Full show notes for this episode can be found at https://jakehower.com/setting-up-your-own-podcast-show-with-terry-lin/

In this episode, we're speaking with Terry

Lynn from buildmyonlinestore.

com, which is a podcast for e commerce store owners and aspiring store owners.

Now we've had a couple of podcasters on the show already in Dan Andrews,

Tim Reed, and a few others.

But what we haven't done is broken down how you can go about setting up your own.

So Terry's been podcasting for a few months now and he's built

up quite a good following.

So we're going to have a chat and really bounce a few ideas off each other about

how you can go about setting up your own podcast and successfully promoting it

and building your own audience as well.

So I hope you enjoy this interview.

Let's go off and get straight into it right now.

Terry, how are you?

How's it going?

Jake?

Fantastic.

And I'm so glad to get you on the episode today.

You're a fellow podcaster and you've been going for, would it

be just under a year now, is it?

No, probably only about six months or so.

I started in May of 2012 and now it's January.

So I had stopped for a month while so net, probably six months.

That's

great.

Now, in our previous episodes, we've had a couple of other podcasters on.

We've had mainly, we had Dan Andrews talking about podcasting and then Tim

Reid from small business, big marketing, talking about podcasting as well.

Now, what I'd like to do for our listeners is really dig deep

into how you go about setting up.

And starting your own podcast.

I don't feel we've gone deep enough into that and what I want our listeners to

be able to do is really basically follow along guide to actually podcasting.

And I think given that you're relatively new to podcasting,

you've probably got some great tips to share with the audience.

Yeah, certainly.

Let's get into it.

All right.

So just before we get into it for the listeners out there who don't know who

you are, Terry, why don't you give us a little bit about your background?

Sure.

So I first got into podcasts probably around early 2000s.

I'm a big electronic music nerd.

And back then you had these people who would record live sets.

They would go to a trans concert and they would record like

Tiesto for like hour and a half.

And so that's how I first found podcasting and then so sometime

around last year I was at a day job.

I'm still at a day job now.

And I realized, building a business like Dan said is really the best way

to create more opportunity and freedom and to give a lifestyle that you want.

And so I sent him an email with a couple ideas and then he was giving

people basically yes or no ideas in terms of if they were dead on arrival.

And one of the ideas was in the e commerce realm.

And then I went with that and then somehow ended up.

Interviewing people that run e commerce stores.

And so the idea came from this a little bit because I listened to

a mixture g a couple of times and mixture g is very tech focused.

You have the startup guys.

You have people that do SAS software is all over the place.

And so I thought, okay, if Andrew Warren could take this model and make

it so big, why can't I just focus it on something more narrow, like

e commerce that still has a lot of room for growth in the future too.

And so you also see a lot of Podcasts online about making money online and

I didn't really want to get into that.

E commerce is like a tangent off that.

And so that's where I started off.

And so the show basically interviews people that run e commerce stores.

So I either find them on blogs like Shopify, big commerce.

These are the big SAS kind of platforms that you can start a store on.

And then I'm also gone on to the shark tank.

I don't know if you guys get that in Australia, but it's a

big us show where people go.

Pitch people like Mark Cuban Barbara Corcoran to invest in their startup.

And so I do follow up interviews with probably about three of them right now.

And so basically it's, I ask people how they built their stores, what

troubles they ran into and what platform technology they're using just to show

everyone, Hey, starting online store is not a huge kind of black hole.

That was that it was 10 years ago.

Oh, that's really interesting.

And so e commerce, did you have any experience in e commerce before

jumping into starting the podcast?

So when I was in college when you buy textbooks from university,

the most expensive textbooks are usually what the chemistry, the physics

textbooks, and like the, legal books.

And so when I was a sophomore, I was buying textbooks for econ class.

And I noticed the bookstore was buying.

100 textbook back from students at 20, but then they would just repackage it

the next semester and sell it for 90.

And so I'm like, okay, there's a big gap here of 70 for a textbook.

Why don't I just buy it from my classmate for 20, and then I'll

post it on Amazon for say 65.

And then that's what I did for a whole summer, and I

made so much money like that.

And that's how I got into e commerce very early on.

That's fantastic.

You're certainly right in saying it, it's a growing market and considering how

many bricks and mortars stores there are out there and how the majority of these

stores would benefit from going online.

Anyway, you can just see we're probably on the tip of the iceberg

still when it comes to e commerce.

Yeah, and just to give you a crazy statistic, I was talking to the guy

at Shopify and he was saying North America in 2012, all the retail sales only about

10 to 15% was actually on e commerce.

So that's still, a lot of room to grow.

That's

crazy.

That's crazy.

So you've got yourself into a fantastic little niche there.

All right, let's lay it out for the listeners for the rest of the episode.

I'm going to sit here and I'm going to interrogate you about how you've gone

through the process and how you've set everything up and try and put it into,

some sort of step by step system that our listeners can follow to potentially

start their own podcast show as well.

How does that sound?

Sounds good.

Let's bring it on.

Excellent.

All right.

So you mentioned that you'd shot an email across to Dan Andrews.

Now Dan of course is from the lifestyle business podcast and from a

dynamite circle or forum that he runs.

What was the next step from there?

So the next step was just figuring out how

podcasting actually works.

So basically a podcast is like a blog RSS, but it's audio, right?

So you subscribe to it.

You either in iTunes or on a Google reader and automatically

downloads through the feed.

