Craft a Compelling Podcast That Hooks Your Audience (and Makes You Money) [Coaching Session]

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
podcast, people, guests, interview, show notes, video, content, episode, podcast episodes, linkedin, talking, recording, episodes, great, listen, format, create, live, title, call

SPEAKERS
Voiceover, Alastair McDermott, Nina Froriep

Voiceover  00:00

Welcome to The Recognized Authority, a podcast that helps specialized consultants and domain experts on your journey to become known as an authority in your field. Here’s your host, Alastair McDermott.

 

Alastair McDermott  00:12

Hello, and welcome to The Recognized Authority. I’m your host, Alastair McDermott. My guest today is Nina Froriep. For the second time. Nina was here in Episode 54, which was about video marketing made easier. So Nina, welcome to the show.

 

Nina Froriep  00:27

Thank you for having me again. Super… Ahm, twice.

 

Alastair McDermott  00:31

Yeah, and you’re one of the first time guests. So that’s great. The thing that we’re going to talk about today is we’re actually going to do a coaching call around podcast and podcast planning, because you don’t currently have a podcast or you want to start a podcast, is that right?

 

Nina Froriep  00:47

I want to start up a old podcast that I’ve kind of let slide.

 

Alastair McDermott  00:52

Okay, cool. And…

 

Nina Froriep  00:54

Well, I mean, that’s actually up for discussions.

 

Alastair McDermott  00:57

Excellent. Well, yeah, so let’s get into it. And it just for context for any anybody who doesn’t know, I’ve written a book called “33 Ways Not To Screw Up Your Business Podcast”, which is probably why Nina thought that she would want to talk to me about this. So that’s just for some context. Let’s let’s get into it. Can you can you tell me a bit more about what what you’d like to do now? what your goals are for the podcast?

 

Nina Froriep  01:23

Yeah, so the podcast that I did, and I started it about nearly four, three years ago, was kind of a due diligence exercise. It’s like everybody was doing podcasts. I’m a video marketer. So I did a vlog cast. By the way, sidenote, drives me bananas when people call the podcast and it’s actually a vlog cast. But you know, that’s, that’s just me. So it was really lovely, fairly easy affair, that twice a month, invited all the interesting people I talk to all the time, be it that their clients or prospects or just from networking opportunities. And we did that for about a year and a half. And then the virtual assistant or she was much more than that, who left me who was setting this all up for me, and left me with a very nice centered opposite writing procedure. But it became a chore after that. And so I slugged myself through another year, year and a half of doing it by myself only once a month now. And I felt like it was just like it had run its course I think there’s certain serialized content, that is fantastic. And then at some point, just you know, there’s a needle in the balloon and it just like, you know, does that just, you know, empties out and there’s not much left.

 

Nina Froriep  02:39

And then, you know, I started being privy to more tools being out there to make podcasting now, audio only, much easier. So I’ve, you know, been thinking that now that my real talk was Nina, as it was called, and real spelled RT, RT E L, you know, because video haha. And I’m just felt like, alright, I either need to just ditch the whole thing. Because I haven’t more than enough content, I’m not lacking in content. I’m not lacking in thought leadership, because I can create that with videos. But I do miss the conversations, I do miss the opportunity to invite people into something that are potential clients that I want to sort of bring in a little more. And it was just other than creating the assets. It was actually fun. So I figured if I do it again, I want to do it right. So I want to make sure it ties in with my ecosystem. I do want to make sure it’s not just some random thing. I want to make sure it’s branded right. And I want to make sure I’m thinking it should be much shorter. The old one was alive. That was simulcast, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Facebook, I couldn’t care less about LinkedIn is my jam. And YouTube was just great, because then it could go right into playlists. And we’re done. Right? So if I do it again, I just want to be smarter and more intentional about it and also explore things like, is this sort of 45 minute affair? Or is this actually sort of more of a commuter length? You know, 20 minute affair? What can I do in 20 minutes? I’m a storyteller. So I like to go long winded, all that kind of stuff. So that’s where I’m at. So I have no title yet. I have no concept yet. But I do know what my audience wants and kind of what I you know, what kind of people I attract. So I have clear ideas about that.

 

Alastair McDermott  04:40

Cool, okay. So there’s a couple of things that that standout there. So shortening the format. This is one that I find that people argue about all the time because some people say, oh, people don’t listen to long, long format. They don’t listen to, you know, long shows. Like I have podcast episodes that are over an hour long, and the numbers of downloads are just as good if not better than some of the short episodes, Joe Rogan is out there with a three hour podcast, there are other people out there with very long form. And what long format you do is go really deep on a topic. And you Well, what I find is you can just get in a conversation, you can actually explore some of the things that you never would get a chance to particular when you’re interviewing an expert. And I think that’s what’s interesting, because if you if you listen to the same expert being interviewed on 10, short form podcasts, they’ll probably say the same thing, mostly because they never get time to go beyond the surface. Whereas if he listened to them on some longer form podcasts, you tend to find that they’re able to go deeper, because the host is able to explore some of the interesting questions. And that’s what I like about the longer form stuff. I think it’s like, what what do you like to do and what works for you. I think people will listen to it, people will find a way to listen to it.

 

Nina Froriep  05:56

That’s very good feedback. I mean, I, as I said, I’m a storyteller, I’m, you know, I’m a documentary filmmakers. So I, you know, when you interview a subject for a doc, you don’t give yourself a time limit, right? You dig until you get the gold. And the gold very often comes an hour in or whatever, right, so. And then there’s also those people who just, I interviewed an expert a couple of months ago, who had talking points, and he would not veer from those talking points. And I’m sure that I could have interviewed him for three hours, and we would still have been on the same five talking points. Right. So that was an interview I actually cut short. Right. But that’s that’s the exception. For sure. So longer for I mean, then the beauty of longer format is also you get more out of it, right? You get more detail, you can get more clips, because the way I’m going to use so this is the other part, like if I’m doing this, I want to the question is, do I even bother with a podcast? Do I need to bother with a podcast? So audio only? Do I want to deal with the show notes and all that I kind of don’t. Because I don’t have a VA who can do that for me right now. I have VAs that have other skill sets. I want to do you know, I want to do a short version like short clips, you gave me the idea of a highlight reel, which I’ve never done before. But I think that could be really sexy. And you could do super shorts, like short shorts, like under one minute. So I want to read like that. For me. It’s not just about the show. For me, it’s also about exploring new topics to talk about with the help of these clips.

 

Alastair McDermott  07:41

Right. And the assets, the other assets that it can create for you.

 

Nina Froriep  07:48

Well, I mean, yes. And it can be written stuff, right? Because you have a transcript that can be written, you know, the resources. I mean, it can be stills, I mean, you can go you can skin the cat any which way you want. Sorry, your cat owner. Sorry, yeah, you can just get your way which way you want.

 

Alastair McDermott  08:06

Yeah, so okay. So in terms of overall goals, so what I’m hearing for you is, you don’t need it to create thought leadership, authority type content, because you already have a lot of that, although that’s, that’s a nice kind of side effect. You, you do want it to create all of those kinds of extra content assets, like the short, short video, video clips, and things like that, which, obviously, I’m very pro doing that, because I think it’s a great way to create content that’s very engaging, and Instagram and TikTok, in particular, but also, I think LinkedIn are starting to really get on the video train now as well. And you can probably speak to that. But, you know, I think I think that that kind of content is definitely more engaging people are more interested in seeing the expert or thought leader appearing on camera on a video than just reading the text.

 

Nina Froriep  09:03

Yeah, so I think so let’s say, yeah, go ahead.

 

Alastair McDermott  09:07

You don’t particularly care about something like monetization through sponsorship or anything like that. That’s that’s

 

Nina Froriep  09:14

that’s actually a good point you’re bringing up I don’t care about the monetization although money’s never bad. But I do want to get a sponsor even just because I think a sponsor would elevate the podcast or vlog cast I think having so I have a friend that is in a in a pod with me in the LinkedIn pod with me and and he found himself a sponsor for his weekly so he does is much more often his weekly live on LinkedIn. And it’s a tit for tat sponsor, right. They don’t give him any money, but they give him you know, he gets sort of the kudos of I’ve got a sponsor, they they get more your ears and eyeballs on their stuff. I think a sponsor definitely elevates a podcast significantly. Even if it’s even might the sponsor is clockwise productions, which is my company. But I’m also thinking I could Yeah, you could be a sponsor with your fabulous new product, right with the with the podcast editing accelerator. Yeah. Thank you for giving it a name. What’s it called? What accelerator

 

Alastair McDermott  10:26

authority accelerator

 

Nina Froriep  10:28

authority accelerator. I mean, that will be you will be a great sponsor. Right. So, I mean, I think having a sponsor is definitely a goal to have. Yes. Right.

