Power of Podcasting #024tv - Getting Past the Fear An Interview with Stephen Christopher Hello, and welcome to the Power of Podcasting, the podcast that's designed to help you spread your message, advice, and stories, in order to maximize both your impact and your income. I'm your host Nick Palkowski, and now it's time to learn about the power of podcasting. Are you letting fear stop you from adding value to your community? On this episode of the podcast, we're going to talk about that very topic with Stephen Christopher, a friend of mine, who is the founder of Seequs Marketing, a digital marketing agency, and he is actually going to be talking about his journey to starting his very own podcast, Business Revolution, and we're going to talk to him about the year-long lead-up that he had into actually sitting down and creating content for his podcast, and getting that out into the world. This episode is jam-packed with some great tips from Stephen, and including how he actually uses live video to help him become a better podcaster, so let's dive on into this episode with Stephen. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the podcast. Nick, thanks for having me on, man. I really, really appreciate it. Looking forward to it.
Yeah, I'm really excited about this interview, because we've actually been planning it for months. We talked about this, I believe, back in, what was it, February, maybe? I don't even remember when we initially talked about the potential topic for this episode, but I'm very excited to dive into it and talk about your journey in the podcasting world, and I guess just to kind of start things off, give us a little quick overview of how you like to describe yourself. Geez, that's a cool question. I mean, how I like to describe myself. I would say I like to describe myself as a relentless entrepreneur whose mission is to do whatever it takes to help business owners achieve results above and beyond what they ever thought possible. Nice, nice, and what is, for you right now, what's kind of the main way that you're actually going about and doing that? There's actually a couple different ways. It's, when you look at it, it's really this big, I hate to use the word "funnel," but I don't really know a better word for that, so I want to help business owners. Now, I own a digital marketing company that has a certain price point, so unfortunately, I can't help every business owner that I want, because then I couldn't run my company, I couldn't pay my staff, so what I've done is, as you know, I've created a podcast, and then I do almost daily Facebook videos, just trying to provide value to these people and really the funnel aspect of it is, I'm working with entrepreneurs that are at all different stages, so I'm trying to add value in the very beginning so that now they can get their business off the ground, and if they've already got it off the ground, I'm trying to add value to get them to the next level of revenue, and then the kind of coolest end result would be that I take somebody from
the very beginning to kind of a second stage where they're a profitable company. Then the next stage after that would be, they're profitable enough to where they have a little team, and they're actually able to hire my marketing company to do work for them so that they can continue to grow. Oh, I love that, and that's definitely like the philosophy that we kind of have here is, it really is all about adding that value upfront, showing what you can deliver, and helping people out, and that is what leads to business. That's something that I truly believe, so I love what you're doing: I love seeing your posts regularly at like Facebook, you're doing Facebook lives like every day, I think. It's awesome. I think you're adding a ton of value to your community, which is perfect, so what was it that actually got you, why'd you decide on a podcast? Man, so it's not some cool, sexy story or anything like that. I mean, I decided on a podcast because our mutual friend, Hal, kind of told me one day, he was like, "Dude, you got to start a podcast," and I said, "Okay," and Nick, you and I had met, and I knew what you were doing. I mean, I don't know if even you remember, but we talked really early on, and I was like, "Dude, how much does it cost to do this?" I won't say the pricing that we talked about, but I know it's changed and evolved a ton since then, so that's how long ago we talked about it, but once I talked to Hal about it, I talked to you about it, and I talked to one of my other mentors, and he goes, "Dude, I wish I would have started a podcast months ago," and so I said, "All right, maybe there's something to this."
