E002 – Why You Should Start a Podcast Today

In this episode, we’ll discuss why I started a podcast and why you should start a podcast today. You’ve probably noticed that podcasts are blowing up. Every celebrity and average joe is starting a podcast like they’re going out of style. What you may not know is why. In this episode, we dive into that and more.

First, because we are dependent on audio devices more and more each day, think Alexa, Siri, and Google assistant. Second, big businesses like Apple, Google, and Spotify are all battling to have the best podcast creators on their platforms so they can sell more ads and subscriptions. So, why should you miss this wave of massive content creation and platform adoption? You shouldn’t, and in this episode, we dive into that and more.Enjoy, and thanks for listening!This podcast and my new book, Advancing Possibilities, are my way of answering many of the most common questions entrepreneurs have, with the hope that they can avoid some of the pitfalls we all encounter on this journey and take advantage of the massive opportunities that are greater now than ever before.Topics Discussed: 

• Why I started a podcast and you should too
• Why content is king and always will be
• Podcasts can create unimaginable opportunities
• Charging what you’re worth
• Podcasts are just starting to capture mainstream attention
• Consistency is the key to success
• Advertising is making podcasts a billion-dollar industry
• Podcasters are now making 6 and 7 figures
• And much, much more!

 

So I started a podcast, and the reason why I started a podcast is that content is king and always will be. If you go back to the very beginning of man, we’ve always shared content. And the way that we shared that content was through language and through stories. So this has been going on for thousands of years. Today we have the ability and the technology to share our content across the world and archive it for generations.

At no other time in human history has content been so powerful and so pervasive or had the capacity to be so longstanding. You have books, which can be passed on from generation to generation. Hundreds of years later, people can still read these books, capture these ideas, and learn from these stories.

However, for that to occur though you had to be literate, you also had to be someone who had outstanding ideas or their ability to tell stories, things like that. But nowadays, it’s anyone. You have a phone in your hand, and you just start recording your voice.

You record your ideas, or if you’re blogging, you type out your ideas, tapping away on your phone, your tablet, your computer, whatever the case may be. And so content is king. It’s not going anywhere. I think it’s always going to be a huge part of human interaction.

There are technologies now where they’re thinking of trying to link up all of our brains and give us some kind of hive mind, but that’s neither here nor there. I don’t really give too much credence to that. What I do know is I created my podcast and this site because I wanted to talk to you.

I wanted to share my thoughts, my insights, my knowledge, and my experience, and hopefully help you in some way. Whether it’s with some idea or with a strategy or a tactic to improve your life, improve your business, and improve your outlook.

So that’s what my podcast is about. It’s me sharing my thoughts with you. And so hopefully, people will find it and take the time to share their thoughts with me. That’s where relationships and friendships are formed, acquaintances and things like that. That opens doors and those present opportunities that right now at this very moment, while I record, I can’t imagine what they might be.

For example, my son is a basketball player. When I was young, I played football and basketball. I love sports, and I passed that onto my sons. I did some boxing, and so I have one son who’s very involved in boxing. I have another son who’s into basketball, and I’ve always been a computer nerd, so my oldest is also a computer nerd.

It’s fascinating to see these little pieces of me manifest themselves in my sons. Anyway, my son, who’s a basketball player, is serious about getting to a division one college and playing basketball. He wants to pay for his schooling through his athletic ability.

I teach my kids that college is a game and somebody has to pay for the game. So you can go, and you can pay for college and get an education. In my opinion, the quality varies based on what career you choose, where you choose to study, and how much effort you put forth to get the maximum return on your investment.

At the same time, you have opportunities and possibilities to go where you want if you are academically outstanding. If you are athletically gifted, they will pay you to attend their college. Then, you get a high return on investment by getting a degree, hopefully in something that will get you a job when you get out.

