Let’s get real – in our digitally drenched world, podcasts are the new black.

But the question that looms large is – should you jump on the bandwagon?

To help answer this, we’ve invited Travis Albritton, the founder of Honest Marketing. With a wealth of experience in producing, promoting, and optimizing podcasts, Travis has been instrumental in guiding numerous entrepreneurs and businesses to success in the podcasting realm.

His agency, Honest Marketing, takes the heavy lifting off your shoulders by specializing in podcast production, enabling clients to concentrate on their primary business.

Through Travis’ expert insights, garnered from his extensive industry exposure, we’ll demystify the advantages and challenges of podcasting, strategies to bolster listener engagement, and introduce you to technical tools that can smoothen the journey for aspiring podcasters.

So, are you all set to delve deep into the nuances of podcasting and sharpen your game plan?

Join our enlightening conversation and equip yourself with the know-how to craft a podcast that not only strikes a chord with your listeners but also distinguishes itself in a saturated marketplace.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• Podcast production and recording tips
• Principles for a successful podcast 
• Assessing the target audience’s preference for podcasts and content consumption habits

Links & Resources:

• Rick’s website
• DM me on Instagram
• Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube

Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie’s Links:

• Become a Facebook Ads Lead Gen Cheat Code Founding Member!
• Visit Kwadwo’s website for Facebook Ads help
• Say hi to Kwadwo on Instagram
• Subscribe to Kwadwo’s YouTube channel to learn with him as he learns about personal finance, financial freedom, foreign languages and enjoying life!

Travis Albritton’s Links:

• Visit Honest Podcasts
• Download this FREE guide to start your podcast
• Listen to Honest Marketing
• Connect with Travis

Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction
01:20 – Podcasting in 2023: Is it too late?
10:11 – Why podcast? Find your unique niche
13:53 – Podcast as conversation accelerator for purchase decisions
19:48 – Intimate experience listening to podcasts while walking
21:01 – Video and audio options for podcasting
28:11 – Paid traffic, SEO, YouTube in podcasting strategy
35:53 – Start with audio, consider adding video later
37:13 – Production and recording tips
40:54 – Tools exist to repurpose video content for multiple platforms
47:18 – Connect with Travis
48:07 – Hiring podcast editing services

Please support the podcast by giving an honest Rating/Review for the show on iTunes!

Travis Albritton [00:00:00]:

So I get a couple of hundred downloads per episode, and I make multiple six figures from the podcast, but that’s not because I’m selling ads based on how many downloads I get. It’s because of how I’m using the podcast to complement my business. And so that’s how I encourage my clients to think about it.

Rick Mulready [00:00:15]:

So Kwadwo this podcast here we are in year number eight that this show has been going, almost 13 million downloads on the podcast, and we are recording this Q four of 2020. What year are we in? 2023. And it was a couple of years ago, a few years ago that people were saying, if you haven’t started a podcast, you’ve missed the boat. And I think there’s going to be a really interesting discussion here today talking about, is it too late to start a podcast? And as we go along here, we’re going to be talking about YouTube and its involvement. Like, if you are starting a podcast, should it just be audio? Should it just be video for anybody listening who’s been listening for a while now, you all know that I’ve been talking for a couple of years now. If you’re going to do a podcast, you should also be doing video. Just turn the camera on when you’re recording so that you have both audio and video. And I think this could be a really interesting discussion today because I don’t know, here we are in the AI revolution, if you will, and a lot of the discussion is, all right, should I start a podcast if I don’t have one for my business? What role does video play, et cetera? And as you’ve been diving in here as the co host of the show, what types of I mean, you recently went to Podcast Movement, right? What’s sort of been the sentiment here around podcast?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:02:39]:

To sum it up, the sentiment is you better be on YouTube because YouTube is coming. They are gunning to take away market share from Apple podcast and spotify the product lead for YouTube podcast and YouTube music, which those are still different. Hopefully they merge those to get rid of the confusion. Was speaking. And some of the features they have coming up are cool. But he was very clear in saying that they’re focusing on podcasting in a major way. And so many other talks at the Podcast Movement, that event, that conference I went to focused around how to create a podcast that is video centric and not audio centric, meaning where the viewers really do watch and consume that way.

Rick Mulready [00:03:26]:

And for everybody who’s not watching the show here right now, joining us on today’s episode for this topic is Travis Albritton and I first met Travis. Travis joined accelerator. What is it? Travis? Now. Like four years ago? Like a few years ago? A few years ago at this point?

Travis Albritton [00:03:44]:

Yeah, it was a few years ago.

Rick Mulready [00:03:46]:

And Travis now runs a podcasting agency called Honest Podcast. I’ll let him tell you more about it as we go along here. Quaja when you were at Podcast Movement, you just mentioned you heard all these talks about YouTube and stuff like that. There’s a study that we’re going to talk about here today that I’ve not read, and Travis, you’ve read it. You have your own thoughts, not only from the study, but also your expertise in working with a whole bunch of clients, producing their shows, and doing all the work on their different shows. And I think this is going to be really interesting. So, Quaja, which way do you want to jump in here as far as trying to answer this question? Is it too late to start a podcast here in 2023?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:04:31]:

I just want to say something intriguing for the listener, which would be like, we’re always going to ask ourselves, is it too late? Am I too late? But you got to think, are there still people who are starting YouTube channels right now and blowing up? And the answer would be yes, or absolutely.

