Jeff Large is the CEO & Founder of Come Alive Creative, a podcast production company. Clients hire Jeff to produce their podcasts and to develop strategies for their content marketing. Jeff spends most days actively learning about goal setting, writing narratives, collaborating with others, and producing amazing audio.
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Kenny Soto 0:02
Hello everyone and welcome to the people of digital marketing with your host Kenny Soto and today’s guest, Jeff large. Hi, Jeff, how are you? I’m well, how are you? I’m doing very well. Before recording, we were jamming on gear. And I think that’s the best place to start just because we were already talking about it.
So I would love for the listeners who are watching but also the listeners who are just going to be using their podcast apps to listen to this episode. I’d love for you to share what’s in your home office.
Jeff Large 0:38
Oh, man. Okay. And then I’m gonna get technical. I think I’ll even throw around acronyms and things but we’re Where do you want me to start an audio or start audio? Okay, audio, I’m using yours you’re listening to the smooth sound of a Shure SM seven B. I have. I have a not-very-popular, boom arm. It’s the array.
And it actually comes with this extension thing. But I love it. It’s super nice because most of the other ones you have to bolt into the desk. This one you do not. So this one’s convenient for moving around a type of standpoint, everything’s running into sound devices mixed pre-six, I’m using that as my audio interface. I have it powering. I can run headphones wise. I have audio Technica, the eight the 50s.
They are not for any of the audio files out there. It is not a flat sound. And so I kind of break the rules a little bit in terms of podcasting in terms of mixing where there’s other mics or other not microphones, headphones that are significantly better. For a flat response. However, I love those headphones, they still sound great, and they’re very comfortable.
And so I’ll use those. I have four monitors to HS six. I’m about or No, I like the Yamaha HS five monitors. I’m going to be upgrading to some Yamaha HS eights because they’re going on sale for Memorial Day at a price that I have not seen before.
So I’m going to be picking those up, which is cool. I have one little trick, it’s super weird and way too nerdy for this early in the podcast device that I’m using. It’s a moko. It’s like it’s by us, I have the company and it’s called a moto. And it’s a passive volume controller. And it was the only way that I could figure out how to get my mix pre-six, to have an external working volume knob for my speakers, if that makes sense.
Otherwise, you’d have to manually do it on the device or on the computer itself, which is a pain. And so I think I think that’s all the audio. It’s a pretty simple rig. In general, I have a ton of other audio equipment, but this is like the office setup. Any questions there? Or should I proceed on?
Kenny Soto 2:39
What is the advantage of having? What do you call it? Like a bar? The swivel?
Jeff Large 2:46
When you play swivel? What do you mean?
Kenny Soto 2:48
That’s what’s holding the microphone? Yeah.
Jeff Large 2:50
Oh, yeah. So there are tons of different stands there are a million different stands. This one is a boom arm. And it basically because if, for those listening, it’s the type of stand that you can kind of swing in think like radio host or something.
And the ease of it is that I’m able to I gonna stop talking because I can swing it off-screen, get it out of the way, I’m able to move it around as I’m if I’m standing versus if I’m sitting because I have a sit-stand desk. And there are different types.
One of the more popular ones I believe is, it’s not sure. It might be shirts, I don’t remember, there’s one that’s super popular that most people get. But the thing that I don’t like about it is you have to physically mount it to the desk. As for me, I move around, sometimes I go to other places. This just has a super heavy-duty clamp. You can mount it if you want to, but I don’t. And so I just use the heavy-duty clamp.
And then it’s better than it’s built quality-wise better than say a lot of you can get like $15 Newer boom arms, and they’re sort of tiny off at Amazon to me, those are decent for just starting, but it’s not something that I would want to use because I mean, I do this every day. So it’s not it’s worth the smallest, slightly smaller investment.
Kenny Soto 4:01
That makes sense. What other gear Do you have besides audio?
Jeff Large 4:05
Yeah, audio-wise that’s pretty much covered in terms of my PC, I don’t have the specs off the top of my head. It’s the second PC that I’ve built. I’m a PC guy over a Mac. I appreciate Mac I don’t want to start a war with anybody. But I mean, I know a ton of most of my friends are Mac but I just look at the specs. And I’m like, I just have a hard time justifying the cost a lot of the time and for what I can build on a PC. It just makes more sense.
And I’ve enjoyed doing it. It’s like a fun thing to occasionally break out. So I built my PC probably four years ago, I wouldn’t mind building another new one, but at the time I maxed it out in terms of what was available. I have the let me see here. I’m using one of my subtle hacks. There are lots of different ways to do this. But I use gaming software or gaming hardware. So I have a Corsair gaming mouse. I think it’s the.
Kenny Soto 5:00
Wait for it
Jeff Large 5:03
The dark core mouse, and then I have the Corsair wireless, that’s a wireless version. And then I have the Corsair. I think it’s the case that the seven keyboards, that’s wireless as well. But the reason I like them is that they have buttons where you can set up macros.
And so when I’m editing I have, instead of like clicking into something, or even having a shortcut on the keyboard like I have dedicated macro keys that if for example, any just think of any task you do, and then think of the things you do most often like I just keep those on my hand and on my mouse.
