One of the most important things about building a podcast from scratch is ensuring that you’re putting out the right kind of content: the kind of content that brings people in. Whether it’s by using the right hashtags or the right search terms, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done in that regard, otherwise, people won’t really find you and listen. Jason Wrobel and Whitney Lauritsen are the co-founders of Wellevatr. They join Michael Silvers to discuss the all-important social aspect of building a podcast. Social media is a fantastic tool for determining what kind of content you could be creating, so let Michael, Jason, and Whitney help you figure out how to use it for your podcast.
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Listen to the podcast here
Setting Up The Podcast With Jason Wrobel And Whitney Lauritsen
I’m very excited to have Jason and Whitney on. For those of you reading, it’s Jason and Whitney and what they’ve gotten there, the big land of podcasting and other biggest podcasters on the planet and you want to know who they are. They have their own information and their own site. Without any further ado, I’m going to turn this over to Jason and Whitney. You two are awesome as usual. We’re going to continue this part two. I can tell both of you also do a little follow-up on TikTok. A lot of people have been asking me about that. I’m not so much how to use it, but where to go with it and lots of questions that come up.
Good to be with you again. Whitney and I have been doing a lot with the podcast, where we’re closing in on a lot of episodes and continue to get production every week. That’s been a tremendous experience for us to build that momentum and also get a lot of interest regarding sponsorships and brand opportunities. We’ll touch on that a little bit. Whitney is the TikTok mistress. For those of you who had questions, I’m sure Whitney can grab the baton on the TikTok front. I also want to talk a little bit about other ways to reach people amidst a growing technological backlash against social media. There’s a lot of information coming out and we’re immersing ourselves in mindfulness around social media and digital technology. The question is as your audience or your followers perhaps don’t spend as much time on social media or their smartphones. What are ways that you can reach them? I want to touch on the newsletter growth and other platforms besides social media where you can reach a dedicated audience. Where should we get started with? What subjects should we dive into first?
I’m here to support people with any questions they have about social media. I will answer whatever you want to speak about beyond what Jason mentioned.
The first thing in terms of building a podcast is something we’ve been learning a lot of things. One of the biggest things was we were at an event in San Francisco. It was the Fancy Food Show up about food, nutrition, product and tech innovations in the food space. I had the great pleasure of speaking to a gentleman who was part of a brand research firm in Chicago. In all of the brands that he works with, and these are big players in the food space, he said, “The number one thing that they were interested in was garnering more impressions and sponsorship through a podcast.” That was a great confirmation for what we’re doing in terms of big brands, being more aware of the power of podcasting especially when they’re aligning their values and their brand mission with subject matter and podcasts that are directly in alignment with the people they’re trying to reach. That’s been something we’ve been hardcore focusing on. We’re in talks with one particular brand that may come on as a title sponsor. We’re ever-present in how do we continue to strengthen our brand values? How do we get in touch with the clarity of our message to not only give our audience and our followers the most value and also to make sure we’re in alignment with the right sponsorship we want to attract?
Whether or not all of you have started a podcast yet or are thinking about starting a podcast, number one, making sure that whatever subject matter you’re speaking about and focusing on is piggybacking on and building what your brand values and your mission already is. Enhancing that or showcasing it in a different way, but also packaging it and presenting it in a way that you can monetize it. Much like anything else, our YouTube videos, our social media, our newsletter, we want to make sure that whatever we’re birthing into the world is part of our business plan. It’s fun doing our podcast. It’s exciting to watch it grow and explode the way it has. We’re also very mindful of packaging it in a way where we can monetize it in multiple ways. It’s making sure that you frame around that and treating your podcast much like you would treat any other branch of your business.
Big brands are now becoming more aware of the power of podcasting. Click To TweetWe ran a program about being more consistent and certainly learned a lot through that. We’ve been focused a lot on our newsletter so we also can provide tips on that. We have a lot of different things. We have been in this online world and it’s been a fascinating journey and there’s so much to share. We’d love to hear from you about what you’re most interested in.
The one thing that we’re also interested in is the importance of optimizing the copy on your website and any of your online materials for voice search because voice search is something that people are getting deep into. How many of you use Alexa, Siri or any of the other voice activations, whether it’s your mobile assistant at home or on your phone? Even the new laptop has Siri built-in if you want to activate it. One of the important things, whether it’s your podcast show notes, it’s your metadata on your website, it’s your page titles or more importantly, keywords in your blog posts. There’s no sign of this trend decreasing. People are relying on voice search. If they’re saying, “Siri, find me natural remedies on depression.” “Siri, find me the top stocks to invest in the tech space.” Whatever particular content you are creating for your brand, you want to make sure that it is simple enough, clear enough and specific enough and safe if you have a locally-focused business. This is huge for local businesses.
