Shownotes
It's that time again to plug in, perk up your ears, and dive into the latest insights from the podcasting universe with The Circle Sessions. In our newest episode, "Ripped From the Podcast Headlines," we sit down with the incredibly innovative Lee Launches alongside co-hosts, Don The Idea Guy and Brett Johnson.
- **Keynote Discussion**: Discover the need for simpler, more accessible keyword tools. Lee and Don explore how popular methodologies like "Getting Things Done" can be integrated seamlessly into our digital toolkits.
- **Cutting-edge Software**: The conversation turns to ingenious software capable of summarizing articles and generating new insights, tailored for business pitches.
- **Launchcasts Unveiled**: Lee introduces Launchcasts, the all-in-one tool for content creators, from script to audio to artwork. Don shares his beta-testing experience and potential applications for the tool, including turning newsletters into captivating audio content. Also, check out Build The Keyword, which was #1 Product Of The Day on Product Hunt.
Innovative Content Creation Tool: "what if you could go from idea to script to audio to artwork all in one flow, and that that was really where the idea (Launchasts) came from"— Lee Hills
Memorable Moments
00:00 Struggling with ideas, met Don, launches Lee Launches.
05:17 Struggling with too many projects, seeking focus.
07:50 Idea for Launchcasts came from conversations with Don.
12:31 Using AI for podcast editing can help.
19:31 Build The Keyword tool to identify low-competition search opportunities.
23:05 Simplified successful product launch through automated popular methodology.
27:03 Write it down, simmer, share, collaborate, build.
29:03 Release ideas to see passion and feedback.
32:21 Document ideas to free up the brain for creation.
Each week, one of The Circle of Experts talks about critical aspects of growing your podcast. We focus on marketing, social media, monetization, website design, and implementation of all of these to help you make the best podcast possible.
Have a question or an idea for one of our episodes? Send us an email at podcasts@circle270media.com.
The Circle of Experts are:
Yasmine Robles from Robles Designs
Tonnisha English-Amamoo of TJE Communications
Brett Johnson, My Podcast Guy, from Circle270Media Podcast Consultants
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/vince-mcgill/lemon-slice
License code: 2NRNUIV5VG7FU3K5
Copyright 2024 Brett Johnson, My Podcast Guy
Transcripts
Welcome to The Circle Sessions featuring The Circle Of Experts. The Circle Of Experts are Yasmine Robles from Robles Sessions, Tonnisha English Amamoo of TJE Communications, and Don The Idea Guy. I'm Brett Johnson from Circle 270 Media Podcast Consultants. Each week, one of The Circle Of Experts joins me to talk about critical aspects of growing your podcast. We focus on marketing, social media, monetization, and website design to help you implement all of these together. This week, Don is here with the Circle Of Experts. He possesses creative powers beyond those of mere mortals. Don The Idea Guy rescues those in need of innovative ideas through his brainstorming sessions.
Brett Johnson [:They are at 5 Buck Brainstorms. Don, thanks for joining me today.
Don The Idea Guy [:Hey. Nice to be here. We are not alone.
Brett Johnson [:We're not alone. That's great. And and and video watchers, they they know we have a special guest, and and here we go with the podcast. Lee Hills. Lee Launches. Thanks for joining us, Lee. We've been, you know, connected a long, long time, but let's get you back on because we've mentioned a couple of your products on the podcast. So welcome on the podcast.
Lee Hills [:Thanks, Brett. Thanks, Don, for having me. Yeah. Great to be here and to talk things all things podcasts and AI and and launching projects.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Talk a little bit about lead launches before we talk specifically about, you know, launch cast and a couple other projects.
Lee Hills [:Well, it it it kinda started for me. I was I was freelancing. I was doing different projects, and I had constantly having different ideas, and I I couldn't frame ideas. And I think I it was about the time that I met Don, and then I I met you. And, I had this idea of, you know, having some kind of brand to launch my different ideas. And I think it was through conversations with Don actually that this idea of being becoming Lee Launches, to kind of encompass everything I was wanting to do. Because I I'd some days I'd wake up and I have this Idea, and that I'd want to launch, and and I'd I'd shelve it because I couldn't I couldn't see where it fitted into what I was doing. And so kinda owning that and saying, okay.
Lee Hills [:I'm I'm just gonna launch literally any idea I want on my terms, and and that's how it came to be. So, it's it started with launching different info products, and then I've gone on to more recently, the last couple of years, launch SAS products, my own SAS products, through no code, particularly no code apps. And that's, yeah, that's that's been my focus.
