IAM1477 – 3 Tips for Starting a Podcast

Building your own media company through Podcasting

1. Having a Goal – to let your audience know, what to expect in your episodes. Constructing the flow of the podcast with guided questions in the form of conversation.

2. Batching – consistently do the podcast, by setting a time and day and batch them. It will set your energy and increase your level of expertise.

3. Authority Positioning – not as the bread and butter but to support your main business that can create a funnel of potential clients.

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Transcription

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00:27 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:54 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. And I actually am doing a very special episode. But before I jump into that episode, I actually wanted to give a little shout-out to 2 people. I actually got a connection through Lee Eisenstadt, who's actually been on the podcast twice, which has a group that I'm also a part of called Leading with Courage Networking. Also, he introduced me to a person and his name is Barry Moline, who hopefully is going to be a guest on the show, but also has a podcast as an author, and is the author of a book called Connect, How to Win, how to Quickly Collaborate for success in business and life. And also as a host of the podcast Leadership Secrets.

So the reason that I want to actually bring up, you know, both of them is because a lot of times Steve Jobs has this quote where sometimes you can't align. I can't understand why things, you know, happen in life, whether there be connections or events or things like that, until you look backward, and you start to connect those dots looking backward. So the reason I bring all this up is because I had a conversation with Barry and we talked a little bit about him coming on the show. We spent most of it actually on him, kind of revealing to me some things that had already been talked about, been heard multiple times. So it wasn't as if it was the first time that I heard it, but I think it was just sometimes the right time that you hear the things that you need to hear.

So one of the things that I'm gonna talk about during this episode and in the episode that will come after this is gonna be potentially some seeds planted for some talks, maybe a book, just different things that might come about from this. But what I've been able to do and accomplish with the Lord's Blessing, first and foremost, but also with some definitely a lot of help from people being on the show and our team as a whole, as a crew, lots and lots of lessons, nuggets, hacks, stories, just so much, you know, content and information from doing these interviews.

So with that being said, I wanted to build the foundation for maybe some podcast tips, maybe podcast tips if you're a podcaster, some things that I've learned from the podcast, just as a general business lesson, and some of those episodes that you can kind of go back to, to kind of understand.

So this episode is going to be specifically if you're thinking about starting a podcast, I will call this building your own media company. And if you go to you are a media company, you are a media company, you will see that I talk a lot around building your own media company and the great opportunity that is, and that is essentially like having your own podcast and being able to kind of leverage that. But I also want to touch on and mention that you also can be on other media companies. You can also be on people's podcasts. You can be on their Facebook Live, their IG Live, whatever it might be. But just, you know, you can get on Clubhouse and have a conversation there.

And there is a tremendous opportunity from being able to kind of leverage, you know, the tools that people have, the audiences that people have, to be able to bring your audience, to connect with them. So don't forget that as much as it is sometimes sexy and sometimes exciting to build your own media company, you also can hop on others. But there are 3 things that I wanna kind of touch on that are gonna be hopefully nuggets for you if you're thinking about starting and launching a podcast. one of the biggest things that I talk about is having a goal. That's going to be number one. Having a goal is going to be so important for building a podcast. And the reason that I say that is because podcasting people may not realize can Be your business.

And I think that's one of the big things that, you know, you have these really huge, massive followings that come from the podcast. Typically, the following ends up becoming a business in and of itself. So it's not just like, hey, I have a podcast, hey, I'm just talking. It's the amount of traffic, the number of downloads, and the number of people that you're engaging with that ends up becoming the business, which does become the engine that actually helps to fund the podcast. But one of the number one things I talk about is having a goal. And it sounds so simple. I actually just finished recording a podcast and we talked a little bit about Alice in Wonderland and how if you don't have a goal if you don't or are confused about which lane to take, which road to take, it's not gonna matter if you don't have a goal.

The reason that I bring this up is because I, for one, started my podcast, the CEO Chat podcast, as a podcast that was pretty much a recording of the interviews I was doing for freelance writing and, what eventually became the blog CEO blog nation at that time. I would take those interviews that are recorded and I put an intro and outro there. Very, very raw, very, very, you know, unpolished is the best way to say it and that ended up becoming the podcast, the CEO chat podcast, the beginning episodes, and it quickly kind of evolved from there. But when I started this I AM CEO podcast, it was very, very strategic to do two things. One, the digital marketing company to provide an opportunity for myself to potentially generate some business, some opportunities from having website audits that we do for everybody that's on the show.