Rick Mulready [00:04:49]:

Absolutely. Like, I’m raising my hand right now because even and I’m hoping that blow up is part of that terminology here.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:04:58]:

All right, Rick’s going viral, so I’m starting by two. And so then the next question would be, what is the newer medium? Is it YouTube or is it yeah.

Rick Mulready [00:05:10]:

Well, I mean, what are you seeing, Travis, as far as that goes? Because you’re working with people who are already they’ve made a decision to start a podcast. But what types of conversations are you having with people when they are thinking about starting a podcast?

Travis Albritton [00:05:26]:

It depends on how you splice the data, right? So Spotify will come out and say, we have 6 million active podcast. It’s amazing there’s so many podcasts to listen to. But then if you drill down into it, on average, there’s about 200,000 podcast that publish an episode on any given week. So we’ll call that active podcast, 200,000 active podcasts out of that, 6 million that are still producing content. And then you drill that down into all the categories. You have true crime, you got history, you got news and politics, you got business. So then you take your category and all the subcategories and niches within that category. And there may be if you’re in a hyper competitive market like online marketing, there may be 100 active podcasts.

Travis Albritton [00:06:12]:

So if you can be Podcast 101, I would still consider that to be pretty early in a medium. And then if you’re in a more specific niche, like a mutual friend, Gloria Chow, when I was working on her podcast, she was the only PR podcast for small businesses.

Rick Mulready [00:06:34]:

What? Seriously?

Travis Albritton [00:06:35]:

And so that’s a niche of one. You are the only one. You are in the blue ocean that you just created. And so there were other PR agents kind of podcast, but none of them had her particular angle or target audience. And that was relatively recent. Podcast really blew up around 2014 with Serial. That was the first mainstream podcast that people recognized.

Rick Mulready [00:06:58]:

Wait, it didn’t blow up with Inside Social Media by Rick Mulready that started in 2013. Come on.

Travis Albritton [00:07:04]:

But you were riding the crest of the wave coming in.

Rick Mulready [00:07:07]:

I started the wave.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:07:08]:

Travis, come on first podcast on Apple.

Rick Mulready [00:07:10]:

Podcast in 52 episodes of the entire show.

Travis Albritton [00:07:15]:

Yeah. So I would say very confidently, it’s not too early to start a podcast for the same reason I would say it’s not too early to start a YouTube channel or to start running Facebook ads or even pay per click ads on Google. There are still opportunities in all these mediums as they mature, the dynamic shift and the early mover opportunities go away. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still create something that’s meaningful and impactful within each of those mediums and platforms if you have the right strategy and you’re intentional about what you’re doing.

Rick Mulready [00:07:45]:

Yeah, for sure. I agree with you. I think I completely do not think that it’s too late to start a show. Are there any niches or niches that, as we all say, that should not, quote unquote, be doing a podcast? Because it’s very interesting that you just said that. All right, let’s just take online marketing. I mean, we went from millions of overall podcast. You broke it down to say, like, on any given week, this number of podcasts which are updating on a normal basis are actually producing a show, and that is not that large of a number. So there’s big opportunity.

Rick Mulready [00:08:30]:

However, within that, are there any niches that you think probably not a great niche for podcasting?

Travis Albritton [00:08:37]:

Well, and I’ll give the answer through a filter of the people that are listening, which typically you’re starting a podcast because there’s a business objective on the back end of it. It’s not simply because you really like talking and you think other people should listen to you, right? There’s some strategic value in having a podcast. The people that shouldn’t start podcasts are people that serve audiences that don’t listen to podcasts. And so if your target audience, who you’re going after with your business, if they don’t consume podcasts, then you shouldn’t have one because it doesn’t matter how big it’s going to get, it’s not going to lead to the results that you ultimately want from it, which is to grow your business. So when you’re doing your ideal customer profile or your avatar or whatever you call it and you’re trying to figure out where are they spending time online, how do they consume content? Do they like blog content, written content, video content, audio content? If they don’t like watching YouTube videos or listening to podcast episodes, then starting a podcast isn’t going to be helpful for you.

Rick Mulready [00:09:36]:

So I can hear our listeners now thinking or saying out loud right now, okay, that’s all well and good, Travis, but how the heck do I know if my audience is actually listening to podcasts?

Travis Albritton [00:09:48]:

So do some market research in Apple podcast or Spotify and see if you can find other people serving a similar community that you serve, and look at their podcast and look at the types of episodes that they’re creating, the kind of content they’re making. And there’s some little hacks that you can do to figure out how big the audience is. One of them is to go into Apple podcasts and see how many reviews they have and how recent the reviews are. You can look to see how many episodes they published. So have they done it long enough for them to have potentially seen whether it’s working or not and stuck with it or not? Because you’ll see some podcasts that go for a year or two and then drop off because it just wasn’t working for them. It’s like, okay, well, that’s a negative indicator that maybe it didn’t work for them for whatever reason. And if you reach out, most people will tell you why they started or stopped, especially if you’re very gracious about it and like, hey, I was thinking about starting a podcast. I see that you had one that talked about similar things, and I noticed you stopped.

