In this episode, Jamie Atkinson,podcasting expert, shares how you can make money as a podcast host very quickly without a big list. Plus, Ellen Violette shared how one of her guests made money from her show and how you can too as a podcast guest.
Resources mentioned
Podcast Profit Playbook Checklist
30 podcast Secrets that will change your business and change your life. Want to know how we’ve taken multiple students from zero into the top podcast charts in less than 72 hours. Grab your copy now.
Jamie’s Podcast 101 Facebook Group
3 Key Points
The way to make money from your podcast quickly is to interview your ideal clients as guests.
You can make money as a podcast guest by making an offer to the host if they are your ideal client.
You should make an offer to every single guest.
Transcript
Ellen: Hi, and welcome to. Episode 79. Today, my guest is again, Jamie Atkinson. In the last podcast, we talked about being real in your business. We talked about the Dream 100. We talked about people telling the truth. We talked about what happens when your income actually goes down instead of up and what to do about it.
So if you miss that, be sure to go back and listen to that one. https://booksopendoors.com/podcast/losing-momentum
So, Jamie, now I want to talk about this week. We want to talk about podcasts. So, one of the things I said last week, that I’ll mention again, is that the way I got to you as I stumbled onto a video, and you were just describing how people can make money with their podcast in a different way than how most people were talking about it.
[01:42]: And what I loved was that people were saying, “You’ve got to build up an audience, and that takes a long time.” And you were saying, “No, you don’t, you don’t have to do that. You can start making money right away.” So, I don’t want to give away what you said again in this one because I’ll let you talk about it.
Jamie: The very first thing I was a freelance writer. I was writing, $28 articles, like a thousand-word articles for like twenty bucks a time.
Then I did this blog and I did some Instagram course and some blogging course, and nobody ever bought either of those things. And then I came to this Pinterest agency and I got three clients and made $4,000 a month. And then, Pinterest algorithm just completely flipped on its head and ruined my whole life when I lost all my clients.
[02:25] Jamie: So, there’s this kind of like build-up to kind of what happens. And, what I really loved about discovery with podcasting was that it wasn’t really, “Oh, I created this unique system.” It was like, “I started podcasting and three months in I didn’t make any money.” And I was like, “If I don’t make any money soon, I’m going to die.” I was like,” “I gotta eat and I got no money to buy any food.” So, it wasn’t quite that dramatic. If you look at what was actually happening, me and Gina were in Bali at the time, it’s like, “Oh, you poor soul,”
Ellen: Right, right.
Jamie: “You live in Bali, you really must have been living the pauper life,” but it really was that way because Bali is so cheap compared to everything in America. We were living for like a thousand bucks a month trying to make this work. And one thing that I saw time and time again was that so many people were preaching about podcasting and God bless Russell Brunson. I love him with all my heart. He helped me make so much money, but there’s one thing he says, which I absolutely don’t agree with, which is, “Hey, you got to go and publish every day for a year, expecting nothing in return.”
[03:25] Ellen: Thank you. I looked at that and I went, “No way.”
[03:30] Jamie: If you’ve tried to do that, and it does not work, I want to validate you for a second because that’s okay, because the truth is that strategy can work. But only the 0.1% of people are going to actually be able to do that,
Ellen: Right. It’s way more about consistency…
Jamie: Yeah.
Ellen:…than every day.
[03:49]: Biggest challenge I found with that. And I don’t know if you’ve ever been this in this situation, but iin school, I used to be a runner, right? I used to be a runner and I also did track and high jump and all of these different things. And the very first time that I ever tried to do high jump, there was nobody there. And I just tried to jump over this bar. And I don’t know if you’ve ever watched anybody do a high jump, but they do this very eloquent thing where they sort of run up to this bar and they jumped backward and their arms and feeds and butt in the air and it’s this beautiful display. And, I kind of ran out this thing, like I was trying to tackle a monkey, running away with my keys and I just plowed headfirst into this bar and it didn’t work.
