like the ideal candidate that candidate that I'm looking to bring on my show. So I found guest outreach to be the absolute most effective and persistence you know if the person doesn't get back to me I'll send them another email and another email until they're willing to cut to either come on or they say that you know this isn't a priority now but I have a master list of people that I'm trying to get in touch with and just sort of contact them one by one. In terms of monetization, monetizing your show is really really challenging. You need to have a substantial amount of listeners to be able to monetize, and you need to be getting about 10,000 downloads per month. Just to give you like a general, you know, an idea about my own show. I launched it in February. Right now I'm around 2000 downloads per month. It is really difficult to get to 10,000 downloads per month. From what I've experienced the more niche your show, the more easy it is to grow. The shorter the show, typically. I know a lot of people who have shows that are five minutes 10 minutes long. There's so much content today and, you know, as we discussed at the beginning there are so many people that have a podcast today that it's really hard to get people attention. But typically, you really can't monetize until you start to reach 10,000 downloads per month. And typically the ways to monetize our ads, live events, selling courses, products or a Patreon and we can jump into this if people have questions at the end but Patreon is a cool platform for, you know, people to connect with their audience and people pay a subscription to get VIP content etc. and ACAST has an integration with them so you can link the two through ACAST. But monetization is really challenging. People have sent some free merchandise to my house to promote etc. But in terms of actually getting to monetization you need to hit us at 10,000 downloads per month. That's typically what companies that are looking to advertise are looking for. And then analytics. So on your host platform you'll be able to view your analytics. For some of the more like Apple iTunes they have their own analytics on their back end. But as they're just getting started I'd say don't get caught up in the analytics. You know, it can and likely will bog you down unless you already have a big influence or a big network or a big email list etc. If you are starting from scratch, it will take time. And you will just need to sort of be very patient with it. The way that I sort of view podcasting right now is that it is sort of like an investment for the long term. Do I think I'll eventually hit 10,000 downloads a month? Absolutely. But in the near term I think it will be sort of the slow rise. And that's sort of what I've personally experienced since I launched the show. Every single month has been more listeners, more listeners etc. But slow and steady. In terms of the metrics that you want to look for. The average downloads per episode is going to be the most relevant. However, again you know if you're just starting, I would say don't even spend time trying to look at the analytics because it really takes time to build a true following and to get an audience that want to listen to your show. And the last bit of gold is have fun and don't stop or be discouraged that your show is not exploding with growth. You know this is something that I spoke to a mentor about for some time when I first launched and you know if you're already a celebrity or you have a business with a large email list and you launch podcasts, you're going to get substantial number of downloads. But if you are like me and you're just starting from scratch. It is going to take a lot of time. You know and I'm used to in business like sort of experiencing more. I think it's time to launch and grow very quickly and think about it very methodically. In this instance, you know, really trying to think it through it more as this is something I'm deeply passionate about I think podcasting. It's just such a unique time to have a podcast to launch podcasts and try to grow a podcast. So I think, you know, having fun. It is probably the biggest piece of advice if if there is an opportunity for you to monetize, you know now or down the road. You know that's awesome but I think right now some of the best podcasts are the ones that are have started because, you know, there were people who just wanted to share a story, a mission, or something interesting. So we can, we can open it up to any questions in particular. If there are specific questions around like a cast or hosting or analytics or anything like that. I could also pull open any of those sites, just to try to show you like the back end etc as well if that might be helpful. Mia, did we answer all of your questions about the tech and the more specific tech questions that you had earlier. Yes, thank you so I had to unmute myself, I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm not familiar with any of those I would have to just sort of poke around, but we're trying to figure out we're going to use zoom somehow and they have ability to record so. So if, if you want zoom zoom obviously works well too. I personally never use it just because I always found that when I tried to record on there at the beginning. I had like, I had issues either with audio with the audio files getting messed up. I could just pull open and share my screen just to show you like how simple it is on squad cast but there's so many platforms to record. So you know, I would say you do have, you should probably like dig around and try to figure out which one, you know works best for what you're looking to do. You know focus right so my audience are would be head of HR CFO is a specific right it's it's not our it's a professional not a personal podcast so yeah matters in terms of what type of audience would use. How