I wrote down a couple topics of things that I could talk about, started to write down some names and realized, "All right, if not now, when," and in a year from now, or 2 years from now, or 3 years from now, it's going to be a much more crowded space, and it's going to be harder to get the attention of the ideal client or the audience that I want, so I said, "All right, I'll just start doing it, and then I'll evolve as I learn." Now here we are. I mean, I think I only launched 5 months ago or something like that, and already I'm evolving a lot in what I talk about, how I do the show, and following people like you and Hal and my buddy Mike, to figure out what to do next. Yeah, so let's walk through actually kind of your process of starting. What did that really look like, for you? You said it's evolved a lot, but what did it look like way back at the very beginning? At the very beginning, I mean... Let me actually clarify. Do you want to talk about when I, once I started the podcast and said, "Okay, here's day 1, I'm going to record an episode," or do you want to go 6 months, a year, before that, when I thought, "All right, I need to start a podcast. What happens next?" Yeah, well, let's start with that, I guess, yeah, let's... When you first kind of got the idea, "Okay, podcasting sounds awesome. Let's go this route," what did your journey kind of look like? Cool, so when I decided to do a podcast the first, probably, year, I said, "All right, yeah, I'm going to do a podcast," and I told people about it, I said, "Yeah, it's going to come... I'm going to start
working on it, get ready," and every time I thought about doing it, it was this huge excuse of, "Well, I'm too busy. I can't do it right now," and then a few months into that, I realized, "Okay, let's do a little self-coaching. Let's figure out, really, why you're not doing this thing," and so after asking myself a lot of questions, all these things came up like, "Okay, you're scared. You're afraid of rejection. You're afraid of being judged. You're afraid of running out of things to talk about. You're afraid of sounding kind of like an idiot," so for, really, the first year that I decided I was going to do a podcast, it was this internal battle of all those things, mostly related to some aspect of fear. I went around telling everybody, "Hey, I'm going to start a podcast," and I really never did, so even the uncomfortableness of that misalignment, based on what I'm telling people, and based on what I was actually doing, made it even worse, so I ran around for a while just basically being afraid to do it. What was it that finally, what made you go, "Okay, this is enough. I got to actually sit down, record some episodes, and get going with this"? Yeah, so there's a couple things that happened within that 1-year journey, some of which, you've seen me do a little bit of speaking, and obviously you see me do a lot of video now; 2 years ago, or, I don't know, somewhere around 2 years ago, you never would have caught me doing any of those things, and it started to become so uncomfortable between wanting to do it because I felt this urge, like I knew that I could... I knew that my experiences could help people shortcut the things that they wanted to accomplish, so I felt this sense of almost necessity that I had to share that. It was selfish if I
didn't, but the more I thought about it, the more fearful I came of all this judgment and things like that, so... One day, I remember this day, I just, I started writing in my journal, and I came up with this thought of, "You know what? I am who I am. I look the way I look. I sound the way I sound. There's nothing that I can do about it to change it, and so get over yourself. Stop being so selfish, and just stop worrying about it, and you know what? If somebody doesn't like it, then they don't have to listen to it," and from that, literally from that day forward, I mean, I remember, I did a selfie video that day which was really uncomfortable at the time, and then a couple days later, I did another one, and another one, and realized, "Wait a minute, this is not that hard," and the stuff that I put out there on Facebook in different places, people actually got value from it, and it helped them, so that kind of encouraged me to keep doing it, and then after I did a couple of those videos, it got me to go out, buy the podcast equipment, and just start with that. I just started recording. I don't even remember recording my first episode. I think I just turned it on and had some topic and started talking for like 15 minutes, and, "There you go. There's episode number 1." Okay, so nice. That's awesome, and that happens so often to so many people, even some of my clients like, they go through that on a regular basis. I have some people where we always like to do an intro episode. Well, I have some that would send me like 7 episodes, like we'd have 7 ready to go, all lined up, and they would just put off sending me that 1 intro episode that I'm like, "We need this before we launch it out to the world," and they put it off for months.