Travis Albritton [00:10:48]:

I would just love to know why. Was it working, not working? What did you learn? Any info you can pass along my way, I’d appreciate that. Yeah, every podcast that I know would be more than happy to answer those questions. So that’s what I would do is I would look to see, are the people that are also in my space, are they creating podcast content? How big of an audience are they reaching? What kind of things are they creating content around? And then once you identify, okay, there actually is an audience here that’s worth serving, then the next question is, what’s the plus one? What’s the thing that I can add on top of the content itself that no one else can replicate to create a space where I’m the only one that exists of what I talk about or do? And that could be yourself, your personality, it could be a particular angle on a piece of content or a medium or a niche. It could be any of those things. But differentiating yourself in at least one way, then that’s how you create a viable alternative to the things that already exist. Instead of Trying To be the Next Joe Rogan, it’s how do you be the first you that would Potentially serve the same kind of person that listens to those shows.

Rick Mulready [00:11:48]:

Now, I’m Glad you bring that last part up. Like, all right, rather than try to be the Next Joe Rogan and one of the top Podcasts in the entire world, everybody always wants to know what is a good, quote, unquote number of downloads per episode? And I have a number, but this is a number that I heard years and years and years ago, and frankly, I don’t even know if it’s still accurate or not. What do you see there?

Travis Albritton [00:12:14]:

So there’s two kinds of podcasts, broadly speaking. There’s podcasts that are associated with large networks like Wondery Podcast, NPR, that’s a whole other bucket, because there you have twelve people working on the show, you have a half a million dollar advertising budget. We’re going to leave that to the side. So when you’re looking at independent podcasts, so self funded, self run, the average podcast gets about 30 downloads per episode.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:12:44]:

30, that’s low.

Travis Albritton [00:12:46]:

Yeah. So that puts you in the top 50%. So you get 30 downloads an episode.

Rick Mulready [00:12:51]:

The number that I heard from years and years ago is about five times that. And everyone always, whenever anybody hears that, they’re like, whoa, is that all? But now you’re saying 30.

Travis Albritton [00:13:04]:

Yeah. So if anybody wants to see this, you can go to Buzzsprout.com Global Stats and we’ll be sure to link it in the show notes below. And you can see all of Buzzsprout’s publicly available global data. And if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll see this breakdown where you have like top 50, top 25, top 10% of podcasts.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:13:29]:

So we’re early on, 200,000 active podcasts. And if that is, let’s call it the barrier to entry, 30 downloads per episode. Travis, what are you saying to people who are still on the fence about starting?

Travis Albritton [00:13:42]:

So the second question is always, how does this make money for me? Like, if I’m investing my time and energy and resources into this podcast, how does it become financially viable? And there’s two ways. One, build a very large audience and sell ads based on how many impressions you get. And that’s a very inefficient way of doing it. But if you have a massive audience, then it’s also a very efficient way of selling ad spots because you don’t have to do these bespoke sponsorship packages. You just say, listen, I got 5 million people, listen to my show. Here’s the price. You want me to run the ad, that’s great. And then you can just kind of bankroll it that way.

Travis Albritton [00:14:21]:

But what I like to do and what I encourage my clients to do, because you can do this from day one, is make the podcast the conversation that happens right before a purchase, whether that’s becoming a client of yours, whether that’s buying your course or your membership, whatever way that you make money. You want the podcast to be the accelerator that speeds them through all of their objections, warms them up to your offers, helps them to know, like and trust you, and also to see that there are other people that have had success with what you do that are like them. And the podcast becomes the incubator for all these internal conversations that your prospects are having. And so then as they enter your world through a lead magnet or a challenge or a webinar, and they’re on your email list and you’re telling them about this content that you’re making, anytime they go to listen to it, you’re getting them one step closer to a purchase decision. And that adds up pretty quickly. So, like last year, I launched a podcast for my agency. It’d kind of be like a Facebook ads manager that doesn’t run Facebook ads.

Rick Mulready [00:15:28]:

Very meta.

Travis Albritton [00:15:29]:

Yeah. So it’s like, you got to have a podcast if you’re a podcast agency. And I haven’t really been super focused on growing the audience because that’s not the way it makes money for me. The way it makes money is I use it as a way to get prospects to spend an hour with me. And so I’ll reach out to them and invite them to be a guest on my podcast, and they’re super excited to talk about themselves for an hour, and then I have their contact information. We’ve had a 1 hour quality conversation. Within that, I can get a sense of what their business is and what they’re struggling with. And then at the end of that, if I feel like I could be a good fit and that what I offer would be of service to them, then I say, hey, if you’ve ever thought about starting a podcast, or I actually typically phrase it as a question first.

Travis Albritton [00:16:16]:

It’s like, hey, you came on this podcast, which I really appreciate. I’ve seen you be a guest on other shows. Have you thought about having one for yourself or for your business? And most of the time they’ll say yes, because most business owners I know have at least thought about starting a podcast.

Rick Mulready [00:16:29]:

Sure.

Travis Albritton [00:16:30]:

So then I ask them, like, well, where are you getting stuck? What do you not have clarity around that’s holding you back from making a decision about it? And we start talking through that. But in the course of that conversation, I can usually move towards either it’s a good opportunity for you to start a podcast or because of other things that you have going on, maybe it’s not the right time or I’m not the right person to do it and here is the person who could do it. And so a podcast that gets not too many downloads, a couple of hundred per episode, generates multiple six figures for me every year.

Rick Mulready [00:17:01]:

Can you repeat that again? Yeah.

