#173 The New Age of Podcasting and Artificial Intelligence with Mark Savant

0:00:01 - Mehmet
Hello, welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show. Mehmet, I'm pleased today to have with me someone who is expert, actually, in podcasting, so I have someone who does this, of course, better than me. Mark, thank you very much for being with me today. Can you just tell us a little bit more about yourself and what you do? 

0:00:24 - Mark 
What's up. What's up. What's up? Glad to be here. Mark Savant here, calling in from sunny South Florida, and Mehmet great to be here. It's pretty simple. I help thought leaders launch and automate podcasts Pretty nice, nice. 

Nice Automate. Yeah, I've been podcasting for about five years now. I run an agency that helps people to do that. We've got a ton of shows under our belt, we're playing with a lot of AI and I think it's a really great time to be in podcasting. I get guest requests all the time. I'm getting requests to be on shows all the time because it is, in my opinion, one of the most powerful networking tools that we have access to 100%. 

0:01:02 - Mehmet
Let's start by this question, Mark. Now, of course, podcasting is not something new, but it started recently to become one of the, let's call it mainstream marketing networking tool for even corporate, for entrepreneurs. Now, from your experience, why thought leaders who want to make a kind of a presence and make their voice hear everywhere, why they should consider podcasting? 

0:01:33 - Mark 
Well, we've kind of moved outside of that early adopter phase of podcasts. It's starting to become the mainstream way that people are getting information. Tucker Carlson left Fox and now he has basically what I would call a podcast on Twitter. So we're just seeing this mass adoption of podcasts because people are starting to open their eyes and recognize that this is actually where big names are at, this is where all the eyeballs are at. So I think, as less as more people become disillusioned with the big mainstream corporate media and more people are listening to podcasts for information and for entertainment. 

People are saying, well, maybe I need to get into this game, and I don't think it's. I definitely don't think it's too late. I think the other benefit there's a lot of benefits, but the other thing I think that's happening. Then it is historically, you know, social media was a good place to transfer ideas, but social media has become all about clickbait. It's about can I keep someone watching this for three seconds? Like, if I can get it for three seconds, I've won. Like three seconds it's pretty hard to get across an idea, and so I think, as we see the evolution of the internet and of social connectivity, people are recognizing that podcasting is a powerful way to deliver ideas that take longer than 15 seconds to deliver. 

0:02:55 - Mehmet
Yeah, 100% true, and people like are always looking for alternative media and mediums, I would say, to get information, knowledge, learning and also to know what's happening around. And you know, like, for me also, it's the same journey. I tried listening to podcasts back in the days, I would say, when they were very new. But I returned back to listening to podcasts, you know, before the pandemic in 2019 actually and then you know, it became my, you know, main source of information for many topics, because a lot of things we hear in the podcast we don't see it anywhere else. I would say, now, let's say, I'm a thought leader, you know, and you know I want to start podcasting. Is it something hard to do? 

0:03:46 - Mark 
Well, I mean, getting good at anything is going to be difficult to do, but you know, I don't think it needs to be complicated. There's simple things that need to occur and that's really what I try to focus on when I'm working with clients is, you know, let's do the simple things right, let's get better. I mean, think about it. You know, the first time you walk into the gym you're not going to be bench pressing 300 pounds, right? You have to work into that. You have to go through some learning struggles, but it's pretty simple. I eat well and I keep lifting, right. So what I try to do is make it simple. 

But you know, what I love about podcasting is how accessible it is. This isn't a thing where you need some massive studio. You need all this complicated equipment. You know I have a lot of equipment now, but that's because I've been in the industry for a while. If you can do a Zoom call, you can have a podcast, and I think that's what I try to stress with people. It's not that complicated. If you can do a Zoom call, if you can host a Zoom call, you can leverage a podcast as a powerful business building and networking tool. 

0:04:47 - Mehmet
Yeah, actually, this is maybe like a coincidence. You mentioned Zoom because the way I started the podcast, first, you know, I think I over complicated, complicated, you know the whole thing, and I was thinking, yeah, I need to buy proper equipment, maybe I have to go to the studio and all this. And then I figured out, like you know, like in business, you would strap a business right, so you just start with anything which is available for you, which basically can be your laptop, even your mobile phone, and then I started recording my first interview, few interviews, using Zoom. And then, you know, once you know, I start to feel myself more comfortable, I upgrade myself, I started to use, you know, streamyard Bailey for recording, I upgrade my mic and actually I have my eyes on another microphone now I want to get because you know, all the time I need to get it better and better and better, and this is, like I say, a nice journey to be on. 

