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Episode 1030 · Oct 23, 2024

Tom Hazzard on Using Podcasting to Build Authority and Grow Your Brand

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George Wright III sits down with Tom Hazzard, co-owner of Podetize and inventor with over 40 U.S. patents, to unpack why podcasting is one of the most powerful and underutilized tools for building authority in your market. If you have ever wondered whether it is too late to start a podcast, or whether yours is working as hard as it could, this conversation delivers a clear, strategic answer.

Tom's path into podcasting started in industrial design. After decades producing consumer products for major retailers, he and his business partner Tracy launched a podcast in 2014 around 3D printing, a niche tied directly to their expertise. Within months, they were featured in Forbes for having one of the fastest-growing podcasts, built an audience of over 100,000 listeners, and landed third-party sponsors. More important, they discovered something other podcasters were not talking about openly.

Why Verbal SEO Blog Posts Are the Most Valuable Part of Your Podcast

Most podcasters stop at audio. Tom and Tracy went further. They built detailed blog posts from every episode, and Google noticed. Starting in 2009, Google began recognizing whether written content came from human speech or traditional writing and ranked speech-derived content significantly higher for keyword phrases. Tom calls these posts "verbal SEO blog posts," and they form the foundation of Podetize's strategy.

For a return on investment perspective, it's the what we call verbal SEO blog posts, which are like a magazine page on your website when we're done with it, that have the longest term value and return on investment for your time of recording.

A well-crafted verbal SEO blog post from a single episode can rank on more than 80 keyword phrases in Google search, deliver free traffic for years, and build genuine equity in your website. Tom shared that a blog post published in May 2018 still ranked on the first page of Google search years later, and the CEO of a company mentioned in that episode received a Google alert only 11 hours after the post went live. That is the longevity advantage: one conversation, compounding over years.

How Multicasting Multiplies Your Content Without Extra Work

Recording one episode does not have to mean producing one piece of content. Tom describes "multicasting" as distributing the same recording across every possible format: audio on dozens of podcast apps, video on YouTube, a full verbal SEO blog post, social media graphics, short video clips, and more.

Podetize distributes episodes to a minimum of 24 listening apps by default, including YouTube Music, which replaced Google Podcasts. The registration is a one-time setup; every new episode pushes to all platforms automatically. For business owners with valuable knowledge to share, this turns one conversation into a content engine that works long after the recording session ends.

Why Podcasting Builds Authority Faster Than Almost Any Other Medium

A decade ago, publishing a book was the credibility marker. Today, hosting a podcast has taken that role. Podcast hosts now appear on news programs and major stages not because they wrote a book but because they have a show. Being a podcast host signals expertise in a way that a social media profile simply cannot.

Beyond the optics, there is something deeper at work: voice builds trust. When listeners subscribe to a weekly or daily show, they hear the same voice repeatedly. They come back because they trust the host. That trust converts. Tom put a number on it:

Your voice is so powerful because they trust you. Whatever you offer them they're going to listen to and consider very carefully, and we see conversion rates from offers and calls to action in podcasts convert at up to 40 percent of the listeners going to a landing page to take action.

George added something every host recognizes intuitively: people who listen regularly feel like they already know you. That shortens the trust timeline dramatically and often turns a cold prospect into a warm lead before any sales conversation begins.

Is It Too Late to Start a Podcast?

The short answer is no. Tom estimates there are 3 to 4 million podcasts in existence, but fewer than 10 percent (roughly 350,000) are actively publishing new episodes on a regular basis. Of those, only a fraction are doing it strategically. The opportunity is far from closed.

The most common question I get asked by people who are considering launching a podcast is when should I start it. The answer to that is always last month. You already should have started it because it always takes time to build and grow that audience and to realize the return on investment.

Podcasting has not peaked in listenership or in the opportunity it offers new entrants. New listeners are constantly discovering the medium, and they are hungry for fresh voices. If you have a unique perspective, there is room for it.

What Promocast Is and How It Expands Your Reach

For podcasters who want to grow beyond their existing audience, Tom developed Promocast: a fractional paid advertising model that places short audio clips of your podcast inside a network of over 1,000 mobile apps. Where traditional advertising in this space might cost $4,000 to $5,000 a month, Promocast makes the approach accessible for a fraction of that cost.

