Employee engagement can feel like a never-ending uphill battle. Companies never accomplish great things if their talent just shows up to collect a paycheck, but how do you ensure your employees feel connected to your organization, stay long term, and encourage others to do the same?
Internal podcasting is a powerful tool to cultivate a culture of employee engagement. Internal podcasts are usually produced with the help of a production company to privately reach their internal audience of employees and stakeholders.
It's no secret why using internal podcasting to improve employee engagement is catching on. Compared to other forms of media, podcasts are easy and inexpensive to produce — and their popularity speaks for itself. A whopping one-third of Americans listen to podcasts regularly, according to Buzzsprout.
Podcast listeners crave new and edifying content to listen to. In fact, the second most popular podcast topic is news according to Edison research. Why shouldn’t it be content that serves your company’s mission and builds your company’s culture? Your employees are used to listening to their favorite news and educational podcasts, so they will trust your corporate podcast as a relevant source of information for training and development. Internal podcasting reaches employees in ways that traditional meetings and corporate culture training cannot.
Done correctly, podcasts are a powerful tool to motivate and develop employees, ultimately leading to better team cohesion and talent retention.
So, how do you do it right? Here are five ways to use internal podcasting to engage, develop, and retain employees …
1. Highlight Top Performers and Rising Leaders
We’ve all heard that one of the best ways to improve moral and employee engagement is to recognize achievement. However, the big question is “How?”. You can only have so many pizza parties, and the “Employee of the Month” plaque is getting a little tired.
A better solution — feature a top performer or rising leader on the company’s internal podcast. This is a chance to shower good work with positive attention in a very public way. The podcast producer could:
Share a big win and highlight the team members responsible.
Feature promotions and rising leaders within the organization.
Recognize outstanding performers by name and describe their success.
Highlight top performers and leaders as subject matter experts where they can share a story or host a Q & A as part of a training exercise.
Employee recognition encourages excellence and creates a sense of shared purpose. It also improves engagement. Employees love to listen along and celebrate the success of their teammates and aspire to be featured on the company podcast as a reward for their contributions as well.
Business and tech consulting company Slalom puts this practice into practice with a segment of their Slalom On Air podcast called “Wins to Know,” highlighting big wins within the organization to its audience of over 8,000 employees.
2. Reinforce What’s Working in the Company
One of the advantages of podcasting is the opportunity to communicate a message to many people at a time. What better venue than a podcast to disseminate best practices, and training, so everyone in the organization can reinforce what’s already working and keep everyone on the same page?
Employee engagement, development, and retention starts with proper onboarding and training. Many savvy organizations are turning to internal podcasts for training, development, and onboarding procedures. For example:
Virtualization leaders VM Ware includes podcasts as mandatory training for new onboards, even using their back-end monitoring tools to verify completion of the training requirement.
3. Highlight Positive Culture Developments
Highlighting positive developments within the company doesn’t have to be limited to individual performance or business practices. The company podcast can also highlight examples of great company culture – teams or groups that took initiative to solve a problem or improve morale.
For many companies, an internal podcast became a cornerstone of company culture during the COVID-19 pandemic, when unplanned remote work led to the risk of a breakdown in company culture. As work from home and hybrid jobs remain popular, podcasts are an important tool to reach both on-site and remote employees.
Reinforcing corporate culture encourages other employees to do the same. They might not have even realized what goes into a healthy company culture or how they can actively contribute. Demonstrating it to them through the podcast is an efficient way to raise the bar for the entire organization.. Here are a few things to keep in mind when using podcasts to reinforce company culture:
Highlight your organization’s values and be sure your script aligns with your corporate culture
Invite employees to company events
Weave in personal stories, hobbies, or humor to improve engagement and inspire deeper connections among employees
Provide updates on company goals and vision
4. Unify the Team Behind a Story or Mission
One of the best ways to get an employee to regard a job as more than just a paycheck is to cast their role as service to a broader mission. Employees who buy into the mission don’t just have a job — they have a purpose. A team united around a mission is unstoppable.
How do you make a mission resonate? By telling a story. Storytelling is the oldest tool in human history for captivating an audience and uniting them around a theme. Use part or all of your podcast to tell the company’s story.
You may have heard of the importance of storytelling in business to grab your customers’ attention. Storytelling is also an excellent way to create connections between leaders and employees. Rather than only being told information, workers feel empathy and connection to their supervisors. Crank up the drama and don’t be afraid to make it personal. Employees respect their bosses more when they are vulnerable, have flaws and a compelling story that shares their leadership journey.
When healthcare administration company Signature Performance brought on two new C-level executives, the company used its internal podcast to introduce the new leaders, let them tell their story in their own words, and articulate their vision for their role and contribution within the organization. It was an opportunity to use the power of hearing someone’s voice to build connection and trust.
An internal podcast is easy to start, cost effective to produce, and simple to distribute. Best of all, it’s one of the best ways you can effectively reach and communicate with your company’s most important asset — its talent. Don’t waste the opportunity. Use your internal podcast to build team cohesion, foster positive company culture, and decrease turnover expenses by earning your employees’ commitment and loyalty for the long haul.
Do you have further questions about how internal podcasting can help improve your employee engagement? Contact us today.
Employee engagement can feel like a never-ending uphill battle. Companies never accomplish great things if their talent just shows up to collect a paycheck, but how do you ensure your employees feel connected to your organization, stay long term, and encourage others to do the same?
Internal podcasting is a powerful tool to cultivate a culture of employee engagement. Internal podcasts are usually produced with the help of a production company to privately reach their internal audience of employees and stakeholders.
It's no secret why using internal podcasting to improve employee engagement is catching on. Compared to other forms of media, podcasts are easy and inexpensive to produce — and their popularity speaks for itself. A whopping one-third of Americans listen to podcasts regularly, according to Buzzsprout.
Podcast listeners crave new and edifying content to listen to. In fact, the second most popular podcast topic is news according to Edison research. Why shouldn’t it be content that serves your company’s mission and builds your company’s culture? Your employees are used to listening to their favorite news and educational podcasts, so they will trust your corporate podcast as a relevant source of information for training and development. Internal podcasting reaches employees in ways that traditional meetings and corporate culture training cannot.
Done correctly, podcasts are a powerful tool to motivate and develop employees, ultimately leading to better team cohesion and talent retention.
So, how do you do it right? Here are five ways to use internal podcasting to engage, develop, and retain employees …
1. Highlight Top Performers and Rising Leaders
We’ve all heard that one of the best ways to improve moral and employee engagement is to recognize achievement. However, the big question is “How?”. You can only have so many pizza parties, and the “Employee of the Month” plaque is getting a little tired.
A better solution — feature a top performer or rising leader on the company’s internal podcast. This is a chance to shower good work with positive attention in a very public way. The podcast producer could:
Share a big win and highlight the team members responsible.
Feature promotions and rising leaders within the organization.
Recognize outstanding performers by name and describe their success.
Highlight top performers and leaders as subject matter experts where they can share a story or host a Q & A as part of a training exercise.
Employee recognition encourages excellence and creates a sense of shared purpose. It also improves engagement. Employees love to listen along and celebrate the success of their teammates and aspire to be featured on the company podcast as a reward for their contributions as well.
Business and tech consulting company Slalom puts this practice into practice with a segment of their Slalom On Air podcast called “Wins to Know,” highlighting big wins within the organization to its audience of over 8,000 employees.
2. Reinforce What’s Working in the Company
One of the advantages of podcasting is the opportunity to communicate a message to many people at a time. What better venue than a podcast to disseminate best practices, and training, so everyone in the organization can reinforce what’s already working and keep everyone on the same page?
Employee engagement, development, and retention starts with proper onboarding and training. Many savvy organizations are turning to internal podcasts for training, development, and onboarding procedures. For example:
Virtualization leaders VM Ware includes podcasts as mandatory training for new onboards, even using their back-end monitoring tools to verify completion of the training requirement.
3. Highlight Positive Culture Developments
Highlighting positive developments within the company doesn’t have to be limited to individual performance or business practices. The company podcast can also highlight examples of great company culture – teams or groups that took initiative to solve a problem or improve morale.
For many companies, an internal podcast became a cornerstone of company culture during the COVID-19 pandemic, when unplanned remote work led to the risk of a breakdown in company culture. As work from home and hybrid jobs remain popular, podcasts are an important tool to reach both on-site and remote employees.
Reinforcing corporate culture encourages other employees to do the same. They might not have even realized what goes into a healthy company culture or how they can actively contribute. Demonstrating it to them through the podcast is an efficient way to raise the bar for the entire organization.. Here are a few things to keep in mind when using podcasts to reinforce company culture:
Highlight your organization’s values and be sure your script aligns with your corporate culture
Invite employees to company events
Weave in personal stories, hobbies, or humor to improve engagement and inspire deeper connections among employees
Provide updates on company goals and vision
4. Unify the Team Behind a Story or Mission
One of the best ways to get an employee to regard a job as more than just a paycheck is to cast their role as service to a broader mission. Employees who buy into the mission don’t just have a job — they have a purpose. A team united around a mission is unstoppable.
How do you make a mission resonate? By telling a story. Storytelling is the oldest tool in human history for captivating an audience and uniting them around a theme. Use part or all of your podcast to tell the company’s story.
You may have heard of the importance of storytelling in business to grab your customers’ attention. Storytelling is also an excellent way to create connections between leaders and employees. Rather than only being told information, workers feel empathy and connection to their supervisors. Crank up the drama and don’t be afraid to make it personal. Employees respect their bosses more when they are vulnerable, have flaws and a compelling story that shares their leadership journey.
When healthcare administration company Signature Performance brought on two new C-level executives, the company used its internal podcast to introduce the new leaders, let them tell their story in their own words, and articulate their vision for their role and contribution within the organization. It was an opportunity to use the power of hearing someone’s voice to build connection and trust.
An internal podcast is easy to start, cost effective to produce, and simple to distribute. Best of all, it’s one of the best ways you can effectively reach and communicate with your company’s most important asset — its talent. Don’t waste the opportunity. Use your internal podcast to build team cohesion, foster positive company culture, and decrease turnover expenses by earning your employees’ commitment and loyalty for the long haul.
Do you have further questions about how internal podcasting can help improve your employee engagement? Contact us today.
Learn four ways podcasts can help solve common pain points of content creation and expand your reach.
By Tina Dietz, CEO Twin Flames Studios
When you’re trying to grow your business, you’ve got a huge amount of information you’d like to share with your audience. But taking everything you and your company are passionate about and distilling it into digestible content often feels like trying to capture a genie in a bottle. Despite your best efforts and highest motivation, it’s all too easy to wind up with content that’s inconsistent, doesn’t connect with your audience, or burns out your marketing team.
Not to mention that in the growing media landscape, it’s harder than ever to capture an audience’s attention. Their eyeballs are constantly pulled between social media, streaming services, hundreds of cable television channels, and millions of websites. But what if instead of eyeballs, you focused on ears?
According to Edison Research’s Infinite Dial 2021 Report released in March, about 80 million Americans (28% of the U.S. 12+ population) listen to podcasts weekly. 116 million people listen to podcasts monthly, a growth of 61.5% since 2018.
As a podcast producer and vocal leadership expert, I’ve seen firsthand how sharp companies increasingly turn to podcasts to solve their content conundrums. Let me take you through some of the most common pain points of content creation, and how you too can use podcasting to overcome them.
Single-use content
Tell me if any of these scenarios sound familiar:
You write a blog post that gets a lot of traction, but a week later no one remembers it
Your team designs a graphic for your website, but only uses it there
You create a social media post that works perfectly on one platform, but falls flat on three others
This is probably the biggest problem content creators and marketing teams run into. No matter how good these pieces of content are, they’re only ever going to be useful once—you can’t just repost them on a different platform. This leads to a never-ending cycle of constantly having to create immense amounts of new content, either for up-to-date engagement, multiple different platforms, or both.
