How to Capitalize on the Audiobook Renaissance with Tina Dietz

Written by Robin Thompson on March 9, 2021. Posted in Audiobook Marketing, Business Development, Leadership, Podcast, Podcasting, Video, Vocal Leadership.

Audiobooks are the most rapidly growing segment of the publishing industry. Are you ready to capitalize on the audiobook renaissance?(Podcast on The Author's Corner, February 25, 2021)

Audiobook sales are the most rapidly growing segment of the publishing industry. Registering double-digit revenue growth for the past few years, it is having a renaissance that can no longer be ignored. How can authors capitalize on this massive opportunity? Robin Colucci brings an expert on to the podcast to help us understand this booming industry. Tina Dietz is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, corporate podcast producer, and vocal leadership expert. Her company, Twin Flames Studios, helps authors and experts amplify their voices through audiobooks, podcasting, and other means. Listen to her discussion with Robin and learn why you should be looking into audiobooks as the new golden goose in publishing.

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The Renaissance of Audiobooks and How to Capitalize on It with Tina Dietz

Our topic is audiobooks. Audiobooks sales and consumption have been booming. This is the most rapidly growing segment of the publishing industry. It’s been on a growth surge for the last few years of double-digit revenue growth in the field of audiobooks. In 2019, we had another epic year of audiobook sales with 16% growth. The total sales in audiobooks were $1.2 billion. This is a phenomenal thing that’s occurring. I wanted to bring on an expert who could help us understand a little bit more about audiobooks, how authors should be thinking about audiobooks, and what we might be able to do as authors to capitalize on this massive opportunity. With that in mind, I have brought on Tina Dietz.

Tina is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, corporate podcast producer, and vocal leadership expert who has been featured in media outlets including ABC, Inc., The Huffington Post, and Forbes. Tina’s first podcast, the The Start Something Show was named by Inc. Magazine as one of the Top 35 Podcasts For Entrepreneurs. Tina’s company, Twin Flames Studios, amplifies the messages of experts globally to their target markets via audiobooks, podcasting, and leadership. Tina divides her time between the US and Costa Rica where she’s part of a leadership team building a conscious community called Vista Mundo. Without further ado, let’s welcome Tina.

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Tina, welcome, and thank you for joining me.

It’s my absolute pleasure, Robin. Thanks for having me.

I’m excited to speak with you because even though I’ve been in the publishing world for many years and long before there was such a thing as audiobooks, it’s an area that I don’t know a whole lot about. I’m as excited for myself to learn as I am for our readers.

It’s an interesting world and industry. I’m happy to share.

Book marketing is an evergreen thing. A little bit every day is better than a big push once.

We all know what an audiobook is. A lot of us listen and have them. Audible is the most famous platform for an audiobook. Something I learned or at least got a taste of in our previous conversations is there are other platforms. I want to know a little bit about that because as I said, this is where you have “newbie Robin.”

Audible is the 500-pound gorilla in the room. They’d been around for a long time. Audiobooks have been around in one format or another. Since 1929 was the first audiobook, which was on an album. Audiobooks were on albums and then they were on tapes. A lot of us remember Books on Tape for years then moved to CDs and then, of course, it moved digitally. It was in the digital transition that happened that audiobooks have received a huge resurgence and a huge renaissance.

Prior to that, one of the first audiobooks I listened to as a young adult was Deepak Chopra’s Magical Mind, Magical Body. It was 12 or 16 tapes. I could not keep track of those damn tapes. I was always like, “What tape is next? I don’t remember which one I was listening to.” When digital audiobooks came about, it changed the game and much like the iPod Nano and the iPod in general changed music. Audiobooks changed in the same medium. Audiobooks, music, podcast, all of this audio content has had a tremendous rise in the last few years.

Audiobook Renaissance: Audiobooks are not as popular outside of the English-speaking world. However, they’re having a tremendous rise in countries like China and India.(Image via The Author's Corner)

It’s such a drastic thing that in my mind, there weren’t audiobooks available. Luckily, I haven’t been in the publishing industry since 1929, so that’s a relief. It’s interesting because you’re right. As soon as you started saying it, I’m like, “the tapes!” It was clumsy. It was difficult to manage. You had to keep track of where you were. You could lose one and lose a whole chunk of the book, and you had to be home. You had to be somewhere where you could also use the equipment.

If you didn’t have a car and Walkmans, things like that, that’s where things got more popular in that era. Prior to that, with albums, you couldn’t do that. I remember being a little kid sitting in front of my record player, having the book, and record from Disney. When Tinkerbell rings her little bell, it’s time to turn the page. I loved those when I was growing up. Those were fun. It was part of learning how to read. Audiobooks have this lovely, rich tradition, but because we live in such a different era now with the internet, digital, Bluetooth, and all the technology we have, as you said, the dots don’t necessarily get connected between the two.

Audible, in that pivot, does hold more than 60% of the market share in audiobooks worldwide. Audiobooks are not as popular in other places of the world outside of the English-speaking Western cultures. However, they’re having a tremendous rise in countries like China and India as the markets have opened up. I’m waiting with a bowl of popcorn. I’m excited to see what’s going to happen there. Going back to your original question, there are a lot more outlets than that.

There are more than 40 other audiobook outlets. This goes everywhere from your libraries. Most people get audiobooks out of their libraries. Those are usually using apps like OverDrive and Libby and sometimes Hoopla. Those are the three big ones for libraries. Those are the apps that they go through. There’s also Audiobooks.com, Downpour, Scribd. Blackstone has their own thing. You can purchase audiobooks through NOOK and other places as well. There’s a large distribution world for audiobooks out there.

I’m curious when a library purchases an audiobook, do they purchase a license or do they purchase a single audiobook like they put a book on the shelf?

The world of libraries does work differently than the retail world and it’s not an area that I have a tremendous depth of expertise. I’ll be transparent about that. To get on the radar of libraries is a lot more challenging. It depends on the types of titles that they’re looking for and their yearly budget mandate. Every community is different. As you can imagine, the number of libraries across the US alone is huge. It’s in the tens of thousands.

Getting into libraries can be an entire strategy in and of itself. The way to get on the radar of libraries is a little opaque because you can’t campaign libraries. You could but it’s a little different. The licensing works different for libraries. They have to purchase more than one license in order to be able to pass it around, so to speak. There are some people in the industry who specialize in selling books to libraries. The audiobook and the book process for purchasing to libraries is, from what I understand, quite similar.

Make a note to get me that contact. That could be also an interest.

It’s a great niche.

I did a little research for a client. They were writing a book that was more for school-age kids. There are over 46,000 school libraries, nevermind other libraries. In K-12, there were over 46,000 libraries in the US at that time. There are all these different platforms but Audible has the lion’s share. I’m curious when you’re working with a client on an audiobook, since we jumped in distribution, what is your goal when someone comes to you for help with an audiobook? Do you focus on Audible or do you try to get them any? How do you look at all these platforms that are available as part of your strategy?

We have to look at the overall goals of the author. We work with non-fiction authors. Fiction goals and non-fiction goals are very different worlds. Generally, the goals with the fiction author is to sell copies. That’s the only name of the game. Whereas a nonfiction author has their book. It’s being used in service of building their platform. Selling copies is important but if you’re selling bulk copies of your book, you’re more likely to sell them in bulk when you’re speaking or to be handed out as a promotional item as a loss leader, or various other things.

Getting speaking gigs, attracting clients, getting press, media attention, all of those things. The goals are different so the strategies are different. What binds the two together is, first of all, distribution platforms. Secondly, everybody does want to sell copies and wants visibility. The third thing is that book marketing, it’s you and I could agree, is an evergreen thing. A little bit every day is better than a big push once. That’s where authors get tired. We could have a whole conversation about that.

As you said, with the non-fiction authors especially, I always tell my clients, “Look at what activities you already are doing to grow your business or you know you should be doing and do those to promote your book because it will pay you off way bigger.” It keeps the book in the conversation that way too.

Going back to your question about what we focus on: We have to look at the goals and the overall strategy of the company or the individual first. What do you want your audiobook to do for you? What do you already have in place? Do you have a marketing team? Do you already have strategies for your book? How is this going to dovetail with all of that? Usually, in terms of distribution, what we end up recommending for the most part, particularly for a newer book. If you have a book coming out as a launch and the audiobook is coming out right around the same time as your book is launching or say within six months afterwards, then what ends up happening is they’ll be distributed exclusively through Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books for the first year, which takes advantage of a couple of things. One is a higher royalty rate. Royalty rates for exclusive distribution of 40% versus 25% for non-exclusive distribution. The other thing it takes advantage of is being able to focus on pushing your marketing, your customers, and your audience at one platform.

Amazon, Audible and Apple Books, that’s one?

Technically, that’s considered exclusive distribution because Audible and Amazon are the same company and Apple Books has an agreement with Audible for distribution. It’s an automatic also-run thing.

I’m going to guess Apple Books is the second biggest platform. Would that be accurate?

No, because Apple only holds 10% of the cell phone market. It seems like it’s everywhere but on a worldwide basis, Android is a much bigger player in terms of the cell phone markets. Apple is amazing in their marketing and they’re amazing at creating evangelists for their brand.

Audiobook Renaissance: The most important factor in someone deciding to purchase an audiobook is the quality of the narration. (Image via The Author's Corner)

This exclusive distribution, you said for the first year.

Yes. You then can evaluate after the first year and decide if you want to continue on or if you want to go with non-exclusive and then get the audiobook out to a bunch of more platforms.

What would be a good reason to be on? I’m wondering, if you’re getting 40% royalty and then it goes down to 25% royalty, does it ever add up like getting that extra market share offsets the decrease in the royalties?

It comes down again to marketing and the goals. If you don’t market, it’s not going to make any difference either way what it comes down to. It’s a marketing opportunity to change your distribution. Once you have your book on other platforms, you can make announcements about it like, “The audiobook is now available here. Did you know that this existed?” Much of marketing in our digital age, particularly on the 24-hour news cycle that is social media is coming up with interesting little, “Did you know,” pieces of information. It’s much like being nominated for a book award, getting a book award, having your book in a new place, or having a speaking opportunity. These are all little snippets of information to offer to your audience to stay top of mind. Additional distribution creates an additional opportunity for content to market your book.

What I’m getting out of this is that you’re adding these other distribution platforms, piecemeal, not all at once.

You submit it all at once but they tend to come in onesie-twosie in their approval process because you’re using a portal. The portals that we use and these are a self-serve portal. Not just for publishers but for people who want to self-publish as well. ACX.com is the common self-publishing backend for audiobooks for Audible. FindawayVoices.com can be also used for Audible but it will also help to get your book up to 40 additional platforms. Not everybody is going to take your book but a lot of them will.

What should I have asked you about the distribution that I didn’t?

That’s a lot of the broad strokes of that particular thing. The only thing about distribution that people need to know is that at least in the beginning, it’s something you want to stay on top of and go in. Read your monthly reports, get familiar with the notations that are made because that’s market research for you. What channels are working for you? What is not working for you? What are your best places to define readers? Certain distribution channels also, individually, if you look into them, may have more opportunities for you to promote your book in different ways.

Some paid opportunities usually come up. For example, Findaway and there’s this program called CHIRP, it sends out a daily email for audiobook deals. You can submit your audiobook to CHIRP once it’s been accepted through these other channels. Your book gets pushed out on a daily email to over 100,000 people. Now, you’re going to give them a deep discount on the audiobook as a result. If you’re talking about nonfiction and building an audience, building notoriety, all of that, that can be to your advantage.

I want to talk a little bit about audiobook production because one thing that we see is there seems to be two tracks. We either have the author themselves read the book or there’s a voiceover artist.

That is correct. Occasionally, that’s a hybrid of the two. That’s our third option.

Talk to me a little bit about what are the things like if an author comes to you and they’re like, “I’m not sure if I should read it myself or if I should hire a voiceover artist.” What are some of the things that an author should be thinking about when you’re looking for it?

One of the things the author should be thinking about, again, comes back to the purpose of the book. First of all, most authors who write non-fiction who are building a platform will come to me and say, “I have to narrate my book. Nobody can do it like me.” That is the first assumption that we question because that may be true. However, the most important factor in someone deciding to purchase an audiobook is the quality of the narration. Even if the author can read the book out loud in a way that they feel characterizes the book correctly, whether that translates or not to a listener receiving it the way it’s intended is an entirely different matter. They may feel like, “This is how I need it to be read,” but their listener may be going, “That is not what you’re portraying.” That is one of the things we have to take a look at and evaluate.

A lot of the folks we work with, our speakers narrating an audiobook is different than public speaking. It’s a tool. It’s a different animal. When you’re up on a stage, public speaking, you’re speaking one to many whereas on a podcast or a narration, you’re speaking one-to-one. You can’t get out there and be like, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be doing all of this and talk about audiobooks.” It blows your face off. You also can’t be boring but you have to slow down with an audiobook because audiobooks are at a slower pace than most other kinds of speaking. There’s a balance there. The breathing is different.

Recording an audiobook takes time and that’s if you hire a professional. If you want to go DIY, double that time and add a bottle of vodka.

Even the duration of time that you have to spend recording an audiobook—it’s not just a matter of reading the book. It’s reading the book in such a way that it sounds like you’re not reading it. There are all of these factors that go into it. In the early days of developing the company and the services and all of that, we did experiment with a number of different ways of working with authors who wanted to narrate their own books because it is an important thing. About 1/3 of our authors self-narrate and about 2/3 work with a professional narrator. That’s the way it shakes out. Some because they don’t have a great voice for narration.

They’re great for a keynote, but if you had to listen to them for 6 or 7 hours, no. Again, a different animal. There may be some physical issues. One of my favorite authors, brilliant book, brilliant man, and a rare form of head-neck cancer. He couldn’t narrate his entire book. There was no way. We did what I like to call the Tony Robbins Sandwich with his book. Tony Robbins narrates the first chapters and the last chapter of his book and has a professional narrator do the middle. That’s what we did with that particular client. It worked out well. Those are some of the factors.

Audiobook Renaissance: There need to be more opportunities for a diversity of narrators. One of the reasons people didn’t listen to audiobooks more is because they were boring. (Image via The Author's Corner)

There’s something in here because when you were talking about a speaker on stage being one-to-many, an audiobook is a one-on-one. I want to point out an idea that goes along with that. It’s something that I speak about fairly regularly is this idea of how a book is the best way when you’re thinking about a marketing avenue to create intimacy to your prospective client or with your reader when we’re talking non-fiction. It’s often your prospective clients or somebody who’s going to be influenced by you in some way. What you’re saying about audiobooks and even the tone of the voice, the pace of the speech, volume, and everything else, I never thought of it before but you’re right. It is a one-on-one conversation, just like the writing is but it’s important to get that across. It’s even different if you’re standing at a book signing in front of the room and reading an excerpt.

You have more bodies there and different energy.

That is one-to-many, but an audiobook is a one-on-one conversation. One of the things is vocal quality. Even the amount of time the author is willing or able to—

The time is a big factor. I’ll give you simple math, 10,000 words of a book are about one hour of audio. You’ve got 40,000-word book, you’ve got about a four-hour audiobook. That four hours of the audiobook is going to take about 10 to 12 hours of recording time. This is working with a professional organization like us. This is not DIY. For DIY, double that and add a bottle of vodka. It’s not just me saying this and do a shot for every hour of audiobook you do, it’s a drinking game. Split up into 2 to 3-hour chunks because that’s about as far as you can go with our vocal fatigue and energy issues and all of that.

What we do to work with the author and take the technology out of their hands and also to give them the objective feedback and a person to play off of, is we do the full direction of our audiobooks, but we do it remotely. We have software we’re able to remote in to wherever the author is anywhere in the world, help them make sure that their sound is tuned correctly, we’ll suggest a microphone, make sure they’re in the right place in their home or office to record. We then fully direct and record the audiobook for them to the entire process. That creates a wonderful product. It also takes a lot of the stress and pressure off of the author. All they have to do is focus on delivering their message and being natural about it and that helps a lot.

You’re able to give them feedback.

Yes, so it makes it a lot easier to catch issues. A lot of our authors have charts, graphs, and exercises in their books. There are industry standards on how to narrate those. We’re able to live coach people through all that process as well.

Let’s talk a little bit about the other side of hiring vocal artists to record your audiobook. What are some of the things that you advise authors to consider when they’re trying to make that decision? Let’s say they’ve decided, “I’d like to use the voiceover artists.” What are some of the things that they should be thinking about as they’re deciding? What’s that going to look like?

I have done professional narration. My background's as a therapist. As an entrepreneur of multiple businesses, did business coaching for years, but the voice acting was a paid hobby for me because I love a stage and a microphone. The masterclasses I took on audiobook narration had me have this epiphany about all my colleagues and clients who are doing bestseller campaigns, why aren’t they doing audiobooks? That was the rabbit hole I went down. That’s how I got there.

Between the podcasting and the audiobooks, microphones are a big part of my day one way or another. Narration and voiceover work in its industry. It has its own language and standards. Coming into that world as an author or as a business owner, there are some things you need to know about that industry. When we send out auditions, there are key pieces of information you need to provide to an author in terms of, what are you paying? What section of the book do you choose for an audition and how long it is? Where do you choose from the book?

Other key pieces of information that the narrator is going to need. If you want somebody to emulate your energy and have similar qualities to your voice being able to articulate, what are those qualities that are most important? What are the key pieces that somebody needs to know if the book is going to, first of all, resonate with them and what they need to deliver to you in terms of an audition? A lot of mistakes that authors make doing this on their own are putting an audition piece out that’s way too long and then being offended when somebody only sends back one minute of an audition. Auditions need to be short. Another thing that happens a lot is getting into the production of the audiobook and not having been clear upfront about the number of characters or the type of characters, even in non-fiction.

A lot of the pronunciation issues can come in regionalisms. We had an issue a while back. We keep a running list of these and this one we hadn’t run into yet. We had 38 replacements. You can’t go back when in audio like you can in text and do a find and replace. This narrator had to go back and we worked with the other because normally, we wouldn’t even allow that change at the end. That’s something that needs to be discussed upfront. Fortunately, the narrator was game and it all worked out but she would have had to replace entire paragraphs or entire sentences depending on the situation in the book. These are the things we get ahead of and get on top of. Occasionally, things happen as I mentioned. We get ahead of it 99% more than working through it on your own. Those are a few things.

What is the question that an author asks themselves even going into that? How do they know to tell somebody that they want that? It made me think of The Chicago Manual of Style which we both know is the publishing industry bible for punctuation and everything. It’s a perfect book except you have to know there might be a mistake to look for the correct way. How do you help authors figure out what to ask for in even a situation like that?

We have a whole onboarding process where we go through things like that. We have protocols, guidelines, and all of these things that we walk people and authors through to help prevent things like this. Everything from names to medical terminology and other types of regionalisms even down to looking at, “Are there any characters in your book, even if it’s nonfiction, who are they? What do they sound like?” One of my favorite books we ever did so far is called Tiger Bravo’s War. It is a ten-hour audiobook about the Vietnam War that I would put up against Ken Burns any day of the week.

Our narrator who works with us in the company now on our podcasting divisions. He’s a wonderful guy named David White. He did an incredible job of nuancing about 15 or 20 different soldiers’ voices inside of this documentary-style memoir. Getting those characters out front, getting a sense of who they are, and having the narrator demonstrate that before you get too deep into the production, that’s important.

I want to bring up something because you cleared a memory for me of an audiobook that I was listening to and I was enjoying. I believe the author Red Moskoff. They did a character and they brought in a different voice. By the way, this was traditionally published—New York Times. Not only was it a terrible Middle Eastern accent, it was so bad that it sounded racist to me. It’s offensively bad.

They went full Apu from the Simpsons.

That’s a perfect analogy. I was going to say it was like a Breakfast at Tiffany’s nightmare. I still enjoyed the book but every time that would happen, unfortunately, it was more than once in the manuscript. I would cringe and it nearly ruined the experience for me. What about characterization, especially when it’s clearly across cultural narrations? This seems to me to be a real potential minefield. If you could you say a little bit about that.

There is always something to get better at.

It can be. We produced a book that was author narrated and it was an emotional book. As I’m talking with potential clients and scanning through their books, a lot of them are highly emotional. I was crying in the first two pages of this guy’s book. He was writing it and he was an angry, abusive man. It was about his healing journey and what he wanted men to know. He had traveled to many countries as a professional Rugby player. He had voices of these people from different countries and cultures. He had a lot of facility in doing this.

He was able to slip into their skins—which most authors don’t have that ability to do. One of the things that the director did is he went and listened to other authentic accents to see how far off or how far on the author was and to make sure it didn’t come off as mocking or disrespectful in any way. There are ways to handle it in the direction process. Professional narrators are sensitive to this because they want things to be represented accurately. That comes down to the audition process and vetting people.

I didn’t feel like we needed the accent in that book I’m telling you.

A lot of times it’s not necessary or there’s a shade. You don’t have to hit it hard.

Why is this even happening?

It happens a lot with male narrators doing female voices as well. Some are brilliant at it. Some of them will characterize female voices as whiny, shrewish, or childish. That’s an issue in the industry that gets brought up regularly and on both sides. Women doing male voices, men doing women’s voices because it’s one narrator. Full cast recordings are still quite rare in the industry because of the cost of production. Some of them are great, like The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, but particularly in non-fiction full-cast recording.

I’m glad we got a chance to talk about that. It left quite an impression on me.