 

Alastair McDermott  10:38

So it’s a third party endorsement effectively.

 

Nina Froriep  10:42

Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s more of the endorsement than the, I mean, yeah. If a couple of bucks look like are in it as well. Fine. Not gonna say no. But I think it’s just great to have that kind of, I think it just ups the value of the show. And that’s the other thing until now, I’ve been inviting whoever I could grab. I would love to also be more strategic with my invites. Yeah.

 

Alastair McDermott  11:10

So the interesting thing, the interesting thing about having like a podcast and calling it a podcast, is it’s a very, it’s a very understandable platform for people. So when you’re inviting, you’re saying, I have a podcast, it’s a weekly podcast, and I’m going to invite you on, it doesn’t really matter if the format also happens to be live or video as well. The thing is that it’s very easy for people to understand when you’re reaching out to, you know, to a business leader, who’s busy, they know they understand, Okay, I’m going to be interviewed if I come on here. Okay, know what it is.

 

Nina Froriep  11:48

Yeah, I mean, I’ve invited people into my life show, I found that to be I’ve never had people push back or say, I don’t know what that is or what the what that looks like. Yeah, yeah. I’m saying, yeah.

 

Alastair McDermott  12:05

1. So I think that for me, what, what, what podcast implies more than a live show, and maybe I’m wrong with this. But what it implies to me is it implies consistent regular scheduling. And that I find interesting that that people then make the podcast part of their weekly routine, if it is something like weekly. And so they know it’s going to the podcast is going to be in their podcast player. For me. It’s every Monday morning. It goes live at 6:01am. Irish time. And so every Monday morning, it’s there in their podcast player. And I know, for example, that Joe Jacobi, one of my former guests, I know because I regularly get message from him on Monday morning, just after I get up out of bed, because my podcast went out before I got out of bed. But I got a message from him saying, Hey, that was great conversation, I was driving to Barcelona and I listened to it, you know, for example, and it just becomes part of their routine. And the convenience. The part, the part of the podcast, the audio part gives you as it gives you access to being in people’s pockets on their phone, on their car. Dashboard. So

 

Nina Froriep  13:18

that’s why I’m thinking about it. Yeah, yeah. Because that is a huge advantage. Like everybody I know who has a vlog cast and blog cast only, I don’t really listen to them, because I’m not gonna sit another half an hour or hour at my computer. And then, you know, sometimes I’ll do like a graphic project or an art project, and I might listen to podcasts. But I’m not necessarily gonna listen to a business podcast while I’m doing some artwork, right. So it just about driving. I actually queue up a playlist.

 

Alastair McDermott  13:48

Yeah.

 

Nina Froriep  13:48

Sure. Yeah.

 

Alastair McDermott  13:49

Yeah. Yeah, me too. And I have binge listened like I needed to. I need to learn about webinars, for example, and there’s a webinar expert. He has been around for a while. He’s around a few years ago called Steven Assa. And I heard him being interviewed. And so what I did was I went into my podcast player, and I searched for him being interviewed on all of these different podcasts. And I listened to him being interviewed about about webinars. And I listened to five different interviews. And by the time I got to the end of that journey, I knew exactly how he does it, and what his process is. And he used all these different examples through, which was great because it meant that, you know, I got these different perspective. So that was like, like a masterclass. And so, what stuck with me is I’ve always wanted my podcast episodes, where I’m interviewing experts, I want them to be like that. I want to be really actionable learning educational.

 

Alastair McDermott  14:39

So that’s what I’m going for with this podcast is that people who are listening to it, really get something from it and can take something away, and actually implement that in their business like an idea that because there’s listening for education, and it’s totally different to listen for entertainment, and I think that we should have a bit of both. Like, I think that we should, we should try to be conversational and entertaining, and, you know, have have fun with it as well, because I don’t like business, we all business. But, you know, we’re like, we’re trying to help people, we’re trying to get people to take some kind of action to move forward with whatever the problem is that they have that they’re trying to solve. So, yeah, that’s just how I think about, you know, the educational aspect of the podcast.

 

Nina Froriep  15:25

Yeah, no, I mean, definitely, I think a balance of both is important. And, you know, case in point, not my, my entertainment is not your entertainment, right. So we see sort of in a lot in the knowledge world, for the most part, then we know we’re in in a safe, safe area that is of interest to our listener, because they wouldn’t have listened into it to begin with, if their interest was in early childhood education, right. And I’m talking about, you know, video marketing. So I at least know I’m hitting, I’m hitting the, we always say like, with a binge worthy content, it has to be timely, it has to be engaging, and it has to be educational. And if we can hit the timeline educational, then we’re golden. And if we, we also get the entertainment or the engaging part down pat, then even better, right. So…

 

Alastair McDermott  16:17

One thing you mentioned there that I just think is important to mention is on, it’s okay to be personally revealing. And that was like, even if your entertainment is not my entertainment, still revealing some of that it brings authenticity and personality to it. Like, for example, we discussed before the show you were talking about your dog, and I said, Hey, well, we’ve got two and a half cats, because there’s a cat hanging around outside who’s, you know, enjoying itself in the sun out there in our backyard. So you know, but but things like that, you know, those kinds of things, make a connection, people people pick up on those details, and just get to know and so they’re painting a picture of you. And when they’ve listened to 200 episodes, they do, they do have a relationship built with you in their head. It’s called a parasocial relationship, where they feel like they know you. And they probably do, they probably have quite a good idea of what you’re like, you know.

 

Alastair McDermott  16:45

So I think the other thing about the podcast is typically, and I believe very strongly in recording video now and and recording on video. But I think that there is something about when somebody is listening to your words, in their ear, on their earphones, or, you know, whatever way they’re listening to you. There’s an intimacy to the audio only that you don’t get with the video. And now I understand video has lots of pluses. And you know, I’m talking to a video marketer. So you know, you get this and that, like video was very powerful. But I think that audio can also be very powerful audios only can be very powerful as well. And so that’s why I think I like to do purpose it.

 

Nina Froriep  17:54

Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally agree with you. And I think it’s just the convenience of you know, we have so many hours a day, when we’re, you know, chopping up, you know, veggies for dinner, or, in my case, I’m on a dog walk, or I’m driving somewhere and not as a New Yorker, I don’t drive very regularly, but I do. But you know, there’s or, you know, even commuting in the subway, whatever. There’s many opportunities where we can easily also be doing something else. And that’s where the podcasts come in. So but what I’m worried about is like with a live show on LinkedIn, which is what I have been doing, you know, I scheduled it at a time where I know I’m getting engagement because I mean, engagement pods. And then I know that you know, LinkedIn, I just get X amount of people who comment on my stuff, because I have I have a loyal following. And I have a name and I have authority. I’m a little nervous about going on. I don’t know. I don’t even know what the name of all the different software’s are, but on Stitcher or on, you know, Apple podcasts and just be you know, posting to, you know, complete crickets.

 

Alastair McDermott  19:09

Right, so, so the fear there is that you’re putting the podcast out, and you’re not getting big downloads on off of the podcast itself. Yeah, you’re getting good numbers on your on your life. But you’re not getting a lot on the podcast. Is that is that the concern?

 

Nina Froriep  19:25

Yeah, I mean, my concern is that I would not now I’m starting yet another new platform that is or and platforms plural, right? Because these podcasts go, you know, nilly Willy wherever and then how much so I’ve never done a podcast. So how labor intensive is it? What about the show notes? That’s something I totally do not want to deal with? What about the links? Because none of that I’m really dealing with when I’m doing a live

 

Alastair McDermott  19:52

Yeah, I mean, for a live you still got to write some show notes, although typically you’re going to write them in advance. And you know, as Then episode Descriptor to say, hey, this event is upcoming,

 

Nina Froriep  20:04

which I have to do for my my lives anyway as well. So that’ll be the same work. Okay.

 

Alastair McDermott  20:09

Yeah. So so there is like it is similar. And there is there is a little bit of work that does need to be done there. The good news is you can delegate and automate a lot of it. And I would suggest that you do that. And even if it’s just even if it’s just a person, a va, or a Podcast Producer, who just does the show notes and, and posting the episodes, but there’s so much of it that can be chained together with automation, like Zapier and all of these other systems.

 

Alastair McDermott  20:42

Like for example, I use a piece of software called Auphonic, which is an online service, which does audio leveling. And what that does is that makes sure that the particularly we’ve got two, two people speaking here, me and you, and our audio gain might be set to different levels. And so what it does, it just normalizes everything, make sure that the speakers are both speaking at the same volume on it so that we don’t have one dropping out. There’s little things like that. But that service, Auphonic, that service, when I put the audio in there, it also automatically goes off to get transcribed. And it also gets copied up into Google Drive. And now, we don’t currently do this, but we could have a kickoff and actually automatically publish the episode.