So basically to learn how a whole podcast works in terms of the backend,

like the hosting, the distribution, it would probably take you maybe three,

two, three days at most, because there's some technicalities in setting up

the whole structure, but just to get.

Your head around everything, it'd probably take a day or two.

So that's how I started first.

And so the resource I use was Cliff Raven's craft.

I think he's the podcast answer, man.

He had a six step YouTube videos that were each like 10 minutes long.

And so I just watched those like one or two times.

And you basically, from that, you can understand how podcasting works in

general, and then that's how you jump into

it at first.

And do you see that as vital for those those that are less tech savvy out there?

Yes, because I would suggest his videos because he actually walks

you through everything, assuming you are not a very tech savvy person.

He walks through what MP3 file is, what ID3 tag is what feed burner is, why you

shouldn't use your hosting services, feed burner, and some of the tips and tricks

that he's done that he's seen for like the past, I don't know how many years he's

been doing, but it's a very long time.

All right, so you've gone through and you've learned, the

inner workings of how podcasts work.

Where to next?

So the next step is to decide what topic you want to do.

So for example I guess me, I was on e commerce, so I wanted

to find stores to interview.

So basically I knew.

I was going to go with the interview format because really the guest is

who has the knowledge and who has the nuggets to share with the audience.

And so once you decide on the kind of guess, I guess the Tim Reed

says it's the spine of the show.

You can decide the format to you.

You want to do an interview?

Do you want to do co host?

Do you want to do a single person?

Pat Flynn and smart passive income.

So basically there's no right or wrong way to choose it, but it has to be something

that you enjoy doing for a long time.

And so just for me, I enjoy interviewing because I'm intuitively

curious about businesses.

So it allows me to interrogate.

An e commerce store and how they got started and how they run everything.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I guess it also comes down to why you're actually podcasting and probably

coming from a similar place that you have, Terry, and that's one of the

goals for releasing this particular podcast is to build my authority.

And there aren't too many better ways to do that than to build authority via

association.

Yeah, exactly.

And the part thing about podcasting versus say, guest posting is that

it's much easier to get someone to come on your podcast for say, 30

minutes, then to say, Hey, can I guest post on your blog, which is probably

what a lot of people are doing.

And it's guest posting, I'm sure it still works.

But just the friction of copying on Skype, like we are right now for 2030 minutes

is a lot less, and it's much more easier to and so there's also a kind of a clout

where you say, instead of saying you have a blog saying you have a show internet

show, there's a kind of a Guest Design.

Maybe five years ago, this was sounding crazy, but now

it's Oh, wow, you have a show.

It's a little, there's a different meaning to it.

I think.

Yeah, definitely.

There absolutely is.

All right.

So let's continue down.

You've got all these different mediums or different podcasting formats, but

we're going to follow your path here.

So you've chosen the interview path.

How do you go about.

Finding and getting guests to come on the show.

Sure.

So this probably breaks into two parts.

I would say the first 10 episodes finding guests is a little tough.

I would say the first three is to go with people, just to get the ball rolling.

And so my first guess was actually a Shopify store.

And I was just starting out asking for the problems and if we could just hop

on Skype to talk about it some more.

And then naturally it became an interview.

And that's how we did it.

I branched into that.

And finding the first couple of guests, it's tough.

You need to go with people that are buying into your idea of,

Hey, I could be on a podcast.

This is cool to get my business featured in iTunes.

When people search for it, it's on the internet.

Anyone who finds it can download it anywhere in the world, right?

I think most of our podcasts get downloaded from probably

like 80 to 100 countries.

I'm sure you look at your stats.

It's something similar to, which is absolutely crazy, right?

Anyone in the world can listen to your show.

So get people that are on board with that idea first.

And then as you get bigger, you can use that as leverage to

say, Hey, here's a sample of my work with three or four people.

You can check it out and you can come on my show.

This is what you're gonna expect.

Whereas if you just went say I went to like Seth Godin for my first

episode, he wouldn't care who I am.

But after say maybe a hundred episodes, you had someone's podcast he's been on,

maybe entrepreneur on fire or a couple other shows you can say, Bingham, I

can say, Hey, Seth, here's These three people, four people, when you want to

come on my show, I think the friction would be a lot less than if you just

started out right out of the gate.

So that's the two step leverage plan.

Once you have a show just starting out and once you have some kind

of like a body of work built up.

And so what

do you do?

Do you just pick up the phone or do you send them an email or social media?

How do you contact these people?

Yeah.

So I have a temp standard template.

I can send you later.

It's basically.

I include everything in the subject line and say, Hey, can I interview

you this day, this time on my podcast, which is a subject line, because if

you just say hi in the subject line, sometimes people might not click it.

And especially if you go to people that are very busy with a ton of email,

if you can just summarize everything in one sentence in the subject line.

And then they click into it, and then you can get into the body of, about

what your podcast is in the body.

So what I do is I ask him for a time tell him how the interview is done via

audio Skype what my podcast is about, and I link three episodes that I've

done, and then I say, here's what you can check out, here's my website, here's

iTunes let me know what you think.

And basically, the hit rate is probably...

Somewhere 80, 90% now.

It's very hard to get noticed once you've got a pretty good

body of work built up, I think.

Yeah, absolutely.

I've seen that exact same thing happen.

And as I say, it's probably hardest at first trying to get

those initial few interviews.

Yeah.

And I think.

Really all you need to be doing is doing just a bit of research in your niche,

and you'll probably find that potentially others in the marketplace who are

also looking to get exposure as well.