do they, you know, download post podcast. Yeah. For you as an important to capture video as well. Not really that would be almost an optional. I think most of them we would want to be able to do it when it's not a video so someone can, you know, take a jog and listen. There's not a lot of business podcasts that it's not a webinar. A lot of the competitors what they do it's really they do a webinar types and people don't have times they're over sitting from a computer for another 30 an hour to listen to content so we would want to do it more on an audio version, but have the ability to have a guest sometimes for their face, you know visual. Got it. That makes complete sense so you know if if you check out squad cast. It's really simple to use you would just simply like add a session, you could make a title. You can schedule it. You could, you would input your guest email, if you're having a guest. Yeah and anyone it would be a guest so and I guess would usually would almost never be there will be not a state so it would be no one that would be next to me ever really and it wouldn't be, you know, just me talking it always there would be a guest or two sometime. Yeah, so. So basically you would just copy the invite link. And you could stand out to your guests, and then you'd be able to join. You know, at the time of your scheduled interview or scheduled podcast, you would simply join join it I don't know how this will work for in a zoom right now but you know you would so you would be able to see this is just your settings how your microphone is etc. You would join you would join the session and if you had a guest, this would go a split screen. So you'd be able to see your guests, and you would hit record. And you guys would start recording. What I love about this software in particular is that it records. It records your files and in. It doesn't record on one audio file link and that's the problem with some of the other software. I'll just show you so when you're done recording. When you're done recording you get two audio files you get your audio file and your guest audio file. So when you go to edit it. You can edit your audio and you can edit your guest audio. Sometimes if there's some software where it only records one audio file. So if there's any issues at all. Let's say the guest mic stops. You so you need to edit the it's very it's much more challenging to edit the. I'll just hear this will probably make the most sense so here I get two audio files my audio file and my guest audio file. So if there's issues with my guest audio, I can edit her audio, and if there's issues with mine I can edit mine. Some software only records one audio file for the for both of you and it makes it a lot more challenging to edit the file. Thank you. And what is this is this at what is the cost of this platform or how does it work is it for episode or do you. Yeah so I I pay based on usage. I'm pretty sure there's like a light version that's maybe $20 I think I pay around $40 a month. Thank you. No, no problem. I could also, I didn't put it because I thought it would be easier to just to just show but if there's interest I could open up a cast as well just to show what that would look like in terms of uploading an episode would that be helpful or that'd be helpful. Okay. And, and again you know, I do recommend looking into lives in. I use a cast but you can explore the different tools and figure out what works best for you. So this is the back end of a cast once you're logged in, everyone can see my screen right. Okay, so if you were to make a new episode. You would take your edited audio software and drag it right to the audio file, simply drag and drop. You would make your, your audio title. You can you can make a subtitle. I personally don't. They will auto populate a link if you want to make a specific link you could do that. If you have a season, you would put like season two, you would put your episode number. And then, you know they have you select the type of content so full. That's typically what I'm going for at the beginning I have one trailer so that was a shorter one. You could do bonus and then this is your summary. This is what will ultimately get loaded to be the description of your episode. And then you could schedule your publish date so you know I want to upload this and it's going to go live on Saturday. And it's really as simple as that you would upload, you would upload your art right here. It would queue up basically. It would queue up in your my episodes part in terms of distribution just because I spoke about that before. These are all the places that a cast distributes to itunes is not on here. Sorry, Apple is right here. So these are all the places that they distribute to. Like straightforward in terms of once you're set up you would select where you want it to distribute to. I would personally recommend you distribute to everywhere. And, you know, once you publish, once it's published it goes live and that's it. So they have here so you could you could see basically once you make these selections. Once you publish it would just go live and you'd be sharing your episode would automatically go there. So is the cost of that different than the other software. Yeah, so this one. I don't even remember what I'm not even certain what I'm paying now. Let's see if they're here. You can you can start with like their basic which is free here it's 1499 a month so it's not really too expensive that will enable you to distribute to Amazon Spotify SoundCloud YouTube. And what I with with the code that I had sent. You guys will get six months. You'll get six months free. Let me get that code once more though. I can post it in the. Okay. So that's, that's what I, that's what I use that's sort of like my stack and, you know, obviously totally up to you if you want to. If you'd like to have, if