Brett Johnson [:I I do have to say you are launching or you launched, you know, pre modifying campers before it was cool. So, I mean, that's where we kinda when we got together with with Don is you were modifying campers, to to to live in, basically, if you wanted to say.
Don The Idea Guy [:Don life.
Brett Johnson [:I love it.
Don The Idea Guy [:Yeah. We when we were originally talking, we had a mastermind group going Don, and Lee actually had a strong brand at that time. He was mister Explainer. He was in Explainer Videos. And then he started doing, freelance, advisory and putting the other freelance groups and freelance email newsletter. And he was struggling with changing a brand that he had he had owned mister Explainer for so long. And just in the conversations, the Lee Launches brand naturally evolved because he kept talking about the different projects he wanted to launch. Like, well, you can't pass up a good alliteration with Lee Launches.
Don The Idea Guy [:And he's been Lee Launches, I think, ever since. And it's perfect how it's dovetailed into this spread of you mentioned van life, and he's done, the no code pieces. It's been really interesting. And it doesn't preclude him from doing video explainers anymore, but it doesn't limit him to that either. So it's it's been kind of fun to watch this Lee launch brand take off.
Lee Hills [:Yeah. The the camper van project was one of the Circle launched as kinda lead launches. And I don't know what it is with me. I've if I have an idea, I always want to try and find a way to monetize it or turn it into a business, and it doesn't it it doesn't always work out, but I try and try and make it that way. So with the camper van idea, I ended up converting my camper van as you said, and and ended up hiring it out, so people would rent it out. Particularly during the pandemic, we had quite a lot of bookings because people, especially in the UK, couldn't go abroad, so they were doing a lot of staycations. And, during that time, I was glad that I'd launched that project because we had a camper van to hire out.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. It could it could have asked for better timing. Exactly. Exactly. No. No.
Lee Hills [:Sometimes you don't know when when it's when the launch is, you know, gonna come to, become fruitful, I guess.
Brett Johnson [:Right. Right. So, oh, well, let me ask you this before we get into, you know, the launch cast. So, you know, your focus has been launching. Yeah. How do you how do you make a choice to when you finally say, I gotta give this up and move on to the next one? Is it that your brain is just moving so fast that you you create it, put it on a shelf, or how do how do you decide that it it just does it doesn't have legs? It just doesn't make sense to do this anymore.
Lee Hills [:I I found that quite hard at the beginning. So, I mean, we were talking off air just before we we started, and and Don reminded me that during the pandemic, I had this goal to launch a new thing every day. And I've got to the end of that. I I I launched one new project today for 60 days, during the pandemic. And I as I Guy to the end of it, I realized I can't possibly sustain all these projects. And I think what I've realised recently is it's it's about kind of finding yourself learning as you're doing it, and also maybe finding that project that maybe does become the one that probably takes over, and that means that you can't carry on the other projects. So that that's what I've tried to do more more recently. I I think I feel like I'm maturing more into it.
Lee Hills [:I don't think I'm there yet, but I feel like I'm getting the mindset of the I'm gonna continue to launch these projects till the one that kind of takes the full focus, kinda takes me over does, and then those other projects will just naturally fall to the Idea without trying to contrive it or trying to manage them all because, like you say, you can't possibly manage them all.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. We we think it'd be difficult because each one of each one of them is your baby. Yeah. I mean, there's a little bit of effort in there, a little blood, sweat, and tears, whether it's a day or not, but you did put some thought to it. And you thought, well, this has some life, yeah, to kind of abandon it. Yeah.
Lee Hills [:Some of the projects I've sold. So I have sold some projects, and that that's been good. That's been a learning experience. It's been fun as well. And and also it means that you're not just leaving it to the side, you're giving it to someone else to take on, and you might be better equipped to take it to the next level. So so, yeah, I mean, one of those projects was a project as I did with another friend called Satya. He was a a a visualiser, of of a visual thinker. And we had this project called Guy visuals, and we we built it together.
Lee Hills [:We collaborated, and then we we ended up selling that just before Christmas.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. That's a
Don The Idea Guy [:well, it's a very cool project. I like that one a lot.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So let's get down to the the the the nitty gritty here. You know, Don and I brought up about launch casts at at least about a month ago, maybe a couple of months ago. You you'd sent us kind of the prelaunch play with it a little bit and Yeah. Very interesting. So let's talk about LaunchCast.
Brett Johnson [:What is it? What was the idea behind creating it? And let's Guy through the genesis.
