A Podcast About Podcasting

Tom Nixon (00:01.626)
Alright, so Curtis, am I going to be put in time out if I say once again that we’re going meta on this podcast?

Curtis Hays (00:11.717)
Is this a Facebook meta or is this like meta we’re gonna, I don’t know, get deep into your topic.

Tom Nixon (00:17.558)
Well, this is this is really. Yeah, this is better because it’s a podcast talking about podcasts. Jerry Seinfeld would be proud. Because what we wanted to do today was talk through various aspects of podcasting, why someone should do it, why we’re doing it. And then maybe walk listeners through some of the setup and some of the things that people should think through if they’re thinking they want to create a podcast, hopefully to remove some of the.

Curtis Hays (00:23.842)
There you go. Okay.

Tom Nixon (00:46.042)
barriers or mystification. And I thought we could start right at the beginning, which is why did we create this particular podcast? You and I Bullhorns and Bulls eyes. Why are we here?

Curtis Hays (00:59.286)
Yeah, well, if I remember right, I, our first, very first episode was with Mario. And so go back about six months from that episode, I had asked you to write case study, uh, so that Mario could tell his story about some of the success that we had and gave you Mario’s contact info, you guys connected and you were going to write something for our blog. And if I remember right, you called me up after.

Tom Nixon (01:25.315)
Mm-hmm.

Curtis Hays (01:29.17)
talking to Mario for about an hour and a half and said, Hey, I have so much material here. I don’t know how I’m going to condense this down into one single case study. And I said, I was like, well, maybe we should do more than just a single written case study, or it could be, you know, a few part written case study. Then if I remember right, a week later, you called me back. I was driving back home from maybe visiting a client or something.

Tom Nixon (01:39.014)
That’s right.

Curtis Hays (01:58.574)
And I think you, you had an idea. You said, Hey, I don’t know if you’re going to be open to this, but I have an idea. Do you remember that?

Tom Nixon (02:05.39)
Yeah, all of my ideas somehow come back to podcasting one way or another, but I do remember that. Yes, because I was thinking, you know, I could write a 1500 word case study. Probably I still wouldn’t get it all in, but I could probably condense it down to 1500. If Curtis really wants something bite size on his website, I could probably make a 500 word version of that, but it’s never going to do it justice because there was the story that took place. It was over the course of.

Curtis Hays (02:08.647)
I think.

Tom Nixon (02:30.586)
Jeez, almost a decade probably now, but it was like a series of learnings. It wasn’t one just big aha moment where a client has a challenge. You come in with a solution and then the outcome is terrific. You know, kumbaya. There was much more to it. I thought, well, if we really want to tell the story and when I even read my own 1500 word case study, maybe I’d proofread it before I said it to you. It’s like, how do we make this more of a storytelling thing, more immersive and more of

In less of I should say like a downloadable lead magnet that people are afraid to download because they don’t want to give up their email address. And that’s what so that’s what I was thinking through all the stuff. I’m like, I hate to keep beating a dead horse. I’ve got like five podcasts going right now and handful of others for clients, but this is a great podcast and you were open to it.

Curtis Hays (03:18.326)
So how’d you come up with bull horns and bullseyes? Because I mean, you had that, you had that and that a week later, you called me like, hey, I have this idea. What do you think about bull horns and bullseyes?

Tom Nixon (03:20.25)
Ha ha!

Tom Nixon (03:28.474)
funny because um one of the other podcasts that I co-host was with uh Jay Harrington who was a guest of ours and he wanted to start a podcast years ago about um content marketing specifically thought leadership content marketing. So, writing articles mostly and really niche. He wanted to do a podcast that was about thought leadership content marketing for law firms and so we were banding about names and one of the things that came to me.

Curtis Hays (03:34.347)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Nixon (03:57.702)
Well, so I got to use it now. But what’s this idea that there’s two really facets to effective marketing? There’s this broadcasting and getting the word out to the masses. That’s one thing that’s bull horns. But the ability to target, like we’ve talked about so many times on this podcast, is the bullseye approach. And you really should be doing both in really neither is as effective on their own as they are, even if like the sum.

or the hole is greater than the sum of the two individual parts. So anyway, so I had this name. Jay was lukewarm on it. So we called that podcast the Thought Leadership Project podcast. And I’ve been sitting on this killer name. Maybe that’s why I came up with the idea. Like, I got a name for a podcast. I just need a podcast.

Curtis Hays (04:40.774)
And, and, and here we are. So, oh wait, so take a step back and how many podcasts have you run and how many are you currently running right now? I just, I want to, I want to establish for our audience, your experience with podcasts, if we’re going to talk about it on podcasts.

Tom Nixon (04:52.342)
So yeah, it’s sort of embarrassing because it sounds like I’m obsessed, but I’ve seen it work so many different ways. So I have a Yacht Rock podcast was what my personal passion project. And that started out. I won’t tell anyone in the Yacht Rock community about this, but it was because my brother and I each had what you’d call modern Yacht Rock projects, bands, and we were going to be recording and releasing music in.