So they may not be the superstars or that they potentially are as well.

I know someone like James Schramko, he'll jump on anybody's

podcasts and he is a superstar.

Yeah.

But you will find it in your own niche, a number of different people

who are looking to get exposure.

So if you just put your mind to it and do a little bit of research initially,

you'll probably find them pretty easy.

Yeah I'm speaking to Shremko tomorrow, actually.

So basically the one I sent him was I sent him a mail through

the dynamite circle email.

And I said, Hey, here's my interview with Tim Reed, who he does freedom

ocean with Dan Andrews, who has been on his podcast multiple times.

I think he's also in the, he's the guy of the DC too.

And then I sent one, who is my third one?

Oh, Dan Norris.

And so they, he's been on his podcast.

So basically it's an easy yes for him to say.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's like absolutely no brainer.

So basically.

It's knowing how to leverage your content tactically to get bigger guests.

And so the way you can look at to it, if you're in a completely new niche

is that you look at like the a, a list bloggers, and then you look at

who has guest posted on their site.

So this is what I did with the Shopify too.

I basically found the guest posters on Shopify.

I found about three or four of them that the PR guy really knew that they work

with and publish on a constant basis.

And I got them on my podcast and then I interviewed one of their officers.

And I sent the PR, Hey, here's an interview with

one of your senior officers.

Would you like me to do a guest post?

And then he said, yes.

So versus, if you just spam him back and forth, it's the friction

is so much easier to go through.

Yeah,

that's awesome.

I think that strategy, it's I guess a classic networking strategy where

you're looking for the influences of the authority people in the marketplace

and reach out to the influences of them.

And you'll potentially get in front of the authority figure.

Yeah, this comes from a book I used to read by

a guy called Dick Marcinko.

He is like a military, like he wrote these fiction military novels.

He was a Navy SEAL.

And he had this phrase where he says when something like poop smells worse

when it drops on your head versus if you step on it on the ground.

So

basically, it's like the corporate world, you leverage the decision maker, right?

If you want something done, it's much easier to go to the boss

than to keep trying to go through the secretary or the gatekeeper.

You tell the boss is okay.

And then you CC the secretary and then everything's smooth, right?

It's just the way the world works and you're just using that to your advantage.

Yeah,

absolutely.

All right.

So we don't need to talk a lot about the technical aspects any longer because

you've probably covered a lot of that if you've gone and look at Cliff Ravenscraft

stuff, but leading up to the interview.

How do you record an interview with a guest?

Sure.

So basically the tools I use are Skype, like we are right now.

And then there's a plugin called call recorder.

It's like 15, 20, and it's basically a plugin to Skype that

records your Skype conversations.

And the thing that's cute about this is that it allows

you to split the vocal tracks.

So for example, after you edit this, it'll split my track on a separate file.

It'll split your track on a separate file.

Therefore, when you edit it, it's not one file that you can cut back.

Because if I cough right now and you're talking and they're not separate files,

there's no way you can edit that out.

Whereas if it was separate, you can cut it out, come out the ums

and uhs and piece it back together.

So that's the key software that I use to record.

Exactly right.

And I'll usually swear a little bit while my guest is speaking.

So listeners won't hear a lot of that because I just edited it

out.

Yeah, exactly.

And then, so that's like the key software that.

Gets you started in terms of your content production.

And then after that you split it in the software, it comes with call recorder,

and then you put it in your audio editing software, which I use is Adobe edition.

I know people use audacity too.

I believe that's free.

And just like Dan Andrews from the lifestyle business podcast, his addition

is like the Ferrari of audio editing.

Okay, let's keep going down along the lines of the

interview process with our guests.

Now, so you've got everything in place.

You've set up an interview with them.

You've got the software or all the technical stuff set

up to actually interview them.

How do you approach an interview?

What sort of research or how much preparation do you

do in interviewing a guest?

Two.

So I would say average, it takes about maybe an hour if you're quick, 30 minutes.

So what I do is I actually ask a structured list of questions, but

I let it go as the guest takes it.

So some interviews are very structured and I guess mixture is

a very structured interview, right?

He has a format and he has these set questions that he asked in a certain path.

So the mentality I take is like a tour guide.

You're just showing your audience.

This business and you let the scenery explain itself as you

go along to different parts.

So what I do in my show is when you look at a business, there's

basically two frameworks, right?

There's the SWOT framework where comes from the art of war.

It's the strength, weakness, opportunities, threats of the business.

And then there's the other side, which is an external one

called Porter's five forces.

And this guy, Michael Porter is a Harvard business school professor.

And the Porter five forces is like your competitors, pricing, substitutions

competitive advantage and what else?

One of the things.

So basically this is a framework I take when I look at a business, I come up with

questions based on each of these points.

And then when you combine all of these, you get a real holistic

view on, on a person's business.

And so that's the interview I take.

And then I also look at their social media platform.

I look at their Facebook.

What have they been posting recently?

Is there anything interesting?

Are they listed on, have they been on like cosmopolitan?

Ask men, big news sites and you take it from there.

And the key thing is to find something curious that.

Intrigues you, because if it intrigues you, it'll usually intrigue your audience.

And that's, I think what really makes a good

interview.

Okay, fantastic.

And do you normally, when you're going through this process, do you know

where the interview is going to go?

Like in terms of, are you asking questions that you know what the

interviewee is going to answer?

Yeah.

So what I do is I structure kind of bullet points based on each.

Aspect of the business I want to cover.