Luckily, podcasts don’t have this limitation. You can take the content from a podcast and reuse it on a number of different platforms, simply by changing its form to adapt to different mediums. And each time you record a new podcast, all those platforms get up-to-date content.
The following six examples are ways you can repurpose podcasts:
Website embeds
Easily embed podcasts into your website so that the latest episode is always available to play with just a click on the front page. Visitors can listen while they navigate through your site or even continue as they switch to another tab.
Quote cards
Take the most memorable insights from your podcast hosts or guests and post them on social media as a one-look visual that your audience can quickly absorb while they scroll through their feed.
Video clips
Many podcast recording methods include video, so you can easily get another secondary piece of content from your podcast. Upload a full, optimized video to your YouTube channel or short, impactful clips to Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok.
Audiograms
An audiogram is a short media clip that layers an audio soundtrack over a background image and texts or subtitles, sometimes with other effects showing up as well. Think of it like a cross between a PowerPoint slide and an Instagram reel or YouTube short.
You can easily grab audio clips from your podcast and layer them over branded images and transcribed texts to create multiple audiograms from the same podcast. Then post them to social media, link to them in your email marketing campaigns, or feature them on your website to attract new listeners.
Transcripts
Some people still prefer the written word. Publishing transcripts of your podcast allows audience members to quickly scan for key phrases and ideas and jump to the point in the conversation that most interests them.
Google scans your webpages for keywords, and it’s easy for the algorithms to recognize them from a transcript. This helps your website’s search-engine optimization (SEO), leading to higher search rankings on Google.
Articles
Repurposing podcast content into blogs or articles are another way to create timely and thought-provoking content for the community or profession you serve. This could be on your own website as blogs or case studies as well as used for contributing blogs or trade publications.
The Paychex Business Series, a thought leadership-branded podcast from the global HR and payroll services business Paychex, is a great example of this multi-platform approach.
On the podcast’s main webpage, you’ll see weekly episodes with links to video of each episode on YouTube and audio on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and iHeartRadio. The Paychex Business Series page also includes a few sentences summarizing each conversation, the timestamps of the topics covered, and a link to a PDF of the transcript for easy downloading and forwarding.
The podcast is promoted on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. One recent tweet from Paychex includes a link to the latest podcast, a short description of its focus on workplace mental health, and a 19-second video with stills of the podcast guest and one of her most impactful quotes from the conversation. The variety of content creates awareness of their message and promotes the podcast to multiple social media audiences.
Another example is Randy Crabtree, the host of The Unique CPA and his team at Tri-Merit Tax Solutions. They are now in their 3rd season of podcasting and went from building an audience from scratch to being in the top 5% of all podcasts, according to podcast data aggregator.
But, the real magic was how the podcast helped Randy Crabtree, the host, reach his goals. As a partner in the company, Randy is excellent in creating relationships and helping companies, but he didn’t consider himself a thought leader or influencer. Hosting the podcast allowed Randy to use his strengths as a relationship builder and generate content that he and his team were then able to turn into articles. They have become regular contributors to industry publications like Accounting Today due to their podcasting content, as they regularly turn their transcripts into thought provoking and timely articles for the accounting profession.
Because of his podcast, Randy also received a coveted mention in the Top 100 in public accounting because of his “excellent podcast.”
As you can see, each podcast can be turned into many pieces of content. Multi-channel marketing is an important process to maintain brand consistency and company growth.
Three other pain points of content creation podcasts can overcome are:
Inconsistent content
Let’s face it: it’s difficult to keep most marketing content consistent across platforms. In written blog posts, you have to follow grammar and style rules and keep the tone the same across multiple writers. Visual media must also remain consistent with brand color schemes and formatting. It’s easy to miss small (or even not-so-small) inconsistencies, especially when producing large amounts of content over time.
Podcasting solves this problem by holding all the consistency in its conversational format. As long as the length and topic(s) of your podcast stay the same theme, everything else can be flexible. The host and guests have room for a free-flowing conversation, without having to worry about going through a ton of edits or making everything look and sound perfect. Audiences already expect that every conversation is going to be a little different, so there’s no requirement to formalize a podcast besides a consistent introduction. After that, the space is all yours to share organic-sounding content that resonates with your listeners.
Trouble connecting with audience
We often struggle with the fact that the more overt our content is as an advertisement, the less likely potential customers are to want to come back to it. Gene Marks, host of the Paychex Business Series, is the first to admit that “nobody wants to have commercials or products jammed down their throats.”
Podcasting allows you to place your brand in the context of topics your audience already cares about. Tomorrow Comes Today, the branded podcast of UK wealth management giant St. James’s Place, features conversations with economists, journalists, and more on everything from success psychology to the role of investors in combating climate change. Content strategist Lauren Smith told podcasting company Podbean that the podcast has solidified St. James’s Place as a thought leader in the wealth management space.
Podcasts are edifying and enjoyable for both content creators and listeners. That’s the reason 80% of podcast listeners stick around for all or most of an episode. Podcasts offer a peek into a real conversation with real people, and provide real solutions to your content difficulties. You, too, can connect with potential customers more organically through podcasting.
Content producer burnout
If you or your company’s content producers report feeling burnt out today, they’re not alone. A recent study by content agency Vibely found that 90% feel the same way. Too many content producers are asked to spend too much time on mediums that don’t maximize engagement.
Mark Bussel, National Director of Learning and Development for the memorabilia ring company Jostens, used to spend much of his time creating an all-for-one newsletter. He recently turned to podcasts and told Podbean he was shocked at how easy they were to create and publish.
“We’ll take maybe 15 minutes to create an episode by putting a bumper on the front and back and adding a little bit of music,” Bussel said. “I am by no means a technical expert, but I’ve learned in a really short period that we can make it look pretty doggone good.”
As you can see, the magic of podcasts is that they are enjoyable for both marketers and target audiences alike.
For more information about how podcasts can work for your business, click here.
Podcasting is one of the fastest and easiest ways to establish authority – Let me show you how you can leverage it for thought leadership marketing.
It’s no longer only insider knowledge — podcasting is one of the fastest and easiest ways to establish authority. Whether you’re just starting to build a business or you and your company have long-established credentials, this online audio platform can catapult your influence beyond the capabilities of many other expert-building marketing platforms. Since there are now 65 million people in the U.S. listening to podcasts every month, thought leaders have an exciting opportunity before them to engage new audiences and build their brand.
Getting featured on TV or publishing a book still serve as gold standards for having achieved expert status, but podcasting has made it possible for even budding business owners to share their knowledge and expertise with a wide audience.
The advantage of this modern platform is that it’s open publicity — meaning the host has the freedom to generate the message and control the content. Podcasting also requires fewer resources and is more accessible because audio is available to consumers when text and video are not. The convenience of listening to downloadable audio files on smartphones or tablets has allowed for a new wave of attentive, on-the-go listeners.
The opportunity to reach your target market by using your personal voice offers an additional layer of communication to convey your company values and brand authenticity. Doing so deepens trust and develops loyalty. By using a conversational format, leaders have the freedom to articulate what makes their business unique, without using typical marketing jargon.
As you may have gathered, podcasting isn’t just for entrepreneurs. Bigger brands, industry leaders and corporations often miss a big opportunity by not taking advantage of this trend.
Below, we’ll focus on leaders who are looking to establish themselves as experts and develop their spheres of influence.
How Can You Get Started With Podcasting?
You don’t need to be a host yourself. One of the best ways to introduce yourself to a new market is as a guest. Hosts are hungry for content. They are searching for people like you to feature on their podcasts to keep their shows fresh and to provide value to their audience. Libsyn, one of the largest commercial podcast hosting companies, reports an increase from 16,000 hosted shows in 2013 to 22,000 shows in 2014 to 28,000 shows in 2015. These numbers are expected to continue to increase as more people become exposed to the platform.
The key is to connect with the hosts of shows most appropriate for your subject niche, and to do so in a way that’s personal — your chance of getting a response lowers dramatically if you have an assistant send an email.
Podcast hosts want a good fit on their show; if they decide to have you on as a guest, they will take the time to give you ideas on how you can most effectively reach their audience. One way to find podcasts that are looking for guests is to do a keyword search in iTunes or Google for shows with topics that appeal to your ideal clients or target market. iTunes is to podcasts as what Amazon is to books; it is the premier platform for broadcasting your audio message to an eager audience.
You don’t have to start with cold leads, however. The easiest opportunities for guest spots may exist under your nose, via your colleagues. Ask people you know who have been podcast guests to introduce you to the hosts of those shows. Referrals can go a long way in establishing credibility and building relationships.
If you have the resources, you can also use a booking service to acquire guest spots; there are several excellent companies that can take care of placing you on the perfect shows.
How To Leverage Podcast Interviews
Once you’ve secured a podcast spot, there are an extraordinary number of ways you can use, and re-use, this valuable material. You can now post audio clips on your website or blog; include audio clips in your media kit or feature them on your company profile page or LinkedIn page. You can share the audio across social media, or use the transcribed content for new articles or blog posts. A wealth of marketing assets is available at your fingertips when you have podcast content.
As thought leaders, experts and business owners, we’re always looking for ways to increase our exposure and to grow our communities of loyal followers. Podcasts are free to access, there are so many shows to choose from, and it takes virtually no technical know-how to get started as a guest. These characteristics make being featured on podcast interviews one of the best “New Expert Platforms” available today.
Did you know one of the most powerful ways you can connect with your clients is through podcasting? You can learn more about the benefits of podcasting, what questions you need to answer before you begin your podcast, and how Twin Flames Studios helps get your voice into more ears on my guest interview with Bruce Eckfeldt on the Scaling Up Services podcast.(Scaling Up Services Podcast with Bruce Eckfeldt, October 2021)
Tina spoke with Bruce Eckfeldt on the Scaling Up Services podcast to discuss how podcasts hone your brand, provide evergreen marketing content, and create deeper relationships.
In this episode, you'll learn:
Why audio is one of the most intimate mediums for storytelling
The top questions to ask before you start your podcast
How podcasts can revitalize your marketing and expand your reach
Bruce Eckfeldt Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier? Check out Thrive Roundtable. Thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community. Created by Inc. award-winning CEO and certified Scaling Up Business coach, Bruce Eckfeldt, Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For details on the program, visit eckfeldt.com/thrive.
Welcome, everyone. This is Scaling Up Services. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host. Our guest today isTina Dietz. She is the founder at Twin Flames Studios. We're going to talk to her about the work that she does with companies helping them with creating content, with promotion. This is a really kind of interesting topic. I think so many service companies based their marketing, based their sales and lead development, based on thought leadership and getting content out in the world. And there's so many different types of content and so many different ways you can do it. I really think they–obviously I love podcasting–but you know, podcasts, audiobooks, you know, spoken word kind of content, there's so many things you can do with it. There's so many things you can use to generate awareness, generate thought leadership, generate leads. I'm excited for this and excited to hear Tina’s story and how she got into this this world of audio content production and what she's been doing with service companies. So, with that, Tina, welcome to the program.
Tina DietzHey, Bruce, thanks for having me.
It's a pleasure having you on. So before we dive into what you're doing with Twin Flames right now and stuff, why don't we talk a little bit about you and get a sense of your background? Give us the story. What was your professional journey? And how did you get into what you're doing today?
Well, like most entrepreneurs, it's fairly stupid. It's just like, “Well, how the hell did this happen?” Yeah, yeah. And that's, and that's what we hear more than everything. If you had asked me, you know, when I was growing up, if, you know, in 25 years or whatever, you're going to own a company that produces audio content in the land of thought leadership for service-based companies. I'm sorry, what? What, what? It didn't even exist, right? You know, at the time?