We had no audience for that. There was no inroads. And meanwhile, I see that there’s this yacht rock Facebook community of something 5,000 strong. I’m like, you know how we get in front of that audience? We create content about what they already love and they’re going to flock to it. And then once they flock to it, we’re going to spoon feed them our music. And it’s going to be great. I didn’t have to build that community. So it started out with 5,000 members. It’s currently over 70,000. And so our podcast has grown with it.

Curtis Hays (05:34.734)
Mm-hmm.

Curtis Hays (05:44.462)
Crazy. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (05:46.874)
So that’s sort of kind of part and parcel. I’ll answer the question about other podcasts, but just to put a pin in the idea is that a you’re trying to build an audience. Yes. But B you’re also maybe trying to curry favor or influence with an existing and growing audience who’s already a passionate about something. So that’s sort of the approach that I recommend clients take. Um, so that’s a fun one that I’ve done. I also have another personal one where I sit on a board at a nonprofit here in gross point.

Curtis Hays (05:51.022)
Thank you.

Tom Nixon (06:16.258)
Um, and so I do a podcast all about what it’s like growing up at gross point and they are serving the alumni community from all of the gross point schools. It’s so we created this podcast. People are listening to the podcast and they’re learning about this alumni association and then they’re joining. So those are my two personal, we’ve got this one. I mentioned the thought leadership project podcast, but I either consulted on or actually I’m actively either producing, editing, or just advising on six client podcasts as well.

Curtis Hays (06:43.462)
Okay, you’re busy.

Tom Nixon (06:44.214)
plus two that have sunset. So, yes. But it’s people must like, how do you have time to work? Well, thankfully, this is part of my work. So,

Curtis Hays (06:53.291)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (06:56.078)
So yeah, so.

Curtis Hays (06:56.31)
Find something you enjoy doing. Yeah. I mean, find a passion and something you enjoy doing and, you know, figure out how to plug that in, you know.

Tom Nixon (07:00.65)
I enjoyed doing it. Every case though, I’ve seen it become effective, you know, so podcasting, you know, sort of was like all the rage and then it kind of got a bad name like oh, too many podcasts out there and then I feel like it’s sorting, ebbing back and I don’t think it’s something you need to like think of as a fad. Like I’m not trying to create a celebrity around myself. I’m not. It’s like the same reason you would have a website or a blog is the same reason you’d have a podcast. It’s another

Curtis Hays (07:04.844)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (07:28.954)
communication channel. And if you’re doing it now in the B2B world, chances are you’re one of very few, if not the only, and you get to be the, you know, you kind of have pole position and you’re going to establish an audience before your competitors do. But it’s just a step back and then we can go back to our story is that you’re just you’re trying to create media or content in a medium that is

completely immersive. If people are on their headphones, they’re not doing something else, right? They’re not writing an article and listening to a podcast. If you’re doing 30 minute episodes, how else and where else do you have the opportunity to get in front of an audience for 30 minutes undisturbed? Not everyone’s going to listen to every episode, but once you start to build an audience and over time, people start liking the content and coming back for it, then that is just like the closest connection I think that you could make to somebody who you’re trying to reach over virtually any other.

format other than face to face talking to someone.

Curtis Hays (08:27.606)
Yeah. And it sounds like we might get into this today to talk a little bit about what it might take to put together a podcast. But yeah, what you’re saying is, let’s say I’ve got a blog on my company website. I invest in creating content. That’s just one medium for creating content. You’re hiring content writers. You’ve got internal people here spending time doing that. You’re doing SEO and optimizing it.

Tom Nixon (08:34.383)
Mm-hmm.

Curtis Hays (08:54.158)
However, there might be just a small percentage of your target audience who’s actually consuming content that way. So what we’re talking about here is saying, there’s an audience who, or a segment of your audience who might be willing to consume content in an audio and maybe even video version. And this is a great way to do it. And it’s been fun doing it so far as well. So.

Tom Nixon (09:21.546)
It is fun. That’s kind of the nice little secret about it. But this is also, by the way, so some of the law firm clients that I represent, I would get questions from marketing directors who, you know, they need to create content. Their attorneys, the subject matter experts are so busy and they’re in the business of billing time like they can’t even get time from them. So I said, what if you interviewed one attorney for 20 minutes and you recorded it and you actually.

recorded on video. It could be a zoom like this. We could turn that into a podcast. We could turn that into a video. We could turn that into several video shorts. We could turn that into a blog post. Even if you’re only doing show notes about the podcast episode that’s written content, we could send that we can post that to your blog. We could send it out in your newsletter. So one 20 minute conversation can yield all of this content. And so that’s another reason to consider podcasting is not maybe an add on well.

it could be either be add-on to what you’re doing or it could be central to what you’re doing and then, you know, be the vehicle around which you create tons of content. And to your point is a good is you’re giving people options on how to consume your content. So some people will like to read really business, I find that the C suite actually doesn’t do a ton of reading except for on the weekends and during the week, they’re so busy. They don’t have time to read so they might do

on the treadmill. They might walk the dog to listen to content. That’s the type of people that read or listen to audiobooks rather than read them. You know, that’s that segment. And then back to your, I think the brilliant part of what you do with this podcast that I don’t do with a lot of the others is you convert this into video content. So some portion of our audience is watching this either in short format or in long format. But this gives us something now to create a YouTube channel around, which is the world’s second largest.

search engine, right? It’s so how was our audience grown on YouTube? Since we started this.