If you look at my show, I'll cover a customer development, e commerce

platform mindset sourcing your product and social media or marketing.

And so basically within those six or seven arcs you then make.

Four or five bullet points that are interesting to you.

And then you pass it to the guests and then they, at least they know

what they're working with and usually if it's a business owner

and someone that's, on top of the business, it's really easy for them.

So you want to give your guests an idea of what to expect, but you don't want

to give them everything like a long question, like a 30, 40 list bullet

question, because then if you give them a whole list, it gets very formal

and doesn't really flow naturally.

In my view,

yeah, definitely.

And it's important that you have to really sound like having

a conversation with somebody.

Yeah.

Because

the last thing you want to sound like, it's like on a new show where

you're going really for the camp Tim Reed calls it the fireside chat thing, right?

Because most people, when they're listening to podcasts, they're

either driving they're working out, they're looking for something

that'll keep them company, right?

Not not necessarily a, documentary that goes up through fact after

fact, there's a very rigid style.

So that's my take on this.

Yep.

Definitely.

Moving on now.

We've recorded a podcast episode.

Do you do the editing yourself?

Yes, I do.

Actually, there's one thing I forgot to mention.

A lot of the times on podcasts, you'll see people interview really big guests.

And one of the mistakes I always thought was that, Oh, if I don't

get a big guest, my podcast, who would want to listen to it?

But the thing you'll realize is that most people.

They can relate better to lesser known guests in terms of, say, if

you have a blog if you're, I guess like an e commerce store, right?

So for example, if I interview a business that's doing a hundred million dollars

versus one that's just starting out the success gap to speaking to someone that's

so high up seems very hard to relate to.

And so if you speak with someone that's been doing it for one or two years.

Is actually some of those episodes resonate much better

actually, which is surprising.

If you're worried, you can't get a big guest, I wouldn't worry about that at all.

It's just, work your way up as you get more experienced.

Yeah,

that's a really good point.

And I guess if you're looking long term at your show creating a stronger,

emotional attachment with your audience is probably more important

than getting some short term traffic gains by chasing those big guests.

Yeah.

And the other thing is the big guests have probably been around on a lot of

podcasts, which is not a bad thing, but they've probably heard them,

here or there for example how many podcasts did you hear Tim Ferriss

on when the four hour chef was out?

He was in my, he was in my feed or like 20 podcasts.

And then you listen to four or five of them, what he's going to talk about.

So basically by bringing someone, yeah.

Not as well known.

You do keep it fresh a little bit.

So yeah, definitely.

And I think on a recent episode on Mixergy with Shu Money, Andrew,

essentially he didn't edit the podcast.

He basically just threw up a quick intro and then got it out there

and did the reasoning behind it was the same reason as Tim Ferriss.

He was about to embark on a podcasting promotional tour and Andrew wanted

to make sure that he was the first one with an interview with him.

Yeah.

And those guys do it for a reason, which is, I'm nothing against that,

but sometimes it's just cool to do something a little different kind

of like Mark Twain says that if you find yourself on the same side as

the majority, it's a time to reflect.

So

all right.

So where do we go from here then you've recorded an

interview.

So you asked me about editing, right?

So I do all the editing myself, which is something I'm trying to get out of.

But when you first edit.

Your first episode will take you forever.

It'll like, cause I'm a perfectionist.

My first episode, I cut out a lot of the ums and ahs and when you're

doing this well, when you can see the waveform, which is the audio file in

your editor, basically there's these different spikes and that's the amount

of volume, I guess that's in a recording.

And so basically when you see an and ah.

And you can recognize it visually.

That's when you're a pro at editing.

But you can see before it comes and you just cut it right away

without even listening to it.

So basically editing out the ums and ahs is probably big because I'm a believer

that, the quality shines through.

And I think, while the content is important, the quality does matter too.

So it reflects on your kind of your professionalism.

If you're, you want to Make this help your business.

It does reflect off your image in the long run.

So I would say don't skimp on your quality if you can, because it's not like a

website, you're listening to a podcast.

All you have is your ears.

It's not like a website.

You have sidebars, you have different colors or a video where

you can see different things.

You're using your ears.

So if it's.

The quality is bad.

It can actually have an impact on your audience.

I think.

Yep.

Let's stay on

that topic and let's look at what's your stance on the intro,

outro branding for your podcast.

I know you're using some commercial music in your intro.

So how did you decide to put in some commercial music and how important is

it to have to, good intro, outro music?

Sure one of the thing about music is that I think you have

to find one that I guess the feeling matches the tone of your show.

So for example, if my show, it's laid back fireside chat and I had

a heavy metal band come in, it would just seem very odd, right?

And what I would do is say, once you've decided on your show, if you want to

do an interview show go look for three or four other shows that you really

enjoy either podcasts that you enjoy.

So basically what I did was I found inspiration from the Adam Kroll show.

Lifestyle business podcast and foolish adventure.

So basically you look at different shows that you listen to and then you

take pieces that work from each show.

And the one that worked well from Adam Corolla is that he does a

lot of sound walls in between.

So I think he starts out with a general intro and he has a new section and

they have like listener questions.

And then each section is blocked off by two or three seconds of audio.

And so basically once you have that structure.

Copy, you can then plug in different pieces of music or voiceovers that

you can get on places like Fiverr or Odesk or any other places.

So I would say look at shows that you like and then take inspiration from them.

Okay.

And what about the commercial music?

Can you use the commercial music in your own shows?

Technically no, but you can get royalty free music

on a place I go called pond five.