It's always a little perplexing to me sometimes, but really that's what it comes down to. There's always that fear of being rejected, that fear of the unknown, of going out there, starting something new, so it's something that I think you're just constantly having to battle when you're trying to start something, but I love the way you framed it is that it's actually selfish for me to keep all this value, to keep all this content, inside, and I think that's a great way to really look at it, because it's going to help propel a lot of people to go out there and actually just deliver value to get that content out into the world. Yeah. You just, you can't worry about it. I mean, when you put things in perspective, we only live once, and it's a very short life, and as entrepreneurs and people that hang around the personal development world, we hear this all the time, so we all know it. We're like, "Oh, yeah, you only live once. Do what... We got to do what we got to do," but most people don't really lean into it, and when you actually sit back and take a few minutes to think about how short life really is, and that's for an average person, right? That's assuming we're going to live to whatever, mid 80s or early 90s or something like that. Look at all the bad stuff that happens to people out of the blue. I mean, today could be your last day, so how are you going to live today to make sure you live it to the fullest? I mean, that's a big thing that I think about a lot when I'm fearful. I'm like, "Man, what if I don't talk about this today, and what if I die in a car accident tomorrow? I would have died with that in me." One of my favorite kind of quotes is that the richest place, or the most wealth, is in the graveyard. People that die with all their great ideas inside them, so you just kind of have to get out of your own way and
stop being selfish with your knowledge. There's so many people that do what I do. I mean, Nick, there's a ton of people now that do what you do... Yeah.... but nobody can do it in the same, unique way that you can. You don't have to have all of the market. You just have to find the people that connect with you, and that you can add the most value to, and that's your client, and that's how you're going to be super successful. Absolutely. I love that, because, yeah, it really is just about delivering your voice, delivering your style. People connect with you, people... You have friends, you have, know different people. It's a matter of your personality coming through, and no one has exactly the same experiences that you do, and people want to learn from those experiences. You can be that perfect guide to someone, so I love that; so Stephen, talk to me a little bit about how your podcast has actually evolved here. You said it's changed a lot since starting out 5 months ago or so? Yeah. What does that evolution kind of look like, and what kind of caused that? A couple things have changed a little bit, and I've learned some stuff along the way. I mean, when I first started, my goal was to deliver
the value to business owners in like 12 to 15 minutes, and it was just going to be me talking on the podcast, because I thought... I listened to all these other podcasts, the greats, that we talk about a lot, in podcasting that have been around forever, and they're all interviews, and I was like, "Oh, cool. I'm going to do something different. I'm going to talk all myself," and then what I realized is that, 1, it's really difficult to get a topic across in 12 to 15 minutes, and part of that was my fear of saying, "Okay, well, geez, I don't even have 5 minutes to talk about something," and I realized once you get 60 seconds in, you can, almost anybody can talk for 20 or 30 minutes, so the length of the podcast has changed, and I changed it partially because I couldn't fit it into that amount of time, and also because that's the feedback that I got. People wanted it a little bit longer, so even busy entrepreneurs who I thought I would cater to by being short, they said, "Well, a little bit more, like you were kind of just getting started. I was just getting into it. Make it a little bit longer," and then it also evolved by having more interviews on the show, and that's been really cool for a couple of reasons. One, I get different perspective, so now my audience can, maybe my audience doesn't resonate with something specific that I say, but if I bring somebody else on that says the same thing, they're like, "Oh, that's a great idea. I love that," so now I'm doing a better job at adding value, and it just kind of changed it up a little bit. Unfortunately, I don't think anybody wants to just listen to 1 person every week without some sort of human interaction. It just makes it way more fun. Yeah. Well, I mean, and just think of it. It's like going to a cocktail party, or having a group of friends over. You don't just sit and listen to 1 person the whole time. You like to have that dialogue, and obviously...
Yeah.... on the internet it's a little bit more difficult to have a direct dialogue with your listeners, but having another person there every so often is a great way to create that dialogue, to create the effect. You're able to ask questions that the listeners maybe want to ask, or the other, vice-versa, so it's a great way to either, it's great to either bring on an interviewee, or even occasionally like a guest host. I know several podcasts that were kind of testing that out to see how that actually works, and it's been fun to see a lot of the listeners' responses. That's awesome. Interesting. That's a really great tip. I'm going to borrow that from you. [Yes. That's great. 00:15:18] Maybe I'll even invite you to be a guest host, or... Yeah. Sounds good. Nice. Nice. Okay, so you've added more interviews on the podcast. Have you seen any... What have been the response from people, the results? What are you kind of seeing? Are you seeing the leads you thought you were going to see? Are you seeing the community being built you thought was going to be built?
Yeah. By having other people on the show, I've started to, my numbers have gone up by, I don't know, 20% or something around that area, so that's been really helpful, or that's been a really cool part of that, as well, bringing other people on, and then it also opens the doors to having, now they're more interested in having me on their show, or they recommend having me to somebody else that has their own podcast, so it's kind of... It spreads a little bit faster than if it was just me alone, and then from a lead standpoint, so since we're all about pure transparency here on this interview, I'm terrible at asking for anything, and my subscriber list is growing like this littlebitty trickle, and I'm 5 months in, I don't even have like the free download. I've made it, and I just, all I need to do is tweak it, and every time I look at it, I'm like, "Oh, I'll do that next week," so basically I'm putting it off because I'm like, "Oh, is there really enough value in this silly little download that I use every day of my life," and I know there is, so I just need to do it, but for... The fear's coming back again. Yeah. I know, I know. It's like, "Oh, is this little stupid thing that I made any good," but it actually is. It's great, it's just what I use to track everything that I do every day, and it reminds me of all the cool stuff that I did, and it helps me set my day up for tomorrow, so it's really simple, but so anyway, so you'll see that come out soon, but from a lead generation standpoint, even without doing that, and I mean, Nick, I'm like the worst podcaster ever, man. I just realized that I wasn't even sending out my email to my list every Tuesday when the podcast came out for like a month and a half, so anyway, we got that fixed.