A typical show is represented by 25 ad clips, each paired with a branded graphic. When someone taps the ad, they go directly to a page where they can listen to a full episode. Shows in the program typically see a 30 to 50 percent lift in listenership within 60 to 90 days. One case study Tom shared went from 6,000 downloads a month before joining the program to 30,000 downloads a month a year later.

How to Get the Most Out of Podcasting as a Business Owner

The key insight from this conversation is that podcasting is not just a media channel; it is a strategic business asset when approached correctly. You are not only reaching people who already follow you. You are building a searchable, long-lived body of content that attracts new audiences through Google, positions you as an authority in your niche, and gives guests a reason to amplify your show to their own networks.

As Tom put it, there is always something new you can bring your unique perspective to, even in a crowded field. And when guests share what you create for them, whether through a PR team or their own platforms, the reach multiplies well beyond what you could achieve alone.

Action Steps

  • Launch or audit your podcast today. The best time was last month; the second-best time is right now.
  • Turn every episode into a verbal SEO blog post formatted for Google indexing, not just a raw transcript.
  • Multicast every recording across audio apps, video platforms, social media, and your website from a single session.
  • Use your podcast to build authority by inviting guests aligned with your niche, and make it easy for them to share the content you create.
  • Explore Podetize at podetize.com to learn about full-service podcast production and the Promocast program.