Lee Hills [:So, yeah, so, Launchcasts really came again, as many of my ideas sometimes come from conversations with Don, Don and I had been talking about a tool to generate scripts for ads, for radio ads. Yeah. And we've been talking about that, and we we played around with some, rough versions of that idea. And as as the kind of technologies that has emerged, and and and advanced, I started to get this idea of, well, what if you could go from idea to script to audio to artwork all in one flow, and that that was really where the idea came from, and I guess it came from my own, wanting to find different ways to create content for myself, and and podcasting has been something I've been interested in for a long while, especially known both of you, but known Donna Donna and yourself, Brett. So it was really just I wanted to find a way to create new content for myself as well. And so I started trying to build on from what Don and I had talked and and was able to build something in one flow that takes you exactly that from script to audio to podcast. And that's that's kind of where I've got up to with with the project.
Brett Johnson [:K. So a new user yeah. Go ahead, Don. Yeah.
Don The Idea Guy [:Yeah. I, I was excited to be a beta tester on it where you could literally go in, give it a title, give it a subject. It would generate the script for you. You could accept the script as is or you could edit it, and you went on to audio. You pick 1 of 6 different voices, which sounded really great, but you could pick the one you wanted, and it would record it for you. And then if you wanted to, you go on to another stage where it would produce cover art for your podcast episode too. So you could stop any part of the way. Like, if you just need help generating a script, stop with the script stage.
Don The Idea Guy [:If you wanted the audio Yeah. If you wanted the voice over, which as a podcaster, I could see using that as to create a separate segment. We have a friend that created an online radio Sessions. And for the longest time, he was using an AI voice to do, his weather report. He would he would have a AI record the, the weather. He'd feed it the script. It would record it. He could name it, give it a personality, and that way, it didn't have to be the same, online DJ every time.
Don The Idea Guy [:So I could really see a lot of potential use for the the tool that that Lee's created in using it to produce a very short podcast. I have a client that I think this would be great for, once we can get the length of the podcast a little longer, or you can use it to record just an ad. Like we said, it was based off inspiration of a conversation we had about writing scripts for radio ads, but he created this tool where you could create the ad and you could have the voice do the ad too. So it doesn't have to be just a podcast. It's this AI audio spot creator. It's it's really cool. That's why we keep talking about it on the show.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Yeah.
Lee Hills [:I appreciate that. I mean, one of the ideas, I mean, often the products I've built build a, you know, it's a scratchbone niche as it were. And one of the ideas I was kind of moving towards was this idea of being able to take content from different places, you know, based on your brand or your interest, whatever it might be, or what your, main niche is, whatever it might be, and then turn that into a podcast from different sources. So you could, you know, bookmark though, those pieces of content maybe, and then have it turn that into a script for each episode.
Brett Johnson [:Yep. Yeah. That's Makes sense.
Don The Idea Guy [:I hope you're still developing that because it's it's a amazing tool either to function on its own or to produce additional content for for stuff. You know, we keep talking about how, you know, you're literally the launch the guy who launches brand. Right? Lee Launches. And think about think about how many people probably said that they were gonna start a podcast this year and haven't done it yet. And, Brett, I imagine from a lot of the folks you've spoken to, one of the reasons people don't start is they don't like the sound of their voice. Yeah. Well, if that's true, we'll use an AI voice. Get started.
Don The Idea Guy [:Until you can get over it, use an AI voice. You could you could paste in your content and have the, have the voice from launch cast do the recording. Yeah.
Lee Hills [:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that that was one of my goals with it was to you know, if you don't want to have your own voice or if if you're like me, when often when I record my own podcast on my own, and Brett will will remember this from days back when we first met. I think I spent hours just thinking over and overthinking my podcast and editing it. And and Brett was saying, just, you know, just get it out there. And if you're one of those people that maybe takes your time over those things, then maybe doing this, you know, having a an AI voice generated for you can at least get you to launch. I mean, one one of my goals is to eventually have it so you can maybe speak to it, have it edit it, edit it down the script, and then re, recreate it in your voice. That that's one of my goals for it, but I've I've got a few other steps to get to before I get
Brett Johnson [:to that. Yeah. So I know when you created this, at the same time, there was another similar software out there. I I I believe it was called Podstash. I still have the icon in my Chrome extension, but it but it kinda went away. But it it was that you would save a a web page, a blog, what whatever you want to, and it would convert it into, audio and summarize it. So you wouldn't it it's it's kind of a t a TDLR situation. But, instead of reading it in a shortened version, you'd hear the audio version of it.