So, 100% on this mark Now, from you know, I get these questions myself and sometimes I ask it from your experience, like what is the best, I would say way to decide whether you go, for example, on a monthly podcast, weekly podcast, daily podcast? Like what are the factors that people need to consider to decide on the frequency. 

0:06:22 - Mark 
Well, listen, just like with any business, it's important to have a vision, a vision of where you want to go, and understanding that, understanding what your time allotment is, is important as well. Right, you know where most of us are building businesses, where we have jobs, we have families, right? So I want to be realistic with your expectation. Right, how many people know someone who? It's New Year's Eve. I'm excited, I got my New Year's resolution. I'm going to gain muscle. I'm going to hit all these goals. Let's go, we're going to hit it hard and they go after it in. Like three days later it's July, it's January 4th and they're like, they're just back to their old habits. And so when I think of podcasting, I wouldn't typically recommend doing a daily podcast if you're brand new to the space, because it'll be very easy to burn out. 

People do underestimate how much time and effort goes into a podcast, which, again, is a big problem that my agency solves. We help you launch it and we help you automate it, so it takes as little time as possible. Like I said, we do that with a combination of AI integration and with human power. So I don't recommend daily if you're brand new, but I don't recommend monthly either, because then you're just not putting the proper habits in place, you're not showing up enough to actually stand out in somebody's mind. So my recommendation is a weekly episode is what I typically recommend, so you can put the weekly habits, the daily habits in place that need to happen. 

At minimum, though I think a bi-weekly every other week is kind of where I'm looking at as far as the minimum for a practical podcast. Now, of course, there's exceptions to that. I know the editor in chief over at entrepreneur magazine and he posts one episode a month, but it's highly produced. They're putting in tons of effort, tons of research, lots of B roll. It's very highly produced. So that's kind of a different thing. Well, for the average CTO, the average business owner, the average person who's trying to get the most value from the bank for their buck, weekly or bi-weekly is my recommendation. 

0:08:31 - Mehmet
Okay, is there any sweet spot on the length of the episode? How long it should? 

0:08:36 - Mark 
run. Well, that depends too. This is one of the most important things about launching your podcast is understanding. Who am I speaking to? What do they want? What do they need? What does their daily life look like? Do they have a commute to and from work? Are they? When? Are they listening to the show? So you know, obviously there's shows like Joe Rogan. They can run three hours plus and there's certainly a space for that there. I think there's a lot of value in shows like that. 

I don't listen to a lot of Rogan, but I recently was going through a move. I'm moving boxes, I'm just like doing a lot of grunt work and I was like I just I'm just going to listen to some of these Rogan episodes because they just they help me pass the time. If I have a trucker, if I'm driving a lot, if I'm going to be doing long commutes, rogan makes sense because I can listen to a whole episode throughout the course of a few hours. But I think that's kind of that's not where most shows are going to be. I think for most shows you probably like, the number is 22 minutes because that's the average commute in the United States. I actually go shorter than that with the after hours entrepreneur and I've tried all sorts of different lengths. So most episodes of the after hours entrepreneur, which is now globally ranked 1% podcast, thank you everyone for listening. My episodes are about 10 to 15 minutes long, even for interviews they are super, super tight. And the reason I met that I did that is because I'm not a big fan of the. That I reduced it because I used to be at around an hour long and I brought it down to about 10 to 15 minutes is because I Recognized that when I was pitching people on listening to the show, if I said, listen to this episode, it's about 10 minutes long, people be like okay, I'll listen to that, I can listen. But if I told someone, hey, check out this episode, it's 55 minutes long, people like okay, and they were like scratch their neck and like look away right there, and it was. It was too much of a time commitment. So you know, I recently released an episode with Patrick Bet, david. It's about eight minutes long, it's super tight, it's super packed in and people have really responded to that episode. So I Think you know, in a lot of cases less is more. 

I like to get to the meat. I don't like to beat around the bush. You know, I've tested out. Let's go into your whole backstory and let's flesh out all these different things, but you know, for the, for the entrepreneur, where time is so, so, so, so valuable, it's our greatest asset. I just want to get right into the meat, skip the foreplay, let's dive right in, and that's kind of where, where I'm at. So, again, I know that's a little bit about beating around the bush on these different examples of lengths, but you know, I think a lot of it is understanding who you're speaking to and what is your actual goal with the episode. Where do you actually trying to accomplish with each episode? 