Podcasting is a distribution platform, an authority builder, a content machine, and a trust accelerator, all in one. It is never too late to start living the life you were meant to live.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to The Daily Mastermind, George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. And I'm very excited today to introduce you to a new partner of Evolution Group and The Daily Mastermind, as well as an awesome individual we have for you. So I'm going to give him a quick intro here before we get going. His name's Tom Hazard, and he's the co-owner of Podatize. He's also an inventor, but let me give you some of his background here. He's a strategist for speakers, authors, and experts. He's really promoted all kinds of individuals through major publications, sports stars, entrepreneurs, influencers, through broadcasting, podcasting, and video casting. But he's also an inventor, and he's successfully produced, in fact, I think he's got about, I'll have to ask him here, 40 US patents, and he's been innovating for over 30 years. His latest creation is Podatize, which totally reinvented the podcast hosting, advertising, and branding space. It's one of the reasons the Daily Mastermind has now partnered up with him. And Tom's the co-host of multiple podcasts. In fact, one of the things I love about him is he starts a new podcast every year just to put himself in the shoes of his clients. But he's been featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Wired, Authority Magazines, and he's guested on a ton of podcasts. He's responsible for, geez, over $2 billion worth of products and innovation throughout the world. So welcome to the podcast, Tom Hazard. How are you? I'm doing good straight. Just great, George. Thank you so much for having me today on Daily Mastermind. Yeah, man, I'm super excited because many people don't know that we have been really deep in the strategy because we've been focusing a lot on authority marketing. What I found is that podcasting is just really the very top of the list. So before we get too far into, um, guys, some great strategies and tactics today, Tom, give us a little bit of a background on you. Cause I was, as we did some research and got to know each other, I realized you have quite extensive background and what has led you to podcasting. So give us the backdrop for a minute here. Wow. That's a great question. I don't, I actually don't often get asked. Uh, so, uh, my education is actually in art, believe it or not. I was an art student in college, Rhode Island School of Design. Really, I'm a designer, industrial designer, inventor, just general creative type, and worked in consumer product industries for more than 20 or 25 years in my career. and it was through that work as a design consultant i mean you probably bought products that i've designed myself and my business partner tracy that you know you you bought at costco or staples or you know target all sorts of different places you just didn't know that we designed them because we were behind someone else's brand so you know invention creativity is just an inherent part of what we did in servicing those customers. And, you know, product design and development has changed a whole lot with offshore manufacturing over my career, among other things. And there was a point around 2014 where, you know, things shifted a little bit and we needed more ways to try to raise awareness of what we do, to market and grow our brand, our design brand. And my business partner, Tracy was an avid podcast listener. And she's like, you know, we might find success launching a podcast around this topic or that topic. And we spent, you know, gosh, together probably nine months researching everything about podcasting and how to start one. Um, you know, watched probably 50 videos on it, listened to dozens of podcasts on it. And Tracy's a huge reader. She read, you know, easily 75 books about this. And she found every one of them while telling a big part of the story was holding something back. And reading between the lines, we figured out, hmm, all right, well, I hear what everybody says to do, but I'm also seeing they're not telling us something and we're going to do some things a little differently. So we did it the hard way. We spent way too much money buying equipment in the beginning, like everybody does who starts podcasting, right? and then finally did launch a podcast in 2014. It's been a decade now and very quickly had tremendous success. We were written up in Forbes for having one of the fastest growing podcasts very quickly. And we got sponsors, we monetized it. And it was in a geeky topic area of 3D printing, which is related to product design and development. That's why. Got it. In your unique talent. Right. Got it. Right. Right. and we very quickly grew and had over a hundred thousand listeners it was significant and we monetized it had third-party sponsors and everything and in doing it though we didn't just do it the way everybody else said to do it we learned and tested on ourselves and invented some unique deliverables created from a podcast that were where the true value of podcasting was. That's what we found. And as we did it, other people we were networked with in business were saying, wow, that's great what you guys are doing through podcast. Could you do that for me? And we hadn't really thought of starting a business around podcasting at that point, but enough people kept asking and I'm like, all right, we're entrepreneurs, we're creative people. I really felt like what kind of entrepreneurs are we if we don't take advantage of what I see here as a real potential business and market opportunity. And we were able to do it because we had a successful business. And now on the side of that, I could take some of that money and put it into this experiment in podcasting is what it started out as. Yeah. So going through that process. Well, one of the things I wanted to point out, just stop for a second is, I think part of what made it successful is you were pursuing it in an area of interest that you had, that you were good at, and it was in that 3D printing. But I also love that your creative mind, because a lot of people just go try to copy what people are doing. Your creative mind was trying to find an innovative way. And that's one of the things about you that sets you apart. So what was it that you thought you noticed they weren't