[04:28]: And the thing that is so, so obvious to me now is that when somebody says, “Hey, just podcasts for a year and eventually you’ll make money.” It’s a little bit like that high-jump example where if nobody shows you how to do it and how to have success, how the hell are you ever supposed to figure that out? Except, just by accident. And so many people that I’ve worked with, so many people have come into our programs are like this. They’re like Jamie, “I’m podcasting, I’m publishing, I’m doing it consistently. I’ve been doing it for three years, but I’m not making any money.” And they’re like, “And I don’t know why. And I don’t know where the money is supposed to come from.” And the trouble with that for me is that if you don’t know what to do to make the money, how can you ever hope to do it?
[05:15]: So, for me, I was in that situation, I was three months in, I was like getting like 100 to 200 downloads. An episode was going to a couple of thousand downloads a month. And everywhere I read about monetizing a podcast at the same thing, it’s like, Hey, if you get 50,000 downloads and you do this and you do that, maybe you’ll get a sponsor who might give you some money. And it was like, “Wow, like I’m so far away from that goal. Like, it’s not even funny.”
Like, there’s just no way that I was going to get 10,000 downloads an episode when I had just like 200 after three months of work and my (inaudible) and I said to myself, “Man, this sucks. I need to figure out a way in which I can actually make money.” And I was very fortunate because at the time, I’d listened to Russell’s advice and he’d said, “Hey, the number one thing you can do is to just be unapologetic and just go and work with whoever your dream customer is.”
[06:04]: So, I decided on my podcast that that’s what I was going to do. I was going to interview entrepreneurs because those were the people that I wanted to work with. So, every week I was doing five to six different interviews. Like one week, I did like thirteen interviews back to back. I was exploding through these interviews cause like, “If I’m just going to do what this genius guy who has made tons of money has done, maybe I’ll figure it out.” And what happened through that process was something kind of accidental. I’d done this interview with one of these entrepreneurs and Ellen, just so you know, at the time, like the thing I was trying to do to make money, I was actually cold calling dentists. I don’t know if you’ve ever spoken to an average orthodontist before, but
[06:43] Ellen: Just my own. Yeah. Right. They like,
[06:45] Jamie: Most of them are like, a lot of them are like, and this is maybe prejudiced to orthodontist, but if you’re listening, I’m sorry. If it upset you. But most of them are like in their early sixties, they’re pretty much retired. They’re working a couple of days a week. And there was this like young spunky, twenty-something-year-old marketer on the phone going, what if I could get you more leads and more customers? And they’re like, “Dude, I make enough money. I don’t need more leads. That’s not what I’m interested in.”
So, I was trying to do this thing on the side. And then, I was interviewing these entrepreneurs who are the people that I really wanted to work with. And then, one day I’d done this interview with one of these guys and they ended up messaging me and it was like, “Jamie, I know on the interview we were talking about funnels and it’s fun and raw and like marketing really cool.”
[07:22] Jamie: And he’s like, “I actually wanted to get on a call because I think I might need your help.” I was like, “Okay, cool.” You know, I thought I was just going to jump back on a call with this guy. We ended up getting on this twenty-minute call. And at the end of it, he ended up wiring me $2,000 via PayPal. And I sat there in my chair, just completely confused about what had just happened. I was like, “Oh my gosh, like, this is crazy.” Like,” I’ve just done this interview with this guy. He then reached out to me. He spoke to me a little bit about funnels, and then he hired me to help him with some strategy.” And it was like, “What just happened? This was crazy.” Cause I’ve been trying so hard to make an impact with a podcast. And then, out the blue, I’d been cold calling like a hundred different dental offices.
[08:05] Ellen: And then, it falls in your lap.