0:11:20 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's that makes sense. Just on a note and people might say, mehmet, how, how come? Like you? You maybe know the answer and you did exactly the opposite of what Mark said, so that's fine. So I, when I started, I was doing daily, but I was not doing interviews. I was doing Solar podcast, which you know it's between seven to 12 minutes, and then when I start in the interview, I kept doing solos and I kept doing seven days a week and, as you said, yeah, it's a lot of work, but because maybe I'm enjoying it, maybe I should have been a podcastor from long time ago. So I'm still doing now, after, I think, six months now. So I'm still doing daily. I stopped weekends, of course, because you know no sense, and I've stopped solo as well, and I'm in the middle of the day as well and I'm enjoying it. Yeah, of course, like and now this is the question I would ask you, because I will not say what I'm doing so, mark, how we can leverage technology like AI in podcasting. 

0:12:32 - Mark 
Wow. There's a lot of different ways now, but before we move into that, though, I do want to point out that idea of doing those short Solo episodes. I think there's. I think that they are very underrated. The majority of people in the thing podcasting they're thinking I'm going to interview people, and there's again, there's a strategy can go through there. You can use it as the top of funnel is a way of generating leads. You know, I say this is the perfect client for my business or this is the perfect capital investor for my business. I'm gonna start by leading with volume and invite them on the podcast and show them a great experience. I'm gonna convert that into a potential sale. So that's, that's one strategy. But this idea of doing solo, very short episodes where you teach something or you Refind your storytelling is is very valuable, is very valuable. So I would encourage people not to undersell it. Russell Brunson when he was building click funnels, which is a massive marketing company, on his way to work every day he would pop open his phone. He would use at the time anchor it's now Spotify for podcasters and he would record a quick podcast in the car on his way to work. That was a podcast episode done. I actually created a podcast brand new it. I've been doing this for half a decade, but I recorded a podcast brand new on Spotify for podcasters. Sitting in the parking lot Waiting for my kid to get out of school, you know. So I think again, you know those solo episodes. There's a lot of value in those. 

Moving to AI and I just want to clarify that because I think I really like what you're talking about in the solos Moving into AI. There's a ton of different things that you can use AI for. Chat GpT is obviously very, very powerful. I could use to give you some examples there. There's a lot of powerful video editing and clip creating softwares that are out now. I Think for me, one of the most is an agency owner, one of the most powerful. Some of the most powerful tools revolve around converting audio into text, because typing in writing is a very laborious process. It's also very expensive to outsource, you know. So I think those are some of the great places to start are with the editing, the text creation, research and development Strategy. I think these are some of the great ways you can leverage AI. 

0:14:50 - Mehmet
Yeah, actually, you mentioned some of the tools that I use. So, and of course, for me it's like again, and I'm doing kind of if you want to call it built in public, as they say. So, built in public is a movement actually usually in entrepreneurship, where people Build their products, which is a software, in public, in front of everyone. So I decide to build the podcast in public and you know, yeah, I'm discovering these tools. Every Couple of days a new tool comes up. I test if I find it it's suitable for me. Yeah, definitely. And now you know, with in addition, to charge you PT with the other tools I'm using, wow, like I'm saying, you know I couldn't do it alone without these tools because they save tons of time. Let's forget about money, but again, time, like what? What need someone to do it in Eight hours or more, one, one full day? It's done like in minutes to three minutes. Boom, you have everything you want to do and it's really fascinating and making actually podcasting much easier. I would say right, it's not so well. 

0:15:58 - Mark 
And most people have no idea that these tools are available or they think that they're too complicated. And you know, again, I teach that in my agency. But Just on YouTube, you know, if you follow marks of on on YouTube, I'm you know, when we find tools that we really like and that we're using, I'll give the build in public. I love that concept. I'll break down this is how I'm using this tool. This is exactly how you can set it up in your agency. I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example that I've been playing with. I'm still working on it and tweaking it, but this concept is really powerful of combining automation with AI. Once you start automating AI, then you start to move quickly, right? So open AI, the open AI software, which is basically the AI language that creates chat, gpt, can be linked to Zapier, can be automated with Zapier, zapier being a tool, an automation tool that connects softwares that don't normally communicate. Okay, and so I'll give you the process, a very cool process, for creating show notes. 

As soon as you finish recording your episode, you open up a Google form okay, google form and then you'll answer miscellaneous questions in your Google form stuff like guest name, their business bio. I'll also include my top takeaways from the episode in their links that the guest has already shared with you. And then, after I type that and I submit it, zapier is gonna send it over to chat GPT and, because I filled out certain entries and criteria and prompts into chat GPT, chat GPT will write out the entire podcast description for me. It'll open up a brand new Google folder in my, where I've kind of managed everything in Google, and then it will write out that entire description inside a brand new Google document inside that folder. It's all automated. 