telling you? Or what were some of those couple of things that you felt were different that they weren't telling you that helped you right off the bat? Because I'm assuming you applied those things right off the bat, which is what helped you be successful. Sure. I'll tell you, there are two key things. One in terms of the content that we were recording and creating and what we did with it. And the other is more of a tech thing regarding podcast distribution and advertising that came out of this. So the first one, every podcaster was, you know, putting out their audio show. Back when we started, very few were doing video. We now, every episode that we record is put out as video and audio, but it wasn't back then. it was you know uh not as common it was a lot more work uh but putting out the audio show everybody um in podcasting who was serious you know had their own website and would have info about their podcast on their website even a decade ago and they would usually have a small little what i would call show notes post on their website which really was not much more than what was published in the podcast listening app yeah but tracy my business partner you know was a blogger and is a real writer and you know she was an ink columnist for four years and had a great experience doing that knew the power of blog posts and and then we also did some more research and found that in starting in 2009 google when they scan and index that blog page on a website is able to tell just from the word order and the imperfect grammar maybe if a post came from somebody thinking and typing writing the traditional way or if it came from human speech and like just a transcript or something got it well or yeah any parts of the writing or the whole blog what you know yes and it has to be in the right format there's a lot to it you don't just want to throw a transcript up on a blog and then that's it got it there's an awful lot more to it but the core content was Google sees as very valuable when it comes from human speech and they rank it for keyword phrases at a much higher level than they do the similar phrases contained in a traditionally written blog. So we said, well, this is great. We can speak our way to blogs and produce all this written content for our website gets indexed by Google. Well, what we found with the 3D printing podcast, we built an authoritative website that came out of Google's penalty box. You know, when you have a new brand new url yeah google doesn't trust it at first it doesn't know what your website is going to provide in terms of content well usually it takes a site about four months to come out of that penalty box we came out of it in just over two months because of these blog posts we were creating for every podcast episode which is very powerful content sometimes four five six thousand words and it not that we expect anybody to read the entire blog but all that text got them there from from a Google search Yeah So got you got them seen got you seen and got you visible got it that huge yeah so not just the audio but you did the the blog and the video and but it was it wasn't a ton of other stuff it's the same podcast that you did you just multi-faceted it right yeah we say we multicast it every which way you do one recording you get the video on youtube and on your website you get obviously the audio going through all the podcast apps you get a whole ton of social media materials graphics video clips and for a while there were audiograms although i don't think they're setting the world on fire very much today anymore yeah and then you know the blog itself out of all that is really for anybody podcasting related to their business is the most valuable part of the entire equation i mean don't me wrong i love podcasting and putting it out there and reaching people your your voice is powerful through podcasting video is also very powerful but for a return on investment perspective it's the what we call verbal seo blog posts which are like a magazine page on your website when we're done with it that have the longer longest term value and return on investment for your time of recording that so do i want to put i want to really put an emphasis on that though tom because We talked about that before, and maybe you could just double down on that for a second, because people don't think of it as strategically. And this is the reason you're so successful and certain people's success leaves clues. They're so successful is they're strategic about what they do. We're not just talking about, hey, if you're doing a podcast, you could also have a blog. You could also have a video. It's very specific things that you're doing. And what you found is that one of those pieces that you might think is an afterthought, a blog or a transcript kind of a thing you might be doing, that piece of content is actually the most valuable. And why is that? Why is it the most valuable? Well, for a couple of reasons. And again, I'm going to preface this by saying I'm a podcast listener. I'm a video viewer. I love all those mediums and they're very powerful. powerful. However, the greatest value really does come from the blog post. Why? Because as, as much as there are now more than 115 million people monthly in the United States listening to, I believe it's an average of eight and a half different podcasts every week. And that's a large group of people. Yeah. And they are always looking for new podcasts to listen to. the search engines for finding a podcast are really pretty lousy in our modern world of search the you know apple podcast spotify iheart whatever you know preferred listening app you have their search function is not very sophisticated and it only searches through the titles and descriptions of your episodes it doesn't search through everything that was said within the episode episode when you create this blog post it makes the majority of everything that was said in the episode gets indexed by google and is searchable in google so yes people are searching in podcast apps for content to listen to every day and there are ways to optimize that search so you're found by as many of those people as possible but they're not searching through all your stuff and all your content. YouTube, yeah, it's the number two search engine, but it's a very distant number two. Still a single- Well, but you're hitting a point that I talk a lot of times to our listeners about, and that