Full show notes can be found at https://jakehower.com/how-to-build-your-authority-through-podcasting-with-dan-andrews/

Our guest today is Dan Andrews from the Lifestyle Business Podcast.

Dan is an awesome guy.

I got to know him a few months ago through his podcast and I was

lucky enough to meet him while I was in Bali about two months ago.

So he's a really cool guy.

If you haven't heard of the Lifestyle Business Podcast, I'd suggest

you go across and check it out.

In fact, that's probably a great source for you to get a little

bit of extra context to this particular episode as well.

We don't delve too much into his background because we want

to bring you some actual tips.

Now, of course given Dan's expertise in, in podcasting, that's

the topic for today's episode.

It's a great source of traffic.

It's brilliant for building an audience.

He, I guess was probably the inspiration for me starting this podcast.

And I can tell you right now, the people I've been meeting or networking

with the guests I've been bringing on the show and we'll continue to bring

on the show, such a high caliber.

And I really feel I wouldn't be able to get access to these

people without doing a podcast.

So if you.

As we've just discussed, I've got Dan Andrews from the lifestyle

business podcast on the line today.

Dan, how are you?

Fantastic.

Jake.

Thanks for having me, man.

No problems at all, this will be our first guest to focus 100%

on podcasting for the episode and if I was to look at all the different

podcasts I listen to, you'd be, or you certainly were top of the list to bring

on the show, so I'm glad that you could spare a few minutes today with us.

Why don't you start off with a little bit of a history about yourself

leading up to you coming online and to the Lifestyle Business Podcast.

Sure.

My initial history before I started my business is it was podcasts that

help inspire me and educate me on how to get started building a business.

I had been doing it for about two years.

We have a A company that creates products for the hospitality

industry, like portable bars.

And we also create a line of consumer cat furniture for cat owners.

And I was looking around on the internet trying to listen to more

people who were interested in traveling while running their business.

And there wasn't a lot of people publishing that kind of information.

So I thought there's an opportunity here for me to start my own podcast

and tell people how I travel.

But also I run a real business in this sense that we have a warehouse, we

have employees, we have a, quick books and all that normal business stuff.

But I still managed to.

To travel around.

We started in 2009 a show called the lifestyle business podcast.

And yeah, we've just been doing it every week since then.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

It's I guess what's what I really wanted to dive into today's is, getting around

the mindset of why you decided to start a podcast how you went to that doing that.

And I guess 2009 to 2012 is pushing on pushing closer to four years

of being online podcasting now.

So I want to get an indication of the differences between when you started

out and how it is now for you as well.

First off, when we started out, we were nervous to

do it and our content was shaky and it wasn't particularly good.

And I think one of the mindsets that we went through is we knew that would be

part of the process and we thought to ourselves, it's worth the investment to

get good at communicating and speaking.

And so we were willing to power through those first awkward months.

And no one's really listening to your stuff at that time

anyway, so that's not so bad.

I think when you look at it from a strategic perspective, Owning

the audience and developing and cultivating an audience is really.

A new opportunity for entrepreneurs, and we're still getting used to

what that means for business.

And I think we saw early on that was going to be a powerful opportunity.

One story that taught us that is at the same time we started

our cat furniture business.

One of our one of our favorite bloggers in that space, Kate Benjamin from modern cat.

net started a cat furniture blog.

And you can probably guess what the punchline is five years later,

who's doing better in that niche.

It's definitely Kate, 27, 000 subscribers strong.

She's got a passionate audience that put her at the focal point of the industry.

She can talk to anybody.

She's got better information.

And if she wants to start a cat furniture business, she's in a much better spot

than me sitting in a quiet room somewhere.

Having some great grand vision of what my next piece of cat

furniture is going to look like.

Yeah,

that's that's incredible.

And you're right.

It's as a, as an entrepreneur and a business owner myself I

am, I'm just starting to realize that there are such great

opportunities out there to become an.

Authority in the markets.

And of course, that's the premise of the show, is that we're trying to

introduce our listeners to all forms of content marketing and give them some

strategies on how they can just get out there and implement in their business.