So my upbringing was I had a younger sibling–that was a business. My parents owned a business that they started when I was three years old. It was my younger sibling, and I hated it. It was a wood burning stove and fireplace business. So real sexy, awesome. And basically, that was my constant companion growing up. So I was steeped like a tea bag in entrepreneurship. From a very young age, I started answering phones when I was four and going to trade shows when I was six, I do a whole talk will have to do another time maybe on how I found my purpose in life through the Ginsu knife demonstration at a local fair. So that’s a whole thing, that's the whole thing. And, you know, I never really thought I'd own a business, but I became a therapist–for a number of reasons. Childhood was not a great place. But you know, lessons learned. It's one of those things. And I've spent a lot of time in the world of personal development, in leadership and all of that. So cultivating myself, of course, created in me a desire to see what else could be done for other people.
That led me to coaching and consulting, which then ended up leading me to podcasting and ultimately to audio production. Basically, through a paid hobby I had as a voice actor. You know, I'm an entrepreneur, we can't have regular hobbies, we have to have hobbies that pay us. That's the way it works. We can't have normal hobbies. So I was a voice actor on the side and taking some classes and masterclasses in audiobook narration. And I had this chocolate and peanut butter moment, this light bulb, aha, that, “Oh, my God, why aren't all my clients and colleagues who are doing best selling campaigns and producing books, why aren't they doing audiobooks?” And that was, as Michael Gerber from The E Myth says, you know, my “entrepreneurial seizure” that led me to investigate the world of audio and led me to a big gap in the market and dove into that.
I took over my business within a year of starting to offer services in this big market gap of done-for-you audiobooks, and also the corporate side of podcasting. And that is kind of was the best decision that I ever made. And so I went from basically being a solopreneur, consultant who'd worked with more than 20 industries in eight countries to being the CEO of a company that now produces content in the land of audio that changes lives and hearts and minds for service-based companies and making sure that they're having this beautiful, human, authentic voice of their company that comes through this medium of audio.
Yeah, I'm curious. You've had a couple of different kind of pivots in your commercial world and career what are some of the things that you had to learn or had to kind of change about your thinking, your leadership, your approach during those pivots?
Bruce, I thought you said this was only a half hour podcast.
The top two. Just the top two.
The top two. One: choose who gets in your ear very carefully, very carefully. I'm very much of a happy puppy kind of person. I'm just like, “Yeah, let's do it. Let's change the world. Let's make it happen.” I have a lot of enthusiasm and energy and kind of that visionary habit–you see something and you want to make it happen. And it took me a long time to really learn how to vet the people that I was working with, or who I was throwing in with, because I assumed for a long time, in a very naive way, that everyone had the same values that I did around integrity and communication, and, you know, working together and making sure everybody wins. And it doesn't always work that day. Most people, most people, 99% of people on the planet are doing their best. But you know, problems and challenges that come up, don't always bring out the best in people. Sometimes it brings out the worst in people. And so learning how to create relationships over time and cultivate those relationships carefully has been a huge game changer in my world to keep things consistent and growing in the right direction.
And the other piece of the puzzle has been, you know, doing my own inner work. I'd say all the time that we were born with two voices: the voice you speak with and the voice that speaks to you. And working on the voice that speaks to me has made the biggest difference in anything that I've done as a leader, as a business owner, as a partner, a wife, a mom, you know, on any of that, to cultivate that inner world–and I could do many, many, many hours, and all the things that have happened there. But suffice to say it's been a journey.
That's a really great, that's a great realization. And yeah, I think it's, you know, time is your most precious commodity and where you spend it, you know, how you spend it, who you spend it with, are all kinds of things that are really going to influence your success and what you end up doing. Tell me a little bit about kind of why audio content? I mean, what's your kind of take on the world? You know, that we're in today? Why is audio content so powerful, so important? Why have you chosen to focus on it?
Well, going back to what I said a moment ago about our internet, our voices, it's something every human being on the planet is born with. And it's something that cannot be taken away. And speaking, as someone who has felt in the past that my voice was taken away and was suppressed, having that voice and having a place at the table to have that voice heard, is incredibly valuable. And so, everything that I have done, and what we do as a company with Twin Flames, is designed to give people a place at the table so that their voices are heard. And then it creates this incredible ripple effect that you know, podcasts and audiobooks are some of the lowest hanging fruit on the planet for people to start changing their lives.
If we can be a part of more leadership voices and more positive voices and more great information, reaching people all over the world, so that they can start to change their lives. That is a really powerful place to be. It is really about making the world a better place one kind of drip of audio at a time. And audio is very, very, very intimate compared to most other forms of media. It's single focus. Most people listen to audio right into their ear. So there is a neurological connection that's very powerful between, you know, the earbud I have in my ear, and the center of my brain, the amygdala, the hippocampus, all of those things. It's not just higher brain functions being impacted by the voice. And so there's an intimacy created in an impact that's really important. And storytelling, of course, is incredibly powerful worldwide. It's something that connects all of humanity. So when we bring all these factors together, neurological, you know, storytelling, how we're wired, the universal power of the human voice to create relationship–it's a very, very powerful medium. And it can be used in so many different ways and sliced and diced, and at the pace we're living at, you know, audio is the most portable form of media. You can listen when you can't read you can listen when you can't watch. So you know, it's never gone away. It's never going to go away. And all of those things together make it what I consider the perfect storm for perfect content.
Yeah, I was like that idea that audio content literally gets you in your prospect’s head.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, you got it.
So what are all the kinds of formats these days? I mean, we kind of went from you know, I date myself accidentally when I say I'm listening to a book on tape or something.
I know, right? Me too.
It's morphed so many times, like what is your kind of how do you kind of lay out the scope or the types of audio content that that you have at your disposal these days?
Well, we usually start with a primary form of content, which is generally a podcast. Podcasting, of course, is something that is hot right now. I’m on one as we speak, and it provides a nice bulk of content to start with, and a framework to start with. So unlike a video, the average video watcher will watch two minutes, but the average podcast listener will listen for 40 minutes.
And it's actually much harder to create short form content than it is slightly longer form content. We have thoughts, you know, curating what we say, you know, the brevity or like cutting things down to its core is much more challenging than this kind of a conversational format. And so, it allows people to be very natural, and very expansive in what they're talking about to dig into nitty gritty and to know that the listener is still going to be interested more than two minutes in, so you're not trying to pack things in. So we start with a longer form 20-30 minute podcast, usually sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, but that's on average what it is. And that gives us a lovely bulk of content to work with.
From there, there's all different ways to slice and dice that type of content, repurpose it, reuse it. And the authenticity that comes through when you're using audio and using this type of format is really important to reach people on a deeper basis, rather than just an informational basis.
Yeah. And when you look at companies, what are I guess, what are some of the companies or situations that are best served with audio content? Like who can really benefit from this form of content?
Well, we love working with relationship-focused, service-based companies. People who, when they're working with their clients, they have long-term relationships with their clients. For example, companies, which seem very dry, but there's a lot of content available in the financial world, in insurance, for example, education of varying kinds, and even things like retail, retail conglomerates, and things like that, that are creating more experiences. Travel can be served in this way, as well, although it does, definitely does need to be paired with the visual aspect as well. But it can be really, really, really beautiful. You will see a lot of influencer podcasting, that's generally not our super cup of tea.
We do a lot of work in the leadership space, though, helping to humanize brands that are large, and give the brand an avatar because we don't really do business with faceless, nameless corporations. We want to do business with people. So being able to communicate brand values and culture and leadership and innovation through the avatar of a podcast host is extremely powerful. Another industry that benefits a lot from podcasting is healthcare. And all of these have constraints with compliance and communication and legal and all of that. But we're able to navigate all of those waters, as well.
Yeah, yeah. So what are some of the other challenges? If you are interested in developing audio content? Like what do you need to kind of consider or think about setup?
The lift is largely at the beginning when you're–well with any type of content, right, so you have to decide that has enough value that you're going to spend the brain capacity and the bandwidth and the time to work with a company like ours, so that we can help you shape that voice and shape the type of content that's really going to benefit you. So choosing that it's going to be a priority.
And then having deep, intimate communication and regular awesome content are things that you really want to do, you also need to decide in terms of you know–and we work with our companies on this–like who's going to be hosting, who's your avatar, who's your people or person that you're going to be featuring. And there's a lot of creative ways to work with that scenario, as well. Everything from solo hosts to two hosts to a panel discussion and everything in between. There's, there's a lot of different ways to manage those kinds of questions, particularly if there's multiple people inside of a company who want to be at the forefront being that avatar for the company, that's all completely manageable.
Another thing the company really needs to decide is if their marketing department, and their team, how we're going to dovetail this with their other strategic initiatives. Podcasting should be one piece and audio should be a piece of a larger strategic picture for a company. It should never be a band-aid or just an outlier. It needs to be integrated because it is something that has high strategic value, and can augment or replace creating content in other areas like blog posts, social media post images, articles for industry publications, and even events and getting used in events in different ways. So, there's a lot of applications and being willing to dive into the strategy is super important.
And what goes into that strategy? What questions are you asking or what do companies need to think about, you know, in terms of understanding kind of the bigger picture strategy before they really get into, you know, executing a particular kind of audio content strategy?
Yeah, we like to get into working with their marketing team. and finding out what are their core values that they're looking to communicate. What is that mission? What is their vision for their company, and then building out kind of an avatar of their host, not of their audience, but of their host. You know, if you had to personify your company, who is kind of that person and that spokesperson to do that? That's certainly an area that we start with, we also need to look at, as I mentioned, their current strategic initiatives. What's already working for them in terms of their marketing? How can podcasting build upon that and make it even more robust? And what are their pain points that we can address that are challenging?
So one of the pain points we run into a lot with companies is just the generation of content to begin with, particularly from a very busy team. A larger company, you know, when you ask somebody to go and say, “Hey, would you write a blog post on this?” somebody who's a technician or a salesperson or whatever, they may not be a writer to do that. Using interview techniques, we can extract and pull really wonderful, real conversational information from team members that can be pulled into podcasting content, or then even turned into articles or ebooks or, you know, other types of content, as well. And the creation process becomes 100 times easier. And this is, of course, scalable for any size company to do that, whether we're working with a sales team, or we're working with, you know, a CPA firm.
Yeah. You mentioned a couple times the idea of leveraging the content, what are some ways that you can kind of use the, the initial content, leverage it in different ways? You know, repurpose it. What are some things that companies should be thinking about when they develop a kind of a content strategy, starting with audio content?
Sure, I'll kind of walk you through a whole process, potential process flow on that. So let's say your podcast gets made, and the audio content is going out to 20-30 different audio distribution platforms, everything from Spotify to Apple podcasts and whatnot. So it lives all out in the world of public podcasting. Well, then the full edited transcript of that podcast, along with an embedded player, which has a number of features on it that are really helpful for the listener, click to tweets, and custom captioned images are all embedded on the website, usually in the form of a blog post. So we have, first, fresh content that goes into your blog.
And secondly, this is all gorgeous for your search engine optimization. Google loves fresh, long form conversational content, because Google is moving towards AI for their search engine optimization. This longer form conversational podcast content is so helpful for SEO, particularly with all the bells and whistles to kind of go along with it. So, from there, you can take the we have always have a little summary at the top and we have our quotes that are pulled out. Those are repurposed into social media posts, usually either on say a company page on LinkedIn that are then shared with the employees, shared with the team so that then they all can share those posts as well.