Jamie: It’s as easy as pie.And this guy was just like, yeah, we just chatted for twenty minutes. And then, he just gave me all his money. I was like, “Wow.” So, I started to break this down and I realize that this process of what I’d done was maybe something I could repeat. So, I completely sacked off all the dentists. I just got rid of that. And I said, “Okay, I’m going to try and do this, but this time on purpose,”
Ellen: Right, intentionally.
Jamie: “If we can make something of it,”I ended up for the next month, I did a bunch of different interviews again. And I tried to do this process of interviewing them, building this relationship, and then making them an offer on the back end and seeing if they went for it. And at the end of the month, I’d actually ended up making about $8,000 from these different sales.
[08:47] I was like, “Wow, this is cool. Like, “Wow, amazing!” And I got really excited. And then, one of my friends was like, “Man, like you should help other people figure out how to do this with podcasting,” because what I’d done was instead of trying to get a ton of downloads, instead of trying to get all of these people to listen to my show so that we can sell to the audience, the listeners, instead, what I stumbled across was “Well, what if, instead of trying to sell to my audience, which is super small, what if I just sell to my guest?”
And I come from a background of sales, I, I love sales. I love one-to-one relationships. I love that interaction. So, it came really naturally to me. And that’s what we discovered. And I was like, “Wow, this is great because it doesn’t require even a single download to do an interview with somebody.”
[09:35]: And then, for them to buy your product and somebody reached out and be like, “Jamie, you should do podcasting for other people.” So, I was like, “Okay,” we launched a beta course. We called it the Podcast Profit Lab, we sold it out, and eighteen months later we’ve now been fortunate enough just in the last twelve months to help over 150 students make nearly $6 million in sales using this podcast- closing strategy.
And honestly, the thing I’m most proud of is that this isn’t like, “Oh, you know, Dan Henry showed up and used my course and suddenly made $2 million.” Like, no, these are real entrepreneurs making 20,000, 30,000, 50,000, a hundred-thousand dollars in sales collectively, It’s people making money for the very first time from these podcasts that a lot of them had given up on or were trying to do it for the very first time. And it really, really excites me just knowing that there’s a way that people can actually have and way to actually make money with that podcast without having to try and do it like everybody else does. You can probably tell, I get real excited about this stuff. Yeah.
[10:36] Ellen: And I have to laugh because I know that that’s what you teach. And that’s what I saw in that video a long time ago. So, one day I’m on my podcast and what do I do? I end up hiring the person on my interview.
[10:47] Jamie: He was probably somebody I train. That’s what we call a reverse podcast close.
Ellen: Yeah.Yeah. Well, he’s a health coach. He’s a health coach and I wanted to do one just, I mean, I believe that that’s a component too. That’s why I call it Books, Business Abundance, because I really wanted to be able to cover a lot of things that I think all go into being successful. But, I was like, “Damn, Jamie said, I supposed to hire. I’m supposed to get them to hire me.” And I ended up hiring this guy. I thought of you. I was just cracking.
Jamie: That’s pretty good. That’s nearly it. That’s a good practice. Right? The next one.
[11:19] Ellen: Let me ask you this. When you said you did a whole bunch of it, so how often do you do the podcast now?
Jamie: Well, it’s interesting because we actually do the podcast a lot less now than what I used to do in the early days. You know? And a lot of that’s down to what we talked about in the last episode was focusing on different things, my role being a little bit different. But it’s actually something that I want to get back to doing more of inside of my business, but for no other reason, then yes, it’s a big driver of our revenue but also if it makes me feel really fulfilled.
Ellen: That’s why I do this. I love it.
Jamie: Yeah. Yeah. And, nowadays and what I wanted to share here as well, is that the way that we use our podcasts nowadays is more about using podcasts, closing, but in a partnership situation. We talked a little bit about the Dream 100 building joint-venture partnerships on the last episode. And that’s a lot of what people inside of our programs now use their podcast for. It’s this idea of, “Well, I’m going to go and use this podcast as a tool to connect with people who have like-minded audiences.”
[12:21] Ellen: Right, becausenow you’re getting to their whole list, not just that one person.
