Winning It Big In The Podcasting Business With Tracy Hazzard From The Joshua T. Berglan Morning Gratitude Podcast With Joshua T. Berglan

As online communities continue to grow, and so much so this pandemic, podcasts have been on the rise as well. Those managing a podcasting business must double their efforts to cope with the demand of both the hosts and audience. Tracy Hazzard gives a glimpse into her podcasting career as she joins Joshua T. Berglan at the Morning Gratitude Podcast. She explains how she and her team handle various podcasting shows at Podetize/Brandcasters, Inc., as well as how her simple show about 3D printing eventually became three podcasts reaching over 550 episodes. Tracy also shares how to leverage an organic advertising model in growing a business, how her strong desire to help build other people’s brand motivated her to seek success, and how to keep podcast episodes timelessly engaging and interesting.

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We have an amazing guest. She’s one of the featured speakers at Lifestyle Hackers. A lot of you may even know who she is already. Tracy Hazzard is an Inc. Columnist and a co-host of three top rank podcast. That’s freaking amazing. Feed Your Brand is listed as one of the CIO’s top 26 entrepreneur podcasts to listen to in 2018, a newly launched, members only Product Launch Hazzards. The other podcast is WTFFF?! I got to figure out what that stands for. The third, 3D Print Start Point was featured as one of the exclusive live podcasts at SXSW 2018. With a constant stream of content and products from her authority platform reaching over 100,000 listeners and viewers each month. Tracy influences and cast branded content and $2 billion worth of consumer products and innovation around the world. I have some lessons to learn from her. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s have Tracy Leigh Hazzard on the show.

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Tracy. How are you?

I’m great.

Welcome to the show. I’m honored to have you. That’s impressive because it’s hard enough having one moderately successful podcast. You have three successful podcasts. That’s impressive.

I own a podcast production company, so I do have a team.

Tracy, first thing’s first. What are you grateful for?

I was thinking about that when I woke up, thinking about the name of your show. I like to go to bed thinking about my gratefulness. It carries over to the morning, which I love. I am grateful like you for loving my life. I have been married to the love of my life and my best friend for several years. I get to work with them. I’m fortunate to work with them. I get to work with my oldest daughter every single day. To work with the people you Love, that’s amazing. Those two things are what I’m grateful for. The fact that I get to be originally me all the time, that’s a gift so I have to be grateful for that.

I understand that you used to live in South Africa.

I did when I was a child, it was the height of apartheid. It was 1978, 1979. I was 8 or 9. That’s a lot older than I look. I experienced right when the bombings were going on in 1979. I saw the power of racism and apartheid and what happens there. It’s getting to be here in this country in the ‘60s, which my generation didn’t get to experience. I had a different worldview because of it. For all the problems that are going on in that country and you felt it as a child, I felt that pain and that violence and the anger, but at the same time, it was such a beautiful country. That’s what I took away from it as well.

How long did you live there?

I was about a year and a half. It wasn’t quite two years. We were supposed to be there two years, but because of the violence, my parents sent us home to my grandparents for six months.

That is where?

Connecticut. I am from Connecticut originally.

Do you live in Connecticut now or are you out in California?

No, I’m in California. I’ve been in Southern California since 2007 and I wasn’t going to college since 2004. I’ve been out here for a while.

What made you get into podcasting? It’s a commitment. From my short experience in doing this, it is a commitment and it’s not something that’s easy to do and you’ve gone all out. You’re over 550 podcast episodes.

Most of those are on my show WTFFF?!, and you asked what that is, that is not a swear. It’s improved news filament publication, which is this total geeky term for 3D printing. If you don’t know about 3D printing, you won’t know that term and you won’t show up, you won’t click it. It works out great. We found out a lot of people were interested, but the story goes, it’s simple. Several years ago, we were having the same problems that many coaches and consultants and small business owners have. That’s that you’re not getting out there now. You can’t stay consistent with your marketing or you get too busy with your clients, you forget to market, marketing model poster thing.