We also pull out short clips, little highlights from the podcast and turn them into what are called audiograms, which are little shareable, closed-caption dynamic videos. Those are also shared on social media. And one of my other favorite places to use audiograms is to embed them in related blog posts on the site that aren't necessarily the podcast episode, but maybe related content. So then you are cross-pollinating your website content and also creating a more dynamic experience for somebody visiting your website, because now you've got this lovely little 30-second to one minute long video that's breaking up the content on a related post and maybe getting people interested in staying on your website longer. Yeah, so those are just a few of the things that you can do.
We even recommend that whoever is the guest on the podcast, or even the host, depending on the situation, repurpose the link to their podcast on the publication section of their LinkedIn profile. A lot of people only use articles or blog posts, but you can use your podcast interviews as part of your publications list. And that helps build out, of course, your LinkedIn presence. For those folks of us who are in the B2B world or in the, you know, the business world. It's really nice to have that additional fresh content on your LinkedIn profile to kind of keep you top of mind for people.
So those are just a couple. Those are just a couple elements. And the other big one we see a lot of is turning podcast content into industry publication articles. So basically having writers–either folks we've introduced you to, or folks on their team. One of our companies that we work with primary tax solutions, they're a specialty tax company, and they've now had six articles based on their podcasts–content produced and published in publications like Accounting Today.
Yeah, I love that idea is like you create one piece and then you can find lots of different ways. Oh, my goodness repurposing it makes it so much easier or just create so much more leverage in terms of the work you do. What are some of the challenges? Certainly, when I started podcasting, you know, it wasn't, there was some hesitation and trepidation about kind of really getting into this and putting myself out there like that. What do you do to help folks who, you know, are considering this, but they're not quite sure they have maybe some, you know, maybe a little bit of fear around some of this stuff. You know, creating this content, really putting it out there–what are ways in which you help them kind of evaluate and create an opportunity for them to really get into this space?
It really just, it lives in the world of conversation. So, Bruce, would it be accurate to say that, you know, one of your big considerations was time?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah. And that's really the biggest thing we have to talk about is, where are your priorities, and where is your time going to be, because even if we're handling 90% of what has to go into the podcast production, we're still going to need, you know, some time for the marketing team and of course, the host and things like that to spend some time in that arena. So it just really has to be a priority, and they need to be well suited. So there's a lot of evaluation that goes on at the beginning, everything from talking about, like I said, the creation of kind of this avatar. We even use thought leadership archetypes that we have developed based on the 12 Jungian archetypes to help kind of shape the brand of the podcast in conjunction with the company's brand to make sure that there's this consistent voice.
So everything that we do really lives in relationship and inquiry and curiosity. And and then from there, the strategy, but we come at it–I would say that, you know, a lot of times I'm practicing my “Business Buddha” and that means I come from a place of non-attachment. It really has to be all about the clients and not about us and seeing what's going to be best. And sometimes it's not the best solution for that company, or it's not the right time. Sometimes it's the absolute perfect time, and the company is absolutely 100% ready to go. Sometimes there's a little bit of a delay until a few ducks get in a row and we say, “Hey, you know, you really should have X, Y, and Z handled before we start this process.” So it always has to be in the best interest of the company, so that we can get the best product, because, as you know, Bruce, podcasting isn't a one and done deal. It's a long tail game. Yeah, you know, so we got to have time.
Yeah, no, let's dig into that just a little bit. ‘Cause I find I see a lot of podcasts out there that get to like episode eight.
Yeah.
You know, big plans, big ideas, and then, you know, just, you know, a big initial push, but, they just kind of fade quickly. What are some things that can help you to prevent that or will help you, you know, kind of be in it for the long game?
Well, most of our companies, we recommend starting with a bi-weekly schedule, instead of a weekly schedule. You can always add episodes. You can always add frequency as you go. But bi-weekly gives enough frequency for folks to really get content out on a regular basis without it necessarily being an overwhelming time commitment. We also work to develop out the content calendar, and make sure that we've actually got, you know, 12 or 24 potential episodes kind of planned out. And then many times we're helping with, you know, getting the guests on. You know, let's look at your networking list. Who do you want to have on and how can we help you facilitate that communication, the guest preparation and making the actual recording process as easy as possible for folks? You know, you and I both use an interface that's very easy to get on. You're using was it Tricast here. Is that what we're both on?
Yeah.
So Tricast, Squadcast, Riverside FM–there's a bunch of them that really helped make the recording process very high quality and very easy, no matter who you are, where you are, as long as you've got a relatively decent internet connection. Yeah, and we help facilitate those with live direction, sometimes, helping people actually kind of feel comfortable, relax them. We do episode preparation sometimes and actually create the outlines for episodes for companies and working with their marketing team to make it easier for them to just have a nice flow of every episode. And of course, any kind of host or guest training when it comes down to the actual vocal or interview side of things. It's really a matter of finding out what are the needs, what are the desires, and creating the right solutions to fill it. There's no cookie cutter solution.
Yeah. And are most of your clients looking to develop leads for like a lead funnel or what are the outcomes that sort of the tangible business outcomes that you're typically focused on with clients?
The tangible outcomes that clients are usually looking to focus on are multifold. Podcasting of this particular kind is a beautiful combination of relationship marketing, influence marketing, and content marketing. So we're looking to have guests chosen strategically that are not necessarily leads for their company–there's a whole philosophy of podcasting that you interview people you want to have as clients. That's not really where we live. The companies that we work with are well-established. They're doing very, very well in their fields. And this is really a move from having a brand to becoming thought leaders in an industry. So it has more to do with influence and high quality content than it does with directly getting leads.
But that being said, it usually–well, actually, it always–it always ends up in developing leads, because collaborations come out of the guests that you have on the show, out of the visibility that you have, out of the elevation in the industry of now becoming a media presence, all of those things happen, and it is largely because podcasting opens doors when it comes to relationships. You know, our clients are always looking to have high quality guests on their show, and then following up with those guests afterwards to help deepen that relationship and develop collaboration inevitably adds leads to additional opportunities and more leads 100% of the time.
Yeah. And what recommendations do you have for folks in terms of kind of picking subjects, things that you're going to weave into your conversations, finding guests? I mean, how do you go from, “Hey, I want to start a podcast, I want to, you know, have these sort of business outcomes,” to actually getting things scheduled and figuring out what you're going to talk about?
Oh, okay, that's a big world. So let's break it down just into a couple of first steps. One is to look at your values. What do you want to be known for? You know, who are you in in the world? What does your company want to be known for? And what are your brand values, the pillars that you operate by that you want to make sure it get communicated out to an audience?
Then there's a little bit of a Venn diagram. You've got your brand values and your culture, and then you have what you're really good at, you know, what's your areas of focus, and you're going to overlap those two areas on each other. And then the third area that you're going to your trifecta, a little three circle Venn diagram is going to be how do you want to communicate it?
So when you're talking about podcasting, you have to have somebody on your team who's got a proclivity towards a microphone. In some way, shape or form, they have to have a desire for it. Because otherwise you're going to end up you know, like, like Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. “Bueller, Bueller? Bueller?” It's got to be dynamic, right? You somebody who is inclined. So that you know, so then you got your format of your show. So you've got those three pieces that you want overlap to find kind of your sweet spot in podcasting. And I will say, that's where you start. Podcasting is one of those things, just like I hate to say it, a website. That is, you're always evolving over time, and you're going to have seasons. You're going to have segments, you're going to evolve it over time. So you got to start with where you're most comfortable and most seasoned in your expertise, and then you're going to evolve and grow it from there.
Tina, this has been a pleasure if people want to find out more about you about the work that you do, what's the best way to get that information?
You can just hop over to twinflamesstudios.com and we are there. There's samples of our work. You can reach us there and we're happy to connect with you and explore, no matter where you're at in the process.
That's great. I will make sure that all the links are in the show notes here. Tina, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time today.
Thank you, Bruce.
Thank you for tuning in to today's episode. Be sure to subscribe using your favorite podcast app, so you don't miss our future episodes. See you next time.
About Scaling Up ServicesScaling Up Services is a podcast devoted to helping founders, partners, CEOs, key executives, and managers of service-based businesses scale their companies faster and with less drama. For more information and a list of recent episodes, please visit www.scalingupservices.com.
About Eckfeldt & AssociatesEckfeldt & Associates is a strategic coaching and advisory firm based in New York City and servicing growth companies around the world. Founded and led by Inc. 500 CEO Bruce Eckfeldt, E&A helps founders, CEOs, and leadership teams develop highly differentiated business strategies and create high-performance leadership teams who can execute with focus and rigor. Leveraging the Scaling Up, 3HAG, and Predictive Index toolsets, the firm has worked with a wide range of dynamic industries including technology, professional services, real estate, healthcare, pharmaceutical, and cannabis/hemp. For more information, please visit www.eckfeldt.com or email at info@eckfeldt.com.
Did you know one of the most powerful ways you can connect with your clients is through podcasting? You can learn more about the benefits of podcasting, what questions you need to answer before you begin your podcast, and how Twin Flames Studios helps get your voice into more ears on my guest interview with Bruce Eckfeldt on the Scaling Up Services podcast.(Scaling Up Services Podcast with Bruce Eckfeldt, October 2021)
Tina spoke with Bruce Eckfeldt on the Scaling Up Services podcast to discuss how podcasts hone your brand, provide evergreen marketing content, and create deeper relationships.
In this episode, you'll learn:
Why audio is one of the most intimate mediums for storytelling
The top questions to ask before you start your podcast
How podcasts can revitalize your marketing and expand your reach
Bruce Eckfeldt Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier? Check out Thrive Roundtable. Thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community. Created by Inc. award-winning CEO and certified Scaling Up Business coach, Bruce Eckfeldt, Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For details on the program, visit eckfeldt.com/thrive.
Welcome, everyone. This is Scaling Up Services. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host. Our guest today isTina Dietz. She is the founder at Twin Flames Studios. We're going to talk to her about the work that she does with companies helping them with creating content, with promotion. This is a really kind of interesting topic. I think so many service companies based their marketing, based their sales and lead development, based on thought leadership and getting content out in the world. And there's so many different types of content and so many different ways you can do it. I really think they–obviously I love podcasting–but you know, podcasts, audiobooks, you know, spoken word kind of content, there's so many things you can do with it. There's so many things you can use to generate awareness, generate thought leadership, generate leads. I'm excited for this and excited to hear Tina’s story and how she got into this this world of audio content production and what she's been doing with service companies. So, with that, Tina, welcome to the program.
Tina DietzHey, Bruce, thanks for having me.
It's a pleasure having you on. So before we dive into what you're doing with Twin Flames right now and stuff, why don't we talk a little bit about you and get a sense of your background? Give us the story. What was your professional journey? And how did you get into what you're doing today?
Well, like most entrepreneurs, it's fairly stupid. It's just like, “Well, how the hell did this happen?” Yeah, yeah. And that's, and that's what we hear more than everything. If you had asked me, you know, when I was growing up, if, you know, in 25 years or whatever, you're going to own a company that produces audio content in the land of thought leadership for service-based companies. I'm sorry, what? What, what? It didn't even exist, right? You know, at the time?
So my upbringing was I had a younger sibling–that was a business. My parents owned a business that they started when I was three years old. It was my younger sibling, and I hated it. It was a wood burning stove and fireplace business. So real sexy, awesome. And basically, that was my constant companion growing up. So I was steeped like a tea bag in entrepreneurship. From a very young age, I started answering phones when I was four and going to trade shows when I was six, I do a whole talk will have to do another time maybe on how I found my purpose in life through the Ginsu knife demonstration at a local fair. So that’s a whole thing, that's the whole thing. And, you know, I never really thought I'd own a business, but I became a therapist–for a number of reasons. Childhood was not a great place. But you know, lessons learned. It's one of those things. And I've spent a lot of time in the world of personal development, in leadership and all of that. So cultivating myself, of course, created in me a desire to see what else could be done for other people.
