Small Business Growth Podcast dedicated to the "3 G's": Personal, Professional, & Business Growth

Shark Bite Biz is hosted by David Strausser, a Forbes Business Development Council member and Vice-President of Business Development for SEIDOR USA. The podcast started during the Covid-19 pandemic as a way for David to continue networking, growing, and learning what others were doing to pivot their business during all the chaos. Now that everything has shifted nearly three years later, the show focuses more on personal growth, professional growth, and business growth - the "3 G's". The show really caters to those types of people that want to learn about how to do a career transition, how to grow their business, alternative business strategies, and to business owners, managers, directors, and executives. The core focus is to help the listener breakthrough any barriers preventing growth.
 

Believe it or not, I'm shy. I don't like public speaking, I don't enjoy being in front of a camera, but as everybody went through the digital transformation change during the pandemic, I also went through personal changes because I had to do what was available. The show name itself was actually registered all the way back in 2015, but instead of doing the podcast, I ended up doing live shows instead. It was only during Covid when I couldn't do live shows anymore or networking events that I was like, "I've been paying for Shark Bite BIz for 5 years now and haven't done anything, maybe it's finally time to do the show" did I get the courage to figure out how to make, produce, and launch a podcast. I launched the podcast as a way to network and grow while we were all locked down and I figured that other people would probably want to come along on that journey with me. Thankfully, many have and the show is thriving almost 3 years later with roughly 200 episodes produced.
 

Originally I funded it myself, out of my own pocket. I already had most of the gear I needed, but was lacking software and some other more subtle things. After about 6 months, my then employer said they'd sponsor the show for me because they saw the value and different angle my show had versus their corporate podcast. Since then, I've changed companies and work for SEIDOR USA, where SEIDOR and SAP sponsor the podcast. YouTube also provides some revenue since the channel is monetized with over 1.5 million views on the channel. When it comes down to it, I don't do the show for money, although to protect myself, it is a registered LLC, I do it for the experience I get from growth. So many strategies I've learned on my show I have taught my team and implemented myself. For me to find time, that's the hard part. Having a consistent podcast is critical for success and I produced an episode every Monday except for two breaks we take between seasons. Since my employer sponsors the show and views my interviews as professional growth in my career, I could spend 5 hours one week a month and have the next 6 weeks worth of episodes. I mostly do my intro & outro segments the weekend that the episodes are about to air. I try to keep those segments as recent as possible. I guess where I've really lucked out is that my then 17 year old son was already using tools like Vegas Pro (we use Adobe only now) and was able to produce the quality. Take a look at episode #002 and look at episode #192 and you'll see a night and day difference between the look, feel, quality and my ability to host. He saves me the most time so I don't have to edit, which really saves me time. Now he's 20, matured, and experienced and the show just keeps getting better and better as we both get more experience.
 

What I gain from podcasting is pretty clear: relationships & knowledge. I've made some amazing friends from the show, got to interview celebrities, rock stars, producers, newscasters, famous CEOs but even with all those big names, I still make sure that our show has guests that are people that run or own a Mom & Pop type business. I try to cover all areas of business. To me, this show is one long masterclass on business, personal growth, financial advice, and more. When I look back, I can't believe how many people I've had on the show and with everything I do in my personal life, how much knowledge I've retained from people on the show. One of my favorite stories is when legendary music producer Jack Douglas came on the show and told me (paraphrased) "so I'm working remotely now but have been forever. Just this morning Ringo (Starr) just sent me over tracks for his new album. I just happened to be hanging with Paul (McCartney) and I asked him to lay down the bass track for me." That blew my mind and because I had a new show at the time and wasn't a good host, I forgot to ask "is Paul still with you?"
 

We actually consider ourselves more of a vodcast. We have many more subscribers and viewers on YouTube than we do on the audio platform. That's one of the reasons for the podcast hosting we have now switched to Podcasters for Spotify (formerly Anchor.fm). We wanted a video on Spotify as the video aspect of it is beautiful and we put a lot of work into our graphics, the look and feel of the show. As far as equipment goes, my current setup is simple: Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra camera (older episodes used a Logitech Brio) and a Shure MV7 microphone. We record the interviews in Zoom using HD, separate audio tracks, and select the 3rd Party Editor option. I used to use a Shure SM7B, I still have it, but hooking it up to a mixing board (Zoom PodTrak P8) or the Yamaha MG-12 was just a pain because as I work, I'd have to adjust the audio for each application we'd use. Teams one volume, a phone call another volume, Zoom another volume, so I gave up and used the USB microphone. The quality is amazing but yes, nothing beats the Shure SM7B. For my intros & outros, I use OBS to record them in 1440p. I also record them on my ZenBook Pro Duo 4K which has an RTX 3080. Really, we just look for simplicity, even with our interviews, it's about simplicity. Many hosts prepare for each show. I don't. I skim over a bio and topics to make sure the guest would be a fit and if they are I bring them on. I purposefully go into each interview "blissfully ignorant" as I like to say because then when I ask questions, they will be genuine questions out of curiosity, not to just check a box. I try to make every episode be a structured but unstructured conversation. Structured because we are talking about a specific topic for the most part, but unstructured because there is no script. Just two (or three) people talking.
 

Social media works great. LinkedIn has gotten new life since the pandemic and has been a great resource for both clips and publishing the episodes. I also spend about $150 a month on different advertising services to promote the show. Listeners can really find my show through anywhere because it's really starting to appear in so many different places organically and that has really helped me keep the cost of advertisements down. We're a niche show, looking for a specific type of audience, this show isn't for everybody, but for those that want to seek growth in a more outside of the box thinking type way.
 

Don't give up. It takes time first and most obviously. It took me a long time to get recognition for the show, but I didn't care, I just chugged along doing what I was doing. Second would be consistency. It doesn't matter if you are sick, have a funeral, birthday party, or a wedding - you must make every episode and keep your promise to your audience and deliver when you are supposed to deliver. In 3 years, we have never been late publishing an episode. We've had some issues when we changed from Podbean to Anchor.fm/Podcasters for Spotify, but that was resolved within a day and ironically only made it so that Spotify was delayed. Some great resources are out there to learn how to do the show and do it professionally. Most of what you are looking for if you are reading this, you'll probably find right here in Listen Notes.
 

Go to SharkBiteBiz.com, check us out on YouTube at https://youtube.com/c/SharkBiteBiz, Twitter at https://twitter.com/SharkBiteBiz or really any of your favorite podcast apps, we should be everywhere. For myself personally, you can find out more about me at https://DavidStrausser.com, follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/dstrausser83 or connect on LinkedIn at: https://linkedin.com/in/davidstrausser. If you want to help the show, you can do that through Spotify with the "Support this Podcast" button here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/shark-bite-biz/support - every dollar earned by the show is a dollar spent on the show... I don't like taxes. Really though it comes down to making the show bigger and better. I'd love to get a 2nd camera, more lighting options, a different studio, but that's only possible with listener support.