We know many people go to college and never work in the field they studied, or they have a hard time earning a living. But that’s a topic for another day. I taught that to my kids, and it’s very much his goal to let his athletics pay for his schooling. He could also do it with academics cause he’s a straight-A student. All that to say that I observed him playing in his junior high school and high school games, and I realized that had taken him as far as I could.

I coached him up to the point where he’s playing, and he is starting on his team, but we needed him to go to that next level. So we started to look for personal trainers. We started to look for coaches because the coaches who were teaching his teams have a lot going on. So they just weren’t available to give him the personal attention I felt that he needed.

We found a website that promotes coaches, and we found a coach. We looked through some profiles, picked a coach, and it turned out to be a great coach. Shout out to coach Kirby.

We started to get some lessons in with this coach. Now, this man is a professional basketball coach. He’s highly skilled. His knowledge of the game and how to train someone to play this game are so far beyond what I ever could have imagined knowing. He’s truly phenomenal.

I knew this the very first day that we had our introductory lesson with him. The introductory lesson was about a hundred bucks for the first hour. It’s pricey because personal attention is going to be pricey. After all, you are consuming all the time that person has for that hour. They have to justify giving you that hour and charging a fair wage for it. I completely understand, and I teach that to my students. You can’t undervalue what you do. There are always people out there who will be willing to pay you what you’re worth, if not more.

Most of us have the tendency to undervalue our own abilities. This gentleman is charging a fair wage for a very good product. While I’m sitting there, 20 minutes into the lesson, I’m thinking to myself, this is the best hundred dollars I think I’ve ever spent. Because it wasn’t just watching him, impart his knowledge to my son. It also gave me a clearer understanding of what I watch on TV and what I watch at the park. When guys who play on a high level are playing.

Seeing all those moves that he demonstrated and understanding the why behind the moves was eye-opening. For instance, pushing off with the side of your arm to give yourself some space between you and your defender with getting a foul called, etc. All that to say, his ability to share his knowledge was amazing. It led me to think, how come he doesn’t have content all over the web? I can’t find him on YouTube, and I don’t see him with a course.

As time went on, we developed a friendship, and I told him, listen, what I do in digital marketing. I create courses. I coach people. I teach people things. You need to be doing the same thing. The first time that I came at him with that, it didn’t really penetrate like his mind was set on a different business venture that he has, which is also a very promising venture.

But the second time I came at him with the idea, we talked, it connected, and it clicked. He was like, “Wow. Yes. This is something that we need to pursue.” What I want to say to you with all of that is. You never know what is out there waiting for you because now we’re looking to build a training course together. He’ll do the coaching and the training, and I’ll do the marketing for him.

This shows just how possibilities work. Searching for a coach for my son led to me establishing a relationship with this gentleman. This then led to us partnering up and creating something new that will help kids get the same type of coaching my son gets at a better cost because we are offering it online. What I’m trying to say is you never know what doors are waiting to be opened until you allow yourself to discover them. So my podcast and your podcast, should you decide to create one, are opportunity generators.

It’s like a machine. Every time you put out a new piece of content, whether it’s a podcast, a video, or a blog post, it increases your chances that someone will find it, vibe with it, and say, “I need to communicate with this person. I need this person’s help.” That is one of the main reasons I decided to create my podcast because it is an opportunity generator.

The other reason is Podcasts are in their early stages. I’ve told my clients and students for the better part of eight or nine years that they need to create a podcast. I was telling people that they needed a podcast for their business. Long before podcasts were popular. I have a knack for seeing when something is going to take off, and I could see it long ago. I could see that podcasts were going to be huge.

I’m talking about when Joe Rogan was just getting started, and people didn’t even know about his podcast. It was a completely nascent industry. The craziest part is I always came up with excuses as to why I hadn’t started my own.

I’m starting my podcast now in 2020 when I really should have started it back in 2010, but that’s neither here nor there because when 2030 comes around, I’m going to be 10 years in with my podcast. The key to success is consistency. People who can tough it out and do something consistently for a good amount of time will generally see their dreams realized.