That led me to coaching and consulting, which then ended up leading me to podcasting and ultimately to audio production. Basically, through a paid hobby I had as a voice actor. You know, I'm an entrepreneur, we can't have regular hobbies, we have to have hobbies that pay us. That's the way it works. We can't have normal hobbies. So I was a voice actor on the side and taking some classes and masterclasses in audiobook narration. And I had this chocolate and peanut butter moment, this light bulb, aha, that, “Oh, my God, why aren't all my clients and colleagues who are doing best selling campaigns and producing books, why aren't they doing audiobooks?” And that was, as Michael Gerber from The E Myth says, you know, my “entrepreneurial seizure” that led me to investigate the world of audio and led me to a big gap in the market and dove into that.
I took over my business within a year of starting to offer services in this big market gap of done-for-you audiobooks, and also the corporate side of podcasting. And that is kind of was the best decision that I ever made. And so I went from basically being a solopreneur, consultant who'd worked with more than 20 industries in eight countries to being the CEO of a company that now produces content in the land of audio that changes lives and hearts and minds for service-based companies and making sure that they're having this beautiful, human, authentic voice of their company that comes through this medium of audio.
Yeah, I'm curious. You've had a couple of different kind of pivots in your commercial world and career what are some of the things that you had to learn or had to kind of change about your thinking, your leadership, your approach during those pivots?
Bruce, I thought you said this was only a half hour podcast.
The top two. Just the top two.
The top two. One: choose who gets in your ear very carefully, very carefully. I'm very much of a happy puppy kind of person. I'm just like, “Yeah, let's do it. Let's change the world. Let's make it happen.” I have a lot of enthusiasm and energy and kind of that visionary habit–you see something and you want to make it happen. And it took me a long time to really learn how to vet the people that I was working with, or who I was throwing in with, because I assumed for a long time, in a very naive way, that everyone had the same values that I did around integrity and communication, and, you know, working together and making sure everybody wins. And it doesn't always work that day. Most people, most people, 99% of people on the planet are doing their best. But you know, problems and challenges that come up, don't always bring out the best in people. Sometimes it brings out the worst in people. And so learning how to create relationships over time and cultivate those relationships carefully has been a huge game changer in my world to keep things consistent and growing in the right direction.
And the other piece of the puzzle has been, you know, doing my own inner work. I'd say all the time that we were born with two voices: the voice you speak with and the voice that speaks to you. And working on the voice that speaks to me has made the biggest difference in anything that I've done as a leader, as a business owner, as a partner, a wife, a mom, you know, on any of that, to cultivate that inner world–and I could do many, many, many hours, and all the things that have happened there. But suffice to say it's been a journey.
That's a really great, that's a great realization. And yeah, I think it's, you know, time is your most precious commodity and where you spend it, you know, how you spend it, who you spend it with, are all kinds of things that are really going to influence your success and what you end up doing. Tell me a little bit about kind of why audio content? I mean, what's your kind of take on the world? You know, that we're in today? Why is audio content so powerful, so important? Why have you chosen to focus on it?
Well, going back to what I said a moment ago about our internet, our voices, it's something every human being on the planet is born with. And it's something that cannot be taken away. And speaking, as someone who has felt in the past that my voice was taken away and was suppressed, having that voice and having a place at the table to have that voice heard, is incredibly valuable. And so, everything that I have done, and what we do as a company with Twin Flames, is designed to give people a place at the table so that their voices are heard. And then it creates this incredible ripple effect that you know, podcasts and audiobooks are some of the lowest hanging fruit on the planet for people to start changing their lives.
If we can be a part of more leadership voices and more positive voices and more great information, reaching people all over the world, so that they can start to change their lives. That is a really powerful place to be. It is really about making the world a better place one kind of drip of audio at a time. And audio is very, very, very intimate compared to most other forms of media. It's single focus. Most people listen to audio right into their ear. So there is a neurological connection that's very powerful between, you know, the earbud I have in my ear, and the center of my brain, the amygdala, the hippocampus, all of those things. It's not just higher brain functions being impacted by the voice. And so there's an intimacy created in an impact that's really important. And storytelling, of course, is incredibly powerful worldwide. It's something that connects all of humanity. So when we bring all these factors together, neurological, you know, storytelling, how we're wired, the universal power of the human voice to create relationship–it's a very, very powerful medium. And it can be used in so many different ways and sliced and diced, and at the pace we're living at, you know, audio is the most portable form of media. You can listen when you can't read you can listen when you can't watch. So you know, it's never gone away. It's never going to go away. And all of those things together make it what I consider the perfect storm for perfect content.
Yeah, I was like that idea that audio content literally gets you in your prospect’s head.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, you got it.
So what are all the kinds of formats these days? I mean, we kind of went from you know, I date myself accidentally when I say I'm listening to a book on tape or something.
I know, right? Me too.
It's morphed so many times, like what is your kind of how do you kind of lay out the scope or the types of audio content that that you have at your disposal these days?
Well, we usually start with a primary form of content, which is generally a podcast. Podcasting, of course, is something that is hot right now. I’m on one as we speak, and it provides a nice bulk of content to start with, and a framework to start with. So unlike a video, the average video watcher will watch two minutes, but the average podcast listener will listen for 40 minutes.
And it's actually much harder to create short form content than it is slightly longer form content. We have thoughts, you know, curating what we say, you know, the brevity or like cutting things down to its core is much more challenging than this kind of a conversational format. And so, it allows people to be very natural, and very expansive in what they're talking about to dig into nitty gritty and to know that the listener is still going to be interested more than two minutes in, so you're not trying to pack things in. So we start with a longer form 20-30 minute podcast, usually sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, but that's on average what it is. And that gives us a lovely bulk of content to work with.
From there, there's all different ways to slice and dice that type of content, repurpose it, reuse it. And the authenticity that comes through when you're using audio and using this type of format is really important to reach people on a deeper basis, rather than just an informational basis.
Yeah. And when you look at companies, what are I guess, what are some of the companies or situations that are best served with audio content? Like who can really benefit from this form of content?
Well, we love working with relationship-focused, service-based companies. People who, when they're working with their clients, they have long-term relationships with their clients. For example, companies, which seem very dry, but there's a lot of content available in the financial world, in insurance, for example, education of varying kinds, and even things like retail, retail conglomerates, and things like that, that are creating more experiences. Travel can be served in this way, as well, although it does, definitely does need to be paired with the visual aspect as well. But it can be really, really, really beautiful. You will see a lot of influencer podcasting, that's generally not our super cup of tea.
We do a lot of work in the leadership space, though, helping to humanize brands that are large, and give the brand an avatar because we don't really do business with faceless, nameless corporations. We want to do business with people. So being able to communicate brand values and culture and leadership and innovation through the avatar of a podcast host is extremely powerful. Another industry that benefits a lot from podcasting is healthcare. And all of these have constraints with compliance and communication and legal and all of that. But we're able to navigate all of those waters, as well.
Yeah, yeah. So what are some of the other challenges? If you are interested in developing audio content? Like what do you need to kind of consider or think about setup?
The lift is largely at the beginning when you're–well with any type of content, right, so you have to decide that has enough value that you're going to spend the brain capacity and the bandwidth and the time to work with a company like ours, so that we can help you shape that voice and shape the type of content that's really going to benefit you. So choosing that it's going to be a priority.
And then having deep, intimate communication and regular awesome content are things that you really want to do, you also need to decide in terms of you know–and we work with our companies on this–like who's going to be hosting, who's your avatar, who's your people or person that you're going to be featuring. And there's a lot of creative ways to work with that scenario, as well. Everything from solo hosts to two hosts to a panel discussion and everything in between. There's, there's a lot of different ways to manage those kinds of questions, particularly if there's multiple people inside of a company who want to be at the forefront being that avatar for the company, that's all completely manageable.
Another thing the company really needs to decide is if their marketing department, and their team, how we're going to dovetail this with their other strategic initiatives. Podcasting should be one piece and audio should be a piece of a larger strategic picture for a company. It should never be a band-aid or just an outlier. It needs to be integrated because it is something that has high strategic value, and can augment or replace creating content in other areas like blog posts, social media post images, articles for industry publications, and even events and getting used in events in different ways. So, there's a lot of applications and being willing to dive into the strategy is super important.
And what goes into that strategy? What questions are you asking or what do companies need to think about, you know, in terms of understanding kind of the bigger picture strategy before they really get into, you know, executing a particular kind of audio content strategy?
Yeah, we like to get into working with their marketing team. and finding out what are their core values that they're looking to communicate. What is that mission? What is their vision for their company, and then building out kind of an avatar of their host, not of their audience, but of their host. You know, if you had to personify your company, who is kind of that person and that spokesperson to do that? That's certainly an area that we start with, we also need to look at, as I mentioned, their current strategic initiatives. What's already working for them in terms of their marketing? How can podcasting build upon that and make it even more robust? And what are their pain points that we can address that are challenging?
So one of the pain points we run into a lot with companies is just the generation of content to begin with, particularly from a very busy team. A larger company, you know, when you ask somebody to go and say, “Hey, would you write a blog post on this?” somebody who's a technician or a salesperson or whatever, they may not be a writer to do that. Using interview techniques, we can extract and pull really wonderful, real conversational information from team members that can be pulled into podcasting content, or then even turned into articles or ebooks or, you know, other types of content, as well. And the creation process becomes 100 times easier. And this is, of course, scalable for any size company to do that, whether we're working with a sales team, or we're working with, you know, a CPA firm.
Yeah. You mentioned a couple times the idea of leveraging the content, what are some ways that you can kind of use the, the initial content, leverage it in different ways? You know, repurpose it. What are some things that companies should be thinking about when they develop a kind of a content strategy, starting with audio content?
Sure, I'll kind of walk you through a whole process, potential process flow on that. So let's say your podcast gets made, and the audio content is going out to 20-30 different audio distribution platforms, everything from Spotify to Apple podcasts and whatnot. So it lives all out in the world of public podcasting. Well, then the full edited transcript of that podcast, along with an embedded player, which has a number of features on it that are really helpful for the listener, click to tweets, and custom captioned images are all embedded on the website, usually in the form of a blog post. So we have, first, fresh content that goes into your blog.
And secondly, this is all gorgeous for your search engine optimization. Google loves fresh, long form conversational content, because Google is moving towards AI for their search engine optimization. This longer form conversational podcast content is so helpful for SEO, particularly with all the bells and whistles to kind of go along with it. So, from there, you can take the we have always have a little summary at the top and we have our quotes that are pulled out. Those are repurposed into social media posts, usually either on say a company page on LinkedIn that are then shared with the employees, shared with the team so that then they all can share those posts as well.
We also pull out short clips, little highlights from the podcast and turn them into what are called audiograms, which are little shareable, closed-caption dynamic videos. Those are also shared on social media. And one of my other favorite places to use audiograms is to embed them in related blog posts on the site that aren't necessarily the podcast episode, but maybe related content. So then you are cross-pollinating your website content and also creating a more dynamic experience for somebody visiting your website, because now you've got this lovely little 30-second to one minute long video that's breaking up the content on a related post and maybe getting people interested in staying on your website longer. Yeah, so those are just a few of the things that you can do.
We even recommend that whoever is the guest on the podcast, or even the host, depending on the situation, repurpose the link to their podcast on the publication section of their LinkedIn profile. A lot of people only use articles or blog posts, but you can use your podcast interviews as part of your publications list. And that helps build out, of course, your LinkedIn presence. For those folks of us who are in the B2B world or in the, you know, the business world. It's really nice to have that additional fresh content on your LinkedIn profile to kind of keep you top of mind for people.