Curtis Hays (11:19.338)
Yeah, it’s well, the subscriber list is, um, I think we’re over 6,000 subscribers now, so we’ve been promoting the channel and, uh, really trying to grow it there. Um, in addition to that, um, you know, through the promotions, uh, really gotten near a couple thousand views on a couple of the shorts, as well as a couple of the longer format episodes, I would say organically we’re getting on average, probably 50 views.

And, um, and those views are, are really engaged users, right? So, um, I’d be super happy if I got 50 people to fully read a blog post. They’re like fully in student. Right, right. But I think when you compare it to some other media, and that’s only one form of it, because we also have the podcast side, which people are listening there. Um, oftentimes people say, oh yeah, I’m listening to your podcast or I saw your podcast, but

Tom Nixon (12:00.18)
Yeah, it doesn’t sound like a huge number on its face, but.

Curtis Hays (12:15.038)
Maybe they only saw a three minute segment that was on LinkedIn that we shared. Um, to them, they watched the entire episode kind of in there, or they might’ve skipped around a little bit. The analytics may not show that they’re, they’re watching the entire thing, but, um, it shows that they’re paying attention that people are definitely seeing it. So. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (12:21.786)
Exactly. Right.

Tom Nixon (12:32.494)
You’re making a brand impression and if nothing else, if, if they, if people don’t watch or listen to any of the episodes, but you’re again, now I forgot to mention you’ve got social media fodder, right? To share on LinkedIn and Facebook. That’s the other thing. Um, even if they just see consistently that, for example, we’re blogging or I’m sorry, we’re podcasting about this topic or whatever your area of expertise is. You’re creating this recurring, um, reminder in people’s minds that, oh, Curtis and Tom are really passionate about.

that subject matter, they must be really good about at it because if they’re sitting there talking about it all day and people are listening, then there’s obviously some validity to it. So, I don’t know if that’s true of us but put listener and viewer, put yourself in that shoes and if that’s like the impression you wanna leave an audience, it’s a great way to do it.

Curtis Hays (13:18.566)
I was actually just talking to two account reps at LinkedIn the other day and they had just met them. They’re working with one of my client accounts and, um, they were asking me how the beginning of the year was going and you know, what I’ve been up to, and if I’ve been busy with X, Y, or Z, whatever. And, uh, so I mentioned the podcast and they were there, like eyes lit up. Like you have a podcast. What’s it called? What’s the name? How do I find it? So.

Tom Nixon (13:39.587)
Hmm.

Curtis Hays (13:44.283)
Yeah, for some reason people get excited like, oh, you have a podcast like and I can find it on Apple. That’s cool

Tom Nixon (13:50.446)
Yes, exactly. Well, maybe we should start through, you know, because I have consulted with clients who again, here’s another thing. So people are like, oh, Tom, you started a lot of podcasts. Can I hire you to consult and help me launch my podcast? I’m sure. But I had an attorney client of Jay Harrington’s actually come to me and say, I’m thinking of doing a podcast. I listen to your Jay’s. I think I have an idea for it’s super dry. What I do is I service large insurance companies.

And I do, I can’t remember the title in deed work on it’s something so dry. And like, I’ve forgotten now what it is even, but he said, you know, there’s only probably 12 companies in the entire world that will hire me. And within those companies, there’s maybe four client contacts that I would need to get in front of. So we’re not talking about a very big audience. It’s like, this is like 40. He’s like, but I don’t want to build an audience. I want to have deep engaged conversations with those 48, 50 people.

Curtis Hays (14:39.196)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Nixon (14:47.158)
And so I didn’t have to convince him of that. He had already arrived there, but that’s one of the first things I think that you need. Oh, and by the way, so he started launching this podcast. He invited all of those 48 people one by one to be guests on the podcast and guess who’s now listening to the podcast. Guess who is sharing that podcast across the company and in their social networks. And by the way, we had a great conversation and you brought something up that I hadn’t considered. Can we talk offline about that potential client opportunity? So

That’s the first thing I think that we need to think about is the strategy piece of what are we doing this for? Are you doing it to gain celebrity? Are you doing it as just another marketing channel? Or are you doing it as a business development effort? And depending on what you decide there, that sort of influences the next stage, which is all right, now, we kind of know who we’re talking to and what we want to achieve. Now we need to create some sort of format for this.

