► Tell us about you and your podcast
I’ve never had a job and hit multimillionaire status selling online 21 years ago. The podcast is entrepreneurial and aimed at people that either want to start or grow a business.
► Why & how did you start this podcast?
I started the podcast 3 years ago for several reasons. New cars can now play podcasts directly from their dashboards and in-home devices like Amazon Echo and Google Assistant can too. This represents 750 million more outlets with more coming each year. With regard to cars, podcast listenership has exceeded XM Radio and it’s free.
My podcast took a long time to launch, but it was by design. I had 50 episodes “in the can” before I released episode #1. This may seem like overkill, but there is a method to my madness. I wanted to have 4 or 5 months completed so I didn’t have to worry about doing any recordings. Why did I do this? The reason is that I did a podcast tour being interviewed on other people’s podcasts. This was a marketing strategy which was very efficient because those that heard me on a podcast obviously like podcasts and know how to listen to them. This is how I got my initial listeners.
► How'd you find the time and funding to do this podcast?
As I said above, I work for myself so I set my own schedule. Also, I have been making audio products for 23 years so my learning curve for recording and editing audio was less than someone starting from scratch. I did, however, go to the local music store and recruited one of the employees to come to my house and hook up a mixing board, compressor / limiter / noise gate and computer interface.
I do three episodes a week. It takes me an average of 1.5 hours to produce a podcast plus another 1 to 1.5 hours to edit and convert to .mp3 Then I turn it over to another guy who spends about 90 minutes to create the show notes and send the file to our transcription service. He also uploads the file to libsyn podcast hosting service.
Once the extra equipment was purchased the only fees I pay are $20.00 / month at Libsyn and the 1.5-hour fee of one of my students which isn’t much. If he wasn’t around, I could do all that for free. The transcription costs $5.00 per recorded hour at 93-95% accuracy. We spend $99.00/year for a podcast app through Libsyn.
Other one-time costs were $25.00 for graphics and $25.00 for intro/outro.
► What do you gain from podcasting?
I do not take sponsorship. I’m the sponsor for every episode which promotes my products and services. I have products ranging from $17.00 to $58,000.00 and the tuition to my school is $19,100.00. My podcast was profitable from day one because I was not worried about downloads per episode or sponsors. The sale of a couple small products per episode makes it profitable and a large product sale makes it profitable for several months.
► How does your podcasting process look like?
I use a Shure SM7B dynamic microphone, going through a cloudlifter, into a DBX compressor/limiter/noise gate into a mixer into a computer interface into an iMac. I edit with Adobe Audition.
Guests are easy to find. I’m a professional speaker and anyone can go to the National Speakers Association website and find professional speakers who are glib, funny, have tons of topics and love to hear themselves talk I get other guests from podcast agencies and Facebook.
If it’s a solo training episode which I do on Mondays, I bulletize all my points and sit down and record. If it’s an interview of other successful entrepreneurs, I have them send me a 50-word intro and hi-res picture. If I don’t know much about them, I look at their social media, products, website and whatever else I can find out about them and I make questions up that I’m pretty sure they haven’t heard before. Because of this, many top tier people have commented that I gave them the most interesting interview they’ve had in the podcast arena.
I use Zoom.
► How do you market your show?
I get most of my listeners from my large email list, then Instagram, Clubhouse and Facebook.
► What advice would you share with aspiring (new) podcasters?
I had lots of trouble in the beginning spending tons of time editing out audible breaths. This was because I used a condenser microphone that I already had instead of using a less sensitive dynamic microphone. Editing goes so much faster. Along those lines I have improved tremendously talking with inaudible breaths. It takes practice, but can be done.
Also, don’t underestimate the time it takes to create each podcast, i.e. don’t be too aggressive in the beginning trying to do too many episodes per week.
I have a modestly priced podcast course which includes a feature on my podcast, and a consultation to give you personal attention, but there are many courses out there.
► Where can we learn more about you & your podcasts?
• ► Question 8: Where can we learn more about you & your podcasts? (0/2048)
https://www.ScrewTheCommute.com/ Podcast Site
tom@ScrewTheCommute.com
https://www.Facebook.com/AmericanEntrepreneurFilm Hollywood Documentary about my life premiering summer 2021
Instagram: @antionandassociates
https://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com My mentor program for podcasting and marketing
http://www.KickStartCart.com Service that collects emails and money from listeners