And so I just literally moved my thumb instead of like moving and clicking a bunch of stuff like if I need to constantly silent audio, cut audio, delete things. I have shortcuts for like, strike-throughs oh my gosh, to find strikethrough on Google is such a pain. So I have a button that I just click and it’s strikethrough whatever I’m highlighted.
And so I use those two things. And then otherwise, we’re just talking about webcams. I need to upgrade mine. I have the Logitech I think 920. I’ve been looking at a bunch of really nice cameras, but most are out of stock right now.
I’ll probably get the Brio like you were saying just as the computer version. And then I have some other ones that I’ll be getting for doing more recordings. And then my monitors are old and I just don’t have a reasonable upgrade.
I’m here to like, one’s an Acer and one’s a Zeus and they’re like 23-and-a-half-inch or 24-inch monitors. I’ll eventually upgrade them, but I don’t need to at this point. So that’s my one kind of old-school thing that I’m still rocking. I think that’s most of the computer setup.
Kenny Soto 6:34
Yeah, my setup is not as complex. I cheated. Oh, you cheated. Maybe we’re missing something.
Jeff Large 6:42
No, I dropped. So here’s the world of let’s be transparent. I just dropped my audio on my speakers, so I wouldn’t get any bleed picking up in my microphone. But I forgot I didn’t have my headphones on. So you just said something that I didn’t hear you. Alright, my headphones are on Go for it.
Kenny Soto 6:58
Yeah, I was. I was saying that my setup is not as complex as I got a $16 microphone from Amazon USB mic and my Brio webcam. Those are the only two things I have right now. Until I can invest in some other gear.
Jeff Large 7:14
Yeah, I love it though. I mean, it didn’t start this way. That’s the thing that people forget is that you look like your favorite YouTuber or something. And they’re 568 years in and there you have all this crazy. I was literally just watching Peter McKinnon buy some new $5,000 camera.
And he’s like, Oh, talking about it and whatever. We don’t start that way. When I first began, it was with equipment that I had from already being a musician.
It was like a Mackie soundboard and a Roland aural five digital recorder and a bunch of other stuff. And as time goes on, you upgrade. And so it’s one of those things. It’s like there’s absolutely no shame whatsoever, and rock and a super simple setup.
And if I’m even like a mobile, my mobile setup would look way pared down compared to something like this. And so yeah, nothing to feel bad about.
Kenny Soto 8:02
Well, this is a good segue into my next question, which is whether you started off as a musician, but then gradually made your way into the world of podcasting. Can you tell us that story and how that journey came to be?
Jeff Large 8:18
Yeah, I wouldn’t say gradually,, it was pretty quick. It was like we just decided to do one, there’ll give the top overview. And then feel free to drill down on anything that might be interesting. But I started, my musicianship started, I won’t make it like a long sob story or anything.
My musicianship started in high school, I believe I started playing bass. And then I started playing electric guitar. And then I got into a hardcore band, I was a vocalist for a while, pretending like Deftones and Rage Against the Machine had a baby. It was like that kind of sound. After several years, I got sick, uh, yelling and so at the time, I think I also started playing acoustic guitar. So I did an Acoustic Singer Songwriter thing for a while.
And because of that, I had a bunch of instruments and I had full pa equipment. It was in 2012, my cousin and my wife and I still do, but we really really loved board games. Not like Monopoly board games, more like indie games, some what we would call gateway games. So the games that get you from a big box game to an indie game would be things like Ticket to Ride Settlers of Catan King of Tokyo, there’s you’re starting to see him more in like, say Myers, like we have a Myers it’s like a grocery kind of all-purpose store chain.
They’re starting to sell that type of stuff. You see some like d&d board games, different things like that. At the time, we were super into the indie scene, and we wanted to make our own. And so we were like, okay, but the problem was, we didn’t really know what we were doing. And then we also knew we were gonna go to Kickstarter and stuff. Hopefully the listeners heard of this by now, but it’s basically a crowdfunding platform, where essentially you put an idea out there, they decide people decide if they want to fund it or not.
And then as I mean, you hit your goal, you go and make the thing and then send it to the people. Kind of like investing kind of not. And so we knew we needed to give back to the community beforehand. And I already had all this audio equipment. And so we’re like, well, let’s just start a podcast, we can do it that way.
And the thing that was different, though, about what we did at the time was, it was interesting, because the space was all just like, a bunch of dudes talking about game reviews, or game night, or having some beers and talking about games, it was like all the same thing.
And then we kind of came on the scene with one a female, which was sort of rare at the time, and my wife has a very fun and quirky personality, that’s just fun to listen to, in general. And it was a good dynamic between the three of us like we were all very kind of distinct, and our personalities and our styles.
And the only thing we covered was the business of board games. And so we were very, very intentional with that intersection of talking to people that designed board games, graphic designers, manufacturing chains, publishers.
And that’s what we interviewed every single time. And what ended up happening, the long short of it is we went through about 50 episodes got to the point where we put when to publish the game took it to Kickstarter, it didn’t find the first time, and my cousin and I were more of he’s an accountant by trade.
And then I was a teacher by trade at the time, but I had more of the business. He is not to say he didn’t, but we both kinds of had more business savvy. And so we looked at it, and we’re like, Wait, I don’t think we want to do this anymore. Because it’s just the board game space. It’s very hard to be profitable and do different things. And so what ended up happening is we, we knew we had a good following with the podcast.