Curtis Hays (15:39.926)
Yeah. So in my example, that was, so we circle back to the start of this conversation. I wanted to start writing some case studies. I wanted clients to be able to tell their stories. Like I had felt like. Been doing this for close to 10 years. In Mario’s case, we’ve been working with him for seven years. Um, so many wins that we just wanted to get out there.

and for people to know about. And many times I’d talk to a new prospect and say, you know, could I just give you Mario Daquila’s contact info? And he’d be happy to have a conversation with you. And he did many times be a reference for us. But I would say he’s gone through the problem you’re experiencing right now. And we helped him. But.

I’m not the only one who can solve this problem for you. There’s likely going to be some things you’ll need to do internally. And Mario will be honest with you and he’ll tell you what it’s going to take to get you there. So, uh, I, when you pitched the idea to me, I was like, well, gosh, this is perfect. Then it’s coming right from the horse’s mouth, basically. Like, you know, let, let’s just talk about what we did, what we failed at, what we succeeded at. And, uh, if.

nothing else and no one subscribed, listened to. I wouldn’t have to bother Mario again by setting up a phone call. I could just send the video or a clip of it or the audio to that prospect and say, do you mind just taking 10 minutes to listen to one of my clients tell this story? And, um, and so that’s, that’s really what sort of sold me into the investment part because there, there were, there is an investment.

Tom Nixon (17:16.857)
Exactly.

Curtis Hays (17:25.578)
And this, you know, this isn’t something that you just do and you’re just going to take some time. There’s some costs associated, uh, with putting this together. And so I basically said, why don’t I use some marketing budget? And this will be my marketing, but it’ll just be marketing in a different, in a different way.

Tom Nixon (17:44.994)
Yeah. And now those like one-on-one conversations that a prospect or your client would have with Mario are now scalable and now they’re working 24 seven. They’re discoverable anywhere in the world. Um, and they’re, you know, going back to written case study, which I’m not saying it’s not a good idea. You should have those as well, but you know, there’s always a testimonial in the case study and people know how these work, right? It’s like, Hey, you draft the quote.

and I’ll approve it. And of course, the person drafting the quote is going, Oh my God, Curtis saved my life. He’s the best in the world. And then it says, you know, Jim Thomas at whatever good, certainly. But what goes even better than that is having the person actually sit there. It tell you unrehearsed unscripted what happened. What were the results? You can see their brain like, you know, racking their brain. And it’s just so genuine. Like when you watch Mario tell the story, there’s no script.

Curtis Hays (18:29.224)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Nixon (18:37.646)
There’s no, Hey, will you approve this beforehand? It was just like this. So it’s a way more effective thing. So that goes back to, again, the strategy piece was we could just create content that just has some permanence to it. Right. So these videos could live on your website forever on YouTube forever. It could be a link that you send off. So I think that’s the first thing to establish is the why piece. Why are you doing it? And then you write about the investment piece because what comes next is now you’re building a marketing asset, a new channel.

Curtis Hays (18:40.169)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (18:56.93)
Good night.

Tom Nixon (19:04.87)
There’s going to be time required of it, right? This is 30 minutes a day, or I mean a week at least to just record, but we need to establish what is the brand, this is a brand asset, so it needs to have the right look and feel, it has to have the right name. I think we got ours pretty good. Um, you’re going to maybe potentially create a, you know, buy a URL for it. If you want it to live outside of your own domain, cause sometimes that gives it third party legitimacy that maybe living on your own website, perhaps doesn’t, although it’s not horrible to have it that way.

You may have to invest in some hardware, some camera, some microphone, some things like that. And then there’s the software side of things. So we can go over that as well, but it’s not exhort. I mean, the all in on this was not all that expensive. We’re hiring video editors and things like that. So there’s some ongoing costs, but it’s not like a web to me. I don’t, it’s not like a website in terms of cost.

Curtis Hays (19:56.166)
No, no, I mean, you might do this for a long period of time and it might eventually equate to the cost of a website, but no off the get-go to get off the ground. That certainly is not those, those kinds of costs. And there are, as you mentioned, you know, some software tools. I think the technology continues to improve even since we started, you know, not even a year ago that makes the post-production and the production and all of that much easier.

and therefore cost effective.

Tom Nixon (20:27.638)
Yeah. Why don’t we talk through some of those hardware and software things in case people are wondering, all right, like, what are all the moving parts that we’re going to need?

Curtis Hays (20:32.886)
Yeah. Well, I’m really curious on your end because it’s like, obviously we say the word podcast it’s audio that we’re recording. Yes. But it has to live somewhere. It’s like goes up to Apple, it goes up to Spotify, whatever, but there’s, there’s a hosting service for that, right? That you’re, you’re taking care of. So if you don’t mind first, explain that really quick for me, cause I don’t even fully understand what you’re doing on that end.