[12:25] Jamie: Yeah. And we’ve had so much success with this and, getting people to use it.
Ellen: Yeah. That’s really how I’ve used it.
Jamie: Yeah. And, it’s really, really powerful. But honestly, I love that we show people how to make money with the podcast. Don’t get me wrong. That’s our big, sexy pull. That’s the thing that grabs people’s attention. But honestly, the thing that I love about podcasting and making money with it in the early days is it actually helps you to do it for the long-term. And I think me and you both know that the real secret to podcasting is if you can do it for long enough, there’s a massive personal growth that comes with it. But also your business will grow a lot if you keep doing it consistently.
And inside of our programs, I think we measured this a while ago and it wasn’t the last twelve months, but we, we measured a twelve-months segment and we had 95% of the people who had launched podcasts in that twelve-month period was still podcasting to that day.
Ellen: That’s amazing.
Jamie: For me, that was the thing that I was the most proud of because what I noticed was yes, like someone was making $2,000, $5,000. That was cool. But what happened is after they’ve done it and they kept doing it about three months later, they had this surge in their business, right? Six months later, they had this other search, right? Nine months later, they had this other surge. And what happens is it progressively helps you to boost and grow your business if you can stay in the game longer.
[13:48] Ellen: Yeah. And I’ll tell you something, it’s hard to stay in the game when you’re not making any money at it. And there was a point where I wanted to quit. And luckily my coach, who is also a Russell Brunson person just said, “Please, don’t quit.” And I’m really glad I didn’t quit because at that point I was looking at it from, “Well, I’m not making money,” but I was still getting the fulfillment of meeting all these people, and yeah, over time that is really important because now when I go to launch a program, I’ve got a whole list of people that I’m going to go to actually with this one, I probably have already launched one, but we’ll see if it’s done yet or not yet. But the point is yeah, you’ve got to just… I mean, I’ve met so many people. when I go down and I’m putting each person in the file for the podcasting of who I just did a podcast with and I see all the names of the people that I’ve worked with. It’s pretty amazing.
[14:42] Jamie: And the other thing to think about here is, think about like, okay, publishing, right? “Oh man, I’ve got to publish,” right? Like, think about when you write an email or you do a Facebook Live or that stuff. Now it’s really easy to quit because it doesn’t really do a lot for your business right there. And then, your podcast closing. And it’s like, ”Okay, you’re making like found money or $5,000 or $10,000 from this thing.” It’s like, you’re getting paid to put out content. Like you’re getting paid to go and connect with these people. And that makes it really easy to not give it up, right? That it becomes something that you rely on it and you want to have consistency in your business. So, that’s a lot about the theory. That’s the story of how I discovered it.
Ellen: Okay.
Jamie: If you want, I don’t know if this is helpful, but do you think it would be good for me to give some practical tips on (inaudible)?
[15:28] Ellen: Absolutely. Let’s give some tips.
Jamie: Yeah. So, the number one thing, and there’s really only two things you need to be able to podcast close successfully. The first thing is you have to have a product or a service. Like if you don’t have anything to sell, you’re going to have a really hard time selling something, right? Cause it’d be like, “Hey, do I buy my thing?” And they say, “What?” And I say, “Oh, I don’t actually have anything, right?” So, you want to have something to sell.
And then, the other thing is to make sure that you’re actually speaking to somebody that is a good fit for that product. So, the very first thing I say to everybody as soon as they join our program is, “Don’t go and interview people because they’ve got something good to share that’s kind of like your thing.” For example, if you are a health practitioner and you’re teaching people how to be really super healthy, don’t get another healthy coach guru person to come on.
Ellen: See, I’ve done that.
Jamie: That’s okay. But the challenge with that is that…
Ellen: Right, you’re not going to sell them into anything. Yeah.