If you have something where you’re offering a service or product, there’s a geographic specificity to it. People are also using voice search in that way where they’re saying, “Siri, find me the best yoga therapy teacher in Los Angeles.” You want to make sure in that example that you are being very geo-specific in your copy, keywords, and your metadata on your website and your blog because that way, if someone’s looking for you and you’re a yoga therapist in Metropolitan Los Angeles, you come off right in search and she’ll say, “We found five teachers in the local area.” The importance of your copy, the specificity and the simplicity of it is becoming ever more important because people aren’t asking complicated questions in their voice search. They’re asking extremely simple questions. It behooves you to have specific simple answers so that you’re more findable in search results. The other thing I want to talk about is making sure that your copy is exacting and specific. If you have a local service or product, making sure that that is interwoven in a very direct way.
I have a question because when it comes to people developing websites or doing their podcasts, the beginning of the question always becomes, “Can I have my YouTube channel and can I podcast?” Here’s the one I always hear, “Do I have to type a lot of copy? Can I transcript everything? Do I have to hire somebody?”
In the beginning, it’s very important for someone to write their own copy because you find your voice that way. One thing I’ve found in my copy, my social media captions and my newsletters especially, and I know Whitney does too, we have very specific styles of how we write. For instance, whenever I write my books, my blog posts or my newsletters, I am doing it in a very conversational tone the way that I would speak normally. I use some slang and aphorisms that I would use in my regular speech, in my language as if we were speaking come together. There’s an imprint of people knowing that it’s me writing the copy. Could you hire a copywriter or could you farm out that specific duty? Yes, but that person would have to understand your nuances of how you speak the copy you use, the way you use language. In the beginning, if you farm that out from the get-go, you’re never establishing the tone, the cadence, and the voice that people will identify with you as you. Once that’s established, you could farm that out and train someone to write like you. It’s critical, it’s more work and no one wants to hear that. In establishing the equity of your brand, the tone and the voice doing it yourself, especially in the beginning, is critical.
Whitney, any follow-up on that?
I want to dive into some of the questions here. Anthony had asked, “How do you optimize for voice search?” Let us know if you feel Jason gave you some good tips there and if there’s any other follow-up to that. Kim asked, “Just started into this, what equipment do I need?” If it isn’t about podcasting or copywriting, let us know. You can get started as long as you have a computer with a USB port. If not, for instance, Jason and I both have newer Apple computers that no longer have the actual USB ports. We use two of these to do our podcasting because it allows us to have four USB ports. One of these is attached to my webcam and then I have one of my mics. Jason and I, in total, have four different mics. I have a Blue Yeti. I’ve been using this for years. It’s very popular. It’s great. It has very crisp audio. It does have some drawbacks. It will pick up a lot of noise. You might hear the animals walking around behind me or the door outside. We also have three Audio-Technica mics. We have a list of everything that we’ve used for a podcast on our website in a blog post. You can go to our website, Wellevatr.com. It has all these things I’m talking about because it can be a lot of information.
The basics are getting a microphone that sounds good to you. Everybody has their little different ideas of what sounds good. I wouldn’t say that there’s one perfect microphone. The Yeti has been popular for some people on YouTube, for example. They use it a lot and some podcasters use it. Audio Technica is a very popular brand and we were sent those mics to use by Podetize who’s a company that we work with Michael. We have two of one model of the Audio-Technica and then we have one Audio Technica that Jason’s had for a long time. We use that as our guest mic. That way, everything is Audio Technica and the Blue Yeti I use for my personal work. We plug all three of those three USBs into the computer. You can use a Mac or a PC. On the Mac, we use a free program called GarageBand. We record into there. We have the wonderful team over at Podetize who does our editing for us and they create our show notes, which you can absolutely do on your own. You can give a very basic, you can learn more complicated tactics or you can work with a team like we do, which has been helpful. It cuts back on our time. It’s nothing that we couldn’t do on our own. It’s just that sometimes it’s good to leave things to the experts. Having Podetize is wonderful because they know all the SEO tactics. Jason was talking about voice search, learning SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is the key because you need to learn how do people write?