Tom Nixon (20:52.076)
Yep.

Yeah.

grab a pen and a paper and I’ll so it’s not too different than from like a website a server right? So these episodes need to live somewhere and let’s just focus on the audio for a second and then what’s the we’ll call that the hub but people don’t go to the hub typically to listen to your podcast. They open up their phone and they go to Apple podcast or they go to Spotify or YouTube is replacing Google podcast. There’s all sorts of other, you know, pod beancast and all these others overcast.

But so that’s how they’re consuming it. So what they’re doing is it lives at this hub, this hosting provider, and then it goes out to what I would call the syndicators, like Apple and Google and YouTube and Spotify, and then people stream from there. There’s a lot of hosting providers. I’ll just tell you, I’m not being compensated for this. I’m not an affiliate marketer. I find that the easiest one is the free one, and it’s the best one, and that’s Spotify.

So Spotify acquired a company called anchor who I think was far and away the best hosting provider in Spotify thought so too, because Spotify is investing millions and millions and millions of dollars into podcasting. They want to be the de facto platform. Um, yes, exactly. So they’re investing in content like that. I think, um, maybe even Howard Stern. I don’t know if Howard’s still with Spotify, but yeah. So.

Curtis Hays (22:07.55)
And they have Joe Rogan, right? Who’s like the de facto, you know, he’s the guy in the podcasting world.

Curtis Hays (22:17.518)
Okay.

Tom Nixon (22:20.13)
They they see the future for it. So they acquired anchor. Acre was always free. It does. You could record all of your episode right in anchor if you wanted to, but it does all of the hosting. No cost hosting. You can do advertising on this platform. It gets it out to all the syndicators. So there’s tons of other ones. But I would say if you’re looking for the easiest and the best place to start to it’s called Spotify for podcast. So that’s the first thing that it needs to live elsewhere as well. So

There’s going to be a question at one point, where do you send people? Like you’re promoting your podcast and they’re on LinkedIn. Where do you send people? Well, in our case, we’ve created a mini website around this and that’s what you’ve done at bull horns, bulls eyes.com.

Curtis Hays (23:04.918)
Yep. Yeah. So, I mean, just tried to be real simple with that of a place to put the episode with the show notes, uh, transcript, the, I’m embedding from Spotify, the actual audio piece. So you could, you could listen right there on the webpage or you could click and it would open your app. Say you’re on mobile, it might open the Spotify app or, or Apple. So all those links are there. And essentially it’s just a feed.

Tom Nixon (23:31.184)
video.

Curtis Hays (23:32.138)
Yep. And there’s video YouTube. So, um, and then I’m trying to, but this will be, I think episode lucky number 13, so, um, I do, as we create more content, uh, organize that content. To make it easy for people to find it there. Right. So related episodes, right? If you go to episode one of Mario’s, you’re going to easily be able to find episode two and three. If you come in on an episode that has to do with LinkedIn.

I want to show other related episodes related to either social media or specifically LinkedIn. So I think it gives you the ability to organize your content, not just chronologically, but topically, where I think in Spotify or, you know, YouTube right now, I have a playlist, which is a podcast playlist, but everything’s organized chronologically. Right. So

Again, you just, people could always search, but I think the website gives you a great place to, uh, to kind of better filter and organize all your content.

Tom Nixon (24:39.01)
Yeah. So this is just to be clear, a discretionary step we took. You know, you wouldn’t have to do this. But if you want to kind of really create something that spoon feeds everything to people, I think what you’ve done there is really effective in terms of editing. So we’ve got two components. We’ve got an audio podcast, which I’ll cover. Then the video portion, which you’ll cover. So there’s.

Curtis Hays (24:43.286)
Yep. No.

Tom Nixon (25:03.502)
You will need some sort of audio editing software or a person to do this for you. It’s if you’re on a Mac, garage band will work just fine. There’s other programs out there. Audacity is one because you’re going to want to take this clip audio clip. You’re probably going to want an open in a close. And that’s another thing you need to think about. Do we want to have theme music? Do we want to hire voice talent to do an open in a close? And you need somebody who can stitch it all together. It’s not.

incredibly complicated, but that is something that, um, you can, again, for free, finding free software, either do yourself or just hire an engineer to do it for you. So there’s that’s how we do the audio. Um, the video you take care of it. It starts, does it start in the recording platform, the studio that we’re in now?

Curtis Hays (25:51.102)
Yeah. So we started with zoom. So the first three episodes we recorded, we recorded on zoom. Um, I think with zoom, you got three separate audio tracks for each individual. And then we were, you were able to mix those adjust volume levels and remove background noise and things like that. That’s where you’re going to use garage band for the video is a little bit more difficult for us to manage because it was one single video file. And so, um, all of us are just tiled.

on that video file in the way that we would have been inside the Zoom conference. So we did some research and I came across riverside.fm, which is what we’re using right now. And so a couple of benefits to that, the first one being it’s actually recording locally on your computer, which Zoom does not. So it’s going to get the highest quality possible, buffer that before it uploads it to their server. So if you have a 1080p camera, but…

you’ve got slow internet, it’s still going to record at 1080p and upload. It just is going to be a little bit behind in the uploading, but no big deal there. So, so that was nice. And then you have a separate audio and video file per participant, which then within the platform, there’s editing. So I can do shorts. I can add an intro. I can add an exit.