you want to edit it versus have someone else edit it. Actually, I cannot post it in the chat. Sorry. I'll do that right now. Sorry. And who was your favorite guest that you had on your show. Um, so how did you do it? Well, Julia B was someone that I had and she was probably the biggest character that I had on. She's like an influencer in the food kitchen space and just had like a fascinating story. It's really tough. I mean that's what I like about podcasting you meet with all these people who have such interesting stories. She's the one that surprised me the most just in terms of her journey and the life that she's building now I just thought her story was pretty fascinating. I did really love my first one with a friend Sunil Aurora. He's actually coming back on next week and it'll be interesting because the show has evolved greatly since, since that first episode but I just like a lot of the topics that that we covered together. No problem. Any other any other analytics that people should be tracking besides, you know, episode or subscribers a month. Um, so you know you might want to look at your downloads per episode, especially if you're experimenting with the type of content so you know if you're doing. I was a little in mind for a while I was doing three episodes a week. I was doing an interview, a recap of the interview and then sort of a short form, like a short form take on just something that I might have been feeling, and I was posting on Friday, and when I was doing that I was looking for downloads, listens and to try to see what sort of content my audience listened to. By far definitely the most. The ones that got the most listens were always the ones with guests. Just, I see the question so the average length. So, the, the average length prior to coven for the most popular were podcasts that were less than 10 minutes long, even podcasts that were as short as five minutes. Again, that's just because there's so much content today. It's really hard to get people's attention. But I think in terms of what's a good average length for your show it really depends on the type of show and again what your audience wants to hear and that might be something you want to experiment with. And you could start with a 20 minute show, see how many downloads you get, do that a few times and then change it to be shorter and see sort of what what happens there but I'd say typically less than 30 minutes is an ideal, an ideal length just because of the amount of content. So if you are doing like a more interview style show, it might be challenging, you know, my, my episodes to date, they've been on average around like 45 minutes. I'm trying to even get it to closer to 30 minutes just because, you know, people, people are busy but, and then also in terms of down dropping dropping episodes so I would post a new episode every single Monday. On Sunday night I would, I would upload Sunday I would upload it and Monday morning it would go live. A lot of podcasts are on that schedule. And that's what I found work best for me. There are some people that I know that are dropping and three episodes a week Monday Wednesday Friday Monday Wednesday Saturday. So you need to figure out sort of what works, what works for you in terms of when to actually release the episode. Okay, I have one more quick question. Is there like a licensing kind of thing that you have to worry about like, let's say I decided to do a podcast about me and my life. And it's like observations from a middle aged mom. Can anybody come back and say, Hey, I'm already doing that show, knock it off. No, so not, not that I'm aware of I mean, I don't think so I mean there are, if you go to like, even the sport shows just to be very specific. There are so many shows that cover the exact same, you know, topic. Same conversation, etc. So no like I would say you wouldn't have to worry from like a licensing standpoint. I think that's what's really cool about a podcast like anyone can start it. The barrier to entry is so low. The ease in terms of setting one up and creating one is so easy and I think. It's, like I said at the beginning they're really podcasting is still so young and so new that there really aren't like rules right now it's sort of like a, you know the Wild Wild West where you can really decide what you want your show to be. What do you want it to be about, etc. Thank you. No problem. Oh, and a question came through in the chat feed Danny. Have you used transitional music using known artists and if so are there issues around sampling that you've encountered. So I haven't I haven't used any audio that I had. I had my friend who was who's a musician like make the audio that I've used. In terms of getting transitional music. You, you should get music that you know is either bought that becomes yours or that's license. You know you can Google like transitional podcast music and you'll probably see a bunch of companies that are selling music clips that are. A couple dollars. Fiverr as well. I'm really big on leading into the freelance sites to find, you know, freelancers that will make amazing amazing music so I would definitely recommend getting either licensed tune or getting your own music built. I haven't heard of any podcasters running into issues but there's a lot of platforms that are selling music so I assume it's, you know, to prevent any sort of like legal issues of stealing a musician's music. Great. Any last questions. Well I want to thank Danny for being with us today and for sharing all of your knowledge. I just linked to Danny's podcast in the chat for you but if you haven't had a chance to check it out definitely it's a great listen bits of gold which is the name of his podcast. And thank you all for being with us today. And we're really excited for your podcast once you get them up and running as well good luck to all of you.