When you get to know the stories of successful people, they usually spent time perfecting their craft and developing a following. They usually can feed themselves with that alone. So, podcasting is still in its early stages, and now you have every celebrity and their mother who wants to put up a podcast.

Add to that the corporate entities like Spotify, Audible, and other billion-dollar companies trying to buy up every popular podcast they can get their hands on. People who, for the most part, just started recording in their kitchen or their garage. They’re buying these shows for millions of dollars to bring these creators over to their platforms.

Why are they doing this? Because they know that this is going to be a billion-dollar industry. I’m sure you’ve noticed that there are ads whenever you listen to most podcasts. Maybe you remember, back around 1996, when Google first started. You used Google, and it was just a search engine. You did your search, and there was nothing else to it. Today you do your search, and you have to wade through a ton of ads.

I’ve been doing SEO for years, so I saw that evolution first hand. It went from some ads, but the first place ranking was important. Then the first place ranking got pushed further down the page to allow for more ads.Now the first place ranking is near the bottom of the page because it’s all filled with ads.

The same thing will happen with any medium that provides content. The search engine is providing you with content. It’s giving you a list of all the content you can choose from. So in front of that list, they’re putting their advertisements. The same thing is happening with podcasts. The same thing happened with YouTube. If you remember back to 2005, when YouTube first started, you didn’t have ads all over the place. You just watched all the cat videos you wanted to. Now, every time you watch a video, you have to deal with ads, or as I do, you have to pay for the premium service. To not get any ads.

That is why podcasting, just like all of these other content mediums, will also be a billion-dollar industry. Because in this day and age, advertising is a big part of sharing content. That means that when you create a podcast and build up an audience to a certain size, you can now go out and talk to local businesses. You can find brokers who will get you, advertisers, or you can go out and talk to large advertisers on your own, depending on your audience’s size.

Companies are willing to pay you to promote their products. Your audience is worth money to you and the advertisers. You can literally make six and seven figures off of your podcasts. I know that for a fact because I know people who are doing it.

That’s another reason to start a podcast. Today the only people who might be listening to this are my cat and my mom. But tomorrow, in the near future, when I’m at episode number 1500, there will be thousands of people who listen to my podcast. That means that they’ll want to go listen to my back catalog and see where I started out.

Right now, people can listen to my first few episodes, and there are no ads, but in the future, there probably will be because that is a source of income. The key is to keep your ads congruent. Things that are related to your audience and that you truly feel can be of benefit to them. You don’t want to advertise garbage, and I would never do that. But my point is, it’s an industry that is growing, and it’s an industry that you can still get in on in the early stages.

It’s just like the whole cryptocurrency thing; people think that’s reached its peak. That’s nowhere near its peak. You’re going to see that grow in the same way you’re going to see podcasting grow, along with a bunch of other technologies. Look at how big TikTok got, and that just came out. I know it was around as Musically and all that kind of stuff, but it wasn’t the household name that it is today. Imagine where’s it going to be five years from now. You know something is important when the US government is trying to shut it down and doesn’t. That means that it’s has a pretty good trajectory in front of it.

Finally, the last thing that I want to leave you with is the idea that if you’re building any kind of a business, the best thing to build today since we live in an age where code runs our world is software and media. With programming, you can build just about anything. With media, you can create ideas out of nothing and revolutionize the world.

We’ve seen that now in many different industries. So what does that have to do with someone who normally would have had a mom and pop shop? What does that do for the person who doesn’t want to go to college or doesn’t want to serve in the military and doesn’t know where they want to go career-wise?

I say build a media company. Why? Because to build a media company, all you need is your phone. Everybody has a mobile phone these days. It’s a necessity for regular things like signing up for stuff and joining schools, companies, etc. You have to receive security code text messages and emails or scan QR codes. All of that requires you to have some type of device. Generally, everybody has a phone.

With that, you can record video. You can record audio. You can type out text to your heart’s content. All of those things are just forms of media. They’re all formats for sharing content. So if you start to share content, whatever thoughts you may have, whatever you want to create. Whatever you want to express, you can build that out with the end in mind.