If we have culturally diverse authors and one of our authors is from China. We opted not to have him do the narration. His articulation isn’t quite up to speed. It might be hard for the listener. He’s a brilliant speaker from the stage—he’s fantastic. But 8 to 10 hours on an audiobook will be harder. One of our biggest challenges has been finding somebody who is Chinese-American or Chinese immigrated to the US, a professional narrator who can do this voice authentically.

Have a hint of the authentic accent without being thick.

It needs to be real.

That’s another aspect of this. If the author is an immigrant or something in the US.

We have several books in the pipeline that we know our narrator searches expanded because there need to be more opportunities for a diversity of narrators. For years, it was, “This is Audible. I’m an Audible guy.” That’s one of the reasons people didn’t listen to audiobooks because they were boring.

“I’m a suburban white man Audible.”

“Can you see my blue suit just from the tone of my voice? I bet you can.”

“On weekends, I wear khakis.”

“I play golf.” I’m a professional instigator, I should warn you.

What I wanted to say is this sounds like a heck of an opportunity. Let’s talk a little bit about investment-wise. What’s the difference when we hire an artist to record our audiobook for us versus doing it ourselves?

There are a couple of levels. We try to keep the cost of author narration and the cost of professional narration very similar. The business model we’ve created has allowed for that because counterintuitively to a lot of people, it used to be in our company that author narration was way more expensive. I run into that all the time but think about it. We had to train the author on a whole new skillset. We had to research studios. We had to pay studio time, which is hourly, and studio time, depending on where you are in the world, is anywhere from $50 to $250 an hour. The editing was a lot more intensive because we weren’t doing what’s called Punch and Roll recording. We weren’t doing live direction. Studios will give you a sound engineer who’ll tell you if you’re screwing up but they just record the whole session. We stop, back up, and record again to get rid of a lot of those errors.

The comfort level of the author was tense because even with training them ahead of time, it was crazy. All of those factors make for a much more expensive prospect. We’ve got things down and we have a negotiated rate with our narrators that we’ve got a sweet spot. However, we do also have a premium level for narrators. These are folks who are in the Actor’s Union, SAG-AFTRA. The minimum required hourly rate to work with those folks is $225 an hour. That’s what’s called a per finished hour rate. That can include multiple things. That’s not studio hours. I go back to that 40,000-word book is four hours long. It would be $225 for four hours. That’s the math we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about 15, 20 hours in a studio at $225 an hour.

Audiobook Renaissance: It’s always better to experiment, beta test, and interest focus group things out before making a big launch. (Image via The Author's Corner)

That’s a lot more reasonable than I would have been imagining.

The average audiobook that we produce is somewhere in the $2,800 to $5,000 range.

I’ve heard of people charging 2 to 4 times.

It can get high depending on how much margin they’re adding. If you’re working out of New York or LA, your price automatically goes up because the cost of production is much higher in those cities.

If you’re hiring the talent or as you said, you were able to do it remotely, that’s not as expensive.

All the companies I’ve ever owned, except for my first one, was in completely remote. For years, we’ve been 100%t remote and my team is across North America and Europe.

A lot of businesses like mine are similar. We were already working remotely. The pandemic added my social life to the remote category.

I lost all my coffee offices for a while. I know that talk about first world problems, but nonetheless.

This has been informative. We talked about production, distribution, costs, and talent. The thing that’s occurring to me now is, you don’t have to reveal any names or anything. Do you have any stories of audiobooks either gone extremely well or horribly wrong? I always love a good story.

One of the reasons we changed the way we were doing things and I looked for solutions around author narration is because of both the amount of time that it took to work with authors that way and then having to go to the studio and the cost involved. Like with many things in business, a lot of what has to be handled upfront is expectation management. For people who don’t understand what it takes to edit audio and rerecord audio versus text, we call it a repeated education process and 90% of people get it. We occasionally do end up with someone who resists the training and coaching, and then after recording wants to go back and rerecord the whole thing because “now they have a handle on it” and think that’s included.

That is not the way that works. You can’t go back and do another ten hours of recording because you feel like it. You haven’t taken the coaching and been willing to do the work that needs to be done. Similarly, managing expectations on the professionally narrated side of things, it’s important upfront to get all of the expectations, voices, cadence, timing, pacing, and all these things are done. We do all that in what’s called the first fifteen of the book. We take about the first 15, 20 minutes, produce it, and make sure that it’s what the author wants before we produce the rest of the book.

We have an audiobook that created a tremendous amount of havoc in the author’s life because they realized in listening back to their own work, that they hated their work and wanted to shutter their company. It was intense. In hearing a third party deliver their work back to them, they had a breakdown. I’m a therapist by training but they were also in a different country, difficult to reach, and a long time difference. It ended up being an abandoned project with them not paying their bill because they decided to not move forward with their company. That resulted in some policy changes on our side of things.

Once you’ve been in business for a while, there are always a few items in the contract that were created in response to a specific situation.

That’s why contracts end up being so long.

They’re like, “We can’t let that happen again. Let’s set this.”

Making people’s initials in certain paragraphs is something we do because it’s easy like the terms and condition page to scroll to the bottom and check, “I have read it.” It is important to read. I don’t read all the terms and conditions either, but in contracts, I definitely read every word because there could be some questions there.

I’m thinking about that. They should have paid you but it could have been a great thing that happened for them.

That’s the thing and I don’t disagree. It was a case of somebody who was extremely well-meaning, had gone out, and they were putting themselves forward as an expert in an area that they had no experience in. It was all academic knowledge. It was all from synthesizing reading and going to workshops. They had never had a single client ever. They, unfortunately, spent over six figures in trying to launch this company. This is a lesson in entrepreneurship. I know there’s somebody out there who needs to know this. I’ve never told this story or alluded to this story anywhere in the media before. I built many businesses and companies my time and helped many other people do the same. It’s much better to experiment, beta test, and interest focus group things out before you do a big website, a book launch, or anything like that.

I want to add to that because this has shown up many times in my business that somebody will come to me in that situation. They’re like, “I want help writing a book.” I’ll be like, “Cool but I’m not going to be the one helping you.” You have no business writing a book about your expertise until you’ve developed some expertise. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who will tell people, “You need a book so you can have a business.” It isn’t true. It’s such a dramatic illustration of a big problem but this is investing over six figures to launch a brand with nothing behind it. By the time he came to you, most of that money was spent.

It doesn’t matter what religion you are. When it comes to sales, you have to become a Buddhist at that moment.

This is an aftereffect of it.

I will let people write a booklet. Quick turnaround, test, and we do help people with that. That’s why I came up with that idea, by the way, was because I turned away thousands of people over the last years who came to me wanting to write a book in exactly that situation and said, “Go become an expert and then come back.”

Come back when you have some chops in what you’re doing. That happens more on the podcasting side of our company. I will pivot people from, “I need to start a podcast.” “No, you don’t need to start a podcast. You need to build some clientele, sell some stuff, and be in business.” I’ll pivot them from having their own podcast to podcast guesting. That’s a great way both to network, to generate content, to build authority, all of those things that you want to do without the massive commitment that it is to have a quality podcast.

I know we’re a little off-topic, but I agree with you. There are people reading this who need to know this. When people start a podcast, what they need to do is get clients. When they decide to write a book, what they need to do is get clients or do an audiobook. The problem is if it feels productive. They can get up in the morning and say, “I’m growing my business,” “I’m recording a podcast,” or “I’m working on my book.” What they’re not seeing is what they’re avoiding. If people don’t have clients yet and everything’s theoretical, it’s because they don’t feel comfortable with doing sales.

A lot of what shows up looking like productivity is an expensive, very long avoidance strategy that could eat up somebody’s entire savings and set them back in terms of their ability to generate momentum in their business because they’re trying to avoid sales subconsciously. What’s they’re saying is, “This is what I do. This is how much it costs, Mastercard, American Express, or Visa.” That’s what innate and they can tell themselves they’re being productive. That’s why it’s so destructive when people tell people that. It’s a double whammy. When they figure it out, their resources are drained.

I bootstrapped my businesses in the beginning for years working other jobs, whatnot is exploring, and all of that. Sometimes you get sold the dream. I grew up in a situation, my parents owned a business, and I was surrounded by sales. Even I wasn’t comfortable with sales until I was in my late 20s, early 30s, it’s always something to learn. There’s always something to master or get better at. It never has anything to do with making the sale, it has everything to do with your internal conversation, your personal growth, and your ability to create relationships. The sales has nothing to do with sales.

We can do a whole episode on sales. I look at it that the sales conversation is a quest for clarity and to help the person that I’m on the phone will come to a place of clarity. If the clarity dictates that we work together, we work together. If the clarity dictates that we don’t work together, we don’t work together. That takes all of the pressure off everybody. I don’t feel pressure to make the sale and they don’t feel pressured too or people like they’re being sold because that’s not what the conversation is about.

This was a mentor of mine that created a lot of clarity for me around sales. Robin, how do you feel about cookies?

I love cookies.

If I were to bake a plate of cookies, I would say, “Robin, would you like a cookie?” Assuming we were together and not social distancing, you would say yes, right?

Yes.

If I were in a room, I walked around, and I offered 100 people a cookie, some people are going to say yes and some people are going to say no. The people who say no, is there anything wrong with my cookie?

Nothing is wrong with your cookie.

The people who say yes, is there anything magical about that cookie special or does it mean anything?

No.

There are all reasons they could have said no. They could be diabetic, not like that particular cookie, allergic to one of the ingredients, not hungry, or on a diet. The cookie has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with my worth or even with my ability as a baker. People say yes or no. Ultimately, you go out into the world and you think about “selling something.” You’re offering them your cookie, and there’s nothing wrong with your cookie.

That’s a great analogy. That was the hardest thing for me to get over because I went from a place of being afraid of sales to I’m almost addicted to sales. I love selling. It’s fun. The big thing that I had to get over was taking it personally either I was lacking or what’s wrong with me. That’s how I did. I was having a lot of conversations in a short period of time to the point where I didn’t care.

That happens a lot with people learning how to like their own voices. They have to listen to themselves over and over again. I say all the time, “It doesn’t matter what religion you are. When it comes to sales, you have to become a Buddhist at that moment. You just have to practice non-attachment.” Temporary conversion. You can convert back afterward.

You can pick up all your baggage. Tina, this has been wonderful and informative. Thank you for sharing your insight, wisdom, and great stories with us.

Thanks, Robin. This has been awesome. I appreciate it.

Important Links:

About Tina Dietz

Tina Dietz is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, podcast producer, and influence marketing expert who 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.

In 2016, Tina was the recipient of the Evolutionary Business Council MORE award and in 2017 she received the award for Outstanding Audio Company from The Winner’s Circle. She is also a member of the EBC leadership body and a founding member of the Forbes Coaches Council. Tina was also the lead interviewer in the podcasting documentary “The Messengers” and featured in the film.Tina splits her time between the US and Costa Rica where she’s part of the leadership team building a community of conscious leaders called Vista Mundo.

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The Intimacy of Voice with Twin Flames Studios’ Tina Dietz

Written by Robin Thompson on March 8, 2021. Posted in Audiobook Marketing, Blog, Leadership, Podcast, Podcasting, Publishing, Video, Vocal Leadership. No Comments on The Intimacy of Voice with Twin Flames Studios’ Tina Dietz

I invite you to tune to this episode of The Conscious Business Leader podcast, where I talk about the intimacy and power of our voice

Or listen here

Gabby ScottRight now, we have Tina Dietz of Twin Flames Studios with us. How are you doing, Tina?

Tina DietzI'm great, Gabby. Thanks for having me.

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,

and about vocal leadership

Strengthening Your Voice of Leadership in Uncertain Times — Tina Dietz

Written by Robin Thompson on January 19, 2021. Posted in Audiobook Marketing, Blog, Leadership, Personal Development, Podcasting, Video, Vocal Leadership. No Comments on Strengthening Your Voice of Leadership in Uncertain Times — Tina Dietz

I invite you to join Julia Steele and me at the VID19 Conference and learn how to strengthen your voice of leadership in uncertain times

Hi, everyone, and welcome to day eight of the VID19 Conference. My name is Julia Steele, I'm the creator and host. I cannot believe we are on day eight already, but days are flying by and the feedback has been absolutely brilliant. So, thank you so much for everyone that has reached out to me and the other contributors. It's great to see you all getting so much value from this conference.

It's traditional in Australia to acknowledge the land that we stand on at the start of every conference. So, given we are on a new day, I am just going to acknowledge that I am standing on the land of the Wurundjeri people, of the Kulin Nation. I extend… Sorry, I, I'll start again. I want to acknowledge the land, the land that I stand on, and the people of the Wurundjeri in the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders: past, present and emerging. I also extend that to all First Nations people that may be joining from around Australia, and overseas as well.

We are joined by the wonderful Tina Dietz. She joins us all the way from Florida. I just love that this is getting more international by the minute.

So, Tina, thank you so much for joining us. And you're gonna help us sort of explore and strengthen our voice, you know, while we lead through these uncertain times. So I can't wait to, to see where you take us with this. And thanks, again, for joining from Florida.

Oh, it's my pleasure. Anytime we can reach out to each other across the globe, it's always a privilege. So I really appreciate that.

Okay, so leading in uncertain times.

I know, Julia, you speak a lot on this as well. So, this is a topic near and dear to my heart. Just to share a little bit about myself.

I've been an entrepreneur for many, many years, many decades, I grew up as one. And I also found myself trained as a therapist. I have been in business for a couple of decades building businesses around the world, more than 20 different industries, and about eight or nine different countries now and counting.

And my company, Twin Flames Studios, works with leaders, executives, trusted brands, and entrepreneurs to help amplify your voice and your message not just to your audience, but also to your team, to new people who are looking to find you. And we do that through audiobooks. We do that through podcasting. And we also do that through what we're going to talk about today, which is vocal leadership. And a lot of people haven't heard about vocal leadership. So, I'll explain more about what that means in just a couple of minutes.

But you know, with everything going on, I'm just, it's funny, I think this is about my—I've always used Zoom a lot, my company has always been mobile so I feel very fortunate. And this time to already be in a place to help other people work with online formats, work with audio formats, because this is what I've been doing now for more than a decade. And it's… But sometimes I am on Zoom so much I question that I actually have a lower half to my body. And it gets a little weird after a while. It's like, “Do I exist from the waist down? I'm not entirely sure.” And I'm also pretty sure that the unofficial tagline of Zoom is “Zoom: Pants optional.” So I don't know if you're wearing pants joining us here today. You don't have to because you're not on camera. Actually, I don't have to either. But I am, I assure you.

But what we're gonna be talking about today, just to—And I'm super curious if you want to put into the chat, anything about what brought you here today? Where you're from? I'm monitoring the chat. So, I will definitely be taking questions as we go along—If there's something that comes up. My preference is to be highly, highly interactive in everything that we're doing here, because the best way that I can serve you is by covering those areas and covering those topics that are going to be most relevant to you. So, as we're going along, if something pops up for you, please do put it in the chat, ask questions again, feel free to introduce yourself, so we kind of know who's out there. We had a really lovely turnout for this today. And I'm excited to get to know you as well.

So how to strengthen your voice of leadership in uncertain times, and what exactly is vocal leadership, and what makes it important?

So vocal leadership encompasses a wide range of topics. And this includes

Your personal vocal mechanics—which we'll talk some about today.
The dynamics of communication
Team communication

It's present in meetings and presentations—when you're live and in person, and you can actually, you know, touch elbows, things like that. It's present when you're in online presentations like this. It is also present in your speaking peer to peer and networking. Anytime that you're using your voice, vocal leadership is present.

The two areas that we don't think about our voices being present, but they are very much present are

The voice of your message or your brand
And how you know who you are and what you stand for—and your values come through that particular modality of your voice.

And the very most important part of vocal leadership, which is your inner voice, and what that tells you, how that informs you because that inner voice that you have—or maybe it's lots of voices, as I can attest to myself. That is one of the things we're also going to discuss today is that inner voice as well as the outer voice—so meetings, presentations, sales conversations, conventions, conflict resolution, performance review, team collaboration, vocal leadership encompasses all of these areas and has a significant impact on your performance on the culture, on everything that happens.

And the two areas we're going to focus on today to help you be the calm in the storm, are:

The mechanics of some vocal leadership technique to help you lead during meetings and conversations. And these are going to be useful to you in any situation where you're the “leader”—I'm putting that in air quotes, because some of these situations, we don't think of ourselves as leaders. Certainly working with our teams or working with clients, working with freelancers, any of those areas, sure. But you may also be having a leadership role in parenting, taking on being a leader or holding a space of calm in your other relationships with friends or in the community.
And we're also going to be covering ways that you can manage your own inside voice, your internal conversations and habits about what happens, you know, inside of you as you're looking to communicate with other people.

And the key to vocal leadership is aligning these inside and outside voices, being congruent. And that's truly where authenticity lives. And if we're looking to truly be leaders, then authenticity is where we must stand as much as possible at all times.

So, when we start with the vocal leadership mechanics, there are four factors we're going to focus on today—there are far more than that. But the four factors we're going to focus on today that have been shown in research to significantly impact how you're perceived as a leader and your credibility, are:

Articulation
Tempo
Flow
Sonority

I'll say that again, articulation, tempo flow and sonority.

Articulation is how clearly you speak, how understandable your words are. And the more articulate you are—not over articulate, because when we're over articulate, we start to sound like a snob, and nobody likes that. Under articulation, of course, kills your credibility because you start to slur your words, you're not understandable, and then people wonder if you really know what you're talking about. But articulation is important. And particularly since we're talking about online meetings, and non-visual meetings, in many cases, articulation is extra important because people need to be able to understand you. And they need to be able to be very clear on what your words are and how you're speaking.

The second area is tempo. And tempo is arguably the most important factor to focus on. Tempo is your natural speaking speed. Now, I live in Florida, but I'm originally from New York. Not New York City, but Buffalo, New York, on the opposite end of the state. But nonetheless, being from, you know, that area, the Northeast, we tend to speak pretty quickly. That's a natural tone for me, I'm never going to be somebody with a lower, slower, more laid-back tone of voice—like you might find from people from the southern US or from other countries where the cadence is much, much slower. So, it's natural for me to have this slightly faster tempo. Your correct tempo is whatever is right for you. And it is, in research, in all the research studies, probably the top factor in what makes you most credible as a leader and what makes you sound most trustworthy.

This is because it has a lot to do with your breathing. Everything comes from the breath. And when we are breathing to shallowly and our voices start to speed up that's an indication on a very biological level that you're nervous, that maybe you're lying, or that you're angry, depending on how you're presenting to people.

On the opposite side of things, if you're halting and your tempo starts to slow down, then you lose people's attention. And they start to fade off. And they're not really focused on what you're saying. And that's a credibility killer as well. So, the most important thing we can do on the mechanic side of things, first of all, number one, is to focus on our breathing. Practicing your breathing—and this can be do through yogic breathing, it can be through something as simple as what I call “The 4-4-4 Breath” and this is where you inhale on a count of four, you hold for a count of four, and you exhale on a count of four. And this helps normalize your breathing, which helps settle your parasympathetic nervous system, and creates more calm throughout your body, which translates—of course—to your brain, and how you're connecting with your audience, or the person you're sitting in front of, or your child, or whoever it is that you're communicating with. And we hear about breathing a lot. But we don't necessarily always take that advice. If we take a few moments, it can make a tremendous difference in how we're perceived by other people.

The fourth factor is flow. And this is how smoothly your words come out of your mouth. This also is indicative of the dreaded “uhms” and “ahhs”. When you're a public speaker or you give a lot of meetings and presentations always tell you, “Oh, you got to watch how many times you say ‘Um,’ and ‘ah.’” The problem with that is that the more you think about “uhms” and “ahhs,” the more you tend to save them. It's like don't think about pink elephants, and there's the elephant, right? So, if you give yourself some room to let go of being concerned about the “uhms” and “ahhs,” the best thing that you can do is focus on the other person instead of what you're saying. Not on their reaction, but in being present to them, even in an audio-only situation. And we'll talk some more a little bit later about how our audio-only—when we're listening—and how audio-only actually can heighten our senses, and how we interact with that, and how we can trust ourselves and our listening when it's audio-only. When we're in a situation where we are listening to other people, focus on them, be present to them, and many times that will get rid of the “uhms” and “ahhs” because those “uhms” and “ahhs” are indicative of our own brain interrupting us trying to get us to say things a certain way, or questioning ourselves in our internal conversation if we're saying the right thing or not. We get worried about “Oh, what do I have to say next?” And that interruption of train of thought can really damage your flow.

So again, coming back to your breath, keeping yourself calmer will help your flow and help get rid of those “uhms” and “ahhs,” and increase your rate of flow for that extra boost of credibility and leadership.

And the last factor we're focused on today is called sonority. Sonority is the pleasantness of your voice. And in truth, most people, the more they practice these other factors—articulation, tempo, flow—the more you take care of your voice, the more your sonority will rise. Not everybody has a naturally super pleasant voice, but you have to work with the voice that you have. That's the only choice that we have—is to work with the voice that we have. And it's a funny thing, when I speak to groups of people—and I'd be curious as to what happens here with this audience—when I ask the question, “How many of you here like the sound of your own voice?” How many people do you think raise their hand? Yeah, pretty much nobody. About 80% of the room will tell me—on any given room—that they do not like the sound of their own voice. And this goes even for podcasters and professional speakers. Even in rooms like that, I'll get 50 to 60% of the room saying “Ehh, I don't like the sound of my own voice. I like my content, I might be able to own my identity as an expert, but the sound of my voice?” Right?