Brett Johnson [:So I could I think there are a lot of different applications as you progress with launch cast, whether it's user experience in that direction or creating a podcast. It could be putting your newsletter up into LaunchCast and having a voice read it and delivered in audio form.
Lee Hills [:Because it Yeah. I mean, I I find that, you know, other creator friends, and and I know Don's one of these people that will often share content with me or something he'll find, for me that I might be interested in. Sometimes you haven't got time to read the article, maybe you're in the middle of work, and what if you could take that and just listen to it, you know, rather than have have to read it?
Don The Idea Guy [:Yeah. And the summarize, I think the summary the book summary apps that are out there now. You know, Headway and all the other ones that I can't think of right now. I probably got 3 of them on my phone right now. Headway, Blinkist, where they story shots, where they take books and summarize them. The articles that and I do tend to send out a lot of articles to people because I think they'll be interested, but nobody's spent enough time to read all those articles. But if you could just feed those into yeah. Like, Brett, you talked about what was the name of the tool you had bookmarked?
Brett Johnson [:Podstash. Yeah.
Don The Idea Guy [:So Podstash, I remember you sharing that with me. It's very cool, but it takes the entire content and turns it into an audio version of the content. I like, I like some place in between where if you take that, summarize it for you, and then give you the audio for that. I think that's another viable product Yeah. That people would be interested in too. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Right. Right. And then if well, you know, going a little bit deeper in this rabbit hole, you you know, let the the software, to summarize it, then you add your input going. This is why I think you should be really considering this and put that in there as well. Boom. Yep. You got yourself on Yeah. About almost a pitch for business, quite frankly.
Don The Idea Guy [:It's kinda why we started this, the rip from the headlines piece. There's so many articles Don not everybody can read them. Yeah. So we share the article, share the link, and then we give our 2¢ worth on it. If it's worth people's time, though, they can go in and read the whole article if they want. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:But if
Don The Idea Guy [:they don't, they go, yeah. I'm not into that. They can just skip it too and cross it off their list of things they had on there to read. Right. Lee, I had a question for you Don, the, the tool you created, Launchcasts. As it's been out there for a while and you've had other people kinda playing around with it, you've had time to germinate on on this concept. Have there been any other use cases that have come to mind, with having that tool out there? Maybe they're PyTorch related, maybe they're not, but any other, knowing that this tool is available, what else does that make possible?
Lee Hills [:Yeah. I think I think one of the main pieces of feedback that I keep hearing from people who've tested it and used it is, to be able to turn it into an RSS RSS feed or put it straight into, a podcast service like Spotify or, is it, Captivate FM, those kind of Sessions. So I'm thinking about that a lot, I think that was one of the main pieces of feedback. I thought about video. Video came up for me a bit whether I could add video, but I think where it's going now, I think I'm I'm gonna stick with audio for now. So I think the next main thing to try and focus on is to get it to generate, your feed of of episodes.
Don The Idea Guy [:I think that'd be great. Even if you just partner with 1 of the podcast host, just so you even if you'd pick 1 partner and get it to work with that one, you could worry about other APIs later. But, I think that's a great idea.
Lee Hills [:I saw I I noticed a sub stack now because they've got a podcast feature, which I haven't, had a chance to play around with, but they've now added a Spotify feature.
Don The Idea Guy [:That's all I can.
Lee Hills [:So I'm wondering whether there could be a link to maybe go to Substack, because I'm also interested in newsletters. I've got my own newsletter as well. So I I wondered about turning that into an audio version and then, you know, sending that to to to, Spotify. Mhmm.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Don The Idea Guy [:Yeah. I think finding the one you're interested in, if it's the if it is the, the substack or and I would think that they'd be easy to work with. But the Spotify obviously has a push towards, everything audio. I don't know how easy they are to work with. You mentioned one of the audio one of the podcast hosting company that Brett works with a lot, Captivate.
Lee Hills [:Yeah.
Don The Idea Guy [:They'd be a great one. Who's the Justin Jackson one?
Lee Hills [:Transistor, is it?
Brett Johnson [:Yes. Transistor. F m. Yeah.
Don The Idea Guy [:If you're looking for 1 podcast, hosting company to go with, I would look at Transistor or Captivate. Mhmm. Either one of those guys is innovative, and they're approachable. Yeah. And say, listen. I've got this tool. Is there a way we can get this audio to feed into your hosting? It gives another feature for them to offer, even to the point where maybe one of them maybe they become your next buyer. Yeah.