Travis Albritton [00:17:03]:

So I get a couple of hundred downloads per episode, and I make multiple six figures from the podcast, but that’s not because I’m selling ads based on how many downloads I get. It’s because of how I’m using the podcast to complement my business. And so that’s how I encourage my clients to think about it. When we’re thinking about the strategic objectives and what the goal is and what we’re trying to accomplish, I always try and divorce it from the number of downloads, because if you do it right, it doesn’t actually matter how many downloads you get. The business success you get on the back end is completely separate from the size of your audience.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:17:35]:

That is good. Travis and you were sharing about on episode 714, actually, if you’re watching the podcast on YouTube, you can see this visual right now about what the top 1% of podcasts are doing to accelerate their online business. And I remember something, Travis, that really spoke to me is you talked about how they’re taking podcasts, their long form content and dividing that up into short form content and dispersing that among the popular platforms and the Internet. And so my next question for you, Travis, is how do you see having a podcast comparing to the other forms of video content? Let’s call it short form video or long form video. How do you see that comparing in terms of building that know like and trust factor for the online course creator or coach?

Travis Albritton [00:18:20]:

So there’s two things that make podcasting special compared to other forms of media online. One is that it’s an owned audience, which is very rare. Normally you’re either buying an audience by paying for ads, you’re renting it on somebody else’s and an Instagram account or a TikTok account where an algorithm changes and all of a sudden, nobody can see your stuff anymore. With a podcast, when they subscribe to your podcast, you own that connection. You can move your podcast to a different host, you can do all kinds of stuff, but as long as they’re subscribed to you every time you push out an episode, they’ll get it. So that’s really unique. The other thing that’s unique about podcasting is the average consumption is very high. So most of the times, if you have a good podcast, you’ll see anywhere between 80 and 95% average consumption.

Travis Albritton [00:19:08]:

And if you think about a podcast being about 40 minutes to an hour, let’s just say you’re getting 30 minutes to 40 minutes of quality time with someone in your audience. I don’t know the last time I spent 30 to 40 minutes a week consuming someone’s TikTok or consuming their blog or looking through their social media profile and reading all their carousel posts. But there’s just something unique about a podcast. You hit play and you’re listening to it as you’re doing something else, or you’re watching it kind of casually where you end up consuming more of it. And so the quality of the interaction you have with the person on the other side is something that’s been pretty impossible to replicate with other mediums. And so I think that’s one of the reasons why podcasting is really special as far as how you chunk it up and repurpose it. That’s something we can dig into. What’s the actual strategic production of how you leverage this long form content? But unless you’re making Mr.

Travis Albritton [00:20:01]:

Beast videos, it’s hard to get the same level of consumption with creating YouTube style videos that aren’t constructed as a podcast. And then the lift is also a lot higher. Like, the production cost to actually do something at a high level, compete in that space is a lot higher. Whereas with a podcast, people are much more forgiving about how it looks because they see, oh, this is a podcast. Like, I shouldn’t expect $100,000 production budget for this piece of content I’m watching it’s, the podcast. And so I think people’s perspective is right sized.

Rick Mulready [00:20:35]:

Yeah, I just want to add two quick things to that. The other thing on that is it’s a very intimate experience, right? Like, you listen to a show, you’re putting your AirPods in or your whatever right in your ears so that when you’re out for a walk or you’re exercising or whatever it is that you’re doing, you’re listening to that person, whatever, the show that you’re listening to right in your ears. And now, so after I drop my daughter off at school, the school is two blocks from our house now, and I just walk her to school oftentimes. I’m going for a walk after that. And so I bring my air pods, put them in, and I listen to a show. Now, what I’m finding is the hole that your brain equates, like, oh, when I was here, I was listening to X. So I find that even right now, I think about an area in our neighborhood, there’s a podcast that pops into my mind because it’s equating that area with what I was listening to. And I’ve listened to that particular podcast quite a bit on my walk.

Rick Mulready [00:21:35]:

And so there’s just that whole other element to it. The other thing to that with the video portion we talked earlier about, is there a niche or is there somebody that shouldn’t be doing a podcast? Right? The way that I look at that also is if you hate talking, if you just do not like talking, just getting on a microphone and talking, well, then there’s the video option because a lot of people don’t like just the audio. They’re like, all right, cool, I can make a video. I can get in on camera and make a video. All right, cool. Well, there’s an aspect to that that you can just rip the audio from it, and if it makes sense, you can just use the audio for the podcast. Which also brings up this other element of this conversation that we’re going to have here about the video aspect. And so I’m very bullish on it for that particular reason, right? Having been podcast for so long, I didn’t start doing video for three years ago maybe, and it was just like literally turn the camera on.

