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How Podcasting Maximizes a Culture of Excellence and Innovation in Organizations with Tina Dietz and Jose Pires

Written by Robin Thompson on . Posted in Blog, Business Development, Leadership, Marketing, Networking, Personal Development, Podcast, Sales, Social Media, Vocal Leadership, Voice.

Did you know one of the most powerful ways you can connect with your clients is through podcasting? You can learn more about the benefits of podcasting, what questions you need to answer before you begin your podcast, and how Twin Flames Studios helps get your voice into more ears on my guest interview with Bruce Eckfeldt on the Scaling Up Services podcast.(Scaling Up Services Podcast with Bruce Eckfeldt, October 2021)

Tina spoke with Bruce Eckfeldt on the Scaling Up Services podcast to discuss how podcasts hone your brand, provide evergreen marketing content, and create deeper relationships.

In this episode, you'll learn:

  • Why audio is one of the most intimate mediums for storytelling
  • The top questions to ask before you start your podcast
  • How podcasts can revitalize your marketing and expand your reach
  • And more!

Listen to their conversation here!

Bruce Eckfeldt Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier? Check out Thrive Roundtable. Thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community. Created by Inc. award-winning CEO and certified Scaling Up Business coach, Bruce Eckfeldt, Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For details on the program, visit eckfeldt.com/thrive. 

Welcome, everyone. This is Scaling Up Services. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host. Our guest today is Tina Dietz. She is the founder at Twin Flames Studios. We're going to talk to her about the work that she does with companies helping them with creating content, with promotion. This is a really kind of interesting topic. I think so many service companies based their marketing, based their sales and lead development, based on thought leadership and getting content out in the world. And there's so many different types of content and so many different ways you can do it. I really think they–obviously I love podcasting–but you know, podcasts, audiobooks, you know, spoken word kind of content, there's so many things you can do with it. There's so many things you can use to generate awareness, generate thought leadership, generate leads. I'm excited for this and excited to hear Tina’s story and how she got into this this world of audio content production and what she's been doing with service companies. So, with that, Tina, welcome to the program.

Tina DietzHey, Bruce, thanks for having me.

It's a pleasure having you on. So before we dive into what you're doing with Twin Flames right now and stuff, why don't we talk a little bit about you and get a sense of your background? Give us the story. What was your professional journey? And how did you get into what you're doing today?

Well, like most entrepreneurs, it's fairly stupid. It's just like, “Well, how the hell did this happen?” Yeah, yeah. And that's, and that's what we hear more than everything. If you had asked me, you know, when I was growing up, if, you know, in 25 years or whatever, you're going to own a company that produces audio content in the land of thought leadership for service-based companies. I'm sorry, what? What, what? It didn't even exist, right? You know, at the time?

So my upbringing was I had a younger sibling–that was a business. My parents owned a business that they started when I was three years old. It was my younger sibling, and I hated it. It was a wood burning stove and fireplace business. So real sexy, awesome. And basically, that was my constant companion growing up. So I was steeped like a tea bag in entrepreneurship. From a very young age, I started answering phones when I was four and going to trade shows when I was six, I do a whole talk will have to do another time maybe on how I found my purpose in life through the Ginsu knife demonstration at a local fair. So that’s a whole thing, that's the whole thing. And, you know, I never really thought I'd own a business, but I became a therapist–for a number of reasons. Childhood was not a great place. But you know, lessons learned. It's one of those things. And I've spent a lot of time in the world of personal development, in leadership and all of that. So cultivating myself, of course, created in me a desire to see what else could be done for other people.

That led me to coaching and consulting, which then ended up leading me to podcasting and ultimately to audio production. Basically, through a paid hobby I had as a voice actor. You know, I'm an entrepreneur, we can't have regular hobbies, we have to have hobbies that pay us. That's the way it works. We can't have normal hobbies. So I was a voice actor on the side and taking some classes and masterclasses in audiobook narration. And I had this chocolate and peanut butter moment, this light bulb, aha, that, “Oh, my God, why aren't all my clients and colleagues who are doing best selling campaigns and producing books, why aren't they doing audiobooks?” And that was, as Michael Gerber from The E Myth says, you know, my “entrepreneurial seizure” that led me to investigate the world of audio and led me to a big gap in the market and dove into that.

I took over my business within a year of starting to offer services in this big market gap of done-for-you audiobooks, and also the corporate side of podcasting. And that is kind of was the best decision that I ever made. And so I went from basically being a solopreneur, consultant who'd worked with more than 20 industries in eight countries to being the CEO of a company that now produces content in the land of audio that changes lives and hearts and minds for service-based companies and making sure that they're having this beautiful, human, authentic voice of their company that comes through this medium of audio.

Yeah, I'm curious. You've had a couple of different kind of pivots in your commercial world and career what are some of the things that you had to learn or had to kind of change about your thinking, your leadership, your approach during those pivots?

Bruce, I thought you said this was only a half hour podcast.

The top two. Just the top two.

The top two. One: choose who gets in your ear very carefully, very carefully. I'm very much of a happy puppy kind of person. I'm just like, “Yeah, let's do it. Let's change the world. Let's make it happen.” I have a lot of enthusiasm and energy and kind of that visionary habit–you see something and you want to make it happen. And it took me a long time to really learn how to vet the people that I was working with, or who I was throwing in with, because I assumed for a long time, in a very naive way, that everyone had the same values that I did around integrity and communication, and, you know, working together and making sure everybody wins. And it doesn't always work that day. Most people, most people, 99% of people on the planet are doing their best. But you know, problems and challenges that come up, don't always bring out the best in people. Sometimes it brings out the worst in people. And so learning how to create relationships over time and cultivate those relationships carefully has been a huge game changer in my world to keep things consistent and growing in the right direction.

And the other piece of the puzzle has been, you know, doing my own inner work. I'd say all the time that we were born with two voices: the voice you speak with and the voice that speaks to you. And working on the voice that speaks to me has made the biggest difference in anything that I've done as a leader, as a business owner, as a partner, a wife, a mom, you know, on any of that, to cultivate that inner world–and I could do many, many, many hours, and all the things that have happened there. But suffice to say it's been a journey.

That's a really great, that's a great realization. And yeah, I think it's, you know, time is your most precious commodity and where you spend it, you know, how you spend it, who you spend it with, are all kinds of things that are really going to influence your success and what you end up doing. Tell me a little bit about kind of why audio content? I mean, what's your kind of take on the world? You know, that we're in today? Why is audio content so powerful, so important? Why have you chosen to focus on it?

Well, going back to what I said a moment ago about our internet, our voices, it's something every human being on the planet is born with. And it's something that cannot be taken away. And speaking, as someone who has felt in the past that my voice was taken away and was suppressed, having that voice and having a place at the table to have that voice heard, is incredibly valuable. And so, everything that I have done, and what we do as a company with Twin Flames, is designed to give people a place at the table so that their voices are heard. And then it creates this incredible ripple effect that you know, podcasts and audiobooks are some of the lowest hanging fruit on the planet for people to start changing their lives.

If we can be a part of more leadership voices and more positive voices and more great information, reaching people all over the world, so that they can start to change their lives. That is a really powerful place to be. It is really about making the world a better place one kind of drip of audio at a time. And audio is very, very, very intimate compared to most other forms of media. It's single focus. Most people listen to audio right into their ear. So there is a neurological connection that's very powerful between, you know, the earbud I have in my ear, and the center of my brain, the amygdala, the hippocampus, all of those things. It's not just higher brain functions being impacted by the voice. And so there's an intimacy created in an impact that's really important. And storytelling, of course, is incredibly powerful worldwide. It's something that connects all of humanity. So when we bring all these factors together, neurological, you know, storytelling, how we're wired, the universal power of the human voice to create relationship–it's a very, very powerful medium. And it can be used in so many different ways and sliced and diced, and at the pace we're living at, you know, audio is the most portable form of media. You can listen when you can't read you can listen when you can't watch. So you know, it's never gone away. It's never going to go away. And all of those things together make it what I consider the perfect storm for perfect content.

Yeah, I was like that idea that audio content literally gets you in your prospect’s head.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, you got it.

So what are all the kinds of formats these days? I mean, we kind of went from you know, I date myself accidentally when I say I'm listening to a book on tape or something. 

I know, right? Me too.

It's morphed so many times, like what is your kind of how do you kind of lay out the scope or the types of audio content that that you have at your disposal these days?

Well, we usually start with a primary form of content, which is generally a podcast. Podcasting, of course, is something that is hot right now. I’m on one as we speak, and it provides a nice bulk of content to start with, and a framework to start with. So unlike a video, the average video watcher will watch two minutes, but the average podcast listener will listen for 40 minutes.

And it's actually much harder to create short form content than it is slightly longer form content. We have thoughts, you know, curating what we say, you know, the brevity or like cutting things down to its core is much more challenging than this kind of a conversational format. And so, it allows people to be very natural, and very expansive in what they're talking about to dig into nitty gritty and to know that the listener is still going to be interested more than two minutes in, so you're not trying to pack things in. So we start with a longer form 20-30 minute podcast, usually sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, but that's on average what it is. And that gives us a lovely bulk of content to work with.

From there, there's all different ways to slice and dice that type of content, repurpose it, reuse it. And the authenticity that comes through when you're using audio and using this type of format is really important to reach people on a deeper basis, rather than just an informational basis.

Yeah. And when you look at companies, what are I guess, what are some of the companies or situations that are best served with audio content? Like who can really benefit from this form of content?

Well, we love working with relationship-focused, service-based companies. People who, when they're working with their clients, they have long-term relationships with their clients. For example, companies, which seem very dry, but there's a lot of content available in the financial world, in insurance, for example, education of varying kinds, and even things like retail, retail conglomerates, and things like that, that are creating more experiences. Travel can be served in this way, as well, although it does, definitely does need to be paired with the visual aspect as well. But it can be really, really, really beautiful. You will see a lot of influencer podcasting, that's generally not our super cup of tea.

We do a lot of work in the leadership space, though, helping to humanize brands that are large, and give the brand an avatar because we don't really do business with faceless, nameless corporations. We want to do business with people. So being able to communicate brand values and culture and leadership and innovation through the avatar of a podcast host is extremely powerful. Another industry that benefits a lot from podcasting is healthcare. And all of these have constraints with compliance and communication and legal and all of that. But we're able to navigate all of those waters, as well.

Yeah, yeah. So what are some of the other challenges? If you are interested in developing audio content? Like what do you need to kind of consider or think about setup?

The lift is largely at the beginning when you're–well with any type of content, right, so you have to decide that has enough value that you're going to spend the brain capacity and the bandwidth and the time to work with a company like ours, so that we can help you shape that voice and shape the type of content that's really going to benefit you. So choosing that it's going to be a priority.

And then having deep, intimate communication and regular awesome content are things that you really want to do, you also need to decide in terms of you know–and we work with our companies on this–like who's going to be hosting, who's your avatar, who's your people or person that you're going to be featuring. And there's a lot of creative ways to work with that scenario, as well. Everything from solo hosts to two hosts to a panel discussion and everything in between. There's, there's a lot of different ways to manage those kinds of questions, particularly if there's multiple people inside of a company who want to be at the forefront being that avatar for the company, that's all completely manageable. 

Another thing the company really needs to decide is if their marketing department, and their team, how we're going to dovetail this with their other strategic initiatives. Podcasting should be one piece and audio should be a piece of a larger strategic picture for a company. It should never be a band-aid or just an outlier. It needs to be integrated because it is something that has high strategic value, and can augment or replace creating content in other areas like blog posts, social media post images, articles for industry publications, and even events and getting used in events in different ways. So, there's a lot of applications and being willing to dive into the strategy is super important.

And what goes into that strategy? What questions are you asking or what do companies need to think about, you know, in terms of understanding kind of the bigger picture strategy before they really get into, you know, executing a particular kind of audio content strategy?

Yeah, we like to get into working with their marketing team. and finding out what are their core values that they're looking to communicate. What is that mission? What is their vision for their company, and then building out kind of an avatar of their host, not of their audience, but of their host. You know, if you had to personify your company, who is kind of that person and that spokesperson to do that? That's certainly an area that we start with, we also need to look at, as I mentioned, their current strategic initiatives. What's already working for them in terms of their marketing? How can podcasting build upon that and make it even more robust? And what are their pain points that we can address that are challenging?

So one of the pain points we run into a lot with companies is just the generation of content to begin with, particularly from a very busy team. A larger company, you know, when you ask somebody to go and say, “Hey, would you write a blog post on this?” somebody who's a technician or a salesperson or whatever, they may not be a writer to do that. Using interview techniques, we can extract and pull really wonderful, real conversational information from team members that can be pulled into podcasting content, or then even turned into articles or ebooks or, you know, other types of content, as well. And the creation process becomes 100 times easier. And this is, of course, scalable for any size company to do that, whether we're working with a sales team, or we're working with, you know, a CPA firm.

Yeah. You mentioned a couple times the idea of leveraging the content, what are some ways that you can kind of use the, the initial content, leverage it in different ways? You know, repurpose it. What are some things that companies should be thinking about when they develop a kind of a content strategy, starting with audio content?

Sure, I'll kind of walk you through a whole process, potential process flow on that. So let's say your podcast gets made, and the audio content is going out to 20-30 different audio distribution platforms, everything from Spotify to Apple podcasts and whatnot. So it lives all out in the world of public podcasting. Well, then the full edited transcript of that podcast, along with an embedded player, which has a number of features on it that are really helpful for the listener, click to tweets, and custom captioned images are all embedded on the website, usually in the form of a blog post. So we have, first, fresh content that goes into your blog.

And secondly, this is all gorgeous for your search engine optimization. Google loves fresh, long form conversational content, because Google is moving towards AI for their search engine optimization. This longer form conversational podcast content is so helpful for SEO, particularly with all the bells and whistles to kind of go along with it. So, from there, you can take the we have always have a little summary at the top and we have our quotes that are pulled out. Those are repurposed into social media posts, usually either on say a company page on LinkedIn that are then shared with the employees, shared with the team so that then they all can share those posts as well.