Obviously podcasting for you has been incredibly successful

and beneficial for you.

So why don't you two explain to our listeners a little bit about

some of the stats focused around lifestyle business podcast.

Sure.

So it's the lifestyle business podcast is a entrepreneurial training podcast

mostly or inspirational podcast focused on digital nomads or the group of people

that they really want to grow a business so that it can help them to travel.

That's our scene.

And so on the back end, we developed a product called the dynamite circle,

which is basically a private membership group that allows entrepreneurs to

meet each other as they go around.

And so that's, I mentioned that because that's how we monetize the podcast.

And I think there's a bunch of things we could do to monetize it.

We could start services or, that's the cool thing about audience, right?

You can, there's, you've got a group of people listening to your

show that need all kinds of stuff.

And they're a captive audience.

You're in their ears.

But anyway, we decided to do this networking group.

So that just clicked over to 500 members now.

So that's good.

There's people all in retention billing arrangements.

Regarding the downloads, I haven't looked at it for a while, to be honest, because I

think we're a little bit under monetized.

But are you looking for numbers on how many people listen

to our show and stuff like

that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That'd be, I think give listeners a bit of perspective as to how

powerful it's been for you.

Yeah.

I actually think for someone who's been podcasting for nearly three

years, our numbers aren't that great.

But I think the interesting thing to think about when you look at

the way these numbers work is that.

To me, someone who listens to your podcast is like someone who gives you

their address, their home address and their phone number on your opt in form.

It's like when they've decided to put you into their ears and let you speak

to them for long, interrupted periods of time, that's much more powerful

than someone who just breezes by and checks out your newsletter, in my mind.

That said...

I think each episode is getting about 10, 000 listens between

seven and 10, 000 listens.

We've got about 5, 600 people on our mailing list that cascades down to about

four to 5, 000 unique visitors on the website every month, which cascades into

500 people in a private billing situation.

So that's what you'd call the traffic trickle, how, it starts large and iTunes

with the 10, 000 people every episode and then over the course of three years,

5600 of those have managed to get on the mailing list one way or another show.

Okay let's jump back to the start now to give.

At least there's a bit of perspective.

So you started this three years ago, Dynamite Circle is now what is it?

Would it be just over a year old?

Is it?

That's correct.

So you've got a two year lead time for Dynamite Circle.

Which I guess the question that comes to mind for me is in starting

the podcast, did you envision that this is the way you were going to

monetize, or did you play around with some other forms of monetization

early on?

We played around with stuff.

Yes we sold our back catalog at the beginning.

It was a throwaway thing.

It wasn't really well thought out at the beginning.

I knew that membership sites were an opportunity, but I didn't

have an articulation for it.

I'll tell you what was a mindset shift for me.

I was having a very difficult time in my mind, justifying charging

our listeners to join a forum.

And one of the things that helped me, but I would.

Help.

I thought it would be useful though to charge them to be in

like a networking situation.

And the problem with looking at stuff like vBulletin is it

just doesn't work for that.

So I was looking at stuff like Vanilla Forums and all this kind of stuff.

And then I stumbled onto a very successful private membership site that was being

run by Simon Black at sovereignman.

com.

I remember I was like, look, it's like 400, 500 bucks a year or something.

And I was like looking over my friend's shoulder.

And I was like, what is that?

That's awesome.

He's that's Ning.

And I was like, shit, sorry, shice, but I this is a family show, right?

I I ran back to my developer and I said, let's stop doing this custom thing.

Let's just get Ning.

It's 60 bucks a month for the premium program.

And when I saw.

My small group of inner circle and beta members inside of that

Ning software, I was like, this is something I can charge for.

So that was a big turning point for me.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I guess you've also got tropical MBA.

Can you explain to the listeners a little bit about that particular portion?

Yeah if I could do it all over again, there

wouldn't be two websites.

At the beginning, I was like I have a blog, so I'll start a blog.

And then I was like I have a podcast, so I'll start a podcast.

