Why Every Author Should Start A Podcast
When is the last time that your ideal client or prospective client invited you into their home in their quiet time?
Most entrepreneur’s would answer that question with “Never”. This is why Published Author’s latest guest Matthew Halloran is a huge believer in the power of podcasts, particularly for authors.
“A book is finite. You’ve got 300 pages or 200 pages,” says Matthew. “When the reader is done, they close the book and put it back on the shelf.”
However, with a podcast a potential client knows that another episode is coming out next week or next month, and this allows an author to continue the relationship.
Matthew is a partner with Proudmouth, an influence accelerator agency focusing on podcasting for authors. Proundmouth’s mission is to free businesses from the torment of sales.
“We love working with authors because the call to action is to download a book, buy the book, go to Amazon,” explains Matthew.
“I know that if I'm going to get you to listen to my podcast, if you'll buy my book, the probability of you becoming a client is very high, because you've opted in steps to engage with me.
“If I can get you to engage with me socially, the probability of me ever having to sell . . . I don't sell anymore. People listen to our podcast. People who have purchased my book, The Social Media Handbook For Financial Advisors. They follow us on social media, they engage with us. Then they just call and they say: ‘Hey, I'm ready to go’.”
BOOK CHAPTERS ARE STARTING POINT FOR PODCAST EPISODES
Matthew says most people have chapters in their books, and these can be turned into podcast episodes. In turn, the episodes can be turned into social media posts, making it fairly straightforward for authors to utilize podcasting as a way to accelerate their influence.
Matthew explains that most authors and their books get a lot of attention when the book is first published. But a book “doesn't have a lot of the longevity that we would really want. We believe that podcasting is the most effective way to achieve longevity.”
Matthew recommends a minimum of two podcasts a month for a business owner. Those podcasts turn into one social media post per day.
Proudmouth works with a lot of financial advisors who've used our services, had already written a book, we've got one that wrote a book based off of his podcast, and they use the book as their main foundation for all of the content.
UNCERTAIN ABOUT PODCASTING? JUST JUMP IN!
Matthew believes that the biggest thing that stops people from podcasting is overthinking. He says when he was writing his first book he was told he’d need to write anywhere from 5000 to 10,000 words a day. He knows this is intimidating, but with podcasting, it’s simply hit record and start talking.
“Podcasting is not only not that complicated, but that's what people like,” says Matthew, noting that host Josh Steimle has found success with the Published Author podcast because it’s a conversation-based, interview-based podcast, a format he recommends.
“I'm not a huge fan of solo casts,” adds Matthew. “You have to have a lot of production behind it to keep people's attention for 30-plus minutes. People like to feel like they're hearing and eavesdropping into a personal conversation. The more personal you can make the conversation about whatever your topic is, the more passionate people are going to be about your podcast.”
He also says that finding a niche is very important. “Joe Rogan is only successful because of the 25 years of work that he did before he went behind the microphone. You're not going to be the next Joe Rogan. You need to do podcasting because you love it.”
Matthew adds that with passion behind the podcast, along with a microfocused topic, an audience will grow naturally.
Finally, he adds that the best podcasts are entertaining, utilize storytelling, and offer listeners a chance to learn something, because most people go to podcasts to learn something new. Not least, a podcast episode must have a call to action.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Josh Steimle:
Today, my guest is Matt Halloran. Matt is a partner with ProudMouth, a business focused on liberating the world's experts from, as Matt says, the torment of sales. He got his start in the financial services industry and wrote two books for financial services professionals. And he's also served in the Navy is a trained therapist and worked as a radio host. Matt, welcome to the show.
Matthew Halloran:
Well, thanks for having me.
Josh Steimle:
So, what we really want to talk about today, this episode is going to focus on podcasting and why an author might want to start a podcast, the benefit of starting a podcast for an author specifically, also why authors might want to be a guest on other people's podcasts. But before we get into that, because that really is Matt's area of expertise. Matt, give us a little bit of background on who you are, where you come from. I've got to hear stories about your time in the Navy and as a therapist and stuff. So, can you give us a little bit of background on you?
Matthew Halloran:
Sure. So, I started doing radio when I was 13 years old, my high school had a radio station. And I remember walking, it was in the library. I remember walking in the library and seeing these two studios with microphones and back then they were tape players. And I walked around and I said, do we have a radio station? And Chris Kirkpatrick was her name? And she said yes. Would you like to be a DJ? And I don't think anybody could have said sweeter words to me. So I said, absolutely. And so I did radio for four years in high school madman, Matt Halloran. I did a heavy metal show, which was funny because we were publicly. We were a public nonprofit station. So, I really was very limited and was allowed to play heavy metal is generous. After I graduated high school, I did go into the United States Navy. And well I'm a Persian Gulf War veteran, the first Gulf excursion that we decided to go into. I found out two weeks after I went to my ship that I was on a floating bomb, it was an ammunition replenishment ship. And the first person who I reported to said, well, welcome aboard Seaman Halloran. I just want you to know that if we get hit anywhere on this ship, we're going to blow up in a two square mile radius. Welcome aboard. And so that that was a rather opening thing there.