Don The Idea Guy [:Yeah. Yeah.
Lee Hills [:Yeah. That would be nice.
Brett Johnson [:Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Well, you've got as you mentioned, you're you're launching a lot. Another one that kinda caught both Don and Guy eye, we have, obviously, because you sent it to us early. But at the same time, it was it was fun to play with, is your is the keyword search, software that you've got going on? So talk a little bit about that.
Lee Hills [:Yeah. So that's build the keyword Don com. The idea is based on the fact that many, makers like myself, many indie makers often have an idea, but don't don't know where to what audience to focus on, and maybe don't have a natural, inclination to do marketing. And so the idea behind build the keyword is to to find opportunities that might be relevant to your idea. So it works by you put in, you know, a keyword or an idea, that that's relevant to your topic, and then it will help you find out if people are both searching for that topic, on Google and and other search engines, but also tell you if those searches are low competition, telling you if you can rank for it quickly. The idea came from there's another indie maker called, I don't know if you've heard of him, Danny Postman Don Postmar. He's, he had this I he had this tweet that he made that breaks down, steps to search for keywords, and he broke down all the steps. And lots of people this tweet, I mean, it's I mean, if you go to it now on Twitter and look it up, you'll see it's been bookmarked, I think thousands of times if not hundreds of thousands of times, and people were using this tweet to follow the steps that he gave, and what we decided was that there seemed to be a need for a tool that actually took you through his steps in one flow, and that's what we ended up building was was a tool that does the steps that Don Postmar shares in his tweet, and I think that's why it Guy a, you know, a bit of, attention because it allowed people to do what they were normally having to do manually in in in searching for keywords to, create their, content around for their for their idea.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. So is it better for you to, for your to input just one word, or is it, like, maybe a phrase get more defined as better, for better for I I'm not saying better results, but, results that will actually give you some deep deeper insight.
Lee Hills [:At the moment, it's a keyword. Okay. So traditional keywords. So Right. Being, you know, 2 words or a seed keyword. But what we've been finding recently is people struggle with coming up with a keyword. So we're working on a tool at the moment that will let you just put in a topic. So, say, you could put in podcasting, and it will go and scrape and check all the different podcasting opportunities and keywords that you might be able to then create content around for for your idea.
Brett Johnson [:Perfect. Yeah. Because sometimes you just don't You you see this tool, and you and and you're not quite sure how to use it. Yeah. You know, it it doesn't fit your purpose, or you don't know that it does until you really go, oh, this is how to use this. This is great. Okay.
Lee Hills [:Yeah. We we Guy we've tried to keep it simple because Yeah.
Don The Idea Guy [:I don't
Lee Hills [:know if this is your experience, but this is my experience. Most keyword tools can be quite complex. You normally have to be a SEO pro to use them. And so what we Guy to do is just create something for the layman, you know, just to easily be able to check an idea and and find any opportunities without getting bogged down in in too much data or or or other technical things that, you know, might not be relevant to us.
Don The Idea Guy [:I think the other thing that makes this a a successful product launch is that you didn't create some new methodology. You took an accepted and popular methodology for for for discovering, potential keywords by this Danny, Postman guy who was already successful, was already a popular feed. I think you guys helped make it even more popular because you were then thinking tool that made it easier for people to follow that method. So they find Danny Postman stuff. They he was very generous in sharing the methodology that he uses step by step. You took all those things and automated it. So if somebody goes there and they like it, and then they go, yeah. Okay.
Don The Idea Guy [:I can do that. It's still a lot of work, but it it's successful. Or I can just go here, pay a couple of bucks, and it'll do all the vetting for me and just generate a report. I think that you're you're taking something that was proven, and you made it really easy for people to execute. Yeah. Yeah. The What about the getting things done methodology? Right? So there's that book, Getting Things Done. The author put it out there.
Don The Idea Guy [:He was out there doing seminars and webinars, and people started creating getting things done apps that were inspired by that methodology. And it's a lot easier for people to to on ramp, to onboard for that stuff because they understand the concept because they saw it laid out. They see other people using it, and you took it and made another tool out of it. I I think that's fantastic application.
Lee Hills [:Yeah. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. And, you know, and I dig a little bit deeper in regards to how you found this idea. I think people look at social media and just kinda bypass these long streams of comments. And they don't really dig deep into, wait a minute. This is a conversation that maybe I can convert into a podcast topic or a blog topic or whatever it might be on my next podcast because it's there's a lot of chatter going on. You saw that too. You saw that it was bookmarked thousands of times. Like, hey.