How do they not only type things out in Google but how do they say things? How do they ask questions? Thinking what questions are people asking to try to find your podcast or your website, your blog posts, whatever it is that you’re doing. Keep it simple, to begin with, and then you can always grow. Another question was, “How to use podcasting to bring more awareness to your services?” This is from Bradford and Angelina. The key is that people want information. Jason and I always come back to something very important whenever it comes to any work that we do, which is how can we add value to other people’s lives? If you’re leading with a podcast, with a blog post, with a newsletter, but it’s always about how can I help people with this? They are going to start to know, trust, and like who you are. That will eventually lead to some people buying your products and services. If your podcast is answering questions that are valuable to people. If you’re providing information that’s valuable to people then when you mention your product or service, they’re going to be much more likely to buy from you. That’s another reason why none of this has to be complicated. You don’t have to write the perfect blog post to help people. You have to be helpful. You don’t have to record the perfect sounding podcast to help people and sell, you have to be valuable to them. There’s more involved than that but it doesn’t have to be complicated.
There’s a question there too that I was thinking when my wife and I started our business. The question is about how do I keep engagement with an audience? This is across from TV, movies, YouTubers and being on stage. When we started our business, part of the engagement was consistency. The biggest thing that we found is it’s always being consistent. If we did meetings, if we did groups, if we were in front of a group of people, we were there consistently. It’s like you start to get to know they’re going to be there. It’s somebody I can trust because it’s know, like and trust. That’s what comes out to that. We weren’t filling in just because it’s all about the money. We were truly there to make a difference and people knew that which grew our team incredibly fast. I’m going to turn it over to you for more of the online space.
Think about what questions people ask to find your podcast or website. Click To TweetConsistency is something that we’re very focused on with our brand Wellevatr. We finished up an online coaching program called The Consistency Code, which was all about how to be more consistent and it’s something that we want to do more frequently. We ran it as a live group coaching program and we were there once a week to guide people through the process of being consistent. Something we found and this advice for you and also something to think about in terms of how you can support other people. Most people struggle with being consistent with new things. As Michael said and it’s so great that he brought this up because having that consistent engagement with your audience makes a huge impact not only on them but on you.
What happens to a lot of people I’ve seen on social media with newsletters, blogs and podcasts even is that people will start very strong but then they won’t be consistent with it. We found through all sorts of research, there’s one big reason for that which is that you need to find out what your intrinsic motivation is, what are your internal forms of motivation? When you get very clear on why you’re doing something, why it’s important to you, and the rooted side of it, why does it matter to your audience? You remind yourself of that every day. You’ll be much more likely to be consistent with it. In turn, there’ll be much more likely to be consistent with the advice that you’re giving.
There’s nothing better than somebody who’s applying the things that you’re teaching. That’s where you’ll get the testimonials, the repeat customers, people sticking around, buying over and over again. If you do something a service, they’ll be long-term customers and they’ll continue paying you. You have to be consistent with yourself. You have to lead by example. As Michael also said, the more consistent you are with putting out content, whether it’s a podcast, a blog, a newsletter or social media, people will get to know you. If you don’t consistently do it, they’ll forget who you are. They’ll keep wondering, “Where is that person? How come I haven’t heard from Kim?”
“How come I haven’t heard from Anthony?” One of the big reasons that people are not consistent is it comes to a lot of self-doubt. You have to push through it. One of the main reasons we’ve heard and we’ve been working on with podcasting is there’s a huge thing called podcast fade. It means that people will start off as podcasters. They record a bunch of episodes and then they don’t get the results that they want. They fade out, they stop recording or it feels too difficult for them because they’ve made it too difficult. That’s why it’s important to make it simple. They don’t know how to market their services so that they’re not getting the results that they want and it’s no longer worth it.
This happens on social media, blogging, newsletters and it happens to me and Jason. We go through phases of this very often where we start to question, we say, “We’re not getting the results that we want. Why are we doing this?” This is also going off of what Michael said, you’re doing it for a reason that feels right to you. You are motivated by something bigger than the short-term results. Long-term results will come with consistency and consistency comes when you’re in it for something more than the views, likes, comments, and the dollars. It has to be you want to help people. You’re passionate about your podcast topic and that’s where Jason and I are at.
One of our best tips for podcasting and it applies to social media, blogging, and newsletters, all of this that we’re talking about is if you can do a lot of work upfront and then slowly drip it out over time, it is huge. Before Jason and I launched our podcast, which is called This Might Get Uncomfortable, we launched it and we had been recording episodes before we launched. That wasn’t fully on purpose because we weren’t sure what we are going to do with it. We’re recording for fun. We started to get serious and we spent months leading up to it, recording more and as we learned about. Figured out what our title, artwork and the goal behind the scenes things in preparation. We were recording in the background so that when we launched, we would not only have 3 to 6 episodes to start with that people could binge-listen if they want to do.