I got out of the Navy, went to college, did some of the normal college stuff with the exception of the two most worthless degrees Josh, you can have. I have a degree in applied ethics, which is a philosophy degree and communications because I wanted to continue and I did radio while I was in college. Fast forward, became a therapist after a short stint, five-year stint in a place called Boys Town in the States, where my wife and I lived with eight at-risk teenage boys at a time 36 in total, which is a wonderful experience. So, I was like, I want to be a therapist. So, I went to grad school, got my master's degree as a therapist, found out I was a terrible therapist. It's really would have been great if I would have learned that while I was in grad school, but I didn't, and became a consultant financial services, wrote my first book was actually published by Bloomberg Finance. So, I actually had a book deal, which honestly was an amazing experience with the exception of --
Josh Steimle:
And how did that come, how did that come about? Did they approach you? Did you approach them?
Matthew Halloran:
I did. Yeah, so what happened was I wrote an article for financial planning magazine that was talking about the power of social media. So, this was a long time ago, this was a 2009 maybe. And they approached me and said, hey, look, nobody's written a book on social media yet. Would you like to write the book, the first book on social media for financial services? And I was like, absolutely. And so I wrote it, and then rewrote it, which I’m sure you're familiar with, and then went to my editor, the editor at Bloomberg, which was magnificent, she, I remember her calling me and she said, you know matter, how often do you want to meet and I said, I don't want to meet with you at all. And she's, well, why is that? I said, because you're the editor. You're going to make the book sound good, right? And she's like, well, yeah, that's my job. I said, well, why don't you do your job? I have some other stuff I have to attend to. And she's like, so you don't want any notes? It's like, no, really what I'd like you to do is just make it correct, grammatically correct as it wasn't. And she said, this is the best experience I've ever had with an author. The problem was, when the book came out, Josh, it takes so long in the publishing world, right to go through all of the cover art and all of the stuff that when the book came out, it was an instructional book, the screen, some of the screenshots weren't applicable anymore.
Josh Steimle:
Yeah. Because social media was changing so quickly. I mean, it's still changing quickly, but especially in those early days.
Matthew Halloran:
Yeah, unbelievably fast. Some of the tools that I had talked about weren't applicable anymore. So, I was a financial services consultant and we came out with my second book, which was really a homebrew with a friend of mine wanted to write a cookbook of marketing ideas. And I had my best friend, the animated or did illustrations for the book. He's a comic book artist. And I still probably have 3,000 copies that book laying around. But that was a great calling card for me because I just opened my own consulting practice, every new client got a book, every prospect got a book, I spoke at conferences, they got books, it really, really helped my credibility. And then I partnered with my partner, Kirk Lo, we met at a conference five and a half years ago now. And realize that both of us were doing something fundamentally wrong, which is you're telling people what to do. Nobody wants to be told what to do. They want somebody to do it for them. And so over the last five years, we have built really a soup to nuts digital footprint program, that's all based off of a single point of entry, much like Josh Gordon, Seth Godin, sorry, Seth Godin, who talks about wanting to make sure that you have the most effective means to communicate digitally. And then what we do is we take a podcast, we turn it into humongous amounts of social media assets, so that people can be ever present and omnipresent.
Josh Steimle:
So, why did you decide to lead with podcasts?
Matthew Halloran:
Well, we've been working in financial services. So that's where Kirk and I really cut our teeth, and they talk for a living josh, I mean, that’s just, you know, people who talk for a living, they're so comfortable behind the microphone, you know, a lot of people aren't camera ready, brother, that's the big concern. There's work you have to do to be good and behind a camera. And a lot of advisors hadn't been camera trained. They do a lot of seminars and webinars and educational events. And so we just said, you know, hey, this is it. It's also the lowest cost way to do it. If editing 30 minutes of video is prohibitively expensive. Editing 30 minutes of audio is not expensive at all. It was also scalable, so we could find out we could help more people.
Josh Steimle:
Got it. And did you have experience at this point with podcasting, you had your radio experience, which is kind of similar. But did you have much experience with podcasting when you started this?
Matthew Halloran:
Not at all, Kirk and I hit record. Our first podcast was called mod marketing for the 21st century, we did about 50 episodes of that ironed out all of the kinks, right, so we built all of the systems for the company based off that first podcast, you know, how do we take things from guest to production, to post production, and then all through the social media assets that we create what social media assets do we want to create? Then we dumped in literally deleted all 50 of those episodes, and started over with the top advisor marketing podcast, we're about 300 episodes in on that now. But in total, we've produced 3,000 podcasts for different professionals, because that's really what our bread and butter is. But we made all of the mistakes, Kirk and I invested a substantial amount of money in this company, to make sure that we just ironed out everything the all of the little hitches in the get along. And now it's really, really smooth, I can't believe in five years, we have 23 employees now. You know, we're producing over 100 podcasts a month now, about 25 to 30,000 social media posts. And I've just got this this machine that I luckily, I'm not the one at the helm of the machine. But the team that we have in place is freaking amazing so.
Josh Steimle:
That's cool. So, let's fast forward to today. What is your main offering? What is the main thing that you offer to people who are coming in whether they're authors or anybody else?