 

Alastair McDermott  21:23

So there’s all of that, that you can chain together to to, to set it up so that it’s literally hands off for you. And so what you do is, you know, you’re done what you’re recording, and you say, okay, and you can actually do this even now, you can do this with the mp4 video. So you can drop the video up onto, again, Auphonic or one of these websites or services. I don’t know if there are other services, I just use that one because it works for me. Yeah, but you can even drop the video up there. And it will split the audio ad for you and normalize it and compress it down to a nice high quality but low file size mp3 for you. And and that will then kick off. And in fact, you can even do it so that you can add an intro and outro automatically if you have those recorded as separate files.

 

Alastair McDermott  22:06

So there’s a lot of the kind of production work can be taken off of your hands you don’t you don’t have to, you know that you can delegate to automation to a machine to Zapier or to a person, I think that that you want to like you should not be doing editing, you should not be doing production work you should be doing the more strategic. For me, the ideal scenario is I invite the guest, because I don’t want to outsource that part of it. I want to invite the guests myself, and then I want to show up for the interview. And that is all that I want to do. And I wanted to delegate everything else be completely hands off. And that’s where it is for me. But I think it’s really important that as a business owner, as a business leader, as somebody whose time is limited, that we’re not spending huge amounts of time on the detail that can be done by automations.

 

Nina Froriep  22:57

Yeah, I mean, for my life, I had an excellent operator send it out operating procedure. The only thing I ended up doing myself was I did the the graphics myself and the writing of the blurb. And it was only once a month. And it only took me about an hour. And every month that one hour became sort of the albatross, like the one chore, right that I hated doing. And I kept saying like, my, my business will be perfect if I didn’t have to do that one hour a month. And it’s just one freakin hour. But yeah, I’m kind of like if I’m doing this, and I’m starting this up again, I want to make sure because now I’m adding elements rather than making it mean, I’m going to definitely make the graphic creation easier. It was in Photoshop before. Now, I mean, I know Photoshop really well. But I just don’t want to go in there. When I have it on Canva or on Adobe, one of those you know of quick and easy online things where anybody with a half a brain can mimic what you what I’ve done and not be fully professional on some really complicated software.

 

Alastair McDermott  24:00

I’m a huge fan of Canva. And I know that Canva now you can even do like you can upload a CSV file to Canva and it will bulk generate slides and things for you. So and then there’s other tools that you can use, like you could actually have chat GBT connected to Google Sheets. And so that you can, you can basically teach chat to you can use those and drag out a seek basically drag out your chat up to inquiry requirements, like just down a spreadsheet, like the other way you expand the spreadsheet. Like it’s insane what you can do with some of these tools. A lot of these are going to take just that grunt work that we should not be doing, particularly as business owners, we should not be doing that. And it’s going to take take that out of our hands, which is good.

 

Nina Froriep  24:46

And it’s just going to be a matter of learning it right.

 

Alastair McDermott  24:50

Yeah, and there are tools like there are services out there and I’ve tried a few of the podcasts shownotes services. In fact, I’ve tried to get seven or eight of them, and I wasn’t I’m really happy with any of them. I was I was creating all of the shownotes. It was the one thing that I was doing, I had a templated formula. If you look back at my show notes, you’ll see that they’re all very particularly in season one prior to Episode 100. They were very formulaic in terms of the layout. But what I found was that the shownotes generation just wasn’t good enough. But it’s, it’s only going to improve from where it’s at right now. So it is going to get better. And you can use chat GBD and other tools to create those show notes. It’s just a question of figuring out the right prompts to use and and figuring out what the input is that you’re giving. Because with podcasts, transcripts, they tend to be too long to to upload and have Chachi Beatty, in particular because of its state of limits. But there are you know, there are ways to do it. So you can I mean, what you can do is you can have it, you know, generate five different versions of the show notes for you. And then you just pick the best one, there are options like,

 

Nina Froriep  25:58

yeah. Do you have a checklist of all the things that go into a podcast?

 

Alastair McDermott  26:05

Oh, yeah. Yeah, so I mean, I have a workflow, I have an internal workflow. And I tend to do a lot of my documentation and Google spreadsheets to be honest. So I have sheets that have SOPs and things like that. We have some of it in Asana as well. And but when I’m building out a workflow for the first time, I tend to build it out in Google Sheets, because it’s much more malleable. And you can tweak it a bit. And once once we have to, once we have it nailed down, then I’ll I’ll get Aiko to build that out in the sand as a as a project template. But I don’t want to do that until we’ve done it quite a few times. So we know we have the process, the process nailed down. Because otherwise what you’re doing is you’re creating it and then you’re tweaking it, and you have to change the template and

 

Nina Froriep  26:53

yeah, it’s ya know, I’ve learned my lesson to never to never do an SOP to to assume, right? Yeah, I’m working. Now I have my SOPs in a in a in like a table format as well. And I just keep tweaking it. And I’m right now as long as I don’t have a VA to hand it over to I’m not going to solidify it, because, as you said, it gives you the flexibility to make changes to it. So

 

Alastair McDermott  27:17

another tool that I’ve used is loom. So I use loom to document the procedure. So somebody had to do the SOP. But Liam also does transcripts. Now, I’ve taken the transcript from loom, fed that into chat GPT and said, Please turn this into an SOP document instruction list. And they did a good job at it. Surprisingly good. Yeah.

 

Nina Froriep  27:42

I mean, I’m a big fan of dub and I’m affiliated with dub, but same thing as loom. Just yeah, yeah, it’s different. Yeah. So so then the big two questions. I mean, there’s the practical side of it. And I’m a producer. So the practical side doesn’t really scare me, I’m just very realistic as to knowing you know, what the work is going to be that goes into it. So on the on the creative side, my questions would be around, okay, so let’s say we stick to we stick with the 40 to 55 minute format, which is what I have had. And I always found that to be a nice, like, there’s guests that are a little less chatty. So you know, I’m done after 35 minutes, or they’re just not. Yeah, and that’s okay. And then there’s guests who, you know, there’s just like this layering and layering and layering where, you know, at 55 minutes, I’m like, Shit, I’m not even halfway down the road with them. But that’s that that’s the person you invite again, let’s say we say with with that length format, and we originate with a live because I think that’s a nice way to originate.

 

Voiceover  28:49

So

 

Alastair McDermott  28:50

recording live on on some services. And so I personally use restream.io. Now, that’s the one that I use. Yeah. And what that does is that allows you to multicast to all of the different so you can go on to LinkedIn, Facebook. Yeah, that’s what I do. Yeah, yeah. So it’s the same thing streaming, right. I don’t know if stream yard allows this probably does. But I like the fact that allows my guest to add in their Facebook and their LinkedIn, and it can also broadcast to theirs. So that’s kind of cool.

 

Nina Froriep  29:20

It does, it depends on which level level you have. I have, it depends on how much you pay to see. But that is something I could definitely explore. I’m on the lowest level. So So that brings me to to sort of you know, the the other side of the conversation is the more is a content side of the conference conversation. So there’s like for me three buckets that I’m kind of and those those are the real big, like, sort of things I’m knowing which is a title. Yeah. Be How can I how am I? What kind of guests and how I might upping my guest list. So I did a trial I’ve done several trials women only Queen ages only then I did other video marketers only other video marketers. marketers do not make for good not make for good talkers. I learned. Not my but there’s some exceptions. But in general, other video marketers are boring bunch. So I’m like, no.

 

Alastair McDermott  30:27

Can I suggest something on that one? Yeah. I think that interviewing your peers, which is effectively what you’re doing there is interesting. But I think that the problem that some people have, and I don’t know if this applies to you or not, but the problem is some people have when they’re interviewing their peers, is when they have when they’re when the interviewer is a generalist. The guest who’s coming on kind of feels like, well, you know, you do all this already. So what do we have to talk about, you know, you’re not really getting into something detail with me, you’re, you know, we’re both, we’re both covering the same topic. So I think that if you, if you approach your peers that you have to get really specific and say, Look, my thing is this, and your thing is that so let’s get on and talk about how those interact, or how those work together and position each other as the expert in our own thing. So again, I don’t know if that applies to you, and what’s going on previously, or it could just be that they were terrible guests. So

 

Nina Froriep  31:25

terrible, but I think it’s also maybe seeing, you know, you know, I think there’s two things going on there. Number one, we did focus on their specialty different than mine, but I think it’s a probably not seeing the label from within the box number one. And number two, I am super opinionated, you know, me well enough to know that about me. I’m super opinionated. And there’s a way to do things, right. And that’s Nina way. So when I sometimes have a guest, who does what I do, and I disagree with them, you know, I get myself into trouble. So not that I disagree with them officially on the show. But then I get careful in the moment. I’m not myself and not like sort of just Nina being Nina. Yeah. So and that’s, that might be the vibe they’re picking up on. So yeah, so maybe I just shouldn’t interview. I think I did better when I interviewed people that had really interesting things they were doing that were adjacent to my stuff, or complimented my stuff. Or, you know, we’re still of general interest to my audience whom I know very well, without without crossing over into what I do for sure.