So, it takes something to get used to the sound of your own voice. And truly the only way out in that situation is through, as the old saying goes. You have to listen to yourself back and learn how to appreciate sometimes you just have to get used to it like a habit over and over again—listening to yourself doing interviews on podcasts, listening to yourself just doing recordings are around your house with your own musings, and things like that. And find ways that you can appreciate the voice that you have. Even if you are, you know, find yourself concerned about things like an accent, I'm going to ask you to let that go. Because what makes you unique is your voice.

And if you have any concerns about how understandable you are, then we go back to practicing the things like articulation, and tempo, because all of those things are going to help make your voice more understandable, depending on the audience that you're trying to reach.

So, the other factors around sonority that I wanted to touch on are two credibility killers. And these are far more prevalent in North America than they are in any other part of the world. So, I'm very curious for our audience in Australia if you see this as well. And those two credibility killers are what we call Up Talk and Vocal Fry.

So up talk is where you make every statement sound like a question. And that really makes you sound not credible. Because you make you sound like you don't know what you're doing. And that's an example of what up talk sounds like. Most people will up talk the end of their sentences when they're not entirely sure how their message is going to be received. If you're doing a live networking event, for example, and you have to give a 30-seconds “Hi, my name is so and so. And my business is such and such,” you'll hear a lot of up talk in people sentences, because they're kind of questioning how they're going to be received in the room. This is another good area to ask somebody else, rather than try to figure it out yourself, if this is a habit that you have—it's actually kind of difficult to hear if you do it in the moment, and you can practice will be called downstrokes. So up talk would sound like this: “Hi, my name is Tina Dietz, and my company is Twin Flames Studios. And we help amplify the voices of leaders and authors and companies around the world.” Sounds a little off, right? Speaking that with downstrokes with sounds like this: “Hi, my name is Tina Dietz. And I'm the owner of Twin Flames Studios, where we amplify the voices of leaders and companies and authors all over the world.” Sounds a little different when you get to hear the contrast between the two. So, you can see why that's a bit of a credibility killer.

The other one I mentioned is vocal fry. Now I have a hard time even doing vocal fry because my voice doesn't like to do it. I've trained myself out of it. But if you're familiar with the American celebrities—the Kardashians—these guys are a good example of listening to vocal fry, it makes you sent voice sound like it's a little bit bored or dismissive, because you drop the ends of your sentences down into your throat. And it's kind of a vocal fry kind of sound. You'll also hear this on American radio, on National Public Radio a lot, particularly with the male hosts on shows if you listen to podcasts, you'll hear this quite often in a lot of professional level shows. But the thing is, the reason it's a credibility killer is—and it's not with those guys who are professional hosts or even with the Kardashians—is we're not looking to take advice necessarily from the Kardashians, or from a radio show host who's doing a game show, we're looking to be entertained by them. So, the vocal fry doesn't matter for their credibility because we're not looking for credibility.

But when you take that same vocal fry, and you put it into a situation where somebody's doing a job interview, we find in the research that across the board—regardless of gender, regardless of age, regardless of race or any other demographic situation—if somebody is giving their answers in a job interview with vocal fry, they are across the board seen as less trustworthy, less credible, and less hirable. So, it is a habit that we do take try to with our leaders try to coach you out of because it can be damaging, particularly if it's done a lot. Here or there you are having a bad voice day, fine. But habitually? Not so good. So those are the two credibility killers with sonority.

Now when we're in a meeting, and you're running something with a team or you're running a program, you can keep these factors in mind. But what's more important is that you practice them ahead of time. So, articulation practicing with things like tongue twisters, and facial exercises are really important.

Tempo, as I mentioned before, the best thing you can do to work with tempo is to work with your breathing. And that tempo piece will flow over—no pun intended—over into the flow and sonority areas as well.

Listening back to yourself as the other best thing you can do for your vocal mechanic so that you can start to identify—And this is not a situation of beating yourself up. This is listening to yourself to say, “Okay, what can I add?” Or “What can I enhance?” Or “How can I create my next level?” That's the conversation that we're in. This is only a conversation between better and best, I never want to hear you beating yourself up for the voice that you have.

And by the way, we have put together a Vocal Leadership Workout for everybody that you can download. And it's got tons of exercises in it, and it also has links to some articles that I wrote for Forbes magazine, and some other places on different aspects of vocal leadership. You can download that we'll put the link in the in the chat as well at TwinFlamesStudios.com/vid19. And that's… I really, really love this vocal workout, I have all my clients do it to get them going. Because we don't think about our voice as the machine that it is, as the muscle that it is. And the neck muscles and the throat muscles around the voice are very complicated. There's a lot of people… You think about it, you have basically a popsicle stick holding up a bowling ball. That's the musculature of your neck. And it's all these crisscrossing tiny little muscles. And if you go to massage your neck or your throat, you can start to feel it like “Holy crap! That's like piano wire in there! That is really, really tight.”

So, allowing yourself… give yourself some throat massage is really, really helpful. We'll talk about that, along with some other techniques a little bit later when we get to talking about managing your inside voice, which we're about to switch to right now.

So, all of that being said about the mechanics of your voice. You know what’s really important? The inside part. Yes, it's important to have all these factors and to practice to manage the articulation. There's lots and lots of different things when we work with podcast hosts, or we work with authors who want to narrate their own audiobooks, there are a lot of mechanics that we go through for phrasing, and asking certain questions, and speeding up, and slowing down, and different listening techniques. All of that is wonderful and valuable. But if I gave you nothing else today, it would be to talk with you about who you are being when you are being a leader, and it coming through your voice that way. So this is all about your inside voice.

It's who you are, and who you are being far more than what you're saying that's going to make the biggest impact on who you're communicating with. We are wired as human beings for empathy. 100%. All the time. We are herd animals, we are social animals, so to speak. And we have these wonderful things called mirror neurons. Mirror neurons allow us to kind of see and understand or feel and understand what somebody else might be feeling. And mirror neurons and empathy kind of cuts both ways. Those mirror neurons that make us able to identify and feel so strongly when we're watching a movie, and the dog dies, or your favorite character falls in love. We feel those feelings even though those events aren't real. That's how powerful those neurons are. And that same biology is what people are reacting to when you're communicating with them, even with non-visual communication. So, for example, have you ever been on the phone, and all of a sudden your stomach drops, because you sense that something has changed without the other person saying anything. Or if you're a parent, your kids are playing in the next room, and suddenly the sound changes, and without even knowing why you find yourself going into check on. And then there's music. Our emotional state can change in an instant, just for those first couple of bars of our favorite songs. So, here's the thing.

You have that same impact on everyone around you. Every single day, we impact those around us whether we're conscious of it or not. And the opportunity for each and every one of us is—Do you want to make a conscious impact or an unconscious impact simply through how you're being? So, have you ever thought to yourself who are you being when you're being the best version of yourself? Who you being when you're being the best version of yourself think about that for a moment. And I'd even invite you now to close your eyes and see where you can feel—see what I said, “See where you can feel?” it's kind of a dichotomy there. But think about it just close your eyes go inside. Where do you feel those emotions in your body when you think about when you feel the best? Think about a scenario about when you have felt the best, maybe a peak experience is, or working with your clients, or, you know, you had a really great experience speaking, or running a meeting, or you had another accomplishment. Where do you feel those emotions in your body? And how would you identify them? A couple of places you can think maybe to check in are your chest, your throat, maybe you have this level of calm alertness. I hear that a lot from clients of level of calm alertness, like you're ready, but your calm. It's a really cool way to be.

You see, we're never taught to practice our emotional states, like we're taught to read, or throw baseball, or create a presentation. But it is a skill, like any other. Intentionally bringing up an emotional state and putting it on—like putting on a new jacket—is something that we as human beings have the absolute ability to do. And it's something that is a very worthwhile practice, because it's not so much like you have to control your emotions, but it's a conscious shifting and a conscious choosing of who we are going to be. And as a leader, this is incredibly important as an internal skill. So, let me break this down into a more practical state.

One of the ways that we train authors who want to narrate their own audiobooks, and our podcast hosts, and our vocal leadership clients to practice these different emotional states, one way we do that is to take a passage from a book—or if we're working with an author to passage from their own book—and read it in different emotional states. You know, and I'm going to give you an example right now. I've got some classic quotes queued up in front of me here. So, this is the first line from The Great Gatsby. So, I'm going to read it normally. And then we're going to try on some different attitudes or different emotional states with it. And you can try this on your own with—open a book and just try doing it in different ways. And the trick is to say, “Okay, as I'm reading it in these different attitudes, how does that feel in my body? Where do I notice it?” so you can bring it up really consciously?

So, here's the first line read straight. “In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.” Okay, let's pick a let's pick an emotional state—let's do sad and regretful. “In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.” Or if we can try angry. “In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.” Right? Maybe we can try excited. So I'm really excited to share, okay. “In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.”

Okay? So those are some different emotional attitudes. And when you're practicing this, I invite you to practice it in a big way, in an overplayed way, in an over dramatic way, so you can really emphasize. And then every time you do a different emotion and try on a different emotion, close your eyes after you do it and see where you can feel it in your body, see where it raises or lowers your energy. And just start to get a little practice doing this. Because your emotional states are something that you many, many times can choose. And this is also very helpful when you are managing people because as leaders, we tend to be “emotional Velcro”—things stick to us, and we can help it because we're empathic and we care. So, you might start out your day feeling really great, and then help people through a whole series of problems, and then by noon, as you're taking a break, you make time to take a pause and go “Okay, is anything sticking to me that might be somebody else's?” Taking a few deep breaths and blowing it out. So, when you kind of clear yourself, there's some different ways that you can kind of clear yourself throughout the day. And clearing yourself throughout the day is super important because of this “emotional Velcro” state that we go into. And because we can shift emotional states, as quickly as we want to. We tend to be—if particularly if you're a coach, if you're speaker, if you are a conscious leader, and you're out there working with people, you've probably been on a ride with people through this empathic state that you have every day. And so, it's important in between times, to take care of your vocal leadership. To pause and see what your internal voice is telling you—has something anybody said to you kicked up an old belief maybe of something that, you know, kind of mirrored off of a client or a colleague, that you need to take a moment to shift? Or maybe someone had something really dreadful happened to them, and even though you didn't totally take it on, there's a little bit of something you need to process.

There's a couple of different vocal techniques you can do to release some of that stress physically, that then translates again to your nervous system and help you bring back that balance or that homeostasis, that internal / external voice congruency that we're looking for. And one of those is something that I mentioned a little while ago, which is throat massage. The throat is a very vulnerable area for most of us. It's not something we allow people to have access to, you know, you touch people on the shoulder, you touch people on the arm, you might even touch people on the knee, give them a hug, but somebody touches your throat? This is a very vulnerable space. So, giving yourself a few minutes to give yourself a little bit of a rub, or slide your fingers particularly up in this area on the bottom of the jaw. Thumb presses—thumb presses down the side. There's a massive muscle that goes from the bottom of your ear all the way down to the throat called the Sternocleidomastoid—say that five times fast. That's a big muscle that also is related to TMJ. So, if you have any jaw issues, sometimes massaging and giving some attention to that big muscle will be a relief for you. So that's one thing you can do to relieve some stress in that area. The second one, I also alluded to, and that is blowing it out. But I also like to refer to it in honor of my grandmother as “The Italian Grandmother Sigh.” And so, this is again, something that helps activate the relaxation part of our nervous system, and it's simply taking some large deep breaths and allowing a sound to come out on the end. So just “Aaaaaaahhhh.”

And I remember my great grandmother sitting in crocheting in the afternoon, and every so often, she would just let out this deep sigh. And I realized years later that that was her way of just releasing tension. She wasn't trying to get attention, she wasn't being dramatic, anything like that it was her body just even unconsciously, just releasing some of the tension that she was going through. So that's another very simple, very, very easy technique that I would recommend.

So, in particular, before you go into meetings, check in with yourself and see what you might need. It's very, very easy for us to get caught up in the doing. But it's the being that allows us to stay on track and go with the flow and be the biggest help of those other people that we interact with and that we lead.

One of the questions I get asked by leaders a lot, is “How much should I share personally with my team, how open or vulnerable is good to be?” Now this question came up long before we were dealing with the global situation we're dealing with now.

So, let's go back to our example of being in an online meeting or a conference call. And so, let's say you've been conscious of your way of being and you're bringing a good version of yourself to your phone call. You are ready to listen to people, your empathy is turned on high, you feel good, you’re breathing, your tempo and articulation are natural and flowing for you, and you're kind of embodying this calm in the storm for your team.

Now as you start your meeting, what many leaders are reluctant to do, but is extremely important to do particularly in times of uncertainty and difficulty is—it's important to acknowledge any elephants in the room. These concerns or issues that your team might be dealing with, but maybe they're reluctant to bring up. So, you as a leader holding a space for what we call clearing is going to help your team be fully present and deal with the task at hand and focused. So, regardless of the way you have this clearing—and there are several ways to approach clearing, I think there are going to be a little outside what we have time for today. But the point is that your role is to model what we would refer to in storytelling as telling the story from the scar, not the wound. Telling the story from the scar, not the wound. So, here's how that looks or sounds. This is where you acknowledge what you may be feeling or going through that's impacting you. But keeping in the clear state of being that you're holding from the team.

So, for example, you might share at a time like this “No, overall, we're doing pretty well, I have to admit, something that's on my mind is my elderly parents live far away, and my mom has some issues with her lungs. So, I have to admit this is causing some stress. And I'm grateful to be able to be in contact with them. And I know they're taken care of, but it's something on my mind. So, I'm just saying in this clearing that even though that's on my mind, I'm going to set that aside, so I can be fully present with all of you.” So that's telling the story from the scar.

If you were to tell the story from the wound, and you've probably heard this in meetings, it might sound something like, “I'm really worried about my mom, I don't know what I'm going to do. This whole thing has gotten me so stressed out, and Oh God, guys, I'm so sorry. But I, just you know, I'm having trouble focusing. And I know this is really hard for everybody.” That's what telling the story from the wound sounds like and it creates a totally different energetic scenario in a meeting. It's definitely something that's going to impact your team. They're going to immediately feel that, and then they're going to be reacting doubly, because not only are they then worried for you. They are—instead of an area being compassionate, or empathetic with you, which is you would they would hear and react to the first way—now they're going to be worried. And they're going to have their own worries on top of it. And then they're worried that you're going to freak out and then they have to carry the burden. And then it's going to spiral.

So, telling the story from the scar, not the wound is the primary cardinal rule, I want you to remember, when you're thinking about how to deal with being the leader in conversations that are challenging, times of high stress, high uncertainty. You are there holding the space. And that's why it's important, you know, not to go from meeting to meeting as much as possible but to leave a little bit of space in between even if it's two or three minutes. To regroup, check in on your way of breathing and being and get your nervous system in homeostasis before you walk in, with that your voice intact, with your being intact at the same time. So, modeling this leadership behavior is super powerful for any team to keep people focused, clear, and also feeling connected to each other and to you.

So, I am known in the circles that know me as a bit of a fire hose on this topic and whatnot and give a lot of information and a lot of topics. And I do just want to remind you that a bunch of this, and these tips are written down in the Vocal Leadership Workout I mentioned at TwinFlamesStudios.com/vid19.

I want to pause for a minute before I lay on any more, and just see about questions, and opening up the floor for comments, and things like that. So, let's take a look here. Oh, this is very cool. We got Canada, Melbourne, Australia. Oh, good to know Australians very commonly use up talk. I yeah, I have my I have several Australian colleagues and I haven't heard of them. So, I have been curious about that.

It's pretty, pretty common in the media in particular. So, when you're watching the news—

Really?—

We talk, and we talk, and we talk, and when we go up at the end, and everything's great.

Very common in Canada as well, as well as the Midwest of the US. But really, it's a human thing. Yeah, it's very much a human thing. So, I'm very curious in all of the info I just threw at you guys, any kind of questions you might have, or if you'd like me to go deeper or clarify on any particular topics. And while you guys are typing, I'm going to go ahead and put that link into the chat.

If you've got any tips, or if I can check out your website, because I find it takes me a while to get my voice warmed up in the morning.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And is there things on there that I can—even now like I'm talking to you, I'm like “I could do with some more cup of another cup of tea or some honey or—“

Definitely. Yeah, those are those are all good things. Yeah, there's a bunch of things in there.

One of the things we can definitely use gargling with warm salt water is really great for breaking up mucus, particularly, excuse me in the morning. Another thing we always tell folks, if you're going to be doing a lot of speaking, of course, stay away from dairy, citrus, and if you can stand it coffee—I usually ignore that last one. And so those all are things that tighten the voice. Yeah, any kind of really heavy meals. Anything that's going to kick up your stomach acid—if you tend to be sensitive and all of that—may impact the quality of your voice or the stamina of your voice. If you have stomach acid coming up, it's going to erode your—it's going to make things more tired.

Sleep is another big one. You can usually tell if somebody's tired by the quality of their voice. Their energy is going to be a little off, they're going to be a little slower, they may start to “uhm” and “ahh” again. So, sleep as much as possible is really a good thing to take note of. And that throat massage I mentioned before, is important.

I'm a big fan, I drink a lot of tea. So, I'm usually get some sort of tea, yeah, ginger, tea, anything herbal tends to be good for the voice to kind of keep things going. Some people have some issues—and sometimes it's just the day—with mouth smacking noises or that kind of mouth click sounds, which is super annoying. And so, if you know that you are somebody who has a tendency to do that, a trick from the voice acting world is to have a bite of an apple, or particularly a green apple. And there's something about the pectin and the acid in the apple that helps to alleviate that mouth smacking noises. Many times, if you go into a professional recording studio, you'll see a bowl of apples on a table. And most people don't know why that is. But it helps to alleviate that. Chapstick is also helpful to have for that. But sometimes water doesn't do it. It's another thing you got going on. That also does point to dehydration though. If you get a lot of mouth smacking noises, chances are you have some dehydration. Speaking of which…

I think it's such a fascinating area, like you said, your comment around, we've got something quite thin holding up a whole bowling ball. And I never thought about it like that. But if anyone's got any questions really encourage you to put them in the chat. Tina, I think I've become more aware of my voice, the more I speak. And particularly having sat on this conference now for what eight days I can feel my throat—

That’s a big job—

Getting a more of a workout than it would normally do. So, thank you so much for sharing your insights. I've already opened your link that you popped in the chat. So, I'll be downloading some of the cool leadership stuff too. So yeah, it's, it does make a difference. And even just listening to you reading that same sentence with different emotions is actually… Yeah, actually, what do I want to come out?

What do you want? What do you want to come out?

Yeah. So, we're working with authors who want to narrate their own books, we'll practice with them, like “What's the way of being that they want to come across as?” And they're kind of amazed when they listen back to themselves, how their voices, how it lands with the listener. Yeah, and sometimes it's not what you expect, sometimes, a more gentle approach is not the best thing. Really just depends on what you're looking to convey. Sometimes a much… You can go way bigger than you thought you could. And that's good news for people like me with, you've always been trying to like not, you know, overwhelm people with our big personalities and all that.

When you're working with audio, or you're working with a medium when you're not in person, many times you can go bigger than you can when you are adding that physical element to it. Not on a stage—stage, you can go really big as you get a big room and all of that. But, you know, if you, I'm sure you've been in networking events where somebody is just like, “Hi!!!”, you know? And they're just really big, and in your face, and all of that. It's “ahh!” you know, personal space. But online, we have a lot more room for people to get in our face, because they're not really there. There's a bit of separation, kind of an energetic level, and also, in our personal space. We don't have any kind of automatic—necessarily—any automatic reactions to someone coming that close to us physically. And again, that's very cultural. Some cultures have very, very close physical space, some it's way further out. So, the online formats do make it more flexible in that particular sense.

But we're finding a lot of teams—and particularly in corporate—are even doing just audio. And there's a lot of advantages to doing just audio meetings. One is it changes the way that you listen. You don't get triggered by people's facial expressions, you really just have to listen to what they're saying and how they're being. The second thing is, is you're not worried about, like, you and I are on camera right now, and you know, we're a little bit crow-like. Sometimes we're like, you know, checking our stuff. You know, am I in the right position? How’s my chin, you know? All of that kind of stuff. So, it helps to relax the people in the meeting. I was just coaching someone who runs a PR firm for executives on running online meetings, and taking their live meetings on to Zoom and audio format. And one of the things that we talked about extensively was, video / no video, and we decided on no video, and she got a lot of feedback afterwards about how comfortable that made it for people to not have to worry about their background, or if they've done their hair, or if their kids were around or you know, especially in the circumstances we're in right now. And that really allowed them to just be present with the content. And they were, you know, she was interviewing Fortune 100 CEO, you know, and normally you do want to like, look your best and all of that to be in something like that. And they could just like, you know, be in their jammies if they really wanted to, and still have this professional conversation.

So, I really think that audio-only formats for online meetings is highly underrated. I work with the majority of my clients—and always have coaching clients, consulting clients, podcasting, audiobooks, vocal leadership—primarily via audio only, so that you learn and you actually train that listening, because there's so much that you can pick up. And it gets quite fascinating once you practice it for a while and you're not relying on the visual cues anymore, what you can hear, and then start to trust your intuition and ask questions of people—

Yeah—

To get that.

I've been wearing my air pods for every session for the same reason because it blocks out all of the atmospheric noise. We have some pretty chatty parrots in our yard, and cats like to meow, and all of that sort of thing that we don't have in an office either.

So, Tina, thank you so much, sending so much love, and thanks from Melbourne. If you're ever in Australia, please let me know. And next time I'm in the States—

Tina Dietz

I will pick you up on that.