Matthew Halloran:
Well, so we offer, we basically call it our influence accelerator package. And so I want to pause if you don't mind to talk just a little bit about how authors. The reason why I wanted to write a book is I wanted to be known as an expert, right? And being published puts you into a field of expertise, or at least known by the public as being an expert in something specific. And so and I wanted to be an expert in social media, I do still consider myself an expert in social media. And that's why, you know, when you write a book, first off, you usually have chapters in your book, which the chapters can turn into podcasts and then those can turn into social media posts. The idea that authors can utilize podcasting as a way to accelerate their influence. It's crazy because you write a book, and you know, you use your system, right, so you're going to get a lot of attention for your book. But it just doesn't have a lot of the longevity that we would really want our books to have, right? I want second, third, fourth addition to the book by getting feedback from people. And you have to engage your readers and your audience.
And we believe that podcasting is the most effective way to do that. So, it's two podcasts a month is what we recommend, that’s as a business owner or professional two podcasts is a good run rate, it's not too taxing. And those two podcasts then turn into about one social media post per business day. And that's, that's, we can either we can post for you. So, it depends on how much you want us to do, you can basically outsource your whole digital marketing in about four hours of your time a month. So, you show up, you do the two podcasts, you meet with your account manager, and then we basically do the rest. Jokingly we call it the Rockstar approach. So, you show up, you grab the microphone, you do your site, you drop the mic, and my team takes care of the rest.
Josh Steimle:
So, are you working with any authors right now?
Matthew Halloran:
I am. They're all in financial services surprisingly enough. A lot of financial advisors who've used our services, had already written a book, we've got one that wrote a book based off of his podcast and they use the book as their main foundation for all of the content. It's a wonderful call to action, Josh, this is one of my favorite things. We call it the perfect podcast formula. So, you have to have entertainment, right? So, you have to be fun to listen to, right? You have to educate people, because most people go to podcasts just like yours to learn something new. You need a story, right? You have to have to storytelling and all great books have great stories, right? But then the last thing is call to action. And one of the reasons why we love working with authors is because your call to action is to download the book, buy the book, go to Amazon, you know, whatever with the book. And I know as a business person, if I'm going to get you to listen to my podcast and if you'll buy my book, the probability of you becoming a client is very high, right? Because you've taken to opt in steps to engage with me that if I can get you to engage with me socially, I mean, the probability of me ever having to sell and, you know, you said it in the opening, our mission is to free the world's experts from the torment of sales. I don't sell anymore, right? People listen to our podcast. I have a bunch of people who have purchased my social media book. They follow us on social media, they engage with us on social media, and then they just call and they say, hey, I'm ready to go. I have a couple of logistics questions. And I don't know about you, brother, but the hard closes. I just don't enjoy that anymore.
Josh Steimle:
That's a beautiful thing when the business just comes to you and says, hey, send me a contract. I'm like, All right. All right.
Matthew Halloran:
Yep, absolutely.
Josh Steimle:
So, I know that a lot of people out there feel like doing a podcast, it's just too much. It's overwhelming. They don't know where to get started. They feel like, oh, I've got to buy all this equipment and I have to be a professional speaker. And what do you tell people who have these types of objections and think that doing a podcast is just too much work too hard?
Matthew Halloran:
It's way easier to write in a book brother, I’ll tell you that right now. But I say that there's validity to their concerns, right? The biggest thing that stops people from podcasting is overthinking. So, when I was a therapist, a terrible one at that, we used to have people journal, that's a very powerful therapeutic technique, right? So, most therapists will give you a journal or force you to buy the one that they like, because there's all sorts of journals out there. And then you open that journal and in what do you see, it's just like when you start writing every day, right? So, I was always told I need to write anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 words a day, when I was writing my first book, that blank page, man, it's really, it's intimidating, right? The journals the same way, podcasting is the same way, what you need to do is you need to push record and just start talking.
And you're going to realize very quickly that since you're going to be talking about something that you love and you're passionate about, like the book you just wrote, it just it's not as difficult. But here's a couple of very, very easy things to do. Number one, get so I'm hoping everybody can do this while they're listening is you're going to take a piece of paper or open up a word document or whatever you use, and number one to 12. And then for each of those, you're going to use a chapter of your book. So, hopefully you have at least 12 chapters of your book or 12 major overarching points of your book, doesn't matter what kind of book it is, right? Doesn't matter if it's fiction. It doesn't matter if it's nonfiction, historical fiction, whatever, you just, I need you to do this, right. So, this is going to be that outline.
And in fact, if you still have the outline that you had, when you wrote the book, you're halfway there. And then what you're going to do is you're going to create two subtopics underneath each of those 12. And now you've got 24 months of podcasts. I hear all the time, you know, what kind of equipment do I need? I mean, Josh, you've got a great setup there. I've got, you know, I've got a pretty heavy duty setup here. You can spend thousands of dollars on equipment, thousands of dollars. But I honestly believe that buying a directional microphone so much like what you have so we've got these directional microphones, which means it just picks up what's right in front of the microphone itself, you can buy what we recommend, which is, I've just tell you to Samson to Samson USB mic, it's plug and play, it means it's going to take out all of the other ambient noises in the room and only pick up your voice. You literally plug that into your computer, you're ready to podcast is that simple? Or here we go. I actually keep these as a prop.