is it's searchable, but it also speaks to the intent of your target audience. In other words, when people are binging audio, video, real, social, whatever, they're just kind of blowing through things. But if you have ever thought about going to the internet and saying, I want to go find some information about this topic or this topic and you search, most of that you're saying is also based on a lot of topics because that's what's optimized in the search engine. So not only is there intent of the right people looking for you, just like with marketing, you can interrupt market or you can have the people searching. But then you also mentioned to me that it's the longevity of the content too, right? Absolutely. And so because so many more people every day are searching to meet their needs in Google, then are searching in YouTube, then are searching in a podcast app. We want to be where people are searching. We want to be found where people are searching. And it is the blogs that do that. Google wants to serve people the highest quality, relevant content that it can find related to whatever somebody is searching on. And the blogs do this. I mean, our typical customer their blogs average blog it ranks on you know over 80 keyword phrases in google search and the reality of the longevity of these blogs i have even from my own podcast and our customers who've been working with us for you know seven eight years blog posts from episodes that long ago six seven eight years ago are still ranking on the first page of google search for A lot of keyword phrases. I still get traffic to the podatize.com website every day for people searching on certain topics. So that's the longevity. First of all, the blogs, the day that they're posted on a website that already has built trust with Google, so it's not a brand new website. They know about the website can actually be ranked. So I got in May of 2018, I got a very angry phone call from the CEO of a company I mentioned in one of my podcast episodes. Now, he misunderstood what I was saying about him, so he had an interesting conversation. But he got a Google alert when our blog post that was published 11 hours earlier came up in a Google alert. And I found that post that day ranked on three high-value phrases on the very first page of Google search. That podcast episode, that blog post still ranked on the first page of Google search today, six and a half years later. So that's the longevity value of this. You actually build equity in your website and keyword rankings and free. Keep in mind, you can do pay-per-click all day long and spend a lot of money to get traffic to your website. I'm talking about free traffic. Google is just managing people up with what they're searching on with your valuable content. Yeah. for not much more. And I think this speaks to the fact that, listen, guys, if you're going to do anything, you want to do it right. You want to do it strategically. And it's pretty clear to me right now that podcasting has become a massive trend. It's definitely taking on more. It's something where it's a core piece of content that could generate you multiple avenues like blog, website traffic, audio, video, social media, like you said. But I guess sometimes I get people that ask, And I'm going to ask you this question. They say, okay, I love that. But, you know, is it kind of too late for me to get into podcasting? You know, as a so many, like you said, so many podcasts out there. What would you say to somebody that says, oh, I love that strategy. I see what you're saying. It could do a lot of things for me. And by the way, as much as paid could do for me, but in a bigger way. But am I late to the game? What are your thoughts on where podcasting is at right now as an opportunity? it has not peaked yet in terms of listenership or the opportunity for podcasters and i've often wondered the same thing is it going to peak you know what's gonna take it over nothing has achieved that yet so there is still a huge opportunity so here's the thing you you hear all these numbers that, oh, there's over a few million podcasts in existence today. That is fairly true. I mean, it's somewhere in the upper 3 million to 4 million total podcasts. However, do you know how many of them are actively publishing new episodes on a regular basis? How many? Less than 10%. It's about 350,000. It depends how you measure. Like anything else in life, right? Very few people do. And even then I think of the 10%, how many are doing it right and getting anything out of it? You know what I mean? Well, strategically, you know, there's an awful lot of people just recording their audio message and putting it out there in the listening apps. And it's wonderful. They're bringing their message to the world, but that's only going to do so much for you. And it either takes a lot of work for you to do it yourself, or you pay somebody a little money to assist you to do the rest of it and do what we call, you know, multicasting it everywhere, every which way. But if you're willing to record yourself and then have that content put out there in all those ways, it can actually be the most effective way to establish your authority as a center of influence in your niche and to market and grow either your personal or business brand in ways that are so much more valuable and produce a better return for the money spent than just dumping huge marketing dollars at, say, social media advertising or something. If there's a very measurable return, I'm all about measurable results and everything that we do. There are very good analytics to, you know, report and jack up whether it's working or not. And, uh, so let's talk about authority for a second. Actually, what I want to do in the limited time we have is I want to talk a little bit about authority. And then I want to talk a little bit about promotion because I think they the thing about podcasting that I really one of the reasons I recommend it to so many people is that besides getting your message to the world besides using it as opportunities for lead creation and growing sales in your business there this authority piece that comes in involved with it. In other words, authority is really just creating that credibility in your space for your customers and your market that you wouldn't otherwise have. And that sort of of shortens the, you know, the timeframe to trust with clients. And I can speak to this many, many