 

Alastair McDermott  32:33

Yeah. Okay, let’s just talk about the audience for a minute, because we talked about your goals, in terms of the audience. So you’re creating the podcast, we really want like, I think that the the audience getting value from the podcast, be it entertainment or education is super important. And so from that perspective, what are they gonna get out of it? And how does that because because we want to frame that against what you’re going to get out of it, which is creating all this content, and audience things like that. So I

 

Nina Froriep  33:08

think for the listener, I think the value would be twofold. One is to listen to someone who really is a thought leader. So that’s what I’m saying. upping my guests game a bit. So like, you know, when you had Oh, my God, you had that one guy on and now I’m blanking terribly January of this year. Last year, you had a famous guy on a wrote a book and I was totally all over him.

 

Alastair McDermott  33:39

Quite a few like so I’ve had Mark Schaefer, he’s pretty well known Christo, Marcus Sheridan, know about quite a few that

 

Nina Froriep  33:51

totally blanking, he was so great. I’m blanking on his name. Anyway, so you know, having for me to know you, and know you’re quite well, at this point, ish. And know that you’re interviewing this person. That is something I’m definitely definitely going to listen to. Because now this famous person is coming in closer to my own orbit, right. It’s not like the two hour interview he would be doing with a brain soulless, but it is sort of my friend Aleister, interviewing famous person XYZ, that makes it really interesting to me. And that is and famous is within the eye of the beholder, right?

 

Alastair McDermott  34:30

Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Like most of the so called famous people that I’ve had on the podcast, like if they walk down the street, most nobody doesn’t know who they are, you know, that’s just the way the way it works.

 

Nina Froriep  34:41

But this is in our ecosystem, right. And my ecosystem is service based entrepreneurs, mostly coaches and consultants, authors and speakers. We geek out sort of on the same people. We all sort of geek out on the same problems like you know how to get more people to buy our courses, see us as the person to spend their hard earned and sometimes very hard earned money on and why we in our ecosystem and our thought leadership is is the person to spend our time and resources with. And so bringing in people who are doing it successfully, and having done it successfully for a while, is really attractive. Because they can bring a perspective beyond the Oh brah. Here I am. And this is how cool I am, right? So the gate upping the game to me is who in our ecosystem is aspirational ahead of us without being Gary Vee or Brian solas. We’re so far down the road, that you know, in my case, I’m like, unless I’m turning 200 years old, I’m never gonna catch up to these guys. Right? Nor do I want to. But somebody who’s like a couple of sets of steps ahead of me, is having a solid, let’s say seven figure business and is doing well. Even if it’s, you know, the single seven figure business that is really aspirational, right, yeah.

 

Alastair McDermott  36:10

So okay, so there are particularly high caliber guests that you can get to come on. Like, for example, Alan Weiss wrote every book in consulting, I think he’s written 65 books, but he wrote the million dollar consultant. And, and so he would not have come on my show if I had not interviewed, for example, David C. Baker.

 

Nina Froriep  36:33

That’s the guy called David C. Baker. That’s the guy. I’m big fan. So.

 

Alastair McDermott  36:42

Yeah, yes. So But David wouldn’t have come on the show, if I hadn’t had Philip Morgan on. Because Philip was the person who recommended he talked, go on the show. So you know, there’s a whole there’s a whole chain. And this is where you can you can connect, like you can see who connects to who connects to who?

 

Nina Froriep  37:02

Six degrees of separation, right? Yeah.

 

Alastair McDermott  37:05

And what I do think like, it is nice to get high profile people on. But the higher the profile doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to get more listens. Because a lot of their audience, sometimes you do, and sometimes you don’t. And I have had guests where I didn’t expect them to have the same profile as some of the higher profile people where their, their podcasts, Episode downloads have been 1020 30 40 x what some of those big people have. And it’s just because of their particular audience. They’re specialized enough. They’re particularly good at promoting when they appear on these shows, for example, David C. Baker, I wouldn’t expect somebody like him to promote his episode with me to his audience, his audience probably don’t care about that conversation. Maybe they do. But But I wouldn’t expect him to promote it. And so it’s nice to have some of those people on, but that wouldn’t be you know, I think that, that it does give credibility. And here’s the thing with with credibility, it’s an interesting kind of psychology. But when you are interviewing those people, you’re kind of elevated to the same level as those people. So if I say, Hey, I have interviewed XYZ, then people will say, Oh, she knows all those people. And it just becomes kind of a subtle psychological thing. And the same, the same for you when you get these people aren’t. And it is a very interesting psychological thing, but you are sharing the stage with those. But I think then, when you think about that, I think that it’s also important that the show is working for you. And so that it’s meeting your goals, which is why I think that the format is important. And that possibly like we’re doing a coaching episode here, that that it’s important to not just a platform other people but also to platform yourself. And that could be you doing a solo episode, and you’re going to be particularly good at solo episodes, because you’ve spoken to the camera so often. But also it could be maybe having somebody like Robin, who works with you come in and interview you about a topic.

 

Nina Froriep  39:16

Yeah, we’ve done that before. And it’s we have a nice dynamic. Yeah, we should yeah, we should actually do that more regularly. That’s a great idea.

 

Alastair McDermott  39:24

That’s a great, that’s a great way to platform yourself. Yeah, now there are networking. There’s a network effect when you bring on a guest. There is a network effect of them potentially sharing it to their audience.

 

Nina Froriep  39:36

And the operative word there is potentially and that’s something I don’t know whether you bump up against, but you know, I share I make it really easy. I give people swipe copy, I give them links to the events I’ve created on LinkedIn and Facebook on YouTube. I know YouTube doesn’t do it but the other day, and I give them you know, as a gift when they’re done, I give them the three The clips that I create, I share those with them and say, please see us as you see fit, I would say have over 40 episodes, I’ve had it two or three people have used those clips. That’s it. And those are clips that make them sound really good. Those are clips where I don’t even see a beat, right? Yeah, these are clips up that highlight my guests. And it’s like, it’s really weird. Like you were all screaming for more content, I’m giving you three, edited, beautifully done, you know, even embed the closed captioning, so nothing can go wrong and a thumbnail and all of it, swipe copy the whole nine yards. No.

 

Alastair McDermott  40:41

Yeah. It’s, it’s really interesting that that, that that happens. I’m not I’m not at all surprised, because that’s been my experience as well. And all I can say is, continue to make it as easy as possible for people, maybe ask them beforehand, in your intake form, to commit to that. And I think that the intake form is important, because you can set up a lot of things with your intake form. Yeah, you can you can kind of foreshadow, hey, you know, I’m going to ask you to share the clips that I create, because you know, you know, I’ve invested a lot of time and in setting up the processes, and like my team makes these great pieces of content for you. And so if I bring you on, I want to know that you’re going to share like, this is going to be great for you. So that’s, that’s something and so you can actually ask them. And so I think the way that my intake form doesn’t you’ve gone through more recently than me, but I think my intake form asks you to confirm that you’re going to do that and ask you to list the social networks that you you know, list your profiles for that reason. Yeah. So I mean,

 

Nina Froriep  41:44

I had a pretty sense of quite the questionnaire, but that I think needs to need to be added in. Like, because I mean, even I just did an interview last week with somebody who has a really nice thing going, you know, the real work for women 50 over 50. And she sent me all these links and asked me to share after the show, and I’m like, it would have been really good to know, before the show, because I plan my content calendar out like a couple of months in advance. Yeah, now I’m scrambling for a spot. And had I known sooner, I could have put that in for let’s say next week. But now that it’s getting it, you know, two days ago, I’m like, it’s not going to show up until July, you know, yeah,

 

Alastair McDermott  42:32

yeah. Yeah, I guess you know, that’s, that’s going to be it’s going to depend on on the guest, and you know, how organized they are and things like that. But yeah, if you’ve, if you forewarn them this is going to happen, then, at least they know, they know that you’re going to be making that ask, I think it’s not that big and ask when you go and make some valuable content for them, that they actually post it. So back, this, this comes back to me for as a discussion for the format. And what we’re talking about here is we’re talking about a hybrid format. So in terms of formats, interview format, is the kind of the default. And and then solo podcasts are also pretty popular, where one person is just talking the whole time. And I think that it’s so hybrid is basically a mix. And I like hybrid, because it’s your podcast, you do what’s right for you, you’re putting in a lot of time and effort into making it now, at the same time, I think that you must absolutely consider the audience. And that the podcast, like there’s no point in doing it, if it’s not in service of the audience. Like that’s totally priority. Priority. I don’t know if I can say priority number one, but it’s sharing equal priority with you. I mean, it has to it has to be up there as as as a as an equal top priority with it working for you the business, you know,

 

Nina Froriep  43:56

I mean, it’s not for the audience, right? I don’t need anything to self aggrandizing myself, right. I, I have so much video content out there already. That, you know, I don’t need more video, I just want to have a different format and something where I can bring because I’m not the expert of everything. Right. So bringing in other people who so then it’s going back to the topic, like what kind of topics will be interesting to explore other than just inviting nice people I meet who could be potential clients, right?