We also pull out short clips, little highlights from the podcast and turn them into what are called audiograms, which are little shareable, closed-caption dynamic videos. Those are also shared on social media. And one of my other favorite places to use audiograms is to embed them in related blog posts on the site that aren't necessarily the podcast episode, but maybe related content. So then you are cross-pollinating your website content and also creating a more dynamic experience for somebody visiting your website, because now you've got this lovely little 30-second to one minute long video that's breaking up the content on a related post and maybe getting people interested in staying on your website longer. Yeah, so those are just a few of the things that you can do.

We even recommend that whoever is the guest on the podcast, or even the host, depending on the situation, repurpose the link to their podcast on the publication section of their LinkedIn profile. A lot of people only use articles or blog posts, but you can use your podcast interviews as part of your publications list. And that helps build out, of course, your LinkedIn presence. For those folks of us who are in the B2B world or in the, you know, the business world. It's really nice to have that additional fresh content on your LinkedIn profile to kind of keep you top of mind for people.

So those are just a couple. Those are just a couple elements. And the other big one we see a lot of is turning podcast content into industry publication articles. So basically having writers–either folks we've introduced you to, or folks on their team. One of our companies that we work with primary tax solutions, they're a specialty tax company, and they've now had six articles based on their podcasts–content produced and published in publications like Accounting Today.

Yeah, I love that idea is like you create one piece and then you can find lots of different ways. Oh, my goodness repurposing it makes it so much easier or just create so much more leverage in terms of the work you do. What are some of the challenges? Certainly, when I started podcasting, you know, it wasn't, there was some hesitation and trepidation about kind of really getting into this and putting myself out there like that. What do you do to help folks who, you know, are considering this, but they're not quite sure they have maybe some, you know, maybe a little bit of fear around some of this stuff. You know, creating this content, really putting it out there–what are ways in which you help them kind of evaluate and create an opportunity for them to really get into this space?

It really just, it lives in the world of conversation. So, Bruce, would it be accurate to say that, you know, one of your big considerations was time?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah. And that's really the biggest thing we have to talk about is, where are your priorities, and where is your time going to be, because even if we're handling 90% of what has to go into the podcast production, we're still going to need, you know, some time for the marketing team and of course, the host and things like that to spend some time in that arena. So it just really has to be a priority, and they need to be well suited. So there's a lot of evaluation that goes on at the beginning, everything from talking about, like I said, the creation of kind of this avatar. We even use thought leadership archetypes that we have developed based on the 12 Jungian archetypes to help kind of shape the brand of the podcast in conjunction with the company's brand to make sure that there's this consistent voice.

So everything that we do really lives in relationship and inquiry and curiosity. And and then from there, the strategy, but we come at it–I would say that, you know, a lot of times I'm practicing my “Business Buddha” and that means I come from a place of non-attachment. It really has to be all about the clients and not about us and seeing what's going to be best. And sometimes it's not the best solution for that company, or it's not the right time. Sometimes it's the absolute perfect time, and the company is absolutely 100% ready to go. Sometimes there's a little bit of a delay until a few ducks get in a row and we say, “Hey, you know, you really should have X, Y, and Z handled before we start this process.” So it always has to be in the best interest of the company, so that we can get the best product, because, as you know, Bruce, podcasting isn't a one and done deal. It's a long tail game. Yeah, you know, so we got to have time.

Yeah, no, let's dig into that just a little bit. ‘Cause I find I see a lot of podcasts out there that get to like episode eight.

Yeah.

You know, big plans, big ideas, and then, you know, just, you know, a big initial push, but, they just kind of fade quickly. What are some things that can help you to prevent that or will help you, you know, kind of be in it for the long game?

Well, most of our companies, we recommend starting with a bi-weekly schedule, instead of a weekly schedule. You can always add episodes. You can always add frequency as you go. But bi-weekly gives enough frequency for folks to really get content out on a regular basis without it necessarily being an overwhelming time commitment. We also work to develop out the content calendar, and make sure that we've actually got, you know, 12 or 24 potential episodes kind of planned out. And then many times we're helping with, you know, getting the guests on. You know, let's look at your networking list. Who do you want to have on and how can we help you facilitate that communication, the guest preparation and making the actual recording process as easy as possible for folks? You know, you and I both use an interface that's very easy to get on. You're using was it Tricast here. Is that what we're both on?

Yeah.

So Tricast, Squadcast, Riverside FM–there's a bunch of them that really helped make the recording process very high quality and very easy, no matter who you are, where you are, as long as you've got a relatively decent internet connection. Yeah, and we help facilitate those with live direction, sometimes, helping people actually kind of feel comfortable, relax them. We do episode preparation sometimes and actually create the outlines for episodes for companies and working with their marketing team to make it easier for them to just have a nice flow of every episode. And of course, any kind of host or guest training when it comes down to the actual vocal or interview side of things. It's really a matter of finding out what are the needs, what are the desires, and creating the right solutions to fill it. There's no cookie cutter solution.

Yeah. And are most of your clients looking to develop leads for like a lead funnel or what are the outcomes that sort of the tangible business outcomes that you're typically focused on with clients?

The tangible outcomes that clients are usually looking to focus on are multifold. Podcasting of this particular kind is a beautiful combination of relationship marketing, influence marketing, and content marketing. So we're looking to have guests chosen strategically that are not necessarily leads for their company–there's a whole philosophy of podcasting that you interview people you want to have as clients. That's not really where we live. The companies that we work with are well-established. They're doing very, very well in their fields. And this is really a move from having a brand to becoming thought leaders in an industry. So it has more to do with influence and high quality content than it does with directly getting leads.

But that being said, it usually–well, actually, it always–it always ends up in developing leads, because collaborations come out of the guests that you have on the show, out of the visibility that you have, out of the elevation in the industry of now becoming a media presence, all of those things happen, and it is largely because podcasting opens doors when it comes to relationships. You know, our clients are always looking to have high quality guests on their show, and then following up with those guests afterwards to help deepen that relationship and develop collaboration inevitably adds leads to additional opportunities and more leads 100% of the time.

Yeah. And what recommendations do you have for folks in terms of kind of picking subjects, things that you're going to weave into your conversations, finding guests? I mean, how do you go from, “Hey, I want to start a podcast, I want to, you know, have these sort of business outcomes,” to actually getting things scheduled and figuring out what you're going to talk about?

Oh, okay, that's a big world. So let's break it down just into a couple of first steps. One is to look at your values. What do you want to be known for? You know, who are you in in the world? What does your company want to be known for? And what are your brand values, the pillars that you operate by that you want to make sure it get communicated out to an audience?

Then there's a little bit of a Venn diagram. You've got your brand values and your culture, and then you have what you're really good at, you know, what's your areas of focus, and you're going to overlap those two areas on each other. And then the third area that you're going to your trifecta, a little three circle Venn diagram is going to be how do you want to communicate it?

So when you're talking about podcasting, you have to have somebody on your team who's got a proclivity towards a microphone. In some way, shape or form, they have to have a desire for it. Because otherwise you're going to end up you know, like, like Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. “Bueller, Bueller? Bueller?” It's got to be dynamic, right? You somebody who is inclined. So that you know, so then you got your format of your show. So you've got those three pieces that you want overlap to find kind of your sweet spot in podcasting. And I will say, that's where you start. Podcasting is one of those things, just like I hate to say it, a website. That is, you're always evolving over time, and you're going to have seasons. You're going to have segments, you're going to evolve it over time. So you got to start with where you're most comfortable and most seasoned in your expertise, and then you're going to evolve and grow it from there.

Tina, this has been a pleasure if people want to find out more about you about the work that you do, what's the best way to get that information?

You can just hop over to twinflamesstudios.com and we are there. There's samples of our work. You can reach us there and we're happy to connect with you and explore, no matter where you're at in the process.

That's great. I will make sure that all the links are in the show notes here. Tina, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time today.

Thank you, Bruce.

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode. Be sure to subscribe using your favorite podcast app, so you don't miss our future episodes. See you next time.

About Scaling Up ServicesScaling Up Services is a podcast devoted to helping founders, partners, CEOs, key executives, and managers of service-based businesses scale their companies faster and with less drama. For more information and a list of recent episodes, please visit www.scalingupservices.com.

About Eckfeldt & AssociatesEckfeldt & Associates is a strategic coaching and advisory firm based in New York City and servicing growth companies around the world. Founded and led by Inc. 500 CEO Bruce Eckfeldt, E&A helps founders, CEOs, and leadership teams develop highly differentiated business strategies and create high-performance leadership teams who can execute with focus and rigor. Leveraging the Scaling Up, 3HAG, and Predictive Index toolsets, the firm has worked with a wide range of dynamic industries including technology, professional services, real estate, healthcare, pharmaceutical, and cannabis/hemp. For more information, please visit www.eckfeldt.com or email at info@eckfeldt.com.

Tina Dietz, Founder and CEO, Twin Flames Studios with Bruce Eckfeldt on Scaling Up Services [Podcast]

Written by Robin Thompson on . Posted in Blog, Business Development, Leadership, Marketing, Networking, Personal Development, Podcast, Sales, Social Media, Vocal Leadership, Voice.

Did you know one of the most powerful ways you can connect with your clients is through podcasting? You can learn more about the benefits of podcasting, what questions you need to answer before you begin your podcast, and how Twin Flames Studios helps get your voice into more ears on my guest interview with Bruce Eckfeldt on the Scaling Up Services podcast.(Scaling Up Services Podcast with Bruce Eckfeldt, October 2021)

Tina spoke with Bruce Eckfeldt on the Scaling Up Services podcast to discuss how podcasts hone your brand, provide evergreen marketing content, and create deeper relationships.

In this episode, you'll learn:

  • Why audio is one of the most intimate mediums for storytelling
  • The top questions to ask before you start your podcast
  • How podcasts can revitalize your marketing and expand your reach
  • And more!

Listen to their conversation here!

Bruce Eckfeldt Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier? Check out Thrive Roundtable. Thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community. Created by Inc. award-winning CEO and certified Scaling Up Business coach, Bruce Eckfeldt, Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For details on the program, visit eckfeldt.com/thrive. 

Welcome, everyone. This is Scaling Up Services. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host. Our guest today is Tina Dietz. She is the founder at Twin Flames Studios. We're going to talk to her about the work that she does with companies helping them with creating content, with promotion. This is a really kind of interesting topic. I think so many service companies based their marketing, based their sales and lead development, based on thought leadership and getting content out in the world. And there's so many different types of content and so many different ways you can do it. I really think they–obviously I love podcasting–but you know, podcasts, audiobooks, you know, spoken word kind of content, there's so many things you can do with it. There's so many things you can use to generate awareness, generate thought leadership, generate leads. I'm excited for this and excited to hear Tina’s story and how she got into this this world of audio content production and what she's been doing with service companies. So, with that, Tina, welcome to the program.

Tina DietzHey, Bruce, thanks for having me.

It's a pleasure having you on. So before we dive into what you're doing with Twin Flames right now and stuff, why don't we talk a little bit about you and get a sense of your background? Give us the story. What was your professional journey? And how did you get into what you're doing today?

Well, like most entrepreneurs, it's fairly stupid. It's just like, “Well, how the hell did this happen?” Yeah, yeah. And that's, and that's what we hear more than everything. If you had asked me, you know, when I was growing up, if, you know, in 25 years or whatever, you're going to own a company that produces audio content in the land of thought leadership for service-based companies. I'm sorry, what? What, what? It didn't even exist, right? You know, at the time?

So my upbringing was I had a younger sibling–that was a business. My parents owned a business that they started when I was three years old. It was my younger sibling, and I hated it. It was a wood burning stove and fireplace business. So real sexy, awesome. And basically, that was my constant companion growing up. So I was steeped like a tea bag in entrepreneurship. From a very young age, I started answering phones when I was four and going to trade shows when I was six, I do a whole talk will have to do another time maybe on how I found my purpose in life through the Ginsu knife demonstration at a local fair. So that’s a whole thing, that's the whole thing. And, you know, I never really thought I'd own a business, but I became a therapist–for a number of reasons. Childhood was not a great place. But you know, lessons learned. It's one of those things. And I've spent a lot of time in the world of personal development, in leadership and all of that. So cultivating myself, of course, created in me a desire to see what else could be done for other people.

That led me to coaching and consulting, which then ended up leading me to podcasting and ultimately to audio production. Basically, through a paid hobby I had as a voice actor. You know, I'm an entrepreneur, we can't have regular hobbies, we have to have hobbies that pay us. That's the way it works. We can't have normal hobbies. So I was a voice actor on the side and taking some classes and masterclasses in audiobook narration. And I had this chocolate and peanut butter moment, this light bulb, aha, that, “Oh, my God, why aren't all my clients and colleagues who are doing best selling campaigns and producing books, why aren't they doing audiobooks?” And that was, as Michael Gerber from The E Myth says, you know, my “entrepreneurial seizure” that led me to investigate the world of audio and led me to a big gap in the market and dove into that.

I took over my business within a year of starting to offer services in this big market gap of done-for-you audiobooks, and also the corporate side of podcasting. And that is kind of was the best decision that I ever made. And so I went from basically being a solopreneur, consultant who'd worked with more than 20 industries in eight countries to being the CEO of a company that now produces content in the land of audio that changes lives and hearts and minds for service-based companies and making sure that they're having this beautiful, human, authentic voice of their company that comes through this medium of audio.

Yeah, I'm curious. You've had a couple of different kind of pivots in your commercial world and career what are some of the things that you had to learn or had to kind of change about your thinking, your leadership, your approach during those pivots?

Bruce, I thought you said this was only a half hour podcast.

The top two. Just the top two.

The top two. One: choose who gets in your ear very carefully, very carefully. I'm very much of a happy puppy kind of person. I'm just like, “Yeah, let's do it. Let's change the world. Let's make it happen.” I have a lot of enthusiasm and energy and kind of that visionary habit–you see something and you want to make it happen. And it took me a long time to really learn how to vet the people that I was working with, or who I was throwing in with, because I assumed for a long time, in a very naive way, that everyone had the same values that I did around integrity and communication, and, you know, working together and making sure everybody wins. And it doesn't always work that day. Most people, most people, 99% of people on the planet are doing their best. But you know, problems and challenges that come up, don't always bring out the best in people. Sometimes it brings out the worst in people. And so learning how to create relationships over time and cultivate those relationships carefully has been a huge game changer in my world to keep things consistent and growing in the right direction.