So when I'm ready to go ahead and post that episode to my podcast host or to YouTube, I already have the description. It's already been written out, it's already done. And then my team goes in on the back end and they clean it up. They add different things, but it's this quick process is unbelievable. It'll change your life. Learning how to automate Google forms. You can do this with calendars like Calendly as well, basically any your type form anywhere where people are inputting answers to questions. You can automate that with chat GPT to use that intelligent copywriting method on automation, which there's all kinds of things you can do this for. You can use this process for and really your mind is the only limitation and if your mind is limiting you, you can just use chat, gpt and ask it for ideas you read my mind, mark, actually because while preparing I saw the video you posted on YouTube. 

0:19:00 - Mehmet
You're talking about this and that will take a while to do this because I think last week yeah, last week I didn't show the guys what I did because I left it for another time. But what I showed in that video is I built kind of a CRM for podcasters where you can put the guests right and once you put the bio and what topics you want to discuss with your guests, of course, using an automation tool like Zapierre or like Integromat, which is now make, you can ask chat GPT to prepare for you some questions which you can tweak later. And actually someone reach out to me and he's not in the podcasting domain, he's actually working in sales and when he saw the video he told me actually I always tell my team that think to ask questions, same as a podcaster ask his guests. And I said, wow, I didn't even think about it. So, yeah, like there's no limits when you put it's like I say you put the rocket fuel in the car. 

When you mix AI with automation, like this is what happens, 100%, mark. One thing we talked maybe a little bit in the beginning about it, but we talked about how podcasting help you in sales and growing your business and we mentioned networking. Can you like a little bit shed some light on that area, a little bit about network building using podcasting? 

0:20:35 - Mark 
Oh gee, well, I mean podcasting gives you access to people that you wouldn't normally have access to. Just last, just a couple of weeks ago, I had James Altucher join my pro group and we had a pod. So we did the first half was a one-on-one interview and then the second half I let members of my pro group ask him questions as well. Now, james is not the type of guy you'd normally get access to. He's worked with big people like CEO of HBO. He's written 25 books. He's the founder of 20 different businesses. Very, very widely respected. Bratamon was able to have face to face time, had a really compelling conversation about AI, the future of business, the future of work Super, super interesting. You can listen to that on the app I was an entrepreneur. Or you can listen to that on the James Altucher show because he enjoyed the conversation so much that he was able to do that. He enjoyed the conversation so much that he is in his team, took that episode and shared it on his podcast and he gets a million downloads a month. So just by having that podcast, not only have I connected with a major thought leader like James, and now we're on a first name basis, but I'm also gonna be reaching potentially millions of people that are listening to the James Altucher show. 

I have people that don't listen to the after hours entrepreneur reach out and say, mark, I love that episode with James. And now I've gotten new meetings. I've got new connections on LinkedIn. I've got people that are scheduling on my calendar that I normally wouldn't have had access to. They're going back into my back catalog of episodes of my show and listening to more episodes, and so it's just again. 

When you go into these conversations leading with value and when you're good at what you do, that's because you practice, you flex that podcasting muscle, you have the vibe, you have a unique way of talking and engaging with people. That's just a simple example, and that just happened in the past two weeks. That just happened in the past two weeks. I could give you dozens of more examples about podcasting as a powerful networking tool, but that is something that's bearing fruit already and I would never would have had the chance of connecting with someone like James if I didn't have a podcast. But because I have the podcast now, I'm accessing potential millions of people that I wouldn't have had access to before 100% and I didn't reach to get to that level yet. 

0:22:54 - Mehmet
I would say, but yeah, I started to talk to people, at least that I want to talk to and the beauty of it is, if you do it the right way I mean you take care of your guests, you established this rapport or relationship with them. Later, actually, they will start to refer other guests to you and the beauty of it. And maybe I want to mention this because people think that, yeah, I would do a podcast because it will be for me kind of a sales funnel and they think about it just from a sales perspective and I've seen people do it like this way and it don't work well with them. So the way I went out, I said, no, actually I'm on a mission, how I can bridge the gap between technology and business, between startups and, again, technology, and get them know how to everyone by getting people on the show. And I never thought about it as a mean to generate leads. And because I did it this way, what started to happen is those started to open for me. 

Now I'm talking to a lot of people actually marketing agencies reaching on behalf of very reputable people asking me can X be on the show? Oh, yeah, pleasure. Do you charge? No, of course no. People think that I take charge for podcasting and hosting. No, I don't take anything. I'm doing this really as a mission to spread knowledge. And really, guys, this is for people who think should I start a podcast Again? Maybe we are returning to the previous question. Yeah, like it will increase first, your authenticity as a person and second, it will grow your network and, as they say, your network is your network, right? So I agree with you, mark, and I'm very impressed also by the work that you have done, because I had the chance to listen to a couple of the episodes also as well. So perfect, and congratulations again on this. You've been in this for longer than me, so I'm the newbie guy here. 