But I should have just had it all be Tropical MBA.

Tropical MBA started out as a recruitment tool.

I was in the Philippines hiring Filipinos.

And I think the turning point was one of the developers who was really talented.

He's and this was like three years ago.

He's like, all right I want you to pay me 1, 000 a month to work for you.

And I just remember just thinking first off, screw all these marketers

who told me the Philippines is the cheapest place on the planet.

The second thing is I would have worked for a thousand dollars a

month to be able to live in the Philippines and to ride around on

motorcycles and, work whenever I want.

And it was just this awesome lifestyle.

And so then I was like, it wasn't a week later that I had a big, my

very first blog post was a job ad.

It's Hey, I'm a digital nomad.

I'm here in the Philippines.

Why don't you come join me?

I'll pay you a thousand bucks a month.

And that's, why I call it the tropical MBA is like an internship thing.

And from there, I just started using it as a outlet for my thoughts.

And that site in particular has inspired about 20 internships,

10 for my company and 10 for.

I'm a close friends and it's also turned into a podcast and stuff like that.

So it's basically a tropical MBA is like my personal blog

and which is it.

Okay.

So you said you would have one side, if you were to do it over

again of the two that you've got now which would have been your choice?

Just in terms of branding, I think lifestyle business podcast is.

Is a generic, more generic brand than tropical MBA.

So I would just have a tropical MBA podcast and a tropical MBA blog.

And that way we could focus all of our energy there.

I don't think it makes sense to switch it at this point.

But if I could give a suggestion to people, it would be, I think,

especially with the way that the technology and the way that people

are moving around online now, the best strategy is to have your core

marketing brand be like your spotlight.

I'm sure I'm code is a good job of this where it's like internet marketing speed

is where you follow him and then whenever he wants to point his spotlight on

something like a new product, he'll just talk about it on internet marketing speed.

But it's not like he's going to start a blog over at, whatever

his thing is, mega millionaire.

com or not.

He's not going to market at that domain.

I think that's a new trend and something to take note of because the

kind of marketing that you're talking about, Jake, is expensive to execute.

And so you want to focus your energy on one product or one core outlet.

The other thing I think which is quite relevant and it's something I've

been struggling with or not struggling but considering is this, the whole

thing is building your online audience.

Now that is where a lot of your future, potential future income comes from.

Now, if you're building it.

Sites on a particular brand here and there, and then you want to sell

off that, that particular brand if you haven't got a central hub then

you're potentially losing your entire audience once you've sold off that

brand.

Great point.

It's a fantastic point.

And I think that's I guess if we do talk a little bit about James

Schramko and what he's doing he's very smart that way where he's got all these

satellite services, but which he could easily sell off without losing his

audience.

Yeah, I call it spotlight marketing.

Your core asset is your spotlight and.

When say you create a service that helps people edit their podcasts or

whatever you call it podcast pro.

com you shine your spotlight over on that for a few months and you build

up a customer base over there That's a fantastic asset for somebody who wants

to buy it But then you still get the hold on to that spotlight, which would be you

know, the Jake Hauer show Or whatever, you're gonna choose as your spotlight What

domain are we at publishing at, by the

way?

This is the Multimedia Marketing Show.

So MultimediaMarketingShow.

com.

Yeah, perfect.

Yeah, I think that's where I'll be moving as well.

I've found that I've built up a lot of my personal online audience

under one of our travel brands.

And I'm just, I know now that if we're ever to sell.

This travel agency that I'll lose my entire audience if

I continue down that route.

So I think for me, the multimedia marketing show is that central hub

where the property itself wouldn't easily be transferable, but that's

because it's me building a connection with my audience with our listeners.

And then we'll build out the satellite brands around that, which are potentially

have a value or a saleable value.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Hey let's okay.

So podcasting let's give some let's give some tips to our listeners.

Do you have a top five reasons why someone should be podcasting?

Sure.

First off, it's easy to create content relative to video and to writing.

Second off, it's more engaging than both of those mediums.