Perfect. Thank you so much—

Thank you so much, Julia. Thanks everyone.

Thank you.

Interested in learning more about how you can strength

your vocal leadership in uncertain times?

The Secret to Shameless Self-Promotion with Tina Dietz [Podcast]

Written by Robin Thompson on January 6, 2021. Posted in Audiobook Marketing, Business Development, Leadership, Personal Development, Podcast, Sales, Vocal Leadership.

If you struggle with shameless self-promotion, listen to my guest appearance on the new episode of the Feminist Visionaries Podcast, hosted by Meaghan Lamm.(Feminist Visionaries Podcast with Meaghan Lamm, January 2021)

Tina talks with Meaghan Lamm about how we can feel our feelings, get curious about our thoughts, and shamelessly self-promote.

In this episode:

The number one block preventing people from shamelessly promoting themselves
Tina’s top tips on how to use your fear to propel you instead of hold you back
Mindset techniques to shamelessly self-promote yourself and your business

—

Listen to the podcast here:

The Secret To Shameless Self-Promotion with Tina Dietz

I’m super excited to have you here. I’ve wanted to have you on the podcast for many months and I’m excited to talk about shameless self-promotion. I think this is the topic that a lot of women in particular struggle with or even self-promotion in general.

Before we dive into that, tell us who you are and what you do on the internet.

I own a company called Twin Flames Studios, and after many years of building businesses internationally in more than 20 different industries, I now specialize in the world of audio to help people get their messages out into the world. We produce and develop podcasts. We work with thought leaders and subject matter experts to get their audio books produced and out into the world, as well. On a personal level, I work with folks on vocal leadership, which is a whole other body of work.

Your team produced about the first two-dozen episodes of this podcast. I don’t think this podcast would exist without you. If I hadn’t hired you for the added accountability, I don’t know that this podcast would have happened.I remember in the very beginning, you sent me some really great exercises and articles to improve my vocal leadership. There were so many things I learned, like how the inflection in your voice can convey a certain emotion, whether you’re intending to do it that way or not, which I found fascinating.

Yes, we had that whole conversation about uptalk where we subconsciously raise the inflection of our voice at the end of our sentences like it’s a question when we mean to make it a statement. And then that makes us sound like we don’t know what the hell we’re talking about.

It also points out things within yourself that you didn’t realize were there because it’s a very subconscious thing. You’re not consciously ending all of your statements as a question because you lack confidence in that area. It’s very subconscious. Once I realized I was doing it, it was interesting to note which moments it popped up in my speech. Then I started to work on that with my mindset coach.

That’s perfect.

When you’re working with your vocal leadership clients and you get into the issue of shameless self-promotion, what would you say is the number one block that people have when it comes to promoting themselves shamelessly?

I would say the number one thing is that people don’t want to piss anyone off with what they’re saying. They don’t want to upset anyone. Not a single one of us enjoys looking stupid or being embarrassed. That’s the shame part and that’s why Brené Brown says shame is a master emotion. Shame is really what’s underneath. I don’t want people to be mad at me. I don’t want to upset anyone. I don’t want to rock the boat. I don’t want to look bad. I don’t want to be embarrassed. All of those and more. It really comes down to that being the core of what stops us from stepping out and speaking our truth.

Absolutely. To get to the point of starting this podcast, it was a big vulnerability moment for me. I had to put myself out there, knowing how feminists and women with strong opinions are often treated on the internet. Creating this podcast and putting it out into the world, with my opinions, was a big vulnerability moment for me.

I haven’t run into many haters yet, but there was a lot of mental work that went into gearing up for this shameless self-promotion, as we’re calling it, because I knew that even though as many supporters as I have, there is also a flip side to that. The people who troll you, especially in today’s political climate, where it gets nasty on the internet.

What are your top tips on sitting with that vulnerability and fear, the fear of looking stupid or like you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about? What are your tips on sitting with those emotions and letting them propel you rather than stop you?

Most of us have a tendency to delay the intensity of what we feel. We’re trained to control our emotions and put a clamp on them. What we’re not trained to do is to allow ourselves to have the capacity to be with strong emotions and let them move through us. That is a learned practice.

It is an emotional, psychological, energetic practice of allowing yourself to feel whatever it is that you’re feeling. When you’re first starting to do this, you’re going to notice all the thoughts attached to it. The questions, decisions, and things that you say about yourself and the world. And it’s not pretty. You have to learn to become an observer of your own thought and not dissociate yourself.

Start to gain some objectivity where you observe the feelings or thoughts that you’re having like a movie. If you can identify it, you can start to move things in different directions. If you feel like you’re at a point where you just can’t move past it or something that is unsayable or unendurable, start to identify the component parts of that feeling. Identify the physical sensation, the things that you say to yourself, the things that you say about the world, and so on. Break that down into its component parts and you start to be able to make choices. And choices give you power.

‘Choices’ was my word of the year for 2020. This year, I had to make a lot of choices and to feel my feelings rather than numb them out so that I could get to a place where I could do things while feeling fear. Fear is typically at the core of everything we’re avoiding doing. If you sit with it long enough, you’re going to realize there’s an underlying fear for not wanting to do whatever you’re avoiding.

So you have to sit with it. It doesn’t go away. It is a conditioned, biological response to keep you safe. Fear used to keep you safe from saber-toothed tigers, and now it keeps you safe from stress or bad chicken.

And trolls on the internet.

And trolls on the internet. The fear doesn’t go away. You just learn how to acknowledge the fear and do the scary thing anyway. I think that’s the place that you have to get to for authentic, shameless self-promotion. To authentically and shamelessly do what you have decided is your mission here on this earth in this lifetime, you have to get to a point where you’re not numbing out the emotions that are uncomfortable.

You’re feeling them and you’re acknowledging them. You’re not telling yourself you’re wrong for feeling them because you’re a human being and you experience the whole range of human emotions. Then, you go out and do the thing anyway.

When I first started my journey through mindset work in 2016, I had never heard the phrase before. No one asked me, how does that make you feel? How does this frustrating situation make you feel? My family did not talk about uncomfortable things. If we had uncomfortable things going on, we handled it very poorly on our own and when we came back together, we pretended like nothing happened.

As a result, I can’t say I grew up to be a super well-adjusted human being who is able to freely express her emotions. But working through that has most definitely been a journey for me, because I had to learn, often painfully, how to stop numbing my feelings by overworking. It’s really common in hustle culture to numb oneself by scrolling on social media or binging on Netflix.

Instead of asking you if you’re still watching, Netflix should have an emotional setting that asks if you are numbing your feelings or actually watching something.

Yes, exactly! I had such a difficult time recognizing when I was feeling anything, because I had numbed it for so long that I just had to name the physical sensations that were happening in my body.

That was how I found out that being mad makes my fingers tingle. It was so fascinating to me to learn how to do that. For a long time, I felt really dumb because I was 30 and I didn’t know what my feelings felt like. I think that happens to a lot of people and I’m hoping that this episode really normalizes that because a lot of us are not taught how to process our emotions. Human beings are designed not to be uncomfortable.

Absolutely. When I’m working with executives and we’re talking about vocal leadership and communication, we talk about how your internal landscape changes your external landscape. If your physical voice is the instrument that you’re playing, like an oboe or violin, then your internal conversation, beliefs, feelings and the things that you say are the music that you’re playing. You’ve written that music. In order to become a virtuoso and be able to play the music that you want to play with your voice and your message, you have to look at the music that you’re playing.

Where are you missing a verse or skipping over things? Where is the tempo off? The voice is such a great indicator of our internal music where we might have a stanza or two that are not in sync with the rest of the composition. One of the quick exercises we can do around embodiment is to bring up all of the physical sensations of what it feels like to be the best version of yourself. We can use this to train our bodies to actually feel better when we are experiencing things that we don’t love feeling. We can do it on the other side as well and train ourselves to feel the way we want to feel because neurologically, the brain doesn’t know the difference between fantasy and reality. It’s a programming issue.

Brains are fascinating. This is why people get sucked into cults.

Absolutely. Politics, as well. If you bring up a peak experience, where you felt like a great version of yourself and allow yourself to go into that memory, you can change your body chemistry. Bring up that experience in your body, as if it’s happening in the moment. Scan your body, scan your thoughts, scan your feelings, and you can change your body chemistry in under two minutes.

You can practice feeling better and like the best version of yourself. We spend a lot of time analyzing what we consider negative emotions. We spend time processing when you’re angry or sad or feeling hopeless, but it works on the opposite side of things, too. A lot of times, we leave the other emotions out of the equation, because happiness feels like something that happens to us and not something that comes from us. Confidence is another one. No one’s ever told us you can feel confident because you choose to feel confident.

It’s true. I have people tell me all the time that I’m so confident and that they are intimidated by me. I’m always looking over my shoulder wondering who they’re talking to because those aren’t the thoughts that are on a loop in my brain. When other people can mirror back what I’m actually projecting out into the world, which isn’t necessarily a facade, is really interesting. I’m not thinking of myself that way, but that’s certainly how I’m coming across because that’s how I’m acting. Which is a weird dichotomy when you think about it.

I think that has come from doing the work and feeling the feelings and identifying what’s going on and being able to work through it without making myself feel bad. When you try to numb the negative feelings, you also numb the positive feeling.

Yeah, the whole thing gets deadened.

It all comes from the same place so you can’t numb one without numbing the other. You have to allow yourself to experience the entire range of human emotion in order to experience authenticity and just as a human being in general.

Have you seen the movie Finding Nemo?

Yes, I’m pretty sure I just watched it a couple weeks ago.

That’s hysterical. I love that movie. One of my favorite parts is the sharks that are trying to not kill other fish. They have this whole kind of 12-step group and their motto is ‘fish are friends, not food’. I’ve changed that to ‘feelings are friends, not foes’. Think about how you can be friendly and have room for all of your emotions.

One of my favorite books is Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. She talks about fear being ever present in a creative life. What is important is how you deal with that fear. It’s how you make space for it and that is a really powerful concept. It takes a tremendous amount of energy and will and that’s unnecessary to kind of squish that into a box. You can leave room for fear in the backseat of your car, like she talks about. Fear does not get to touch the radio, fear does not get to choose where you’re going. It doesn’t get to have an opinion on where you stop for snacks, but there’s room for it in the backseat.

I love that analogy. I imagine shoving my fear into the backseat and telling it to sit down and shut up. I call my fear Karen, who lives inside my brain and is very negative. I get to the point where I say Karen, thank you for your opinion, you can sit down now. I can picture her stomping away in her high heels with her Karen haircut and sitting down in the back of the room.

This is very effective for me. I think this conversation is so relevant to feminism and feminism ideas of toppling the patriarchy. This is for men, women, and non-gender conforming people. Men are embroiled in toxic masculinity, where feeling any other emotion besides anger is seen as a weakness. Women are constantly told that they’re too emotional. Opposite ends of the spectrum: women have too many emotions and men don’t have enough. We can get to a place where every emotion is valid and it’s safe to experience and express every emotion.

Not just safe within yourself, but safe to have emotions externally around other human beings. When we can get to a point where we don’t need toxic masculinity anymore, because it doesn’t matter if a man cries, he can feel more feelings than anger. He can express more feelings than anger without somebody calling his masculinity into question.

It is a tool to break out of this patriarchal society if we can get to a place where women aren’t trying to appear less emotional and men are not embroiled in anger as the only good emotion to have.

We’re all highly emotional beings. It’s a matter of expression and what we feel safe expressing in a situation. This ties into this idea of shameless self-promotion because we’re always in self-promotion. We’re always promoting something. It could be something that you have an opinion about. As a human being walking around, can you state your opinion, and be okay with that? Can you have a conflict at work and work through that in a way that feels both productive and stimulating?

It does bring up strong emotions, but you work through it together rather than shutting it down. One of the biggest access points for mustering that kind of mastery of emotions is curiosity. Curiosity is my favorite state of being because curiosity is neutral. It is neither good nor bad. If you’re upset, you might not be able to feel good but you might be able to access curiosity. I wonder how I can just feel a little bit better right now. It snowballs its way out of something. It’s not an all at once process and it is a never ending process.

You get through one plateau and you think that x is your problem. So you work your way through x and you grow from that work. Then you move along and find another problem that you have to work through. This is especially true in business where you think that your next goal is to make $5,000 a month and when you get there, there’s a whole new set of mindset work to be done. And so on and so forth.

You’re not fixing your issues. You don’t fix them one time and then never have them again. As you evolve and grow, whatever your goals are, whether it’s money or relationships or whatever, there’s always going to be something else that you’re running into. Your brain is constantly trying to keep you safe from what it perceives as dangerous threats and your brain thinks that anything that it doesn’t know the outcome of is a dangerous threat. If your brain can’t predict exactly what’s going to happen, it thinks you’re in danger. It’s going to try to get you not to do that and the most effective way to get you not to do that is to make you afraid.

No matter what you’re doing, no matter where you’re going, you have to remember, you’re always going to be afraid and you just have to remind your brain that it’s okay to be afraid, but you’re going to do it anyway. Putting yourself out there is probably not going to kill you.

No, absolutely not. You mentioned your inner Karen before. When we’re dealing with fear, one of the visuals that I like to use is a puppy or a kitten because our fear isn’t evolved. Our fear isn’t us. If you imagine that your fear is a puppy or a kitten that is scared and needs to be taken care of, if that appeals to you more, then you can bring up the self-compassion to take care of that.

Assert yourself as the adult taking care of that piece of yourself rather than it being an overwhelming, all-consuming thing or becoming enraged at yourself, which God knows I’ve done many times in the past. Asking myself why do I feel this way? Why do I suck? I love the idea of being able to just sit with those emotions.

As a side note on the business side of things, when we’re talking about self-promotion, it’s a big hurdle for a lot of people. Particularly artists and people who are more on the ‘woowoo’ side of things, which I would classify myself on that side of things. For an analogy, if you offer someone a homemade cookie and whether they accept your cookie or not, it has nothing to do with your cookies. A person may say no because they don’t want a cookie, or they don’t like chocolate, or maybe they’re diabetic. They have their own reasons for saying no and nothing is wrong with your cookie. The same is true for them saying yes. There’s nothing wrong with you when somebody says yes or no to what you’re putting out into the world.

That is a big hurdle for anybody to get over when they’re first starting a business or even as their business grows. Especially when you’re an entrepreneur and you’re in business for yourself. Many businesses are a personal brand using the owner’s name. You’re not selling a product, you are selling yourself.

I have a friend who owns a bookstore and when people don’t buy a book, she gets annoyed. She gets annoyed when they come in and wander around the shop, admire her store, but don’t buy anything. But she doesn’t take that personally, because she’s selling a product. She’s selling books.

When you’re selling your service, your knowledge, your expertise, your strategy, you’re selling yourself on a very personal level. It can be difficult to remember that you’re not really selling yourself, but that you’re selling them an outcome. Those two things do not have to be related. If someone says no, it’s because they weren’t interested in what you had to buy, just like they weren’t interested in your cookie, and that leaves more for the people who are interested.

I think that’s a fantastic way of looking at it. It’s never about us. It’s always about the other person and what they’re experiencing. If we make it about ourselves, we’re not going to sell anything. Coming from personal services, it all has to be about what the outcome is. We’re all self-centered. Human beings are wired to be self-centered. When you’re talking with other people or you are marketing on social media, being curious and interested in what other people are up to is always going to be the pathway to building your business. Particularly in personal services, because relationships are at the heart of every single thing.

Long story short, you can fix the entire world by feeling your feelings and changing your thoughts. Your ego just solved it all. This conversation didn’t go how I was anticipating it to go honestly, but I loved where we ended up because we kind of dived more into authenticity.

In order for you to be the most authentic version of yourself, you have to acknowledge that you are a whole person with the entire range of human emotion inside of you. It is okay and normal and good for you to feel all of your feelings. To acknowledge them. Sometimes I am in a shitty mood for no reason and that is okay.

It’s okay to be pissed off for no reason and take the day to not do anything or not communicate with people because you keep snapping at them. That’s normal. I think that in order for you to get to a point of shameless self-promotion, you first have to explore shameless authenticity. Once you do that, you get to a place where you’re feeling your feelings, because you acknowledge that you’re a human being with human emotions and feeling your feelings can help you topple the patriarchy.

I think that sounds like a perfect place to close, don’t you?

I absolutely do. Feel your feelings, change your thoughts, topple the patriarchy.

Listen to this one over and over again. I’m sure I will be listening to it multiple times because these lessons are so important. These are tools to go in your toolbox that you can use over and over again. When you get curious, don’t be afraid of feeling your feelings. Don’t be afraid of your thoughts or changing your thoughts. Together we’ll all feel our way through toppling the patriarchy and everything will be great.

Thanks for listening to the Feminist Visionaries podcast!

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Send me a message if you’d love to chat more about what partnering together would look like!

Executive & Corporate Podcasting Trends & Applications – Tina Dietz

Written by Robin Thompson on January 5, 2021. Posted in Blog, Business Development, Leadership, Marketing, Podcast, Podcasting, Sales, Video, Vocal Leadership.

Presentation for PodFest Global 2020

Chris KrimitsosI've known Tina for quite some time—she actually was very active in our local group and has helped quite a few of us. And she's gotten into the B2B niche. So, Tina, if you'd like if you want to just share your screen, and then we'll open it up to Q&A.

Tina DietzYeah! Sounds good.

So, the floor is yours.

Why thank you.

Hi, everybody! Thanks for joining us here today. I'm excited to talk with you. And I'm not much of a PowerPoint fan, but I'm gonna do my best here.

What I'm really excited about, though, is just having an opportunity to talk with you all, and have some Q&A afterwards, because this is an area—Executive and Corporate Podcasting—that I got into… Well, I started talking about it about five years ago now because I was in podcasting, and looking at podcasting trends, and where I saw it was going, I knew it was going to take a while for larger organizations to get into podcasting.

But, like with any trend, it was almost inevitable that it was going to happen.

So, let me back up and share a little bit more. It's really about how to give a nameless, faceless corporation human personality. And this is about half my more executive team. And what we do at Twin Flames Studios is we amplify the messages of trusted brands of leaders, sometimes really well-established entrepreneurs. And we do that in three ways:

Through full-service podcasting, getting things going, very high touch, kind of white glove, concierge service, podcasting, and ongoing production
I, one-on-one, work with executives and CEOs on vocal leadership—which I'll touch on a little bit later when we talk about podcast guesting
And we also do nonfiction audiobooks. Full production, publishing and distribution.

So everything audio, to get your voice out to millions of people.

And I've been building businesses for more than 20 years. I started my career as a therapist, but I grew up as an entrepreneur. And I never met a microphone I didn't like, I say all the time. So, eventually what happened is, after building businesses in about 20 different industries in eight different countries over the course of years as a consultant and a coach, I felt this pull towards doing more with podcasting, doing more with audio, that was where my heart was.

And I had this epiphany that if I could work with enough leaders, who are doing enough amazing things in the world with low hanging fruit like podcasting, and audiobook—some of the lowest hanging fruit for people to start to change their lives—then there was a good chance, you know, what was important to me, I can make a bigger impact in the world, leave the world a better place than I found it.

So that's why we do what we do. We have a global team. We've got folks overseas, we get folks here in the US and Canada, Portugal, Scotland, and I adore my team. So, I love to show them off whenever I can.

So Corporate Podcasting trends—how and why are companies using podcasting.

And like I said, most companies are—well, they're familiar with what podcasting is. But getting it into their own systems is a little different. Because how corporations handle their marketing is quite different than how entrepreneurs handle their marketing. And this was actually a learning curve for me, being a very pure entrepreneur. With all the businesses I've owned, I actually don't come from a corporate background at all. It was my ability to be flexible, and for my company to be flexible, that has really made this work in the corporate and in the B2B space.

So, what we found is that companies are using podcasting for a number different reasons. We're going to break it down, but they're primarily using it in three different ways and wanting to use it in three different ways.

So External Podcasting, which is the type of podcasting, of course, we're all the most familiar with, out into the universe available to everybody. Internal Podcasting, which we'll go into a little bit more, that is when a podcast is only available to the people inside of a company. And Podcast Guesting.

Let's break down these three—and I'm going to move through these slides as quickly as possible so we can get to the juicy meat of the matter talking about what you're most interested in and how it can serve you best.

External Podcasting, of course, they're generating brand awareness. If you look at the research on sticky branding or sticky advertising—it means when it's not directly an ad necessarily, or maybe it's something more narrative of a mention or it's a brand that gets featured in a podcast—that really is the stickiness that sticks to people. And so, they find that with podcast advertising or podcast branding, people who listen to podcasts are about 70% more likely to do business with a brand mentioned on a podcast or a brand offering a podcast. So, very important.

Attracting new clients and customers is what most of us are trying to do in podcast and podcasting on the business side of things. So, in this case, we're not talking about narrative podcasting, we're not talking about NPR style, business podcasting. That is a trend and I think what some of the people who do it best are “Pacific Content” out in Vancouver—they run Charles Schwab's external podcast, they run Facebook's external podcast; I had the pleasure of interviewing one of their executives recently, and I have tremendous respect for what they do. But every one of those episodes is tens of thousands of dollars in production, because it is a full-time, massive deal.