So those are just a couple. Those are just a couple elements. And the other big one we see a lot of is turning podcast content into industry publication articles. So basically having writers–either folks we've introduced you to, or folks on their team. One of our companies that we work with primary tax solutions, they're a specialty tax company, and they've now had six articles based on their podcasts–content produced and published in publications like Accounting Today.
Yeah, I love that idea is like you create one piece and then you can find lots of different ways. Oh, my goodness repurposing it makes it so much easier or just create so much more leverage in terms of the work you do. What are some of the challenges? Certainly, when I started podcasting, you know, it wasn't, there was some hesitation and trepidation about kind of really getting into this and putting myself out there like that. What do you do to help folks who, you know, are considering this, but they're not quite sure they have maybe some, you know, maybe a little bit of fear around some of this stuff. You know, creating this content, really putting it out there–what are ways in which you help them kind of evaluate and create an opportunity for them to really get into this space?
It really just, it lives in the world of conversation. So, Bruce, would it be accurate to say that, you know, one of your big considerations was time?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah. And that's really the biggest thing we have to talk about is, where are your priorities, and where is your time going to be, because even if we're handling 90% of what has to go into the podcast production, we're still going to need, you know, some time for the marketing team and of course, the host and things like that to spend some time in that arena. So it just really has to be a priority, and they need to be well suited. So there's a lot of evaluation that goes on at the beginning, everything from talking about, like I said, the creation of kind of this avatar. We even use thought leadership archetypes that we have developed based on the 12 Jungian archetypes to help kind of shape the brand of the podcast in conjunction with the company's brand to make sure that there's this consistent voice.
So everything that we do really lives in relationship and inquiry and curiosity. And and then from there, the strategy, but we come at it–I would say that, you know, a lot of times I'm practicing my “Business Buddha” and that means I come from a place of non-attachment. It really has to be all about the clients and not about us and seeing what's going to be best. And sometimes it's not the best solution for that company, or it's not the right time. Sometimes it's the absolute perfect time, and the company is absolutely 100% ready to go. Sometimes there's a little bit of a delay until a few ducks get in a row and we say, “Hey, you know, you really should have X, Y, and Z handled before we start this process.” So it always has to be in the best interest of the company, so that we can get the best product, because, as you know, Bruce, podcasting isn't a one and done deal. It's a long tail game. Yeah, you know, so we got to have time.
Yeah, no, let's dig into that just a little bit. ‘Cause I find I see a lot of podcasts out there that get to like episode eight.
Yeah.
You know, big plans, big ideas, and then, you know, just, you know, a big initial push, but, they just kind of fade quickly. What are some things that can help you to prevent that or will help you, you know, kind of be in it for the long game?
Well, most of our companies, we recommend starting with a bi-weekly schedule, instead of a weekly schedule. You can always add episodes. You can always add frequency as you go. But bi-weekly gives enough frequency for folks to really get content out on a regular basis without it necessarily being an overwhelming time commitment. We also work to develop out the content calendar, and make sure that we've actually got, you know, 12 or 24 potential episodes kind of planned out. And then many times we're helping with, you know, getting the guests on. You know, let's look at your networking list. Who do you want to have on and how can we help you facilitate that communication, the guest preparation and making the actual recording process as easy as possible for folks? You know, you and I both use an interface that's very easy to get on. You're using was it Tricast here. Is that what we're both on?
Yeah.
So Tricast, Squadcast, Riverside FM–there's a bunch of them that really helped make the recording process very high quality and very easy, no matter who you are, where you are, as long as you've got a relatively decent internet connection. Yeah, and we help facilitate those with live direction, sometimes, helping people actually kind of feel comfortable, relax them. We do episode preparation sometimes and actually create the outlines for episodes for companies and working with their marketing team to make it easier for them to just have a nice flow of every episode. And of course, any kind of host or guest training when it comes down to the actual vocal or interview side of things. It's really a matter of finding out what are the needs, what are the desires, and creating the right solutions to fill it. There's no cookie cutter solution.
Yeah. And are most of your clients looking to develop leads for like a lead funnel or what are the outcomes that sort of the tangible business outcomes that you're typically focused on with clients?
The tangible outcomes that clients are usually looking to focus on are multifold. Podcasting of this particular kind is a beautiful combination of relationship marketing, influence marketing, and content marketing. So we're looking to have guests chosen strategically that are not necessarily leads for their company–there's a whole philosophy of podcasting that you interview people you want to have as clients. That's not really where we live. The companies that we work with are well-established. They're doing very, very well in their fields. And this is really a move from having a brand to becoming thought leaders in an industry. So it has more to do with influence and high quality content than it does with directly getting leads.
But that being said, it usually–well, actually, it always–it always ends up in developing leads, because collaborations come out of the guests that you have on the show, out of the visibility that you have, out of the elevation in the industry of now becoming a media presence, all of those things happen, and it is largely because podcasting opens doors when it comes to relationships. You know, our clients are always looking to have high quality guests on their show, and then following up with those guests afterwards to help deepen that relationship and develop collaboration inevitably adds leads to additional opportunities and more leads 100% of the time.
Yeah. And what recommendations do you have for folks in terms of kind of picking subjects, things that you're going to weave into your conversations, finding guests? I mean, how do you go from, “Hey, I want to start a podcast, I want to, you know, have these sort of business outcomes,” to actually getting things scheduled and figuring out what you're going to talk about?
Oh, okay, that's a big world. So let's break it down just into a couple of first steps. One is to look at your values. What do you want to be known for? You know, who are you in in the world? What does your company want to be known for? And what are your brand values, the pillars that you operate by that you want to make sure it get communicated out to an audience?
Then there's a little bit of a Venn diagram. You've got your brand values and your culture, and then you have what you're really good at, you know, what's your areas of focus, and you're going to overlap those two areas on each other. And then the third area that you're going to your trifecta, a little three circle Venn diagram is going to be how do you want to communicate it?
So when you're talking about podcasting, you have to have somebody on your team who's got a proclivity towards a microphone. In some way, shape or form, they have to have a desire for it. Because otherwise you're going to end up you know, like, like Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. “Bueller, Bueller? Bueller?” It's got to be dynamic, right? You somebody who is inclined. So that you know, so then you got your format of your show. So you've got those three pieces that you want overlap to find kind of your sweet spot in podcasting. And I will say, that's where you start. Podcasting is one of those things, just like I hate to say it, a website. That is, you're always evolving over time, and you're going to have seasons. You're going to have segments, you're going to evolve it over time. So you got to start with where you're most comfortable and most seasoned in your expertise, and then you're going to evolve and grow it from there.
Tina, this has been a pleasure if people want to find out more about you about the work that you do, what's the best way to get that information?
You can just hop over to twinflamesstudios.com and we are there. There's samples of our work. You can reach us there and we're happy to connect with you and explore, no matter where you're at in the process.
That's great. I will make sure that all the links are in the show notes here. Tina, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time today.
Thank you, Bruce.
Thank you for tuning in to today's episode. Be sure to subscribe using your favorite podcast app, so you don't miss our future episodes. See you next time.
About Scaling Up ServicesScaling Up Services is a podcast devoted to helping founders, partners, CEOs, key executives, and managers of service-based businesses scale their companies faster and with less drama. For more information and a list of recent episodes, please visit www.scalingupservices.com.
About Eckfeldt & AssociatesEckfeldt & Associates is a strategic coaching and advisory firm based in New York City and servicing growth companies around the world. Founded and led by Inc. 500 CEO Bruce Eckfeldt, E&A helps founders, CEOs, and leadership teams develop highly differentiated business strategies and create high-performance leadership teams who can execute with focus and rigor. Leveraging the Scaling Up, 3HAG, and Predictive Index toolsets, the firm has worked with a wide range of dynamic industries including technology, professional services, real estate, healthcare, pharmaceutical, and cannabis/hemp. For more information, please visit www.eckfeldt.com or email at info@eckfeldt.com.
Have you ever considered that your voice is an instrument and your thoughts and beliefs are the music you’re playing? If you want to learn how to “tune” your voice, take a listen to my guest appearance on the new episode of the More than a Few Words podcast, hosted by Lorraine Ball.(More Than a Few Words Podcast with Lorraine Ball, September 2021)
Recently, Tina joined Lorraine Ball on the More than a Few Words podcast to talk about how to use your voice to deepen your connection with others, enhance your credibility, and strengthen your leadership.
In this episode:
You'll discover the 5-7 different vocal qualities that are highly associated with credibility, trustworthiness, and perceptions of leadership
How these elements impact your career and income
Techniques to sound more professional, confident, and knowledgable
Lorraine BallHave you ever thought about what an amazing instrument your voice is? How the tone, the pitch and the tempo of your speaking voice can change how people view you? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today. Okay, here's the show. Welcome to More Than a Few Words – a marketing conversation for business owners. MTFW is part of your digital toolbox and this is your host, Lorraine Ball. I grew up in New York. I have a slightly nasal New York accent. That's part of my voice. But over the years, I've certainly worked to try to moderate that. And it is important that you do, because you can create an impression with your voice. That's what we're going to talk about today. And I couldn't think of a better person to have this conversation with than Tina Dietz. Tina's an award-winning and internationally-acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, corporate podcast producer, and vocal leadership expert. She has been featured on media outlets, including ABC, INC.com, Huffington Post, and Forbes.Tina's first podcast, The StartSomething Show, was named by INC Magazine as one of the top 35 podcasts for entrepreneurs. Her company, Twin Flames Studios, amplifies the influence of brands and leaders through high ROI audiobook and podcasting solutions. Tina, welcome to the show!
Tina DietzThanks, Lorraine. I really appreciate you having me on.
I am so excited to have you here, because this is something I've worked on a lot over the years and I think it's really important. But why don't we start with the question: What are the important qualities of someone's voice that makes them an effective leadership voice?
There’s about seven different qualities that are highly associated with someone's credibility, trustworthiness, and perception of leadership when it comes to vocal qualities. And the research around this is a little bit astounding. For example, Duke University did a study of almost 1000 CEOs, and found that on the topic of pitch alone, CEOs who had a lower pitch to their voice, had more tenure, commanded larger companies, had more perception of credibility and leadership, and made more money to the tune on average of an additional $180,000 per year.
And, you know, I know a lot of women like myself are like, “Crap!” You know, that's not necessarily a good statistic for us. But it's not that alone. The most highly, highly, highly associated vocal characteristic with credibility, leadership, trustworthiness is tempo. And this isn’t a particular tempo, it's your natural tempo. And this has to do with how we perceive somebody's breathing and their natural rhythm—the rhythm of their voice. So if you're, if you're talking a little bit too fast, and you're kind of gasping a little bit and all of that, that shows that you're maybe a little more anxious or nervous or not present. If you're talking slow, and a lot of pauses, then that may show that, again, you're not present and not confident or not sure of what you're saying. So those are two aspects of vocal qualities that really have been shown in research to make a difference. Other ones are sonority, which is the pleasantness of one's voice, articulation, as well as flow. And flow and tempo and articulation all kind of go together, as well.
And, you know, I know a lot of women like myself are like, “Crap!” You know, that's not necessarily a good statistic for us. But it's not that alone. The most highly, highly, highly associated vocal characteristic with credibility, leadership, trustworthiness is tempo. And this isn’t a particular tempo, it's your natural tempo. And this has to do with how we perceive somebody's breathing and their natural rhythm—the rhythm of their voice. So if you're, if you're talking a little bit too fast, and you're kind of gasping a little bit and all of that, that shows that you're maybe a little more anxious or nervous or not present. If you're talking slow, and a lot of pauses, then that may show that, again, you're not present and not confident or not sure of what you're saying. So those are two aspects of vocal qualities that really have been shown in research to make a difference. Other ones are sonority, which is the pleasantness of one's voice, articulation, as well as flow. And flow and tempo and articulation all kind of go together, as well.