Curtis Hays (27:20.606)
I can put our logo on top. I can do some transcription. There’s a few things you can do. It’s not going to be anywhere near as powerful as Adobe Premier Pro. Maybe someday they’ll, yeah, better than Zoom. And so for our post-production full episode, we are still, there’s an export option where you can export to Adobe Premier Pro. So it packages up all the files for you.

Tom Nixon (27:32.57)
better than zoom.

Curtis Hays (27:47.21)
that you can then take and import directly into Adobe Premiere, which just makes it easy in the setup. So if you did have a video person who was doing some post production for you, you record in Riverside. You could either give them access to do the export or you could do the export, share the file with them, a half hour episode is probably going to be four gigs, so it’s a, it’s a fairly large file. Um, that’s with three participants. Um, and then, you know, send that off to them and then they can do all the post-production editing that you might want to do.

Tom Nixon (28:17.462)
Yeah. Again, so you have a free option, free. I mean, everyone’s probably has access to Zoom in some way or another through work or whatever, so that’s close to free, but you’re paying for it somewhere. Or go the extra mile and do a professional studio like Riverside.

Curtis Hays (28:30.422)
Yeah. And Riverside, I think it’s $29 a month. So we’re, we’re not talking about it, Tom. And the amount of time I actually save and the ability to do some of my own editing with shorts and, uh, just the quality we’re getting, I felt like it was a no brainer. And there, we’re not affiliated with Riverside and there are other options out there other than Riverside. Um, I evaluated a couple, this one for me, I liked the interface. It seemed easy to use. So.

Tom Nixon (28:33.75)
Okay, yeah.

Tom Nixon (28:44.578)
Yep. So we should.

Tom Nixon (28:55.778)
I’ve heard other people say to that recommend Riverside. So, um, yeah, you mentioned that 10 ADP camera. So we, you could use your laptop camera again, free, or I don’t know. My, this is an HD camera here. 10 ADP looks pretty crisp and clear to me. Not, I didn’t break the bank 50, 60 bucks, maybe at the most. Um,

Curtis Hays (28:58.446)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (29:15.97)
Yeah, I have a 1080p Logitech that I think I spent maybe $90 on.

Tom Nixon (29:21.59)
Yeah. So but I think it’s worth it. You get extra. I mean, they’re more receptive to light and things like that. So you can see my bald head reflection and things like that. Higher def. So again, if going back to like, is this a representation of your brand and if your brand is sophisticated and buttoned down, you might want to, you know, invest. And then the microphone. So you’re using a Blue Yeti. I would say that’s probably like the mid level.

Curtis Hays (29:38.974)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Nixon (29:49.066)
And I’d say probably the bare minimum for what you want. Other people have used the headsets with the close mic. I think those are pretty good. Sometimes those sound a little thin though, and they sound like the, um, pilot coming up over the, uh, the PA system, right? Um, but they’re good because what they do is that there you’re so tightly might, which is how close we are here, that it eliminates the background noise and you get a nice clean signal. But I would recommend the one that you’re using, that’s still the blue Yeti, right?

Curtis Hays (30:00.174)
Okay.

Curtis Hays (30:13.526)
Yep. Yeah. Again, I have a Logitech keyboard, a Logitech mouse. This, this is a Logitech brand. Yeah. I mean blue Yeti, but I think it’s, I think it’s associated with, with Logitech. I could be wrong, but I think, I don’t know if Logitech bought them, but when I was in Amazon researching, I think, I think Logitech was, uh, was associated with it. So, um, it was a package deal that came with the arm and everything. So I, uh,

Tom Nixon (30:20.97)
Oh, it is Logitech. Okay.

Tom Nixon (30:29.837)
Okay, maybe.

Tom Nixon (30:37.358)
It’s about $130. Oh, yeah.

Curtis Hays (30:43.146)
And there’s another stand I could use. So there were a few things that I got that just, I watched for deals. And, uh, when I saw a deal, I liked, I kind of pulled the trigger on getting everything.

Tom Nixon (30:49.134)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Nixon (30:53.934)
Yep. This is a sure microphone. And in case you’re wondering why I don’t have the Blue Yeti, I do have a Blue Yeti. It’s over there. I don’t know if you can see it, but I’m also in a rock band and I do some vocals. So I was going to spring for high end microphone. This is not a high end, but it’s fairly high end. But you could get away with Blue Yeti for sure. So that’s the hardware side of things. Do you want to mention? So the YouTube, if there’s any costs and so now we’ve got a YouTube channel for horns and bullseyes and that.