Jamie: Well, one you don’t sell them, but also from your audience listening, you’re the interviewer, not the expert. So, what I really encourage people to do is say, “Okay, who is your dream customer?” And then, go and interview them. So, and I always loved the example of the Facebook ad marketer that sells the chiropractors, because I think it’s the most oversaturated thing that most of us have tried to do at some point.
So if you imagine, like you’re a Facebook ad agency and you sell to chiropractors, the normal way people would make a podcast is, “Oh, I’m going to invite Facebook ad experts. We’re gonna talk about marketing. We’re going to talk about all that stuff.” And what I would encourage you to do instead is forget all that and make the show about your dream-customer: interview chiropractors because one thing you’re going to speak to a new chiropractor every single day. You’re also going to become associated with that chiropractor, but you’re not the chiropractor, you’re the marketer, right? So, when you’re interviewing people in that process, you’re going to be interviewing them about, maybe how they’ve grown their business and what they’ve done in the online world. But you’re the person, who’s the expert, you’re the marketer that’s bringing that conversation.
So, not only are you able to build that relationship with them, not only are you able to potentially work with them, but other people who are just like them are going to want to listen to the show. They’re going to maybe want to come on the show as a guest, and they’re going to start trusting you because you’re associated with people that are like them as well.
[17:46]: So that’s always, my first step is make sure you have the foundation set up the right way. And just that on its own is different to 99% of the way podcasting is taught. “Hi, are you insane?” This is contradictory to everything I’ve ever read. I’m like, “That’s kind of the point,” Hastag polarize. And so, that’s the first thing. And then, the second thing is that I really encourage you just to keep it really simple. All you need to do is to speak to the right person, build a relationship on that interview, and then make them an offer.
And I don’t know if you know this about me, Ellen, but when I was a salesperson, I used to sell sofas. And it was a pretty good job because I just used to get to sit on sofas with my feet up all day and I got paid for it. So, maybe I should never have quit. But the cool thing about that job was that it really taught me a skill that also was repeated by Myron Golden at Funnel Hacking Live. And one of the things that I used to do as a sales trainer, and something that was taught to me was just to every single time you’re with a customer, make sure you offer them every option.
So, when we were in the sofa store, we would say, “Hey, do you want a footstool? Do you want to have stain protection? Do you want to have those little glider feet on the bottom that make it move around real easy? Do you want delivery?” Right? And there were all of these additional products that we could sell as a sales trainer. I would go into these stores and it was always hilarious cause I was like twenty and I looked about fourteen and everybody’s been in the job for thirty years.
[19:16]: They’re like, “Who’s this punk coming to tell me how to do my job?” But I was always able to get a really great result every store I went into because in every store, people would second guess what their customers wanted. If somebody said,”No to stain protection,” they assumed, “Okay, they’re not going to have anything else cause they said no.” All I did as a trainer was I went in and I just made sure, “Hey, whatever you do, make sure you offer it every single time.” And every single store without fail. I went into the results increased.
Ellen: Wow.
Jamie: And this is exactly what I say to people when they do podcast closing. What’s so many people do when they first start, this process is they don’t make an offer to every single person. So, they’ll do twenty podcast interviews and I’ll say, “Great. How many times did you offer the podcast closing?”
[20:04]: And they’ll go, “Well, I only actually sold one person.” I said, “Okay, how many people did you offer it to?
Ellen: One person.
Jamie: Four people. “Okay. What about the 16 others?”
“ Well, I didn’t feel like they were going to be a good fit.” They said something
Ellen: So, you second-guessed them.
Jamie: A hundred percent. So, what’s one thing that Myron Golden said at Funnel Hacking Live, “The more offers you make, the more money you make,” because people get so confused about sales, and the truth is 50% of the time people are going to say yes, 25% of the time or 20% of the time, people are going to say no. And then, there’s this little bit in the middle. There’s 30% in the middle where it’s moveable. Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. But the simple matter of the fact is most of the time, at least half of the people you speak to are probably in the market to buy the right thing if you’ve attracted the right people and you’ve done the right thing.