So that's really reassuring to someone like me, because as soon as you started talking about it, I heard the deeper bass tone, having come out of a corporate environment, lots of men, I'm like, “Of course that sounds better to their ears.” And that's something that's really hard for me to change. But I can work on the flow, the pacing, some of those other qualities that make me sound more confident.
Exactly. But you know, and the good news is, is that everybody's voice is like a fingerprint. It's unique to us. So if you have an unusual voice, it doesn't mean that you have to fit into a cookie-cutter situation to be unique. You just need to be more of yourself. And the more that you work your voice out like a muscle, like you would take care of your body—it's a very complex musculature in there and your lungs and your throat and your neck and your shoulders, your face, everything combined—you know this, this beautiful orchestra happening inside of your body to get your voice out into the world. If you pay attention to it and work it out, it'll do wonderful things for you.
As a business owner, I'm thinking, “Okay, I'm not going to be doing big presentations, I'm not going to be standing in front of a room of 100 people. Does my voice really matter?”
Yes, yes, it does. It absolutely does. Because business is all about relationships. And every relationship you form, whether it's with a prospective client, it's with colleagues, it's at a networking group, it's on a phone call, it doesn't matter, you bring your voice with you everywhere you go. And you owe it to yourself, and you owe it to the growth of your business, your company, to bring your voice with you and to have it be a representation of who you are as a leader, and who you are as a brand.
Do you think that you have a different voice when you're at home or at work? Is it one voice? Or does it change based on the situation? And those are obviously the two extremes, but does your voice change in different situations?
Yeah, yeah, I think it does. Because we have a range, right? Just like you have a vocal range low to high, we also have a range of expression. And sometimes the expression that you use in business is not necessarily going to be the same expression you use with your kids.
That being said, I think most people draw two strong boundaries between what's in business, and what's really in your heart. And the more integrated we become from the inside and the outside, the more effective we become as leaders. So vocal leadership isn't really all about the external voice, it's about the dance between your internal voice and your external voice. It's analogous to a virtuoso musician. So, if you imagine your external voice is the instrument you're playing, and your internal voice—your thoughts, your beliefs, your message, all the things that make you who you are—that's the music that you're playing. So if you can learn how to create the arrangement of the music that you're playing, and pay attention to the external instrument, that's when you become a virtuoso.
Wow, I love the comparison between your voice and an instrument, because it really, to me, it makes a lot of sense. I can see that whole tuning and being pleasant to the ear. And even jazz sometimes is appealing to a certain audience. So I like that analogy, because it can be… your voice needs to fit the situation, it also needs to be kind of true to who you are. Are there things that we do with our voice that really work against us? That send the wrong message?
We could do it pretty easily. There's two in particular that in a business setting, and we're talking specifically about leadership and credibility, that are credibility killers. One is vocal fry. Now, if you don't know what vocal fry is, you can think about the Kardashians. So it basically makes you sound uninterested. And you actually will hear a lot of this in advertising when they're advertising to millennials and younger. Generally, when they're advertising to Gen X and older, you won't hear near as much vocal fry as you would, because it's more typical to hear in the younger generations, and they don't react to it as much as older generations do. So I do think we'll see this changing, but it's at the end of the sentences and it gets dropped down really low. And in the research that's been done—Gonzaga University did a huge study on this—regardless of who was evaluating the interviewees, anyone who was being interviewed that used vocal fry in their voice across the board categorically—age, race, gender didn't matter—they were rated as less credible and less desirable, less trustworthy to take a job. So it's a huge thing in career development: don't have vocal fry in your voice. That's a really big one.
And the other one that is similar—same thing, but different—is up talking the end of your sentences. And up talking the end of your sentences kind of makes you sound not credible, and then people think you don't know what you're doing, because your sentences sound like a question. A lot of times you can't hear it when you're doing it yourself, so you have to have other people listen to you. This happens a lot in networking situations when somebody is introducing themselves and they feel uncertain on the inside and that gets reflected to the outside. So a good thing to take note of.
Awesome. So as we're wrapping this up, I really want to encourage people to check out Twin Flames Studios—lots of S's in there for me to practice. But I really want to encourage people to check out all the wonderful information you've got to learn more about this subject, because I think being able to communicate and communicate with confidence is such an important first step for everyone and especially for business owners.
It sure is. We actually have a vocal leadership workout. If anyone is interested. And we don't have a landing page for it, but if you connect with me on LinkedIn, or through our website. We're happy to send you a copy.
Awesome. Well, we will make sure that we include all those links. Thank you so much for being a part of the show.
Thank you, Lorraine. This is wonderful. I appreciate you.
If you've enjoyed today's conversation and you'd like to find more resources for your business, be sure to check out the Digital Toolbox at DigitalToolbox.Club. Look for MTFW wherever you listen to podcasts. This is another episode of More Than a Few Words. Thanks for listening.
You woke up feeling great this morning, but as you’ve completed projects and spoken with colleagues, you find yourself running out of steam. You feel burdened, anxious, or drained. Something is off. Why? You may be experiencing the effects of “emotional velcro.”
As we interact with others throughout the day, the emotions we encounter leave a residue on us because we are by nature empathic beings. Let’s say, for example, that your spouse has a stressful morning and you’re wondering how their afternoon is going or one of your team members feels stuck about an upcoming project and takes you into their confidence, seeking advice. Those emotions aren’t yours, but they can stick to you like velcro and color every interaction you have for the rest of the day. Emotional velcro has a compounding effect because when we are weighed down by it, we also leave our own emotional velcro behind for others to bear. If left unaddressed, emotional velcro hinders our ability to effectively communicate, influences our team’s emotional state and, ultimately, diminishes our leadership ability.
The good news is we can clear the emotional velcro we pick up and reclaim our energy while still being empathetic leaders. By clarifying our emotions, determining a strategy to process them and intentionally choosing our emotional states, we successfully manage our own emotions and maximize our emotional elasticity (our ability to emotionally adapt and engage). Furthermore, clearing our own emotional velcro ensures we continuously communicate with transparency and integrity, which means we do not transfer any emotional velcro to our team. As we lead by example, we contribute to creating a culture and workplace of psychological safety for our teams.
In order to accomplish these goals, there are a number of strategies we can use. Here are three to consider:
1. Self-evaluate.
Ask yourself, “Why am I feeling this way? Is there anything I am carrying that is not mine to bear?” Distinguishing if an emotion is yours or not is sometimes enough to release the velcro for us. In other situations, what someone else is going through may trigger some emotions of our own that may need to be readdressed. In either case, discerning what the source of the emotional velcro is and who it belongs to can bring either immediate relief or give us an opening for an empowered next step.
2. Self-address.
Address the struggle that the interaction has uncovered by getting curious about solutions and taking action. Sometimes, the solution is that we need to talk with someone else like a coach, counselor or other trusted source. Other times, we simply need to combat the issue with the truth about ourselves or the situation.
3. Shift your emotional state.
We have the power to learn to intentionally shift our emotional states. Just like learning to read or catch a ball, this is a skill set that simply takes practice — and that practice is not something most of us have consciously had before. Intentionally shifting does not mean denying what we are feeling or not caring about others; rather, it means consciously choosing and embodying an emotional state so we are not weighed down by emotional velcro. Embodiment techniques vary, and ample research exists explaining why they can be so effective. According to a study from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, when we smile, it can actually help us feel happier. We can also use simple vocal techniques and “power poses” to release the stress we are feeling.
Engaging in this process of self-evaluating, self-addressing and shifting maximizes our emotional elasticity and brings more psychological safety to ourselves and the people around us as we lead by example. We may not be stress-free and revitalized overnight, but every time we “reset,” we are able to shift our emotional state more easily and more quickly. This allows us to establish deeper, more authentic connections with our team, be more present and pour into them from a place of wholeness, instead of scarcity. Psychologically safe workplaces begin with leadership. Shed your emotional velcro and see what happens.
Read and watch more Frequently Asked Questions about Audiobooks and benefit from our expertise, or Contact Us for more information and forthright advice about producing, distributing, and profiting from Audiobooks. Plus, download our Vocal Leadership Workout to develop and refine your the most influential tool you have — your voice!
What most surprised you, or what do you still want to know? Let us know your thoughts below!
About Tina Dietz:
Tina Dietz is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, podcast producer, and vocal leadership expert whose work and shows have been featured on media outlets including ABC, NBC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal and Chicago Tribune, Inc.com, and Forbes. She’s been named one of the top podcasters for entrepreneurs by INC.com, and Tina’s company, Twin Flames Studios, re-imagines thought leadership through podcasting and audiobooks for experts, executives, and founders.
Yes, thank you for joining us.So please tell us a story of how Twin Flames Studios came to be.
Well, Twin Flames Studios is a high ROI Influence and Marketing company where we use audio to amplify the voices and messages of trusted leaders and companies all over the world. It's really our mission to help these people help these organizations get their word out to a larger audience in the very intimate form of audio, whether that is nonfiction audiobook publishing, or that is podcasting strategically for your business.
And it's important that we note that in these times of great change, these powerful voices are needed now more than ever.
My background, and my story, is a little bit more like the twisty journey of a lot of entrepreneurs.I grew up as an entrepreneur—my parents’ business—the super sexy world of wood burning stoves and fireplaces.
Wow.
Yeah, very exciting. But I never wanted to have my own business because I didn't want to be tied down to a brick and mortar like my parents were. And I'm an only child, so that business was my annoying younger sibling when I was growing up.
Right, the baby.
The baby, yeah.
So, I became a therapist, and I tried to be conventional. And that didn't work out so well for me—
Okay—
As many entrepreneurs—
The entrepreneurial spirit was still—
That’s right, within the blood.
Yes.
So, after working in higher education, starting a nonprofit, and also building a family—another family business with my father, the Nayada Institute of Massage—I stepped off into a full-time business coaching practice. And through the jigs and the reels over the years grew that practice.
It was wonderful, had young children at the time, we lived a mobile lifestyle, we sold our stuff moved to Costa Rica. And at one point because I was… had my own, like personal expression—I grew up a little bit of a theater kid—drama kid—and was looking for some outlets, creative outlets—I became a voice actor as a paid hobby. And through that process, and learning the audiobook industry as a narrator—I was exploring that—I had this epiphany “Well, wait a minute, I'm coaching all these people from all over the world who owned businesses—20 different industries, eight different countries—why aren't these folks who are publishing their own books doing bestseller campaigns? Why aren't they doing audiobooks?”
And it was that curiosity that led me down the rabbit hole first for audiobooks—I already had my own podcast at the time—had fallen in love with that world. And that is what led to developing this niche in podcasting and audiobooks for business owners, thought leaders and companies.
And so what would you say the difference is versus something that's on paper, versus really hearing a tone? What does that do for an audience to really hear a voice?
Well, you know, a couple of years ago, I had the pleasure and privilege of being the lead interviewer on a documentary about podcasting called The Messengers, you can find it I think it's on Amazon Prime. And that was developed by Chris Krimitsos and his team at the Podfest Multimedia Expo. And that was, that organization was younger at the time and wanted to really explore what is this industry of podcasting from an independent podcaster’s point of view, rather than monopoly, or NPR or the, you know, the big professional gigs.
So, I interviewed about 40, different podcasters from all different walks of life, different countries, different places, most of them didn't know each other. And the word that came up in every single interview independently was the word intimacy. Podcasting being this intimate format, you know, directly into your ears—becoming a voice in somebody's head, it's such a privilege. And that and then also the ability to do active storytelling when we're so wired to tell stories as human beings. So that's, you know, the audio format has a lot of advantages in that way. And it's also the most accessible form of media, you know, you can listen—as I'm assuming some people are right now listening to this podcast—when you can't read, you can listen when you can't watch. So, you can take it anywhere.