Also now I mentioned YouTube is sort of the shut down Google podcast and YouTube is sort of acquiring the podcasting arm of what Google was. So now we’ve, that’s a hosting environment for both our video, but it also operates as a podcasting listening platform.

Curtis Hays (31:37.45)
Yeah. So that they have, uh, when you upload, you can select your video type and podcast is one of the selections and then create a podcast playlist. So it’s just kind of, it’s a slightly different player for the user. Like, so when you go to our podcast on the channel and you click bull horns and bullseyes, it’s going to look differently in a layout perspective. What you’re used to seeing. And Dan talked about this, like that.

If you’re, if you build something that’s like something somebody’s already familiar with, they’re likely going to adapt to it easily and it’s going to be a good user experience. So if you go to this, if you select your stuff as podcast, it looks like an Apple podcast, you know, playlist or Spotify or whatever, very similar layout. So, um, I upload all that there and then I upload shorts that I create in Riverside. So that’s anything less than a minute. Um, with a.

9 by 16 ratio So those get uploaded and a specific playlist for shorts And then I do take some 3 to 6 minute segments that are in your typical 16 by 9 ratio And sometimes I’ll upload those and those just go to the regular like video channel Just to have some additional videos up there for some people like a 6 minute watch Versus a whole half hour episode, so I’ll take some good stuff and put it up that way as well

Tom Nixon (33:05.922)
Yeah, we’ve got everything from 60 second to six minute to 30 minutes, right? So, so those are all the mechanics. So maybe we can end up where we started out, which is why you would do a podcast. And I just have a cautionary tale. Um, I would recommend that for the first 90 days, you don’t even look at the metrics. If, if you’re worried that you are trying to build this audience and the expectation and hope is that you’re going to have thousands and thousands of plays and you’re going to be the next Joe Rogan. I would say I would.

Curtis Hays (33:09.9)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (33:34.53)
temper that enthusiasm for one, but I would say that’s not the metric. So maybe it is, but going back to why are we doing this? You said you wanted to create some case studies. So what did we do? We created very immersive, dynamic storytelling case studies in the form of audio. Did we accomplish our objective? We did that. That was that was your objective. Some of our other objectives are we want your clients to tell your stories. Are we doing that? We’re able to do that. Are we hopefully reinforcing our

expertise every time we post an episode. I think we’re doing that. Um, are we getting hired? So maybe, you know, we never set that as an objective, so maybe that matters. Maybe it doesn’t, but going back to my client that started this crazy podcast for this insurance, you know, deed thing, he was getting, I remember he told me a typical year for him, he would get like 10 looks at a piece of business.

He’s launched his podcast in November. In December, he got twenty looks that month alone and eventually he had to turn his podcast off because he was too busy and I guess for him, that was a mission accomplished and he gets back to it when he gets back to it but going back to that, that’s why I want to kind of loop back and say and I’ll be curious your thoughts on this having never done it before.

Curtis Hays (34:45.386)
Right, right.

Tom Nixon (34:56.642)
Were you looking at the metrics? Were you disappointed that the first episode only had X number of listeners or viewers? Or did you start to see results right away in another sort of lens?

Curtis Hays (35:08.458)
Yeah, I would say summer played into this, but I think the first three episodes were really hard for me. And I was a bit impatient in what I was expecting. But I think once we got over that hump, and it was probably around maybe episode six, I don’t even remember what episode we recorded for episode six, but it was probably about that time that.

I then realized that there was an opportunity and I don’t think there was anything specific that came out of that only that. Like I was having fun, I think more than anything, this is more fun than writing blog content, which I’ve completely abandoned on my website, by the way, I had like six posts last year that I had started at the beginning of the year that are up on the website and then I, we started this and I haven’t even looked back at that, but, um, you know, so I did a few things, I think I elevated our.

Tom Nixon (35:42.682)
Hmm.

Curtis Hays (36:02.53)
reinvested in the cover art for the video portion. And we didn’t really talk about that, but from a creative perspective, you want some cover art for the podcast itself. But then I invested in, um, having Dan redo the cover art in YouTube, just to try to improve click-throughs. For each episode, we have, we went back to all the old ones. Now I’m not editing the video for the older episodes and we’re continuing to improve the video post-production. But.

Tom Nixon (36:20.902)
for each episode, right? You’re talking about like the thumbnail. Yeah.

Curtis Hays (36:30.198)
just to get more clicks in the channel because I started to see subscribers. I would say, but results specific, I know, and we’ve talked about this previously, I know one person who just reconnected with me, what I ended up realizing and why this person reconnected and said, hey, I think you could help me with some stuff is, and this might be true of your business.

where you get sort of siloed into like, oh, you’re that company that does X or you’re that, uh, consultant that’s really good at why, but you have a whole range of things that you can actually do and problems you can solve for companies, but you’re not known as that. And I was always known as the SEO guy. And I wanted to come into this podcast, not talking about SEO, because it’s like, we do so much more and Kaleidoscope is a team of, you know, experts in so many different disciplines.