Ellen: Right.
Jamie: So, if you just make sure that every time you do an interview at the end, you say, “Oh my gosh, thank you so much for the interview. I love the fact that you talked about that you were growing your business online. I actually think I might be able to help you. There’s a couple of ideas that I actually got stiring into my mind as we were talking. Would it be okay if we like jumped on another call after this?’ Because I would love to share how I might be able to help you to grow in your business. Would that be okay? If you just ask something like that most of the time, because you’ve built this rapport, you’ve built this relationship? It’s not like a sales environment where people have got their wall up and they’re guarded.
[21:33]: Most people are going to say yes.
Ellen: Right.
Jamie: And then, you’ve got their permission to pitch them. You’ve got their permission to make them an offer. And they’re going to be really, really receptive to hearing what you’re going to talk about. So when it comes to putting this into practice, that’s my number one piece of advice. Don’t overthink it. Don’t think you have to follow some sales script. Don’t think you have to be the most sales-y person in the world. I could take any person inside of the sofa stores and if they just had the right attitude and they said, “Jamie, I’m willing to do the thing that you’re telling me to do, which is to just make an offer every time. We have people with incredible sales ability who got beat by people with hardly any…
Ellen: Because they did that.
Jamie: Because hey were too proud and the other person just did the thing that works. And this is what I always encourage people-you don’t have to be a good salesperson. You don’t have to be any of that. All you’ve got to do is be willing to make people on offer. And I love podcasts closing for this because it’s one of the most easiest environments to make offers ever because you don’t have to cold call somebody, you don’t have to knock down that door, you don’t have to slide into their DM’S, you don’t have to do any of that stuff. You invite them onto a show. You increase their status. They already love you because you’ve made them look like a rock star. And then you’ve actually built a rapport. You’ve built a relationship, and then when you do make an offer, it’s on the right terms. I always think of it like a date, right? Like if you think about it, regular sales is kind of like you wanting to date somebody and you stand in the middle of a high street, you stand upon a soap box, and you start screaming out, “Hey, you come over here. I want to date you. Let’s go back to my place. Let’s do it.”
I’m like, that’s just not how it works. Right?
Ellen: Right, right.
Jamie: If you want to date somebody what would you do? Well, first you’d maybe invite them, right? Just like you would on a podcast interview. “Hey, do you want to go on a date? Hey, you want to come on a podcast interview?” Then you’ve probably increase their status. “Oh my God, you look great tonight. This is amazing. You’re wearing that wonderful suit or dress or whatever.” And then, you build a rapport and relationship. You don’t just say, “Hey, come on, let’s go to the bar and go on a second date.” You get to know them, you’re vulnerable, you share some stuff. And then, if you do that in the right way, then they’re much more receptive when you go to that next step. I mean, I always like to think of podcast closing like that. Just if you treat people like human beings, like regular people, usually they respond well, if it’s something that they want,
[23:59] Ellen: So, people want to know more about this, where do they go?
[24:02] Jamie: Well, I actually previously, for the last eighteen months, we’ve only taught Podcast Closing and a few videos in our Facebook group. But most of the secrets we kept behind our program, the Podcast Profit Lab, which is our full coaching program. But a couple of weeks ago I made the rather either exciting, rash, or stupid decision did just kind of give away all of the strategies of what we do to make money podcasting. And there’s the two we talked about. There’s what we call high-ticket podcast closing and partnership podcast closing. But there’s also another method that we’ve just recently been using thanks to Emily Hirsh, which is called “Pop-up Podcasting”, which are these mini five day or three day pop-up podcasts, which help people to buy your product as well.
So, if you want to learn about those three different ways that we’ve been able to use monetizing, if you want to go and actually download our pop-up podcast, it’s called Five Days to Monetize your Podcast. We reveal it all inside there. And if you want to go to that, you can go to changemakersmovement.com/fivedays, which is the number five D-A-Y-S. And inside of that five-day series, we reveal all of the monetization strategies and how to do them.