And as a coaching also involved in telling… teaching people how to speak as well as I'm sure some people aren't necessarily natural storytellers. Is that something you sometimes have to teach certain clients as well?
Yeah, actually, the body of work that I've been developing over time and will continue to do so is around what I call Vocal Leadership. And that's really about the instrument that your external voice is and learning how to tune that and play it beautifully to another level. And also, the internal voices that we have, which is really… if the external voice is the instrument, then the internal voice is the music, the sheet music that we're playing.
So those two things really need to be congruent in order to have a presence, and in order to move people the way we want to move them through stories. And then, of course, there's also the actual storytelling, and microphone techniques, and all of that good stuff as well.
The little details.
Yeah, exactly.So, our hosts… One of the things we do as a company as we get our podcast hosts together into a mastermind about quarterly, to connect them with each other, and also to provide additional support and training.
Okay
And that's, in addition to meeting with them one-on-one to help them with the strategy, you know, as their podcast is, you know, being aired.
Okay, and so that kind of goes to my next question—you mentioned Voice Leadership, and then how you can kind of take an extra step to really connect with the audience. So then, what does being a conscious business leader mean to you?
I think that the word conscious has… has not become overplayed, but it's important to take a step back and look at “Well, what does that really mean?” I'm so glad you asked the question.
And being conscious in your business means taking not just your business into account, it's taking the impact that you're making, or that you can make into account. And that has to do not just with the people that you serve, but it also has to do with how your business is set up. How the impact… How it impacts the people that work inside the company? Is it a win for them? Is it a good culture? Is it healthy? Is it helping people develop their dreams and goals? And is it good also for the people who are, you know, the founders? So, sometimes it's really easy as a C suite or business owner to get on this hamster wheel where you will—you burn out, right?
So, you really need to bring a conscious view… You know, taking these things into consideration. What are the deeper values that you have? And how do those infuse everything that you're doing, everything that you're saying, and the practices that you have? You know, unfortunately, being in the entrepreneur world, speaking world, as long as I have, sometimes you run into people who preach these incredible positive messages from the stage, but then don't treat people well behind the curtain. And being conscious means that you're congruent.
And that also comes back around to the—you know—the vocal leadership, or embodied leadership that we all strive to develop. When you are conscious to make sure that, you know, you're reflecting and having the… your internal conversations match what's coming out of your face.
Wow, that's the first time I've heard that sort of response as far as how it can be one way for the show, but behind the scenes things aren't matching, and how it needs to.So, would you say then, in order for things to be congruent, it has to start with the internal of the founder, of the person who's kind of setting the culture from the beginning?
Yeah, I would completely agree with that. You set the tone. The buck stops here, as the old saying goes.
And I think one of the important things about being a leader is being open enough to seek the coaching on that or to seek the feedback on that, not just from other experts, but also from your team, also from the people around you, from your, from your clients. And it can really take something to hear feedback about that. I remember years ago—I'll go in all the way back to my 20s—I used to get this piece of feedback all the time, because I'm a pretty intense person, you know, I—
I understand, yes.
There's this intensity, and there's this fervor, and there's this passion. And it's… they would say, “Well, could you tone it down a little bit?” Or “Could you soften your edges?” And—oh, my god—that was so offensive, that pissed me off 18 different ways. Because I thought, I just thought they meant that they wanted it, “You go be quiet, put in a box, and smile and do what you're told.” And sometimes that was the case. But what I came to understand later, is that it wasn't really about me, it was about them being intimidated by me. But where I can be kind, and I can be compassionate is learning how to read the room.
Right
And learning how to not, you know, quell or shut off my integrity or my passion, but to manage it in order to express it in a way that people can really receive. Because that's what's important to me, can you receive the message that I'm giving?
Right, right. I guess that’s one of the hardest lessons to learn—different people receive things in different ways.
Right.
I’m just passionate, I just want you to do great, I want us to do great. And just certain ways… it doesn't sit with people like that. And it's learning how to do that extra communication.
Yeah, I remember one of the most important conversations I ever had was in a leadership course really kind of intense one year-long course. And one of my fellow, very successful executive woman, she said—I was getting all ramped up about something—she said, “Why is this so important to you?” I said, “Well, the question is, why isn't it important to you?” And we had a really fascinating discussion about how different people have different capacities to feel. And certain ones of us are very highly sensitive and other people are not. And just, it really opened my eyes, because I really kind of just thought that everybody was like me, and turns out, nope—
No—
Not so much.
I had to make those adjustments. And so, where do you see your business going then in the next three to five years? And I'm sure… We're seeing that people are doing more audio both receiving and giving, than actual reading, and literature, and everything. So where do you see your business going?
Well, it's been a… we've doubled the company four years in a row, time on time. And I don't expect that that will happen forever, certainly—
But it's nice.
It's great so far. And so, we're in a big scaling phase right now. And also, in a position, you know, earlier, in 2020, when the pandemic really was affecting a lot of our colleagues, our clients, our customers, former clients—things like that—I was grateful that we were in a position because we've always been a fully mobile company. And of course, audio is much easier to do remote—that we offered, you know, a lot of—a complement just for free. We went out and said, “What… how can we help?” and offered teleclasses, and consultations, and things like that, to help different companies make use of this online space, make use of audio, both for internal communications, and external communications and marketing. And so, we've had… 2020 was really a banner year for us.
And going into 2021 and beyond we're just looking to really serve more companies to have more intimate relationships with their current clients, with their future clients, with their colleagues, and even for their internal culture, because podcasting in particular, can help with all of that. And then on the author side of things, of course, a lot of people with time that they had, are finishing their books and getting things out on audio—and you know, audiobooks, outsell eBooks three to one across genres. So, it's… It's a beautiful thing to be able to help people get their voice out like that.
Yeah, absolutely, so you're kind of in a nice little sweet spot where it's like you get to of course, help people build their businesses and kind of make some pivots, but of course, it helps your business as well having more clients.
Exactly. You know, it's weird to say it felt like being in the right place at the right time after 20 years. So, worth the wait, worth the wait.
Absolutely. So, you have a few services offered through your website, such as links to your podcast and audiobooks. Tell us about any other services that you might offer, your business offers?
Well, you know, the done-for-you audiobook side of things, one of our… the key things that we're able to do with folks, to the best of my knowledge, we're the only audiobook house—and we do specialize in nonfiction exclusively—who is able to remote into wherever an author is in the world and record their audio book with them, live, full direction, from their home studio or office without them having to go into a studio.
And we can coach them on very easily getting good sound having a high-quality audiobook, and it keeps the cost down. And it's also very comforting to be in your own space while you're do that. So… And we also can do really fun things like insert music, and even other audio clips, and things like that. We're producing a memoir for a family right now on the Holocaust. And there are some fascinating video clips that we're converting to audio that we're going to be inserting in the narrative to help tell the story. So, there's some really cool stuff we do on that side.
Same thing with podcasting. Podcasting is so creative and such a beautiful format to get your message out there. So, whether it is internal podcasting—like we do with enterprise level companies—, external podcasting—that we do with companies and organizations to help get the word out about who they are, what they do and develop their influence—, or the vocal leadership—that I do one-on-one, to help people become more effective in the messages that they have. We're just happy to do all of it—
Yeah, sounds like, yeah, cover a lot of different things that a lot of different people could use especially right now with how things have changed. And so, for anyone who's interested in using any of those services or just even wants to connect with you, where are the best places, and platforms to go to?
You can definitely find me on any social media platform. We have a social media following about 280,000 so we're out there and so you can find me, Tina Dietz. You can also look up Twin Flames Studios, although my name is probably going to get you a better result there on LinkedIn, certainly Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. And you can also just come over to us at TwinFlamesStudios—it's a lot of ss—.com, and come and hang out with us find out some more information, and grab a cup of coffee.
Love it. I love coffee, and I'm sure others do too and would love to share with you.
Me too.
Perfect.
Tina Dietz, thank you so much. It has been such a pleasure learning about you and your company today.
Well, it's been a pleasure being here. Thanks so much, Gabby.
Learn more about the intimacy and power of our voice,
In this quick video, I share with you some mysteries behind microphones and give you some recording tips to improve your podcast sound quality
Tina Dietz
Hi guys, it's Tina Dietz from Twin Flames Studios, and I wanted to do a really quick video for you on microphone technique, because I hear microphone issues constantly—particularly on new podcasts—but even on longstanding podcasts.
And there's a few things that are very small that you need to be sure that you're doing with your microphone.So, first of all, this is a Yeti. Yeti is one of the most popular microphones on the market. A lot of people have one. I've been using one for years. Even though I've got other ones floating around, I do come back to the Yeti because it's familiar and lovely.One of the biggest issues with the Yeti people don't know is that it is a side presentation microphone—you don't speak into the top of the Yeti, you talk into the side of it. The other thing that happens a lot with the Yeti, as well as many other microphones, is you may have what's called the gain adjusted wrong. Gain is sometimes a button or dial on the microphone; sometimes it's in the software. The gain has to do with how much volume, or how much that your microphone is taking in. And you want to have that generally set about halfway. Not too low, not too high. Sometimes you have to experiment with it.On a microphone like the Yeti there's also different settings on the back—read the directions. Usually, for podcasting, you use the cardioid, which is the little heart symbol on the back. There's different settings on the Yeti because it is an omnidirectional microphone—you can have a bunch of people sitting around it to get sound.This is in contrast to a top presentation microphone, which—if you have a microphone that looks anything like this—and most microphones are a top presentation microphone. So, a microphone like this—this is a Samson—you would speak into the top of it, not the side of it. So, one of the biggest issues of Yeti—the sound isn't here; it's here. So, make sure you're doing it right.The other thing is, are you close enough to the mic? When we're on video like this, I'm sitting back kind of far from the microphone, and you know, you might be getting a sound. If I'm recording a podcast, I don't want to be that far away. I'm going to take a hang loose sign; I am going to put my pinky finger on the microphone; I'm going to put my thumb on my lip. And that is as far away as I should be from the microphone.If you want to create an even more intimate sound as long as you don't get too loud—because it'll pop your sound waves—you can even get in a little bit closer. And you can probably hear in the sound quality that there is a difference here when you get right up on the mic.
If you have a lot of popping and sibilance—you'll hear that right there—on your microphone, you want to make sure you do have a guard on it like this—a foam one or a screen one. They will help with the sibilance; we can also do some in post-production.And I'm also speaking in a room that is quite big—high ceiling, all of that. I'm going to get a lot of room noise. I'm going to get a lot of reverb. So, when you are recording, think about recording either in a smaller space with soft cloth or, you know, acoustic tiles on your walls. Record in your walk-in-closet—it's a great space to do recording. Just don't use video.And for God's sake, stop using Zoom for your podcasts. Even as a producer, I can tell you we have used Zoom for our podcasts in the past. We have stopped doing it. Because all of the changes in the software of the platform, they are over-compressing the sound quality. We're not getting good quality out of Zoom anymore. So consider using a podcast platform like Squadcast.fm—that's the one we use for our clients, Squadcast.fm. That is not a paid plug. It's a really easy to use format. There are a bunch of other ones out there as well, that are going to be better than Zoom.Audio and video—very different. We'll talk about that in another video. But I wanted to talk with you—since I'm seeing so many podcasts launching here in 2021—about some quick microphone techniques. These are very, very basic. There's a lot more we can go into, but if that's helpful to you—I really hope it is and hopefully that'll improve a little bit of your sound quality on your new podcast.Talk to you soon.