Everybody gets a website audit just to kind of see exactly what might be some gaps and opportunities, especially from an SEO perspective. But the other big thing and the reason that I started the podcast is because I was stretched. I was doing way too many things. I was on boards, I was going to networking meetings, I was in this group and that group. This was prior to the pandemic. I literally didn't have a lot of energy and I always knew that if I wanted to add on anything else in my life, you know, it was going to have to be as a result of creating space for that to happen. So what I did was basically take a step back from all the networking, all the groups, all the boards, all these things that I was a part of.

And I wanted to be a lot more strategic about the things that I was doing. I wanted to, you know, really make a way for myself to use my Zona genius and hopefully make an impact on people. So that's where the idea for the podcast came from. So I took the CEO Chat podcast and said, hey, these are really valuable questions that I want to try to cover. I took 6 or so of the best questions that I could have, but I also wanted to have a little bit of a scripted podcast. So whenever you do a podcast, you might send the questions. Once you send the questions and you get feedback and then it goes back and forth, it turns into this really long kind of cycle that can happen.

And doing a daily podcast, it's not going to say it can't happen, it just becomes more of a challenge if you're trying to do something else. If you have this complimenting or supporting something else, or you potentially are doing it as a side hustle, it could be a lot to try to do a daily podcast and have unique questions every single episode. But I also think it creates a really big, opportunity for people to know what is coming from the episode. So I think that is one of the reasons that you want to have that goal because my goal was really to use the podcast as a potential way to network and maybe generate some opportunities for my digital marketing business. Those were 2 goals at the forefront that kind of set up each of the steps.

So I was like, okay, these are the best questions. These questions overlap a little bit. So it's going to allow it to be more of a conversation. So let me take those steps in terms of constructing this podcast, but also constructing the flow of the podcast and what we're gonna follow. So that's one of the big things that you wanna kind of keep in mind, make sure you have a goal for the podcast. Number 2, batch, batch, and batch again.

One of the things that I didn't do, but I did for the previous podcast, for the CEO Chat podcast, is that I just kind of set times whenever to do the interviews. Again, going back to the goal and having the strategy, you know, along with that, the reason that batching was such a big thing is because it's, there's a lot of science around understanding that when you're doing things over and over again, you get better at it, you get in a flow.

If it's podcast interviews, I have them on Monday afternoon, most of the day, and Friday. These were also my office days and still are my office days to some degree. But what it does is allow you to have that energy that's put towards whatever you're specifically doing. So while I had the opportunity to. Be strategic about the podcast as a whole, it also translated and manifests itself into batching. So I had podcasts, basically, at some point, I would end up doing maybe like 13 or so podcasts in a week when I was really like back to back to back with doing the podcast. I'm not doing as many, you know, in a week because I've started to, you know, take, you know, more priority in other places. But the point was I had the podcast back to back to back to back to back.

I had some gaps in between now. But the important thing was this energy was spent on the podcast. I did things here and there in between, but the podcast was a really big part of that. So make sure you batch your podcast. That's one of the biggest things that I could say. Pick a day, pick a time. This is a time you can have it. You have your scheduling link, set up that time to be blocked off just specifically for podcasts, and figure out what works best for you related to that. So the third thing that I kind of alluded to as well too is my big recommendation is to have some type of business or some way that you're going to be funding the podcast as, and especially if you're going to be launching it. one of the best reasons to start a podcast is authority positioning.

It's not necessarily to have it set up in a way that your podcast is going to be your primary breadwinner, it's usually that you have a primary breadwinner and your podcast becomes a way for you to submit and showcase your authority, your expertise, your knowledge, and potentially have guests that you can network and collaborate with or that have an opportunity for you to be able to have and showcase your audience, but also maybe help out your audience in a different way than the services that you provide. But I would say definitely if you have a business and can find a way for your podcast to support that, make sure you definitely do that. Cause I think that's something that's, you know, underrated as well. But hopefully, that's super helpful.

This is Gresh signing out. I won't go into, you know, all the, you know, things that I do and things that I'm juggling, but hopefully these 3 things will be really great tips for you and your podcast. If you need any help and support, please check us out at help, the number 4 podcast.com, or help for podcast.com. And you'll see that there are lots of other resources there. But again, just to reiterate, have a goal, make sure you batch, batch, and batch again. And of course, have a business that you can use your podcast that your podcast can support. So have a phenomenal rest of the day.

12:53 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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