[25:12] Ellen: Okay. So now I’m going to put you on the spot. Why have you not written a book? Oh, I actually have written the book.
Ellen: You’ve written a book? I saw one that you did with somebody else.
Jamie: Yeah, I did a collaboration book. And honestly, if I was to give you the really real answer about why I haven’t written a book yet, is that if I’m going to write a book I think I’m going to follow the model that a lot of people inside of Russell Brunson’s world have done, which is the free plus shipping book.
Ellen: Oh, yeah, yeah, those are great, yeah.
Jamie: The reason why I haven’t written a book yet is the
Ellen: Because you have it, you have it, you just haven’t put it in book form.
[25:48] Jamie: A hundred percent, right? We’ve got a ton of value. We’ve got all of that stuff.
Ellen: Yeah, you have it.
Jamie: But for me, it’s just that I want to do that book when we need to have this huge influx of leads. And right now we’re not at the stage where we need that in our value.
Ellen: Fair enough.
Jamie: But it’s coming.
Ellen: Yeah. Cause your pop-up podcast could be one book and then you could have the precursor to your main thing and you could have one on closing. I see all these books. I see all these books in your future.
[26:13] Jamie: A little secret is I actually love writing, like writing is one of my favorite things to do, so yeah, a book is definitely on the horizon.
[26:19] Ellen: Alright! Yeah. I liked doing number one bestseller launches and then doing a free plus shipping. And the reason is because you can’t get the ranking with just a free plus shipping.
Jamie: Yeah. It’s tough, right? And it’s also cool to be like, “Man, I’m a number one bestselling author.”
Ellen: Exactly,
Jamie: You better listen to me cause I got some real, you know…
Ellen: Exactly.
Jamie: What is it exactly?
[26:44] Ellen: Also, people need to build their lists before they’re ready to do free plus shipping somewhere. We help them build their lists that way. (With a launch) Okay. Well, I know you have to get going. So, I wanted to stay within your timeframe. So, any last tips or anything else you want to share before we go so I can get you out on time?
[27:01] Jamie: I think the biggest thing would be if you’re listening to this right now and you’re considering starting your own podcast is just try not to overthink it. One of the biggest evolutions in our own podcast that I’ve noticed is that when we first got started, we really strived to be perfect and as good as possible. And we were very highly edited. And, the problem with that is that it was just a lot of work to do it, right.
Ellen: Yes it is.
Jamie: Just one episode was insane. And if you look at the way our podcasts are done now, it’s done in one take, we have equipment that makes it really easy for us to just export the podcast in one go. And we don’t actually edit our show at all. And, there’s a kind of a beauty in that because it captures some of those imperfect moments. And it also allows us to get it out of the door without any hassle in trouble. So if I was to give any advice to anybody looking to start a podcast right now, I would encourage you not to overthink it. Right?
The most important thing you can do is to start and to get it out there and to start vulnerably sharing your message, share your mess with the world so people can start to connect with you. And don’t worry if it’s, a bit wonky and you messed up and you fell off your chair halfway through. One of our most popular podcasts episodes is when Gina came into my room and kicked over a board and all you could hear in the background was this fluttering of paper, as everything was just demolished in the room. And it was one of our most downloaded episodes and the most talked-about episode, we ever did. So, if you’re thinking about it, just embrace that imperfect action.
[28:31] Ellen: Well, you have to have a cover. I know because otherwise, yeah, you have to have a cover to put on an iTunes and everything, but what about like music and, intros and all that other stuff to get started?
Jamie: Yeah, I mean, if you want help figuring that out, we have a full program that’s dedicated to showing people how to do all of those steps. It’s called the Podcast Profit Lab. And if you want more info on that you can join the Podcasting 101 Facebook group.