And we took the podcast to Kickstarter just to see like, do people want us to continue this and they ended up funding like season three or something we like double funded what we wanted. And so we ended up rounding out around, like 7075 episodes or something.
And then finally, my cousin ended up what ended up happening is my cousin bought my wife and me out, and then at that time, I started coming live creative, which is my current company, and I wanted to focus more there anyways. But that was sort of the trajectory of musician to podcaster.
Kenny Soto 12:13
In your opinion, is a podcast, a marketing channel, or a tool?
Jeff Large 12:20
No, probably neither podcast is audio. It’s like, I mean, it was what it comes down to. It’s, to me, it’s just, it’s, um, if I had to put a word to it, I’d say a medium. It’s not any different than any I mean, this might be what you mean by a tool. And we might just be saying, the syntax wise, a little bit of jargon wise, a little bit different things.
But essentially, to me, if I had to equate it to something, if I had to throw it into a bucket, it’d be the same thing as social media, blogs, videos, or anything like that. It’s just content, it’s medium, it’s something how you use it can be a marketing channel, it can be the business development, it can be a networking tool, there’s a bazillion things it can do. And I’m also because I do this full time, I’m, I mean, I’ve been doing it now full time.
I’ve podcaster since 2012, we’ve been providing them for other people since about 2016. I’m very biased towards the medium itself, I think it’s unique compared to other mediums, and it’s something that I very, very much enjoy. But at the end of the day, it’s still a medium, people don’t come to me just for a podcast, they come to me for what a podcast can do for them.
And I think that’s a very clear distinction.
If this is something, I mean, we might be jumping ahead a little bit. But if somebody is considering this as a possible thing to do, you need to understand why you need to understand the goals behind it. Because it’s not just like, oh, the new shiny thing, there are a million things that we could focus on as marketers at any given time, it’s important that we’re intentional with the things that we are doing to make sure that they’re gonna get us where we want to go.
Kenny Soto 13:56
So I feel like I’m very lucky with this podcast because in most cases, nine times out of 10 When I am interviewing a guest in that same moment, whether it’s that very week, that every quarter or even every month, I find that the questions I’m asking are not only for the listeners, but they’re also for myself, when it comes to producing a podcast for a client, what are the unique challenges that come about that are different from let’s say, creating your own podcasts for your own business?
Jeff Large 14:36
I have to pause. Can you give me further clarification on what? Why are you asking me? What essence are you trying to help me get to?
Kenny Soto 14:44
Yeah, so I suspect that there are potential listeners or even new listeners who already have their own podcast, and they might have already been approached like myself to help someone else. build their own podcast for a business not necessarily for a personal brand. And like what I’m doing? Are there any key differences in how you would launch? And produce a podcast for someone else as opposed to for yourself?
Jeff Large 15:14
I don’t know. I guess I still am struggling with the question a little bit. I don’t know if that’s the right question to ask. Because for me, and we can, I’m always down for healthy debate, too, because I’m curious about what you think, in response, I’m gonna kind of force you to answer this. My simple answer would be yes. But I don’t think that’s important.
What’s important is that there are a lot of ways that you can answer this. If I go to the top level, I’m gonna go to the top level. Again, I think any quality show is technically sound. And so I mean, sound-wise, it’s at least acceptable at this point in time with the number of shows that there are and the way the industry is trending. Like, that’s kind of just this expectation is like a high level of audio. I think they need to be strategic.
And I don’t mean, I don’t mean inauthentic, I just mean intentional with how we construct our questions, how we have a conversation, the style of the content we produce with how we allow our personalities to shine through. Those decisions need to be made intentionally, and then they need to be human.
You can’t forget that the shows that resonate with people have a true element of humaneness to them and that that can be a topic in and of itself. So you need an understanding of those things. If you have your own podcast, you may have that understanding. But it’s not a prerequisite, you might not your podcasts might not be that good.
You might not just because you know how to do something doesn’t mean you know how to teach it. My former background is as a teacher as well, I taught for 7, 7, 8 years, and I’m just trying for my master’s degree. And it’s a whole nother ball game to teach anybody a skill, let alone to be able to do a skill, there are things that I can do that I do not like teaching, I have a guitar in the background.
It’s not for show, I like sitting down to play it. I’ve been given lessons before, but I don’t like to because I don’t think I’m that good at them. But I sure love playing and my family enjoys me playing. And when I used to do shows and stuff those people enjoyed me playing. That’s different from the way that I feel about podcasting. I feel like I can execute a very good podcast personally. And I know I have evidence that I can do it, and my team can do it for other people. Does that answer your question?
Kenny Soto 17:32
Yeah, it does answer my question. And as you were answering the question, I can see why you mentioned that there was a better way of asking it. As a follow-up, let’s go into the details of your onboarding process in this case. So let’s say you have a client who reaches out to you and says, Hey, we’re XYZ company and XYZ industry and we would love to have a podcast, but we don’t even know where to start. What’s your approach to helping them?
Jeff Large 17:57
Are they asking me for advice? Are they coordinated? Are they a prospect and recording us for your engagement? I’m gonna ask three questions. It’s the same thing. My sales call usually don’t sound like sales calls. They usually just sound like somebody needs help. And then I go through, and then they figure out if they liked me or not. And then that kind of gives the reflection of the team.