And so they've had music there for maybe 5 to 50.

But I think commercial music, if you do it like once or twice, and you

credit it, we're not super, super duper mega million star podcasters.

I don't think we can get sued anytime soon.

But, each person has their own risk tolerance, right?

That's my take on it.

But of course, to be safe, you shouldn't use any commercial music

that's not licensed properly.

By a lawyer or whatever all that deal is.

Yeah.

Very

good point.

Very good point.

Okay.

Let's get into then, I guess the next logical step for me

would be into the marketing and the promotion of your podcast.

How do you go about doing that with yours?

Sure.

So this was a mistake I made in the beginning.

I recorded episode, I edited.

And I would do the next episode and so basically by doing that in the

beginning, you really cut yourself out of a lot of time in doing the promotion.

So what I would if I would do it again, I would basically record

five or six episodes at first.

And I will let the episodes drip out every week.

And then for that first month, just focus on promotion.

And so I wasn't able to promote it.

I That much, as much as I wanted, cause I'm still at a desk job.

So what I basically did was I went through the data circle,

which is Dan Andrews mastermind.

I went to the people I knew there to get them to listen to it.

And then I also blasted it on Twitter about two or three times

a week, and that was about it.

So probably a little lackluster effort, but I think you can definitely improve

on that if you're starting a new podcast now what would you do differently

then?

So

I would get.

All the guests that I've interviewed before to help me promote it to basically

those first five or six episodes.

And so basically, then you can really steamroll yourself and make a big leap

in terms of kind of the exposure instead of letting it grow slowly, week by week,

month by month, which is a mistake.

So it's interesting.

The first month I released, I had probably 300 downloads now.

And so I thought, wow, 300 people, that's actually more than I thought.

And then as of December last year, it was probably like a 9, 000 a month.

It's not as big as some other podcasts, but knowing that, you've

grown 30 times in half a year, it's pretty, pretty well though.

And I think one of the.

Key aspect you should do is if your podcast is going organically people will

naturally reach out to you, especially if your content is resonating with them.

So basically if you look at your opt ins your Twitter followers, if they're

getting gradually growing without you really pushing the content out that's how,

a subtle way that it's really resonating and people are finding it organically.

Yeah, that's a very good point.

And as you say when the goal is the longterm, having that really

engaged audience is very important.

Yeah.

And I think one thing I, another, I guess the counter side of this is

that since I didn't do much promotion I, I knew that it wasn't just all

my Facebook friends and my family or friends listening to this in terms of

getting the actual data starting out.

Cause if that was the case, it was just dropped.

After two months because they would stop downloading or they

would find other things to do.

So whereas if you let it grow organically, you can actually see

the trend of everything go up, which is a very encouraging sign.

Actually on

that topic, one of the hardest things that I'm encountering

is getting feedback from the audience.

Do you have any suggestions about how you can actually try and get

some feedback from your audience?

No,

this is something I struggled with too.

So what I did was you know how the standard Aweber MailChimp opt in is you

click your email and then you take, you can take another page that says check

your email for a good confirmation, right?

That's the standard kind of thing you get.

Yep.

And so what I did was I actually created a survey after that page

and in a Google form on my website.

And that's actually click submit.

That's the page I get linked to.

And basically on that page, it has, how did you find this podcast?

What's your biggest problem in e commerce?

What are you interested in?

And is there any feedback for me on the show?

And so basically anytime someone opt in, usually they fill that out right away.

But the downside is they don't click the confirmation to your opt in list, right?

But, and so the other side is if they don't click that, they'll still

see it later on in their email.

They don't need to be reminded.

And if they don't click it, they're probably not really.

Interactive with their email and then maybe someone you don't

really want on your list too.

So it works in a dual way just to get feedback.

And so usually if someone's taking the initiative too often,

they will give you feedback.

And that's the channel I found to automate getting feedback.

Oh, and also after they submit the survey, I have another page with

a video I recorded thanking them.

And then there's a link to iTunes on the bottom for a review.

So how effective

is that video for you?

It's a

little hit or miss, but the thing is knowing that they'll see you on

video, in person is more the aspect of connecting with you as a person, I think.

It probably not as works as much as I wish it does, but just knowing it's there, if

someone can go through this whole process, they're a very engaged person with you.

So basically, that's the key I go

with.

I've gotten into the habit over the last two weeks or so of every email

subscriber coming into the podcast.

I'd actually I'd record a quick video snippet and send it to

them.

Oh, I got to start doing that.

Did you also Google their email, try to stalk them, see where they're at?

I

do.

I do.

And this works, I guess this also we can tie this into two things.

We can tie this into probably the research for upcoming guests.

When you don't know their email addresses or when you're trying to search for

their email addresses, I use a tool.

Called Smarter Inbox, but you can also use another tool called Reportive.

Oh yeah.

I use that one.

Yes.

And essentially if you enter an email address, it will validate

against any social media accounts.

And of course it'll pull in all the data from those social media accounts as well.

So you can often if you've just got the email address, you can pull in first name,

surname, and maybe a Twitter or a Facebook feed and just give you a bit of an idea

of who you're actually speaking with.

Yeah.

And it gives the LinkedIn profile too, which is what I've been

playing with the past month or two.

So basically when you go on LinkedIn now as of early 2003, when you visit

someone's profile, they actually get an alert, like someone's viewed your profile.

And so what I do is if you optimize your profile about a podcast and

then you visit their profile, usually they'll visit you back.