So, these are old Apple earbuds, right? So, these are they don't, I don't know if I made sure you can buy them anymore. But I don't think they come with your phone. There's this little microphone that's in these headphones, they're fairies or something. And this microphone, Josh, I have no idea how this works. But honestly, this is one of the best microphones that's out there. And you can use this, you can use your phone, there's a great app called Anchor FM. So, another one called Blubrry, which is a company that we've partnered with, there is so easy to get started, you just have to realize that you're kind of going to suck at the beginning. But here's the fun part, you're going to get better, and then let's see your 20 episodes in, 30 episodes in, people are going to go back and listen to this first podcast and they're going to love you even more, because you showed your warts and they get to grow with you.
Josh Steimle:
Yeah, it is hard to not be sensitive to that, because you feel like, oh, if I say the word, um, or uh, just once or I have to clear my throat or I cough like it's all ruined, it's all messed up, I can never do this again. And then you get into it, you get little ways down the road and you realize nobody cares. It doesn't matter. I mean, as long as you're not doing tons of background noise or something which of course you can just edit out. It's not that hard. And you don't have to be perfect. I mean, go watch Joe Rogan like it's not perfect. And that guy's got the money to do everything perfect. And it's just two dudes, or Joe Rogan and a woman every once in a while, I guess it seems like it's mostly dudes on that show. But you go watch that show. It's just two guys talking, chatting casually with some really expensive equipment. But it's just two guys chatting. It's not that complicated.
Matthew Halloran:
Not only not that complicated, but that's what people like. So, the reason why you have found success with your podcast is because it is a conversation based, interview based podcast, that's really what we recommend. I'm not a huge fan of solo cast, you have to really have a lot of production behind it to keep people's attention for 30 plus minutes. People like to feel like they're hearing and eavesdropping into a personal conversation. And the more personal you can make the conversation about whatever your topic is going to be, the more passionate people are going to be about your podcast, you have to niche yourself out to and I want to be very specific, Joe Rogan is only successful because of the 25 years of work that he did before he went behind the microphone, right? You can't do that, right? You're not going to be the next Joe Rogan.
Probably, you know, that's the 1%, not even 1%, right? I mean, you're looking at point 0001% that the monetization of podcast which people ask me all the time, you know, you need to do podcasting because you love it. The more you love it, the more passionate you are about it, the more passionate you are about your micro-focus topic, you're going to get the right audience. And I'll tell you a quick story. There's a plastic surgeon who was who started his own podcast and he would interview other plastic surgeons and they talk about the health of how to grow old gracefully, all of that sort of stuff. And he had about 150 subscribers, so people actually subscribed to his podcast, right? He got a $25,000 a month deal to sponsor his podcast. Because, well, he's a plastic surgeon and all the, you know, the company had to do is get one client from the plastic surgery and it paid for, you know, their sponsorship. So, people get very fixated on numbers, people get very fixated on subscribers, downloads, reach, worry about that after you get a year's worth of podcasts in the can. Or you need to outsource it to somebody else who can help you gain a much greater audience. But you got to do it because you love it. And that's what people are going to connect with.
Josh Steimle:
Now, you and I we're also recording video here, but of course you don't need to do video. So, you might be watching this and thinking, oh, I've got to do video too. No you don't, you can just do the audio. Tell us a little bit more about options like Anchor and Blubrry though because these are really interesting options that have come up in just the past year or two. And it makes it so easy to get on. But walk us through a little bit more about how these systems work and what the options are and what the opportunity is.
Matthew Halloran:
The big thing about podcasting is you have to go through a syndication service, right, you can't just go directly to iTunes. You can't go to Stitcher. You can't go to Spotify. Now Apple has premium podcasts, you can't get to any of those, you have to go through a third-party. We use Blubrry. Blubrry is by far we have tested every syndication service that out there, Blubrry, it's B-L-U-B-R-R-Y. It's an absolutely fantastic service. Very, very, very simple to set up. Basically, what you want to do is you, well, first off, you need to record a podcast, I know that sounds crazy to put the cart before the horse, but get something in the can record something, you can utilize, again, you can utilize Anchor FM, you can utilize Blubrry on the Blubrry site, we use a program called Audacity, which is an editing software that is free. And it's the simplest program, you click a button, you highlight it when you're done, you click normalize. So, that takes out the big peaks and valleys of the of the audio if there is some, and then you export it as an mp3 and Kablammo, you're ready to go.
But Blubrry is really easy to set up. Because you know it asks you what genre you are, what category you want to be in, you write a description of the podcast, which basically could be almost like the foreword to your book, or description of your book on the back cover whatever you use for Amazon. And then you upload your first podcast, you're going to put a podcast summary in there, we highly recommend that you find keywords. So, if you want to be found, if you are a murder mystery writer, and you're going to do a murder mystery podcast or true crime, make sure that you're putting that in there. Hashtags are super-duper important. But there are lots and lots of companies out there, every one of them has something different that they offer. And what we found was with the analytics with the ease of publishing, with the ease of hyper focusing Blubrry was the best program that we found. But if you just want to use your phone, which by the way, has got a really great microphone, and a lot of us have at least 1080P, if not 4k cameras, you can use, you know, that program that I just talked about, in fact, I got a, I just riverside.fm, I just downloaded that app and I'm going to start beta testing that for some of the stuff that we do on the road.