Podcasting Business: Engaging podcasts must learn how to diversify into a new platform and determine the available market there.

Everybody has that problem. How can I create consistent and constant content? How can I hold myself accountable by having a schedule? That was important. For us, it was important to diversify into a new area and test it and see if there was a market there. We discovered there wasn’t a market. It was a good thing I didn’t develop a bunch of products and services around it because there wasn’t a market for it yet. It was too soon, but there was a great market for information. That grew a whole separate revenue stream from that and a whole separate following. All of a sudden, several years later, we’re experts in 3D printing and we do have projects and clients, but it took that long. Over time, we discovered that it’s hard. Systems, teams, process, it’s what we do, the how to is what we’re all about. It’s what we consult our clients to figure out how to make a product, how to launch it, how to get it going, how to make it cost-effective. We apply those same principles to building a podcast.

When I first started this portion, doing lives every day and then it evolved into a podcast, I was somebody that did not have the budget to promote to do paid advertisements or to be able to boost any posts. I didn’t have the income for it. I went to the philosophy of I’m going to try to build every possible outlet organically. I’m on LinkedIn, on Tumblr, on Anchor, on Spreaker, on iHeart, on iTunes, on YouTube, on Twitter.

On TuneIn is where you should be. Ping me and I’ll get you on there. It’s no problem. TuneIn is up and coming, so if you want Alexa to play your podcast, then you better be on TuneIn. We didn’t believe in paid advertisements either. We didn’t have the budget for it. We started out with the organic model as well, and we crunched it and we did it ourselves and that we grew that audience to 100,000. We grew to 25,000 within four months. You can do it. It’s a little harder now because there is more competition, more noise and more things going on, but it doesn’t mean you can’t do it. There are ways to do it and still get going. It is not podcasting. The PR that goes around that is a lot easier to come by than any other method.

I found out that I’m going up on Spotify now and even Google Play. It sounded crazy because a lot of people spend their time on YouTube and that’s all they do, or they do Facebook. I didn’t want to do that because I have a globally minded mission. It is about gratitude, but it has nothing to do with what appears in front of everyone’s face every day. It’s a much bigger mission, but I understand that media is such a powerful medium. The reason I was even bringing that up is because if you have somebody, there’s a lot of young people out there, there’s a lot even older people that are gone, I have something I want to say, and I want to start a podcast, but they don’t have a big budget. Do you recommend them focusing on one platform and building that or do you recommend spreading it all out and build it all at the same time?

We believe strongly in what we call brand casting. That’s the name of our company, Brandcasters, for a reason. We don’t want a single platform to own you. We don’t want Facebook to own you, YouTube to own you, even Google to own you, although YouTube’s a little better because it’s broader. We want you to own you. You want to have her own authority, put it on your own platform and be your own website. Whatever happens wherever you go and whatever you’re most comfortable with, that’s what I recommend. Start where you’re comfortable. If you’re comfortable on Facebook, then start there. If you’re comfortable on YouTube, start there. I was not comfortable being on video every day because I wanted flexibility. I was like, “I didn’t want to ruin my hair. I was going to be on the right. I could be in my PJ’s. I can report at 10:00 at night when my girls are in bed.”

Whatever it was, I wanted flexibility. I didn’t want the video, but now we do lots of videos. It’s mixed in. You can expand into those things. Whenever you do, bring it all back to your website. Do full blog posts so you have enough power. Put images and videos. Put them on YouTube, take them off Facebook. Don’t recreate content on all of those places, just insert there, share there, move it there, put a link on there. The brand casting model is to create that cross-linking power and creating Google search for you. At the end of the day, Google has 13% conversion rates on search and Facebook only has 1.3%. There are 1.4 billion websites on Google, but in your particular topic, you might have a lot better shot.

That’s something too that I try to tell people and I’ll see if you agree on this. If you think that you have nothing to say or what you say is not important, isn’t that the best thing ever? If you say what’s on your heart and your passion, your purpose, your niche, your niche in this space will expose itself by you sharing what’s on your heart. That’s how you create your message and what the topic of your show is going to be.