But it really comes down to what are your goals. And I’m gonna sound like a broken record with a lot of this stuff. But what are your goals? Who is your target audience? And why do you want to podcast? Once that’s established? Usually, I’ll follow up with some specifics. I almost always follow up on what does success look like? As a marketer? You might call that a key performance indicator or KPI might be a success and might be like, it could just be a feeling like sometimes I’m like, how this would what makes this worth it to you is sometimes what I ask.
And then that way, you can see like, if I achieve x, this investment would be good for me. And then you can have a sense of reality, then I’ll know, do their goals aligned with the types of goals that we believe in and that we can accomplish? Are we familiar with their target audience? That’s not always necessary.
In fact, that’s that often isn’t necessary, but it’s helpful when we do know their target audience. Well, that’s just kind of like a one-up on top of things. And then in terms of key performance indicators, it’s, I’m asking it almost for two reasons Do they understand what success looks like? Like, do they know what will actually make them happy? And most of the time, especially with businesses, they do, like they have bottom lines that they need to hit.
When it’s individuals, it gets a little fuzzier to get them to define that. But for the most part, that’s good. And then I also want to know, the second piece, losing my train of thought a little bit key performance indicator to them if they know it. And then also, is it realistic? Like, can we achieve it? Because sometimes you get people that are like, I want 50,000 listeners, and I just want a straightforward interview podcast. It’s basically the same thing as the Tim Ferriss show, and I’m like, Okay, we’re not going to do that. So, it’s those things. That’s how I begin.
And once that’s all established then it’s typically asking Alright, what do you want to know that I just handed over to them ask that let them ask as many questions as they want. And by the end of the conversation, we usually have a feel of, yep, this is a good direction. Let me write you up a proposal, or Nope, this isn’t a good direction. Let me point you to somebody that will be a good fit for you.
Kenny Soto 20:21
I want to double-click on the Tim Ferriss joke that you mentioned because I feel like there’s a good opportunity to dive deeper. When it comes to clients that may have come to you who already have a podcast. What are some common mistakes? Do you see that you’re seeing they’re making?
Jeff Large 20:40
Do you want these to be high-level little things or not? Doesn’t matter? What would be most beneficial?
Kenny Soto 20:48
Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of someone who might be listening and who has their own podcast and might want to have like a checklist to look through to see if they’re, they’re doing any of these mistakes.
Jeff Large 20:59
Checklists are not a bad idea. I’m gonna have to make one now I’m gonna make a note to myself. But alright, if you already have a podcast, and you’re doing your thing. This can be all over the map. That’s a really broad question. And sometimes I slow with what is the best way to answer it. So let me give a couple of things that might help guide this. A common problem that I see is people automatically jump to promotions.
A huge question that seems to be more popular. If you dated the industry back, say four-ish years, most people were asking the beginner questions, how do you launch a show? What kind of equipment do I need? All of the Getting Started style questions. It might be because of where I’m at in general now.
But in general, I feel like there’s an overall shift in the industry most people have that figured out. There are ample resources in terms of what to get equipment, it’s never been easier to use software to connect you and I was just talking about zoom versus Riverside versus like for other different major platforms.
There’s so much stuff that we can use. So most of that stuff is out of the way. Does the question now seem to be how do I grow my podcast? How do I get more listeners? How do I promote? What I think we miss is that we often are thinking about traditional marketing means as more social media, let’s get ad placement. Let’s do show swaps. Let’s write more articles, like all these things.
But I have to ask, is your show good? Like, is the guts of your show worth listening to foundationally? Are you drawing people in the people that are listening now? Are they dedicated? Do they just sort of show up and leave like, we missed the foundation, we missed the baseline of the whole thing? There are different thoughts in marketing, and I usually land in the camp, I have a hard time really going hard on marketing campaigns when the foundation isn’t set up.
Like that could be the website, that could be the podcast, it could be the article. I want that stuff in place. So when people arrive, when I make an effort to talk about it, and they arrive there, they can go, Wow, this thing is really cool. I’m glad I showed up versus like, yeah. And like, and so there’s sort of there’s that piece to it. That’s one biggie. Then on the other hand, for what it’s worth, on the other end of the spectrum, more like kind of small checklist stuff. Introductions have changed a lot. You’ll see.
Even with the recent trends, if anybody pays attention to it, we’ve gotten rid of language like subscriptions, like the way that we talk about things. Tom Webster talks about this a lot. iTunes has gotten rid of it. It’s like we’re talking like the following now or we’re talking to be a listener? Like, Subscribing to my podcast sounds dramatically different from listening to my show. Especially when you’re somebody who is not a podcast listener.
Whether you believe it or not, people that don’t listen to podcasts still exist, like we still have a market to go and draw in. Other things would be like a scene with the intro in general.
Because of losing the subscribe option. Apple has a listen-to option like listen-to preview basically I forget the language that they’re using on the players now and even if it’s currently still a thing, there was a period of time where I would basically sample the first 30 seconds of like, the most recent episode, if you just have a 22nd Music intro and a generic radio host being like Welcome to the blah, blah, blah show well, where they cover this thing in this thing and this thing and that’s not going to capture my attention.