Brett Johnson [:There's something here that's resonating that maybe I can extrapolate and even go further with with a with a topic. I I I that was really smart to look at it differently going, well, that's kind of a cool Robles. Like, wait a minute. This is super popular in regards to a reference point. Why can't we turn it the next step? I love that.
Lee Hills [:Yeah. And, again, it was it was also, you know, scratching our own itch. We
Don The Idea Guy [:Yeah.
Lee Hills [:We were using it for our own purposes to, again, to find ideas using his methodology, and and finding could we make this quicker? Yeah. Just for ourselves. And then as we got into that process, we thought we we talked to a few friends and and other makers, and we said, you know, would you use this? And and that that was really the process, which which I, you know, it's taken me a long while to Robles this, but it's a good process to follow. You know, if if you've got an idea and you and you're not sure about it, maybe bounce it off a couple of friends and and see if they'd they'd be interested in it too.
Brett Johnson [:Right. Exactly.
Don The Idea Guy [:Well, the, the other nice thing is they've given suggestions of things to search for on the site too, and they have pre vetted keywords that you can get access to. Right on the front page where you can type in, you know, what's your main keyword. As an example, they're saying, newsletter names. How easy would it be for our audience to go on there and just type in podcast names? You can use this tool for very specific, pieces as well as the general topics or or general projects you wanna launch. You could apply this concept to your podcast research.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So when you're, launching those projects, how much research do you Don, before you kinda say, nah. That ain't gonna work. You know, that sort of thing or just it's gonna take too much time. So do you give yourself kind of a set of 48 hours? You know, just say, okay. Let's let's dig into it for this amount of time.
Brett Johnson [:Boom. Let's put it on the shelf maybe later. I'm just not finding something. How do you do that?
Lee Hills [:I I definitely I definitely try and write it down, make a note note of it. Might seem obvious but it was something I learnt from Don, I remember early conversations with Don, he would say right for goodness sake write the thing Don, and I think that's a good starting point, and because then you can kind of leave it to simmer, and see if it just keeps nagging. For me it's I wait and see does it keep nagging at me, and then if it does at that point I might go and talk to 1 or 2 friends and just share the Idea. Sometimes I might put a tweet out and, you know, do a poll, you know, what if I launch this thing would you would you be interested? I think those things can be good to do, and just just see where that where that takes me, and then if it keeps nagging, keeps calling out to me then I might take it further, maybe put up a landing page, or you know think try and think technically about how I could do it. For me I like building the thing, but that doesn't mean you have to you have to. It might be for you, that or or someone else who has an idea that you find someone else to partner with you on building that thing who's maybe more technical, which has happened to me a few times. You know, some of the collaborations I've had recently, I've worked with other people who've done a different part of the of the idea. Yeah.
Lee Hills [:Maybe the marketing or the branding.
Brett Johnson [:Right. Right. Okay. Yeah. You know, and that leads me to, you know, what we kind of talked about too, what we wanted to cover is, you know, you you're launching and you come up with these so many different ideas. It's that but you could be sitting on them. You could have never launched any of these, but you decided to do it. So, yeah, I I I guess we wanna talk about the concept of just doing it.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. When you've got something, do it. Whether it's it and perfect is kind of the opposite of getting it done. It it it it's good enough kind of feel to it. How do you approach that?
Lee Hills [:I I think it is the idea of I I I I can't the frustration of I don't wanna have it just in my notebook or in my head. I at least wanna get it out and see if something happens or it goes somewhere. And so so that's that's the approach, it's just launch it and and and see if your passion and energy for it continues, and let that kind of guide you I guess. If if people then become paying customers for me that's that it's not just about validation it it gives you motivation I think because then other people want it so then it makes you Don to keep going, which has happened with particularly with Build the Keywords, recently where you know we've got people giving us feedback and using the tool and telling us what they'd like us to do with it, I think that when you get to that stage and then you keep going, you keep you keep building, But I think I think it's that thing of let me just get it released, get it launched so that it I can at least know and never have that feeling of what if.
Brett Johnson [:And and you could insert podcasting in there wherever you put, you know, that concept or it's like we talked about as well too. Just that, okay, you Guy the podcast created. Now you maybe wanna create some marketing tools around it. So what are you waiting for? Do a newsletter. Get on Circle media and start promoting. It's just that the longer you wait, that's another day gone.