And the other piece of the puzzle has been, you know, doing my own inner work. I'd say all the time that we were born with two voices: the voice you speak with and the voice that speaks to you. And working on the voice that speaks to me has made the biggest difference in anything that I've done as a leader, as a business owner, as a partner, a wife, a mom, you know, on any of that, to cultivate that inner world–and I could do many, many, many hours, and all the things that have happened there. But suffice to say it's been a journey.

That's a really great, that's a great realization. And yeah, I think it's, you know, time is your most precious commodity and where you spend it, you know, how you spend it, who you spend it with, are all kinds of things that are really going to influence your success and what you end up doing. Tell me a little bit about kind of why audio content? I mean, what's your kind of take on the world? You know, that we're in today? Why is audio content so powerful, so important? Why have you chosen to focus on it?

Well, going back to what I said a moment ago about our internet, our voices, it's something every human being on the planet is born with. And it's something that cannot be taken away. And speaking, as someone who has felt in the past that my voice was taken away and was suppressed, having that voice and having a place at the table to have that voice heard, is incredibly valuable. And so, everything that I have done, and what we do as a company with Twin Flames, is designed to give people a place at the table so that their voices are heard. And then it creates this incredible ripple effect that you know, podcasts and audiobooks are some of the lowest hanging fruit on the planet for people to start changing their lives.

If we can be a part of more leadership voices and more positive voices and more great information, reaching people all over the world, so that they can start to change their lives. That is a really powerful place to be. It is really about making the world a better place one kind of drip of audio at a time. And audio is very, very, very intimate compared to most other forms of media. It's single focus. Most people listen to audio right into their ear. So there is a neurological connection that's very powerful between, you know, the earbud I have in my ear, and the center of my brain, the amygdala, the hippocampus, all of those things. It's not just higher brain functions being impacted by the voice. And so there's an intimacy created in an impact that's really important. And storytelling, of course, is incredibly powerful worldwide. It's something that connects all of humanity. So when we bring all these factors together, neurological, you know, storytelling, how we're wired, the universal power of the human voice to create relationship–it's a very, very powerful medium. And it can be used in so many different ways and sliced and diced, and at the pace we're living at, you know, audio is the most portable form of media. You can listen when you can't read you can listen when you can't watch. So you know, it's never gone away. It's never going to go away. And all of those things together make it what I consider the perfect storm for perfect content.

Yeah, I was like that idea that audio content literally gets you in your prospect’s head.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, you got it.

So what are all the kinds of formats these days? I mean, we kind of went from you know, I date myself accidentally when I say I'm listening to a book on tape or something. 

I know, right? Me too.

It's morphed so many times, like what is your kind of how do you kind of lay out the scope or the types of audio content that that you have at your disposal these days?

Well, we usually start with a primary form of content, which is generally a podcast. Podcasting, of course, is something that is hot right now. I’m on one as we speak, and it provides a nice bulk of content to start with, and a framework to start with. So unlike a video, the average video watcher will watch two minutes, but the average podcast listener will listen for 40 minutes.

And it's actually much harder to create short form content than it is slightly longer form content. We have thoughts, you know, curating what we say, you know, the brevity or like cutting things down to its core is much more challenging than this kind of a conversational format. And so, it allows people to be very natural, and very expansive in what they're talking about to dig into nitty gritty and to know that the listener is still going to be interested more than two minutes in, so you're not trying to pack things in. So we start with a longer form 20-30 minute podcast, usually sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, but that's on average what it is. And that gives us a lovely bulk of content to work with.

From there, there's all different ways to slice and dice that type of content, repurpose it, reuse it. And the authenticity that comes through when you're using audio and using this type of format is really important to reach people on a deeper basis, rather than just an informational basis.

Yeah. And when you look at companies, what are I guess, what are some of the companies or situations that are best served with audio content? Like who can really benefit from this form of content?

Well, we love working with relationship-focused, service-based companies. People who, when they're working with their clients, they have long-term relationships with their clients. For example, companies, which seem very dry, but there's a lot of content available in the financial world, in insurance, for example, education of varying kinds, and even things like retail, retail conglomerates, and things like that, that are creating more experiences. Travel can be served in this way, as well, although it does, definitely does need to be paired with the visual aspect as well. But it can be really, really, really beautiful. You will see a lot of influencer podcasting, that's generally not our super cup of tea.

We do a lot of work in the leadership space, though, helping to humanize brands that are large, and give the brand an avatar because we don't really do business with faceless, nameless corporations. We want to do business with people. So being able to communicate brand values and culture and leadership and innovation through the avatar of a podcast host is extremely powerful. Another industry that benefits a lot from podcasting is healthcare. And all of these have constraints with compliance and communication and legal and all of that. But we're able to navigate all of those waters, as well.

Yeah, yeah. So what are some of the other challenges? If you are interested in developing audio content? Like what do you need to kind of consider or think about setup?

The lift is largely at the beginning when you're–well with any type of content, right, so you have to decide that has enough value that you're going to spend the brain capacity and the bandwidth and the time to work with a company like ours, so that we can help you shape that voice and shape the type of content that's really going to benefit you. So choosing that it's going to be a priority.

And then having deep, intimate communication and regular awesome content are things that you really want to do, you also need to decide in terms of you know–and we work with our companies on this–like who's going to be hosting, who's your avatar, who's your people or person that you're going to be featuring. And there's a lot of creative ways to work with that scenario, as well. Everything from solo hosts to two hosts to a panel discussion and everything in between. There's, there's a lot of different ways to manage those kinds of questions, particularly if there's multiple people inside of a company who want to be at the forefront being that avatar for the company, that's all completely manageable. 

Another thing the company really needs to decide is if their marketing department, and their team, how we're going to dovetail this with their other strategic initiatives. Podcasting should be one piece and audio should be a piece of a larger strategic picture for a company. It should never be a band-aid or just an outlier. It needs to be integrated because it is something that has high strategic value, and can augment or replace creating content in other areas like blog posts, social media post images, articles for industry publications, and even events and getting used in events in different ways. So, there's a lot of applications and being willing to dive into the strategy is super important.

And what goes into that strategy? What questions are you asking or what do companies need to think about, you know, in terms of understanding kind of the bigger picture strategy before they really get into, you know, executing a particular kind of audio content strategy?

Yeah, we like to get into working with their marketing team. and finding out what are their core values that they're looking to communicate. What is that mission? What is their vision for their company, and then building out kind of an avatar of their host, not of their audience, but of their host. You know, if you had to personify your company, who is kind of that person and that spokesperson to do that? That's certainly an area that we start with, we also need to look at, as I mentioned, their current strategic initiatives. What's already working for them in terms of their marketing? How can podcasting build upon that and make it even more robust? And what are their pain points that we can address that are challenging?

So one of the pain points we run into a lot with companies is just the generation of content to begin with, particularly from a very busy team. A larger company, you know, when you ask somebody to go and say, “Hey, would you write a blog post on this?” somebody who's a technician or a salesperson or whatever, they may not be a writer to do that. Using interview techniques, we can extract and pull really wonderful, real conversational information from team members that can be pulled into podcasting content, or then even turned into articles or ebooks or, you know, other types of content, as well. And the creation process becomes 100 times easier. And this is, of course, scalable for any size company to do that, whether we're working with a sales team, or we're working with, you know, a CPA firm.

Yeah. You mentioned a couple times the idea of leveraging the content, what are some ways that you can kind of use the, the initial content, leverage it in different ways? You know, repurpose it. What are some things that companies should be thinking about when they develop a kind of a content strategy, starting with audio content?

Sure, I'll kind of walk you through a whole process, potential process flow on that. So let's say your podcast gets made, and the audio content is going out to 20-30 different audio distribution platforms, everything from Spotify to Apple podcasts and whatnot. So it lives all out in the world of public podcasting. Well, then the full edited transcript of that podcast, along with an embedded player, which has a number of features on it that are really helpful for the listener, click to tweets, and custom captioned images are all embedded on the website, usually in the form of a blog post. So we have, first, fresh content that goes into your blog.

And secondly, this is all gorgeous for your search engine optimization. Google loves fresh, long form conversational content, because Google is moving towards AI for their search engine optimization. This longer form conversational podcast content is so helpful for SEO, particularly with all the bells and whistles to kind of go along with it. So, from there, you can take the we have always have a little summary at the top and we have our quotes that are pulled out. Those are repurposed into social media posts, usually either on say a company page on LinkedIn that are then shared with the employees, shared with the team so that then they all can share those posts as well.

We also pull out short clips, little highlights from the podcast and turn them into what are called audiograms, which are little shareable, closed-caption dynamic videos. Those are also shared on social media. And one of my other favorite places to use audiograms is to embed them in related blog posts on the site that aren't necessarily the podcast episode, but maybe related content. So then you are cross-pollinating your website content and also creating a more dynamic experience for somebody visiting your website, because now you've got this lovely little 30-second to one minute long video that's breaking up the content on a related post and maybe getting people interested in staying on your website longer. Yeah, so those are just a few of the things that you can do.

We even recommend that whoever is the guest on the podcast, or even the host, depending on the situation, repurpose the link to their podcast on the publication section of their LinkedIn profile. A lot of people only use articles or blog posts, but you can use your podcast interviews as part of your publications list. And that helps build out, of course, your LinkedIn presence. For those folks of us who are in the B2B world or in the, you know, the business world. It's really nice to have that additional fresh content on your LinkedIn profile to kind of keep you top of mind for people.

So those are just a couple. Those are just a couple elements. And the other big one we see a lot of is turning podcast content into industry publication articles. So basically having writers–either folks we've introduced you to, or folks on their team. One of our companies that we work with primary tax solutions, they're a specialty tax company, and they've now had six articles based on their podcasts–content produced and published in publications like Accounting Today.

Yeah, I love that idea is like you create one piece and then you can find lots of different ways. Oh, my goodness repurposing it makes it so much easier or just create so much more leverage in terms of the work you do. What are some of the challenges? Certainly, when I started podcasting, you know, it wasn't, there was some hesitation and trepidation about kind of really getting into this and putting myself out there like that. What do you do to help folks who, you know, are considering this, but they're not quite sure they have maybe some, you know, maybe a little bit of fear around some of this stuff. You know, creating this content, really putting it out there–what are ways in which you help them kind of evaluate and create an opportunity for them to really get into this space?

It really just, it lives in the world of conversation. So, Bruce, would it be accurate to say that, you know, one of your big considerations was time?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah. And that's really the biggest thing we have to talk about is, where are your priorities, and where is your time going to be, because even if we're handling 90% of what has to go into the podcast production, we're still going to need, you know, some time for the marketing team and of course, the host and things like that to spend some time in that arena. So it just really has to be a priority, and they need to be well suited. So there's a lot of evaluation that goes on at the beginning, everything from talking about, like I said, the creation of kind of this avatar. We even use thought leadership archetypes that we have developed based on the 12 Jungian archetypes to help kind of shape the brand of the podcast in conjunction with the company's brand to make sure that there's this consistent voice.

So everything that we do really lives in relationship and inquiry and curiosity. And and then from there, the strategy, but we come at it–I would say that, you know, a lot of times I'm practicing my “Business Buddha” and that means I come from a place of non-attachment. It really has to be all about the clients and not about us and seeing what's going to be best. And sometimes it's not the best solution for that company, or it's not the right time. Sometimes it's the absolute perfect time, and the company is absolutely 100% ready to go. Sometimes there's a little bit of a delay until a few ducks get in a row and we say, “Hey, you know, you really should have X, Y, and Z handled before we start this process.” So it always has to be in the best interest of the company, so that we can get the best product, because, as you know, Bruce, podcasting isn't a one and done deal. It's a long tail game. Yeah, you know, so we got to have time.

Yeah, no, let's dig into that just a little bit. ‘Cause I find I see a lot of podcasts out there that get to like episode eight.

Yeah.

You know, big plans, big ideas, and then, you know, just, you know, a big initial push, but, they just kind of fade quickly. What are some things that can help you to prevent that or will help you, you know, kind of be in it for the long game?

Well, most of our companies, we recommend starting with a bi-weekly schedule, instead of a weekly schedule. You can always add episodes. You can always add frequency as you go. But bi-weekly gives enough frequency for folks to really get content out on a regular basis without it necessarily being an overwhelming time commitment. We also work to develop out the content calendar, and make sure that we've actually got, you know, 12 or 24 potential episodes kind of planned out. And then many times we're helping with, you know, getting the guests on. You know, let's look at your networking list. Who do you want to have on and how can we help you facilitate that communication, the guest preparation and making the actual recording process as easy as possible for folks? You know, you and I both use an interface that's very easy to get on. You're using was it Tricast here. Is that what we're both on?

Yeah.

So Tricast, Squadcast, Riverside FM–there's a bunch of them that really helped make the recording process very high quality and very easy, no matter who you are, where you are, as long as you've got a relatively decent internet connection. Yeah, and we help facilitate those with live direction, sometimes, helping people actually kind of feel comfortable, relax them. We do episode preparation sometimes and actually create the outlines for episodes for companies and working with their marketing team to make it easier for them to just have a nice flow of every episode. And of course, any kind of host or guest training when it comes down to the actual vocal or interview side of things. It's really a matter of finding out what are the needs, what are the desires, and creating the right solutions to fill it. There's no cookie cutter solution.

Yeah. And are most of your clients looking to develop leads for like a lead funnel or what are the outcomes that sort of the tangible business outcomes that you're typically focused on with clients?

The tangible outcomes that clients are usually looking to focus on are multifold. Podcasting of this particular kind is a beautiful combination of relationship marketing, influence marketing, and content marketing. So we're looking to have guests chosen strategically that are not necessarily leads for their company–there's a whole philosophy of podcasting that you interview people you want to have as clients. That's not really where we live. The companies that we work with are well-established. They're doing very, very well in their fields. And this is really a move from having a brand to becoming thought leaders in an industry. So it has more to do with influence and high quality content than it does with directly getting leads.