Nice. Nice. It's doing that alone, so actually this is a great point that I think can add value. There's little-bitty things like that. Sending out that email that I didn't think would be that big of a deal, because I get tons of emails, and most of them I don't read. I skim it, and I don't read it, or I don't click on it to listen to the podcast, but that alone, I mean, way more than 20% increase in that section of my listener base, when I started sending that email out again, so it's the little-bitty things, I think, that you have to do consistently that will really help you grow, and help you connect with your audience way more than at least I ever thought that it would have. No, I think that's an excellent point about those, those little things can make such a big difference. I know, for some of our clients, for example, we've seen just basically repurposing, or not even necessarily repurposing, but re-putting those episodes back out on social media, has made huge results, because when you think your Facebook community, your social media followings, they're not seeing all of the posts. Maybe they just joined, just signed up, didn't hear about episode number 25 when you're on episode number 75, and just kind of adding that back out again, as we've seen a significant amount of increase in terms of number of listens and downloads, just across the board for clients, just by simply not letting content die. Yeah. That's great. That's a huge point that I think so many people miss. I think, 1, they're a little afraid, they don't want to annoy their audience, but, I mean, in the world of social media, I mean, even just with my interview with Laura, which aired, I think, last week,
and another one that I did with Dr. Anissa Holmes, who runs like the... It's probably the first largest dental Facebook fan page in the world now. Nice. She was like, she was about to pass Mark Zuckerberg's dad when we did the interview, because he's a dentist, but they talked a lot about that, and so many of our audience, even on like Facebook, they miss the first post, so you've got to repost this stuff. You're never going to annoy anybody, and the ones that you do annoy, they probably weren't your ideal listener anyway, and... Exactly. If you're annoying everybody, then, yeah, you're probably doing it too much, but very few people, I think, do it too much. I would agree, and... We, I love Edgar, so Laura's company, that's one of the tools we use. We also use a tool called CoSchedule just to kind of keep that content out there, but that's... I think what I... What has always kind of perplexed me a little bit about podcasters a lot is that, or just content creators in general, they will often just put content out, and just kind of let it disappear. They don't reuse it, they don't create it into, repurpose it into blog posts or ebooks or anything like that. They just, they create, spend time to do a solid, 20 to 30-minute podcast, but then it just stops there, and kind of that content disappears forever, so that's always been something that kind of has frustrated and perplexed me.
Yeah. I get it, man. I think it goes back to fear, again. At least in my opinion it does, because people think, "Okay, well, I did that. I put it out there. They listened to it. They consumed it. It's not really good enough to push back out there again, or it's not really good enough to create a little program," or a little whatever it is that you want to create with it, but I'm here to tell you that it is. I mean, it is good enough to repurpose and create something bigger, and even create something that people are buying out of the exact same content that you gave away for free on a podcast. I mean, it is good enough. Yeah, I know, that's excellent. Exactly. I would completely agree, so Stephen, how do you actually go about determining what to talk about on your podcast? How do you go about and create that content? Really good question. I'm working on the answer to that every single day, so part of why I do the daily videos is to force myself to read and force myself to think of topics for content creation for my audience, and part of the reason why I do those daily videos tied into the podcast, because I was like, "Oh, man, what am I going to talk about," so when I first started the podcast, I had a list of maybe 40 or 50 topics that the month, or, well, way, way longer than a month, leading up to when I launched it, I just created an Evernote document that said, "Topics that I know something about," and as I went to events, or as I read in the morning, I would just jot down things in there, and that's probably the most valuable thing that, at least, I would say that I could give advice on, is create some sort of a living document where you're just constantly adding bullet points to, so you're sitting there having... I mean, whatever.