Yes. When we started the 3D Print podcast, I don’t do the CAD models in that group. I plan and I partner with my husband and we figure out what to make. We designed it together, we do drawings together and I do market research and we do all these things, but I don’t do the physical drawings and run the machine. I thought, “I’m not technical enough to be a part of this.” He was going to want to listen to what I had to say because I’m not techie about it. At the end of the day, what he discovered was there was many people who wanted someone to sit there and go, “I don’t understand a thing you said there. Can you talk in real terms to real people than forcing to explain it?” That worked out well. I asked those questions. People wanted that. It worked out well. Several years later, I think I’m expert in it. While I still don’t do drawing, I feel competent. I know all the parts of the machine. I know all of these things, so you gain competence in those things as well, but not for yourself out there. If I help myself to that, that would have been a disservice to the community.

Thank you. You are part of a group of experts that are going to be at the Lifestyle Hackers event in LA.

I’m excited.

I am too. It still hasn’t dawned on me that I’m emceeing the event because I’m looking at all the speakers going, “Lauren Harris, Dan and Abby.” First, let me start, Dan and Abby are amazing humans and they’re great at what they do there. Lauren Harris is a master and then you have you and then you have Libby and then you have Darren, Adam IMob Flores, truly the best of the best in their field. As opposed to all the different events that we go to that are people speaking, this is getting to sit down and work with Tracy Hazzard to learn your ways. You’re going to be there hands-on teaching people how to do all of this.

I would teach 90 minutes, which is so exciting to me because no one ever gives you 90 minutes. I’m going to do something fun, which is bringing somebody up on stage and teach how to strategize. We’re going to talk about how to think about forming your brand podcast, because it’s a brand at the end of the day. You got to be thinking about that. We’re going to work through that by seeing it being done. You only have to do it sometime. Dan and Abby put together worksheets and workbooks. That’s killer. Who does that? They are like, “Are you sure you can get through all this content?” I got 90 slides. I go, “Have you heard me talk? I’m really fast. Everything is visual too.” I like that reinforcement of I talk, there are visuals, we’re going to do live action. It’s fantastic. The thing that I think is the most unusual about this event that I’m so excited about is the fact that they structured it in a way to grow you to the day to be ready for it. I still often get where they go like, “You’re going to be first.” I’d be like, “People are ready to learn how to, but they don’t know why yet.” By structuring the order of the speakers and putting them in a flow, it’s amazing.

I’m impressed. I’m not saying this because they’re my friends. I’ll be having access to the behind the scenes of how things are playing out here. The work and dedication that they’ve put to be able to bring value to everyone in attendance is inspiring because not everyone takes that much detail. Lauren Harris is planning an event that’s coming up. His attention to detail is perfect. I love that when I see people that are running these events take it seriously. They strategically pick the people they want to be on stage. It’s not just, “They’ve got a big name and following.” We’re going to put them on the stage and then we’re going to pay them a bunch of money to be there. It’s not that. The people that are going to this event are the best of the best of what they do, and they genuinely care about what they do. They’ve been strategically placed there to improve everyone that it’s in audience, to improve their business and their brand. It’s inspiring to me. I’m excited about being a part of it.

When you said strategically, another word that comes to mind is that they did it energetically. We all are this passionate. We all have this passion for like, “We want to help you. We will make you better. We know we can fix this for you, whatever you’re struggling with.” We all have that energy and when we put that together, that’s going to be awesome.

Podcasting Business: Google has 13% conversion rates on search; Facebook only has 1.3%.

I’m excited because I saw you speak. It dawned on me right when we started the interview that I’ve seen you on stage. It’s impressive. You do an amazing job. I’m happy that we’re getting to talk a bit because it’s going to make it a lot more fun for me to introduce you. When you come on stage, that’s going to be great. I know that you love to do the podcast, and you’re doing three, you’ve done over 550 episodes. I’m trying to catch up to you. I started this and I’m up to 98.