But that being said, it usually–well, actually, it always–it always ends up in developing leads, because collaborations come out of the guests that you have on the show, out of the visibility that you have, out of the elevation in the industry of now becoming a media presence, all of those things happen, and it is largely because podcasting opens doors when it comes to relationships. You know, our clients are always looking to have high quality guests on their show, and then following up with those guests afterwards to help deepen that relationship and develop collaboration inevitably adds leads to additional opportunities and more leads 100% of the time.

Yeah. And what recommendations do you have for folks in terms of kind of picking subjects, things that you're going to weave into your conversations, finding guests? I mean, how do you go from, “Hey, I want to start a podcast, I want to, you know, have these sort of business outcomes,” to actually getting things scheduled and figuring out what you're going to talk about?

Oh, okay, that's a big world. So let's break it down just into a couple of first steps. One is to look at your values. What do you want to be known for? You know, who are you in in the world? What does your company want to be known for? And what are your brand values, the pillars that you operate by that you want to make sure it get communicated out to an audience?

Then there's a little bit of a Venn diagram. You've got your brand values and your culture, and then you have what you're really good at, you know, what's your areas of focus, and you're going to overlap those two areas on each other. And then the third area that you're going to your trifecta, a little three circle Venn diagram is going to be how do you want to communicate it?

So when you're talking about podcasting, you have to have somebody on your team who's got a proclivity towards a microphone. In some way, shape or form, they have to have a desire for it. Because otherwise you're going to end up you know, like, like Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. “Bueller, Bueller? Bueller?” It's got to be dynamic, right? You somebody who is inclined. So that you know, so then you got your format of your show. So you've got those three pieces that you want overlap to find kind of your sweet spot in podcasting. And I will say, that's where you start. Podcasting is one of those things, just like I hate to say it, a website. That is, you're always evolving over time, and you're going to have seasons. You're going to have segments, you're going to evolve it over time. So you got to start with where you're most comfortable and most seasoned in your expertise, and then you're going to evolve and grow it from there.

Tina, this has been a pleasure if people want to find out more about you about the work that you do, what's the best way to get that information?

You can just hop over to twinflamesstudios.com and we are there. There's samples of our work. You can reach us there and we're happy to connect with you and explore, no matter where you're at in the process.

That's great. I will make sure that all the links are in the show notes here. Tina, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time today.

Thank you, Bruce.

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode. Be sure to subscribe using your favorite podcast app, so you don't miss our future episodes. See you next time.

About Scaling Up ServicesScaling Up Services is a podcast devoted to helping founders, partners, CEOs, key executives, and managers of service-based businesses scale their companies faster and with less drama. For more information and a list of recent episodes, please visit www.scalingupservices.com.

About Eckfeldt & AssociatesEckfeldt & Associates is a strategic coaching and advisory firm based in New York City and servicing growth companies around the world. Founded and led by Inc. 500 CEO Bruce Eckfeldt, E&A helps founders, CEOs, and leadership teams develop highly differentiated business strategies and create high-performance leadership teams who can execute with focus and rigor. Leveraging the Scaling Up, 3HAG, and Predictive Index toolsets, the firm has worked with a wide range of dynamic industries including technology, professional services, real estate, healthcare, pharmaceutical, and cannabis/hemp. For more information, please visit www.eckfeldt.com or email at info@eckfeldt.com.

Audiobook Publishing: How It’s Done And Why You Need It With Tina Dietz [Podcast]

Written by Robin Thompson on . Posted in Audiobook Marketing, Blog, Business Development, Creating Wealth, Marketing, Personal Development, Podcast, Publishing, Sales, Vocal Leadership.

Have you ever considered that your voice is an instrument and your thoughts and beliefs are the music you’re playing? If you want to learn how to “tune” your voice, take a listen to my guest appearance on the new episode of the More than a Few Words podcast, hosted by Lorraine Ball.(More Than a Few Words Podcast with Lorraine Ball, September 2021)

Recently, Tina joined Lorraine Ball on the More than a Few Words podcast to talk about how to use your voice to deepen your connection with others, enhance your credibility, and strengthen your leadership.

In this episode:

  • You'll discover the 5-7 different vocal qualities that are highly associated with credibility, trustworthiness, and perceptions of leadership
  • How these elements impact your career and income
  • Techniques to sound more professional, confident, and knowledgable 

Listen to the podcast here

Lorraine BallHave you ever thought about what an amazing instrument your voice is? How the tone, the pitch and the tempo of your speaking voice can change how people view you? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today. Okay, here's the show. Welcome to More Than a Few Words – a marketing conversation for business owners. MTFW is part of your digital toolbox and this is your host, Lorraine Ball. I grew up in New York. I have a slightly nasal New York accent. That's part of my voice. But over the years, I've certainly worked to try to moderate that. And it is important that you do, because you can create an impression with your voice. That's what we're going to talk about today. And I couldn't think of a better person to have this conversation with than Tina Dietz. Tina's an award-winning and internationally-acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, corporate podcast producer, and vocal leadership expert. She has been featured on media outlets, including ABC, INC.com, Huffington Post, and Forbes.Tina's first podcast, The StartSomething Show, was named by INC Magazine as one of the top 35 podcasts for entrepreneurs. Her company, Twin Flames Studios, amplifies the influence of brands and leaders through high ROI audiobook and podcasting solutions. Tina, welcome to the show!

Tina DietzThanks, Lorraine. I really appreciate you having me on.

I am so excited to have you here, because this is something I've worked on a lot over the years and I think it's really important. But why don't we start with the question: What are the important qualities of someone's voice that makes them an effective leadership voice?

There’s about seven different qualities that are highly associated with someone's credibility, trustworthiness, and perception of leadership when it comes to vocal qualities. And the research around this is a little bit astounding. For example, Duke University did a study of almost 1000 CEOs, and found that on the topic of pitch alone, CEOs who had a lower pitch to their voice, had more tenure, commanded larger companies, had more perception of credibility and leadership, and made more money to the tune on average of an additional $180,000 per year. 

And, you know, I know a lot of women like myself are like, “Crap!” You know, that's not necessarily a good statistic for us. But it's not that alone. The most highly, highly, highly associated vocal characteristic with credibility, leadership, trustworthiness is tempo. And this isn’t a particular tempo, it's your natural tempo. And this has to do with how we perceive somebody's breathing and their natural rhythm—the rhythm of their voice. So if you're, if you're talking a little bit too fast, and you're kind of gasping a little bit and all of that, that shows that you're maybe a little more anxious or nervous or not present. If you're talking slow, and a lot of pauses, then that may show that, again, you're not present and not confident or not sure of what you're saying. So those are two aspects of vocal qualities that really have been shown in research to make a difference. Other ones are sonority, which is the pleasantness of one's voice, articulation, as well as flow. And flow and tempo and articulation all kind of go together, as well.

And, you know, I know a lot of women like myself are like, “Crap!” You know, that's not necessarily a good statistic for us. But it's not that alone. The most highly, highly, highly associated vocal characteristic with credibility, leadership, trustworthiness is tempo. And this isn’t a particular tempo, it's your natural tempo. And this has to do with how we perceive somebody's breathing and their natural rhythm—the rhythm of their voice. So if you're, if you're talking a little bit too fast, and you're kind of gasping a little bit and all of that, that shows that you're maybe a little more anxious or nervous or not present. If you're talking slow, and a lot of pauses, then that may show that, again, you're not present and not confident or not sure of what you're saying. So those are two aspects of vocal qualities that really have been shown in research to make a difference. Other ones are sonority, which is the pleasantness of one's voice, articulation, as well as flow. And flow and tempo and articulation all kind of go together, as well.

So that's really reassuring to someone like me, because as soon as you started talking about it, I heard the deeper bass tone, having come out of a corporate environment, lots of men, I'm like, “Of course that sounds better to their ears.” And that's something that's really hard for me to change. But I can work on the flow, the pacing, some of those other qualities that make me sound more confident.

Exactly. But you know, and the good news is, is that everybody's voice is like a fingerprint. It's unique to us. So if you have an unusual voice, it doesn't mean that you have to fit into a cookie-cutter situation to be unique. You just need to be more of yourself. And the more that you work your voice out like a muscle, like you would take care of your body—it's a very complex musculature in there and your lungs and your throat and your neck and your shoulders, your face, everything combined—you know this, this beautiful orchestra happening inside of your body to get your voice out into the world. If you pay attention to it and work it out, it'll do wonderful things for you.

As a business owner, I'm thinking, “Okay, I'm not going to be doing big presentations, I'm not going to be standing in front of a room of 100 people. Does my voice really matter?”

Yes, yes, it does. It absolutely does. Because business is all about relationships. And every relationship you form, whether it's with a prospective client, it's with colleagues, it's at a networking group, it's on a phone call, it doesn't matter, you bring your voice with you everywhere you go. And you owe it to yourself, and you owe it to the growth of your business, your company, to bring your voice with you and to have it be a representation of who you are as a leader, and who you are as a brand.

Do you think that you have a different voice when you're at home or at work? Is it one voice? Or does it change based on the situation? And those are obviously the two extremes, but does your voice change in different situations?

Yeah, yeah, I think it does. Because we have a range, right? Just like you have a vocal range low to high, we also have a range of expression. And sometimes the expression that you use in business is not necessarily going to be the same expression you use with your kids. 

That being said, I think most people draw two strong boundaries between what's in business, and what's really in your heart. And the more integrated we become from the inside and the outside, the more effective we become as leaders. So vocal leadership isn't really all about the external voice, it's about the dance between your internal voice and your external voice. It's analogous to a virtuoso musician. So, if you imagine your external voice is the instrument you're playing, and your internal voice—your thoughts, your beliefs, your message, all the things that make you who you are—that's the music that you're playing. So if you can learn how to create the arrangement of the music that you're playing, and pay attention to the external instrument, that's when you become a virtuoso.

Wow, I love the comparison between your voice and an instrument, because it really, to me, it makes a lot of sense. I can see that whole tuning and being pleasant to the ear. And even jazz sometimes is appealing to a certain audience. So I like that analogy, because it can be… your voice needs to fit the situation, it also needs to be kind of true to who you are. Are there things that we do with our voice that really work against us? That send the wrong message? 

We could do it pretty easily. There's two in particular that in a business setting, and we're talking specifically about leadership and credibility, that are credibility killers. One is vocal fry. Now, if you don't know what vocal fry is, you can think about the Kardashians. So it basically makes you sound uninterested. And you actually will hear a lot of this in advertising when they're advertising to millennials and younger. Generally, when they're advertising to Gen X and older, you won't hear near as much vocal fry as you would, because it's more typical to hear in the younger generations, and they don't react to it as much as older generations do. So I do think we'll see this changing, but it's at the end of the sentences and it gets dropped down really low. And in the research that's been done—Gonzaga University did a huge study on this—regardless of who was evaluating the interviewees, anyone who was being interviewed that used vocal fry in their voice across the board categorically—age, race, gender didn't matter—they were rated as less credible and less desirable, less trustworthy to take a job. So it's a huge thing in career development: don't have vocal fry in your voice. That's a really big one. 

And the other one that is similar—same thing, but different—is up talking the end of your sentences. And up talking the end of your sentences kind of makes you sound not credible, and then people think you don't know what you're doing, because your sentences sound like a question. A lot of times you can't hear it when you're doing it yourself, so you have to have other people listen to you. This happens a lot in networking situations when somebody is introducing themselves and they feel uncertain on the inside and that gets reflected to the outside. So a good thing to take note of.

Awesome. So as we're wrapping this up, I really want to encourage people to check out Twin Flames Studios—lots of S's in there for me to practice. But I really want to encourage people to check out all the wonderful information you've got to learn more about this subject, because I think being able to communicate and communicate with confidence is such an important first step for everyone and especially for business owners.

It sure is. We actually have a vocal leadership workout. If anyone is interested. And we don't have a landing page for it, but if you connect with me on LinkedIn, or through our website. We're happy to send you a copy.

Awesome. Well, we will make sure that we include all those links. Thank you so much for being a part of the show.

Thank you, Lorraine. This is wonderful. I appreciate you.

If you've enjoyed today's conversation and you'd like to find more resources for your business, be sure to check out the Digital Toolbox at DigitalToolbox.Club. Look for MTFW wherever you listen to podcasts. This is another episode of More Than a Few Words. Thanks for listening.

The Growing Appeal of Audiobooks with Tina Dietz [Podcast]

Written by Robin Thompson on . Posted in Audiobook Marketing, Business Development, Creating Wealth, Marketing, Personal Development, Podcast, Publishing, Sales, Vocal Leadership.

Did you know that the first audiobook was created in 1929? Today, audiobooks are a billion dollar per year industry in the US alone! If you want to discover more about the power of audiobooks, check out my guest appearance on the new episode of the VIP Access Podcast, hosted by Michelle Herschorn.(VIP Access Podcast with Michelle Herschorn, November 2021)

Tina had a fantastic conversation with Michelle Herschorn on the VIP Access podcast to talk about the power of audiobooks.

In this episode:

  • How the audiobooks’ industry has grown exponentially
  • Tips for authors who want to supercharge their book marketing
  • The ways audiobooks uniquely meet our intrinsic need for intimate connections through audio storytelling

Listen to their discussion here!

Melanie HerschornHi again. I'm Melanie Herschorn, the digital content creator and marketing strategist and coach for women business owners, and welcome back to another episode of VIP Access. VIP stands for Visibility, Impact, Profit, and this podcast will get you inspired and fired up about content creation and marketing yourself and your brand. Each week you'll get marketing and mindset strategies, actionable tips, and the motivation you need to land more clients, nurture your leads, and position yourself as an expert in your industry. We also go behind the scenes with powerful women in business to discuss strategies, messaging and more. My mission is to empower you to stop spinning your wheels and to make your mark with your marketing. Ready to wow your ideal client and create a community of raving fans? Let's dive into today's episode!

Hi, and welcome back to VIP Access. I'm Melanie Herschorn. Today, my guest is an award-winning and internationally-acclaimed speaker and audiobook publisher and corporate podcast producer and vocal leadership expert. Her name is Tina Dietz, and she has been featured on media outlets from ABC to Huffington Post to Forbes and more. Her first podcast The StartSomething Show was named by Inc. Magazine as one of the top 35 podcasts for entrepreneurs and Tina's company, Twin Flames Studios, amplifies the influence of brands and leaders through high ROI audiobook and podcasting solutions. And you will hear from her mic how great she is with sound. So welcome, Tina. Thanks so much for being here.