You’re going to lose me quickly versus the shows that like just actually going into it. I think about the same thing: we see the same principles everywhere. With good quality, a book is not going to just do something to capture your attention. immediately a good quality YouTube video, it’s going to do something to hook you quickly, podcasts need to start doing that more. That’s something that we’re sort of in a transition phase. And there are other things like that. But I mean, does that help? I don’t want to keep ranting,
Kenny Soto 25:13
No, this is definitely helpful. And I’m already like, looking into my own being introspective, if you will, thinking about, like, is my show good? Is there any way that I can improve? And I think there’s always ways we can, yeah, always, certainly, um, one thing that sticks to my mind, and I’m assuming this is a question that the listener right now might have is when it comes to having a good show, right? Let’s say you have one, are there metrics that you can look at to help you make it even better? Like, are there any ways to look at metrics as to signals to help improve over time?
Jeff Large 25:55
For sure, it’s like any good marketer would know, all those sayings about like, what gets measured is how I forget what the phrases like that’ll be held accountable. That’s definitely not what it is. But you know what I mean, like measurement matters. And so it’s not the end all be all. I’m very much of the mindset. To clarify, this will help frame pretty much how I think about everything, especially stuff like this. I’m not a fan of balance, a lot of people will talk about things in regards to finding work-life balance, let’s find this balance.
I don’t think that’s the case, what I’ve more adopted is tension. And we usually have to function in between tension points. And so on one hand, are there actual measurement factors that we can definitively say, are we doing well against yes, if that’s the only thing you’re measuring against, then you have a problem. Because there are those human elements, there are, there are things that are more anecdotal, and that should be paid attention to.
And in some cases, I give them equal weight, if not more weight to a number. And so it’s something that I want to give as a caveat before I start talking about these other specifics. So keep that in mind, you have to function within the tension, depending on what success looks like. So for example, if I had a show, that was my main goal of it was, say sponsorship revenue, the thing I care about is numbers.
And so that means how many downloads Am I getting? The day that it releases, seven days after it goes live? The magic number of 30 days after it goes live? Some contracts, or 60 days after it goes live? Those numbers are gonna matter a lot.
And then you have to ask yourself, well, how do I increase those numbers, and it goes back to things like the quality of the show itself, the appeal of the show itself, the format of the show itself, you’re going to be able to achieve something like that with a really well done narrative show, easier than you can a straightforward one to one interview show, there are just things you have to factor in.
On the other hand, you might have a show, where say, one of our clients, we were only pulling really like, in my opinion, super low numbers, maybe like 100, and episode type of a thing. It was a series of 10. It was this ridiculous niche, like a ridiculous niche and an already niche category. And we did the whole thing I was the host of the show and looked into it without giving a ton of details. And what ended up happening is it was low, and in my opinion, I’m like, I wish these numbers were higher. But the client was like, this is fantastic.
Because their goal was primarily internal things like onboarding and sales. And what it did is even though it was super niche, and only a handful of people were listening to it and aided the sales process because it answered questions for the prospect that they could hear firsthand from other individuals like themselves who are already using their product.
And it also helped their team. So any orientation they were doing was a large, large entity that they brought in, they had them listen to these specific shows, and they could hear directly from the client, what their experience was like.
And so success in that person’s camp looks way different and has way different metrics than somebody else’s camp, and it’s going back to a this is a hill I’m gonna probably die on going back to the goals matters. Success can look drastically different. You don’t always need a lot of downloads. In fact, most of the time you don’t but that’s where we’d like to go. I want a huge listenership. Well, why? Because I want to be popular. Well, why? Like, ask why the whole trick of asking why like three times or a handful of times to get to the root of what actually is at stake, what the issue is what really matters. So help.
Kenny Soto 29:43
That definitely helps because it reinforces my own goal with this podcast, which is to build the biggest personal network marketer can ever have in marketing. And that’s not necessarily going to be where I’m selling more tech tools on this podcast. I’d like to have a sponsor who sells some software, and I get a cut or a kickback. That’d be nice. But the reason why I keep doing this and why I’m almost on my second year of this podcast is because one, I get to learn anything that I want as like, my, in my own profession, which is great. And then to.
Jeff Large 30:18
Ridiculous. Yeah, it’s insane access to give you like this, I make this argument and other people are trying to make the argument too now, which is kind of fun. Is the whole, like, if you would have reached out to me and been like, can I talk to you for an hour, Jeff, I probably would have been like, you seem like a nice guy.
But no. But the fact that you’re like, I have a podcast, and I would love to have a conversation around this thing that my audience would also like, and I’m like, Well, you do seem like a nice guy.
And now I have a little bit more opportunity to be able to get introduced to some new people. That’s something that is currently on my radar where I’m trying to get out on other people’s shows more, I’m sure, I can spare an hour to do that. And, again, still happy to talk to you. But it’s at that added perk.
And all of a sudden you get access. When you couple that with something like cold, somewhat warm introductions like you did with me. If you’re active on Twitter, like the number of people you can access, and then again, then you have a platform like this to be able to just hash out ideas and wonderings and questions. I’ve used mine for the same exact thing for years. So 100% with you.
Kenny Soto 31:18
Yeah. And then the other added benefit that I’ve noticed, and this may not be for all professions, I could be wrong. But I started doing some freelancing on the side outside of my main work. And the podcast was a sales tool. Because not only are people googling me and looking at my website, etc.