Josh Steimle:
Sure. Now, for the record, I'm using Zoom here to record this and I'm recording the video, I'm recording the audio. This is how I've done the first 50 or so episodes of the published author podcast. And Zooms let me down maybe once maybe twice here where we had some connection issues or something, but it's been really good for me. I know a lot of people love Zencastr. But there are lots of different software's out there. But the important thing is to have a good show more than the software, isn't it?
Matthew Halloran:
Absolutely. And we use Zoom for our clients just for ease of use. The nice thing about Zoom is you can split the audio track. So, Josh is recording remotely. I'm recording remotely, so it records both of those remotely, so that my post production team if there's somebody is mowing the lawn outside, right, when I'm not talking, they can edit that that sort of stuff out. But yeah, the format of the podcast is more important than the sound quality. You know, people get very fixated on the length of a podcast. Some people say, well, I want to do a less than 10-minute podcast. You know, research doesn't show that that's what people want. People want, you know, well, 27 minutes, that's, that's the ideal length for a podcast. And the reason for that is that's the average commute for a person in the States. People will generally listen to that in their quiet time. How do people don't have more than 30 minutes of quiet time, and they don't want to listen to three podcasts. And here's why. Because that means they're going to try to learn three things, right? So, three 10-minute podcast is a lot for me to consume. Whereas if I kind of dive a little bit deeper and I push 30 minutes, that's going to be a little bit more palatable to the audience specifically, but audio quality is something that people get fixated on. The number of downloads is something that people get fixated on. The equipment is something that people get fixated on. And I say you know what, you need to just freakin record and go for it. Have a good time and see where it goes.
Josh Steimle:
Yeah, these are all excuses to not start recording. That's what everybody's afraid of. Now you mentioned that you recommend people do interview shows the same way that we're doing it right now. It's two people talking back and forth. If I'm just starting a new podcast, how do I get good guests on my show?
Matthew Halloran:
You're going to be surprised, Josh. People love to be on podcast, dude. I mean, if you have a podcast and somebody asked you much like you and I did, we did a podcast swap. You are on my show. I'm on your show, right? You're going to find that this community is wildly passionate and wants to help other people out. Really, when you're first starting out. You need to just find a friend, somebody who knows you well, who can ask you some of the initial questions that you want, especially as an author, right? People don't want, they don't get to know your story very well, because it's not really that outlined in a book. But if somebody loves your book, they're going to love getting to know you. And so have somebody asks you questions much like Josh did at the beginning. Tell me your story. I start all of my podcasts off the same way. I have two later today. And I'm so excited. I love that question. I love finding out people's stories, find somebody who's inquisitive, who truly wants to know the answer to your questions and have that go back and forth. If you are an author, and you have a companion author in a different genre or in the same genre you are, you start a podcast yourself, right, with that other person, then you're going to gain access to their audience, they're going to gain access to your audience. And then, you know, rising tide lifts all boats with podcasts.
Josh Steimle:
So, the first episode should actually be somebody else interviewing you, the host of it. Now that should just be the first episode or could that be multiple of the first episode?
Matthew Halloran:
Well, I think it should be multiple. In fact, we've got a basically a five podcast system. So, your first five podcasts are really who are you, tell me your story, right? You're going to talk about what you do, right? So, really, what is the podcast about and why are you even doing this? The third one is really about your specialty, right? So, as an author, it would be really what is the Book about, then the fourth one is setting expectations for the listeners, who should really listen to this, what are you going to get out of this podcast? And then the fifth one in our system is when you're going to be you, as the owner of the podcast are going to interview one of your centers of influence, which gives you access to them. So, if you're an attorney, writing, you're starting a podcast, we want you to interview another attorney that you do a lot of business with, because what ends up happening is it's a 30-minute commercial about how awesome that other business that other attorney is. And you know, they're going to share that with their audience.
So, I think a lot of people, Josh, don't understand that. There's a huge business component to podcasting. It's a magnificent way to market your thought leadership and a way for you to grow your business, no matter what your business is. It's whether, you know, you're a writer, or you wrote a book to promote your business, that's really who we work with the best. I have a water company here in town, I live in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and they're going to start a podcast called Water is Life. And their whole podcast is going to be interviewing the owners of the company about not only what they do, but about how you can have clean water, because I don't know about you, dude, but I live in Michigan, we aren't known for having clean water here. You know, talking about the social events that they do and in lifestyle stuff, and we've got all of this documented out for them. And they're going to be using this as their major marketing tool, because it endears you to the product in the brand, right. It allows you as a salesperson to give something to somebody, right? Instead of handing somebody a book or making somebody buy a book because you know, some of the 24 bucks right or more, have them subscribe to your podcasts. It's just an easy opt in way to start building your audience.