Tina DietzThanks, Melody, I appreciate that.

I just, I have a background in radio, so when I hear a good mic, I get really excited. Totally geeking out on that.

We end up being like radio voice nerds and all of that. It's like, “Oh, listen to the sound quality.”

Love it. So okay, I don't even know where to start, because I'm just so excited to have you on today. Because not only are you a podcasting expert, but really audiobooks are so important. And I think that that's something that people who have written a book don't even necessarily think about, you know, in terms of a way to get more ears or eyes on their book, and to amplify their mission and their influence in the world. And so, I would love to know some statistics about audiobooks.

Oh, statistics about audiobooks? Well, it's a funny world. When I first started working with audiobooks, they'd been around since about 1930. This is not a new format.

You mean like book on tape, okay.

Book on tape. Before that, it was book on album, you know. Or I'll date myself and talk about, you know, when I was a little kid, we had those book and album combinations where it was, “When Tinker Bell rings her little bell, it's time to turn the page.” Or we used to get books on tape out of the library, which you can still do. Mostly they're CDs sometimes have these all in one little players, which are really interesting and cool. 

A lot of people don't know that the military uses a lot of those books. A lot of audiobooks are consumed by our servicemen and women overseas. It's one of the ways that they stay in touch and they don't have to use the internet. So audiobooks reach into some really remote places in the world. 

But what really happened, oh, let's go back about 10 years ago, audiobooks became truly digital. Audible, which is the largest audiobook distributor in the world–they handle about 60% of the market share worldwide–combined themselves with Amazon. For whatever you think about Amazon or your opinions about Amazon as a global company, one way or another, what they have done is made things more accessible for everyday people. And when everything went digital, audiobooks went digital, the cost of production for audiobooks dropped about 50%. That has continued to be the case. 

So when, back in 2009 or so and earlier, to get an audiobook produced you were talking about at least $10,000 minimum. Now an audiobook can still cost that much, if you get a lot of bells and whistles: you've got a full cast, you're recording in a New York studio, you got Tinkerbell in there full costume makeup, ringing bells. But that is generally not the case. Now you can get your audiobook fully produced by a company like ours, or another high quality studio, generally for $3,000-$5,000. And that's full production, author-narration, professional-narration, really high quality work. 

It can be done remotely without our having to go into a studio. And audiobooks, you mentioned statistics, audiobooks outsell eBooks about three to one. And they're a $1 billion plus industry just in the US alone. And there are new markets opening up overseas every single day with audiobooks, so it is a growing market. It's been double digit growth year on year for the last eight years. So it is crazy pants what is happening with audiobooks and it's just a really reliable, familiar way too to get books into more ears and reach more hearts with your message. And that's what we're out to do.

I love all of that. So I want to just break it down a little bit more. Let's say somebody wrote a book a couple years ago, they launched it, it didn't do great, because they didn't have the marketing in place. And now they're starting to work on the marketing, because I always say you wrote the book, it's still published, so let's keep going and try to get some excitement about it. 

Totally with you on that.

Can you also couple that with an audiobook and make that an exciting launch?

Why yes, Melanie, you can. I'll go into my commercial voice there. Yeah, no, it's a great application for an audiobook. We call it a “Second Chance Launch,” and it is something that happens frequently. As you know, in the book world, particularly with first books and authors, you get very excited. It's almost like having a child. You do all this stuff to get the book ready and to get it out there, and then by the time you get it out, you're exhausted. 

Right when you need to be at your best is when you want to be taking a break. The marketing falls down or the budget isn't there, or just the persistence and the will isn't there to keep going with that particular book, because it's taken everything you've got as an author just to get the book out on the market. Launching an audiobook six months, a year longer, two years, three years down the road, is a way to revitalize that title and get it back out there again. Some folks also do a second edition with their audiobook, but more than likely, if the material really is evergreen, like many of our authors it is, then just getting the audiobook out there is enough to revitalize and get things going again.

What if you hate the sound of your own voice? 

Ah, yeah, I hear that a lot. Even in a room full of speakers, if I'm on a stage and I survey a room, and I say, “Who here doesn't like the sound of their own voice?” about half the room, even in a room full of speakers and podcasters will still raise their hand. And if it's a roomful of executives or entrepreneurs, more in the general space, about 80% of people will raise their hand to say they don't like their voice. A very common thing. It's a very human thing. You have to get used to it. 

There's two pathways through that. One is to basically suck it up and get used to it. Seriously, that, that's kind of the way it works. And to rely on professionals like myself, like my team, who are going to be honest with you and say, “Really, your voice is going to be fine for this book. And this is how we're going to work with you on it.” Or we'll be honest with you and say, “You know what, your voice is great for a podcast. It's great for a keynote. But it's going to be challenging to listen to you for four or five, six hours straight. And here's why.” That really just depends on the voice. But a lot of times, it's for reasons you don't expect. People have unique voices. I have this wonderful colleague who is totally Jersey–totally New Jersey–she has the most amazing, gorgeous New Jersey accent. I've been trying to talk her into doing her audiobook. She's got a great podcast, and she's like, “No, no, no, I have to have a professional do it.” I said, “Don't you dare,” because her voice is part of her brand.

Exactly what I was gonna say. It's part of her brand. And so she's taking people away from her brand, if she doesn't own that. That's part of who she is.

That's part of her voice. And her articulation is great. She's fun to listen to. Her voice is musical. All the things that are engaging about a voice. She has her accent, which she worries about, is not going to be a problem. She's very engaging to listen to.

Now, this is something even though I've worked in radio, I've been trained how to have a radio voice so to speak. I worked in classical music, which is like, “And now we are going to play Bach” and like, you really have to be like “The Sonata in B Minor played by…

The Philharmonic Orchestra. We hope you enjoy it.

Yes, exactly! Exactly. And then the people are dozing off while listening, which is fine. And news, which is also a different way to talk. But when people are gonna stand there and talk for four hours, five hours, how do they keep up momentum?

Well, you don't talk for four or five hours. That's really the key. Even professional narrators don't tend to record for longer than two hours at a shot. It is vocal fatigue across the board. Even for our really, really experienced speakers, our speakers always come in and say, “Oh, no, I do 20, you know, gigs a week.” And you know, we work with great people who do amazing things out in the world, and then they get into the audiobook process, and afterwards are like, “Oh, that was different.” Not that it was bad, it gave them a whole new skill set, because we record our authors remotely from wherever they are in the world and we fully direct them through the entire process. 

Just as if you were to go into a New York studio and you were to have a director right there live in your ear, we are live in the ears of our authors, usually from their home office. So we're catching their mistakes, we're making sure that their energy is good, making sure that they're getting across the message and the intention that they want to get. 

When you're reading and delivering material at the same time, it's different than a rehearsed keynote, or even in the format where we are now, which is really casual. I'm not as worried about my articulation. I'm not delivering a particular set script. You know, when you're going through an audiobook, it's a certain type of breathing. It's much slower than most people are used to speaking at and it's usually a little bit more articulated. There's a couple of things that come into play and that's what we help with. But we work with authors, you know, if their energy level can't support speaking for two hours and getting a great performance, then we do it for one hour. We have another author, we're working on her second audiobook, Jennifer Brown, she's an amazing DEI consultant. She has opera training, and tons of vocal training, and she has vocal stamina like crazy, so she can go for three or four hours. But she is an outlier, so it works across the board.

I mean, I can only imagine how exhausting that would be. You're not just talking, you're “on.” I'm one of those people that after a full day of work, I need to just shut down and have complete silence. Because when you're “on,” it just takes so much out of you. Do you find that people falter in the middle? And you're just like, “Okay, we'll come back to this tomorrow.”

It depends on the day that they're having. We do a lot of prep work with folks. We have a whole document we deliver to help people understand the mindset, to prepare to do their audiobook, and that can move into the rest of their lives as well. You know, when any of us who have been in business for a while, as you're developing your leadership, you know, you have to maintain your energy management and your energy hygiene, I'll even call it. And that has to do with you know, introversion/extroversion. Do you need to be around people? Do you need to shut down, as you mentioned? I need to go out tonight and go to an open mic comedy night to recharge myself. I'm an extrovert. That's going to charge me up. That would be a nightmare for you, probably at the end of a long workday, if you needed to recharge your energy after so many things coming at you.

Not necessarily. I'm one of those people, I could just have like five minutes, put on more makeup, and go out and feel totally returned.

We'll have to keep that in mind when we meet in person.

Oh, I can't wait for that!

But the point is that, you know, you have to manage your energy. And that's a big part of what our directors and what we listen for, watch for, and talk with our authors about because it's a very personal journey.

For me, I, even though I've worked in radio, as I said, I am a visual learner. I think it's two-thirds of the population are visual learners. But audiobooks, they don't really go against that, I find. Like I can listen to a book on a long drive and take it in, take all of it in. And so do you find that there's ever any pushback about people who are like, “Well, I'm a visual learner, so I don't need an audiobook?”

It's an interesting world, because we're so wired for storytelling. It comes into a different part of the brain entirely, so the best thing about an audiobook is the intimacy that it creates between the narrator and the listener. And there's a neurological connection, even when you're in the car. Actually, 80% of audiobooks are listened to through earbuds. That's what the research says. 

You know, we're not in our cars quite as much as we used to be on long commutes, especially in the last two years. But at the same time, even if you are listening through, you know, your car speakers, or your earbuds, which are going to be the two most common areas, there's a relationship that forms you know? You almost find yourself or maybe you do find yourself, responding in the case of fiction, a character, just like you're watching TV, and you want to say, “Don't open the door!” Or if you're listening to a book on personal development or leadership development, you may find yourself pausing just to have a conversation with yourself about, “Do I really believe that? I think they are full of crap. I don't know about that.” Or, “Oh, I never thought of that!” And you kind of have to process through it. Because it is, to one extent or another, a conversation, just based on the way that we're wired neurologically. So it is an intimate experience. And that's why the quality of narration is so very important. That is what sells audiobooks. It's the quality of narration.

Okay, I love that we got to that point because it is true. It's like, if you have grainy video or pretty terrible photos that's not going to excite your audience and grow your audience, but you need to have quality sound. And what people might not realize is you can hear lights. You can hear a dog barking in the distance, and that ambient sound can throw off so much other than just the sound of your own voice reading your book. So how do you account for that in somebody's house, if they don't have their own studio?

Well, I’ll tell you a little secret: about 85% of our authors record from a walk-in closet. And this is a very common thing, even in the professional narration world. It's very cozy. The atmosphere of a walk-in closet with the clothing around you very specifically buffers the sound. And usually there's a spot where you can set up a little portable desk, or a table and a chair and your microphone and record your audiobook with a director in your ear taking care of the recording for you. And that's where a lot of voice acting happens is in those small spaces. You absolutely can create things on your desk, as well. The other thing we recommend a lot that's a really easy setup for people is to take a plastic storage box, the kind that you would put a bunch of, you know, Christmas decorations and things like that. The Rubbermaid, Sterilite kind of containers, you'd get.

A giant Tupperware 

A giant Tupperware container and then you take a piece of foam that you would put on top of a bed. Bed topper. Get it at Walmart or Target for $20, put it on the inside, stand it on end, and toss your microphone in it, and then you've basically got a little portable sound booth. I actually had one of those when I was living in Costa Rica that I did some professional voice acting from and the sound quality–it was great.

That's amazing. Yeah, and you got to live in Costa Rica, which is even more amazing.

It's a whole other story.

That's great. Okay, so I love how you're bringing this to more people. You know, where I sit as somebody who's currently working on writing a book and I work with authors, sometimes we feel like audiobooks are a little bit out of reach. You figure out whether you're going to be self-publishing, working with a hybrid publisher, or going the traditional publishing route, and then you're so focused on the launch, and “Am I going to be an Amazon bestseller? I don't know” and all that stuff. And then you're like, “Okay, well, now nobody knows about it. So I need to do the marketing. But wouldn't it be great if people could listen in their AirPods to me?” It almost feels like it's, it's just high up on this pedestal that we can't reach. So I love that you're bringing it to more people. So what you're saying is, pretty much everybody should do this.

I think if it's something that you can carve out, the budget for and the time for in the great scheme of things and also survey your audience. Do they listen to audiobooks? A lot of our authors come to us because they launched their book and the number one question they got was, “When are you doing the audiobook?” I hear this over and over again. We have lots of conversations with authors every single week, and it's either, “My publisher said I needed one,” “I have to have one because I love audiobooks,” or “I've launched my book and everyone's asking me for the audiobook. How quickly can we get it done?” So those are the things that we hear on a daily basis from authors, which is good news for everybody.

That's great. So how long does it take from start to finish? Because I've heard there are delays and it can be like a really long time before Audible says, “Okay, here you go.”

Audible, particularly on the self-publishing side of Audible, there can be glitches. There can be some issues. We produce a very pristine level. We do not get rejected by Audible. We [have] t's crossed, i's dotted. But there's very, very specific technical specs that your audio files have to meet for Audible. It is not like podcasting. It is not like doing any other kind of audio. The audio that I'm recording right now for this podcast would definitely not meet Audible standards. There would be background noise, there would be a noise floor issue, all kinds of stuff. And even the, the amount of space at the beginning and the end of the file and what's included–so many technical details. But we do this every day. We meet all those technical standards, so our books go through in generally about 10-15 business days through their system, which is average. It can take up to 30 business days to make it through Audible's system, if there's no mistakes in your files. So what happens is if there are mistakes in your files it gets bounced back to you. They'll tell you what the issues are, you have to fix it, and then you got to start back at the beginning of the queue again. And that's usually where the problems come into play because somebody has worked with someone that tried to do it themselves, or they worked with someone who isn't highly experienced. The author can't tell. They can't test it. They don't have the, the technical skills to do that, and then it becomes a problem. That's where people run into the most issues. And they come to us and say, “Can you fix these files?”

“Help us!” I get that. Now, is there ever a book that doesn't make sense to become an audiobook?