Let’s say you want to have the next big shoe company. Okay, great. To create a podcast, video channel, or blog, maybe all three. There are ways to just do one and then leverage it for the other platforms. We can talk about that more in-depth later. Gary Vee shows you how to do those things. He’s got a whole PDF about it. Look it up. My point is you start with the end in mind.

So let’s say you want to be the next big shoe mogul. You get on your phone, and you start talking about shoes. You start talking about that sneaker that you think is really cool. Cause there’s a ton of sneakerheads out there. That’s a whole subculture now, and it’s a prosperous one because it just so happens that lots of millionaires and celebrities are really big sneakerheads.

So if you start to share your knowledge, you don’t even have to have that much experience. You just have to have an opinion and not be afraid to share it. Talk about shoes and about what you think of them. What’s good about them. How to make them better or more stylish, whatever the case may be.

As time goes on, you’re going to build an audience. If you can share some of your original ideas, along with your opinion, you’re going to start to connect with people. Especially if you create new content every day. Once you have an audience of a certain size. Now you can go talk to the marketing guys at different shoe companies. Now you can talk to the different up and coming designers out there in the sneakerhead world.

Before you know it, you will find people willing to finance you to create the next sneaker startup. You continue with that content, and you continue giving your brand exposure, and who knows, maybe you will be that next sneaker mogul. This has been done already, and it will happen again, and content will play a huge part in it.

If you ever look at the creator of FUBU Daymond John on shark tank, he’s already laid out the framework for you. Go back, read his history, learn how he did it. P Diddy Also did it. Jay Z also did it. It’s a long list of all the people who have accomplished this.

What was the key that they all used? It was the exposure. It was the branding around them. The number one case study that I would look at is how Kanye West created his brand. Now he’s a billionaire, so it’s doable. The way that you do it is by establishing yourself as a media company.

First, you create media. You create content. Then you surround that content with products over time. You can do consulting, you can do design, you can do all sorts of things around that core idea that this is a media company. We create content first, and then we sell products to the audiences that the media builds for us.

Ultimately, I want to inspire you to start your own podcast today. Just pick up your phone or grab a mic, or talk into your laptop, whatever the case may be. It doesn’t have to be beautiful. Once you get past episode number 50, you’ll start to hit your stride. It’ll start to be smoother. By episode 50, your real voice will start to come out because you’ll now be at a place where you’re much more comfortable doing it.

That’s around the same time that people will actually start to discover you. Russell Brunson gives a really good example because he started his podcast in his car. At that time, he had to do it that way, so he did. What wound up happening is that he just kept creating content for a number of years without checking his stats. Why? Because he knew that if he saw that his stats were small or non-existent, he would get uninspired, he would lose his wind, and he wouldn’t want to continue.

He ignored his stats, and I recommend that you do the same. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to create my content and just keep putting it out there. Then maybe a year from now, I’ll start looking at some stats. You might say, “hang on for a year?” but you have to get off of the “I need this today” mindset.

If you need money today, you need to go get a job. If you have a job, you need to hold onto that job for the next year. Because you should never try to build your business or start a business venture of any sort hoping that it’s going to give you money today.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Most great things in our world. We’re not built overnight. You should always provide for yourself separately from your business ventures because your venture will take a hit for it. Your venture will take the hit from you making poor decisions because you’re trying to get money or putting out poor quality because you’re preoccupied with money.

So you should go out, and just get yourself a job. Work your venture without it being connected to your income. Then once you’ve hit your stride, and you know exactly where you’re going and how you’re getting there, eventually, you’ll get to the point where you no longer need the job.

That’s my best advice. I hope this was valuable for you. I hope that it’s something that causes you to think and inspires you. If you have questions, leave them in the comments. That’s why I’m creating this. To help and connect with people like you. Have a blessed day, and I’ll talk to you soon.