Produce A Powerful Business Podcast With Tracy Hazzard Entrepreneur Experts Cafe With Kimberly Hobscheid
One of the emerging platforms that could help get your message across the board is podcasting. At a time where it can be so easy to get drowned out by the noise, it is important that we up our game and create not only a good podcast but a powerful podcast. Visiting the Entrepreneur Experts Cafe podcast with Kimberly Hobscheid, Tracy Hazzard shares some of her tips and tricks that can help you jumpstart your podcast—from doing interviews and choosing your topic to finding the people that can support you. Join Tracy and Kimberly in this conversation as they expand on how you can effectively use this platform as a powerful marketing tool to get you seen and heard.
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I’m going to interview Tracy Hazzard. Tracy is an expert on podcasting, launching a podcast, doing a podcast and getting guests on podcasts. Welcome, Tracy, to the show.
Thank you, Kimberly. I am happy to be here. I love to talk to entrepreneurs all the time.
It’s a good group of human beings. We met a little while ago. I know some about your background, but our audience does not. Can you share with us a little bit about how you got into this and why podcasting?
I was like other entrepreneurs and small businesses that are out there. I was hidden behind the scenes. No one knew who I was. I was this great expert, but for me, I was even worse. I was a ghost designer. People didn’t know that I designed stuff. Martha Stewart wasn’t going to admit I helped design her new office furniture. I had no way to get my name out there. In that struggle, I started to look at what were the options. Years ago, we started our first podcast. It was on something geeky, like 3D printing. It was fun and it is still fun. We still do it. The thing about it is that what we found was a powerful marketing tool that we hadn’t had for getting our voice, getting seen, heard and bound. That’s been the thing. People started saying, “Would you do this for me?” We ended up with business before you knew it.
I know that a lot of people are thinking about starting a podcast, especially entrepreneurs because if they’re anywhere in my Facebook group, they’ve heard me say, “If you’re not being seen, you’re being overlooked. If you’re not being heard, your message isn’t getting out there.” I love that you’re helping people get their message out there, but a lot of people are thinking about starting a podcast. What do you think gets people stuck? Why do you think people don’t go into, “Yes, I’m doing it?”
Business Podcast | Tracy Hazzard | Entrepreneur Experts Cafe with Kimberly Hobscheid: You podfade when you don’t have a plan, a strategy to utilize, and enough time to give you a return on investment.
There’s a sense of overwhelm. There’s a lot to learn and do. The problem with most launching of almost any type of product, and I’ve done this for years, is launching is something harder than doing it. We get caught up in that launching stage of things where there are many little things to learn. I’m a big fan of, “Unless I need to learn this, to utilize it day after day as I continue podcasting, then maybe I should pay someone to do that and have someone else do it for me. I don’t want to learn it. I don’t want to take a course on it. I don’t want to have a lesson. I want it done for me.” If time is more important to you than your money, that’s the place you go to, especially in the launching of about anything that I’ve had experience with. That’s a phase at which just stop worrying about how to do it, go find somebody who can do it for you, and then learn the things that are going to serve you well week after week. Maybe great interview tactics.
That’s powerful because I do try to share with people that even though we’re solopreneurs, we don’t have to do it all alone. We don’t have to be an expert on everything. We don’t have to be an expert on HR, legal, and all that stuff. Even though it’s our responsibility to get it right, it’s not necessarily our responsibility to do all of the pieces to it and learn and to know about everything. If you love building your own website, that’s great. I love building mine until one day, I didn’t. Now, somebody else does that for me because it would break if I kept doing it. I’ve forgotten about most of it. It’s the same thing with launching anything. Maybe getting it up and started could be part where people freeze. Do you find that it is probably true?
It is. There’s a confidence level. I have some clients that frankly, we did all their setup, got all the strategy in place and then they don’t record. They freeze when it comes to being in front of the microphone. That’s where you have a confidence level about your message, your voice and your value in the world. That’s a whole different thing to work on. I can only do so much coaching to do it. I’ll share one with you. We have tactics for people to get started quickly, to pull that Band-Aid off and get recording. The first thing is that if you’re going to do interview shows, do an interview first with someone you know well enough that if it goes horribly wrong and you need to rerecord it, they won’t be offended, but not your best friend because that’s also not the best thing either.
If you're not being seen, you're being overlooked. If you're not being heard, your message isn't getting out there. Click To TweetFind someone who’s a good enough acquaintance that can understand this is your first time, but do the interview. When you have that booked on your calendar, you will show up and record it. You will do it. It forces you into the moment to do that. The second thing is you do your biggest, most favorite topics. If you’re going to do topic-based episodes, do your number one question people ask you and do an episode on that. You could talk about that all day long and then try to limit yourself to 20 minutes or 30 minutes on that one. Do your introduction episode, which is what’s the show about? What am I about? What’s my story? You do that one last because it’s trying to write the introduction chapter to your book. We all know how hard that is and you should never write it first.
Those are good tips to get people over the hump. They got up the hump and they’ve launched their podcasts or at least they started recording and they have these episodes. What do they do with them next? Did they get stuck in technology? What happens after they’re like, “I’ve recorded this, but now what? How do I get it up on iTunes? How do I get it out there?”