Rick Mulready [00:22:41]:

Now I have an additional piece of content that can be leveraged in repurposing putting it on YouTube in all these other areas. And so speaking of YouTube, I know have this is where I think the conversation is going to get want. I’m not saying heated, I’m just saying like, very different thoughts of why YouTube or if YouTube and that sort of thing. Because again, you were at podcast Movement Quajo. You heard people talk about, you heard people from is the I don’t want to say consensus, but what is the thought around if we’re going to do a podcast which we’ve established, you know, like, yes, podcast. Do we do just audio? Do we do just video? Do we do both?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:23:34]:

Well, let’s have a little discussion, shall we, on the screen? I have a slide from a study done by Coleman Insights, and I will link this study up in the show notes below so you can go and watch the video. It’s quite informative. And two gentlemen from that company and one gentleman from another research firm were sharing at the Podcast Movement. And basically, they asked a sample of podcast consumers and they used the word consumer on purpose to not bias towards people who listen to podcasts audio only or people who watch it video only. But they asked podcast consumers across the US. From many different demographics. How would they define a podcast? And as you can see on the screen, I’ll describe it to you if you’re not watching over on the YouTube channel. But 75% responded a podcast could be audio or video only, 22% said, and these are podcast consumers across multiple different platforms said that it was audio only.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:24:37]:

And even smaller percentage, 3% said that their definition of a podcast was video only. But as I’m sure the listener and Rick is thinking, well, if some of these podcast consumers were people who watch YouTube and don’t really listen to podcasts, then aren’t the results kind of skewed? And so to account for that, they went a step further, and they reorganized that data here it is on screen again. They reorganized that data by platform preference. And this is what shocked me, was, as you can see on the screen, even if one of their respondents had preferred Spotify or Apple Podcasts as their primary platform to consume content, those are audio only platforms. Still, for people who preferred Spotify, 70% of them responded that a podcast could be audio or video. And for people who preferred consuming podcasts on Apple Podcast, 67% said a podcast could be audio or video. That right there is super intriguing. Travis, what do you make of it?

Travis Albritton [00:25:47]:

Again, this goes back to it depends on who you’re asking and how you’re asking the questions. Because if you asked people at Podcast Movement four years ago, what is a Podcast? And you’re asking people that work in the industry, they would say, well, Podcast is an audio file. It’s available over an open RSS feed with enclosure tags that you can sync to your device and you can download and listen to whenever you want to. So that’s what an industry professional would tell you. Someone who listens to them would say, oh, it’s kind of like a radio show that I can listen to whenever I want to. So even just the way that people think about what that word means or what it means to have a podcast or listen to a podcast, podcast has now just become a talk show that I listen to or watch whenever I want to. And some of it is because we’re also bleeding different mediums where you’ll have talk shows that are on traditional cable television, also doing YouTube where they’ll pull segments or interviews, know, do their intro narrations as independent videos on YouTube to grow the audience to go back to CBS or NBC or Fox, wherever the full episodes are. And so this on demand consumption is driving people to think about everything is just kind of bleeding together.

Travis Albritton [00:26:58]:

And so people don’t think about podcasts as Apple podcasts anymore, like an audio listening platform. They think about podcasts as a show that I consume. Sometimes it’s with video, sometimes it’s audio only because something else they talk about in the study, and I’ve seen this in other studies too, is that people aren’t particular about the app they consume podcasts with. So you’ll get a lot of bleed over between Spotify, Apple podcasts and YouTube where you would think, man, well, they just have one place to go to consume all their podcasts. But that’s not true. What you’ll see is people that listen on Apple podcast will also listen to some things on Spotify, depending on what their music playlists are and how they’re organized. And then if they’re in the mood to watch something, they’ll go to YouTube to consume that same content that they would normally listen to Apple podcast or Spotify in the car because they like being able to see the people interact and see them talking. And so whereas before the word podcast was much in and the definition was much more persnickety, now it’s just kind of become this catch all for people talking about stuff.

Rick Mulready [00:28:01]:

That’s a big word here on the show, right?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:28:04]:

I’m googling it right now.

Rick Mulready [00:28:07]:

Well done, Travis.

Travis Albritton [00:28:08]:

Yeah, so that’s how it shifted. And people in the industry have finally kind of given up on holding the definition hostage and making everyone say it’s open RSS audio, episode Two this is just content that people are consuming online that’s generally long form and involves one or more people talking about a particular subject. And that’s what podcast means.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:28:30]:

Now, I will add something before we hear from you, Rick, which is let’s make sure we’re driving home the context, the listener, you, we both, all of us on the podcast and listening are online course creators or online coaches, right? Or a mix of both. And at least my primary goal in having a podcast would be to build that know, like and trust factor so that people would end up wanting to do business with me. Agreed.

Travis Albritton [00:28:58]:

Yeah.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:28:58]:

And so I always hear in past episodes where we talked about paid traffic, Rick, or where I think we had Laura Balos on the episode and she talked about the power of SEO to drive organic leads. I mean, it’s either going to be organic or paid the way somebody comes across your business. And for context to YouTube or not to YouTube with the podcast. Other than the fact that big names in the industry, like if you look know Alex Hermosi, if you look at Ryan and their strategy is super clear make long form content and then divvy up that content. Right? But we got to remember who owns YouTube. It’s Google, it’s the largest search engine in the world. And by the way, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. So when we’re talking about future proofing a podcast or what platforms to start on, should we do video? Keep in mind that if you want people to find your stuff, you probably should make sure your strategy lines up with being discovered on the first and second largest search engines in the world.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:30:04]:

I mean, anything could happen. I don’t think they’re going to be dethroned. And what are your thoughts, Rick?