So, most of the podcasting we're seeing externally, with corporate, with B2B, is not quite in that range. We can—we do see that sometimes in enterprise level companies, like Facebook, like Charles Schwab, some other large, large corporations. But companies that are in, say, the three to $35 million range—some of them maybe even considered, you know, small to mid-sized business, rather than super large corporations—they're really looking to expand their presence in a way that allows them to keep their humanity. You know, remember a lot of these are well established businesses, they're used to doing their marketing and their networking, face-to-face or as we say, belly-to-belly. And so podcasting is very appealing to these companies, particularly at this time as they're having to pivot and still wanting to keep the relationships, in their marketing, in their networking, and particularly creating relationships with industry influencers to widen their professional network.

Very rarely do we ever find that if you reach out to somebody and ask them to be on your show, or any of our companies, they reach out to an influencer in their industry—lots in finance, in particular that we work with—that somebody turns them down. It's basically “Hey, would you come and have a really friendly conversation with me for half an hour about things you're most interested in and passionate about?” Not a hard sell. So, our clients get really thrilled at having this media platform to share, that allows it to open doors for them.

And of course, that leads to creating collaboration. My favorite, favorite value out of B2B and Corporate Podcasting is what happens after the interview. Yes, there are audience members; yes, you have downloads; yes, we have, you know, growth. And we're generally not looking at podcasts that are necessarily in the thousands of downloads per episode, because we're looking at very niche podcasts. And we are also looking at the collaboration and the relationships that happen with the guests—between the guests and the host between, the guests and the company—as these podcasts come along. It does improve SEO to the websites. SEO is one of those things that seems like more magic than anything else these days. A lot of the things we all knew to do years ago with meta tags, and keywords, and all this other stuff… It's really kind of gone away and really gone the way of organic.

So, corporations are using the podcast to generate long form content that can then be repurposed into transcript-based articles on their website—which are fantastic for SEO, particularly paired with a few other important pieces. So that's External Podcasting—the main reasons and why—we're seeing for External Podcasting.

Internal Podcasting is another animal, and this is a rising area. It's just starting to come forward and flourish a little bit, particularly in enterprise-sized companies. So, this has more to do with development and reinforcement of company culture. Culture development is key to things, like you know, making sure that things actually get done. Efficiency, particularly now that everybody is working from home, or so many people are working from home; it's how we can create a little bit more glue, and have people not feel quite as alone or lonely.

And it also really helps to prevent things like screen fatigue: if you can listen with your earbuds while you're doing the dishes, or taking your dog for a walk, you don't have to be staring at a screen like you are all day for regular work. And screen fatigue is a real thing—it has shown to decrease productivity, it increases a certain number of health risks in a big population. And corporations are always looking at corporate wellness inside of their corporate company culture. So, this is actually more to it than meets the eye when we think about culture.

It's also great, of course, for dissemination of important information. We're moving fast. There's a lot of town hall meetings that happen inside of companies, or they're rolling out new products, or particularly with some of the companies we work with in the pharmaceutical/healthcare side of things, everything's changing right now with Coronavirus, and people need to be kept in the know. Podcasting internally is a way to disseminate that information in a more intimate way than a newsletter. And also in a more human way, than they’re used to, you know, providing this, you know, very kind of cold, documented information. We're still seeing people doing everything written, but adding on the voice, adding on the relationship, and the warmth.

Also, to educate and inform teams, particularly sales teams as they're rolling out new products, features of those products, how to sell them, who to sell them to—issues that might be coming up talking about your sales numbers. A lot more interesting to celebrate your wins, by meeting your sales goals over a podcast and to hear somebody announcing your name—it's like “Hey, a big shout out to John Smith! And, you know, Amelia, for you know, blowing away the sales numbers this month, you know, make sure when you see them in the hallway today, you know, give them a shout out, send them an email.” It's great to hear that. That celebration, acknowledgement of achievements is a really, really big one—who doesn't love to hear their name being mentioned by leadership, right, or being interviewed?

And the sharing of stories and inspiration, particularly Leadership Development. Leadership Development is the biggest area we're seeing for internal podcasting, and in internal employee resource groups. And I'll talk about a specific example in a minute about that.

So, I wanted to dive in and talk about a couple of specific instances where we can see how Corporate Podcasting is being used, you know, directly. And so, we have been working with the folks at Tri-Merit. They're a corporation outside of Chicago, and they have a very, very niche business. They had no marketing team up until about a year ago, and their marketing team actually contacted us to help with the podcast. They find R&D tax credits for technology companies. Can you hear the crickets, thinking about how you would create podcast content about this?

But what they do mostly, is they have relationships with CPA firms. That's where they generate most of their business. And they are passionate about the world of public accounting. Again, not something I would ever find myself naturally drawn to be passionate about, but these guys are thrilled, and finding the stories in the public accounting world that are unique, that are interesting—they're getting them out there. And they're using this as a beautiful networking tool. You have never seen a more excited group of folks talking about public accounting than these guys. And they do fantastic work in the world. So, this podcast for them has been the hub of their content marketing, allowing them to then create social media, allowing them to then follow up with their guests afterwards, and generate collaborative opportunities, generate other guest speaking opportunities. All kinds of networking happens when the host or their team follows up with these guests after the fact.

Now let's talk a little bit about Internal Podcasting. I have to talk about the Podcast Inc. conference, which is going to be online this fall. And I don't know if any of you know Jennifer Crawford. Jennifer Crawford is the founder of DC PodFest. And you know, Jennifer and I have known Chris for years, and know the folks from She Podcasts for years. And there's this wonderful collaboration and cross promotion that happens in the background with all of these podcasts’ conferences, which I love. And Jennifer saw a need in the industry to have a one-day conference specifically in this area, because it really wasn't being addressed a whole lot of places. It's very, very niche.

And so, what we did when we moved the conference from May to November, is—I went out and I said, “Jennifer, why don't we do a limited series podcast on Internal Corporate Podcasting and use this as a lead up?” So, this just came out about two weeks ago. And we're just ramping up the promotion of the conference. But if you want to look up PodcastInc.co/podcast, you can find this and listen to these episodes from different aspects of the Corporate Podcasting world specifically talking about Internal Podcasting, but also Corporate External Podcasting sneaks in there as well.

So then we talk about things like security and the use of a podcast intranet. One of the biggest issues for Corporate Podcasting is security. And so, platforms like PodBean, Blubrry, and Libsyn all have internal podcasting capability, and you have to find out what works for you. What we're finding is that these corporations want to use their already existing intranet to disseminate podcast information. And that's actually what we're doing with the folks at Novo Nordisk right now developing an internal podcast with them, for their women in leadership employee resource group. And what's cool about that is, as we're getting further into the process, the folks from the women in leadership resource group are reaching out to the other employee resource groups to see about developing a collaboration so that the podcast can live over time.

It's a very different development art—for those of you who work with podcast show development—then an external podcast. It's a much slower process, for the most part, and also there's a lot of little baby steps. So, what we've learned in this process, in the back end, is just to let things play out and have some patience. But people are really, really coachable, really, really interested in learning, and very excited about making their workplace better. So it's very, very cool.

One of the ways we're using podcasts a lot in corporate, both Internal and I'll also reference back to External, is Limited Series like this podcasting. Podcasting doesn't have to go on forever: For companies that feel like it's a high risk to commit to a full year or an ongoing podcast, we work with them on a limited series. A to 10 to 12 episodes to start, and we say “You know what? If this doesn't work out for you, if you don't feel like you want to keep going, then you've got a really great marketing asset and a series that you can use.” So, we always bring up seasons, we always bring up limited series podcast, and we find that most of the time when they get into the groove, they do want to keep going.

We also see in Internal Podcasting, the use of External Podcasts for internal purposes. So, you can repurpose the material you're sending out to folks, and make sure that your team, you know, is actually getting that information. And we're starting to develop databases of podcast information for say a group of financial advisors to then be able to keyword-in and then send out articles, and podcast episodes, specifically to their clients and really use the podcast as a resource.

Podcast Guesting—we're just going to check on this real quick. This is some of the companies that I've worked with, some of their executives, in one capacity or another around their vocal leadership and/or Podcast Guesting. And so, Podcast Guesting, we're finding a lot of usage for executives who are looking to set themselves apart, to have third party credibility, to develop their personal brand, and to do personal leadership PR, which is different than company PR. I work with a wonderful company out of Manhattan, and they help leaders get their leadership profile amplified. And we do a lot of work with their folks around getting them prepared to be on a podcast knowing that they can have this laid-back intimate, conversational relationship. They're not teaching, they're not reporting. They're in a relationship with the host. And we work with them heavily on their storytelling, so that they're not boring guests. And they come across as the people they really are, which is warm and professional, and really out to make a difference in the world. And that conversational interview style and format makes this possible. So, Podcast Guesting we're seeing a lot of rise in the director and above level of executives in corporations.

Okay! 20 minutes.

So all right, and I wanted to leave 10 minutes for Q&A, and seeing if there's any other examples we want to talk about if we want. You guys can go to TwinFlamesStudios.com/PodFest—I've got a bunch of materials for you there. I'm not a funnel girl. Don't sell things via email. But I do have our Vocal Leadership Workout, our package on How To Be a Guest and more podcasts, and some additional articles on Corporate Podcasting that we will just send you in an email if you go to that particular link.

That's it.

Awesome, Tina. So I’ll put it back to speaker view, if you could just unshare for a second there.

You’ve got it.

Alright, so we have a couple questions. When it comes to Internal Podcasting within a corporate culture, how do you know what to charge? Is it per minute, or? Because you're dealing with very big companies—like how do you figure out what to charge?

Yeah, so with these large companies, we're generally not dealing with the umbrella of the company; we're dealing with a small section of a company. So, these Employee Resource Groups have their own budget. So, the first thing is to find out what are their budgets to work with. They don't have tremendously large budgets, and if you can work with them—I usually work with them on a consulting basis and then go from there. Because many times they have internal resources even to do the editing and things like that. They need to know how to get things going.

So, an internal podcast, is that open on an Apple feed? Or is it, you know what I mean, so it's internally?

Yeah, so these are being—

How do you set them up? I'm just curious.

Well, it's actually, again, because these are larger companies, they want to handle the tech themselves. So, it's really a matter of teaching them, showing them how to create the content, how to manage the workflow. These are a lot of things we do, you know? Conceptually, how do you internally market a podcast? And then it requires interfacing with multiple departments to actually find, you know, work with them to get the show loaded up onto their intranet. Like I said, there are the—

That’s right, they all have Internet and MI Departments, computer guys, you know, people.

Yeah, yeah. So, it's a different animal, you're not going up on a hosting platform, unless they do want to use Blubrry or PodBean, or Libsyn—are the big three right now that have Internal Corporate Podcasting platforms. We're gonna see that happen more in mid-sized companies that don't quite have intranets, but still want to have control and security.

So then you're seeing that… I found it interesting you're seeing a lot of C-Level executives wanting to grow their brand by going out on other podcasts—you're seeing that?

Yeah, there's an interesting point in an executive’s career—you're rising up in these in these large industries, you know, they've distinguished themselves and they've kind of hit a certain level and to go from say, what we call a Director Level executive, into a C-Level executive really requires distinguishing oneself with Thought Leadership in some way.

And so, Podcast Guesting is a way to distinguish oneself on Thought Leadership, that is outside the company. You know, there's an old saying that says, you know, “it's hard to become a hero in your own hometown.” So, if people know you really well, they think they know you. Well, if you're out there, and all of a sudden, you're on a podcast or a bunch of podcasts as a guest, that gives you a third-party credibility in your leadership and your development of your Thought Leadership. This is usually paired with a whole package of executive PR, of articles, or press releases, or other types of materials, that kind of all go together to help develop somebody's leadership. Getting on Boards of Directors is another really big thing. And when boards go out and research potential candidates, one of the things they look for is have they done media, and most of these folks haven't done any media because most of the media that's taught at a corporate level is high pressure crisis media.

You’re right, “how to protect yourself when everything hits the fan.” That's true. There's no… This is a… I have to tell you… This is… The more you talk, it's like the beginning of a new era, because you're right, the C-Level executives are only trained, “Don't talk to media, unless you talk to your PR department before you go out there.” Now, they're being proactive, and they're interfacing with podcasts. And I guess they also have to build their personal brand, because who knows how long they'll be an executive with that company till the next one. And, you know, there's—

Yeah, there's a fair amount of mobility and talent even, in these times, you know, top talent is something that companies are always looking to retain. It's a big issue. And we find that podcasting is a way to really bring out their voice not so much in a technical way. Working with the executives on their storytelling is one of my absolute favorite things, to have them go from this kind of teaching reporting style, that they're used to doing in meetings and things like that, and kind of teasing out the humanity. And the really cool thing is that once they learn that, now they're bringing it back to their teams and having different conversations with their teams. And that's what we go deeper into Vocal Leadership training.

So, this is really a cutting edge field of consulting, if I hear you correctly, like a media training, which they always have, but on the podcasting side, and you're at the forefront of it.

Yeah, I'd like to think so.

No, you are I mean, it's only going to grow as we move forward. What trends are you seeing with corporations and B2B type stuff? So, there's Internal Podcasting going on, you're doing external facing… Any other trends that you see? Obviously, they're trying to build their PR cred by going on other podcasts shows—

Yeah, what we're seeing a lot is that the internal marketing teams in these companies really, really want to do podcasting. I spoke at a conference a little over a year ago in Scottsdale, big B2B conference, had a packed room of 100 people speaking at a panel, and two thirds of the people in the room raised their hand when they said, “Are you trying to start a podcast in your company?” And they were running into issues with time, they were running issues with knowledge, they were running issues with budget.So coming in and being able to stay the course—these are, of course, much longer relationship building sales cycles than, most entrepreneurs, generally care to go with. I have people ask me all the time, “So can you introduce me to your people at GE so I can be a corporate, you know, trainer there?” And I'm like, “That's not how this works.” It's not the warm introduction cycle that we're used to as entrepreneurs to build our network. So, there's a lot, there's a fair amount more to it than that. It's a fascinating world, but it's definitely growing.

Yeah, a few years ago, I had, I was approached by a big $800 million, like trust, and I just remember, for them to make a decision was like 10 different committee meetings, and they still hadn't decided and they said, “Oh, this is too cutting edge.” I'm like, “This is actually not”—this was just a couple years ago—and I’m like, “It's not cutting edge. And you guys have money by the time you implement it,” you know, but it's just amazing to see how they make decisions. And you’re right. It's not the entrepreneurial world.

No, they’re much more risk-averse.

So yeah, when you do get the contract, because there's a huge lead cycle in this kind of field. So, I'm excited for what you're doing.

Thank you.

Tina, your numbers—we started at like, 50, we ballooned to 70. We have 60-something people here is amazing. I just want to give a shout out to Ross Brand, Al Mega, Dr. Ellen, Rachel Hernandez, commenting, chatting.Anything that you see for artificial voice in corporate or is that going to take time? Like the [Alexa] skills, are you seeing anything there?

Any artificial voice—any truly artificial voice that it's not a human voice—we find a lot of resistance to and I also have a tremendous amount of resistance to it. Because to me, that is the polar opposite of what podcast gets used for. You know, when you and I worked together and I did a bunch of the interviews for The Messengers movie—if you haven't watched it, watch it—you know the thing that came up across all those interviews that we did was the word intimacy and podcast and creating intimacy. And so, an AI voice is the opposite of intimacy. And I don't think we're going to see mechanized or automated voices, takeover things anytime soon. Will we see things go into voice activation? Will we see more happening with Alexa? Yeah, I do think we'll see that. But there's a lot of privacy concerns, particularly in corporations. So that's the last place we're gonna see that; we're gonna see that in the consumer market way way sooner.

Oh, well, Tina, people can reach out to you through the app, connect with you. Thank you for taking the time out. Just tell us your website one last time.

Sure. You can go to TwinFlamesStudios.com and if you want to grab that package of stuff we put together for you. It's just TwinFlamesStudios.com/PodFest.

Awesome. Tina, thank you so much. You always knock it out of the park. You're a pro.

Thanks everyone for joining us.

I know you got a lot on your agenda. So, thank you for being part of this and supporting what we do. And also thank you for—I forgot but you did… Tina did the initial interviews, probably half of the movie. The Messengers came out with interviews Tina did while we were running the second ever Pod Fest. And if you haven't seen The Messengers: A Podcast Documentary—I'm gonna have Andrew upload it to the conference so people could see it. But thank you for mentioning that, Tina. Thank you for doing that for us.

It’s a great project. One of my favorite things.

It was awesome. Thank you.

Take care.

Goodbye now.

Interested in learning more about Internal Podcasting, External Podcasting, and Podcast Guesting?

Align Your Big V Voice with Your Little v Voice to Amplify Your Message with Tina Dietz [Podcast]

Written by Robin Thompson on December 17, 2020. Posted in Audiobook Marketing, Business Development, Leadership, Personal Development, Podcast, Vocal Leadership, Voice.

Tune in to episode 111 of The Creative Impostor podcast, hosted by Andrea Klunder. We will show you how to amplify your message(Podcast on The Creative Impostor, August 9, 2020)

Tina Dietz - The Creative Impostor Podcast - Andrea Klunder

Episode 111. “In this phase of growth, it feels weird. It feels nebulous. It feels like this molting bird… Sometimes it takes as long as it takes, you know, it's not the enlightenment Olympics.” ~Tina Dietz

This episode is for the birds. Or rather, about birds. More accurately, how much creative humans have in common with molting parrots.

Hang with me; this episode isn't wall-to-wall ornithology talk. I recorded my conversation with Vocal Leadership Expert and Podcast Host Tina Dietz way back in the before-times. Still, her message about self-acceptance and faith in our creative evolution rings doubly true at a time when putting our trust in anything is a struggle.

She just happens to equate this transition with shedding feathers.

As founder and CEO of Twin Flames Studios, Tina molds (not molts) experts into influencers, teaching clients how to amplify their message. Whether it's through their own podcasts, as guests of other shows, or as in-demand speakers, Tina's vocal leadership expertise goes beyond the simple correction of speech mechanics.

Transitions rarely come without challenges. There's the macro level, global shifts taking place right now, and then there are the awkward personal doubts and missteps.

You're not wrong for feeling vulnerable. Massive life changes force us to question our personal and professional identities.

Happy molting!

Links, resources, opportunities… You can find them here: http://www.thecreativeimpostor.com/111

Interested in learning more about how

you can amplify your message?

The Accidental Entrepreneur: Tina Dietz – Twin Flames Studios [Podcast]

Written by Robin Thompson on December 11, 2020. Posted in Audiobook Marketing, Business Development, Leadership, Podcast, Podcasting, Vocal Leadership.

Diving deep into the world of audio on the Accidental Entrepreneur Podcast, hosted by Mitchell Beinhaker. Tune in…(Podcast on The Accidental Entrepreneur, August 25, 2020)

Tina Dietz is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, podcast producer, influence and vocal leadership expert who has been featured on media outlets including ABC, Inc.com, Huffington Post, and Forbes. Tina's podcast, The StartSomething Show, was named by INC magazine as one of the top 35 podcasts for entrepreneurs. Tina’s company, Twin Flames Studios, amplifies the influence of leaders, experts, and companies around the globe.Tina joins Mitch on the podcast to discuss the world of sound recording including audio books and podcasting. If you are looking to start your own podcast or want to improve one you already produce, be sure to reach out to Tina! Here's a link to a free gift just for listening: http://www.launchyouraudiobook.com

Connect with Tina:tina@twinflamesstudios.com https://www.facebook.com/TwinFlamesStudiosLeadership/http://www.linkedin.com/in/tinadietz https://www.instagram.com/thetinadietz/For more information about the podcast in general, send us an email: info@beinhakerlaw.com

Listen Here:

Developing a Calling: Tina Dietz on the ACHiEVE Podcast with Aseem Giri [Podcast]

Written by Robin Thompson on December 11, 2020. Posted in Business Development, Creating Wealth, Leadership, Personal Development, Podcast, Vocal Leadership.

Tune in to 101^st episode of the ACHiEVE Podcast with Aseem Giri and find out how you can start developing your calling.

(ACHiEVE Podcast with Aseem Giri, October 2, 2020)

Listen to the podcast here

On this 101st episode, we have Tina Dietz. Tina grew up mostly in western New York State, and studied in Buffalo, New York during her undergrad years. She had a childhood passion for musical theatre, and helped her parents out extensively in their family business. She went to graduate school in North Carolina, focusing on education, and returned to Western New York, where she worked with an international leadership organization called Camp Rising Sun. She also worked as a life coach and educator, focusing on adolescence. After several years, she, her husband and two children migrated to Costa Rica. She has now relocated to Florida and morphed her coaching and business development company into an audio production studio called Twin Flames Studios, where she produces audiobooks and podcasts for clients. Tina, thank you so much for being on our show.

Aseem—I really appreciate it.

It's great to have you! You've had a tremendous amount of expertise in podcasting, and in developing podcasters, and so it's really great to have your perspective on the show and to hear about your journey.

In prepping for this interview, I was listening to some interviews that you've done in the past, and I was particularly intrigued with one that talked about how you were handed a tape recorder at the age of two.

Yeah, I have that recording!

I would love to hear that story and have you shared that with the audience, please.

Well, I'm originally from the Buffalo New York area. And by way of context, my father is—and was—a very fiery Italian man. And before he turned his sights to entrepreneurialism—and I grew up inside of my parents’ business—prior to that, he worked for the Asbestos Workers Union. And he ended up having to do quite a bit of travel. We ended up living out in San Diego when I was really, really little—around two years old. And the Easter that we were out there the first time, my parents’ friends came—I was the only child there—and they handed me a tape recorder and started to show me how to use it. I actually still have the recording. (I have to put this on digital at some point.) And you can hear me—and them saying “Okay, here you press play, and hear you press stop,” and I'm like, “I got it. I got it.”