So, you know, that was, that was mission accomplished. There was somebody who came in and that, you know, we’re not working with that. I’m doing hardly anything for it. Certainly isn’t an SEO engagement. Um, this, the second thing, which solved that issue I was talking about earlier was in that, um, I wanted to be able to send prospects content to educate them. And so I had another prospect who needed content writing, but thought they could do it themselves.

and we had our why how what episode. And I sent the why how what episode to him and gave him a timestamp and was like, just watch this 12 minutes for you, for me, if you can. And.

Tom Nixon (37:59.72)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (38:09.058)
With the idea that it might help him write the content, right?

Curtis Hays (38:11.55)
It might help him write the content or in that conversation, I was just trying to relay that, you know, the subject matter. I had no doubt that he could write about the subject of which he’s an expert in. What we talked about was there’s a whole nother level where you write it so that the user wants to read it. And if you’re right, there’s a big difference. So, you know, I, I wanted to share that with him and then, um,

Tom Nixon (38:32.287)
difference.

Curtis Hays (38:39.438)
We haven’t started an engagement specifically yet, but he did reach out and say, you know, yeah, hey, I want to talk to Tom about this. So, you know, I think those are those opportunities. And we’re going to use the video today where I’ve had a couple of people ask about podcasting to say, hey, you know, you want to learn, you don’t have to spend a half hour on the phone with me. I’m more than willing to do that. But in your spare time, if you’re on the treadmill or you’re driving to work or whatever, you want to listen to this, it’s going to cover a lot. And then if you got any specific questions from there, let’s chat.

Tom Nixon (39:09.166)
Yep. Yeah. So going back to now again, your metric initially was to have some content assets. Then if you don’t mind me putting it this way, because this happens is you get seduced by the idea of what if this really takes off, right? What if they’re like we hundreds of views of thousands of you know, and I would hope for people who want that would be achievable and it certainly is for some.

But if it’s not your primary objective, then live with the other wins that you’re going to get along the way. There will be plenty of wins. I never forget. I tell the story all the time. So many people were telling me that I just love your new podcast and listening to it every week and I would ask them. Oh, you do subscribe on how do you listen to it? And they said, oh, no, I just see those like short little videos that you post on LinkedIn. So. Okay, so somewhat disappointed. They weren’t listening to the podcast.

But without me asking, somebody came back to me and said, you’re doing a great job professing to be an expert in the area that you cover. I’m consistently listening to it and you’re doing a good job. So that’s to me. That was the metric. The whole reason I do things like this is to I mentioned the story about the outrock at the beginning. It’s like it wasn’t to create. I didn’t need to convert those 5000 fans to be like

followers of the podcast, you know, I just needed to be in that community and have enough presence to that those 5000 people were aware of us. Um, and same thing with like this podcast. I don’t need, we don’t need thousands of thousands of subscribers. We just need to have content and an asset to, we can point people and say, you have a problem. I know somebody else who had that problem and you, you know, we can spend two weeks we trying to get you connected with them, or you could go listen right now to a 20 minute conversation we have with them. So take the winds along the way.

Curtis Hays (41:03.501)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (41:03.598)
And then eventually you’ll be big and famous like my Yacht Rock podcast.

Curtis Hays (41:07.739)
Maybe we’ll get there. I, my target audience is the marketing manager, the director of marketing, the business owner who just trying to figure out sales and marketing from a digital perspective or even non-digital there’s so much technology, there’s so many different platforms, there’s so many things going on that you could get lost in the weeds and I see repeat, you know, problems that, that

There’s themes of challenges that these companies have and, um, why not educate them? I mean, that, that’s what this is for is just, just educating them.

Tom Nixon (41:49.77)
And that is, this will be my final thought because I think you’ve just come full circle to the whole value proposition of content marketing in general is usually not to try to sell somebody on something is to educate them. And then eventually they consider you the expert. When need arises, they think of you first. Same thing with podcasting. If you can educate, we haven’t tried to sell anyone on anything other than they might have to go buy a microphone and all the stuff that we don’t benefit from. But if we’re educating, that’s good. And if we’re helping people

you know, overcome an obstacle. Great. And if they need our help to do it, that’s good too. So any final thoughts from you before we conclude this very meta episode podcast about podcasts?

Curtis Hays (42:31.502)
No final thoughts. It’s great to be back again with you, Tom. Another great episode and looking forward to many, many more.

Tom Nixon (42:40.374)
Well, I am off to go enjoy some fun in the sun. So while you’re listening to this, I will be down in Florida. Actually, when you were listening to last week’s episode, I was down in Florida. I’m back. So I hope I’m rested. We are recording this a chronologically or asynchronously. So thank you, everyone. And I will see you next time. I am back to the next episode of bullhorns and bulls yes.