0:25:12 - Mark 
Well, you've got a lot of things intuitively correct, because the podcast is, and should be, a sales funnel, right? You're spending a lot of time. You wanna make sure that you're getting a return back. It takes time, it takes money. But the problem I think that you're talking about is people think I'm just gonna create this sales funnel, I'm just gonna sell everybody. You did. 

0:25:32 - Mehmet
Yes. 

0:25:33 - Mark 
People don't wanna be sold to, so you need to lead with value. I had an experience the other day where this guy invited me to be on his podcast and I said, sure, when I show up for the interview. It wasn't him, it was a girl that was on a, basically recording on a potato. Her video was terrible, she had no background, it was just wasn't thought out. And she said, oh, you're gonna be my first podcast interview ever. And I'm thinking to myself who the hell are you? And she's like, yeah, we're starting a new podcast it's gonna release in three months. I'm like I agreed to be on this podcast with this guy and who are you? And it was just part of a sales funnel. And after the podcast then I was in their email and they had me in this email nurturing campaign with all these long texts trying to sell me on a $20,000 program and it was like this is not the right way to do it. 

Now, I was actually fascinated with it because, at the same time, I can appreciate building out scalable systems to generate income. I get that, but this was done all wrong, and so I went through the entire process just to kind of see what it looked like and to see the things that I wouldn't want to do personally, or I wouldn't want to do with clients. So, anyway, to your point, there's definitely a right way and a wrong way to do it, and that's why working with the right people, experimenting with the right things, is a way to make sure that you actually do it in a way that builds your brand equity as opposed to tarnishing your brand equity. 

0:27:04 - Mehmet
Yeah. So just to clarify for the audience, I'm not saying that I don't want to have income or something Like don't misunderstand me, but what I'm saying of course I built a presence as a thought leader and of course this is because I need to do business. But what I wanted to say, like, don't put the sales slash, business side as a priority on the value that you are delivering, as you said, mark. So and of course this is again what I'm telling is it opened doors for me to go and do consultation for people who I was referred by some of my guests. Right, so, and nothing wrong with that, because everyone needs to have his business, grow his business or her business, or nothing wrong with this. But what I'm saying be on a mission and you need to find, as they say, your purpose, why you are doing this, why you are podcasting, what's your end goal of that. 

0:28:00 - Mark 
So come to the present. The more value you first, the more value you give, the more you get back. 

0:28:05 - Mehmet
Exactly exactly. 

0:28:06 - Mark 
You know, on the idea of charging for guests too, I actually do have a guest charge. It's not a large charge, I think a couple hundred dollars right now, you know. But I had to do that Because I'm getting so many guest requests. I get probably two dozen guest requests every single week, two to three dozen guest requests, and I just had no way to filter through all the guest requests. So I have people fill out a form, I have guests fill out a form, but I say listen, if you're willing to share the load of the production cost, if you're willing to value. You know I put a lot of effort into building up my show, you know. So people just want to take. They're like, oh, I want to get on your show so I can, you know, so I can get business from your listeners. I'm like, okay, cool, no, I get that. But I actually do have. 

I do generate, you know, a decent amount of income just through guests paying to be on the show. 

I've gotten as much as $500 a guest before. 

So there's, you know, and that's the thing that people I don't think also understand is like, now that podcasts are becoming so powerful and so popular, you're starting to see big money going on behind the scenes, like anytime you see like two big names get together on a podcast, just know that there's tens of thousands of dollars exchanging hands behind the scenes between the guests, between the host, in between sponsors. There's tens of thousands of dollars that are exchanging hands and that is becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. Once you start to see the numbers that are exchanging hands for these podcast interviews, you're like whoa, that's, that's crazy. So anyway, I know a lot of people are averse to charging guests to be on their show, but in my opinion, if you're spending the time I've spent tens of thousands of hours if you're spending the time to build the show, if you spent the time to build the audience, if you have the credibility, if you're spending literal money to produce the show, I don't have any problem with charging to be charging guests to be on the show. 

0:30:05 - Mehmet
Nothing wrong because when you do it as a profession, nothing wrong Because, as you said, you're paying for production, you're paying for, you know. Actually think about it, guys, like will any radio station accept to put an ad for you for free? Of course, no right. So think about it this way. And there is nothing wrong with that of, you know, getting income. 