But now they get like a somewhat personal touch point where they’re either seeing me actually speaking or listening to me talk about a subject. And in most cases, I’m not even doing the majority of the talking, I’m just asking questions. But for at least a certain degree, I seem more knowledgeable than my competition doesn’t have a podcast, which is very, very like it’s an edge.
Jeff Large 32:02
I don’t even know honestly, it may be the knowledge factor. But it’s just the way we do business with people. That’s what I mean, we can be huge companies. We can be small companies, we can be big companies that at the end of the day, you’re doing a deal because you trust someone or you like someone or and that’s what it comes down to.
It could be the expertise, it could just be they like the way you structure questions. We had one, I have a ton of stories that would back this up, I have one, one really funny one of a bigger web entity that I liked.
And I used and I somehow think I don’t know if I cold emailed them, or what happened, I think I was a little more strategic. I got a pseudo-warm, like a lukewarm email introduction to this person. And emailed him a couple of times. And then they showed interest where they’re like, Hey, I’m too busy right now, but keep following up with me.
And so I was following up. And it was just kind of getting ridiculous, like around Christmas time, I was like, I hope you have a great Christmas, I was just like because, at this point, I had nothing to lose, I’m like, I’m just gonna have fun, and that type of thing.
So I had that going and then it didn’t look like it was gonna pan out. Within I think three months, I guessed it on a show. His owners, CMO, I think it was CMO or like vice president of marketing or some kind of position like that heard me on the show, and then reached out within a couple of days and was like I heard you explain things on the show. I loved it. We want to work with you. And then it wasn’t until like a month after we did our engagement.
And I’m like, Oh my gosh, this is the same company I didn’t even like to put two and two together because there is so much time sort of gap in between. But there’s like, there are so many different situations where that happens. I want to be clear not to assume that having a podcast will get you sales but very often that’s not the case. However, when people are in the right place, like when they’re already kind of interested in what’s going on.
And you can give them that added benefit where I do that very often where I’m like, Hey, go listen to my show, or go read my articles. Even though I’m working primarily in art, and audio, I do love writing. And so are most of the articles that I’ve written on our company’s website. When I have a prospect I go, go read this, this will give you a very clear look at how I feel about the subject and why I feel the way that I do. If that aligns with your values, we may want to work together.
And it’s like doing things like that it doesn’t have to just be a podcast, podcasting is unique. Because you can hear me, you’re making an active choice to have my voice to have your voice in the earbuds and that makes a big difference. It’s just a more intimate interaction. Then you can literally hear the tone of my voice. It’s hard to fake this as you can usually tell you can kind of fake it in writing.
You can sound like you know what you’re talking about, but not really know what you’re talking about in writing, and even other mediums but audio and especially when it’s only audio and you kill all the other visual and sensory ways to interact. It’s like you’re either going to believe me or not. thought you’re gonna think I’m having fun, or you’re gonna think Oh, thanks, Jeff guy, he’s full of crap. I don’t really have a choice otherwise. So yeah, that’s one of the reasons I like it so much.
Kenny Soto 35:09
Yeah. And one of my favorite podcasters, which everyone at this point knows Joe Rogan, he always says that like after Episode 567, people really know whether or not you’re full of it. So it’s just best to start off with the right foot forward and be as authentic as you can.
And if you have to be honest and say, Hey, I don’t know XY and Z subject, hey, then that’s a reason to have a guest on if you’re doing a guest show, for example, one, one thing that caught my attention, and that’s a good segue, you talked about you like to write, and I am trying to figure out a strategic way to repurpose these podcast episodes.
And I’m certain that people who are doing podcasting for the first time this year, are focusing on consistent output, making sure that there’s like, all of the checklist items that we just mentioned earlier, are being checked off. But we purposing might be an afterthought. And I wanted to get your opinion on it. How do you effectively repurpose podcast content?
Jeff Large 36:12
Yeah, that’s, that’s another biggie. We’re hitting, we’re hitting some good ones. Let me tell another story that’ll lead into this story. The first time I ever realized this was a thing I’ve written about this, too, was, I can’t remember if I did it first, because I just wanted to be more efficient. I think I read the story first.
And that just got me thinking, I’m a huge advocate for looking across the industry to get inspiration. If you pigeonholed me into a corner and said, I can only hang out with podcasters, or I can hang out with other people, I probably pick other people, just because of the challenge and the diversity that you’re able to learn from other places, and then go and like critically look at what you’re doing and say, hey, does this work?
Like can I get what that graphic artist is doing to work in my scenario, like, to me that’s really, really fascinating? And the lumber industry, I forget what the arrow was which decade we were talking about. But they got to a point where it was like, nearly impossible to be profitable with this demand and the competition that was going on.
And so they found themselves instead of just cutting trees down into lumber, they were literally using every single part of the tree. I don’t even know how stupid an article is, it’s like one of those really nerdy things that you just rabbit hole into. But they’re making the lumber like you wouldn’t normally expect. They’re taking the bark, and they were turning it into some stuff that could be like, I forget the term for it.