We could also have weeks of content so that we can focus on all of the behind the scenes stuff that happens with the launch and not have to worry about recording constantly. We’re at a point where we need to be recording more episodes again and we’re getting into a regular flow. It was great that we could slowly start releasing everything that we’d been working on and that helps us be consistent. We heard that most podcasters fade off, around 10 to 21 episodes. Jason and I were excited that we had 30 episodes already recorded. We were guaranteed not to fade out. We already had that number up and we can see the impact it’s had with the comments coming in and the numbers coming in terms of how many plays that we’re getting.
Our work has paid off and we’re motivated by that. We have something on top of that intrinsic motivation. We have that external amount validation that’s happening a lot. That does help you be consistent. We all like the pat on the back and we all like seeing the testimonials, the traffic and eventually the money which we’re not there yet with our podcasts. We’re working on it. A lot of us go into something for money, but if you don’t get the money right away, you might stop. You have to think about what are the other things that are important to you and what are the other things that are going to help you push through the desire to fade out.
I’m not pushing this because there’s no cost to it. The reason that I wanted to start the Podster Network is we get more and more shows because we’ve launched over ten shows just in that network, let alone Podetize is 300. We’ve got seven more ready to go to start getting the group together. The fade-out quite sometimes is because you’re alone. There’s no feedback going on. You two, when you get on stage, there’s feedback, people, and energy. You come off the high, you’re ready to do all this. You do a podcast and then you’re finished and you’re like, “Okay.” The part of the reason we created the network so everybody can get together. The podcasters will have one place and one call but it addresses that issue.
That issue for everybody is a problem. It’s with any business you’re in. The solo entrepreneur goes through this. They sit at home and they’re like, “Wow.” Even though I’m the biggest introvert on the planet and I am, you still get lonely. You start to lose that consistency, especially when your vision and mission are not clear of where you want to go. You’ve made a great point and there was a question here, “What’s the biggest surprise since you started podcasts?” For me, it’s how easy it is to not do the shows even with a team and a network. Even with people behind me, it’s like, “I got to do a show. I should do all four.” All of a sudden, the month has gone. If you’re thinking that, then your audience is, “They’re done. I’m moving on.” I’ll let you two address that.
Consistent engagement on your audience makes a huge impact on them and you. Click To TweetNumber one based on the format that Whitney and I have conceived which is not an interview format, it’s conversations. There has been an incredible rise in some incredible, vulnerable, deep visceral shares from the guests that we’ve put on. Wonderful pieces of inspirational, deep, emotionally moving content by virtue of the fact that we don’t have interview questions prepared. A little bit of background, there are two formats to our podcast. Number one is Whitney and I sit down together and dive deep into a topic where we don’t have questions prepared for each other. It’s the same format when we bring on a third person as a guest. Via that, we had no idea how it was going to turn out.
I’m pleasantly surprised by how people have loved the format, how they’ve been courageous in diving in with not knowing any pre-selected questions. They’re like, “I’m game. Let’s jump in and have a conversation.” The other thing that surprise wise has been the immediate response and reviews that we’ve gotten on iTunes, Apple Podcast and other platforms. We haven’t necessarily solicited our audience for reviews or incentivize them. Sometimes people do that, say for Amazon Reviews for books. Whitney has got a great book. Some people do that with podcasts, but we haven’t necessarily solicited our followers or our audience. The reviews and everything that have come in has been phenomenal. It’s so wonderful and heartfelt. That’s been the second greatest surprise I’ve noticed.
I wanted to touch on what Michael was saying too about this desire to not record. I face this often with a lot of different things. For better or for worse, Jason and I each as individuals plus with our brand Wellevatr have a lot of things that we could be doing every day. It’s tough if you have a family, if you’re doing a side hustle, you have another job, or you’re in school. There are so many factors that can distract us or we can allow to get distracted. You might be struggling with your health, mentally or physically, and that makes things challenging to you. A lot more people are struggling with their health than we might realize. I especially am passionate about the ideas around not feeling good enough.