 

Alastair McDermott  44:36

Yeah. So I think maybe we’re coming around to talking about the title, because the title sets the scene for what the topics are and what people are gonna get out of because the title is kind of like, well, what’s the benefit for the listener? So and so I rebranded this show this was originally Marketing for Consultants, which was kind of branding done by an engineer which It was, I was I was I still hadn’t figured out the I still hadn’t figured out what the exact angle I was taking on it. I knew that

 

Nina Froriep  45:10

I recognize authority, which is brilliant, right?

 

Alastair McDermott  45:13

It’s, it’s like, it’s about building authority, becoming The Recognized Authority. That’s, that’s the end goal. For the people who listen to the podcast, at least that’s, that’s why I hope they’re listening to it. Yeah. And so that is like, that’s my North Star with the content. And even if I make solo episodes, or different types of episodes, the North Star is still the Northstar. And that I think that’s why the title is important, because it just gives you that thing that you’re aiming for. And that’s what aligns your business needs. With your listeners needs. Yeah. Interesting, you want to talk about the title, do you want like, you’re thinking of, yeah, like, I’m gonna push for time here. And we’re gonna have one of those super long episodes that I hope people will listen to. And, you know, we even if only one person listens to this all the way to the end, and it helps them with their podcast. That’s great. But that’s what I would hope that a lot more people would get value out of it. So yeah, so So tell me about your titles. And let’s have a discussion about that.

 

Nina Froriep  46:18

Yeah, so titles, zero. I mean, what I’ve been calling my last one was real talk with Nina or live real talk with Nina real R E. L. So that was just the beginners it was like the creative trying not to nail herself down with anything specific and keep it as open ended as possible. So similar to your, you know, to your first title of your show. So now, I think it’s it is time for something more specific. My end goal for my clients is visibility, right? It would it is authority as well, right? But I’m not, that’s not my vocabulary. And I think my vocabulary is all around what I call the four C’s, which is, you know, clarity, community consistency and confidence with with video, right. So that is sort of where, where, where, where I’m sitting with my, my buzzwords, we talk a lot about creating, making people like from the unseen expert to The Recognized Authority, or the recognized I shouldn’t say recognized authority, I’m looking at the title of your show, the recognized expert, or the visible expert. So that’s sort of what we’re, that’s sort of the transformation that we that we talk about for our clients. Yeah, so where there is a title in there. And of course, you know, you want to have to do a title search and make sure not 50,000 Other people already have a podcast with that title.

 

Alastair McDermott  47:54

Ya know, if if there is a podcast out there, that’s defunct, that’s no longer in existence, and it has the name that you want, and it’s no longer live, I would just go with it, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Unless they happen to have it as a registered trademark somewhere. That would be anything I’d really watch out for. But in terms of so what I would do here is I would brainstorm, and I would think, and actually, this is where those AI tools really come into their own. You can ask tools like chat GPT, for suggestions around this, and ask it to give you a lot of suggestions. And ask you to give you suggestions where it used the alliteration. ask it to give you stats in court uses pawns. And you can basically get get a lot of different ideas from it and just go through them and look for those that are sticking out. I mean, you’re talking about visibility, and you’re talking about video. So there’s obviously the V thing there. Real talk, obviously, it’s just a pawn, but there’s no benefit. So we’re looking for, like, what’s the benefit to the listener? Is it really clear what they’re getting from it? And so I think my, my preference is not to use something like upon I prefer to go more straightforward, because you don’t have a lot of space and you just want to get it across really simple. I think it should be four words, maximum, three or two words is better. And that’s, that’s kind of the

 

Nina Froriep  49:19

three words, is there like a character minimum to make sure you don’t get cut off.

 

Alastair McDermott  49:26

But in terms in terms of that, the way that I think about it, I think about when it’s actually being shown on the screen. So for example, when you’re titling your episodes, I would never put the podcast title first. I always put the what the topic is the name of the episode in terms of the topic, and then your guests name and then the podcast name, because that’s the bit that’s gonna get cut off is the podcast name, but that’s the bit that gets repeated for every episode, but I have seen podcasts where it was the podcast Name a conversation with and then dot dot dot. And every episode, when you looked in the podcast player just looked like that. And it was because they had podcast name, a conversation with guests name, and the guests name was always off the edge of the screen. So you just got to be careful of things like that. In terms of the podcast name, I think so long, like, the way I think about it is how does how is it going to look on the artwork? So? Because that’s, that’s an important, that’s an important thing. I would keep it short, I would avoid using your personal name in the podcast, I would like I would say with, you know, as it like, almost like a subtitle.

 

Nina Froriep  50:39

Okay, so the name and

 

Alastair McDermott  50:41

yeah, I think that if your show is going to be really informative, it should be reflected in the name rather than kind of being humorous. And the other thing that you can do is, you can think about what it is that you do, and then zoom at one level. So that gives you more room to evolve. So it could be and then obviously, you know, try it, say out loud to yourself, to see how it sounds. See, is the domain available? That could be nice to have the domain? It’s not it’s not essential that it’s available, but it’d be nice if it was. And yeah, and then don’t use the word podcast in the podcast. Yeah. So yeah. And the other thing is, you’re not married to the name. If you don’t, if, if it’s not your thing, you can always change it later. So I’d say launch go with Go at your best one. And you can change later. And like, that’s, that’s one of the great things about podcasts is like the feed is the feed. And if somebody subscribes to podcasts, and you change the name, they’re still subscribed to your podcast feed, unless you for some reason want to change your feed address, which I wouldn’t recommend doing. But because you can use all your subscribers. But but that the advantage if you’re happy, and you’ve already got podcast subscribers, if they haven’t deleted your podcast off their phone, because it’s it’s gone quiet, if they may still have it on there, and you can just upload a new episode and with the new artwork and and they say, Oh, what’s this? And they go, oh, there’s Nina. Okay, Nina has a new podcast episode. And you know, it’s it’s alright, that it’s already there and good to go. Okay. Do you think the big advantages of the podcast feed?

 

Nina Froriep  52:32

Yeah. Okay. That’s actually good to know, because that’s very different from, you know, doing the Wirecast. Or the lives. Do you include in your artwork, photos of your guests and yourself? Yes, no, no, yes.

 

Alastair McDermott  52:49

Okay, so there’s two different pieces of artwork. There is your podcast cover, which is the overall cover that goes and things like Apple podcasts and all of those other podcasts, places. And that that is just the podcast title for me. And the podcast title with an image, I don’t include a picture of myself on there, most of my listeners, most of my initial listeners don’t have a clue of who I am. I don’t have enough profile. So you know, if you’re Gary Vee, sure you put your name on there. But I think that if you’re not forget about putting that picture of you on there for now. Then you’ve got the episode covers. And so you can just leave it by default, you don’t have to create an episode cover every time. But if you do create an episode cover, it is nice because it means that when people are in the podcast player, they see the person’s face and the name of the episode. And if you create a template for those in Canva, it’s very easy to just drag and drop Canva has these little frames. So there’s a circular frame. And I just dropped the headshot from the intake form, which again, is just showing the importance of the of the intake form having the question to ask for the headshot location. And we’ll just drop that in. And again, this is all hands off. For me. I don’t do any of this. Aiko takes care of it all. And I’m sure that there’s even ways we probably could even automate it. I have hooked up the intake form to to Zapier to do some things like grading, it sends us an email to get the show notes. It starts off creation of the show notes. And so you can you can set that kind of thing up. If you do try and make it as low friction as possible, because there is you know, I think that you’re that you’re experienced enough with video production, things like that, to know that every time you add an extra step in that that extra step has to be done every single time it’s just adding a little bit more friction and the whole system can become a bit unwieldy so so I would say try not to make it too too complex. Try and keep it as simple as possible. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I like to keep Pareto Pareto Principle 8020 in mind as much as possible.