And then when they visit you back and if there's someone you want to interview.

Then you just connect with them and say, Hey, I saw this was

interesting on your profile.

Do you want to call my podcast to talk about x topic?

And that's like a ninja way to get guests and network with people too.

Because if you're a business show, you used to grow your leads or whatever.

LinkedIn is a much better place than Facebook or Twitter, I would say

just because of this notification.

And it's a more b2b professional social networking, please.

We're starting a little bit stalker ish, but let's

stay on LinkedIn for a second.

Again, this is relevant because we're talking about podcasting

and getting guests on your show.

Many famous people on LinkedIn will accept your friendship requests

or your connection requests.

And as soon as someone becomes a connection, you can also export

all of your contacts details.

And that includes an email address.

And that's again, another, I wouldn't call it ninja, but it's

probably not utilized enough.

Where you can actually get the person's in most cases, primary email address,

just by connecting with them on LinkedIn.

Yeah.

Because most people sign up, they don't think that people can do this.

So it's, I got to start doing this too.

Now that you bring it up, yeah, but LinkedIn is a great way to network.

with people at bigger companies that maybe are still out of your league at first.

So you just search someone like a HubSpot and then you look for

like their vice president or some officer, and basically you can ninja

your way into the company that way.

And so just going to the website, click and contact us and submitting a form

that goes into a corporate black hole.

Okay.

Moving on, we're probably getting pretty close to getting

through the podcasting guide.

Do you have anything else we should be adding?

I guess we can

talk about mental resistances a little bit.

That's a very important one, or we can do that later.

As we wrap up to you though,

no, I think we probably should.

Cause that's probably what's stopping most people from podcasting.

It's going to either be the technical aspect or the mental aspect.

How did that affect you?

So the weirdest thing is hearing yourself on recording.

I'm sure you would attest to this any day.

Luckily is when you're doing an interview show and you're doing it well,

probably 20% of the time you're talking and 80% of the time is your guests.

And so when you listen to yourself.

Doing that is not that bad, but when you record a whole episode by yourself

and you have to edit your own audio, you get very subconscious onto the

stuff you're putting out in the world.

And is it good enough?

People think this is stupid because when you're doing an episode by

yourself, it's all you, right?

Whereas with a guest or a co host, you can bounce off each other and

the dynamic is a little different.

So I would say the mental resistance is probably bigger than the technical

aspect because the technical aspect, you can really get it down.

In a day, right?

And then the mental aspect is taking that first step, putting your first episode

out and then following up with the second and third and fourth and fifth episode.

I think the biggest bottleneck that I've heard is getting really past

the 10th episode in terms of the consistency and just keeping yourself

motivated and, just pushing forward.

Okay.

So how have you been able to break through

that then?

Sure.

So one of the things that is when you get good feedback from your show

someone says, Hey, I love your podcast.

I love this guest.

I learned a lot from them.

And when you don't publish, when you think about not publishing, you almost feel

bad that you're going to let them down.

And so some ways that really keeps you going.

And the other way to do it is if you just record your content in batches.

So what I do is I have a whiteboard about six or seven people on there now,

and it's basically, I interview people.

I do six or seven interviews a week and then I stop for a month and I can focus

on some other stuff to build like services around the podcast and then basically by

doing that you have to publish it because you've interviewed someone you owe them

this interview so it forces yourself to actually publish on a consistent basis.

One thing that

I struggle, I tend to do a little bit of batching as well,

but I find that when something's not in a consistent habit, it's

actually also hard for me to return.

So I might pump out four or five episodes in a week and then not

have to go and record for two or three weeks and it will get time

to actually start recording again.

And it's hard to get back into the mindset that I need to be recording.

Has that been a problem for you?

Yeah, the momentum, you do lose it once in a while, but I think

as an interview show, you, I guess the pressure to create content is a lot

less than say, if you're recording five episodes yourself, I'm sure, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

There's no doubt about

that.

Yeah.

So sometimes...

I've been doing it for about 30 episodes now.

It's, it just comes back, after a while maybe you'll hit there at some

point too, but I think that most of the times, what really gets me through

is if I really find a guest that's interesting, I think you really need

to be curious about your guests and really want to learn more about them.

And I think that's a big driver in terms of the long term kind

of goals of your show too.

You have to enjoy.

Publishing get enjoy interacting.

Otherwise, if you don't really enjoy it at some point, I think it's going to

show and then you start publishing later.

Maybe you'll skip an episode when you start skipping two or three weeks,

and then you just gradually stop.

And so you see that with some podcasts that kind of started in, early 2012,

like a year ago, there's some people I followed, they've had maybe 10, 15

episodes and then I really liked them, but then they just stopped or disappointing.

Yeah,

absolutely.

And I think it probably just comes down to the person you are in

the business that you're running.

I know from my perspective, putting a deadline on every episode, like we

will release an episode on Fridays means that as you said earlier,

you want to get that episode out.

You don't want to And I think having that respect for the people that put

you in there, hidden areas for an hour a week is very important because without

that, it is likely that the show will just fizzle out and you stop recording.

Yeah, exactly.

And I, when I was starting out my website, I was like, should I actually,

publicly say new episodes every Sunday?

And I was like, gosh, I got to hold myself accountable.

So I was going to put new episodes every Sunday.

And I'm going to put it out there and I'm going to hold myself to this.

And yeah, and I think the big gauge is, when you're done with editing episode,

are you really excited to press publish?

Cause if you are, that's a good sign.