Lee Hills [:Yeah. I I think especially with podcasting, I think and and and I've, you know, launched a a Circle of different podcasts in there. So I've been there. I've had that feeling, and I've I've definitely had that feeling of not launching that podcast, of having that idea sitting on it, and not launching it. And I think to to get it out there, to get it, and then and then get listeners, you know, get people trying it, listening to it, and to then help validate what that idea you is for your for your podcast. Because, you know, people are gonna need that podcast. You gotta launch. I I launched the podcast with my daughter, few years ago, when we homeschooled her.
Lee Hills [:And and basically it was just to document her process and my process of learning what it was to homeschool, and we just had it wasn't hundreds of thousands of people. We just had a few people who listened to it saying you you've inspired us to to homeschool because we could listen to your journey. We're now we're now feel like we're confident enough to to do homeschooling, which we've been thinking about doing.
Don The Idea Guy [:You never know what kind of impact your content's gonna have on the public until you get it out there. And everybody starts with 0 audience. Everybody feels that they're talking to themselves for a long time. And then you get one piece of feedback and it changes your your whole outlook
Lee Hills [:and
Don The Idea Guy [:perspective on it. The to hit on a couple of things you said, it's about the first thing to do is write down the idea. I suggest that to everybody because if you come up with a good idea and you don't write it down, if you don't save it somewhere, your brain is using up value energy trying to remember the idea. It's like, I got I can't forget this great idea.
Lee Hills [:Yeah. But if you
Don The Idea Guy [:write it down where you can go to refer to it, your brain is freed up to work on the idea itself. So that one. The other was launching it. You get your stuff to a minimum viable creation where you can put a landing page out that explains it, or you put the tweet out that says, would you be interested? Or you have a beta version of it that you can post, a prototype that people can go in and play around with. You're rarely, as long as I've known you, launched a finished product. It's always something that is in stage 1. It's functional. You can get what you need out of it.
Don The Idea Guy [:But it's usually even very apparent when you go in there that you're not done yet. You know, I'm I've posted this because you can get from a to c, but I'm still working on d, e, and f. But tell me what you think. If you love it, then I'll keep going. If you don't, then, hey. Maybe it's just good enough going to to c. That was the other thing I thought was very interesting.
Lee Hills [:Yeah. My Amamoo, going back to our point at the beginning, my, my camper van, it still got d, e, and f that needs to be added to it even after all these years. So, you know, it hasn't got a heater in it. It's those kind of things. When
Don The Idea Guy [:when Brett and I were talking about that project itself where you had the the bot, We're like, he built that without AI. There was no AI. You had a program in your answers. Think about how much easier that is now with AI responses.
Lee Hills [:Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Makes me think wherever I should go back and do a
Don The Idea Guy [:Oh, mess with the your launch plan now.
Lee Hills [:Lee relaunches. Lee relaunches. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Right. Right. Exactly. No. I I think, your point of the launching piece of of, you know, whatever it looks like, just do it because I know that that stops a lot of creators to stop. They they think it has to be perfect, and they've never looked back or listened to episode 1 of a podcast that's maybe published 200 episodes. Yeah. Go back.
Brett Johnson [:And I've got clients that are in that number that they're well into 150 episodes in Sessions. They cringe when they go back to listen to number 1, because I'll I'll I'll showcase an anniversary. Hey. You guys are in season number 7 now. You should go back and listen to episode 1 or 2, and they go, I don't wanna. I don't wanna. And we talk about the progression, how things have changed. And a lot of it is just putting it out there, and you're getting feedback from people, from listeners that they want this, they want that.
Brett Johnson [:You're ask. You specifically have to ask for that call to Sessions, though. You have to ask for input other than or or you're just, you know, talking to avoid. Are you creating an avoid and you're creating something that's only for you, which is fine, but that's not necessarily the purpose. It's for you and the world, and you want the world's input.
Don The Idea Guy [:I I think the podcast launching a podcast or launching a site, launching a product Mhmm. It's a way to explore your ideas. It's a way for you to fix your opinion on something because you're gonna you're gonna make a single version of that manifest. You're gonna create this one version. What becomes possible after that version's out there is open to the possibility. My wife's going through this now with a podcast she launched last year on cybersecurity. Does she have a small podcast audience that's grown since she's produced more episodes? Yeah. Sure.
Don The Idea Guy [:I'm sure she has some general followers. But what that podcast and publishing on a regular basis, her thoughts on cybersecurity has led to is speaking gigs. All of a sudden, she's been invited to speak at different events because she's put her and her opinion and her insights into this topic out there. It's not or or podcast isn't winning awards. People aren't saying, hey. Can we guess on your podcast? They're going, we love what you said about this. We like your thoughts on this idea. Will you come share them with our group? So by virtue of creating this one thing, she opened up this whole other avenue, and I I think that goes to creating any idea.