Rick Mulready [00:30:09]:

So just to get a caveat again, I haven’t read the study so I’m coming at it from the perspective of on one of my screens right now. I’m looking at our stats inside of Buzzsprout. So we use Buzzsprout for our hosting, 92% of our listeners since we came over to Buzzsprout and it’s a pretty good sample size, it’s several million downloads. 92% of listeners are coming from Apple podcast. So that’s telling me is that it’s primarily audio now with that please don’t for everybody listening. I’m not saying don’t do video, quite the contrary. I’m absolutely saying video. I just wonder where these studies are saying that YouTube is the biggest platform now for listening.

Rick Mulready [00:31:03]:

Well, the way that YouTube defines a podcast today is very let’s use the big words here, it’s very nebulous, right? All you literally have to do is click a checkbox and call it a podcast. There’s no vetting of it to my knowledge. It can be a regular video of you walking down the street talking about something you can call that a podcast. So that just brings in my head there’s question about really is YouTube the biggest podcast platform now? Which then brings into question me questioning the rest of the other stats that are being thrown about now. I am 100% I absolutely think if somebody’s doing a podcast we should be on YouTube. And you mentioned Quajo about the search, if you have a show just on Apple podcast or on Spotify or whatever. As an audio platform, podcast is not a searching platform. However YouTube is as we’re talking about here.

Rick Mulready [00:32:17]:

So from a search like absolutely you should be on YouTube. Right. And I’m really excited about know all the things that YouTube is saying that’s coming with podcasting. Again, I’m just cautiously skeptical. I’ve been hearing that for over a year now that this stuff is coming from YouTube and I feel like they’re making little like, okay, first we have this little podcast channel over here that you kind of have to know how to get to and then it’s like, okay, we can check a box now. To call it a podcast, but any video can be designated a podcast. So are the results being skewed? I’m just skeptical of what’s being thrown about out there. Now, again, please don’t confuse that with me saying like, oh, I don’t think you should be on YouTube because absolutely you should be on YouTube for me.

Rick Mulready [00:33:22]:

Yes, people are absolutely consuming stuff on you and we’ve had the show on YouTube now for what, three years, and we’ve seen very little traction in terms know, do people watch it? Sure, yes, but it’s not been a mover in any way for the show. I’m glad that we are there and that’s not going to change. But I don’t know, I look at it like it’s searchable and it gives us the opportunity to repurpose the content so much easier because there’s a video portion of it and I can rattle off probably ten podcasts off the top of my head. Look mostly in the online space that don’t have podcast channels on YouTube and they are doing just fine. So, again, all this to say, yes, you should absolutely be on YouTube, but just know, do your own research on it when you’re looking at this sort of data.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:34:33]:

Well said, Rick.

Travis Albritton [00:34:34]:

All the things that you’ve said are consistent with how you give advice to anyone ever. Results may vary.

Rick Mulready [00:34:42]:

Is that good or bad? Test it.

Travis Albritton [00:34:44]:

Yeah, it’s like, here’s an idea, test it, see if it works for you. If it does, keep doing it. If it doesn’t, try something else. And so a couple of other things that are helpful to think about these studies. Also in a lot of these studies, they’ll ask, what are the podcasts that you listen to? And it’s usually the same 25 that pop up. The 25 biggest ones, honest marketing art of online business has never shown up as a result of any of those studies. Because when you’re asking somebody, what podcast do you listen to? Or what podcasts have you heard of? There’s only like a handful that really pop up and those handful that pop up are also on YouTube. So there’s some selection bias here just in how people think about and recall podcasts they listen to.

Travis Albritton [00:35:25]:

So that’s certainly a piece of it. Another piece of it is Rick Quajo this audience. They’re busy people, they’re running businesses either full time or on the side while they’re doing other stuff. They don’t have time to sit in front of a computer for an hour and watch a YouTube video, right, but they can listen to an hour in the car while they’re doing errands.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:35:44]:

Totally.

Travis Albritton [00:35:44]:

So some of it too is like, whether you add video or not depends largely on who your audience is and how they consume content. So going back to the original, like, when should you not start a podcast? The reason you wouldn’t add video is because not enough of your audience consumes video consistently. And so just as a general rule of thumb, it’s about to do it yourself. It takes about three times as much resources, time, investment to add video versus just keeping audio. And that’s because you have a lot more moving pieces that you have to take care of. Not only do you have to do your hair and look presentable or cut your hair, you’re now adding a visual element on top of and audio element. And YouTube currently does not connect to your podcast hosting platform. So it’s a totally separate upload process, totally separate analytics.

Travis Albritton [00:36:31]:

And so it’s basically like, once you jump into that, it’s a lot of work to do it and sustain it. And so if you have the ability to do that and make that investment, it’s great. But if you’re trying to start an MVP version of whatever this podcast idea is that you have, then start with Audio Only and promote it to the people that already are connected with you online and see if they like it. And then later on, you can always add video if you feel like it’d be advantageous or experiment with it. Or if you see adding video as a way to also create content for other channels you’re investing in, like TikTok or Instagram or YouTube Shorts or Facebook Reels, then now you can double, triple, quadruple dip in that same long form content to create content over there. And that’s the magic of repurposing. So adding video makes repurposing a lot easier with your podcast content. But you don’t have to have video.