times. So I've had people just call me out of the blue and say, hey, I love your podcast. Can we do business? And, you know, unlike going out and trying to market your products in the marketplace, when you have built authority, then you just have something that a lot of other businesses, a lot of other competitors of yours don't have. So how does a podcast help you create authority. And I think that with all the multicasting you talk about, that's a perfect strategy to create authority. But how have you seen it create authority? And what would you speak to when it comes to authority with podcasting? There are so many ways it builds authority and certainly name recognition or, you know, prior to the pandemic, when we're all going to tons of events, and I do see that starting to happen again now in-person events taking place, but whether it's in-person events or virtual events it be it has become the modern you know everybody had a book 10 years ago exactly it was trying to be relevant you had to have a book it was like the the big thing you're an author you get to be a guest uh on television shows you i mean look at late night tv or news programs 24-hour news programs and i don't care which news programs or channels you listen to they're all the same okay it used to be authors got on there first and and in order to get on a show you had to be an author you had to have a new book now every week and sometimes multiple times a week for the shows that have like daily shows uh you will see podcast guests featured podcast hosts rather podcast hosts featured if you have a podcast it puts you on the map in a different way so that's part of why um it's an authority building because it has become a new sort of credibility factor for people in business but the other thing about podcasting it is true the power of your voice and here's where actually publishing the podcast and listening as is very powerful you're speaking to people who subscribe to you let's say you have a weekly show or in your case, you have a daily show, you're, you're in their ears every day or a couple of times a week or every week at minimum, they wouldn't be coming back and listening to you if they didn't like you and they, you hadn't built trust with them. Yeah. So your voice has a tremendous amount of power and it's, it's very meaningful. And when you share some, an opinion with that audience or you offer them something maybe of value either to opt into whether they're buying something or they're just opting in to be notified of something and there are many many ways to you know convert listeners to take action of some kind your voice is so powerful because they trust you whatever you offer them they're going to listen to and consider very carefully and we see conversion rates from offers and calls to action and podcasts convert at up to 40 percent of the listeners going to a landing page to take action and when you offer them something or you even have an ad within your podcast podcast listeners don't mind listening to them because they have opted in to listen to you so yeah i've gotten that same exact i've seen that i've seen it happen. And I think you're right. The power of the voice. I hadn't actually thought of it from that standpoint because the power of voice, I've run into people that have listened to my podcast and it's almost like they feel like they know you. And when someone knows you, it's one thing to say they're aware of you, but I'm saying they feel like they know you, they trust you more. And, you know, podcasting is actually simpler than video, right? So people could be just their voice and not feel like they have to be on camera. And so I think it also makes it simpler to come in, But I think it allows you to really just have people know you and control your narrative. If you wrote a book, like you said, your stuff's there, your message is there. You're not changing it any later. But with podcasting, you can control the narrative and you can really syndicate that. That's the other thing that I really thought was interesting is, you know, unlike social media where you got to kind of change the format of the content for every channel, you could syndicate a podcast in and maybe you could speak to what syndication is or what it is. But look, once you produce an episode, it can go on to many, many, many, many platforms and expand your reach without you doing anything. It just goes out. It's definitely a one to many distribution platform. Yeah. So you publish one podcast episode and it goes out, I mean, in our world on pod ties to a minimum of two dozen different listening apps. And it can go out to more. You know, we have sort of the standard ones that we believe are the most relevant and every six months, another one becomes more relevant. We add that to the list, right? So it's a one-time thing to syndicate, meaning register your podcast on all those listening apps. And then every time you publish one, it pushes to all of them at the same time, including now YouTube music, which has replaced Google podcasts, which went away. uh and of course youtube is owned by google so it's all part of the google family uh and so you even if you don't have a video show you have just an audio podcast it can be on youtube and youtube music uh listening app and as a as a podcast so so many and so i want to make sure people get this let's think about this again for a second so you're saying one episode i just want to clearly put this out for people. One episode not only can get distributed to several dozen destinations, but can also be converted into a blog, put into video, put on your website, added to social media clips, added to, like literally we're talking about, you know, I mean, you can be talking hundreds of pieces of content in dozens and dozens of different formats from one method that actually you can control the narrative on. And if you're smart, you'll do interviews. And so you actually can piggyback and bridge the credibility of other people. So, you know, maybe you don't know everything. I certainly don't know anything about podcasting. I've done a few episodes, but, you know, we can bring guys on like Tom. So I hope you get that if you're listening to this episode, because it's, it's nowadays, it blows my mind, Tom, like people talk about, you know, whether the economy, whether, you know, the, the marketplace is crowded or whatever. We have so many tools at our disposal that