I'm just, this is anecdotal, but I'll put it out there.

People that have elected to put you in to their eardrums

while they go about their life.

Let you speak to them.

That is a way to build trust with people because you're talking about long periods

of engagement over the course of time.

That's massively powerful marketing.

So I love that element to it.

Number three, it's so much easier to network with other people.

Vis a vis podcasting.

I would never want to write a guest post for your blog

because it's so hard to write.

I would never want to come onto a video show because I don't have the technology

and it's too much time and mucking around, but I will absolutely get on the horn with

you and talk with you and I'm just a small fry, but you could manage to get really

influential people on the phone and become friends with them and network with them.

I think that's a massive benefit to podcasting is just the, your ability

to, to network with market movers.

And this is a.

This is, I don't, I can't think of an industry that's an exception

really, think about industries where, this kind of this swapping of

notes and podcasting isn't the norm.

I looked at it with my friend just started a podcast called smartdrugssmarts.

com and his first episode was with one of the leading scientists

in the world about this stuff.

There's not that many inbound phone calls that scientist is, that are exciting.

And so this is a big opportunity.

It's all of a sudden it's a media inquiry.

It's an opportunity for them to reach a broader audience.

So I think those are three explosive reasons right there to start a podcast.

I could probably list 25 for you.

I know that's I'm a member of the DC or the dynamite circle.

And it's certainly big in there at the moment.

Everybody talking about podcasting and it was probably the final straw for me

to actually start this podcast itself.

And I know I've been going now for a month and I've pumped out six or

seven interviews not all that had been aired yet, but, those three reasons

that you've just discussed, they're already folding out in front of me.

It's the the networking I've done so far with with my guests is incredible.

And there is no other way that I'd be able to get in front

of these people.

That's it, man.

And it's just an incredible value that you're offering people is

access to your audience and an opportunity to share their message.

Sure.

And I guess let's look at then how easy it actually is to get a podcast up there.

You say it's easy for you to just record some audio.

What is that?

Is that simply a microphone and a piece of software on the computer?

I would say the, if you want to take the 80 20 way to getting a quality

podcast shipped, you would buy Skype recorder, call recorder or Pamela so that

you can record your Skype phone calls.

You would buy a USB mic.

And it doesn't, you can't even just be a call center mic.

Ian's all of most I would say 80% of our audio is from 40

Logitech call center mics.

And as long as you're plugging them into the USB and not into the small

little circular hole in your computer, it's going to sound good enough.

And then you're You record it all you're gonna record it on your call recorder.

You toss it into audacity, you apply some EQ, a little bit of

compression and you normalize it and boom, you've got yourself a podcast.

That's all it takes.

Absolutely.

And then the submission to something like an iTunes, which potentially most of our

listeners out there will be listening to this on is it's a one time submission.

And if you're not it's relatively easy, but if you're not.

Technical enough to be able to do it.

You could pay someone 50 to get it set up for you.

Absolutely.

No question.

Okay, Dan.

So let's what does the future hold for the lifestyle business podcast?

Are you looking at changing direction in any way, or do you

continue on in the same manner?

That's a good question.

I was thinking about that today.

Actually we've been continuing on in a very consistent

manner for the last two years.

It's just been weekly every Thursday morning.

For the foreseeable future, we're going to continue down that route.

We got a bunch of other products in the pipeline, so I don't know.

It's a great question.

I have no idea.

We're at a bit of a turning point right now.

We just closed the dynamite circle.

We have 500 members.

I think we need to ask ourselves.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What would market leadership look like in 2013?

And if I am such a big proponent of developing audiences and building

businesses that way, I think that there are some limitations to

our current publishing outlets.

In particular, they focus on Ian and I's time.

So I think that we've pretty much got two options for growth.

One would be to.

Go the Adam Carolla route and sell off all of our business

and only focus on audience.

So basically just become a daily show like Howard Stern or Adam Carolla or Oprah

Winfrey or that kind of audience route.

And then the other way would be to go like a Huffington Post

route where you instead pull the community's content and publish that.