But like poult, like soaked in water and brought down into pulp for paper. They were using a lot of the Shipping for mulch, even down to the sawdust. So they were selling sawdust for two farmers like we’re talking dust like to me, that was the one that really blew my mind the most. And they made it work and they like became profitable because of how ridiculously efficient they became.
And that caused me to go look, I’m spending so much time on this content, what I What can I do to make its life expectancy last longer. The other thing, I don’t remember the stat off the top of my head, but Andy Crestodina, from orbit media, he’s one of my favorite marketers, I think he’s an incredibly smart guy, and just really, really helpful. I’ve interacted with him a lot. He’s had some different things up just about how much time we spend waste on creating content to have nobody actually reading it or engaging with it or seeing it.
And between those two things, I can be more efficient. And half the time people aren’t seeing this anyways, if I’m not super ridiculously intentional, what do I got to do? So the first time that I ever practiced this at all was, I have a friend of mine who’s very good at AdWords.
And we were kind of setting up an idea for a potential course and we were gonna kind of run one of those classic tests on AdWords, we’re gonna throw a bunch of money at it, see if people would opt-in that kind of thing. If we got enough people that I know, okay, there’s, there’s a desire there, I can build this course.
And it was around podcasting, just because it’s one of the things that I know the most, and he has a different level of expectation of what would be viable and what isn’t. So I wrote, like a 4000-word article about just everything you need to know to launch a show. We ran the test against it. He deemed it like, okay, he does. I don’t think this is worth pursuing.
And I was like, alright, and at that point, that 4000 Word page for that 4000-word article could have died. But it didn’t. What I did instead was I had a training website that I knew, I was like, at least acquaintances with and I offered it to him and I said, Hey, I got this big orange article. Would you be interested in buying this from me? And they’re like, Yeah, because it was just cool at the time. So I sold them this article, and we broke it into like, four or five kinds of 1200-word blog posts.
The other thing I did that was ridiculously intentional. It was I made sure it was a shared agreement, it was a shared license. So I could still do my own version of it for my personal site. Because I didn’t want them to just take this good piece of content from me by myself, I think I sacrificed a little in terms of what I got paid. But to me, it was worth it to retain control over those things. That did super well.
And the long story short is that guy vetted, that got turned into a video series for them because of how well it performed on their site. They’re like, hey, we want you to create a video how-to because that’s what they’re primarily known for. And I was like, let’s do it. So clearly, I have to put the effort into making a video, but the structure and the content, everything, and the lessons are already there because I wrote them.
On the other end of my site, they got turned into those articles, one article performed the best, which happened to be the equipment one. I turned that into a landing page, its own dedicated site for things like podcasting equipment or equipment for podcasting.com or something like that. And then that got rolled into an email series, that was basically the same thing. That was sort of the lead gen.
And I think I sold off some, like, inexpensive ebooks with it at the time, this was years ago. And some of those things, but it was literally one piece of content that got pretty naturally turned into I think it was at this point, like eight or nine different things. So that’s just one story. This is when I realized I’m like, Oh, my gosh, this is a thing we can do. So specifically with a podcast, again, the circumstances matter.
What does your audience care about? Where is your audience? Like, we have to ask those kinds of questions. But just generally speaking, for your show, I don’t know, I don’t know what you’re thinking about it. But if I was your show, you have to be realistic with your time and ask yourself, Are you the one that should be doing it?
Or is this something that you should be contracting out to other people, I have an unfair advantage in that I literally have a team, everybody’s a specialist, I have a graphic designer, I have a couple of their graphic designers, editors, writers, all this stuff.
So I can farm mine out to my team, it’s built into my process. So be realistic with what you should take on what is in your skill set. But if I was you and what we do for our clients, naturally, you have the show, you’re going through the show, you’re probably going to edit it, and when you edit it, you’re going to hear things that you like pull those out as pull quotes, you’re gonna need to make some show notes.
And those show notes can be elaborate, they can be minor, whatever it is, but you have some show notes. It’s very easy to get the transcription done. transcriptions are super huge from an accessibility standpoint. And people that might not be able to actually listen to the show can go and read the show.
Some people don’t want to listen, some people do like reading more. Some people make an argument for SEO, regarding the transcriptions. I’ve seen both that it works, and it doesn’t work. I don’t put a lot of stake in it. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t hurt. But it’s not. It’s not gonna rocket you to the top of the show.
Kenny Soto 42:45
Before you continue. I just wanted to jump in with the transcription case, because it’s something I’ve been experimenting with. And it’s working. Sometimes. Transcripts do work if you want to get SEO for the guest’s name.
Jeff Large 42:57
Yeah, that does help. In that regard. You can do the same thing with show notes. We have one of our clients who is doing he’s he does search for real estate. So he’s like a search professional in real estate. We almost always take top rank on his clients, or the people he’s interviewing, because it’s all these huge named people that are running these massive corporations and have no personal presence.
And so we beat them. So often, we will search for them. They find his podcast, and I’m like, Yes, it was something we discovered on accident early on. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, let’s leverage the mess out of this. It’s so funny. So So that’s definitely a thing. So you got those like from a copy standpoint, again, I just said, let’s use some pull quotes, pull quotes, drop it into the episode themselves, or into the show notes themselves. All right.