There's some that do better than others. Books that tend to be at least 35,000 words tend to do better in audio. Most audio platforms like Audible, our audiobooks are sold on a membership basis. So longer books have a higher perceived value, because you get a credit every month and you can buy any audiobook. Are you going to look for an audio book that's eight hours long, or two hours long? So there becomes a perceived value issue.

Okay.

Also, audiobook pricing is different than other book pricing. Audiobooks are priced on length, which irritates a lot of authors, and I completely understand that it is an issue in the industry. Having a book that's a little bit longer–30-35,000 words, at least–gets your pricing up into a range that you're going to be much happier with. That's one issue. Another one is books that are highly technical, highly visual. They're going to need an audio edit to make an audio version of and when we evaluate books, we go over that if there tends to be more of a technical guide. 

Cookbooks and poetry–it really just depends on the market that you're in. We don't work with fiction. We are a nonfiction house, but we do often get people asking us for poetry. And we don't tend to work with those because you're better off working and getting that done kind of on your own in terms of price points, and things like that, because those poetry books are shorter books. And I almost think that you're better off releasing those as an album, like almost as music, so that you can control the pricing more, rather than as an audiobook. And that's not something a lot of people think of. Go get it audio designed and really make that book juicy and worth your while to do if you're working with poetry. But technical guides, cookbooks are another one that require some changes if you're going to do an audio version. And that's more from an accessibility standpoint. Most cookbooks are not going to be listened to as a traditional audiobook, but if you're looking to reach an audience of say, folks who have visual impairment, then that's another animal. So accessibility is a whole other part of the audio industry.

There is so much that we have unpacked today. And I feel like we just scratched the surface, truly.

It’s true.

But I love that when I asked you about statistics, you rattled off a number of them. So I really appreciate that. Because so often we hear about things and it's like, “Oh, is this the next shiny object that I need to go after?” And, you know, as entrepreneurs, as authors, it's often like, “Well, what if I don't get it? If I don't do this, as I going to miss out?” And so this really sounds like something that is worth investing in because of just the sheer number of people that you can reach in a way that is going to help them better because maybe they really want to read your book, but they just don't have time to sit and read their Kindle app, or they just don't have time to sit and leaf through the pages.

Now well, and the one beautiful thing I'll tell you is that a lot of times what happens with audiobooks, particularly in nonfiction, people get a nice case of “mightas-well-itis.” They'll get the audiobook to listen to so they can make it through the material and then they'll buy the paperback, so that they can go back and make notes and the salient points. We've had it happen all the time. So, many times if you are selling your audiobook and then giving away a Kindle version that can be annotated for free, it's nice to bundle those together. Or you'll see an uptick in your paperback or hardcover sales when you release your audiobook because people are buying both versions. There's all kinds of things on the marketing side of things we don't have time to get into today. But maybe another time. There's there's lots of cool stuff.

I love it. Alright, so how can people find out more about you and Twin Flames Studios? 

Oh, you can check out our audiobook library, our kind of gallery of information. Find out more and reach out to us at TwinFlamesStudios.com.

I love how you articulated that.  

I gotta have all the S's in that url.

TwinFlamesStudios.com.

That's a tongue twister in and of itself.

But a worthwhile one. Well, Tina, thank you so much for being here today. 

No, thank you, Melanie. This is great. I really appreciate it!

You've written a book. Now what? If you're ready to implement a simple content marketing strategy to create buzz around your book and your brand, schedule your free Sparkles and Strategy Call with me, Melanie Herschorn. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of VIP Access. We can't let the fun end here. To find out how engaging your content is, take the content quiz at MyContentQuiz.com. Plus, you're invited to join our private Facebook group at VIPDigital.live/community where you'll get live trainings and other great tips all about digital marketing. And if you've enjoyed listening to this podcast, head over to iTunes and leave me a rating and review. This tells iTunes that you found the show helpful and they'll share it with more women business owners just like you. Thank you so much for listening.

Everything You Need to Know Before Investing in an Audiobook [Podcast]

Written by Robin Thompson on . Posted in Audiobook Marketing, Business Development, Marketing, Podcast, Publishing, Sales, Vocal Leadership.

​Not sure if ​an audiobook is the right investment for you and your brand? Listen to my ​guest appearance on The Book Marketing Action Podcast with Becky Robinson and learn more!

Tina talks to Becky Robinson about the benefits and process of investing in an audiobook.

In this episode:

  • If Tina’s noticed a trend of people buying audiobooks vs. other formats
  • Reasons an author would consider investing in an audiobook
  • Why an author might choose to narrate their own book (author narrated vs. professionally narrated)
  • The best time for an author to release their audiobook
  • What the process looks like and the average length of an audiobook
  • The range of investment that an author should expect if they want to create an audiobook

—

Listen to the podcast here:

Welcome to Season 2 of The Book Marketing Action Podcast with Becky Robinson, where we give you information that you can immediately implement to increase your influence and market your books more successfully. In this episode, we are joined by Tina Dietz—CEO and co-founder of Twin Flames Studios, award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, podcast producer, and influence marketing expert.

ABOUT TINA

Becky: I am so thrilled today to be interviewing Tina Dietz. Tina is a friend I made, actually, as a result of this podcast. A previous guest, Jenn T. Grace, introduced us, and I’m so glad she did, because I’ve already learned so much from you, Tina. So before we dive in, I hope you’ll take a moment and tell our listeners about your work in the world.

Tina: Well, my company Twin Flames Studios focuses on getting more great voices out to the world. So really the mission behind the company is that audiobooks and podcasts are some of the lowest hanging fruit for people to start to change their lives. So particularly with audiobooks, and certainly with podcasts, they tend to be low cost or free. They’re available in multiple countries, a lot of them can be in multiple languages, and their stories are what keep us all connected as human beings. So the more that we can help leaders, subject matter experts, and people who have lived extraordinary lives in the nonfiction space, which is our specialty, tell their stories and get it out to the world, the more we can make a difference and leave our own legacy, as well as help with the legacies of all these authors that we work with. So what we’re talking about today is mostly our audiobook division, which is strictly nonfiction audiobooks. And we do full, done-for-you production, publishing, and distribution, both for professional narration as well as author narration, which is something we’re known for.

HAVE YOU NOTICED A TREND OF PEOPLE BUYING AUDIOBOOKS VS. OTHER FORMATS?

Becky: Tina, that’s really intriguing and I look forward to hearing more about that author voice narration. But let’s talk for a moment, first, about audiobooks as a genre. I’m curious to see what you’ve noticed about the trend of people buying audiobooks rather than other formats.

Tina: It’s been an interesting art because audiobooks are certainly not new. The first audiobook was produced during the Great Depression, and I believe it was a Christmas story. They’ve always been around. Those of us who are a little bit older will remember books on tape and getting them out at the library, things like that. But up until the shift in the market about six, eight years ago, where audiobooks became digital, the production of audiobooks was generally relegated to traditional publishing. It was very expensive to do and very expensive to distribute, because everything was in a hardcopy, and first on tape, well, first an album, then on tape, and God forbid, on 8-track, and then ultimately on CDs. So when everything went digital, and Amazon and Audible became the same company, when voice acting and narrators became available more online, we had the rise of the gig economy, all of these things kind of created a perfect storm for the rise and the renaissance of the audiobook. So audiobooks have risen in sales year upon year, in double digits for the last eight years. And some of those years, it’s been a 20% to even 25% rise in the sales of audiobooks. So it’s a billion dollar industry in the US alone, and the accessibility of it is largely what makes them so so so popular.

WHAT ARE SOME REASONS AN AUTHOR WOULD CONSIDER INVESTING IN AN AUDIOBOOK?

Becky: Well, as the wife of a man who only consumes books via audio, I know that there are many people who really are drawn in a big way to that ease of being able to listen while you drive, or listen while you get something else done. And I think in a way, you already answered this question, Tina, but I’m gonna ask it anyway. What are some reasons an author would consider investing in an audiobook?

Tina: Well, you definitely have to look at what your purpose is, and I’m really glad you asked this question. So on the nonfiction side of the equation—fiction is going to have a different answer, and I can touch on it if you’d like—but on the nonfiction side of things, an author wants to look at doing an audiobook to access a wider audience, first of all. A lot of executives, C-suite folks, people who are decision makers or at high levels in their career, often listen to audio, or listen to audio and buy a copy of the book so that they can switch formats because they can multitask, and also because audiobooks you can listen to at faster speeds. So I know lots of people, including myself, who might put an audiobook up to one and a half time speed, in order to be able to consume the information and get what they need, and then maybe have a hard copy of the book to reference back or make notes in as they go, using it as a learning tool. And they use it to keep your brain juicy as you go. So having an audiobook does open up those markets. An audiobook is also a marketing tool and it is an evergreen marketing tool, just like your book is. So using snippets of your book, in audiograms, in book trailers, in different parts of your material, or even potentially as material to create a course or modules in the backend membership site that you might have, you can use your audiobook in all of these different ways as an asset, not just distributed on Audible.

WHY MIGHT AN AUTHOR CHOOSE TO NARRATE THEIR OWN BOOK?

Becky: So Tina, this might be a good time to talk about this idea of an author narrated audiobook. Why might an author choose to narrate their own book?

Tina: Well, speaking as an entrepreneur myself, I would say that we all have egos, so that’s really the first truth. You have to know that it feels, if you’ve gone through all of the process of writing a book that is part of your soul on paper, and it is in your voice and of course, you want to have the experience. And I hear this all the time, “I’m the only person that could narrate this book.” Now, that’s not actually true, but an author may actually feel very strongly about that. We should probably also, if we have time, talk about why an author wouldn’t narrate their own book, because most of our authors come to us assuming that they are going to narrate their own book. But for those who do want to have that, if you are going after speaking gigs, if you want to have your voice known in a particular industry, or if your voice is already highly associated with your work, you have a popular podcast, you’re a TED speaker, so on and so forth, there may be some congruency to having your voice on the book. At least in part, not every author narrates their entire audio book, sometimes we do what I lovingly call a Tony Robbins sandwich, which is a hybrid version of the book where the author introduces the material, does the introduction or the first chapter, and then kind of hands it off to a professional narrator who shares similar vocal qualities as the author, and certainly has similar energy as the author, and then the author comes back at the end of the book to wrap things up. Sometimes there’s a happy middle ground between the two, given how busy most of our authors are.

WHAT ARE OTHER REASONS AN AUTHOR MAY NOT CHOOSE TO NARRATE THEIR OWN AUDIOBOOK?

Becky: Well, that’s an amazing idea. And so in addition to being maybe too busy to narrate your own audiobook, Tina, what are some other reasons an author may not choose to narrate their own audiobook?

Tina: Well, not every expert has, first of all, a great voice. Not every expert has the desire to do it. That has a lot to do with it, because it feels like a slog behind the microphone. Because narrating an audiobook is no joke. It takes time. It takes discipline. We fully produce and direct our authors through the process. We remote into their home offices, make sure that we get great sound quality, all kinds of great stuff to support them. But ultimately, if you aren’t feeling it, you’re not going to have a good audiobook. And so not everybody is a verbal communicator. They might be really strong in writing, but not really enjoy a lot of speaking, particularly in long form narration like an audiobook requires. So there’s a really important cocktail of desire, skill, experience, and time that go into whether we determine it’s a best path forward for an author to have their own voice on the book, versus a professional narrator on the book. And not for nothing, but some authors may actually have either physical or other issues happening, that it’s not a good fit for them, depending on what they have going on in their lives or their abilities.

WHEN IS THE BEST TIME FOR AN AUTHOR TO RELEASE THEIR AUDIOBOOK?

Becky: That’s really helpful. So when do you find is the best time for an author to release their audiobook?

Tina: We tend to have authors come to us in one of two areas, or one or two timeframes, I should say. One is that they’re getting ready to launch a new book. And if it’s an author narrated book and they’re planning on doing preorders for their book, there are some technical caveats to when you can actually get your audiobook launched, particularly on Audible. Audible is the 500 pound gorilla in the room when it comes to audiobook distribution. They do own about 60% of the market share in audiobook sales. So not being on Audible is going to be a problem for you if you’re not there. So they have some rules about when you can get your audiobook out. But generally we can get pretty close, with an author narrated audiobook, to your launch date. And that’s kind of one scenario, you’re launching a new book and you end up putting the audiobook out, either at the same time as the other versions of it, or it’s a staggered launch anytime generally, within the first six months of the launch, there’s a lot of advantages to doing it that way, because it extends the life of the launch and you can get the same audience excited about a new format, or reach people that you haven’t reached before. So it’s a nice marketing technique to stagger your audiobook launch after the hardcover or ebook versions of the book that might come out first. 

The other version of audiobook launches comes into play when we have a book that could use a second life. Many authors come to us and they say, “I wish I could relaunch my book, knowing what I know now.” They may have had a difficult relationship with their original publisher, or they didn’t have the chops that they have now in marketing. So an audiobook is a way to give your book a second chance, and basically have a second launch, and that’s really valuable as well. Some folks even want to do a second edition of their book or add new material to it, so that comes into play as well.

Becky: That’s all really great advice and aligns to what I’ve coached authors to do. So I’m glad that we’re on the same page. It’s encouraging to hear. 

WHAT DOES THE PROCESS LOOK LIKE?

Becky: Tina, I’d love for you to explain to our listeners about the steps that you take, as you coach authors through this process. Obviously, you mentioned that it’s done for you. So you’re creating the audiobook for and with them. Tell me about those steps and about the timelines, so that if our listeners are considering investing in an audiobook, they know what to expect.

Tina: Yeah, let me talk about timelines first. So generally, we’re looking at about 90 days in either case, whether it’s author narrated, or professionally narrated. Some of this highly depends on the availability of the author, certainly in the case of the author narrated, but also in the case of professionally narrated, because there are key times that the author is needed to make choices. So for example, in the professionally narrated case, we have an audition process that is very robust, and we get about 150 auditions, per book, on average. We curate all of those auditions, first for sound and goodness of fit, and also the energy. Can we actually believe that this narrator is delivering this material? All of that gets done on the first round.