literally can change your life overnight. Uh, you know, blogs that could immediately be ranked, um, and things like this, that I think there's just no excuse, no matter what kind of business you're doing. I can see that podcasting is a great outlet for anyone. Couldn't agree more. Not only is there still tremendous opportunity in the podcasting ecosystem itself, there's always room for your voice your unique perspective even if you're in a crowded field you got to understand people are are hungry to listen to new content there is always something new that you you can put your unique perspective on something and also bring out something unique from guests and And of course, the big opportunity, if you're going to have guests on your show is incentivizing them to share your show with other people. And so there's a very powerful amplification of your message that can take place that way, especially when you're creating all those different things you mentioned, all those different ways you're multicasting your content. and when the guest even if they are not someone who would share it themselves if they have a social media manager or a pr team or anybody else helping them amplify their message they love what you do as a podcaster when you gift wrap for them all this content and make it easy for them to do their job so there's a whole lot of advantages i like those strategies yeah you've gotten to you know Yeah. And this is why I think now that I, yeah, now that I think about, um, we're going to have to do another episode because I try to always kind of keep the time to let 30 minute slot. However, I want to cover one more thing, because I think if you're listening to this episode, what you're realizing is that how you do anything is how you do everything. So if you're strategic about your podcast, you're going to get more success. If you're doing it the right way, you can amplify your message, build authority. And then what you're going to find is that there, and this will probably be our next episode, a ton of strategies outside of that. Like how do you promote to your guest? How do you get your guest to promote? How do you create lots of content? How do you repurpose it? How do you do those? We'll talk about all that, but I do want to touch on one thing because I think you do a phenomenal job of promotion. And you've got, and this is not, by the way, guys, this is not a advertisement for it or anything, But I was kind of blown away by this topic that that Tom created around promo cast meaning I always been told and I told people that I know promote your podcast because the best way to get your message out there is to promote it in addition to all the syndication we talked about. But you have something you call Promocast and it's a unique way of getting the message out there. Could you speak to that for a minute? Because it's not just about the product, it's more about the innovation that you created with getting the message out there. Tell me what Promocast is. Okay. So we've been podcasting for a decade. We've been in business for almost eight years doing this and every podcaster that we support and everything we do is really about how to take your unique message and get the most out of it. i would say organically first right or meaning get the most out of it um without dumping huge amount of money into you know social media marketing or other things that you know may have right paid ads of some kind but so many podcasters were needing ways to reach more people they weren't already connected with right i mean you you probably didn't get into podcasting just to speak to the people who already knew you, right? You want to have new people who don't know you find you. So is there a way, maybe in a very small, incremental paid way, that we can raise awareness of your show? And so we worked on this for a couple of years and actually invented a process that we do now advertise. And I know this is truly not meant to be an advertisement for this, but just to explain what it really is, It is paid advertising, but what we've done is made it so that the average podcaster can participate in an ecosystem they otherwise couldn't afford to. That might cost them $4,000 or $5,000 a month to do traditionally, but can be just a couple hundred dollars a month and in a fractional way. And so their podcast can be advertised minimum of half a million times every month in an ecosystem of more than 1,000 mobile phone apps, not podcast apps, all kinds of different subject matter and utility apps that, you know, as long as your ideal podcast listener is a mobile phone user, I guarantee you they're using some of these apps. Which is everybody. It really is everybody, right? And most people are listening to the podcast either on their phone or on a mobile watch through their phone. So they're going to see using these apps and see some of these ads. But we take, usually start with 25 ads, good sound bites, clips of your podcast audio and advertise them with a unique graphic that lets people know not only the name of your show, but they can click to hear more. And then when they click, they go to wherever the podcaster wants them to go. We usually recommend a page on their website about their podcast. And so this is in a push proactive way. We have all the analytics for the number of ad impressions every month and the click through and typical show ends up getting, you know, 15 to 20 clicks a day. And I know from a half a million ads, that sounds like, well, it's not a lot of clicks, but you know, you know what? 15 to 20 people a day who didn't know your show, like what they heard. maybe after seeing an ad 60 or 10 times it takes a lot right but then they go to immediately where they can listen to a whole episode and then a lot of them are going to subscribe and we do see a measurable lift in listenership usually in the 60 to 90 day time frame in the program of at least 30 percent up to 50 percent and then we now have case studies of shows that have been in this program more than a year now. Growth, one case study is 6,000 downloads a month before being in the program. Three months into the program, they're getting 10,000 downloads a month. And a year later, more than 30,000 downloads a month. Now, there are a lot of variables, a lot of things that can impact it. But again, measurable growth. All we want to see is growth and listenership. So yeah. What I love about that is I