We have a whole section on our website about how to feel good enough and how to work through feelings like shame, anxiety and feel more powerful about that. We’re trying to do whatever we can. This is our intrinsic motivation. It’s we see people struggling with their health and we want to support them. Coming back to Michael, we got very ambitious and I don’t know if it will continue quite this long. We’re experimenting because we’re so new. We released three episodes a week: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We were figuring things out as it goes along and doing some research in the meantime.
That was suggested to us from the people at Podetize to build your audience, releasing a bunch of episodes because it gets people feeling more invested in your work, your loyal, dedicated followers, become more loyal and dedicated the more often you release. They know that you’re going to be there and they expect you at certain times of the week. We have to plan way ahead. We got to make sure that we submit our episodes seven days in advance so that our editor can get them to them in time and release them and we can review it. It does take a lot of work and it takes a lot of planning. There are certainly times where we don’t feel doing some of these things. That was the other big benefit of batch recording. With everything that you do, you can schedule your tweets, your Instagram posts, and your Facebook posts ahead of time too. You can find out when you feel the most energized and motivated. Do things then and do them in excess so that you can have things planned for the days that you don’t feel doing something. You could batch up a bunch of episodes and then if you don’t feel recording one day or one week, put up one that you’ve recorded in the past that you have it as a backup. There was another question about TikTok. I wanted to answer that out loud because Michael had mentioned it. I’ve been experimenting with TikTok a lot. I like using TikTok as a platform myself.
It does skew very young in terms of an audience because somebody had asked what would the average age was. The data I could find was from December 2019. It is for users between 16 and 24. I don’t think anybody who’s in that age range and neither is Jason or I. A lot of people are thinking, “If I’m not that age, then how do I appeal to them?” I looked at my analytics for TikTok and it’s interesting depending on how you set up your TikTok account. If some of you have never heard of TikTok, don’t be embarrassed. It is a social media platform. Since it’s so skewed young if you’re over the age of 24 or you might not have heard of it or you may not have even used it before.
It reminds me a lot of Instagram Stories, Snapchat or Facebook Stories. If you’ve seen anything with stories on social media, which are short video clips, that’s basically what TikTok is. What I looked up in my analytics is they show you the videos that your followers love. It’s the videos your followers watched in the last few days. One of them has almost ten million views. There’s a grandma who’s become incredibly popular in TikTok and doing the simplest things. She’s walking across the floor and turning around and they’re playing some popular music and I put some funny texts on the screen.
It’s not the super simple thing. If you copied her, you’re not guaranteed to get ten million views. My point being is she has 782,000 followers and she’s 88 years old. Age does not matter on TikTok. It’s just that it happens to have a lot of younger people on it. Why is she appealing to a demographic that’s so young? She does funny things. She’s cute. She reminds people of their grandmothers. She’s figured out clever ways to talk to these people. What I would recommend is to get on TikTok. We always recommend this for a new social media platform. Create your account and try to make it the same as your Instagram, Twitter, Facebook so that people can easily find you.
Go on there and start watching videos. Learn what’s popular, learn what’s interesting to other people. Whatever’s popular and TikTok is going to give you some good indications and then do your own version of it. If that doesn’t work for you, do something else. It doesn’t matter. There’s no precise formulation for success on there. I wanted to remind you, it does not matter how old you are. You can appeal to a wide range of people and to not be deterred by your age, which is something a lot of people are frustrated with, “I’m too old for TikTok.” It’s not true. People of all ages are doing well in there.
It’s interesting too because you also think who your buyers are? In the personal development industry world, it’s going to be that 35-plus. There’s a certain age range. We have so many people, they’re in college, they don’t know what they want to do, they’re frustrated by what’s going on. They’ll come in or they’ll graduate and life’s not what they think it is. They’re tremendous buyers. They’re about 19 to 24. It’s a great market because that market is looking for what’s next, what to do. As you know better than I am, social media is where they live. They will do the buying on there. They can hit Amazon faster than any of us hands down. Even with my grandkids, they bought something from Unspeakable, for Minecraft. I looked at his net worth and what he’s created and it took him four years to get where he is. You have a buyer who’s nine years old because he’s coming to his grandfather who’s doing the buying. You have to realize you never know where the audience is as long as you’re giving them enough value that it makes sense.
The downside to having longer podcasts is that people aren't spending as much time listening. Click To TweetA huge motivation for us is supporting people through any of the resistances that they have. If we can help you with one piece of advice, that will help you be less resistant, that you can be more consistent with getting these things done, we’re here to help as much as possible. Kim asked, “How long are your average episodes?” Ours are very long compared to a lot of others. We wanted to have the freedom of expression and we were inspired by podcasts like Joe Rogan. He was our model in a lot of ways because he sits down and has conversations with great guests. His podcasts can be four hours long.