 

Nina Froriep  55:08

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I tend to over I try to go for perfect. That’s just my suppose you

 

Alastair McDermott  55:16

anything that you can do is you can get experimental with it. And you can say, Okay, this is going to be a fixed length season of eight episodes. And so episode, season one was that was was the initial goal, this is now season two, and season two is going to have either eight episodes, and at the end of eight episodes, or 10 episodes, or 100, episodes, whatever you want to make it, we’re going to stop and reevaluate. We’re going to look, is the title working for us? Is the format working? is the length of it working? Are we happy with the types of guests that we’re inviting, you know, all of those different things. And a season break gives you a natural break, to make changes. And if you again, foreshadowing, you tell people, Hey, this is episode six of season two, we’re going to be taking a short hiatus of two weeks, at the end of season two, and we’re going to evaluate these things. And then we’re going to come back with season three, you know, after Easter, or after the midterm break, or whatever it is, you know, you just you’re you’re setting people up, you’re letting them know, it’s really important to let them know if you’re going to go on hiatus, it’s really important to let them know a few episodes in advance. So you just mentioned that a couple of times so that they know okay, and then they’re not shocked when you disappear. There’s no new episode The next week, because, again, hopefully people are planning and putting your podcast into their schedule. Because that’s, that’s what we really want as is people to have such trust and appreciation for what we’re doing. And so again, this comes back to the podcast being in service of them.

 

Nina Froriep  56:54

Yeah, that’s very different from alive, you’re either there or you’re not no one really cares. So and that actually is really interesting. So yeah, probably seasons wouldn’t be bad. Also, just to like, give, give, give yourself a summer break or Christmas break whatever. So So you keep mentioning weekly. Yeah. What about monthly?

 

Alastair McDermott  57:17

So the reason why I like weekly is, it’s a short enough interval that people don’t forget about you. And they do things every week, whereas monthly is it’s a bit more infrequent, and it just doesn’t, I think that you don’t get the shedule benefits, you don’t get the benefit of being part of their scheduling in the same way. So it, I still think it’s monthly is better than nothing. You know? Yeah, yeah, if you can, and you can get ahead of your schedule. So you can batch up, you know, I got way ahead of my schedule at one point, with lots of episodes botched up. And then the I had the opposite I went went to the States actually for three weeks. And then when I came back, I didn’t have an episode scheduled and then somebody cancelled last minute and, and suddenly, for the first time, I was at risk of not actually having a full episode. So I recorded a short snippet to put out and say, Hey, I don’t have an episode. But that was the first time and you know, 120 episodes or whatever, that I didn’t have a full episode to put out. So I

 

Nina Froriep  58:22

actually just three people cancel on me back to back.

 

Alastair McDermott  58:26

When that happens, that happens, you know, that’s life and like it is your podcast. So you get to make the rules like, yes, you’re all doing it in service of your audience. But you you know, you want to make it work for you as well. And

 

Nina Froriep  58:39

so then if I was, you know, bunching up on them, because I want to do it as alive because lives perform really well on LinkedIn. Yeah, that ties me in to a schedule. So would you then say, even if I do, let’s say to, like, if I do some lives in advance, hold them back and release them, like basically do a couple of lives to hold on to. So

 

Alastair McDermott  59:05

like, I think it’s okay, so I have actually, I’ve surveyed my email list. But this I’ve asked people about it, I’ve asked for feedback, because I was concerned because I do record them live on video. And now, I haven’t really been promoting the lives hard. And sometimes I haven’t even set up events for them. We just I just hit Go Live without any pre pre advanced. And I probably need to get better at that. But that’s because I was coming to it from a podcasting first, rather than a live stream first viewpoint. So that’s something that I certainly could improve on here.

 

Alastair McDermott  59:39

But what I think is, if you are going live, some of the people who listen to your podcast will also have seen the live. And then the feedback I got was I was a bit disappointed because I’d already seen you on LinkedIn and then I got the podcast episode and it was the same, but I think that that crossover is is going to be rare. I think that I think that people aren’t going to mind. I think that’s a nice problem to have. Exactly. Yeah. So I wouldn’t worry about that, to be honest at the start. And maybe people will catch the live and the only catch the end of it, and you’re providing them the whole, the whole episode. So I think that that’s, that’s good. The only thing to remember is that when you are recording a live, you’re almost certainly recording a video. And so it’s just, it’s just worthwhile remembering that people who are listening to it may or may not have video. And, you know, sometimes that’s important that most of the time it’s not, but if you know in advance, that’s the case, that’s fine. I do tend to refer to it as the show now instead of the podcast. So that’s a nice thing

 

Nina Froriep  1:00:43

to show as well. I like that that wording better. Yeah. I mean, the only thing that bothers me, I mean, I wouldn’t even consider podcasting. If it was a way to watch a YouTube video with sound only without losing the video when you close the YouTube app, right. And the nice thing about a podcast is, I can listen to something while I’m still driving, and seeing my GPS, or while you know, there’s a podcast allows for different kinds of interaction over you know, putting it on YouTube, because the moment I close the YouTube app, it stops the video, and that that means a problem. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. There’s so much I could go on for quite a bit longer. But

 

Alastair McDermott  1:01:33

the burning questions, can you like, I’m okay to go on, you know, another 15 minutes, if you want to do that. If it’s if you’re finding this useful. I mean, super, your questions?

 

Nina Froriep  1:01:45

I mean, the burning questions. I mean, other than the title, is, I think the title also is what will focus me on what kind of people I invite? And, you know, I think having a purpose. So I think that burning question is, you know, you have, you have this whole ecosystem, right, and you have that amazing graphic that I love showing to people, which I probably have a much too old version of where, you know, people are generalists, and then there’s specialists, and then they’re experts. And then they are, yeah, authority. Right? Yeah, that, to me, is just an absolutely brilliant concept. And I teach that concept to my people, because I think they need to be aware of some right. And because it justifies my work with them, because I help them get, you know, I sort of grabbed them normally at the expert stage, and help them to the to get to the authority stage. So I have a similar ecosystem, which I’m more I’ve been working on for half a year. And I keep saying I’m going to publish it, I’m going to publish it, and I then I sold, you know, the perfectionist in me, who does not believe in the 8020 rule, although I should believe in the 8020 rule keeps keeps tinkering with it, I really want to make sure that my podcast or my show is not just an x, I see so many people, so many of my clients even who just do content as an exercise of duty, and not with brilliant strategy, even if we like ask them about it over and over again, and make sure that they kind of get it and blah, blah, blah. So I want to make sure that this is not a exercise in Oh, I have a show, I want this to be an exercise in this is a brilliant add on tool that I’m using to educate my audience, and to benefit me to help me grow and be in authority. And that is, so I’d rather delay the launch of this. I have a launch date set for myself. I’d rather delay that launch by a month, two months, three months and get it right.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:03:55

Yeah, so I, I agree with both of those. But I would be wary of that over delay. I think that you know, now, I think that, you know, we have very different philosophies on things in terms of that way of approaching it. I think that it’s important to start before you’re ready. Because if you if you don’t start before you’re ready, you’ll never be ready.

 

Nina Froriep  1:04:18

Yeah, I know. And that’s what I tell my clients and right. Yeah,

 

Alastair McDermott  1:04:21

yeah. And the best way to get ready is to get experience you only get experienced by starting so it’s a it’s catch 22 So so I do you think that people should jump in before they’re ready. Now I know that you’re much more experienced than somebody starting this for the very first time who has no experience with production and content because like that, but the other thing that you were talking about is, you know, kind of passion for the topic.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:04:45

And I think that when you really love what you’re talking about and you really enjoy talking about it and you enjoyed the people who you’re talking to, the listener will appreciate will appreciate that they’ll understand that. They will they’ll feel the passion in your voice and it makes it easier for you all So it means that you’re not going to burn out in the same way that it makes it much easier to kind of carry through, particularly through the fallow period. And, and there is we’re podcasting. You know, it’s really tough particularly at the start. We didn’t really talk about promotion too much. But I think that if you’re going, if you think thinking at all about promoting the podcasts in terms of paid promotion, then I would, I would urge you to do that as close to start as possible. You know, once you’ve got a few episodes on the podcast, feed a few of your newer episodes there to show that it’s alive. I would suggest that you put a little bit of money into that in terms of promoting in podcast ads. Yeah.

 

Nina Froriep  1:05:38

Okay. That’s interesting. Well, that’s a whole other topic. I’ll cover with you some of the time, I guess. Would it be just sort of cycling back for a hot second? You had mentioned seasons? So I mean, I have I have 40. I have 40. Interviews? Should I put those up as or should I select like my favorite, my top five or 10? And put those up for season one?