The second round is professional vetting. Can they meet the timeline? Can they meet the budget? How are they to work with? So we do all of that, before we present our authors with a list. Generally, we have about eight to twelve choices of our top picks, with their auditions in our notes on why we think they’re great. But we need the author to have a little time to listen through those things, and make a choice. So depending on how busy the author is, we can throw timelines off based on how much time they take, or God forbid, if they decide to make decisions by committee, which could happen. But the author is one of the couple of key things that we do that are important, because the author has creative choices, we’re not taking over the process like a traditional publisher would. We also don’t take any rights or royalties. So we keep our authors involved in the creative process, one way or another. 

So in the case of professional narration, once we have a narrator selected, and we’ve produced kind of the first 15 minutes or so with the book, and everybody’s on board with the tone and the pacing, the characterization that the narrator is using, the process goes quite quickly. And we, of course, handle all of this, not just the narration and the direction, but the proofing, the editing, the mastering, and after the author has had a chance to sign off on everything and it’s all good to go, it goes into a quality control process. Quality control on Audible can take up to 30 business days, so that’s all part of that 90 day period that I’m talking about. 

Similarly, on the author narrated side of things, I mentioned before we do sound checks, we do all of that. And then it’s a matter of scheduling the recording times, and you cannot bang out an audio book in a day. Most professional narrators don’t record for longer than two to three hours a day. So a non professional—like even a professional speaker—very, very rarely do we run into authors who can narrate for longer than two hours at a time. More likely it’s 90 minutes without losing gas, without their energy dropping into their feet, and that’s okay. But you do have to account for that in the schedule.

WHAT IS THE AVERAGE LENGTH OF AN AUDIOBOOK?

Becky: What would be the average length of an audiobook, in this nonfiction kind of thought leadership experts space?

Tina: A lot of our books are right around the 30,000 to 50,000 word mark. When you get into really short books, 20,000 words or less, they don’t tend to do as well in sales for audiobooks. There are some exceptions, of course, simply because audiobooks are generally sold on a membership basis. So when you are an audiobook member of Audible, and you have a credit that you can use on an audiobook that is an hour and a half or two hours long, versus eight or 10 hours long, the perceived value is higher on the longer book. Now, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t do an audiobook version of a shorter book, but we might tweak the distribution strategy, and talk with you further about how that audio is going to be used to the best advantage.

Becky: Wow, I am learning so much today! I am sure our listeners are as well. 

WHAT’S THE RANGE OF INVESTMENT THAT AN AUTHOR SHOULD EXPECT IF THEY WANT TO CREATE AN AUDIOBOOK? 

Becky: So my final question as it relates to audiobooks, Tina, is what’s the range of investment that an author should expect if they want to create an audiobook with the type of support that your organization provides?

Tina: Sure, absolutely. I think that for most books, on average, we look at somewhere in the $3,000 to $5,000 range. Sometimes less for shorter books. Sometimes more if somebody wants multiple narrators and they want music added. We’ve had a few specialty books that we’ve done that have even incorporated the audio from video clips and things like that, that have happened from major events, and whatnot. The average kind of cost of an audiobook with everything included, including the distribution, is definitely going to be in that three to five range.

Becky: I appreciate that transparency, because I think it really sets people up to consider whether this is an investment that they’re prepared to make. 

ACTION STEPS

Becky: So, Tina, our listeners are used to us always giving them action steps at the end of every podcast, because this is the book marketing action podcast. I know you have a couple of action steps that you’d like people to take today. 

Tina: Oh, yeah, for sure.

  1. Read your book out loud. The first thing is, have you ever read your book out loud? Take a couple of chapters of your book and just try reading it out loud. See how it feels. See how you like the material. Most of our authors, when they read their book out loud, which we have them do before they step into any kind of recording situation, they have a series of reactions to their own work. We all do. You also have a series of reactions to the sound of your own voice, and that’s okay too. But try it on, try it out and see what that’s like for you. If you’re in the process of writing a book, definitely read the book out loud before you finalize your editing, you will find all kinds of things there to make the book more narrative, maybe to shorten up sentences a little bit. And you’ll even catch errors that you didn’t catch when you were just doing it visually. So that’s really the first thing go read your book out loud. 
  2. Download the step-by-step guide. The second thing is, is that a lot of the things that I talked about today, we’ve put into a guide. And we also have frequently asked questions and all kinds of good information, best practices, and a full kind of step-by-step guide on how to get your audiobook done. And you can find that at Launchyouraudiobook.com.

RESOURCES

  • Learn more about Tina Dietz’s company, Twin Flames Studios, here. 
  • If you want to learn more about how successful authors leverage their books, download Tina’s free guide here. 
  • Connect with Tina on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. 
  • Connect with Twin Flames Studios on LinkedIn and YouTube. 

If you found value in today’s episode, we hope you’ll take a moment to share it with someone else who might benefit from it. If you have any questions or topics you’d like us to cover, please email Becky Robinson here.

Click here for our free resources. 

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review. 

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Executive & Corporate Podcasting Trends & Applications – Tina Dietz

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

Presentation for PodFest Global 2020 

Podcasting Trends & Applications - Tina Dietz

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:

  1. Through full-service podcasting, getting things going, very high touch, kind of white glove, concierge service, podcasting, and ongoing production
  2. 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
  3. 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?

How to Start a Podcast for Your New Brand

Written by Robin Thompson on . Posted in Blog, Marketing, Podcasting.

So you started a new business. Now what? In today’s highly competitive world, it’s important to find a way for your brand to stand out. And starting a podcast might be just what you need to get your brand ahead of the curve.

Podcasting is an inexpensive yet highly effective marketing tool that can help promote your brand. 24 percent of Americans listen to podcasts every month, with an average person listening to five different podcasts a week. One reason why podcasting is such a powerful medium is because it allows you to connect on a more personal level with your audience. Brands that use podcasts allow them to speak conversationally to their potential customers in a comfortable, trusting environment. Below we will look at how business owners can start a podcast to promote their new brand.

Test the waters with guesting opportunities

One of the best ways to introduce your brand to a new market is through being an interview guest. It’s a good way to test out the waters and see how audiences respond to your business. An audience’s initial response can help you craft a concept and format that works. Although you can’t just become a guest for any podcast, it’s important to find a show whose subject is appropriate for your brand. If you are a food-related business, you may consider educational shows that look at food trends. If you are a company focused on health and personal care, you might want to look for a podcast focused on helping people improve their wellbeing.

Come up with a name, concept and format

The first step to starting a podcast for your business is finding a niche. This will not be difficult as it should be something related to your brand. However, you must keep in mind that the topic should be broad enough that you can explore different aspects of it, yet narrow enough that you are able to attract an audience within that specific interest. For example, the podcast show “.future” by Microsoft is exploring how the future may unfold based on how our individual lives are today. The show looks at aspects of technology, health and data that influence the future we are moving toward. This fits Microsoft’s branding quite well since the company has always been looking at how to shape the future of society through their products.

Once you have come up with a topic, you can zero in on other details of the podcast such as the name of the show. It should be something catchy, short yet also descriptive. You will also need to decide on the format, which includes the length, structure and how often you will be publishing. The structure, such as solo shows, co-hosted shows or interview shows, will also need to be carefully decided on depending on what best allows your brand’s content to shine.

Make sure the business side of your brand is in order

You also need to ensure that the business aspect of your brand is in order before you begin marketing through podcast shows. This is especially important for startups and small businesses who have limited resources and manpower. It goes without saying that you should fine tune a strategy in marketing your primary product or service. You must also check that you have the right business structure that allows you to protect yourself. Starting a podcast opens you up to many potential liability issues that could shut down both the podcast and your brand. And if you are, like many starting business owners, a sole proprietorship, be aware that this business structure doesn’t protect you should your brand fail or you run into legal issues. Instead consider upgrading to a new structure. An LLC is a US business structure where the owners aren’t personally liable for the company’s debt and liabilities. Business structures such as these give you the freedom to invest in opportunities to grow your brand without the fear of anyone going after your personal assets. For online businesses, you must also make sure that your online platforms are in order and that the user experience is polished. This is because the idea is for customers to head to your website after listening to your podcasts.

If you are thinking about starting a podcast for your brand we hope these tips have helped.

Online Lead Generation for Non-Salesy People

Written by Robin Thompson on . 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

Online Lead Generation - Tina Dietz

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!

Online Lead Generation - Tina Dietz - Lisa Pezik

Lisa Pezik

Online Lead Generation - Tina Dietz - Eric 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 . 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.)

Find Your Book - Tina Dietz - Alyssa Berthiaume

“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. 

Find Your Book - Tina Dietz - Alyssa Berthiaume

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

How to Enchant Your Skeptical Audience and Bring Them Back for MORE

Written by Robin Thompson on . Posted in Audiobook Marketing, Blog, Business Development, Leadership, Marketing, Podcasting, Sales, Vocal Leadership.

Tina Dietz talks to Andrea Enright about the importance of not just engaging, but enchanting, your audience.(Facebook Live, August 11, 2020)

How to enchant your skeptical audience - Tina Dietz

Tina Dietz talks to Andrea Enright about the importance of not just engaging, but enchanting, your audience. They discuss:

  • How “engagement” has become a social media buzzword
  • How it’s vital to make people understand what you provide, not just what you do
  • The importance of being authentic
  • Tips for improving your profile and presence on LinkedIn
  • The value of stories for creating enchantment—but avoiding the “Once upon a time” trope!

Listen below:

Hey everybody!

Since I'm posting this publicly, I'll introduce myself really quickly. And then of course, my beautiful friend and colleague here.

So those of you don't know me, I'm Tina Dietz, I'm the owner and CEO of Twin Flames Studios. I have been building businesses for many decades internationally, but what me and my company do best is unleash the voices of trusted brands and companies, executives, and leaders worldwide. We do that primarily through audiobooks, podcasting, and vocal leadership.

I've decided to go ahead and talk with some of my colleagues live—we have all these conversations that happen in the background, I know all these amazing human beings who are out doing incredible work in the world and I thought, “Well, you know what, why not share some of this awesome with the world?”

This is Andrea Enright from The Boot Factor—and I'll tell you more about her in just a second—but Andrea and I had gotten to talking about the proliferation, the outrageous number of people claiming to be LinkedIn experts that is happening lately. And all the mistakes that people make in their branding and their messaging, and how tired we are of certain conversations in the industries that we work in with consulting and coaching and service industry professionals.

We work a lot with the financial industries, and with high end consultants, with healthcare organizations—pharmaceutical—and training organizations. So you know, we have all these inside conversations; now we're bringing it back out to you and today what we're talking about primarily is the conversation around engagement: “Well you have to create an engagement on social media!”

Are you tired of that? I'm tired of this.

Buzzword, buzzword, buzzword!

It's such a buzzword right?

Let me tell you more about Andrea before we get into this. So Andrea, has been an entrepreneur since 2002. And much like myself, she has a checkered past…

Well, they's fun questions to come. That’s what we call a hook!

Love it!

But she's been working, beautifully, with coaches, with consultants, a lot of folks coming out of the corporate world becoming consultants, and helping them to clarify their message—”Please god, clarify your message”—and get your message out there, in these badass elevator pitches, making sure that your LinkedIn profile is, I'm gonna use a really horrible term, “on fleek.” 

But making sure that it is beautiful and pristine and represents exactly who you are. We'll talk a little bit more about how that gets done. Because that is an art and a science. And she's just a really cool person to hang out with. I love her because she's no BS. That's what we're mostly talking about here.

So, thank you for joining me here today. We were having some technical issues with Facebook Live, so thanks for hanging with me through that.

Thanks, Tina!

Yeah. Sorry, do you want me to—should I talk about—

No! Talk. Absolutely! Go ahead. I'd love to have you go and dive in. I'm curious, what did I miss?

I mean… I really work with coaches and executives, and really helping people get brave with their brand, basically. When you get brave, then you get to something called, what I'm starting to call, “Leads In,” which is getting Lead Gen without freaking out, you know?

Yes!

Without the panic! So, if you can get to your authentic self, and you can get brave, and you can show up and get vulnerable and show just a little bit of lack of perfection because nobody wants to see that—we're totally bored with it. We're not interested in a long list of achievements.

And I think… Here, how about this? This is really what it sums up—most LinkedIn profiles start out with, like, “I'm not sure how to tell you this, but I'm kind of a big deal.” Right?

Yeah, actually, mine does. I know mine’s up for an evaluation. That's one of the reasons you and I have been talking And I haven't updated it yet. Because I'm intending to have your badassery all over it! So, that was the way it got done.

And it's the same way with webinars and things like that, you know? Speaking from my own experience: I've had to talk to a number of clients in the vocal leadership side of things to please, please, please tell a human story. Don't spend twenty minutes talking about your long list of how perfect your life is before you actually teach anything or share anything or give people any value about why they're there.

Right! To give people credit—to not totally throw everyone under the bus—LinkedIn was set up originally as like this resume place, right? Like this job seeking place. So people are like, “Oh my gosh, I better put everything that's amazing about me in a long boring list, like a play-by-play timeline of your life.” And guess what? Nobody cares!

Yep.

Just please summarize for me, because I'm not getting past the third line.

Yeah, and that's it. Our attention spans are like that of a gnat, pretty much, online these days. And, well, here's what here's one of my other favorites: I'm sorry, guys. We're not trying to totally throw you on the bus here. If you have any of these things, it's okay. We're all human. It's a good time. But you know, how about how about this? This pose!

It's true! I think people get really self conscious about “How am I supposed to look?” It can be okay. If you're looking authentic, if your teeth are showing, if you're smiling, if your face is taking 60% of the frame.

Yes—please.

Then you're good. I don't care what you're doing. But yeah, there is a pose—a perfection about it. And people are just not interested in that. And now LinkedIn is going from like resume to resource, like, “How can you be of value?”

Yes! From resume to resource! Let's talk about that. We've been doing some different things on LinkedIn this year and really doubling down on using LinkedIn.

We've been using LinkedIn a lot in the background and now it's kind of having a resurgence. I think for a long time, LinkedIn was a bit of the redheaded stepchild of the social media world, and now it's having a resurgence because so many more companies—we're business to business companies, and us marketing high-end services on Facebook does not work. Same with Twitter. Forget it.

Yes!