I had my first sponsorship like two weeks back, but I made it short on purpose because I said I cannot commit with you guys and because they had like limited budget. So I said, guys, I will read one time on one episode and I will put you in the description for one week. That's it. And, of course, why I'm accepting sponsorship? Because it's costing me money, which is I'm, you know, putting from my own money, actually right to produce this. I don't have a production crew behind me by my own. 

Maybe in the future, yeah, if this show goes to somewhere else and this is all depends on the audience how they will want me to resume or stay, and actually I did. I did a survey couple of months back, maybe two months back, and everyone said keep it coming daily. Because I asked actually for feedback. Do you want them to be weekly, twice a week, or I didn't ask for for like monthly, I just asked two times a week, three times a week, or five times a week, or once a week, and everyone, majority of the day, said we wanted every day, every single work week, we wanted, and then I kept it this way. 

0:31:46 - Mark 
So and I mean nothing. I think, daily is probably optimal, because then you're part of someone's daily routine. To like, oh, I can't wait to listen to the CTO show. What's the new episode today? Lots of value there. The key is can you keep it interesting? Because you know, if you're just releasing new episodes every day, there might be a point where, like I don't have anything interesting to stay, but I'm still going to record an episode. So I record multiple episodes every week. I probably average probably three episodes a week. 

You know, because I record impromptu episodes when I have something interesting to say, when something happens, it's interesting. Yes share, you know. So you know, the more episodes the better, as long as you can keep it interesting. 

0:32:32 - Mehmet
Right, yeah, actually right. Because when I was doing the solo ones I, honestly speaking, I don't have nothing to hide from anyone At some stages I was starting to feel, okay, maybe I will start to get to get out of things to talk about, yeah, but I was lucky enough to have some breakthroughs here and there that I went out and recorded maybe five, six minutes. You know putting my comments on what's happening. But, yeah, I said I need to shrink, you know the solo numbers. So first I went from all solos, then I start to do three solos, then two, then now I'm not doing solos anymore. Maybe I will come back, I'm not sure. If you know, I feel there's something I need to personally talk about without guests, I will do this as well, no issues. 

0:33:24 - Mark 
The other just as a side note. The cool thing that the one thing I think is interesting about that point, mehmet, is there's stuff. There's stuff happens in our lives every day, right? So by recording more episodes, especially the solo episodes, it helps train that muscle of something you know, of becoming a better storyteller. Like, how do you take that mundane thing that happened during the day and make it a story that's interesting and actually can teach a concept? Because the better you are at storytelling, just the more interesting of a podcast you're going to have, the more compelling of a public speaker you're going to be. You know, the best storytelling is what moves people to action. So I think that's a. I think that the solo episodes again, I think it's something that's often overlooked in production shows. 

0:34:13 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's true, mark, like something we mentioned a couple of times and for people who are interested to make it, make maybe a mainstream way of getting their incomes. We mentioned a couple of ways to monetize podcasts, but what you can tell us in general about how to generate revenue from podcasting? 

0:34:35 - Mark 
Well, a lot of different ways. I think the best way to generate revenue from a podcast is have a product or service that's valuable that you can sell, and then the people that listen to your show you know they can move to buy that product. Or the guests that you're bringing on can go to buy that product, or the people that are networked with that guest could go buy that product or service. That's the best way to do it. Probably the worst way to generate income from a podcast is thinking that you're just going to land sponsors and make a lot of money through sponsors. It doesn't work that way. 

I brought on a client recently and we were going through the onboarding process and I said well, what's your, what's your goal with the show? And she's like well, by the end of the year I want to make $100,000 and I want to have a million downloads. I'm like that's you know, that's ambitious, that you know it. Maybe if you're Michelle Obama, you can pull that off, but the vast majority of people are not. You need to. In order to make that happen, you need to be a celebrity, you need to be a household name, you need to be like a Logan Paul. You know you need, you need to already have some juice behind you, right, and I'm not saying that you'll never get there, but you know, nobody knows who you are, and there's there's 3 million podcasts for people to listen to which, by the way, isn't that many when you think about 8 billion people on this planet. 

There's only 3 million podcasts. In fact, a majority of those about 70 to 80% of those aren't even being actively produced. So, in actuality, there's only about 500,000 podcasts that are that are actually being produced regularly. So if anyone's thinking the market saturated, I don't think so, but you know. Again, I think the best way to generate income is to have some sort of offering, preferably that's high ticket that costs $1,000 plus, $5,000 plus, so that you can leverage the podcast as a marketing tool to show up on people's LinkedIn profile, to show up on Instagram, to keep showing up, to keep reminding people that you exist, to generate relationships, to generate process, to develop processes on the back end, to nurture that relationship, to develop referral programs that incentivize referrals to buy your product, and then to have a good delivery system on the back end so that you can scale the delivery of that product or service. So that's the way I think of. I think that's the best way to monetize your show from day one. 