But again, I always encourage people. There’s all tons of free information out there. That’s going to show you how to do all of those things. It’s really easy to go and get that free information, what most people need isn’t the information, it’s the support and accountability to be able to actually do it right and actually, step into action. So, if you’re thinking about that, just surround yourself with people who are doing the same thing.
[29:19] Ellen: Yeah. Well, let me just say I did it on my own and it took a long time. Okay? Go, go study with Jamie. Don’t do what I did. It took me a long time.
Jamie: Yeah.
Ellen: But, I did it. But I did it. Huh?
Jamie: If you can just surround yourself by other people who are in that world, it’s going to speed up your progress.
Ellen: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, thank you so much, this has been a joy.
Jamie: I really enjoyed being on it. Thank you so much for having me.
Ellen: Oh, you’re so welcome.
Jamie: And I got to do TWO! That was good, huh? Two episodes!
Ellen: Yeah.
That’s it for my interview with Jamie.
[29:53] Ellen: Now, welcome to another edition of Books Open Doors Insights, where I share tips, strategies and more to help you make a bigger impact, make more money and leave a lasting legacy. As an authorpreneur this week, I want to answer a challenge that one of my new members in the books open doors, Facebook group www.facebook.com/groups/booksopendoors posed as her number one challenge.
She said creating this space in my life to write consistently and finish my book was her challenge. So my answer to that is if you want to write consistently, you have to establish the habit of writing consistently, but before you can write consistently, you have to have the motivation to do it. So the first thing I would ask myself is why do I want to finish my book? And then what will it do for me? And finally, how do I feel about that?
[30:46]: Because you might feel some trepidation for some reason. And that’s why you aren’t writing consistently. I have had clients who were afraid their book, wasn’t going to be good enough and that it would get bad reviews. So they were afraid to put it out. I’ve also had clients who were afraid, how their lives would change if their book was successful. And some have been afraid of both.
I also have a mentor who wrote 90% of his book. And then it took him almost a decade to finish the other 10% because he didn’t see himself as an author. So you have to know how you feel about it. And then once you know that you have to have the courage to move forward. Anyway, it’s not about not having fear. We all have fear of the unknown and you’re doing something you’ve never done before.
[31:32]: So it makes sense that you would be afraid, but you have to want it badly enough to be willing to do it anyway and move through the fear. It just has to be a priority. And then you have to set the intention. So maybe your intention is that you’re going to write three days a week or three hours a week. It really doesn’t matter what the length is. It’s the intention to do it consistently.
And then, if you miss one, you want to get right back on schedule and keep moving forward. And something that works for some people is the “never miss twice rule”. So if you miss once, that’s okay, but never miss twice. On the other hand, if you’re somebody who’s a perfectionist and is easily feeling guilty, then that may not work for you, but, try it out and see if it works.
[32:17] Then once you set the intention, you have to schedule it, because what doesn’t get scheduled does not get, because what doesn’t get scheduled, because what doesn’t get scheduled, just doesn’t get done and to get it on your schedule may mean that you have to take something else off your schedule. You have to learn to say no to the things that you don’t want, that you can say yes to the things that you do want. And that’s why it goes back to how badly do you want it? How motivated are you? And are you willing to take something else off your schedule to get this on your schedule, then make it public. Sometimes, we’re more willing to flake on ourselves and on other people, but we don’t like to let other people down. So making it public can help you keep your commitment to yourself. So the question is, are you willing to do what it takes? Because that really is the bottom line.
Next week, my guest is Jamie Greenberg, and we’re going to be talking about creativity and your roadmap to success, how your creativity can propel you forward. So stay tuned for that. Well, that’s it for today to get the transcript go to https://booksopendoors.com/podcast. And you’re welcome to join our Facebook group. It’s on the page they are. And if you’d like to write books faster and easier, or if you just don’t know how to get started and you want to get started, pick up a copy there of Books Planning Secrets, A Simple 4-Step Guide to Writing a Bestseller. So, until next time bye-bye,
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