Like immediately, you know, and then the first thing I do is you hear these little footsteps and you hear my voice go, “Hi, I’m Tina. What's your name? And “Do you like Easter? Okay, thanks. Bye.” And then go on to the next person and basically interviewed everyone in the room on their opinion on Easter. Wow. And I love the laser-like focus on understanding everyone's viewpoint on Easter.

Viewpoint on Easter was very important to my two year old self apparently.

Did they ask you the question? Did you have a chance to answer?

No, I did not answer my question on Easter, but there is a funny bit on there where my dad's trying to show me something else, and I wouldn't let him show me. “No, I got it,” and I have to say that characterized a lot of our relationship when I was growing up, for better or for worse.

But yeah, I always had a tape recorder. I remember recording on my floor when I was a kid, trying to improve on nursery rhymes with my own versions, and then later on when I was about ten years old, I discovered my parents’—we had a lot of albums; my parents love music—my dad's George Carlin, AM/FM album, which is a classic comedy album, not for ten-year-olds.

Most George Carlin content is not for ten-year-olds!

No, generally not for ten-year-olds, but I loved it! And did what I usually did, which is memorize it. My parents were pretty hippie-ish. We had a lot of parties at our house and things like that, and I came out at one of the parties one day and basically did George Carlin's routine,much to their delight. Then I started recording radio shows with my friends, as boomboxes came out and things like that.So it's been in my blood, but it took until I was 40 to come back to it. I had done a lot of vocal work, voice acting work, things like that. But it was my mom for my 40th birthday who sent me a collection of recordings that she had taken off of tape, she even took some 8mm camera stuff—old, old movie stuff—and made kind of a DVD of my life. And I heard this recording of me at two years old.

A sizzle reel. I love it!

It was like a two year old sizzle reel! I needed to be on Dance Moms or something like that. Yeah! But it was that—it hit me in the face, because I had been told a lot by a lot of people, “You should start a podcast, you should start a podcast, you should start a podcast.” And I'd been holding off and holding off. And hearing my voice at two years old was my wake up call to go ahead and do it. It's like, “You've been doing it anyway. Just do it,” and that was the rabbit hole I fell into with podcasting.

Yeah, I love that. Well, thank goodness your friends were encouraging you so that you had that backdrop. And when you heard your voice, it was like, that was a catalyst, that was a push off.

I had so much support. It was wonderful.

That's really extraordinary. I love how that's full circle, how a passion from childhood is now helping you achieve self actualization in many ways, because you're a natural.

Very much so. I talk with my clients all the time and ask them to kind of go back into what they loved as children. And sometimes you have to reach really far back to find that kind of wonder, find that joy. You know, one of my friends was talking about, she had to go back to 18 months old to really find the purity of it. She had a very difficult time. But bringing that forward into her life now has been so enriching.

Yeah, I'm sure. And I'm not a geneticist, Tina, but I'm pretty sure the fiery aspect of being Italian is inherited.

I would agree.

So your dad should have known what to expect.

Yes, exactly.

Do you have siblings?

No, I'm an only child. My younger sibling was my parents’ business. They started it when I was about three.

I love the way you described that. That's really good. So you're out in San Diego, tell us about the business they started.

Well, they came back from San Diego, we made our way back across the country and we landed in the southern tier of Western New York—a rural area called Holland, New York. My parents built a house, and my dad was still working, but they got—not a fireplace— more like a boiler or furnace for this big house that they were building. My uncles are contractors. My grandfather's built stuff. So it was a family project.Well, the directions on the installation—something happened and almost burned the damn house down. So my mom got on the phone with the company and ended up having like a three hour conversation with them, and at the end of it, they said, “You know what, have you ever thought about selling wood stoves? We're really interested in having you start a dealership in your area.” My mom was like, “What?”Now my mom had never considered being an entrepreneur, and she was staying home with me at the time. I found out many years later, she talked about this office job she had had when she was 18, 19 years old as a punch card operator. Those of you out there, you know what that is? Early computers, you had to punch in everything on these cards? I couldn't believe it when I found out my mom, of all people—my mom had worked for IBM. I thought she was just staying home with me. But my dad had been looking for an excuse really, to get out of the manual labor side of what he was doing, and so they decided to give this wood burning stove shop idea a try.We had space in the first floor. So the first floor became the business. And we lived upstairs and so I started answering the phone and going to trade shows when I was around six.

Amazing! Well, naturally. You're so good with your voice and in talking to people. So were you asking them about their thoughts on Easter? Or just furnaces?

No, I didn't ask them on their thoughts on Easter for sure. Interestingly, at least I think it is, I kind of hated the business. I had a love hate relationship with it.

You had some resentment?

Yeah, it took up a ton of my parents time and it was ever-present. Our employees were upstairs in our home all the time. Which was fine and well, but I was alone a lot.Well, how did you feel that time when you were alone? Did you read a lot? Did you watch movies? What were your passions?Tons of reading. I was a big, big reader. Listening to music. I did a lot of living room performance, tremendous amount of performance. Well, you know, it never occurred to me when I was a kid that anyone else could hear me. It never occurred to me that this business was downstairs, and I was basically entertaining all the customers all the time. And my parents—I'm so glad they never told me.Okay, so there were never requests coming up.

No, no, no requests coming in, or all of that. But there I was, you know, belting out Phantom of the Opera and Les Mis, and Oklahoma and The Sound of Music, and all these musicals that I grew up with, or, you know, music like Supertramp and Styx—I cut my teeth on progressive rock. I'm doing choreography in the living room. And yeah, apparently, it actually was quite helpful, because if customers had to wait to talk to one of my parents during a busy season, they got a show.

Yeah, well, that worked out well. An audience that you weren't even aware of.

Exactly. Sometimes the better option!

Oh, that's really incredible. So did you actually perform in musical theater in high school?

I did. Yeah. I was big into the drama club, and my whole life, I took dance lessons, and I always wanted to do more. Living out in the country was really hard for that. I always wished that I had lived closer to the city, and when I was 16, and my parents gave me wide use of the car, I started going to a theater / art school in downtown Buffalo on the weekends, and I absolutely loved that.

But high school was a really busy time, and driving an hour into the city to do things—it was pretty tedious. So, I basically had to make up a lot of my own opportunities at home and in the tiny community that I was in. My culminating glory was playing Dolly in Hello, Dolly my senior year.

Oh, congrats on that.Yeah, that was a big deal!

And there's some recordings available of it?There are actually recordings. That's true. Weirdly, they didn't record the actual performance. They only recorded the dress rehearsal, which is a shame. But nonetheless, I do have some recordings of various things that I was in over the years from Pirates of Penzance to My Fair Lady and several others.

That's one of the better ones. I love that one. Did you make the sizzle reel?No! She actually didn't put those into that 40-year-old This Is Your Life sizzle reel.

We’ve gotta fix that. Are your parents still with you?

My parents are still with me. And still both up in the western New York area.

Okay, great. So tell us about the decision to go to North Carolina for school.

That was a very strange period of time, and looking back on it, it was kind of insane for me to do that. Because I married pretty young—I was 24—and six weeks later, I was living in North Carolina for graduate school. Completely changed location, had no support system in a new area, and at the time, he didn't have any support system in that area, either. He was able to transfer jobs—he was working in management for Barnes and Noble bookstore at the time. Really young, you know. And I was able to immerse myself in my studies and kind of had a ready-made community. So that was my saving grace, because living in the middle of North Carolina, not a bad place to live, but the climate was not my favorite for sure. Living in the foothills of the Piedmont area was very sticky and very hot, and getting used to living down South in the late 1990s was a huge learning curve.

Yeah, I can imagine.

Yeah. For this Yankee. It was a big learning curve.

So UNC was actually for grad school.

That was for grad school. Yeah, I went to undergrad in the Western New York area.

Okay, gotcha. Is that where you met your husband?

No, actually, we met at Barnes and Noble. It was my first part time job out of high school, in college. I went to school at the University of Buffalo for a year. Coming out of a very small town, while I did very well—I graduated pretty close to the top of my class—but the size and scope, of you know, 50,000 undergrads was a little too much for me.So I ended up taking a gap year, working several jobs at once, which I did a lot throughout the next 10, 15 years or so—working multiple jobs. And Dave was one of the folks that I worked with at Barnes and Noble. We became good friends, and then that turned romantic, and we got married a couple of years later.Fantastic. That's great story. So how long were you in North Carolina? And you ultimately made it to Florida.

Florida came much later, yeah. So the geographic timeline, basically went: We were in North Carolina for two years, and after I graduated from there, we came back to Western New York. And we were there in that area for another 12 years, 13 years. Then we sold everything and moved our young family to Costa Rica for a couple of years.

Yeah, I read about how you split your time between Costa Rica and Florida.Yeah, whenever we can get down there. We've had the pleasure of being in the midst of developing a community, a conscious community, for thought leaders and entrepreneurs and really good folks called Vista Mundo, which is in the mountains of the Central Valley.That's fantastic. I do want to get back to your time post-UNC, but what's fascinating—I read about in terms of Costa Rica—is what's led to a lot of its success. It really is a shining light in Central America as an economic success story. What contributed to it was geography—where there were no real ruling families that could control large swaths of the land, because it's so mountainous.Yeah, there's seven climate zones in Costa Rica. So you can go from beach to cloud forest within several hours. It's a very cool place to be—very cool.Well, we'll definitely chat more about that. I noticed looking at your profile—when you had gone back to Western New York, you were involved in a lot of teaching roles.Yeah, my graduate work—I had worked for a fantastic organization I'm still involved with called Camp Rising Sun, and it is an international leadership camp, summer camp, for teens—boys and girls—from all over the world. And it is a fully scholarshipped camp. The whole idea has been to erase socio-economic barriers, to create connection, and meet humanitarian goals, and this camp has been around since 1930 or so.It's a tremendous organization. That opened my eyes to a larger picture in the world and what young people are capable of. So when I started my career, I really wanted to work with teens and young adults in harnessing that power and that energy of transition and new purpose, and help people get on their path. So that's actually where I started my career, was in the world of education, and nonprofits.That's great. And these were like high school aged kids?High school aged kids and getting into, you know, 18, 19, 20.Yeah, that's really inspiring. I'm beginning to—my daughter is 14 now and my son's 12. And so we're beginning to have those conversations and exploring what they're passionate about and thinking about career trajectories. So it's an exciting time.It is! Mine are that age now. So same thing.Yeah. We do have that amazing conversation. My daughter is petitioning to take a class at her school called Advanced Constitutional Interpretation.That sounds fantastic.And so I was probing her a little bit, because I know she's very big on social justice, and she actually has her own podcast.No kidding!Yeah, she’s very focused on wellness—mental wellness for adolescents. And so she began interviewing her peers on that topic. And she's also been a co-host on another show called Dear Asian Youth. And so I began asking her like, so you know, how do you—what areas specifically are you interested in? She started talking about Japanese internment and citing three Supreme Court cases around that, and I thought, “I'm floored.”I think my daughter and your daughter would have an awful lot in common. It sounds like they operate a lot the same way. My daughter in the wake of George Floyd's murder, she was educating me on resources and presenting me with lists of things we needed to get involved in, and then she's signed yourself up for a 30 day class on how to become a better ally. She's always been an advocate and wanting to get more and more involved. And it's interesting. I don't remember feeling like that when I was 14.Yeah. I tell my daughter all the time, she's definitely smarter than I was.Yeah! It's so great to see.Yeah, that's great. Well, maybe we can make an introduction, have them chat. I think that's a great idea.Your daughter could be a guest on—my daughter's name is Nana—Nana’s show. That could be very intriguing.That would be cool!Thanks for sharing about that organization you’re involved with, youth from around the world. That sounds extraordinary. I also noticed you worked with a college—Villa Maria College and Erie Community College. You're doing some teaching there on—sounds like psychology, a little bit of coaching as well, career coaching?Yeah, career coaching. Erie Community College is one of the largest community colleges in the country. And I was part of an initial team, where we were developing high school-to-college-to-industry partnerships. So we worked with all 200 high schools in the area, and then community connections into the programs in the school.And then I had a really great time working with a couple of the major utility companies—National Fuel and some of the other ones, to help work with their curriculum so that they were getting employees that could actually fill the roles they had available.Wonderful. That's exciting work. You're so well suited to it, and then this kind of mentoring and helping is a theme throughout your career, because you're still you're doing that very much today——Yeah! Creating pathways and fulfilling the more purpose-driven side of things has followed me, you know? It's definitely been a central theme. A lot of the coaching programs I did with the teens—and the nonprofit, I worked with folks to start years ago, called “Tremendous Teens of Western New York,” and our core leadership team program. Everything was about taking a good idea and bringing it into reality, and how do you do that? And so much of that followed me into the work that I do today, and the business-building work that I've done over the last couple of decades.

That's extraordinary. Definitely have found a calling. That's wonderful. So you had your daughter in 2006?Yeah, I had my son in 2004, my daughter in 2006.Okay, so you have a 16 year old son.Yeah, coming up on 16 in a few months, it's really weird to think about, and he's like a foot and a half taller than me. It's insane.Yeah. Well, it's a fascinating time, that's for sure. I'd love to hear about Evergreen Experiment. The premise of it is 10,000 thriving businesses.Yeah!Oh, let me check—this year! By 2020! I know! I have pivoted from that project, not because it was hard. But boy, that was a journey.I was in a process of doing a lot of personal and professional development work. One of the main reasons that I decided to become a therapist was my own healing journey. I had a number of instances of trauma growing up, and found psychology and therapy and then later on, more the personal development side of things. Inspiration—all kinds of things were, you know, fundamental in me: Not staying stuck in a place of victimhood, essentially. So much of what fueled my own exploration and my own learning, was this idea that people could be so wonderful. And such jackasses! Sometimes even simultaneously. And that was a really big part of my own journey to learn how to be—well, in some cases, functional. To spot a vein, and to move into a place of growth. Because if you feel like the world isn't a safe place, you can't build anything that isn't a defense. It can only take you so far.Exactly. Do you talk publicly about the trauma that you endured?To one extent or another. So I've done a lot of work on it. And so my concern is not so much talking about what I went through, it’s that the end listener can stay with me in it without necessarily feeling deeply triggered themselves.Understood. Yeah. And so that's what I try to be sensitive to, because so many people—I think that statistics are something like one in three women have been sexually assaulted in their lifetime, and a lot of us, it's happened to more than once—either from more of a peer situation, or an adult perpetrating either violence or sexual assault or some combination of both. Quite honestly, some of my experiences happened when I was very, very young. And so when you are vulnerable, when you are very young, that vulnerability doesn't tend to go away when you're older, which is why we often see—and I certainly experienced—repeated assault over time, repeated trauma over time.And again, going back to my own exploration, I had to ask myself, why? Why was that happening to me? And what was worse—What was I making that mean about myself? Oh, gosh, yeah.And those beliefs and those thoughts about, “Well, the world must be this way. I must be this way.” Those were the things that really, I had to take a lot of time. Well of course!Over time. And we're like onions, you know, you're going along fine in life, and then you experience something, or you open yourself up to a bigger thing, stepping off into a business, having a child, moving to a new location—all of those things can bring up stuff that I thought was resolved. But now it's a different layer.Yeah, of course, and it's so heartbreaking—the negative psychological impact, not just from the trauma itself, but what you're led to believe about that, and evaluate yourself and the shame, the guilt. All these very unfair sentiments and feelings, and it takes a long time to unravel that.And, I mean, it's a testament to the challenges—it was well over a decade before you were able to really kind of face it, address it. I'm really thankful that you did that, Tina.Thank you.It took a lot of courage on your part to do that. There are plenty of people who don't have that courage. Again, I just feel horrible that you had to experience that. It's obviously because of my gender, it's not something I can ever fully empathize with. I’m just thankful that you had the courage to work through it. And now as you talk about it, you have a lot of strength, and there's a lot of thoughtfulness, your concern for other victims and not triggering them, I think is just very thoughtful and poetic. It speaks volumes of you as a person.Thank you, Aseem, I appreciate that.And I definitely appreciate your candor. We talk about facing adversity on the show and overcoming obstacles, and so this is a clear one, and you've obviously done amazing things in your life. You're an empath yourself, and so, again, kudos on taking the time to address that.So as we reach kind of the end of that decade, tell us about the decision to go to Costa Rica. That sounds like such an exciting change.Oh, yeah. That was a very exciting time. So I kind of came to grips over time with myself that I have a lot of wanderlust, and I love to make home. I'm a Taurus—wherever I am, I have to make my home and find a balance. And at the same time, just wanting to be somewhere new, wanting to try and experience new things.We had decided to sell our house because it had become, honestly, a money pit. It was just not going to get any better, and we said, “You know what, let's get out of this. We want to own our paychecks. We want to have more time freedom to spend, you know, with our kids and on my business” and all of that. So we were already in that process and my husband at the time, Dave, he got a call from his higher-ups. That company was in transition, and they were allowing people to work completely remotely. We had actually created a five-year vision plan, which is something I did with my clients—I still do sometimes. We had this image of five years we were going to be living in Costa Rica, because my family had a lot of familiarity with it. I had run my father's business and we had run retreats down there and things like that.So even though I had never been there, I had a lot of background on the country. And I made a couple of phone calls to some—or not clients, but contacts—I had down in the area. Within an hour and a half, we were hooked up with an apartment, we knew a school system we could send the kids to—I had every piece of information, visa information, anything I needed was just: there it was. It was so much easier to get down to Costa Rica and move in there, than it was to finish selling the house in western New York where we were living!

Amazing! That's extraordinary. And the business you had at that time, this was Twin Flames Studios?No, Twin Flames had started as a progression of StartSomething Creative Business Solutions, which was an iteration originally of Tina Dietz Business Development, which was my original solo coaching practice. So for those out there who are worried about pivoting multiple times, feel free to use me as an avatar, because I've done it many, many, many times. I’ve had many businesses before that. My very first business was around babywearing because my son was super colicky, and I got into babywearing and it was the only thing that calmed him down. Found a tremendous community, and what I got into was teaching classes locally. That was my first business while I was working two other jobs.Brilliant, I love it. So another kind of curve, in this winding path was being a massage therapist for a while?Actually, I wasn't the massage therapist! My dad was. So even though I came out of growing up in a family business, for some reason, I was crazy enough to decide to go back into business with my dad. Now anyone who's ever been involved in a family business is laughing right now.

Oh, yes.Right? So people asked me for years, “Why don't you specialize in coaching family businesses?” Because I'd like to remain sane and unmedicated! Family Business is hard! It's hard. But we actually built a really amazing international training company for massage therapists in teaching advanced techniques. My dad's brilliant with what he does. He invented a modality and didn't even know it. So I ran the business side of that company, and he did all the teaching, and of course, he had all kinds of ideas he wanted to fulfill. But that's really where I learned online business. I taught myself online business and really learned product production and all kinds of marketing and things like that, that I had started learning when I was very young—but it kind of came full circle.Amazing. And you were managing the massage business from Costa Rica?I was done with the massage company, by the time I got down to Costa Rica. The timeline’s a little wonky. But I had stepped off from working with my dad into my full time business coaching practice prior to moving down to Costa Rica. Living in Costa Rica, of course, was a big bump, because a lot of folks are very interested in, “How do you own your paycheck and live this freedom lifestyle, work from home, live on the beach, work from anywhere?” And so I was walking my talk and working with a lot of folks one-on-one who wanted to have that kind of lifestyle and it was—I just worked with some amazing, amazing people.That's fantastic. Well, I think you attract them. You attract people, because you put that energy out there in the world.I do like people, it's true! By and large.Yeah, absolutely. And, and Danny Levin being a good example of that, our mutual friend.Danny's awesome.So how many years, Tina, were you in Costa Rica?Well, we were back and forth to Costa Rica for a while because there's our visa requirements and things like that. So we were down there for three months, came back and lived in Florida for six months, and then we were down in Costa Rica for another year, and then ended up coming back to Florida, and we’ve kind of been here for the last five years now, approximately, going back and forth to Costa Rica on a more casual basis.Unfortunately, we haven't been able to be down there in about the last year or so, but in our community, Vista Mundo, my partners down there have been building homes and the pool and the deck and working with the local community, trying to create more jobs down there, and it's been a really cool project. So I can't wait to get back down there.That sounds really extraordinary. Your kids, were they homeschooled during that time? It would have been elementary school age.Yeah, they have enjoyed—this is what they've told me—that they really enjoyed this period when they went to a private school in Costa Rica, that was bilingual, for a period of time, and then for a year, we did homeschool them. I was really glad that we did because it allowed us to almost kind of take a few habits or beliefs that they had about education out of their system at a young age. So when my kids have now gone back into school, and my daughter's entering high school, and my son is entering his junior year of high school—they're both good students. And they have a perspective on school that I'm very proud of them for having, which is, school is there to serve them. They're not there just to get a grade; school is there to serve them.That's such a great orientation to have. you have to take control. It’s a similar paradigm, “take control over your paycheck,” “take control over education.”Exactly, exactly. How are you going to make the most use of this for yourself? You know, yes, geometry might suck—let's see if we can find some places to actually make this useful in some way, shape, or form. And if it's not going to be useful long term, how can you minimize what a pain in the ass it is now?

Yeah, absolutely! Just a small anecdote—the grading in these math departments—I just don't think it comports with real world experience. The concept is clear that it's understood by the student, but points are being deducted for not having accuracy. And I understand taking a little bit of a hit for that, but the amount that they're deducting, it just doesn't make sense.I’m with you—how to think is so much more important that anything else we can teach.