Josh Steimle:
So, going back to this question of how do you get good guests on the show, I got to tell us a little story. So, I've been on over 100 podcasts as a guest, as a host I've also done over 100. But as a guest, I've been invited to be on more than 100 podcasts. I never think about how big the podcast is. Or I should say I mean, that doesn't determine whether I accept the invitation a lot or not. If I'm invited, I do it. And I've done podcasts where I showed up. And the host was a 17-year-old kid in Romania, recording on his iPhone, except that his iPhone broke and so he asked me if I could record the episode and then send the file to him. I mean, and I was like, sure, no problem. I was happy to do it. And I realized, you know, this kid's just getting started. But yeah, I want to be on his podcast, I want to help him out. And I've had people do that with me too. And I've been starting podcasts that I've been able to get big names on my podcast. And most of them never ask any of these questions. They don't ask about downloads. They don't ask about audience size. I have had a few who have done that. I think maybe two out of the 50 that I've done have asked that question. But most of them I mean, this includes bestselling authors, really famous people, and they don't care. They're just like, yeah, I want to be on a podcast. That'd be great. That'd be awesome. So, it really is not as hard as you think.
Matthew Halloran:
Never hurts to ask, I mean, what's the worst thing they can say, Josh, is no, right in. And I've been in, you know, a sales and business development position for quite a long time. I could say no to all time. But here's the thing is I'm going to go up to bat. And you and I, when we first met, I was looking through your, the people who you had podcast with. And you do have big freaking names. I mean, these are humongous authors. And when we talked, you said, I just asked them, right. And so I found that in financial services, I've gone up and asked the top three people who are the most famous in financial services, whether that's insurance or financial planning, stock markets, whatever, in two out of the three said, yes. And they didn't just say, yes, Josh, they were super excited about being on the show, because they get to talk about what they're passionate.
Just think about that, guys, you're giving somebody the opportunity to talk about something they're so passionate about, that this is their career, you're giving them an outlet and it's free marketing. I mean, come on, who doesn't like free marketing, just take it and ask, the first person I asked was a guy named Bill Good. Okay. Nobody else outside of financial services, probably going to know this guy. He is the guy who started real marketing and financial services like 40 years ago. Okay. He's old as Methuselah and he is hysterical. And I remember I was so nervous. I set up a call with him through his team, because, you know, he's got handlers and stuff. And I said, you know, hey, Bill, I'd really like for you to be on our podcast that we just started. He says, I don't care if you've started. I know what a podcast is. Are we going to start recording now? I was like, no, dude, you hold on a second here. I’m going to get you set up. And he's like, oh, my God, this is going to be so much fun. I’m like, oh my God, it’s freaking Bill Good, right. And so I've just carried that momentum, Josh, that that is what I do. I reach out to a lot of people on LinkedIn.
So, if we want to kind of make rubber meets the road here, going on LinkedIn, sending people connection requests and asking them if they would be interested to be a guest on the podcast is a great way to build your network. I even go on Facebook and ask my friends, right. So, I asked my friends. Here's another big win for me. I said, look, I'm looking to interview somebody who works at NPR, right. I want to talk about how NPR has moved to digital. They have all of these podcasts now. And I got somebody who I'm a huge fan of her name is Celeste Headley. She's just an unbelievable journalist. And because of one of my best friends has coffee with her every Sunday, she said yes and came on the show. So, just make a list. In fact, that's the second actionable item. So, first is write your list of 12 and then, so the 12 major topics for the 12 months and then two subtopics so that you have the 24 podcasts that we're recommending.
And then the second one is create a dream list man, or grab that piece of paper, write down, whoever you think would be the greatest person you could ever talk to and write their name down and then cast it out into the universe. Ask your friends, ask Twitter. Hey, does anybody know how I get in touch with Stephen King or whoever you want to try to get in touch with? And you never know, one of your friends might be Stephen King's frickin neighbor. And they go out and eat pizza every Saturday night and you have you're in, it never hurts to ask. They're going to say, you know, so many people say yes, just like you, Josh. I mean, dude, the lineup for this podcast has been, I mean, when I, when you asked me to be on after you were on my show, I was a little overwhelmed. Because I mean, you have some pretty amazing guests in the can here.
Josh Steimle:
Matt, you flatter me. But it's the other thing is even if people do ask how many downloads do you have? So, I just went through this with Chris Voss, Chris Voss wrote, never split the difference. One of the greatest books out there on negotiation, great business book, one of my favorite books. So, this guy is one of my heroes. This is one of the guys from like, oh, man, this would be a dream come true to interview, Chris Voss. And so I waited until I had a few episodes in the can, but I just reached out the other week. And I said, hey, I'd love to get Chris on the show. How do I do this? I had the, I got the email address of his assistant. And she wrote back and she said, we need to know how many downloads you have and all this stuff. And I was like, oh, man, this is where I lose it, right? Because they'll come back and say, you know, come back once you've grown a little bit and I'm like, kind of bummed out. But I just sent the info. In at this point, the published author podcast is not getting that many downloads, we just launched this four-months ago. It hasn't really gotten a lot of traffic. It's growing. It's progressing. But right now, it's still a small podcast. And so I thought, this isn't going to happen. But I sent the info in, a week later, I get an email back and it says here four times, choose your time. That's it. So, even when you have a small podcast and they ask those scary questions, you might still get them.
Matthew Halloran:
That's right. Well, you have the published author podcast, right. So, from a branding perspective, Josh, you were way ahead of the game, that's freaking brilliant. There's no question in the world what this podcast is about, right? So, you have published authors on your show, talking about pub being, you know, being an author and all of those things. We know who your ideal target market is, right, which are going to be other authors or people who want to write books. And guess what, I'm sure that his team knew that a lot of the people are going to end up buying his book about negotiation are probably people who are in the business world and all of that stuff, he's going to sell books for being on your show, brother, it doesn't matter if he sells 100 books or 10,000 books, he still gained greater exposure.