There’s a lot of tech in there. When I started this business years ago, and the way that this went was that I did it for myself first, I figured out the team I needed and the technical skills I wanted to train. I trained them. I had techniques and tactics. The whole goal was to make sure that I was found, to make sure that the Google and iTunes algorithm, that all of those things served me up so people would find me in my topic and my content. We did that and it was powerful that people started shoving credit cards at us saying, “Would you do this for me because I don’t want to learn this?” I have people who can’t plug in USB microphones. If you’re in that place where you don’t have the tech skills and if you’re a tech challenge, this is not for you. Go hire a production service company or come to us if you want to.
There are a lot more resources than there were several years ago. I didn’t have that option to work with anyone. I could get someone to edit my sound, but I couldn’t get someone to blog it for me. To develop those full-service packages, all that exist nowadays. Go out and find that if you don’t have the technical skills, but if you do, there are a hundred million tutorials out there. Go to the people who’ve been there, done it again and again and who have done it the most. Not someone who did it once, started a show and then decided to teach a course on it. Let’s do it to a person who publishes every day, who does it every day.
The technical side of getting on to iTunes and Stitcher, when the big podcast events put out a thing about all the different directories, you should go register yourself in. I sit back and I say, “No, that should be the job of your host.” As a podcast host, a hosting company that distributed shows, it’s our job to technically making sure you’re showing up everywhere. You shouldn’t have to do that yourself. Find a good service bureau. Find someone who can help you with that.
When people come to you, do they have already started their show? Do they feel like they want to create a show? Do they have a business and they’re trying to get the word out about it? Where are they when people usually come to you first?
We are probably the biggest in the business side of podcasting. People have a business, a mission, a message, and they want to get it out there. They come to us to help them with strategy, launching, and production after the fact. We do the whole syndication to get them on different platforms. We take that whole approach to them and get them started. That’s what a lot of our clients are, but there are also those that already started it and then said, “This is working for me, but I feel like I should take it up to the next level. I feel like I should do more with it. I’ve got this podcast, but why don’t I have my videos distributing? Why don’t I have my blogs going? I see all these people are doing that. Why can’t I?” Those people come to us as well. That’s the type of it. We have over 350 shows that are actively producing. We have a lot that are in production at all times. Some of them start from the beginning and some of them start midstream and say, “I’ve got to take this more seriously.”
It is powerful when entrepreneurs can find something they only have to do once, but get to reuse again and again. Click To TweetWhat do you think the biggest mistake people do in losing interest? It is oftentimes a thing. They start the podcast, get excited about it, record in 5, 10, 20, 30 episodes, then they’re like, “I am over it.” How do you stop that from happening?
We call it podfading. It has a term because it’s common. Most people know it as iTunes, but it’s Apple Podcasts. There are a million podcasts listed on Apple Podcast, but there are only 350,000 actively producing. All those other ones podfaded. They quitted. I don’t consider quitting if you did 100 shows or more. You did your time. You’re done with that show. Your business shifted and that’s okay, but when you quit at less than 11 or 23, the most common is you’ll quit. You podfaded because you didn’t have a plan. You didn’t think it through about the strategy of how you were going to utilize this. You didn’t give it enough time to give you a return on investment. You didn’t have metric expectations in place that were realistic and viable.
That’s probably because a lot of them get out there and somebody was like, “All you’ve got to do is to start.” You need to think about it and then start. Let’s be clear. I want you to start fast, but let’s do a little strategic thinking so it works for us better. The number one mistake I find is that they don’t get as many listeners and that’s when it happens. It’s like, “People are downloading my show. I have 100 people. I have 50.” They get frustrated with that. If it’s the 50 perfect people who want exactly what you have, what’s wrong with that? Let’s reset our minds to thinking about what’s right for that. The strategy of, “Am I focusing on the right people and do my numbers are realistic for that target that I’m doing?” Does it matter how many they are? No. It only matters how engaged and the conversion to that to what your business goal was.
Business Podcast | Tracy Hazzard | Entrepreneur Experts Cafe with Kimberly Hobscheid: Being an entrepreneur is stressful but there are some things that make it just streamlined and easy for you to get a lot of different things accomplished.
It’s all about making money, a business in the end, or an impact that you want to make. Clearly, you’re the expert on podcasting and launching a podcast. If people want to get to know you and start working with you directly, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Our company is called Podetize. Podetize.com is the easiest way to find our company and our business. We have all kinds of things where we can have free strategy calls and different kinds of things to evaluate your platform and where you are. If you want to follow me, you can follow me anywhere on social media. It’s Tracy Hazzard. I also have a couple of podcasts. You can listen to The Binge Factor and Feed Your Brand. Those two are podcasts for podcasters or aspiring podcasters.
That’s The Binge Factor, which I love. It’s about binge-watching or binge-listening.
The other one is called Feed Your Brand. It’s more tactical and tools to launching, promoting and working on your show from a strategic standpoint, but from a tactical standpoint too.
Tracy, thanks for carving time out of your day-to-day to be here with us. I appreciate it. Are there any final words for our crew?
I want to say to all of you out there that being an entrepreneur is stressful. There are a lot of things you should do, but there are some things that make it streamlined and easy for you to get a lot of different things accomplished, and I love those things. That’s what I dive deep into. When you can find something that you only have to do once, but you get to reuse again and again, that’s powerful. That’s what I found for podcasting.
I appreciate those words of advice. Thanks, Tracy, for being here.