0:37:01 - Mehmet
Yeah, and, by the way, guys, because Mark mentioned something regarding sponsorship, especially for new podcast, first you need to have like certain number of downloads per episodes so you can get people to sponsor, and then don't think that these guys pay thousands of dollars. So probably your first sponsor would pay Maybe three digits, right, and this is would be maybe for I don't know, like not per episode. Maybe you need to do an agreement for one, one Week if you do couple of episodes per week, or maybe two or three episodes if you do bi-weekly something like this and it's not that big. And if you just want, actually, mark, let me ask you this so of course there are the big names out there, like you mentioned, rogan, tim Ferriss, you know there's a lot of Podcasters out there. How long usually, if everything is done properly, how long it would take to reach to, let's say, to be reasonable, 10,000 downloads and then, let's say, hundred thousand dollars? 

0:38:10 - Mark 
Man, I. So I can't answer that question because there's there's a lot of factors, right? So I don't know if you've watched this, this movie on Netflix, or the documentary about Arnold, arnold Schwarzer yeah, documentary really, really good and he, he and I love. This fact is, you know, you know, to be successful, you need three things. You need to have some, you need to find something that you're very talented, you have natural talent and you're good at it. Right, you need to be, you need to enjoy it and People need to value it. Mm-hmm, right, you need those three things. 

If you're missing one of those three components, you'll never hit 10,000 downloads, right? So you know, I don't think podcasting is necessarily for everybody, but you know, there's. That's why I I Don't think it's really about it about how do I get to 10,000 or 100,000 downloads as fast as possible, right, it's. It's about putting those processes in place, the systems in place to make sure that you're able to milk the cow as best as possible. Right, how can I give as much value as possible from this, from this endeavor? So, you know, is my show approaches 500,000 downloads now I I just have become much more of a believer in that. You know that you know, focusing less on the downloads from day one and focusing more on how can I, how can I you know, what's my vision and how can I achieve the goals from this the show as quickly as possible is is what I look at. And just on the advertising question as well, I just want to point out, you know, if people are new and kind of trying to figure this out, advertising dollars are delivered, generally speaking, based on your CPM, your cost per milli, which is basically, you know you get paid per thousand downloads In some categories of shows generate more in, generate more money, but just as a rule of thumb, you're probably expecting it somewhere between $30 per thousand downloads. 

That would be a that would be on the high side, right. But you know, when I'm, when I'm looking at potential sponsors and when I'm advising people on this, you don't want to look at. You know. Someone comes to you and says how many downloads do you get per episode? An advertiser? You don't want to just sell the downloads per episode, you know. So the downloads per episode, the views on tic-tac, the views on Instagram, your email list, the, the value of getting the backlinks from your, from your website, right? You want to look at the whole picture. You sell the whole package. You don't just sell one piece. You don't just sell downloads, you sell the whole package. 

0:40:43 - Mehmet
If you're looking for sponsorships, yeah, that's great, we approach the end. I have my very famous question mark Is there anything that you wished? I asked you and what you'd? 

0:40:59 - Mark 
your answer would be Wow, anything that I wish you asked me. So I think I think that in a lot of cases, and a lot of you know, one of the mistakes that I made in In building up my podcast was wanting to just do it all on my own thing. I could do it all on my own right and it took me, I think, a lot more time to build what I, what I built today with the after-hours entrepreneur, with the podcast agency, by wanting to learn it all on my own it's. I spent it minimum 50 to $60,000 in hiring and building systems and firing and finding a new person and creating different shows to try to find my, my sweet spot. I spent so much time and that building systems that didn't work, in tearing them down and rebuilding them and figuring out payroll and how to Bill and all this stuff. 

You know where is it? It would have been a lot easier if I had just found Someone or some community that it was a good fit, that that jived with me and I could. I could, you know, essentially pay them or or contribute in some way to learn faster. Right, and I'll give you another, just a perfect example of this. My wife and I, my family, we recently moved. 