Travis Albritton [00:37:24]:

Is it nice to have? Absolutely. And if you are making a podcast that’s trying to reach the widest audience possible because you’re selling ads based on how many impressions you get, then yeah, you should totally have video. But if you don’t, if that’s not your goal, then you can totally start a podcast, audio Only. Or if you’ve had an audio only podcast and you’re, like, kind of happy with how it’s going, don’t let FOMO get you to chase a new shiny object and say, well, we have to have video or we’re failing. It’s, like, totally not the case.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:37:54]:

Can we get tactical? I like that somebody’s starting a new podcast. Travis, what do you recommend, software wise, that they use to get started? You dropped that acronym, MVP. And I immediately thought, Michael Jordan, because I’m dating myself. And then I thought, no, what’s a more relevant example? Kobe. But then maybe I’m also dating myself there. You want to break down what MVP is and then tell us practically what software do we start? Because I think for the art of online business, we use Descript for some episodes, and then what do you guys use to produce?

Travis Albritton [00:38:30]:

Travis so MVP is a term that was redefined in the book Lean Startup by Eric Reeves. To me. Minimum viable product.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:38:41]:

Okay, so not Kobe.

Rick Mulready [00:38:42]:

Yeah.

Travis Albritton [00:38:42]:

So not Kobe Bryant. It’s not most Valuable player. It’s what’s the minimum viable product. What’s the earliest version of the thing that you can ship out to get feedback? And so the reason that’s a helpful mindset for a podcast is, especially if you’re doing it for the first time, you want it to be as good as possible, but if you’ve never done it before, it’s not going to be as good as it could be. And so there has to be this commitment to shipping something out, publishing something that’s less than perfect to learn, to get feedback, to get better. And so when I think about an MVP podcast, a Minimum viable podcast, it’s audio only because you need audio to have a podcast. If it’s on YouTube, people still have to listen to you, you still need to have some way of communicating audio. So the audio is a non negotiable.

Travis Albritton [00:39:26]:

The video is an add on. It’s something that you can add if you want to start playing on YouTube, using it for repurposing it, using it for search, all those things that are beneficial recording software. The easiest one to use is Zoom because everyone has it and everyone knows how it works. For the most part nowadays it’s not the best quality, but if it’s something you already have and something you’re already used to, there are some settings you can tweak to kind of bring in the audio and make it good. You’re looking for high fidelity music mode for your audio and you want to turn on original audio. Those are all audio settings that you can fine tune in the preferences of zoom to get better audio quality than just the default settings. If you want to invest in some software specifically for recording higher quality audio and or video, then the two that I recommend are Riverside FM and then StreamYard. The reason being that they do a much better job of capturing the audio and the video at the source and then uploading that somewhere where you can grab it from the cloud instead of trying to bring everything in and have it play nice together as you’re recording it and then spit out one output.

Travis Albritton [00:40:31]:

And then when it comes to editing, it’s really whatever you’re comfortable with. The script is very popular because it’s a text based editor. So as you’re listening through, you can edit basically a blog and take out words that you don’t want in there and move stuff around and it’ll edit the audio underneath. And so if that’s something that is intimidating to you editing audio and you’re going to be doing it yourself, then the script is a good platform to start with. But if you want to get more into the weeds of really finessing the edit and trying to make it exceptional, I’m particularly partial to Hindenburg, not the blimp that exploded, but the software.

Rick Mulready [00:41:04]:

Hindenburg, I’ve never heard of that in my life.

Travis Albritton [00:41:06]:

Hindenburg journalist pro. It’s fantastic for editing podcasts, but it’s not free, so not many people know about it.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:41:13]:

If you want to see those head down notes below, we do have a link set up. It’s quajo.com toolsoftrade. Quajo.com Toolsofthetrade. And I’m looking at it right now and I can see a link for Buzzsprout, a link for Descript, and well, zoom. If you don’t have zoom by now, what are you even doing?

Rick Mulready [00:41:38]:

I’ll throw a couple more tools out there for in this whole discussion of MVP. If you’re just starting with just audio, if everybody’s got a webcam, right, just flip the webcam on while you’re doing audio doesn’t necessarily mean you have to know upload it to YouTube. But now you have video of like, you have video content now, which you can then use to I mean, this can be a whole other episode about AI tools to repurpose it. But I mean, you can use something like video AI vidyo, AI opus clip, there’s a lot of different ones, but those are the two of the better ones that I’ve come across so far. That will take a longer form video and then cut it up for you into short form vertical content, which you can then repurpose like we’ve been talking about here today, whether it’s TikTok, whether it’s YouTube shorts, whether it is Instagram Reels, what have you. You can then also transcribe the audio and take that transcription and have AI create blog posts for you. It can create a LinkedIn post for you, any number of things. It’s creating that primary piece of content that will then allow you to create a bunch of different forms of content to really amplify that original piece.

Rick Mulready [00:43:11]:

And yes, I will tell you that turning on that camera when you are just doing audio, it is a little bit of an adoption process. I find it a little bit weird. But don’t forget that it’s not like you have to be staring at the it’s actually quite odd and creepy if you’re staring at the camera the whole time while you’re talking. It’s not how we talk, right? We’re looking around, we’re looking at even if you’re looking at your notes, it’s totally fine. Just flip the video on record yourself. It just gives yourself more options, right?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:43:45]:

We’re laughing because I started staring at the camera and I gave you a little wink.