And if you're not, maybe that's something you need to sort through.

That's my take on it.

Yeah,

cool.

Before I move on, I just want to roll back a little bit.

And you're talking about the mental aspects and about listening to your

own voice and that's something, yeah, definitely it that really

affects me, but the way I've been able to break through that barrier

is that I don't edit my own podcasts.

So I actually have someone do that for me.

And so essentially that means that I'll jump off this call with you tonight,

Terry, and it'll be uploaded to Dropbox and then it automatically gets edited.

And that.

Means that there's no time for me to think about whether or not I sounded good.

Because it just automatically gets edited.

And do you find that cause I'm anal of it.

I like to edit my own stuff because I want to make sure it sounds a certain way.

Did you have a hard time letting go, having someone else edit this or?

No, I

didn't, but I also prospected quite a bit for the right person.

It was a via Odesk.

I got my audio editor off Odesk.

I'm based here in Melbourne and the person that I actually employed is

living in Richmond, which is about two suburbs away from where I am here.

So I guess having a native English speaking editor who I can pick up the

phone and speak to, or even jump in the car and drive around and see him

has been really helpful because he really gets what I'm trying to do.

Yeah, that's the one thing too, like I've been thinking about hiring

an editor, like a VA, but I just don't know if I can let someone do this at this

stage, but maybe in the future, once I have more on my plate, but do you listen

to your podcast after they're done?

I do.

I probably listen to each episode two or three times.

And normally what I'll do is that this is a perfect case in point.

I'll probably download this to my phone as soon as I get off the call and

I'll listen to it for the drive home.

And I guess that just gives me a little bit of perspective about what I'm

actually recording or where I can improve.

And then I'll usually listen to a second time around once it's been

edited, just for the quality control.

And every now and then I'll go back to an episode just to actually

listen to the content that my guest

provided.

Interesting.

Yeah, I do that too.

So I usually take notes as I'm doing the interview.

And then once I'm done with the whole uploading thing,

I'll download to my phone.

I actually know before this, I actually listened to it once just

to make sure there's no gaps in my editing in case I miss like a

block of silence here or there.

So basically I'll edit it, listen to it once, upload it, download to my phone

just to make sure the experience is what kind of, I want the audience to see.

And like you said, just to get some perspective as an end

user when they're on your show.

Yeah, that's very interesting.

Interesting.

It's Googling your own name.

Yeah, exactly.

I guess since we're on this, so do you want to talk about a little bit of

artwork and kind of the ID three stuff?

Yeah, that'd be fantastic.

Sure.

So I think some podcasts you can choose to put your face on there or not.

I think this is a personal decision personally.

It depends on the business model you're going.

I think you look at Shremko, Tim Reed Dan Norris, myself, you, I think we all

have our face on the artwork, right?

And this serves a purpose because when you see someone on your phone

and you're listening to them, you make a connection that, Oh, this

is someone that's talking to me.

And so it's funny when you go to a live event like I went to Dan

Andrews dynamite circle meetup in October and they were like three or

four people that I never met before.

They're like, Oh, Hey, you're Terry Lynn.

I listened to your podcast and I was like, Whoa, this is a little weird.

But it's interesting though, because if you don't have your

face on there, you're just a voice.

And so it works both ways too, right?

Because you look at some DJs, you never see the picture before,

but you feel like you know them.

So I think this is a very important decision that you should make

early on because if you switch your artwork halfway through, it can

throw off the branding of your show.

Yeah, it definitely

can.

And I guess what's the giveaway for people meeting you, you've got

the right leg kicked out to the left and the arms up in the air

with the coat tail swinging around.

Oh

yeah, no, that's just my social media.

So the one on my podcast is just me holding a sign.

I was at a friend's studio, just messing around.

And I guess a lot of podcasts are like the show's name, something like with.

So I decided, okay, I'll just print a sign of me holding this in

the picture and then, it a little different and it looks a little cool.

So

for our listeners, this is obviously audio and I'm going

to include links to the photos in the show notes of what I'm talking

about here.

Will that be my caricature?

The little James Bond, I'm thinking, yeah,

I'm thinking it will be

cool.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then, so that's, I guess your image or your your brand and

you're talking, what's an ID three?

So

ID3 is, so normally when you have an audio file, this

is something you'll see in Chris Ravenscraft podcast answer man series.

So basically when you save a file on your computer and you look at it, you

find it in your hard drive, it'll say, episode 26, but when you load it into

a player there's a separate set of data that identifies it in a playlist.

So when you go to iTunes, it has the artist, the title of the year.

The album, artwork, all that stuff is called the ID3 tag.

And basically, if you don't have that on your phone or in your file

and you open it on your phone, we will have is just a blank screen with

the default no, no artwork image.

And so basically you lose out on a big branding aspect for your business.

So what you want to do in your ID tags, you want to include

obviously your name your website.

Artwork, and you can also do show notes in the lyrics side, which is

what I do when I listen to the podcast.

Again, I take notes I copied this off Shremko.

He does like a timestamp topic.

So basically every like time he talks about a certain

topic, he'll say at one minute.

30 seconds, we talk about this topic and then you'll go on like

listing that on in each episode.

Basically, when you have that in your phone and your audience wants

to just skim through, they can just then just skip around to the

general area versus listening to the whole podcast and having to go back

and find where to take the notes.

So basically, all this stuff goes into your ID3 tag and it's

like the branding aspect of the actual audio file in a sense.

I don't personally do this, but I think we must have something

like that being done by the team.