 

Alastair McDermott  1:06:06

So okay, so So we talked about you having a podcast there already? Is that still in existence? Are you happy with the podcast hosting company that you’re using things like that?

 

Nina Froriep  1:06:16

Or I don’t have a podcast? So I have never had I’ve never podcast ever before. So right now we understand zero.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:06:24

You’ve got these pre recorded shows that you already have. But they’ve got they’ve got slightly different branding. But yeah, well, there’s a

 

Nina Froriep  1:06:31

real it’s a real talk with Nina show that has been only a LinkedIn live, sometimes Facebook, sometimes not because Facebook doesn’t always cooperate. And YouTube, right, so I have a playlist on YouTube, which is about 40 videos deep. And I have all the lives on LinkedIn. And I have all that endless micro content.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:06:54

Yeah, so you’ve got tons of content already. I think you definitely could do a weekly show. And so what you could do is, you’ve already got these interviews, you can repurpose those interviews very easily. As podcast episodes, strip out the audio, you could pre record a sorry, so record a new intro to those so that people know that it’s, you know, that they know that it’s it’s the podcast, the new podcast name, what I did plan, a rebrand of the podcast, we went we got all of the old podcast episodes was only 20, actually, with the old branding. And we just recorded a short clip saying, hey, disaster, you’re gonna hear the old branding on the on the podcast apps that you’re about to hear. But it’s actually the podcast is now has been renamed and then just kind of explained that. And then I said, Oh, yeah, and by the way, all of the content, all the stuff that we talked about, is evergreen, and is still as relevant to you now, as it was, you know, that that might be something that you might want to add. That’s the only thing I think that or you could just drop it in, you know, you could just drop it in, I think. I think I would probably

 

Nina Froriep  1:08:07

during the next I mean, you would have to pre record it and put it in Yeah.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:08:11

Yeah, that’s that’s the only that’s the only part. But what it does

 

Nina Froriep  1:08:16

40 You know, I would pick my five favorite are my 10 favorite. Yeah, and, and really poured

 

Alastair McDermott  1:08:23

40 If you wanted to, and I think that if I was doing it that way, I’d probably drip them in. I wouldn’t like drop all 40 At once, and I wouldn’t drop those 40 Before you start to do new ones. So I would do a new one. And then I would do one of your favorites and then do a new one and do one of your favorites, something like that and kind of mix them up like that.

 

Nina Froriep  1:08:41

Yeah, I mean, it could have the legacy version of XYZ new cats, right? Yeah.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:08:47

Yeah. I mean, the prequel. So the point I’m trying to get at with with with this is, you want to make sure that people know that the information that they’re getting from this is still as relevant as it was when it was recorded. But all of those things are still relevant. Now, that means that there might be things where if you refer to platforms, specifics, then maybe those kinds of things may have changed, you know, the YouTube algorithm or the Instagram algorithm, as it pertains to, you know, video content or something like that. So maybe there is something like that. But I think knowing your content, I would say most of it is probably evergreen, which which is good.

 

Nina Froriep  1:09:27

I think that you and I know there’s there’s a couple of episodes that I still use the clips from, although they’re two years old, because they’re just so brilliant. And reuse. Yeah,

 

Alastair McDermott  1:09:36

right. Yeah. But that isn’t the brilliant thing about creating great evergreen content is that you can do that. You know, and I have and you can read, you can reuse it again, you know, the all of this content. You can use it over and over again. Ideally not yourself. Somebody else is doing it for you.

 

Nina Froriep  1:09:55

Yeah. I mean, I have a great editor and the Also some audio experience. So yeah,

 

Alastair McDermott  1:10:03

yeah. The other question I had for you is IV, are you hooking this up to your website? Have you had? Will you set up a podcast page on your website? I strongly urge that you do. Because

 

Nina Froriep  1:10:18

I haven’t even gotten. I haven’t even gotten that far yet. Okay. Okay.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:10:24

And there are tools that will. So there’s two ways to approach it. The first way is to automatically add episodes to your website, so that when you put up a new episode, it gets picked up your website notices, hey, this new podcast episode on the feed, and it’s automatically added. And that’s very hands up, frictionless. The other way is to do it manually, where you add the the episodes manually. And what you can do with when you do it manually is you can add more context. So you can add the transcript, you can add other other show notes or guest bios and things like that. And the advantage of that is you can do a bit more than because if you do the automatic way, it just picks up the show notes that are in the episode in the

 

Nina Froriep  1:11:12

cannot go in and edit it after.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:11:16

You can but it’s it’s not as easy to do. So it’s you know, it’s tricky depends on which system you use. There are there are different systems that you can use for this. I do it manually. And again, I delegated by the want to do it myself. But I just find now I’m a website guy. That’s my background. So doing the website stuff is is easier for me and my team because that’s that’s our background. But I do I do have clients who do the podcast, the automated system because they wanted as frictionless as possible.

 

Nina Froriep  1:11:49

Yeah. What is software like Lipson, Lipson, I think it’s called?

 

Alastair McDermott  1:11:55

Yeah, Lipson is the is the podcast host. And so so it will support that, in fact, all of the podcast hosts, the way the podcasting works is there’s a feed, which is updated, every time you publish a new episode, your your podcast feed gets updated. And what happens is all of these different services, basically, they just pull that feed to check, hey, has it been updated, and they usually pull that feed out at a at an interval, like they might pull it once an hour, or something like that. And so, and I think actually, what happens is if you pull if you publish on a regular consistent basis, they know when you’re going to post so they pull it just after you’ve posted just to check, so they know that those there, I was getting a bit nerdy about it. And I hope I’m not over explaining that. But it just means that it just means that that gets picked up pretty quickly. And it’s on your website straight away, you know.

 

Nina Froriep  1:12:46

So then this brings me to another question, which is if I wanted to alternate let’s say I do do a weekly because that’s what we’re supposed to do blah, blah, blah, but I don’t want to deal with guests every, every week. What if I did once a month a guest once a month? Me talking by myself to the microphone? Once a month? Something with Robin? And then maybe once a month? I don’t know maybe to get some month? One Robin one me alone? Something like that? Can I do that all under the same umbrella? Or would you consider those different podcasts that should go on to different different things. So

 

Alastair McDermott  1:13:25

me personally, my viewpoint on all this. I’ve got this in the book quite a few times is it’s your podcast, you do what you want. And I think that that is absolutely fine. So long as those so I would call those solo episodes when it’s just you. And, and the other ones I personally I call them guest host because it’s it’s the somebody comes on as a guest host. So it’s rather than me hosting it. I’ve got a guest host and and I’ve done that quite a few times with my my good friend and ex business partner, Alistair McBride. He’s coming in, and he’s interviewed me several times on the podcast when I wanted to have a conversation about something in particular. And that’s been great because we already have a good relationship we get on and so we know each other very well. And so what we’re able to do is have a nice report. Exactly. I think that’s really important.

 

Nina Froriep  1:14:16

Yeah, which I would say. So doing it with Robin would be a guest host situation. Yeah,

 

Alastair McDermott  1:14:22

that’s personally what I would call I don’t I don’t actually know if there’s an official name for that. But I would call a guest host. And so I would have a guest host episode, I would have a solo episode and then he would have your regular interviews. And and by the way with those regular interviews, there are two options so you can interview you know, you can interview authorities and experts, but you can also do things like what we’re doing here you can do coaching style episodes. You can interview or you can have conversations with potential clients, for example, you know, and you can make those make those interviews but you can use the podcast to bring on a potential Trying to interview them, it’s great way to build a relationship with somebody by by platforming them effectively, you know. So it’s not just about bringing on high profile people who are experts in their field. And I think that those coaching style, which is why I was really happy that you asked me to do this, because I think that these are really useful for people to hear because they get to, if somebody is thinking about planning a podcast, this hopefully is a really interesting conversation for him.

 

Nina Froriep  1:15:26

Yep. Yeah. And I’m sorry that my thoughts are all over the freakin place. But, you know, that’s just how my brain works. Yeah, I like this idea a lot. Because, you know, for me, also, having a format in mind, having different styles in mind, helps me then focus in on, you know, I think I think my inspiration for a title and content has to come from the ecosystem that I’ve been building, right, because that is the you know, our, our aim is always the same, which is giving visibility to small businesses that otherwise wouldn’t have a seat at the table. That is really what it’s all about.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:16:06

And visibility through video, something like that.

 

Nina Froriep  1:16:10

Which is not the sexiest title, but it is a nice alliteration. Not really.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:16:13

Yeah. So yeah, I mean, something along those lines. Yeah.