Do you do one every morning?

I don’t do them on the weekends, but I sometimes will do a couple in a day. I’m doing three now. You’re being interviewed, but then I have another one at 1:00 that I’m excited about. I love doing it. It’s something that I’m genuinely passionate about because I love sharing, interviewing people like yourself that talks about their passion and purpose and gratitude. It’s entertaining because you offer so much. Where do you go from here? You can grow a bigger audience with podcasts. You can get to millions and millions of people, but where do you foresee transitioning? What’s the level up for you? What’s the goal that you want to achieve?

This is where we get into hard business. I am the fun girl. I’m all about the, “Let me talk about it. I’m excited about doing a podcast. Let me give you the how to make it happen.” The reality is there is a huge amount of business structure going on underneath us. That’s planned, orchestrated and out to the exact degree plans in the next few years is what we’ve done is we’ve hired a team. I have worldwide now. We produce 70 or 80 podcasts. Hundreds of episodes every week. It’s 200 every week. What we do with it though is giving these people who wouldn’t have the power that they have.

They don’t have this tool. We do it easily and all under the radar for them. That’s powerful. I love that that’s the service part of the business. The reality is that it doesn’t make a valuable business now. You also have to have something that provides residuals, things like monthly subscriptions. We have hosting as well where you host your podcast somewhere. Sometimes we will do Libsyn and all those things. We have our own host called Podetize. On Podetize, we one upped it and that’s where our growth is. That’s where we expect to get to a $20 million valuation in several years. That’s our goal.

How do I get on there?

We transition existing podcasts. It’s super easy. The power of Podetize is that you can advertise for your favorite charity, for your book launch, that you’re going to be at Lifestyle Hackers, for them. When the event happens, you can take it out. You put your advertisements in, and you take them out so you can sell advertisements. We’re going to be bringing on a whole advertisements network that will sell advertisements for many podcasts that achieve a certain level. You can do it yourself because I hated the idea. This is how it holds up. I hated the idea that someone was going to listen to a holiday episode that has nothing to do with the holidays, but it happened to be in December and it adds some random advertisement about Christmas 2016 in it. For me and for most of us, our podcasts are timeless.

They aren’t anchored in a news date and a specific time. When people find my podcasts, and I have 550 of them, they go back to the beginning and listen to the early ones because there are explorations. They’re interesting to them because it’s a learning process. A lot of times it’s entertainment. When they go and find yours, “I want to know about this guest and this guest and this guest.” They go back and they pick up the choose. What a shame not to capitalize on that and get them something current information about you or your advertisements or your non-profits. You should be able to do that. The idea that I would have to re-edit my files was dumb. I was not going to do that.

I have some of my original stuff that was downloaded. I uploaded it to create a DMP for that, but I didn’t have a microphone. The quality doesn’t sound as good. I’m paranoid about my old stuff being on there.

You shouldn’t be because remember, most people are listening to them on their phone, their tablet. It’s probably not as bad as you think it is. The reality is that at minimum, what you should do is turn them into blogs. These have the written word giving your site power even if you’re not happy with the sound quality of content.

I need a dictation person. Is there a computer that does it automatically?

Yes. It’s terrible. You have to edit it, that’s why I have a gigantic team because that’s what they do.

I need to figure audio conversion to text.

Our team does everything from audio all the way through getting on the website and even putting graphics in there. We don’t want to get into anything but what we do what we do here. Shouldn’t we live in this world in which we’re our brilliant self?

Which website? Is that Hazz Design? is that the one that you do that or Brandcasting You?

It’s BrandcastingYou.com. If you want to post, which is as cheap as any other host, you want to go to Podetize. Here’s my real secret yet to everyone, exactly what we do to launch a podcast, exactly what I do for my clients, done for you, the step-by-step is there free for anyone who host with us. I want people to be successful. The logic process should be as a mystery that you pay $400 for a course so that they can charge you $4,000 for a mastermind. I find that ridiculous and I want it to be easy for you to get started because once you get started, if you get going, you’re going to need more of my services. That’s what’s in there, but if you get going and you’re on the platform, then there’s more powerful authority, authenticity out there. That’s what drives us.