love how you really are on behalf of the podcaster trying to figure out innovative ways. Because obviously as a marketer, I can get ads, pay-per-click, Facebook ads, Google search, and things like this for people. And they spend tens of thousands of dollars on that. But if you think about it, folks, if you're listening to this, and you can do a podcast for free, and you basically for less than a hundred bucks, you're hosting the thing, you're syndicating to dozens and dozens of platforms, you're using it for a blog. And by the way, guys, with the power of VAs and services offered by Podatize and everybody else for less than a couple of hundred bucks, you can have everything done for you. You could actually literally have blogs made and website done and videos and posting and now get little clips of your audios put in front of half a million to a million people. This is all stuff that not only drives organic, but trackable lead volume. This is the power that podcasting is, and it's a message you can craft. So I really am a huge fan, as everybody knows, from podcasting with over a thousand episodes, but I did it as a passion project. But what I'm starting to learn associating with, guys, that's why you're listening to The Mastermind, individuals like Tom and his company and others, that there's a lot of advantages you can have in the world of marketing and building and putting your message out to the world. but you have to get seen. You have to get heard. You've got to get, you know, uh, the people to pay attention. And if you do it in a strategic way, it's huge. So Tom, I, I, I really love our conversation and I know we're going to have to do a follow-up with some actual strategies, tactics, but because we don't have time, if someone's saying I either have a podcast and I need help, or I want to start one, cause I know you have lots of free resources and things. How can people learn more about what the best way is to start a podcast, how to do it, where to go stuff about pilotize where's the best place for them to connect with you so pilotize.com is our website and if you already know you already have a podcast you're looking for more support or you for sure want to launch one then right on the home page of pilotize.com scroll down about three quarters of the way down there's a booking calendar you can book an inquiry call just to talk about your show or your goals that's that's one easy way i also have a podcast called feed your brand where we talk about all these things every single day. And you can go through a whole history of episodes there. And then we record ours live every week. So if you want to get it first, then you actually can go to podcastersunited.org, which is a nonprofit in podcasting that we support. But our show is live streamed on podcastersunited.org and you can find it, um, you know, through any social platform. If you watch on LinkedIn or Facebook or YouTube, it's, it's multicast streamed live to all those. Now, not every podcaster does that. We do that now with this one show. Um, and it's a great way to reach people. So, uh, feel free to come tune into that. And I can put all those shown, I'll put all those links in the show notes so that everybody has access to them. And I think what's going to happen is I know we're going to have you back as one of our mentors inside our mastermind group. We're going to do a full masterclass in there. But I know just because I experienced it, guys, listen, I went to the website. That's how I kind of learned and got a bunch of information from Tom and Tracy. And I'm really excited for people to delve into this world. So I appreciate you being here. And I think it's been a big privilege of mine to get to know you. We got a lot of things going. So folks, I know we're short on time. So I want to be able to just recommend that you spend a little bit of time. If you have a business at all, which you are, if you're listening to this, you're a CEO, business owner, high achiever. There's no better way for you to really craft your message, your narrative than podcasting. So I encourage you to check it out and I'll put inside the show notes, a bunch of links for Tom. And like I said, it's one of the things I say all the time, It's never too late to start living the life you're meant to live. It's never too late to start a podcast. It's never too late to just get out there and make things happen. So anything else that you would add, Tom, before we take off? You know, I just want to echo one thing you said, which is the most common question I get asked by people who are considering launching a podcast is when should I start it? The answer to that is always last month. You already should have started it because it always takes time to build and grow that audience and to realize the return on investment. So the sooner you start, the sooner you realize those results. Yeah. The best time is last month. The second best time right now. Right now. And actually legitimately right now towards the end of the year, guys, I'm telling you, this is a great time. So if you need anything, obviously, you know, do me a favor, share the show. You know, we definitely love to hear from you as well. Also, you can hit me up on The Daily Mastermind on Instagram, Facebook. Let us know what you're working on. How can we help you? And have an amazing day. That's our message for today. I'm glad you could spend time with Tom and I, and we'll look forward to talking with you more. Once again, this is George Wright III. This has been The Daily Mastermind. you

About the host
George Wright III, host of The Daily Mastermind

George Wright III

George Wright III is an entrepreneur, investor, and the host of The Daily Mastermind. Over more than two decades he has founded and scaled several multimillion-dollar companies and built a renowned seminar business that put some of the world's biggest names and brands on stage. With 25+ years across marketing, sales, and executive leadership, he's made a career of turning bold ideas into results — and momentum into lasting growth.

Today his mission is singular: empower driven entrepreneurs everywhere to master their mindset, unlock their potential, and live their ultimate destiny. Through The Daily Mastermind, George shares the Prosperity Principles and strategies that help people create massive change — in their business and in their life.

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