I don't go as far as I guess, timestamping it, but I probably

should investigate that.

That's

probably why I don't do an exact timestamp.

I just listened to it and I jot down the general time area.

I heard it.

So I just do this while I do the second listen just to check the quality.

I think just

thinking about, cause normally the way I consume podcasts is usually

when I'm doing something like driving or taking a walk and usually it's from start

to finish of an episode, but I guess where the timestamping would become important

is when somebody has heard something and they want to re reference it.

Yeah, or it could be as a good way to entice people to listen to it.

So sometimes if you just part of podcast episode, no one knows

who your guest is, but you talk about really interesting stuff.

There's no way to give them like a preview, right?

Like I think Derek Halpern from social triggers, he calls this

the information gap, right?

Whereas basically you tell people, here's what we're going

to tell you, here's a preview.

And if you want to find out the rest, you need to.

Subscribe to my emails, into my podcast or watch this video.

So basically it serves as a way to give people an idea of what to expect.

And if it's enticing, they'll probably listen to it.

So it works both ways too.

I think it

certainly does.

Okay.

I think we're getting close to wrapping this up.

We've covered quite a lot in the episode and I'm conscious of taking

up too much of your time, Terry.

What I'm very interested in though, is what podcasting for the last six or so

months?

Sure.

So podcasting is a great networking tool.

I would say like I said earlier, it's much easier to chat with someone.

You're promoting their business on the side too.

In some ways they feel like, Hey, if you need anything else after

you can just ask me for help.

And so basically what this has led to is some consulting gigs on

the side, just starting out people that are looking to start a store.

They're not really sure where to begin.

And so they're willing to do a session with me.

I like a one on one just to guide them through the ins and outs.

And so basically once you've spoken to, 30, 40 guests within the

specific niche, you'll know the best practices, the mistakes they made.

And you can piece everything together in terms of what can work for a beginner.

So that's where you can leverage that into expertise into something else.

So basically you're taking your intellectual capital that you've

gathered and then you turn it into intellectual property and services.

Fantastic.

And okay, where's the next six to 12 months taking you?

So the next six to 12 months is ideally is building a services business

off the podcast for e commerce store.

So a lot of them or need help with things like pay per click maybe writing

copy maybe they need an SEO campaign.

So the idea is to build these, this kind of one stop shop platform.

On the back of this podcast, where you also have a consultant that

can give you the best practices on what's worked for different stores.

Whereas if you just went on the internet and found some SEO person

or another person, there's a little bit of differentiation here.

And you also have the body of work, a podcast where you get a lot of value

from listening to different guests too.

And you certainly build up the right brand, build my online store.

It plays well into the services market.

Yeah.

And

that's one thing you got to think about too, when you're starting your

show's name, do you want to start with a Google Yahoo, but you really have to

build up the brand over a period of time, or do you just go with something that's

self explanatory build my online store or like yours, the multimedia marketing show.

It's very straightforward.

You see it, you know what it's about and you can engage with it right away.

Yeah.

And for the vast majority of things, I think it probably makes more sense

to do it like that because it makes it easy to build up a customer base.

Yeah.

It works both ways.

And there was a branding person I talked to, if you look at Tim Ferris and Chris

Guillebeau, Tim Ferris has the whole four hour thing under his brand, right?

He has a four hour body for our chef.

He can cut, it's under his name.

Whereas Chris Guillebeau, if you look at him, he has like

the a hundred dollar startup.

Art of nonconformity and a bunch of other things.

So he's not very in the forefront as much as Tim is.

And so the advantage of that is you can then do different projects and

different niches, whereas if you're focused on, if I use Terry Lynn as the

name for this podcast, if I decided to go into say Japanese steak knives.

My audience will be like, Whoa, what are you doing?

This is very weird.

So if you had a branded name off a company name, you can, then you can

hire people to join your team too.

You can have different aspects within this brand.

Whereas if you did it personally, you're not necessarily stuck, but the

amount of pivoting you can do is stuck because once you have an audience

that's really resonating with you on this topic, if you want to switch,

it's a more difficult thing to do.

I was having a, just a conversation earlier with Dan Norris

along these lines about how you go about branding or going with a, like

a personal brand type of thing against going with a more generic type of brand.

It's, I don't think there's any one right answer.

Yeah, there's, yeah, I think there's no right or wrong way.

Another thing is too.

If I was just to say, Hey, listen to the Tara Lynn podcast, versus

the build my online store podcast, no one knows who's Terry Lynn is.

They're going to be like, who is this guy?

Why do I need to listen to him?

Whereas if you see, build my online store, multimedia marketing show,

web domination, you immediately know what you're going to expect.

So the other ways to look at it.

Yeah, definitely.

Definitely.

All right, Terry.

I think that's fantastic.

We've got so much there that our audience can sink their teeth

into and get stuck into it.

Where can our listeners find out a little bit more about you?

Sure.

So you can find my podcast on build my online store.

com.

I publish new episodes every Sunday.

We're always interested to talk to e commerce throners, but if you're

also a service provider, you do SEO copywriting, we always bring different

guests on just to bring another angle onto how to approach e commerce.

So build my own store.

com.

You can find me on Twitter at it's me, Terry Lynn, and I'm also on LinkedIn.

So yeah, that's how you can find me.

Excellent.

Terry, thank you very much for coming on the episode.

It's been fantastic.

You've shared so much awesome content with our listeners, and

I'm sure they appreciate it.

And I know I certainly do.

Awesome.