So I think that's the natural decision point that we're at.

And it's a, I'm sure not a very easy decision to make because

as you said, you're a, this is, I guess this publishing side of your

business probably only represents 50% of your total, I would imagine.

Oh, it's 5%.

5%.

Yeah.

So a very small number.

So I'd be.

Big quarter to go into that, but on the other side of the coin as you said

particularly with podcasting, it is such a a personal and a private thing

that you're asking your audience to do.

So to bring on others to your show can completely change the dynamics.

So you're almost going to the pub.

Someone like there's a number of podcasters out there who have a

number of shows in their stable, and I guess that's something that

you would potentially consider.

Yeah, you've seen it happen a lot with like great blogs, they go bad

quote when they bring in other writers.

And so far our blogs have been this kind of personal love affair, we've

been obsessed with them and they've been our babies, and, that's a bit of a

red flag when anything in your business becomes babified or anthropomorphized.

I don't know, I don't know exactly what we're going to do

right now, but it should be fun.

Yeah.

All right.

Okay.

So our listeners out there haven't started a podcast yet,

or the majority wouldn't have.

We've discussed a number of things here to help them get started.

Just looking at that that, that point we're just discussing then would you do

something different if you were to start, if you were to start fresh again today

in terms of branding and being able to scale with that with that increasing the

amount of time it takes you to do it.

I like the idea of increasing your velocity.

So like whatever it takes, forget the intro music, forget, big, long episodes.

If you can't put, just get stuff shipped as soon as possible.

I think the biggest thing that we did right and that.

We continue to try to do today as we, we differentiate ourselves,

try to give people a real reason to listen to your podcast.

Aside from, this is not just the next podcast, but there's a reason

why you would listen to this one.

I think that's the same, mantra that we would keep if we were to start

today.

And okay.

A little bit of trivia.

Or a little bit of history on your show.

You've got 10, 000 listens per show roughly now.

How long did it take before you started getting a decent number of listeners?

That's an interesting question because I always say like I

podcasted it into the dark for six months, but it wasn't really I think probably for

the first three at month three or four, we had 44 subscribers and you mentioned

until it got interesting or relevant.

To me, being able to speak to 44 people on a weekly basis is

an extraordinary opportunity.

So podcasting got interesting almost right away.

And when you look at the guys in the D.

C.

Who are starting their new shows like smart drug smarts

and Terry Lynn's new Robbins.

Build my online store.

He's got like 600 subscribers in just a couple months, and it's not

surprising nowadays because people are they're more attuned to podcasts.

They know how to subscribe faster.

They know how to consume the content better.

Podcasting is a bit of a learning curve to become a consumer.

But it's becoming more mainstream.

It's coming into cars, it's coming into dashboards and homes.

And I think that's still a ton of growth opportunity for the marketplace out there.

It's not so surprising to think that you could get a hundred subscribers if

you posted it in a popular forum like that in the course of a couple of weeks.

What business owner doesn't want the opportunity to talk to a hundred?

People every week about their business, so I think it gets interesting right away.

Yeah,

That's great.

That's fantastic for our listeners out there.

Okay, Dan, I think we've covered quite a lot in this episode and

I thank you again for coming on.

Where can listeners find out a little bit more about you and some of the services

you offer?

Sure, just check out lifestylebusinesspodcast.

com.

It's my favorite hour of the week and in fact, I'm off to go do it right now.

That's fantastic.

Hey, and one more thing.

Dynamite circle is closed.

Do you have a waiting list for people wanting to get on?

Sure.

Yeah.

If people want to, if they have a business set up and they're interested

in traveling while they work, they can go to a lifestyle business podcast and

just put their email address in there and We'll email when we open back up.

Yeah, that's great.

And I'd recommend both to all of our listeners the podcast is

exceptional and the dynamite circle, if you've got a business and you're

looking to increase the velocity of of improving your income, then

that's a fantastic source as well.

So get on check out both of those resources and Dan, thank

you very much for coming on.

Cheers, Jack.