It's noise. It's just noise. So we've been having a lot of a tremendous engagement—hopefully enchantment, we shall see—with folks. And getting tremendous reach on our post, sometimes up to 65, 70,000 people seeing our posts! But it takes a lot of time to craft these messages, and get things out there. Fortunately, I have a fabulous team and they're really helping to repurpose content, get things out there every day on a regular basis.

But you know, where do you think people should start? Do you start with the content? Do you start with your profile? Chicken/egg.

I want to talk about the posting because I think there's a big shift that needs to happen with the posting. But the profile is really where you start. That's where you should start with anything. If you are a high-end coach, executive turn consultant, speaker, author—people are googling you, they're finding you, please start with your profile, and turn that into a resource instead of a resume.

So, how can you give a soft sell and create Thought Leadership, and give them something that they can use in their meeting today at 3 o'clock—and this is amazing! This makes them think, “Oh, wow! She knows what she's talking about,” and “Oh, wow! I'm going to call her anyway.” They're not going to go implement your shit with this “three tips” that you give them. If they're serious, they're gonna call you. So this is really just—it's giving. It's giving stuff away and being okay with that. It's serving instead of selling.

Serving instead of selling. That really is the key, and I think that it's also important if that feels like a foreign concept for people. Because every so often, most of the people that we work with are heavily service-oriented, heavily relationship-oriented. They're used to doing a lot of business what we would call “belly-to-belly.” But I think a lot of folks have a difficulty translating that to online, particularly our podcasting clients.

We work with a lot of folks who are very high touch, very white glove, wealth managers and consultants, who really spend a lot of time cultivating relationships with their clients. So when you go into a social media situation, it feels sometimes to them—not only like the Wild West, but like a foreign entity, like a different language they have to speak.

We talk about being vulnerable. We talk about being authentic. But for somebody who's having these long conversations with people, how does that translate?

This has been a perfect segway because of Zoom, because of having to switch to Zoom. So, people are like “I meet my clients face to face, I can't give them this custom thing. How do I do this?” And really, I think it used to be building a LinkedIn profile to get people to know, like, and trust you—

Yes, classic.

—and that was, like Dale Carnegie. It's like, Okay, “How can I get get those people in,” right? But now it has to be these three things, I believe, these three pillars. Mine are: Translate, Educate, and Enchant.

So, we Translate that message; and the biggest way we do that is, because we're not face to face with them and we can't see, we can't go off their cues—we are not in real time—we have to Translate that message, and we have to think, “How can I think of it in terms of how they're thinking about it.” Not “how I'm thinking about selling it,” because nobody wants to be sold to. “How can I think about it in terms of them receiving it?”

What is their pain? What's keeping them up at night? What is the wound that they have that they can that they cannot get past? What is hurting? And what will then make them think of that message in a translated way. So, Translate is really that first one. 

Yeah, Translate very, very important there.

And here's the other thing. You mentioned something we talk about a lot in marketing, on the marketing side of things, which is pain points. I, personally, am pretty uncomfortable with the terminology of that, and a lot of my clients are as well. So, I want to translate that piece as well. Because classically, we do talk about pain points and identifying their pain or their wounds, and things like that. I want to counteroffer something here and say, you know, it might not be something that keeps people up at night, but what's the itch they can't seem to scratch? Or what do they have questions about? What are they curious about?

It really is all about putting yourself in the other person's shoes. My clients are doing well. They're doing well for themselves. They're really out there helping other people. But if I were to talk with them and say, “You have to have a podcast or everything's going to hell,” that's never going to happen.

Okay, that is a great point, and I think pain points can matter. Two things come to mind. One is that I recently redefined for me the definition of… redefined “brave,” because “brave” used to be like, being scared and doing it anyway. Guess what? That's really not good advice for a teenager who's just about to enter—

Yeah, it's a little bit psychopathic on occasion.

Right! Like “Oh, you're afraid, but keep going!” So instead, I think it's this inner knowing or this inner voice, and I think a lot of my clients’ pain—it hurts not that bad, but they know that something's off. They know they haven't tended to something, they know there's a voice that's—that they're hearing these whispers. So, I think when you have that inner knowing, that also moves you into that brave position, and into that position where you're like, “Look, I've got a change, I've got to change something. I have to go that extra step.”

That makes total sense. I had a really important turning point in my life a couple of years ago, where I realized that I had this background mantra of “I'm fine; it'll be fine. I'm fine; it'll be fine.” That's a really good thing if you're just looking to evaluate something and truly let it go, but I realized that I had spent a lot of my life talking myself into things being fine when they weren't fine.

Right. Right.

And so, I think it's important, if you are listening to this right now, if you're watching this right now, and you hear yourself trying to talk yourself into something that “It'll be fine. It'll work out.” That is a red flag.

It's a great point, and I think that leads me to this “fear abundance.” When I'm talking to people, when I'm helping them establish their brand, and they're wanting to sell—I'm like “I'm not going to outlaw it, but let's try not to wrangle our clients, or potential clients, into a position of fear.” Like, “Oh, my God, if we don't do this, things are going to be over.”

Yes.

You don't want to instill that kind of fear. I really want to get them out of the trance of scarcity and toward a mindset of abundance, right? There is more; there can be more. You can find more. And so, I think that's important as well.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

So what are some of the other things that you tend to see—and we'll stick with LinkedIn for right now because it's a good focal point for us to look at—especially if we're considering that how you do one thing is how you do everything. It is a place where we're focusing on showcasing ourselves as well as our businesses: Who are you, as an individual, as a leader, as a CEO, as a consultant.

But truly, we're not looking at business pages, or company pages, the same way we tend to look at individual profiles. So what are you seeing that people are missing the mark on this?

A couple things. One is they're thinking of themselves very firmly attached to the job that they currently have. When you do that, and then that job ends, and then your life will shift. So what we have to do on LinkedIn—and with a personal brand—is really talk about yourself, and brand yourself, in a way that is connected but independent of your job, right? So then when you're moving on, when you're moving up, when you're moving over, those skills are much more easily translated.

I see people describing what they do in their job instead of what they do around their job, and for the company. So it's task oriented instead of outcome oriented. I think I’m definitely seeing that as a mistake.

That's a really important focal point, and I want to build onto what you're saying. On the podcasting side of things, we often work with folks who are emerging—in their thought leadership, in their vocal leadership, in their messaging—and we see the same thing: I have a client right now, actually, who is still so firmly ensconced in the corporate world, does a great job there, has been there for 15 years, but he has a whole other company that he's been developing on the side.

So, the dance he has to dance is in speaking broadly about who he is, what he stands for, what his values are, and—rather than a lot of how to, or any kind of pitching or things like that—and that's a that's a real mindset shift.

It really is. I've seen people do that though—you really can go from, “Well, what am I really bringing to the table on the board position I have, in my company, in my side business? Why am I valued?” Then going from there, we see that people are putting their positions. They're just treating it as a resume. Instead of a headline at the top, I see a position. It really, in my opinion, should be a headline. It should be who you help, what you actually give. Not advice; you give peace of mind. Not a massage; you give out relaxation.

Translate what you do into what people are really getting, and try to lead with that. Positions mean less than they ever have, because they hand out positions because they can't pay you more sometimes. Isn't that true? I mean, your executive title does matter, but that doesn't really tell me how you're any different from the other VP. So you can have your position, but then I want to know more. I want to really know the hard skill and the soft skill of what you're bringing to the table.

And I want to give a shout out. A lot of what I've learned is from my LinkedIn coach Ellen McLemore. She's amazing. She really has helped shift my mindset on LinkedIn, and that's been that's been huge. It is really a mindset shift.

You know, one of the things that just occurred to me is the concept of elevator pitches. Which is something you work a lot with as well?

Yeah!

How does that interact with something like LinkedIn, or does it at all?

I think it really does. You have to remember that it's all about context, so when I'm sitting next to someone on a plane (in my non-COVID life), I need to have an elevator pitch that is a hook, and it's just enough for someone to turn their head and say, “Tell me more.” Or if I’m on a networking event, or if I'm a Zoom call.

But on a LinkedIn page, it's much different. We've got the scroll, we've got someone clicking, we've got someone distracted by their other tabs, and so we have to go in these little bits—and they're going to scan them. I do think the elevator pitch absolutely should be woven into the LinkedIn profile, but I would try to squeeze in some of those words I usually use into your headline. That's where I put them first, because that once you get into your “About” section it's a much different formula.

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. So then coming back to our original topic of this idea of going from Engagement to Enchantment, what do you think are the differences between the two? We've seen a lot of engagement on things, but whether somebody leaves “enchanted” or not—

Yeah!

—Customers or clients certainly do, but what about interactions out in the world on a daily basis?

There's a few things we can do, to do this. Engagement is like, “Hey, I'm paying attention,” which is what we want everyone to do. To me it's like a bare minimum of having a conversation. “Is someone paying attention to me? Okay, I’ll keep talking,” which to be honest, I’m not super comfortable doing. If they're just gonna stand there, and keep talking just because, okay, I got their attention—I want more, and so it's just not enough.

To really create what I call “Enchantment,” we are going to take them by the hand and lead them on a journey. We are going to look them directly in the eye and create an intimate conversation. We are going to make them feel as though we are talking directly to them. We do that by getting human: by using human phrases, by really resonating with not just their head, but also their heart—

Yeah!

—and getting vulnerable. Most people are. Why this is hard, is, it’s scary to be vulnerable—people are a little afraid to put themselves out there, and they're also very afraid to be specific—to really talk to that one target audience person that you want to reach.

Right! That idea of “Well, if I niche down, I might miss someone or something.” That's another indication that your mindset may be a little less than abundant, perhaps, and that's okay. We all do this. Like we hit these walls, we hit these ceilings of everything that we do.I think this is also a really good place to remind people that you don't constantly have to be telling a deeply intimate personal story—you can just tell a story. This is the storytelling portion of things. It's not “Once upon a time…” necessarily, but this whole idea of creating intimacy, creating connection, and creating authentic, heart centered, alignment with another human being. That is, we connect with these little stories. We're all wired for stories.

I would say even that storytelling’s become such a buzzword. The problem is that not everybody's good at telling a story, and that's okay. Not everyone's a storyteller, and so one trick is to remember what you said—it doesn't have to be vulnerable.For example, in my profile, I used to say something like, “There's nothing I love more than mining you for your magic and building you a great brand.” And then I say, “Except maybe chips and salsa, but otherwise you’re number one!” It just gets a giggle, right? It's sharing something about me that's not vulnerable or secret or anything, I just like chips and salsa!

But it makes me like a human instead of a company, and people just they just respond to that!

Right, exactly. Yeah. as well. Another point in your bio, you say, you know, you speak to audiences—speak and sometimes swear, in front of audiences—I do the same thing. The little bit of human internal conversation with these little moments that create connection and create this sense of “Oh, I know you.”

Right! Like, “Oh, I know you! You're like my neighbor” or “I know you! You're like my daughter.” Like there's a resonance there. I think you really hit it too with this. There is that storytelling, but it doesn't have to be much—not “I've got to tell this long story.”

No, no. I was just working with this absolutely brilliant chiropractor. He's invented this incredible machine to help people with low back pain. He's an older gentleman, credentials out the yin-yang, and he's about to be on his first podcast.

But the question that always gets asked in the beginning of a podcast—notice I didn't ask it—is, “Tell me a little bit about yourself. Tell me what brought you to this place.” Or “Tell me about your journey?” I hate that question.

It's a lazy question on the part of the host. Sorry guys, it is, and it is boring to the audience because everyone answers it the same way. They always answer it, “Once upon a time… Well, I lived in a small town, and I grew up, and I got this degree, and I started in this job, and…” Once upon a time stories—we are programmed to go to sleep when we hear “Once upon a time!”

That's a good point!

So all we did was have him say the main thing that he spent his whole life doing: “What's the main thing that you spend your time doing? What's the main thing—the outcome they reach?” He said, “I spent my entire career reducing people's pain and suffering without drugs or surgery, and it was actually back when I was in high school as a 90-pound weakling on a football team.”

People are like, “What?” It's a 180 to tell this beautiful little story. Now he's just a dude, you're hanging out with coffee, who's telling you a story. By the end of that very short story I might add—of how he kind of discovered the possibility of chiropractic through high school injury—everyone's like, “I love you!”

It is true! The thing is you have to be aware enough. A great exercise to get you to this is just asking yourself five or ten questions that I include in my Boot Factor brain questionnaires, like, “What do you think about work? What do you believe about humans?” Just those two, right like, something's come up, right?

You can journal on that for a month.

Right! They're like writing prompts. You just have to answer those, rather than “Where was I born?”

“What do you do really well, what's most important to you?” And I like to ask little silly things like, “What's on your nightstand? What's your favorite food? What could you not live without—not your phone!” It gets into people's habits, so that's really about digging and trying to show up in just this little way on your profile.

Let's get some people hooked up here with connecting with us further. So the best place, Andrea, for everyone to reach you is at TheBootFactor.com; is that where we want people to go and check things out?

That's right! You can go there, sign up with my scheduler—it's right on the front page. If you go there and mention the Facebook Live, you'll get a 20-minute, free LinkedIn lowdown session with me. And I'm telling you, we're gonna have fun!

Oh, I've done it with you. It's very enlightening.

Yeah! I don't do anything without like having a little bit a little bit of moxie, a little bit of craziness. And you really will get some quick answers that you can check off.

Kickass! So go to The Boot Factor, literally: Go to TheBootFactor.com, schedule a 20-minute LinkedIn conversation—it really is enlightening. I've done this with Andrea and she really will kick your ass in the most beautiful and loving way. And you need that—I know you know you need that.And if you want to connect further with me and with Twin Flames Studios go to TwinFlamesStudios.com and check out what we do there. Check out our audio library of podcasts and audiobooks. Also feel free to reach out on our contact page anytime. You can find us all over the social media networks—”the internets,” as it were—under our name, because we have done the work and we show up on Google.So there it is. So hey, Andrea, thanks for joining me from… Denver today?

Yeah, Denver.

Thanks for joining me from the mountains. I am in the flat, flat land of Florida, as we have this cross continental conversation in the time of COVID. Thanks everyone for joining us!

Got questions? Leave a comment and we'll talk to y'all soon.

Yeah!

Bye!

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