Don The Idea Guy [:You create this one thing. What else opens up because you created that one thing?
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Lee Hills [:A 100%.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. So what's the future for early launches? What you got what what are you cooking on? You know, what's what's the itch you wanna scratch? Let's put it that way.
Don The Idea Guy [:What's Don the launching pad?
Brett Johnson [:Yes. There you go.
Lee Hills [:Yeah. Good question. I'm I'm currently, April, I'm trying to finish, build the key. I say finish. I've I've got a long list of things I wanna do for build the key words. I'm not gonna get to them all, but I'm trying to spend the rest of April, the last 8 days or 9 days, whatever it is, finishing off that project to a to a certain level. And then I'm I'm not sure. I might go Don a new project.
Lee Hills [:I might go back to launch casts. I would like to do that if I can, especially get Don the the feed part of it, the podcast feed part of the the product, and and maybe explore some of the voices a bit more. But other than that, I I don't, at the moment, have a a burning idea, but who knows? It could be different tomorrow morning.
Brett Johnson [:I was just gonna say that.
Lee Hills [:I drink that first cup of
Don The Idea Guy [:coffee. Yep. Yeah. I vote for Launch Cast. I I still wanna see the, the episode length increase on that, the the duration of the episodes. Boy, that's I there's just so many more things I wanna use that tool for myself that I hope you Don, get a chance to expand it more.
Brett Johnson [:Oh, yeah. And, obviously, you got a little bit of a bullhorn here that we'll we'll keep listeners updated
Don The Idea Guy [:Yes.
Brett Johnson [:On what's going on for sure.
Don The Idea Guy [:Up to date. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Oh, yeah. For
Lee Hills [:sure. For sure.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. So where can, where can listeners find you? What what what's the best way to get updates? You know, do you have a central point that they can go to with a dotcom or a Don io or whatever, you know, you've chosen?
Lee Hills [:Yeah. So yeah. So I'm I'm most on Twitter quite a bit. Oh, sorry. X.com Yeah. Forward slash, Lee Launches, and and the same on LinkedIn. You can find me on there. And then I've also got, Lee Launches dotcom.
Lee Hills [:I'm currently in the process of building a new site for that, which is gonna have different parts to what to what I do. And then I've also got, I'm also on YouTube. You can find me on YouTube, Lee Launches Don com. Sorry. Youtube Don com forward slash Lee Launches. So yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Super. Good. Well, thanks, Lee. Because this yeah. We've we've kinda danced around what this thing is. You know? I mean, and and and and basically our use of it, but we wanna go to the to to the source, and kinda get an update and kinda get a feel for where you're going with it as well too. And and maybe get some podcasters excited about it depending on their use, depending on what they're needing Yeah. At the point in time.
Brett Johnson [:Because I've used it now. And 1 podcast instead of I I I used, the the I forget which voice it is. I know she got one named Brett, which he does a great job if you haven't changed names. But, it's a female voice that I've got an intro used for one of the pod intro and outro for one of the podcasts that, I work with, and it came out great. It was just me playing with it a little bit and Yeah. Pauses and such, but it was great for an intro, outro. Perfect.
Lee Hills [:Well, that's a that's a that's a great use case to have. Yeah. And like Don was saying, you know, you could use it for for your ads, you know, if you need
Brett Johnson [:Exactly.
Lee Hills [:Someone in a different voice for for the ad segment of your podcast. Yeah. That's a great use case.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Yeah. So, Don, let's, let's let's let's send it. Where can people get a hold of you? And we can't have some great ideas already, but they can get a hold of you for even more ideas. And it's not just ideas. It's ideas to launch, to get going.
Don The Idea Guy [:That's right. I am, I'm I'm not gonna claim credit for Lee's, launches. He has all those, but I I'll claim a little credit for standing behind him and pushing him a little bit. Get go. It is. Guy, you could like, you could find Lee as Lee launches on all the platforms. You can find me as Don Don Idea guy on all the platforms. Find your favorite one, whether you call it x or Twitter, or Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever you Don, you'll find me out there.
Don The Idea Guy [:Or Don the Idea guy dot com.
Brett Johnson [:There you go. And, find me at Circle270Media.com or MyPodcastGuy.com the best way to either way, I'll be there. And, we look forward to to, bringing you another episode in just a few weeks. Thanks for listening.