And here's the thing that a lot of people don't understand. Podcasts live as long as you want them to live. So, anytime and this is what we, this is what's happened with us. And we found out that we're a little bit anomalous is, we'll get, you know, a couple, 300, 500 downloads immediately to our podcast. But since our company's Canadian and hockey is normal conversation, we it's like a hockey stick, right? So, it starts strong and drops down. But then what ends up happening is it starts growing over time, because when people listen to episode number 295, and they're like, wow, this is a lot of fun, guess what they do? They go back and they listen to the other ones, right? They'll look to the titles, and they'll say, oh, my gosh, that's the guy who wrote that book on negotiation. Bam, I want to listen to that. And so podcasting is an ever present and omnipresent way for you to be there. And again, the same time that people sit down and listen or they read a book, right.
So, in their quiet time, they're generally at home. That's when people listen to podcasts, I want you to all think about this. When is the last time that your ideal client or prospect of client invited you into their home in their quiet time? And that's the power of podcasting. It's also the power of writing a book. But the book is finite, right? So, you've got, you know, 300 pages, 200 pages, I think my books like 230 pages. So, when they get done with the 230th page, and they close the book, what most people do is they put the book on the shelf, right? We're 300 podcasts in and the top advisor marketing podcast. They know that in another week, another one's going to come out and it allows me to continue that relationship. Here's the reason why I really wanted to be on the show one because I like you, I think you have a great system. But the other reason is, is because I, so there are a couple of authors that I like. I would love to get to know them better, right? I would love to have them have their own podcast. I would love to hear how they came up with the characters. I would love to hear, you know, how much research did they do? How did they storyboard it out? You know, all of those sorts of things.
To me, that is where the real magic happens when it comes to giving your book longevity in building a relationship with other people. I'm actually trying to find the name of this, this author, okay, so one of them, it's called Joyful Wisdom. This is about a Buddhist monk who is a meditation prodigy. And so I listened to the book on tape because I happen to really enjoy that course what they don't call it, what do they call it now? Download –
Josh Steimle:
Audio books?
Matthew Halloran:
Audio book. There you go. See, I'm so old, I still call it a book on tape. But he has been interviewed on a whole bunch of different podcasts. And he was absolutely fantastic. You know, I love, love, love the opportunity to find other things like where, where is it? This is terrible, because it's going to drive me crazy until I find it.
Josh Steimle:
Take your time, we can edit this.
Matthew Halloran:
Yeah, I know, I appreciate that. Okay. An author named Christopher Moore. Okay, so he's, he wrote A Dirty Job and Secondhand Souls. And I'm reading Secondhand Souls right now, which is just fascinating. And when I wrote my book, I wrote obviously a nonfiction book, which is boring. I totally get that right. But his character development is insane. And I can't imagine being able to subscribe to his podcast, not only find out about his previous books, what's in the pipeline? You know, I want to know and by the way, he's published a number of books. And it just, I would feel so much more connected and allow my giddiness as a fan to be expressed a little bit more if I was able to have each author that I love if they had their own podcast.
Josh Steimle:
For sure. Well, I hope we get some more signed up after this. Now as we wrap things up, let's talk a little bit more about leveraging a podcast for your benefit as an author, how can authors make sure that the podcast is working for them rather than that they are working for the podcast. And I want to talk specifically about the tip you gave me the mistake that I made with my podcast, which we're now in the process of fixing.
Matthew Halloran:
What works? What tip did I give you? Hold on. You rewind here, brother.
Josh Steimle:
Remember? So, with my podcast, because you were looking at my podcast and I was saying it, you know what, I'm not getting the leads from the podcast that I thought I would be getting, I thought I would be getting more leads from it for the published author programs. And you listened to a couple episodes and you came back and you said, I know exactly what you're not doing and it's a super easy fix. And it was I’ll let you tell it.
Matthew Halloran:
Yeah, call to action, right. So, that's the kicker is I was listening to the podcast, I was so, I love the interview, you're a great interviewer. And then at the end of the podcast, it just kind of petered out. I'm like, dude, you've got great real estate here, you need to use it. And that's where the podcast works for you, your call to action, especially as an author. So, let's break down some of the great things about being an author. Number one, the podcast call to action can be by my book, right? Pre order my new book, which is fantastic by the way. And I know that's part of some systems that you have in place. You know, give me feedback on characters, what characters do you love? So, then all of a sudden, I'm starting to get engagement, every single solitary author out there needs to have their own LinkedIn group and they need to have their own Facebook group, you have to have your own Facebook group. If you're really super techie, have your own discord group, have your own subreddit, right.