Also, let’s say you have a WordPress-based website, even if you might have a different type of platform, but most of the time websites will want metadata, which is super short, it’s going to be like a one-liner or something describing things, you’re probably going to want an excerpt that’s going to be a little bit longer, maybe a paragraph about what’s going on. And you’re probably going to want to show notes, which is the actual body of the post.
You can take things like the say the metadata, reuse it on social media, you can grab clips out of the show notes, reuse that on social media, can grab the quotes that you pulled to use for your show notes, and make an image and use that on social you can use your excerpt for the newsletter you can move that over there if you have a newsletter series that’s going on you could that could be your little announcement Hey, this shows live there’s no reason to write brand new fresh copy use the same one that you had before.
Most people aren’t No I’ve never had a single person ever complain if you put the same thing out too much. That just doesn’t happen. Other things that we’re doing if you’re doing the video component all of a sudden you got a new wealth of stuff you got all these visuals you can grab little tiny things like kind of audio Graham style stuff short clips, the full clip so all sudden you got this YouTube presence now. Yeah, there’s a ton you can rewrite.
There’s a Say Kaley more, she has a service. She’s a professional writer that I think is super talented. I’ve collaborated with her in the past, she has a service called Content remix, where she’ll have her team. They can listen to podcast episodes or episodes like one or multiple, and then create articles, original articles from those, and then all of sudden you’re getting repurposed content there.
There are a lot of things you can do. Should you do them all? No, most of the time not you need to be again, purposeful with what you’re doing. Don’t just wake out because you can. But it’s really unfortunate if you’re not getting it to go further if that makes sense.
Kenny Soto 45:40
That makes total sense. And you’ve provided so much great information in this episode. So I wanted to leave with just one more question, which is hypothetical. Okay. If you can go back in time, using a time machine, about 10 years in the past, knowing everything you know, right now, how would you accelerate the speed of your career?
Jeff Large 46:00
Alright, that’s better than most of my whole life. What advice would you give your 21-year-old? So I hate those questions. But 1010 years ago, I’m a boomer now. So back when I was younger? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t. There’s plenty of stuff. I genuinely don’t know. Because I have a hard time with this.
A while ago, my cousin, the same one I did business with it was around the timeframe that I moved out of teaching and into running a business. And at that time, we were doing web development it was before we kicked over fully to podcasting. And he asked me, Did you regret going to school for being a teacher? Considering that’s not the thing you do anymore? And the answer was no. Because everything that I’ve done up until this point has made what I’m doing now possible.
So I get what you’re asking, but I have an extremely hard time answering it because I just have no idea. I don’t know if anything would even give me an edge outside of like if I memorized a lottery number or something that’s going to hit in the future. I spend very little time reminiscing about what I spend more of my time trying to make is gonna sound dumb and philosophic.
But like I care about now, I care about what’s immediately in front of me, I care about the future I want to make what can be possible I want to make what is I want to be present to what is and make what can be possible. So it’s, it’s really I’m not trying to buck the question, I just have a very hard time answering it. Because to me, it just doesn’t matter. Like I don’t know, I don’t know.
Kenny Soto 47:54
No, I love your answer, because every single guest has their own approach. But eight times out of 10 The answer is usually I wouldn’t change a thing. And that’s reassuring because it shows that one, it’s not a rare case to think, hey, everything’s gonna be fine. Just keep moving forward. And a lot of people think that way. And too, for the most part, even if someone does have something they would change. They’re not changing the whole entire career. They’re not changing the way they live their life. It’s just one tweak, which is reassuring in and of itself.
Jeff Large 48:30
Yeah, I think that’s a really good takeaway. It’s, it’s important. Of course, of course. We want to get there faster. Of course, we want to, I joked forever. We had a long, ongoing joke with my family of like, we could do this important thing when I arrived, like when dad arrives with his career, and it literally began with a can opener, or can opener broke. And this was like when things were super simple. We definitely could have afforded a can opener. But I just did it because it was funny.
And like my kids would be my son. He’s older. He was like using the super janky can opener. And he’s like, Dad, when can we get into Kendall Brown, like when I arrived, and the like, we’d finally get to a point and it was like, things are good. I’d land a big deal. And I’m like, Let’s go buy that can opener. And so it’s been kind of this ongoing joke.
But here’s the catch. You never arrive. If you’re really a learner, it’s never going to end. I’ve talked about this just recently with a friend we’re always getting better. At least we can do that. We always can be and the journey becomes more enjoyable when you realize that you’re never really going to get there. It’s just a matter of like, am I better than I was yesterday?
Am I better than I was a year ago? Yeah. All right. Let’s keep pressing. Of course, I wish I had more or wanted to do more accomplished ABC. But when I stop and I’m honest with myself, when I look around, it’s like knowledge is pretty good. I can’t complain about anything.
Kenny Soto 49:53
And with that being said, Jeff, if anyone wants to find you online and say hello, where can they say hi.
Jeff Large 49:59
Ah Uh, Let’s go by LinkedIn is where I’m pretty active right now. So if you just search Jeff Large on LinkedIn, I will come up and post on there every day, and especially in the podcasting realm if you need anything that’s a super easy way to get a hold of me there and call it good.
Kenny Soto 50:17
Perfect. Thank you for your time today and thank you to your listener for listening to another episode of people’s Digital Marketing podcast with your host Kenny Soto. And as always, I hope you have a great week.
Bye.