And we came to the agreement that we were going to lease out our old home and I said cool, we're going to lease out our old home, I'm going to do it myself, I'm going to use chat, gpt, I'm going to use Google, I'm going to develop out this system to rent it out. And then, as I started to dive into it, I recognized like there's a lot to this and there's a lot that I can mess up. I need to learn out, I need to learn contracts, I need to learn listing. I need to learn, I need to build up my network of realtors. You know, maybe I could find something that'll put it on the MLS. I need to make sure I'm screening properly, I need to make sure I have the right invoicing system and you know what is the criteria on the application there's. And as I started to dive in, I'm like this is immense. I don't want to give someone $3,000 to lease it out, but for me to learn this it's going to take me a hundred hours. 

0:43:27 - Mehmet
Right. 

0:43:28 - Mark 
So would I rather spend $3,000 and get it done? Would I rather spend a hundred hours and try to learn it myself? And you know, we've hired a realtor. We've already gotten offers. I'm so much happier that I hired someone that's been in the business and is an expert, instead of trying to learn it all on my own, you know. 

So I think that's the piece of advice would be, and I'm not telling you to go out and hire someone for $20,000 to teach you how to do podcasting. I think that that's unnecessary. But, you know, finding a person or a community that can then help you get somewhere faster is something I would recommend. 

0:44:07 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's really. It's something again, and the audience maybe the people who follow us know that I am very transparent and I don't like to hide anything. I need to learn this Mark myself, so it's a confession. Let's call it to have the power of accepting that sometimes you need to do delegation. I do delegation in other stuff. Actually, I start to do a lot of delegation recently and, oh, like you know, you free your time, you start to focus on the thing that really matters and you know what can bring you income, peace of mind and so on. 

0:44:53 - Mark 
There's value in learning the hard way, but it just it takes a lot longer. 

You know, and I do. 

You know it's important to me that I, you know, I just I want to see more people podcasting, selfishly because it improves the value of my value in the world, but selflessly because it's going to help you build your own network in your own systems, your own habits, in your own income. 

So you know it's a win-win situation and so, of course, you know, at marksofontmediacom it'll show you, like you know, my offers through my agency I also lead a pro group called the After Hours Entrepreneur Pro Group. Right now it's only 50 bucks a month, although it's I'm increasing it up to $79 a month in the next couple of weeks. But you know that's just a really powerful place where I can help give people the tools that they need, give them access to people they wouldn't normally have access to at an affordable rate. You know, I know there's, I know people tell me, mark, you should be charging $250 or $500 a month and these high ticket gurus. But I just don't really I would rather under promise and over deliver. So you know, that's one of the programs I built out to help people kind of get started and learn these digital marketing, these digital business systems, at an affordable rate. 

0:46:18 - Mehmet
Beautiful, actually, what we will do. The links that Mark mentioned. They will be available for you in the episode description, right? Whether you are listening on your favorite podcasting app or watching this on YouTube. So you're going to see this in the description. Don't miss out. And I really advise you guys to go and listen to Mark's podcast. Really cool stuff over there, highly, highly advisable. This is from a podcast. I can tell you this. Really, I learned a lot and I think I need to catch up on the previous episodes as well, mark, because you have, like, I think, how many episodes you have in total? 

0:47:02 - Mark 
We're approaching 350 episodes. I've had some amazing guests. Everyone you know if you're in a podcasting Pat Flynn, john Lee Dumas I've been on the show. I just had Jordan Harbinger on the show, you know. There's people like James Altucher, patrick Bet, david, david Meltzer, chris Doe I mean just Jasmine Star. There's a lot of really great episodes. I'm very proud of the episodes that we have built. 

0:47:29 - Mehmet
Fantastic and, by the way, guys, like majority of as mentioned by Mark majority of the episodes, they are not that long. So, you know, some of them they are 10 minutes, some of them 20 minutes, but you know, like, really, you can, if you are, you know, commuting or maybe you are in the airport, you can, you can, you know, pass the time and really, the beauty of them, they are all, as Mark mentioned, very good guests, like very pretty guests and cool topics also discussed on that podcast. Well, Mark, thank you very much for you know being with me today. It's a honor for me and, as I end every episode, guys, if you have any question or feedback about this episode or the show in general, I like to listen to feedbacks, I like to have your opinion and if you have any feedback question, you know how to reach out to me. I'm very active on LinkedIn, Twitter and my email is also available for you. 

If you are interested to be, like Mark today, a guest, reach out, we can figure it out together, decide on a time date and then we can do the recording. And, yeah, thank you very much for being loyal audience as well. And don't forget, tell your friends, family, colleagues about the show. Don't try as much as possible to bring guests that are adding really great value. Whether you are an entrepreneur, start-up founder, you are in tech and thinking about doing something different as well. So thank you very much for tuning in and we'll meet the next episode very soon. Thank you, bye-bye. 

Transcribed by https://hello.podium.page/?via=mehmet