 

Nina Froriep  1:16:18

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think you’re right. You’re absolutely right. Although I like my C’s approach, because you know, clockwise, see.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:16:29

Yes, yes. Yeah, cool.

 

Nina Froriep  1:16:31

But anyway, this is, this is so much, it’s on one hand, it’s so so much clarity. On the other hand, I’m like, who

 

Alastair McDermott  1:16:37

work to do, it is more work to do. Now, there’s one more thing I can give you that might be useful for you and for the listener, is I have a free workbook for a podcast creation.

 

Nina Froriep  1:16:50

And there we go. That’s what I want. It’s part of,

 

Alastair McDermott  1:16:53

it’s part of my resources package. So if somebody somebody buys the book, 33 ways not to screw up your business podcast, the in the book, there’s resources, but actually, I’m gonna make it available in the show notes for everybody who listens to this in case they want to. So I’m gonna put great lead magnet, whenever there’s a very famous there’s one, there’s one for everybody in the audience. That’s what they say.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:17:22

Yeah, so I’ll put that in the show notes and the workbook. And that might help with this as well. Because, you know, just when you go through it, there might be something there. And also, it just, it brings you through it in the right in the right format in the right priorities. I think that’s, you know, the priorities for me are, what are your goals as a business and as a person? And what, what, what is the audience? How is it serving the audience? I think, if you keep those two things key, then everything else will fall into line with it.

 

Nina Froriep  1:17:53

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Totally agree. And I mean, that’s, that’s how all content that we’re creating should should be thought about. Right? So yeah, it makes total sense. And now of course, I’m all set. I’m thinking, Yeah, but you know, I have this rhythm of working week, one, two, and three, always taking off the fourth week. I mean, I don’t take off, but I don’t do classes. And I’m thinking about maybe where they want to post something on the fourth week, but it’s exactly.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:18:23

So you can schedule these to go out in advance. And that’s the great thing about the scheduling tools is you could if you wanted in whatever hosting company that you use, you can schedule these things to go out at whatever time. And so I’m a big fan as well of batching. I think we both understand. Yeah,

 

Nina Froriep  1:18:43

I mean, you and I, we harp on the same. Yeah, yes, absolutely. Yeah. And I’m just thinking maybe not all of these needs to be lives, right. So maybe that fourth week never is alive, maybe that fourth week or

 

Alastair McDermott  1:18:54

so, for example. Yeah. Most of my podcast episodes now are broadcast live. But we decided not to broadcast this one live because we wanted to record it and see, does it make for a good episode first, and I think that it does, so I’d like to use it. But we agreed that we were recording in a different way because of that. Yeah. So we’re recording it on a different tool rather than going live. And so you can make that decision. Ultimately, the person who’s listening to this on a podcast player with the with their, you know, the earphones on or listen to it in their car, or they’re doing the dishes or chopping up peppers for for dinner. You know, ultimately, it doesn’t really matter how it was recorded for them so long as it sounds good. And that is one thing that I would say to you is is think about getting a bigger better microphone or moving it closer. Yeah, I have cameras.

 

Nina Froriep  1:19:49

I have a really nice expensive microphone, and it’s sitting with all the other equipment I never use in my freakin closet.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:19:59

I know I know that I have like, I have this big microphone in front of me on camera. And I know that like a lot of video people, they like to remove it, because it can look fine. Like yes, of course, but that it does sound better.

 

Nina Froriep  1:20:13

And yes. And no, it does. Yeah,

 

Alastair McDermott  1:20:16

yeah, if we’re, if we’re going to be in service to the listener, I think it’s incumbent on us to make it sound as good as possible.

 

Nina Froriep  1:20:22

All right, you’re making me You’re making me crank out my my Yeti. I even bought two I have one in Switzerland as well. So when I’m there, I don’t have a yeti in Switzerland. Because the Yeti, you can kill somebody with it. It weighs like, you know, five pounds. I don’t even know whether it’s the best microphone, but I wanted something that also looked cool. Because you know, in the end,

 

Alastair McDermott  1:20:42

yeah, well, I do have some podcast equipment recommendations in the workbook. And I have actually a whole separate guide for that, which I’ll link in the show notes as well. The yetis are are good, but possibly too good in the sense that they can pick up too much. And sometimes we’re recording in less than ideal environments. For example, I live near a small airport here. And sometimes the pilots go up to do training or there’s one guy who does Arab acrobatics. Arab airobotics out of the way call that but anyway, so my microphone is

 

Nina Froriep  1:21:15

crazy shit in the air. Yeah,

 

Alastair McDermott  1:21:17

yeah. Call it a Oh, literally like it’s like an air show out there sometimes. Would you want a microphone that only picks up stuff that’s close to it. And that’s why the there’s a particular type of technology. There’s two types of mics, there’s dynamic range, and there’s condenser microphones, condenser microphones are brilliant. If you’ve got a soundproof environment, if you don’t, then maybe you want to go with dynamic range, because a dynamic range microphone will not pick up stuff like the dog barking next door. So that’s the advantage of that. So that so when you said Blue Yeti, I was thinking about that, because they have really good condenser microphones. But it may be that’s not the most appropriate one for you. So just in New York

 

Nina Froriep  1:21:56

City, there’s a fire fire engine out there every other Second, by the way is zoom. I don’t know whether it’s just zoom. But lately, when we’ve been on Zoom, things don’t pick up I think zoom has changed their their their recording technology.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:22:13

Interesting. Yeah. So I made it

 

Nina Froriep  1:22:17

made a joke about you know, the sirens. And I’m like, Oh, look, this is proof that I’m not lying. I’m actually in New York, and a room of 30 people who all looked at me like with a blank face, because I had no clue what I was talking about. Yeah, the host told me afterwards, just like we didn’t hear the sirens. I’m like, Oh, shit.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:22:37

Yeah, well, that’s, that’s, I mean, I do occasionally for convenience, I do actually even record on Zoom. Now, I tend only to do that with the highest profile guests. If I think that they’re not very technical, I don’t want to introduce friction by asking them to use my recording service. And allowing the upload to complete which is necessary on this recording service. You gotta let the upload complete. That gives us a higher quality, Zoom is more convenient. And so for example, I when I was talking to Alan Weiss, I asked him, I didn’t ask him, I just got on Zoom. And I was happy to be there. So yeah, that’s

 

Nina Froriep  1:23:16

also with this when I hang up, I need to wait until the upload thing is 100%. And not Yeah.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:23:22

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So. So that’s, that’s it, I think we’ve covered like, 90 99% of the really key things. Is there anything that we that we didn’t cover that you that you still have as a burning question?

 

Nina Froriep  1:23:37

No, I think this has been we’ve covered more than I thought we needed to cover. So I’m super happy. I know, I’m going to real rewatch this for sure. And I have I have some notes. And I have more than enough to think about I mean, my next questions and this is not for now because I don’t have to I don’t even want to go there right now. It’s going to be like, you know, what, what, what podcast service to use? What I mean, I had talked

 

Alastair McDermott  1:24:04

to I’ve got some recommendations in the in the

 

Nina Froriep  1:24:08

workbook and they change I’m sure also Yeah, absolutely.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:24:11

Yes. Yeah. So but most of the big ones are pretty good. I wouldn’t go with somebody tiny. You don’t need to go with the biggest ones and find find something that works for your budget. And you know, that they all have different some of them will do things like automated transcriptions and like I think lips in

 

Nina Froriep  1:24:31

water, I mean other really need that. Yeah,

 

Alastair McDermott  1:24:33

some of them will automatically level your podcasts now in terms of the normalization, the the the audio levels, things like that. Yeah. So yeah, there are there are things like that, that that you can use as well. So you know, it’s worthwhile looking at some different options. So I’ve got a bunch of options in that workbook as well. So I’ll say no, I’m

 

Nina Froriep  1:24:52

awesome. Okay, nominal. Thank you,

 

Alastair McDermott  1:24:56

Nina for reap from clockwise productions. Thank you for are being in the coaching Jerry’s right? It’s been fun to talk about this.

 

Nina Froriep  1:25:03

My pleasure. Thank you Alastair. This was phenomenal.

 

Alastair McDermott  1:25:07

Awesome. Thanks for listening, I know that you’ve got a choice of podcasts and shows that you can listen to. So I really do appreciate your time and your attention. If you did find this episode interesting, I would truly appreciate if you could take 30 seconds to rate the show in your podcast player or even leave a text review. It won’t take you long but it has a huge impact on the growth of the show. And it also helps to motivate me and continuing to do it. So it’s right where you’re listening to the show. You can also find a link in the show notes which will take you to rate and review. Thank you again. See you in the next one.