Compared to his, ours are not that long, but ours run from at the very minimum of 30 to 40 minutes and then the maximum two hours. We did a two-hour episode with a guest simply because that’s how long it went. We always tell our guests, we’re going to talk until you’re done. We’ve had some guests that have come on and done 30 to 40 minutes, which is shorter for our guest episodes. Our average guest’s episode is about 90 minutes. Between the two of us, if it’s just me and Jason, that’ll be anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes. That feels right for us. We talk until we’re done with the topic. We haven’t had a single complaint from people.
The downside to having longer podcasts is that some people are not spending that much time listening. Maybe they can’t or they only listen when they’re commuting or they have a short commute, or they only listen when they exercise or do dishes and that shorter. Another reason that we decided to go that long is because those are the types of podcasts we like. I would encourage you, what do you listen to? What really appeals to you? That will be how you want to do your podcast. You can also go the route of following out what is the average length of a listener.
Go find out all the analytics and try to construct your podcast around what seems to be working and appealing to people. There’s someone else on our podcast network. His episodes are 10 to 20 minutes. Some of them were short and then he gives a little nugget of wisdom. It depends on what you’re talking about and how you’re talking about it. Jason and I want it to feel an organic conversation that you would have with us in person. Those are rarely short. We are a bit long-winded and like to flush things out in our episodes and go in deep.
That’s a great point too. When you take a look at the podcasting world and what’s going on is the average drive time is typically 10 to 20 minutes unless you live in Los Angeles or Seattle. Eighteen to twenty minutes is a podcast if you’re doing it individually. People are going to be on drive time and they’ll be listening and then they’re done. As for an interview show, 45 minutes is setting the average. The length of the show too, you two have longer shows, which is great because it gives you a ton of transcript content. We get back to that content piece. You could even take an hour-and-a-half transcript.
You could break it into four different shows because of what you’re creating. There’s so much you can do with it. You’ll have this ongoing amount of content that others with a twenty-minute show won’t have even if people drop away if they love what you see and you’re going to get both sides. You can’t please everybody. For those of you out there, what we want you to do is think of how you want to position, where you want to position. Don’t get too carried over because we’re all different too but that’s a great response. I moved to the next question to Jason, do you want to add to that?
Let’s dive into the other ones. Ayesha asked, “I find it hard to determine the market as my goal is to help people with stress and anxiety. That’s right on topic with what we’re doing. How do we determine the audience?” The reality is that people are stressed and anxious across the board. If you look at the statistics in the US that people dealing with stress and anxiety, I don’t think it’s necessarily about determining the audience as much as you framing it and making sure that you are using words that most accurately describe that your resources, tools, and products are helping people with stress and anxiety. If you’re using that kind of language, people will find it. This is a good opportunity to talk about niching down in terms of your content and what you’re offering to the world because if you have resources specifically for people that are dealing with stress and anxiety as they’re searching for those resources, they will find you.
It’s important to be very clear about what you’re communicating in that regard. Searching for specific hashtags on Instagram for example. If you were to search for #Stress, #Anxiety, #MentalHealth, #MentalHealthWarrior, you’re going to get an idea of the type of content that other people are putting out using those hashtags and also how people are responding to that content. You being a student of the game and doing your research ahead of time to see what content is attached to those hashtags is going to help inform you, Ayesha, of what content you want to put out that you think could be valuable to those people looking for resources to help with stress and anxiety.
It also helps to create the content that you want to create in the beginning and then look at the analytics to see who’s paying attention to it. You can sign up for all different types of analytics, whether it’s on social media or on your blog. There’s Google Analytics, there are other alternatives to Google Analytics that will tell you details like the age of people, the genders or the location. Once you learn those details about them, you can start to create an avatar. You see who’s already listening. You can do research and see who needs the most help. If you type in average person with stress and see what it says, you can find some research studies, some reports out there that tell you the average age that people seem the most stressed and that’s who you target.
It’s also important coming back to something Michael said is you have to think about who’s going to buy and what is it that you’re selling if that’s part of your work here. Is it that you are promoting link through affiliates, is it that you have a service that you’re offering? Do you have a product, how much is it? Where is it being offered? Is it something local? Is that available online? All of these things are going to help you determine a little bit about your ideal person that you want to reach in terms of this market. You do want to appeal to teenage boys, but if they’re not going to be spending any money then you have to think, how do you monetize something this?