I’m grateful that you came on the show and spend some time with me and the value. Typically, we’d go other directions on the show, but I am fascinated by your passion for what you do. I love that. You helped a lot of people. I’m grateful for you. I’m looking forward to being able to meet you in person. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m excited. For being on the show, I’m going to give you a giraffe.

I love giraffes.

You cannot give it away and you cannot sell it. What are you going to do with it?

I’ll put it behind me here.

Is your ceiling tall enough?

Probably not, but we can always tell them go out the window, just hanging. I see you’re an awesome person. They’re the most tender, loving thing.

They’re amazing creatures.

They’re walking over, looking at you and checking on you, giving you a little peep now and again.

Tracy, thank you for being on the show.

Thank you. I appreciate it. I can’t wait to see you.

It’s going to be so much fun. I’m going to be like a hummingbird flying all over the place. Have a good time. Be safe getting there and I’ll see you.

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How cool? I’m going to Podetize.com. I’m going to check out TuneIn. I’m going to check her other websites too. HazzDesign.com, BrandcastingYou.com. She writes for Inc. What an accomplished human. I want to do that. I’ve made the decision that I’m going to start writing again. I want to write, but I don’t want to write my old podcast. Sometimes I don’t form complete sentences when I talk, and it may sound a little goofy or read a little goofy. It’ll be fine. I’m excited about that. I never do this stuff, but will you go subscribe to iTunes? You could hear my voice all day long on my podcast. There’s 90 episodes of Morning Gratitude. You’ll even hear the morning gratitude mayor stuff. I haven’t given up on the whole mayor thing. I’m going to be known as the world’s mayor. That’s what’s going to happen. When I go to the UN, they’re going to give me a trophy that looks like my microphone that’s going to say “The World’s Mayor” on it. That’s going to happen.

Podcasting Business: Turn podcast episodes into blog posts to give your site power even if you’re not happy with your sound quality.

Have you written out your vision for your life before? I’m curious. I’d love to know. I’m doing that. Have you ever written a vision for your life in real detail? I’m doing this exercise and I’m breaking it out like my personal life, my vision for the show, the vision for the TV show, the vision for how I want to give back, where I want to be. It’s profound and it’s humbling. To be honest with you, when you write it out, it makes it feel like it’s coming true, but it’s also daunting. It’s amazing how my brain starts talking to me life, “You’re crazy. You can’t do that. What if you fail?” My brain talks to me about that. It’s one of those things. At the same time, I’m obsessed with achieving this vision. It matters to me so much.

That’s what I go to bed thinking about, it’s what I wake up thinking about. It’s what I think about throughout the day. Everything in my world, this show here, what’s going to be a TV show, emceeing an event, writing, the way I live my life, it all ties back together as part of my vision. That’s where my energy goes. I was curious if anyone’s ever written it out. You should write it out sometimes. It’s pretty powerful. You are amazing. I’m extremely grateful for all of you. If you enjoyed this and you thought somebody would benefit from what Tracy taught us, I wasn’t expecting her to give so much information.

If you thought this was valuable, please share or tag somebody. We’re going to start interviewing people on the political world now and nonprofits and things like that. If you know anybody that runs a nonprofit that you would like to see on the show, they’re welcome to. Please tag the and let them know because I’d love to interview them. I love sharing people’s messages and help them spread the word about people that are trying to change the world. God bless you. I love you. Thank you so much for your support.

Important Links:

• Tracy Hazzard
• Feed Your Brand
• Product Launch Hazzards
• WTFFF?!
• TuneIn
• BrandcastingYou.com
• Podetize.com
• HazzDesign.com

Watch the episode here:

Morning Gratitude Podcast
Joshua T. Berglan