Y ¿yo sospecho que tú también hablas español?Oh, un poco poca.I'm much better with Spanish when I'm living in the country, being around it all the time. That makes sense, yeah. After a few drinks, I also find that my lingual skills—Oh, wayyyy better! There is a foreign language-to-alcohol ratio we found. We used to hang out with a couple of different families who spoke no English, we spoke no Spanish, and all we had to do was have two drinks—we understood each other perfectly. It’s the weirdest thing!Yeah, alcohol is just phenomenal.I don't know, I think it opened up the quantum field or something. I don't know what's going on there.Synapses firing like we've never seen before. That's really great. Tell us about the Start Something Show, which was very successful as a top 35 podcast for entrepreneurs.Yeah, Inc. Magazine was very, very kind in adding me to that list. I didn't even know about it, until a colleague of mine pointed it out—”Hey, did you see this on inc.com?” Like what? What're you talking about? And that was my first podcast! I just dove in, and it was a very emboldening experience. It was doing something that it felt like I had always done. I hired a company to work with me to do the launch and everything—they're called Cashflow Podcasting. They're still a sister company of my company, we love to collaborate together, we've worked with each other for a really long time. Ben Krueger is the owner there, and he's a fantastic man, wonderful business owner, and so his company took care of everything. I fell in love with the process. I fell in love with podcasting, and I've kind of never looked back on that. It just allowed me to really dive in at this.And at the same time, it gave me a really great excuse to spend more time with audio. I had had this background in voice acting—I had done voice acting on the side. And that's where I had come to the understanding that the audiobook industry was rising. And I started thinking about, “Well, why aren't all my clients and colleagues who are doing bestseller campaigns and self publishing on Amazon—why aren't they doing audiobooks?” So between the podcasting and my inquiry into audiobooks, it led me down a path that I'm very, very grateful I got led down, because that brought me to creating Twin Flames Studios.That's fantastic. And is that where you spend the bulk of your time now with Twin Flames?Yeah, Twin Flames is the business. It's what we decided to double down on and really build. It's the first scalable—really scalable—business I ever created. I'd always prior to that, had been a solopreneur, and I was very dissatisfied with the coaching industry. I still am dissatisfied with the coaching industry.

Just your your fellow coaches and behavior practices or standards or…?It's more the standards and the fact that pretty much anybody can call themselves a coach, and they can really wield tremendous power over other people. And coming from my background as a therapist, I have some concerns about coaching as an industry and it starts to sound like the fitness industry: “You can create a six figure business in 90 days,” you know? Yeah, it can get ugly. But you had accolades and distinction in the coaching field. Forbes had you on their council, the Forbes Coaches Council?Yeah, I was a founding member of the Forbes Coaches Council, and in all transparency—it’s a paid organization. But they sought me out in their first 50 members, their charter members, and it was really great to work with them and be able to be published on that platform. It's definitely a privilege.Yeah. So tell us more about Twin Flames Studios, the services that you're offering. What's your favorite part of that, of the job?So there's kind of three divisions of the company, just to create a little bit of context, but the whole idea for me has been, if I could help more leaders reach more people—if they're out there trying to reach people with positive messages, growth-oriented messages—then I don't have to be the person making all the change in the world. I don't have to be a guru. I don't have to be, you know, some lofty on high, millions of people following me personally, I can help more people reach more people.And books, podcasts, these are some of the lowest hanging fruit that people have worldwide—not just here in North America, but worldwide. That's really what gets me out of bed in the morning, you know? I have this privilege of helping leaders help more people, give people a voice, when they may not have found their own yet, amplify the messages in a positive way, in a good way, get good information out there, all of those things.

So we provide services—done-for-you services—in nonfiction, audiobook production, and distribution, publishing, of course. On the podcasting side of things, we tend to work more with companies, and it's a little more challenging for companies to start a podcast because there's a lot of questions that need to be answered: Who's doing it, why are they doing it, how's it going out there? We're able to help them navigate all of those so that we can humanize these companies, and give them a voice out in the world that people can relate to so that there is better connection.

We have a lot of corporations where it feels cold and impersonal, and we have a lot of stories about the intentions of companies and corporations. If we can get down to a human level of conversations, now we have an opportunity to create a dialogue.Yeah, for sure. I love that.

The third division is actually my favorite division and it's the one that is most in development, because the first two divisions, I have incredible teams, and we're growing and serving a lot of people. But that is also freeing me up to do the deeper work with folks that I really love, which is around vocal leadership.That's really around cultivating your inner voice along with your outer voice, so that you can be more effective as a leader in your communication, in your empathy, in your speaking, and beyond. It actually covers a lot of bases.That's really phenomenal, Tina, and I just love that concept that in order to be outwardly engaging, we have to do some internal housekeeping, and be sure that our internal voice is tracking the way it needs to and kind of mirroring, or in sync with our outside voice. I think that's really phenomenal. It mirrors your concept of walking the walk, so to speak, when you talked about moving to Costa Rica and living that life. It's sort of, you’re showing, and I think your training and your background as a therapist is so well suited for that, to be able to do that.I like to think so! Thank you.That was really phenomenal. Who would you say, Tina, is an ideal client for you?So our clients are subject matter experts and leaders—CEOs and executives. What kind of brings them all together and in common is that they're the type of people that have worked hard, but also with a sense of—I don't wanna use the word integrity—but a sense of truthfulness to themselves. A sense of, they're really doing this for good reasons.Yes.Yeah, forthrightness, right, and really wanting to do good work in the world. And so they're at a certain level of leadership, where now they want to get their voice out, get their message out, to more people, and they want to use a vocal medium, or a voice medium to go ahead and do that—an audio medium.A lot of them are more comfortable speaking than they are writing. A lot of them are really at a point where blogging or social media just isn't cutting it. It's not satisfying, and it's not doing what they want it to do. So they're adding another layer onto that. We work a lot with the financial sectors, we work a lot with legal, as well as business and marketing, and people who do very mission-centered type of coaching work, specialty coaching work. Our coaches tend to be a bit more on the audiobook side of things, and our financial and our executives tend to be a bit more on the podcasting side.

Oh, that makes sense. That's really extraordinary. Sounds like you have a really thriving business that you are really passionate about, and it really allows you to highlight the skills that you've developed over your life and expertise that you've developed. So talking about subject matter experts! Yet again, you're walking the walk, which is really phenomenal.Any other side businesses brewing since you have a mind that never rests?You know that the beautiful thing about having been a business coach for years, even though I don't—I won't say “indulge” in that very often, is that I refer to myself as a “professional instigator” for new ideas, because I can't help myself. It's just the way I'm wired, and I find the most fulfillment now in helping other people fulfill their ideas, and that's incredibly satisfying for me.I'd like to participate in more philanthropic things in addition to Camp Rising Sun, there’s another organization called AllitTakes.org, which is out in California—unbelievable people. They're actually in the process right now of finishing up and releasing publicly to all schools nationwide in the US, an entire socio-emotional learning curriculum, to support not just the students, but also the staff and also the parents through this time that we're dealing with around Coronavirus, and the pandemic, and all the shifts. It is a brilliant curriculum. Folks from Stanford and MIT and the national level of the teachers’ union are all supporting this curriculum, and I'm just so happy to contribute to them any way I can.

That's really phenomenal. Kudos on being involved with that. That's really great.Great people!I'm just mindful of time—we're up to the hour here—and I do have one more question to ask——well I’d ask a question of the audience, and if they got to this far in the interview, listening to you and I talk for an hour—what was it about the conversation that held their interest? Or made them—where do they see themselves in this conversation? Take a moment to actually reflect on that, if you’ve actually gotten this far in the interview.That's really great. And if you'd like to share your response, you can email us from our website, achievepodcast.com, because that would be enticing to hear, and we would certainly respond to you and share that with you, Tina.

I would love that. Thank you.That's really great. This has been a wonderful conversation. My last question for you, Tina, is, do you like Easter?Haha! Yeah.

You're more of a Christmas person?Actually yeah, this is true.Okay! I'm glad we've clarified that now.It's important. It was hanging out there, an unanswered question.It had been a few decades, I thought someone should ask you.Thanks, Aseem. No one has ever asked me that, so…It was just, the universe has brought me here to you for that.Tina, what a great conversation. You know, I really do appreciate how candid you are, your willingness to be vulnerable, and chat about real experiences that you went through and how you overcame them. And I love the mission that you're on. You're in service of others, you're bringing your expertise to help people achieve something wonderful, and I think it's great. I wish you all the success in the world.Thank you. I see him and thank you for doing this series and everything you're up to out in the world. I know you're doing incredible things and helping a lot of people and I'm just honored to be associated with that.That's very kind of you say. Thank you so much, Tina.

Aseem Giri

Aseem has over twenty years of experience as an entrepreneur, private equity investor and investment banker. Aseem now focuses exclusively on Art opportunities, serving as Art Advisor and/or Finance Advisor to Art-related businesses. Aseem has been involved with over twenty companies from a principal investing standpoint. Born in Berlin, Germany and maintains US citizenship.

Online Lead Generation for Non-Salesy People

Written by Robin Thompson on December 3, 2020. Posted in Blog, Business Development, Leadership, Marketing, Sales, Social Media, Video.

Tina Dietz talks to Lisa and Eric Pezik about online lead generation strategies for non-salesy folks that actually generate leads.Facebook Live, 2020

Tina Dietz talks to Lisa and Eric Pezik about strategies non-salesy folks can use to increase their visibility, draw in new audiences, and just overall generate more leads:

The important difference between lead generation and sales
How lead generation is often a long-term process
What looking for instant results can cost you in the long run
How “not-so-perfect” ads work better than professional ones
Why perseverance is key to lead generation success

Watch here:

Today, what we're talking about is this big old buzzword we've been hearing it in business constantly. It's gotten really intense this last year: Lead generation – online lead generation.

And particularly with a big surge in interest in LinkedIn. That's been where there’s been a lot of the lead generation conversation. But it ties in with conversations about Facebook ads, and Amazon ads, and Google AdWords and all of these places, so we're going to be talking about lead generation—what you really need to know, particularly if you're not a salesy person.

If you're somebody who has an established business, but the online world doesn't quite work for you, you're more of a relationship kind of person, you're more interested in “belly-to-belly” conversations, but you'd like to be developing more business online in a way that feels good—that feels like you, that doesn't feel like markety marketers marketing to marketers, as I often say.

I have here Lisa and Eric, my beautiful colleagues, hailing from the southern Ontario area—someplace I miss very much, that I used to spend an awful lot of time in. They have an absolutely gorgeous, gorgeous marketing agency that we've been sharing with our clients and colleagues, because I'm just so impressed with the work that you guys do. So thank you for joining me.

Aww! Thank you for having us!

Yeah! You guys have a number of different links—a number of different websites—so we'll put those in the comments as we go along. Please note that I tagged both Lisa and Eric on their respective pages in the description of this video as well. So that's all I want to say about that; let's get into chatting about some good stuff here.

Actually I would love to have the audience get to know you guys during this conversation, rather than ask you what your background is and what you do. They can look you up—you’ve got an about page, all that good stuff.

Let's get to the meat of the matter, which is, let's talk about the difference between lead generation and sales, because I run into this in conversations with people all the time. They don't know the difference between lead generation and sales. So Eric, would you start us off with that?

Yeah, absolutely. It's such a common thing that people talk about, and I really connect with this. I don't think that sales is sales—when it's really not a sale. What I mean by that is, you say, “Eric, I'm going to be in your neck of the woods, and I'm looking for a really great sushi place.” I'm going to refer you to the sushi place that I love, and I'm gonna say, “You gotta check it out! this restaurant, it's amazing. You'll love it, they have killer sashimi, they have amazing rolls, here's my favorite roll.”

Am I being salesy? Not at all. That’s sales, right? The lead gen side of that is the complete opposite. Now it's, “Okay, well, how do I get someone as the restaurant owner into my sushi place?” Completely different. Right now, you need to build trust, you're gonna have to be in front of people when they're looking for sushi, and they're googling for sushi. And that’s totally different. That's the lead gen side.

I feel like what Tina was talking about, how people want to be belly-to-belly, and they feel like there's the either/or: They feel like you're either belly-to-belly, or you're salesy. You're either a relationship marketer, or you do lead generation. They feel like lead generation has no belly-to-belly “relationship personality.”And that's what we do! We're not just going to grab random people off the street and throw them in the sushi restaurant and say, “Hey, I hope you like this.” We do all the legwork to get those people who love sushi, who love Toronto, who love the culture, who love the type of sushi—there—and then as the business owner, is to do what you do best, which is serve the pants off people and build those relationships. Serve the sushi pants off people!

Sushi pants!?

Maybe that's a thing!

It probably is. #SushiPants. Let's do it.

But people don't get to serve the sushi pants off people. They're so busy trying to find those people that want sushi pants, who come few and far between.

That's where this whole, “Lead generation didn't work for me, it's too much money, it's too much effort” idea comes from. No, lead generation works—with people that know what they're doing. What drives me crazy is the, “You’ll learn how to set up an ad and one hour and you'll be up and you'll be making money,” and everyone makes it sound so easy.

Yeah, so it's the salesy part. This is—I'll say it again, markety marketers marketing to marketers. It sounds like the fitness industry, you know—“Start a business in 30 days,” “Write a book in a weekend,” “Start a podcast overnight,” “Generate leads in your sleep”—all of these things can be done, but there is a quality conversation here.

It depends on what you are trying to create, both short-term and long-term. It also depends on what you already have in place. So I think it's important for us to take a look at what is necessary before you start lead generation. What do you already need to have in place?

For example, I work with a lot of authors, and I don't recommend lead generation, because all they have is a book. They don't have a product, they don't have a back-end yet. They're publishing a book for credibility, and there's a lot you can do with that in terms of book marketing, but there's a difference between book marketing and business marketing. So when you're working with people, what are some of the pitfalls that you run into? What should people have ready?

You don't know what you don't know. People come to us and they're like, “We want to run an ad to this, and we're like, “Okay, where's your landing page?” “Oh, I don't have one.” “Where's your social account?” “Oh, I don't have one.” “Where's your website?” “Oh, I don't have one.” “What are your products?” “I only have a book.” “Okay, then what if no one wants your book? Where are we going to take them?” Because lead generation is not a once and done, throw up some ads for 30 days, make you a million dollars. It is an ongoing process, that only gets better and better the longer you stick with it.

Everyone's comfort level is different. So for me, I'm okay to spend $500 one month and $500 the next month and have zero sales, knowing that in the third month, I'm going to make two, three, four thousand dollars in sales, or I'm going to make that thousand dollars. I'm okay to hang with it longer, knowing that I'm building relationships. Other people are like, “If I spend $500, I want $500 back that same day. I spent $5 today, I want a $5 sale that day.”

And most business doesn't work like that. Let's face it, it really doesn't work like that. You have to test, you have to find out what people want, what lands, what works, what doesn't work, and you can only do that by doing it.

Right! That's me—I don't want to waste your dollars testing. I want to take your ad spend dollars and go. So you've got to know clearly who you are, what you do, what you offer, and have somewhat already established a brand, a business, a tagline, a voice, a message, a product, that you’ve somewhat trialled and run through on.

I like to say on Facebook, for example, people have got to see you. You’ve got to go live, you’ve got to be serving, and giving, and showing up, and being visible. You're like a ghost and then all of a sudden, you're like, “Buy my s***!”

Exactly! People are like, “Who are you? Why are you here? What are you doing?” Particularly if it's a personal brand. Do you think we have a little bit more leeway on a product than a personal brand? I see new products pop up in my Facebook feed all the time.

That comes more down to if it's a product, you really want to talk about the pain points and the benefits. Why are you different? It's very similar. It's just when you're a personal brand, it's about you. People buy on you, versus buying the product—”Why should I buy this product over that product? Here's why.”

And the product is the experience! Nobody cares that the drill can drill into the hole in three seconds flat. People care that if I'm going to do a DIY project, I'm not going to kill my child when the playground system comes falling down on them, because this drill works so good. Or my honey is gonna love me, because I get this nice thing done in a day, as opposed to a year because I can't figure my stuff out.

The product is the experience. The service is the experience, but it's more the experience with a person. So people see you, they feel you, they know you, they understand you.

Yeah, so in both cases, it is a storytelling experience. You guys talk about this on your website, I talk about it all the time in my work. What's the story that you're telling? What's the journey you're taking people on? But yet, even if you're telling a personal story, the story really isn't about the storyteller, it's about how it relates to the people that you're talking to, and what's important to them. It's creating that connection. All storytelling, the purpose is to create connection and to draw people in into you.

So I think that the preparation of that, what you're talking about—do you already have something proven? I think a lot of newer entrepreneurs get scared by this, because they have had all these messages that, “Oh, if you build authority by writing a book, or if you suddenly become a coach,” (We'll talk about that another time!)—but really, “What are you good at?”

There's a little bit of chicken or egg thing that happens when you don't have a proven track record yet of doing that kind of thing. And I think that's where building a network and building referrals—a lot of the relationship work—the podcast guesting we help people with. Certainly, the book side of things can help with all of that, but it has to be paired with all kinds of other things. And I know that you guys have a full service agency, so some of these things—the website building, the storytelling, the branding, all of that—if someone's not ready for lead generation, you’ve got to back it up and help them with all of those things first. But what it really comes down to is, can you deliver on what you say?

Yeah! And being realistic. If you don't have all that figured out, but you know this is gonna work, you know you're gonna follow through, then be realistic that the first two or three months that we're driving leads to you, we're doing that “figuring out process” for you, which is worth every penny. It might take us three months, but it might have taken you three years.

Oh, definitely.

So even though maybe you're not making sales, even though your ROI is sales, it's figuring out what's landing with your audience—and you're getting more clarity in the process. So it shouldn't keep you from doing it, because either way, it's a win-win. It's just you’ve got to be realistic with, “What is that win?” Everybody goes to money in their pocket. That's the only thing that they say makes it work or doesn't work. But you’ve got to change your mentality when it comes to that new generation.

And being realistic with what is the lifetime value of the client. We get that a lot. They don't realise that you might work with us for three months and say, “Oh my God, I haven't had a sale,” but then three months later, you might have fifty or a hundred sales that happen because that person followed you, and then when they decided to actually buy whatever you're offering, you were the one that was there from the beginning six months ago, when they had that thought, “I'm gonna play in my backyard, I'm gonna do a landscaping job.” Well, you don't just flick a switch and go, Oh, yeah, I'm gonna invest $30,000 in my backyard. It’s a six month, twelve month process.

Yeah! We had a lot of that with this current state of as we're filming this, we're still in the middle of the pandemic, and everyone's like, “Shut down my ads, I'm done. I can't run ads.” We're like, “Wait, what? Why?” “Well nobody's doing nothing. nobody's buying nothing. Shut ‘er all down.”

So not true.

Yeah. What's gonna happen if you all of a sudden disappear, and then you all of a sudden want to reappear again?

Then you’re messing with people’s heads.

A lot of people are spending time on their social media in front of their computer, researching. Planning. You don't want to run ads? Says who? So again, you gotta think about what's the end game? What's the end goal? That lifetime value. They might not be ready today to purchase your service or buy your product, but six months from now, they may be!

It's a whole thing about sticky branding, right? People do remember things. They're more likely to look things up that they've seen in the past, or they've heard in the past, or that have been endorsed by other people that they do trust.

If you've already got an ad campaign going, and it has been producing results, it's the people that I've seen in the last six months, as we've been dealing with this pandemic, who have really doubled down and pivoted appropriately, depending on their industry, and really made it even more about relationships, even more about serving people, even more about being helpful, that have done really, really well.

I know you guys have seen an expansion in your company, we've seen an expansion in our business. We're in a position, being fully online businesses, we're used to doing business online, that are in a position to help companies do things that aren't in-person. That is something that has been a little nerve wracking for some of the companies that we're working with, because they are highly professional and financial companies, private equity, very sensitive areas.

It may take a little while for them to make the leap, but once you get into a groove, once people start to trust who you are and what you're saying, there's a flow that happens with these lead generations. People can tell when you're being authentic, and when you're not. Even when it might be some type of automation or nurture campaign that may go out automatically. The storytelling that you guys do is so conversational, and so transparent, and I think that's what makes the biggest difference in making what would normally look like marketing or advertising, feel good. That's what we all want. We need to feel good when we see this.

Yes! And that is knowing your client. Like when you hear the word “agency,” we run a social media agency, we run a marketing agency, we run a done-for-you agency—at the beginning, I remember when you were saying that, “I don't want to be called an agency! I don't even want to be associated with that word.”

Because that's like a production factory. Get you in, get you out, charge you astronomical amounts, good luck trying to get ahold of somebody. There's no belly-to-belly personalization. That's the complete opposite of us! We're so individualized, we’re so deep-dive, and I think that's where the best ads come from. When you know your client, you deep dive, you take the time to learn their stories, their brand emotions.

The not-so-perfect-ads tend to do a lot better than the perfectly makeup scripted, in front of my computer… The messy hair, walking down the street ads—people tune into because they're real. And they're relatable. You don't have to be anyone you're not, you don't have to speak like you're not. You just have to be you. And the right people connect to that.

Yeah, it comes across. It's like connecting with people that you talk to for the first time. It's either you're gonna instantly feel that compassion, if they're genuine people, or you're just gonna be like, “No, forget it. I don't relate.” And that's totally fine.