Thinking how can you best support them if you want to support them or do you want to pick an audience that might be a little bit more willing to spend money? Doing a little bit of research and experimenting can also help you in determining your audience. That’s one of the number one things to move forward. Start creating content and then after a couple of months, analyze it and see what’s working and who’s paying attention to it and you can start doing things based on that. Anthony also asked, “Do you ask your audience to submit topics for the podcast? If so, what is the most efficient way to do so?” We have. I don’t know if we’ve received any input yet. Most people are giving their feedback on the episodes.
It’s coming in from a lot of different sources. One is that you can check your reviews on iTunes, any reviews left. People write what their favorite episodes are or what topics they like which can give you some ideas for that. You can ask and you can tell people, “Ask me a question, tell us what you are liking in your review.” We also encourage them to leave a review. We talk about our social media and some people will direct message us. We’ve been getting a lot of that on Instagram. People posting about us in their stories or sending us messages in there. I found with my personal brand that I get a lot of questions through platforms like Instagram and Facebook Direct Messenger, I get them in as well.
People will comment on our blog posts, the show notes that we have on our website. People will write in the comments, things that they and sometimes questions on there. We have a Patreon as well, so that’s another great way that you can offer up. The ability for people to submit topics is if they’re Patreons of you, meaning if they’re paying money every month as supporters of your podcast or whatever it is you’re working on. They get priorities to submit topics. The downside is we don’t have a ton of Patreons. We have three or four, and they’re not very active. They want to support us financially. They don’t necessarily want to give their input. I found that in general with my experience in Patreon, it’s harder. The last thing I would say, a good place I’ve seen for interactions is Facebook Groups.
One of my friends runs a successful podcast. It has been going for years. She has a great Facebook Group. People are engaged in there. She can constantly pull her audience and say, “Do you want this topic or this topic or which do you want to hear?” She can also read through the comments and see if that’s resonating with people and start to weave together ideas based on the feedback that she’s getting. It’s a long answer. You can pick one of those things. You can say, “Leave a comment on the show notes. What questions do you have? Leave me a review on iTunes. Join my Facebook Group. Send me a direct message or send me an email.” Choose something that feels best for you and let people know that that’s the ideal place to submit topics.
I’m taking notes too. When you listen to a call, whether you’re an average or not, take notes. You can listen to it over and over and that will make a difference. The other thing I wanted to say is everybody’s getting the perspective here. Do this with a team. You two are a team. Even I would say as a team, sometimes you slip a little bit. I’ll tell a great story. My wife and I are launching a business. We’re in personal development. We go to Australia to work with some teams down there and to take two courses. Those courses are critical for building our business and something we’ve paid a lot of money for. We get down there the first week and we’d take the course.
A couple of days before, the second course we’re about to take. All of a sudden, these incredibly cheap flights pop-up and there’s this discussion, “Should we go up to the Great Barrier Reef?” Even with two people holding each other accountable, Barrier Reef or sitting in a classroom for seven days. Sometimes, even as a partnership, you make those. In that case, we didn’t need to follow the script and at the same time, it was still great to have each other and to hold each other accountable. That was with two of us. When you have four or six and you have a mastermind, for those of you who are in the Podster Network, then who you are and those ones that join.
We will bring in more people on especially if you fit the shows, but do this as a team. Please stop doing this alone. Everybody out there doing it alone and we’re going to build as big as a team. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter because we need to have people doing it together. That doesn’t mean everybody will be running with the Podster Network. Being on the mastermind, I believe and it’s all about the family. We should do this and not leave anybody out. I do believe you don’t leave anybody behind. You do that from the perspective of keeping yourself in a direction. How are you going? What makes a difference? Jason and Whitney, why the mic and the earbuds combo? Your sounds are great.
If you’re asking about our sound, I’ve got a bunch going on because I love getting good video and audio quality. I have an HD webcam. My webcam built into my computer is almost as good but this one is slightly better. I have the Blue Yeti mic, which has a bunch of different settings on, so you can hear how my voice changes when I move it. It has four different settings based on how you move it. It will create different sounds, which I like as different settings for having multiple people on it. I can always hear the feedback back in my earbuds. Stacy says, “I have the Yeti,” so you should use this. I use this for a lot of things that I do. We don’t use it for the podcast anymore because we like the Audio Technica. You wear headphones that you can hear your voice in the microphone to make sure that it sounds as good as possible. I do recommend getting a microphone that has a headphone jack in it. Jason’s Audio Technica is a little bit older. It’s the Audio Technica 2020 and it didn’t have a headphone jack. That was a big drawback because he wasn’t able to hear his voice until we played it back in the recording.