These are things that are just fantastic, because then you're going to start attracting your ideal listener and your ideal, you know, consumer of being an author in your books. The other thing that you need to do is, you need to have some sort of upsell opportunity, and now it's going to sound very salesy. And you guys can all delete this if you don't want to hear this, because I know that there are many authors who write books for art and I fully support that. And I think more people should do that. But even if you're an artist, you have to have money to live. So, why not take advantage of people who love you, who've opted into your marketing. What are you going to try to get them to do next? Maybe you're going to do a workshop or writing workshop, right. Maybe you're going to do book signings, right, which is fantastic. Podcasting is a great way to talk about, hey, I'm going to be in Seattle at bookstore blankety blank, there is a great call to action, right? Buying my book, subscribing to something, right, you can even do that. Now, Apple's got premium podcasts now, which means that you can charge for your podcast, it's another great way to have passive income coming in, but you have to utilize that call to action. Make sure that you're passionate about the call to action and it's an actionable call to action. It can't just be, you know, subscribe to my podcast, because most of the people have already subscribed to your podcast, needs to be the next level. Did that answer the question?
Josh Steimle:
Yeah, perfect. Another thing you told me is not just the call to action at the end, but also in the middle of the podcast is splitting it into halves and having that part halfway through, right. Now, what's the difference between having a call to action at the end and having a call to action in the middle? I mean, what's the performative or what's the difference in results that you could expect to see?
Matthew Halloran:
Well, because mid-roll people aren't expecting it. And this is, again, a very powerful influence technique. If I've got you for seven to 15 minutes, in what we're finding, research has shown that people will listen to every word of a mid-roll ad, right? So, you know, hey, we're going to take a quick commercial break here, you can even say that, by the way, that's totally acceptable in the world of podcasting. And then maybe, Josh, you're the one doing the commercial, a lot of times we'll have in our company, we’ll have a pre-recorded pre roll, so that we will go ahead and put it in there, so that our client doesn't have to read one live. But they're going to listen to the whole freaking thing. And then your call to action at the end, usually supports the mid-roll, right? And so you know, just to remind everybody, I know that you heard this in the middle of the podcast, but you know, if you'd like to subscribe to, you know, our mailing list, again, there's another great call to action. If you want to download our, the first five chapters of the new book, right, here you go, here's a way to do that. But that's really the best way to continue. There needs to be continuity between mid-roll and the enroll commercial, because you really have the real estate in the buy in for one strong ask. So, I'm going to ask in the middle and then I'm going to ask at the end just to reinforce my mid-roll.
Josh Steimle:
Awesome. All right. So, for those who are listening, there are at least three big takeaways from this episode. The first was take your book outline, turn that into a bunch of episodes. The second one was in my mind just went blank. What was the second one, it was, oh, interview people rather than doing your stand –
Matthew Halloran:
Yeah, your wish list.
Josh Steimle:
Yeah. You should interview other people, not just go it alone. And then the third one is you got to have a call to action in the episode. And preferably not just at the end when people might just be like, alright, on to the next one. Are there any other major tips that authors should be aware of when it comes to starting a podcast? I guess one other tip was just get started, just do it. But other than those, is there anything else that we didn't cover that you think is an important point for authors to understand about podcasting and leveraging a podcast?
Matthew Halloran:
I think I would actually go to the performance side. So, this might not be where you thought I was going to go. But one of the things that we offer in our program is coaching, right. So, we review much like I did with you, I review podcasts, I tell you, you know, some of the things that you can do to get better, because as a performer, I want feedback, right. So, the first thing that I think is really, really important that everybody needs to do, whether you're podcasting, your public speaking, is you got to learn how to breathe, many people don't breathe correctly. And when you're podcasting, if you don't breathe from your diaphragm, you're going to run out of air at the end of your sentences. And it actually comes across as you being less confident. So, there's number one. Number two, find out what your go to words are. It could be, ah, um, oh, so you know, I had a woman who said in what not 75 times in a 35-minute podcast, she had no idea she did it until I played it back for her. Now mind you, it wasn't a 35-minute podcast, after we got done in post-production, because that took off four minutes.
Josh Steimle:
Four minutes of whatnot.
Matthew Halloran:
Whatnot was brutal. Listen to yourself and always try to get better. There's a Japanese principle called Kaizen. And this is one of our company values here ProudMouth. It's continuous, gradual, continuous improvement. No matter if you're a writer and you want to get better at writing. If you're a podcaster, you want to get better, just go back review yourself, make sure that you're consistently finding ways to improve. Listen to this podcast, you're going to listen to this podcast and you're going to hear another author speak and say something that is going to fundamentally change the way that you write your next book or how you attack the marketing of your next book or even maybe the topic or organization of the next book. When you listen to this, you know, that you're going to get some gold, right. You want to have three to five major points, much like we had today, right. I come to these podcasts with generally three major talking points. And I want them to be actionable. It's not hire me, because I know I might not be the fit for anybody. But I want to give you enough value so that when you listen to the end, so that you can listen to Josh pitch, because he's supposed to because he's got the real estate to do it. But to all I want to do is add value, and that's what most podcasters want to do.
Josh Steimle:
Perfect. Thanks so much, Matt. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about you and more about ProudMouth?
Matthew Halloran:
Well, proudmouth.com is the website. But I'm wildly active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the best place. If you literally send me a connection request. As long as you don't try to sell me something within the first message. I'm going to connect with you. We're also on Facebook. We have an Instagram account. We're on Twitch. We've got a whole bunch of different places, but really LinkedIn and our website, we the two best places to go.
Josh Steimle:
Perfect. Thanks so much, Matt for being on the podcast today.
Matthew Halloran:
It was an honor dude. Thanks, brother.