And that's why lead generation isn't a start and stop kind of initiative. You don't ever want to have that, “Oh, I'm gonna do that, I'm not gonna do that for two months, I'm gonna do another month, I'm not gonna do another one.” You’re not getting anywhere when you start and stop.

So I think when you're in that position, that lead generation is right for you, have the budget for it. How many times do we say, “Okay let's go,” and they're like, “I have no budget.”

Well, what's the budget that somebody might consider starting with? What would be, you know, a good range to start with? What should they set aside for, say, six months or a year? Just the ad spend is what I'm talking about.

We would start at like $500, and then we would scale it based on success,

Based on success, right. And so yeah, so from a $5,000 [total] marketing budget, that makes sense to me, because there's a lot of done-for-you: The iterations, the testing, the research, the keywords, the audiences. There's a lot of friggin details in the back end of that. I took a couple of classes on Facebook ads, because who hasn't? And just the back end, the interface, was enough to make me want to go blind. That is not my world.

Yeah, like we tell people—we have a team of Facebook ads experts, and that is their job, to stay current, to stay around. If you are going to run ads on your own, $500 is a great ad spend to start with. You then have to be the one every single day going in there looking, testing, tweaking, staying on top of it, because you will burn through that if you don't know what you're doing. You'll burn through that $500 faster than you clicked the button to put the ad on.

Some of the most successful people I've seen advertise on Facebook, particularly who were on the service side of things—you guys have a really fantastic specialty working with online businesses, but also working with local companies: Everything from local colleges, to gyms, to medical practices and things like that.

I think that's really impressive, because that's a big gap in the market—those types of companies. Clearly you're able to do both, but I remember in a Q&A session with this person, because they very much had an “anyone can do it” conversation. And it was like, how much are you spending on ads on a daily basis?

They were spending $700 a day on ads, and they had a team doing it. It's the same thing with these major launches, when you see all these people’s success, really important, prominent people. Jeff Walker—classic, right? The big launch guy, fantastic work, amazing work. It will take you six months to a year and $60,000 to run a full Jeff Walker launch campaign. Period.

The guy that I was learning from said, if you don't have $5,000 a day to spend on ads, you're not even playing in Facebook Ad Land. And I was like, “Did he say five dollars a day? Did he—he said $5k a day!?” I'm like, this isn't my seat, because we started with $250 a month when we started running ads to my courses and programs.

What I like is why you don't just want to guess and do it yourself, is our experts watch it. They're very quick to say, “The $500 is your budget. We've already spent like 300 bucks, it's not working. We need to try something different, we need to go somewhere else.” Like I said, you can burn through money. And that's why people say Facebook ads don't work. No—it's you didn't know what you're doing, and you burn through your money, and now you got a bad feeling about that.

Yeah, even with just building our pages on Facebook. We have a page we built organically, we've got about 200,000 followers, and it's a massive pain in the butt because Facebook is constantly changing things, so there's a lot to it.

You know, you've mentioned a couple times, the value of done-for-you services, and my company with audiobooks and podcasting—we provide done-for-you as well. One of the reasons I decided to go in that direction was a survey I ran on audiobooks when I first started experimenting with audiobook services, because like most people coming out of the consulting world and the coaching world, my first thought was, “Oh, I'll do a course, and people can do it themselves.”

I ran a survey with a bunch of my colleagues, about 50-60 people, ran them through it. There was a question that I put in there that said, “Which are you more likely to do? A. Take a course and do it yourself, B. Hire someone to do it for you, or C. Take a course, realize how much it is, then hire somebody to do it for you.” Almost everybody answered C, and put a note in about that question of, “Thank you for asking this because it actually brought to my attention that this is what I actually do.”

That's when I decided I’ve got to do done-for-you services instead. Best decision I ever made as a business owner, both because it's been great to develop the company and find out what's needed, but also because it got down to an actual need that people had.

That’s it! A necessity. The people that understand done-for-you realize the cost of an action, the cost of trying to muck through and figure it out on your own—you're not going to do it. It’s a necessity to move that mission bigger. That makes people go, “I gotta stay in my lane. I have no business tinkering around in the back end or Facebook ads thing. I have no business trying to do my own audio book thing and like, I gotta stay in my lane.” The people that make it a done-for-you service—they're good at what they do! They're not just random newbie developers; they are the best of the best of the best. It's like, “We get you where you want to go—you don't have the time. You can waste so much money so much time so much energy.”

I've done it myself, trying to do a lot of stuff myself. Let's face it, we're really smart people—we can figure a lot out. But doesn't mean you should.

And that's hard. When you're Type A, you're driven, you're good, and you're like, “I can do this—tell me I can't, I’ll show you I can,” and that's the curse of being really good. You can figure it out. You're smart, you're resourceful. You know how to ask for help. It's like that badge of, I'm gonna sit here for 27 hours. figure this out, and then for what? And it's like yeah is that battle you should be entering into—

—Or should you be spending that 27 hours having conversations with people that you could be helping, having them sign on to work with you, or bring them into your business or your company, and then having your clientele fund the done-for-you services, your marketing team, your PR your audio branding, whatever it is that you're doing, so that you don't have to.

I can't tell you how many people are like, “I have $10,000. I need your help. But oh, well, I can't work with you though, because I decided to put this into my book. Or I decided to put this into, I'm going to speak on stage—I paid to play and I'm going to speak on a stage, or I'm going on this TV interview.” The one shot wonder. There is no such thing as overnight success.

Media is so important. Having a book is important. All of these things are important. But they have to be in order.

Correct!

They need to be in order. Unfortunately, I see it a lot, too. That being said, this morning, wrote a couple of emails, referring some of my close colleagues to you guys, because I'm like, “You know what, they could really work with you guys, because they're at a point in their company—they need to not be doing it themselves, but it doesn't make sense to hire like a single marketing person.”

A single person can't do everything on their own. Having the backing of a team is really important, and finding a good marketing agency is—that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to bring you on this live today—is that I only have a few companies that I will refer people to for marketing services. That's based on my 20 years in business and having been burned and being really very suspicious—very suspicious Type A over here—on things.

I even have a referral partner of mine—today, they sent me some information about information they wanted me to put out there. And I sent it back to them some feedback: I'm like, your terms and conditions aren't clear, and your disclaimer, it actually isn't legally responsible for you to say some of those things. So I can't promote this, because my people are going to have questions that I can't answer, and you're not giving me an opportunity to send them to anyone to answer questions. You just want them to click “Buy Now.” And I'm never gonna send somebody to a “Buy Now” button that's five to fifty thousand dollars, without the opportunity for somebody to have a conversation. I wouldn't do business like that.

Yes. People don't want to take the time. You have to take the time. You have to treat it like it's your business—like that business decision is a decision that you would make in your business. And if you don't like being rushed, why would you rush somebody else?

Exactly.

Give people all the information. It might not seem like a life or death, make it or break it conversation to you, but it may be for that person staring back at the screen. We never push our people into making decisions. We educate and we take as much time as we need till they feel comfortable one way or another.

I've seen you do it! For sure.

Well, I wanted to see if I could kind of wrap up some last words of wisdom here and circle back around to this whole idea of a checklist or a couple of pieces that people need to actually make online lead generation effective. What are a few things that we really want people to know—that they ought to have, or ought to work on, and obviously they can reach out to you guys too, or reach out to me for more.

A few things. Definitely have multiple offers. Think about how you can take one particular thing and make it three different things, but yet, it's still the same thing. That's critical, because we get that a lot, where you say this thing's 99 bucks, and you think that everyone's gonna buy it because you think it's the greatest thing. At the same time, maybe that 99 bucks, instead of saying it’s $99, you turn around and say, “You know what, I'll give you free shipping.” So there's two offers right there. So think of it that way. Crafted uniquely, so when you put it out there to the public, you’ve got places to go and different things to try.

Because a lot of people will say, “It didn't work.” “What did you try?” “I put it on for 99 bucks, nobody bought it. It's the price, but this thing's worth a million bucks.” So I'd say that's number one.

Number two is, make sure you have proper branding. Make sure you have something that someone's gonna trust. We always find that people think that people aren't paying attention because they didn't click like or because they didn’t comment. Biggest BS! People are always watching. People are always paying attention. You probably have the same friends like we do where all of a sudden, we won't see friends for six months. Next thing you know, they're like, “Hey, yeah, I saw that you had oysters yesterday! Where'd you get those oysters from?” You're like, “What?!”

So just remember a big takeaway from Eric. They're always watching. It's true, though. It's absolutely true, and I think that goes back to your analogy from the beginning of our conversation about the sushi restaurant as well. You not think about having sushi for three, four or five months at a time, but when you have a craving for it, you know exactly where to go because of that recommendation that you got from a friend, or because of the ad that you saw, or the coupon you got in the in the paper or the recommendations you saw on TripAdvisor. It sticks with you, and that goes by just what you said—that sticky branding. It's about that branding that stays with you over time. Anything else?

My last thing, no matter what you think is or isn't working, stay at it. Stay at it, and get out of your own way, because you're not the one that gets to decide that. It's your buyers, it's your audience—they're the ones who will decide for you. So just stay in your pay lane and keep doing what you're doing, whatever that is. It'll end up paying off dividends in the long run. We see people give up really quickly—they'll try for two weeks, three weeks, and then we’re like, “No, no, you gotta give it like, three years before you can really say something did or didn't work.”

I give it six months.

I agree.

I know if I'm gonna say yes to running an ad, any campaign, any process, I know I'm in this for six months. It's too early to bail on it—to say it worked or didn't work. You don't have enough data.

And I was gonna say make sure everything matches. If you run it, and it doesn't look and feel—it looks and feels and sounds one way, and then they hit your landing page or your website, and it looks and feels and sounds a different way—that's going to cause an instant, people are gonna be like, “Whoa!”

Oh, no, that will cause an instant pivot to everything. I'm actually in the midst of a fitness program right now, and I know the fitness industry. I have a hard time joining programs with it because of the marketing that gets done with that. This company is no exception—I won't name them. Their products are good, and it's like, “Oh, I'm going to show you in 30 seconds how to do something,” and it takes you to a 15 minute sales webinar. Every day, an email that's like that, usually selling a supplement, selling a meal plan, it's like, “Oh, we're going to give you everything you need, we're going to give you the recipes, we're going to give you this, we're going to give you that.”

No. They're going to give you one list of recipes, and then they're gonna sell you a personalized meal plan every damn day. So this is why this personal connection and taking the time with people, and managing expectations is so important, particularly in this realm. I know we agree that transparency is so important.There's lots of places that you can go out there, my dear friends out in Facebook Land, where people are going to tell you where you want to hear. Your friends will tell you what you want to hear. Don't ask your friends for feedback on things. Ask people that you respect, that are successful, for feedback.

Go out and ask three marketing agencies to give you feedback and see what the commonality is between the three. You'll find the intersection of where you're falling down on the job. But when you're talking about doing business with a company, make sure they're willing to take the time with you. (I mean, be respectful of their time of course, we don't have all damn day!) But nonetheless, someone that's willing to work with you and is willing to shoot straight with you and say, “You're not ready for this yet. This is actually where you need to be.” It's not because they necessarily want to sell you something more, it's because they want your initiative to be successful.

Yeah, hundred percent. Lastly, I would say have a process in place for follow-up. Because even though everyone thinks lead generation equals automated sales—

—That's a story, tell the story!

Okay, so we have this lovely client who we love dearly, and she worked at a gym. She's a nutritionist, and people were just giving to her, as part of the package, amazing testimonials, a ton of success stories. A perfected process: Check, check, check. Now she's running ads to a webinar to an application to work one-to-one with her so she wants to do it on our own. Because helping all these people, getting paid X amount at the gym—that's how you know you're an entrepreneur when you're like, “Wait a second—”

“I’m pretty sure I can do this better on my own! Shouldn’t I get paid more for this?”

Right! But the legwork was done for those people—the trust was built, the qualified leads were already there, whether they liked it or not. There were people that were saying to her, “I don't even know why I'm in this office with you. I'm here because I have to be. I don't really want to do this.” They end up being her best testimonials.

But now you know, we have over 100 people that have watched that webinar and we're like, “You got a goal, but the sales—‘Oh well?’ You got to go back to those hundred people! You got to go back and say, Hey, the belly-to-belly! The personalization! What was the biggest thing that made you click into that webinar? Was there anything in there that resonated with you, anything that didn't resonate with you? What are you looking for? What are your worries and your fears about hiring someone like me? Like you? What do you need to know for us to be able to help you?”

Instead of the “Watch the webinar, do the application, click it, buy it.” You can't duplicate the same process—well you can, but there's more legwork and belly-to-belly work that has to be done. You have to follow up. So even though everyone leading to you was automated, when it's a service-based high ticket, sometimes there's a conversation that's required. When you've got 100 people that want to work with you, And you're the lag in your own way, because you don't want to have a conversation, come on.

That's a problem. You’re really shooting yourself in the foot.

Yes. You have to do this much. Don't let this be the month that makes it not work.

Yeah, you might be missing the office. Right? Like you think about the analogy behind that. The reason why her biggest success was at the gym was because she got people into her office. And that office they got a relationship, into intimacy. We all get nutrition, we all get health. We all get that we need to work out, eat better, and drink water. But you know, you need that next level—you need someone to tell you how to do it.

You need to trust someone enough to say “Yes, I'll do it with you.”

That's very true. There's a lot of choices out there. There's a tremendous amount of information.

How much money have we spent on health products? MLM. Training. And she makes the claim which is valid, and I believe her, that “I want to be the last nutritionist you ever work with.”

I love that.

“I teach you about how to do it for life. I teach you how to truly live in tune with your body.” I'm like, “And then there's 100 people that need you! Get your butt on the phone!”

Yeah, so maybe my next one of these Facebook Lives I’ll do something on closing! Because that's one of my favourites. Lead gen and sales—remember this—not the same thing. Also your website, your offers, your products—not the same thing as your marketing in your lead generation.

So all of these things are pieces of a puzzle—they're like Legos. You're building a house as colourful and as interesting and as weird as you want it to be, but that doesn't mean you don't need the architecture. So if you're looking for more architecture, for your business, and to help with the marketing, to help with the lead generation, and you really want someone who's going to tell you—”Do this, don't do that”—talk to Lisa and Eric. They'll tell you what you need to know. And I do trust wholeheartedly that you'll be fully taken care of.

I appreciate you guys being here today and joining me for this collaboration conversation here on Facebook Live. And we'll be also sharing this out with our other networks as well. So I'll see you all over “the Internets.”

Thank you so much for having us!

Oh, my pleasure. We'll talk to you soon, guys. Thanks!

Lisa Pezik

Eric Pezik

Lisa, her husband Eric Pezik, and their team specialize in done for you services with branding, content creation, funnels, and websites, with their agency Infinite Design House. They also offer SEO, blogs, social media, and lead generation with their Sales Booster Program. They do all the things you don't know how to do or don't want to do in the online space!

5 Steps to Find Your Book Inside Your Blog

Written by Robin Thompson on November 17, 2020. Posted in Audiobook Marketing, Blog, Business Development, Leadership, Marketing, Publishing, Sales, Voice.

Here are five steps you, as a content generator, can take to find your book inside your blog (and inside your other content, too.)

“We all have a book inside us,” as Dana Micheli, fellow ghostwriter points out. I agree with her, but I also believe that content generators, who are practically manifesting material in their sleep, already have a book outside of them. They just don’t know it…yet.

I consider a content generator a business owner or entrepreneur with an abundant blog, LinkedIn articles for days, keynote addresses and speeches filling up digital file folders, transcripts of every interview they’ve ever done (podcast or otherwise), and copies of any free eBook, presentation, or article they’ve ever written. Whether they’ve generated all this content themselves, or benefited from the support and talent from content writers, copywriters, and/or ghostwriters, the fact is this: They are sitting on a content gold mine, each piece a precious gem, and part of a book just waiting to be produced.

I’m fortunate to work with clients who believe in the power of content and who leverage me to help grow and nurture their mines. Most of them want to produce their first book (or next) but struggle with repurposing their content or searching for the parts and pieces to produce a book—a book that is focused, well-written, showcases their expertise, offers value to their audience, and boosts their business credibility and brand.

Here are five steps a content generator can take to find a book inside their blog (and any of their other content, too).

STEP 1: Identify Topical or Thematic Threads and Trends

List all the places where content exists and visit these locations. Review headings (and subheadings) and scan your content. Note keywords and other recurring ideas that you notice.

Rank your discovered themes/topics and choose the one that speaks to you the most, or aligns with your brand and vision for your business. By going through this process, you’ve found the focus of your book. (You’ll also likely find the most precious gems: the stuff you once wrote that really shined above the rest. Hopefully, those pieces make it into your final work.)

STEP 2: Define Your Reader and Relevance

Now that you’ve identified your topic, pull together copies of each piece of related content. Scan the content and ask yourself: who is my ideal audience? Why is this topic relevant to them? What will they get in reading this information? How is it different and new from what already exists? To take this one step further, envision all this content in its final version (a beautiful book with your name on it) and reflect on what your intended goals / hopes / outcomes are for this book.

STEP 3: Outline Your Table of Contents

Determine where you believe you want your reader to begin and to end. Mark the beginning as A on a piece of paper, and write B on the other side. You’ll fill in the outline of A to B as you read your content again, and this will become your table of contents. Now, this time, you’re not going to just look at content online. Print everything relevant to your topic. Read each piece then set it aside (temporarily). Yes, this may take you some time. You’re mining for the gold here. What are the relevant pieces that really stand out? How do you see these pieces creating an arc of the work? Organize your content based on how to get the reader from point A to B. List the titles of each individual piece in your outline according to how you think they should be ordered.

STEP 4: Investigate Gaps and Goodness

Pinpoint what’s missing and what’s already kicking butt. Read your content from start to finish in the order you outlined. Record what is working (‘goodness’) about what isn’t (‘gaps’). Make a plan for addressing the gaps. This may mean reading it out loud to yourself, taking some time away from the draft, running it through spell check, asking a friend to proofread, etc.

STEP 5: Polish Before Your Publish

Polish your work so it’s crystal clear and shines like a diamond. It’s time to fine-tune things before you publish—no matter what publication route you go. When you’ve finished addressing the gaps, read the full manuscript for clarity, cohesion, and flow. Mark the text where adjustments need to be made. Proofread with an eye for spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc., and review for formatting and styling consistency. Solicit the feedback of others you trust to give you a professional and critical eye, and assess if you achieved your goals.

You have now finished mining a book out of your voluminous mountain of content.

If you need some extra support with these five steps, you can snatch up my free gift, Finding Your Book Inside Your Blog: A Content Master’s Scavenger Hunt & Field Guide to Find the Pieces to Produce Your Book.

Alyssa Berthiaume is a native Vermonter, professional (and creative) writer, practicing feminist, recovering middle child, wannabe superhero, and a mom who’s pretty sure she’s “winging it” most of the time. She’s the leading Lady (Boss) and ghostwriter at The Write Place, Right Time – her virtual boutique of writing services for badass coaches, trainers, and speakers, and other badass entrepreneurs who don't “do words” but know they need them. To know more about how she can “do words” for you, visit her website.

Alyssa Berthiaume – Copywriting, Ghostwriting, Lady Boss and Owner of The Write Place, Right Time

Audiobooks are the most rapidly growing segment of the publishing industry. Are you ready to capitalize on the audiobook renaissance?(Podcast on The Author's Corner, February 25, 2021)

Watch the episode here:

Read to the transcript here:

The Renaissance of Audiobooks and How to Capitalize on It with Tina Dietz

Important Links:

About Tina Dietz

I invite you to tune to this episode of The Conscious Business Leader podcast, where I talk about the intimacy and power of our voice

Or listen here

I invite you to join Julia Steele and me at the VID19 Conference and learn how to strengthen your voice of leadership in uncertain times

If you struggle with shameless self-promotion, listen to my guest appearance on the new episode of the Feminist Visionaries Podcast, hosted by Meaghan Lamm.(Feminist Visionaries Podcast with Meaghan Lamm, January 2021)

In this episode:

Listen to the podcast here:

The Secret To Shameless Self-Promotion with Tina Dietz

Important Links:

Presentation for PodFest Global 2020

Tune in to episode 111 of The Creative Impostor podcast, hosted by Andrea Klunder. We will show you how to amplify your message(Podcast on The Creative Impostor, August 9, 2020)

Diving deep into the world of audio on the Accidental Entrepreneur Podcast, hosted by Mitchell Beinhaker. Tune in…(Podcast on The Accidental Entrepreneur, August 25, 2020)

Listen Here:

Tune in to 101st episode of the ACHiEVE Podcast with Aseem Giri and f​ind out how you can start developing your calling.

(ACHiEVE Podcast with Aseem Giri, October 2, 2020)

Aseem Giri

Tina Dietz talks to Lisa and Eric Pezik about online lead generation strategies for non-salesy folks that actually generate leads.Facebook Live, 2020

Lisa Pezik

Eric Pezik

Here are five steps you, as a content generator, can take to find your book inside your blog (and inside your other content, too.)

STEP 1: Identify Topical or Thematic Threads and Trends

STEP 2: Define Your Reader and Relevance

STEP 3: Outline Your Table of Contents

STEP 4: Investigate Gaps and Goodness

STEP 5: Polish Before Your Publish

Alyssa Berthiaume – Copywriting, Ghostwriting, Lady Boss and Owner of The Write Place, Right Time

Tune in to 101^st episode of the ACHiEVE Podcast with Aseem Giri and find out how you can start developing your calling.