It was harder to adjust. You can get advanced podcasting equipment that has all sorts of options for that. If you’re going basic, I would say make sure it has a headphone jack so you can hear yourself and you can wear simple headphones. I’m wearing my iPhone headphones. You can get that over your ears, which block out a lot of sounds and make sure that your voice is sounding as best as possible. That’s my setup. Jason is using his webcam’s built-in computer. Are you using the microphone from your headphones or using the microphone from your computer, Jason?
I’m going straight to the webcam on the MacBook Pro and then using the Apple earbuds. Very simple. I’m glad it sounds good.
Jason and Whitney, you two are always awesome because what’s great about this is you’re cutting edge. You’re doing it. You’re living in it, you’re breathing in it but you also saw what it used to look like. That way, it’s great to have you two on. I’ll let you take final thoughts. We’re going to extend it to four episodes a month. We have Hollywood talents signed on. We have the greatest YouTube stars sitting right in front of me. We’ve got a lot of people and business leaders coming on board. We’ve got great stories for you, good learnings, interaction and ways you can take it to that next step. At the same time, anybody who’s reading will be able to connect through them through The Mentor Studio too. We want to make sure that all of you get exactly what you need. Please leave a review for The Vertical Live in the Mentor Studio. Any last thoughts, you brilliant two?
I challenge everyone to experiment with trying something new you haven’t done before. We talked about this but it’s important to refresh ourselves, especially in the beginning. Always do something you’ve never done before and try it. Be relentlessly experimental with something new.
Consistency is the biggest takeaway that you could have with. This is to not give up. You need to try something for a while to get results. We have experienced all the ups and downs with our businesses. We both have wanted to give up on all projects. If you can tap in and figure out what your why is, what your intrinsic motivation is, it’ll serve you so much. If you want to write that down in a Post-It note, put it on your alarm clock, on your phone to go off throughout the day. Put it into your journal, make sure that you are looking at it every day and tapping into it doing a daily gratitude practice or a meditation. Anything that brings you back to the joy that’s deep within you, that will help you so much and that will help you stay more consistent.
Being consistent will help you achieve a lot of the goals that you have. We’d love to stay in touch. Our brand is Wellevatr. Our podcast is This Might Get Uncomfortable. If you have any podcast topics you want to hear on there, we’re always looking for new ideas so you can always send them our way through social media or email. We might even think about things we talked about here on the chat. We’re looking for content in everything that we do and everybody that we meet. Thank you all for being here and asking your questions. It taps into our intrinsic motivation for being here. It makes us feel good too.
You two have been brilliant. From all of us here, from our families, from everything we’re creating. A new show is coming with my wife too. I’m very excited about that. We’ll be talking about that my partner in life and my partner in creating all this. Thank you all so much. For those who are reading, I’ll talk to you all soon. Jason and Whitney, you two are awesome. Goodbye.
Important Links
- Blue Yeti
- Audio-Technica
- Wellevatr.com
- GarageBand
- The Consistency Code
- Patreon – Wellevatr
- Wellevatr
- This Might Get Uncomfortable
About Jason Wrobel
My purpose is to contribute my passion, experience, talents and wisdom to a world that desperately needs more healing, compassion and unconditional love. To co-create a community of conscious, effective global citizens who embody positive communication, intentional self-actualization, creative contribution and the practice of presence.
Basically, to support you in becoming a big-hearted, badass, healthy, happy superhero who unabashedly shares their gifts and realizes their ultimate potential for contentment.
My mission is to provide the tools, resources and strategies to help you live a more balanced, free, joyful and truly nourished existence on all levels of Being. To provide inspiration, motivation, humor and heart to light up your soul and let you know that you’re not alone in your struggles and ambitions. To make affordable and accessible products and programs to help you create a deeply satisfying, uplifting and passionate life that you feel proud of. To remind you who you really are and that “all is well”.
About Whitney Lauritsen
I’m the creator of Eco-Vegan Gal, co-founder of Wellevatr, co-host of “This Might Get Uncomfortable” the podcast, co-author of “The Vegan Ketogenic Diet Cookbook“, maker of online courses and ebooks, and all-around wellness enthusiast (just to name a few things). My videos, social media and written content focus around making it easy to live in harmony with the body and the planet.
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