Rick Mulready [00:43:50]:

See, I didn’t see that because I wasn’t looking directly. But you’re so right though.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:43:55]:

In YouTube world, you do want to stare at the camera to create that connection, like you’re looking into somebody’s eyes and talking to them. But in podcast, YouTube video world, it’s okay not to be looking at the camera the whole time for the listener, if you are at the level where you have a team, I thought we could share our simple workflow for how we were producing these podcast shorts and the workflow for us. The art of online business is that recording in StreamYard and then obviously honest podcast edits the podcast for us. Thank you, Travis.

Travis Albritton [00:44:31]:

You’re very welcome.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:44:32]:

And then what’s happening is we have a VA who takes the video and actually uses video AI to find notable viral worthy highlightable moments of the podcast. And then I believe the VA, he is then taking exporting from video AI or video AI and using CapCut to put captions on the videos. And then those videos are getting sent around the Internet. So that’s behind the scenes of our workflow for the art of online business.

Travis Albritton [00:45:06]:

Yeah, and there’s always tools popping up that can do X, Y or Z. Now that podcasting is maturing as a medium, you’re seeing a lot more investment in the space, which is really exciting because there’s tools out now that weren’t here last year that have totally changed the way that I produce podcasts, that I encourage other people to produce podcasts. It’s really cool and really exciting. It could also be a treadmill where you’re always tweaking it, you’re always optimizing it. And so there are certain principles that will always be true when it comes to podcasting. And as long as you nail those things, you can always try and test different things, but you always want to have a show that’s one of one where there’s something unique about it that makes it different than every other podcast in the world. Whether that’s a particular value proposition or a set of values that you hold to that’s different than others in your industry, or a stance that you take about something that’s controversial, that divides the crowd and attracts the people to you that are more aligned with you. And then it needs to be listenable.

Travis Albritton [00:46:09]:

So make the audio as clean as you can possibly make it. Invest in a microphone. When you’re telling your guests to show up, make sure they’re not in a crowded cafe. Tell them to record somewhere quiet where there’s a strong internet connection. Like get as good of audio as you can reasonably get and then actually edit it. So it used to be you could just record something, start, stop upload, and that was totally fine. That’s not the case anymore. Now quality is what rises to the top, not simply throwing your name into the ring.

Travis Albritton [00:46:38]:

And so you do want to spend some time editing it to make it as concise as it can be and as impactful as it can be, because those are the shows that people return to. It doesn’t necessarily impact people showing up and trying your podcast, but if you want them to listen every week, you want to spend the time to clean it up, remove the filler. If you hear shouting in the background, clean that out. There’s tools that can help you do that. But then the last thing is invest in podcast artwork. That’s the number one mistake that I see independent podcasters make, is they kind of phone it in on the artwork. They throw something together in canva or use a template that looks kind of like somebody else’s and then put your picture on it. But if it looks like you made it yourself, that’s what other people are going to think, too.

Travis Albritton [00:47:22]:

And so there are services that you can go to, like upwork.com to hire a freelance graphic designer. 99 Designs is a graphic design specific website where for $300, you can get twelve to 20 different podcast artwork designs from different designers and work with them to tweak it and get it dialed in. That’s the best $300 you can spend on your podcast because everyone judges the podcast and the quality of it based on what the artwork looks like. So that would be my recommendation. And if you nail all those things, you can do Opus Clip, you can do YouTube, you can add video, you can add all these other pieces, but that’s the foundational elements that you want in order to have a podcast that will continue to grow and actually serve you in your business.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:48:06]:

Thank you for all this expert advice, Travis. Thank you so much. Where can somebody find you if they would like you to produce their podcast for them so they can get onto the other CEO things that grow their business?

Travis Albritton [00:48:20]:

Yeah, I’m really glad you asked. So the best way to get in touch with me is just go to my website, honestpodcasts.com. You can learn more about me. You can see examples of some of the other shows that I produce. And there’s a link where you can book a strategy, call with me where we sit down and talk about your business, what your goals are, what a podcast will look like for you, and if working with me makes sense, cool.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:48:38]:

And I definitely will put that link in the show notes below. And I will add that there is a certain point in the progress of somebody’s business, a certain revenue level, where it definitely does make sense for them to hire out podcast editing and not be the person who’s editing their own videos. Right, Rick?

Rick Mulready [00:48:55]:

100%. You should not be editing your own show. Whether you’re outsourcing it, whether you are just having somebody do it, and Descript. And look, my team has done Descript for a long time, and it makes it super easy. And then to take it to the next level of editing, like Travis is talking about here, it’s totally worth it because it’s like, you record and then you’re done. Then you just, all right, I recorded, my file is done, gets passed over to the team, and then it gets taken care of. That’s where you want to get to.

Travis Albritton [00:49:32]:

Yeah. And the other thing I’ll say, too, is when you’re an entrepreneur, everything has an opportunity cost, right? So it’s not simply, oh, I have an extra hour that I could devote to editing my podcast this week, but it’s, what else could you have done with that hour if you had it? Back. That’s why you have a team. That’s why you hire VAS. That’s why you bring people on, is to take tasks off your plate so you can focus on those CEO level tasks and responsibilities. And I know that’s something that Rick preaches quite often, is make sure that you’re putting people on your team to take away those low level tasks that need to get done so you can focus on the higher leverage stuff.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:50:04]:

I’m going to land this plane. Take care, Travis. Take care, Rick.

Rick Mulready [00:50:08]:

Thanks, guys.

Travis Albritton [00:50:08]:

Thanks for having me on.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:50:09]:

Take care, too. Be blessed. Bye.