You're having a beer with a friend, and they ask for advice on something, and you start giving advice. Write that down. Obviously, that's a good topic that you can talk about, and even if it's not specific to your audience, who cares? Write it down, because, for me at least, those ideas would spark something else that I could tie back into the business world, so that was really, really helpful for me, just going through everyday life and knowing that, when I had a phone conversation, or talked to a client, or talked to a staff member or a friend, I would write down what that topic was that I was capable of talking about, and that was really helpful, because the worst thing, for me, in podcasting, is pulling the microphone up on the day that I'm supposed to record, and just having like the blank... Like a writer looking at a blank sheet of paper. You're like, "I got nothing... " Yeah.... so now I can go to this sheet, and generally, something on that sheet will resonate with me that day, and the other 30 topics won't resonate, or I won't feel strongly about being able to talk really well about it that day, so I'll pick something that really resonates with me that day, maybe based on something that's happened in my life, so that's been huge for me, and then forcing myself to... Not even forcing myself, I enjoy this, but reading and consuming other information that's of interest to me, and that can help my audience, so now I'm benefiting, because I'm kind of putting myself in that position where I have to consume more good knowledge, because if I don't, then I'm in big trouble. Yeah, no, and I think that's kind of a great jumping-off point. Do you have, because that's definitely a habit that you're building into
your regular practice, you're reading every day, but do you have any other habits around, kind of, content creation that help you find that motivation? Because I know that's something I hear from people pretty often, is that they just have trouble sitting down, pulling up the microphone, and starting to record. It just doesn't quite work for them, so I know... At least for me, I've started to create some habits around content creation. I'm wondering, do you have anything around that at all? Kind of to tie in with what I just talked about, having an ongoing list, I think the other things that I do is don't give yourself any time. I mean, you're like, "All right, cool, I'm going to record today at 9am," and maybe I'm just going to record on my own, so, "I'm going to record today at 9am." I don't really look at or get near my microphone until, like, 8:57, and then I kind of have a topic in mind, maybe I'll write down a couple bullet points, and I don't give myself any time to doubt myself or create the fear around it, and I'm just like, "Boom, okay, we're going to sit down right now, and we're going to record in 3 minutes, and here's the topic, and here's 2 bullet points that I had written," and I just kind of go. I found that's really helpful for me. Nice. We even have a couple mutual friends that are doing some podcasts that have asked me for advice on that, and they, when they started theirs, they would tell me, though, like, "Oh, yeah, I've been preparing for like 2 days to record this episode," I was like, "Wow, how do you feel about that?" They're like, "I don't feel ready at all." It's like, man, if I recorded for, or if I thought about topics for 2 days, I could record, like, a year's worth of content, and I think it all
goes back to that mindset of just remembering: You are enough right now. You have enough knowledge to do what it is that you're going to start doing. Just don't let the fear of whatever get in your way of being able to communicate that, because nobody can communicate it the same way as you do, so just sit down at the last minute. I mean, maybe this'll work for some people, maybe it won't. Me, personally, I normally do a lot of prep work for things that I do, but I do it over a long period of time, so, like that ongoing, or that running list that I created, I do that for all kinds of stuff in my life. Like when I'm going to go on a trip, I start thinking about it 3 or 4 days in advance, and I just jot stuff down in a notepad, and by the time it actually gets ready to go on the trip, I already have my whole list ready. Nice. That's really, really helpful for me. It gets it out of my head, it makes me feel more comfortable about it, and I don't give myself a lot of time. It's, I call it, kind of, forced urgency, but that's been really helpful for me as well, and the cool thing is, is that outside of doing it, well, even in an interview, this isn't live. Right, exactly. You know? Who cares? You can hit stop.
Just go back, yeah. You can hit record, you can erase stuff, and actually, I will give another tip, is that when I first started, I would always hit the, I would wait until I was ready to hit record, because it's this oldschool mentality of when I used to make mixtapes, a long time ago? "Okay, well, I have a 90-minute tape, or a 60-minute tape, and that's it," and now, somebody had to tell me, they're like, "Dude, it's digital, you could record for, like, days." It just doesn't matter. They're like, "Just hit record and leave it on. Even if there's 5 minutes of silence in there, just forget about the whole record part of the thing." That was really helpful as well. No, that's an awesome tip. That's an awesome tip. I think that's great. I think, really, what it kind of all comes to is, yes, some people need to prepare, maybe write out outlines, things like that, but I think too many people wait for everything to be perfect, to be exactly figured out, but really, what you're kind of saying is, jump in. Just go for it. Don't let that perfection, kind of, hold you back, and I think that's excellent advice, and yeah, just, you have the ability to edit, you have the ability to change things, you have the ability to rerecord if you need to, but just start recording. I think that's perfect. Yeah. Yeah, just get started. I mean, what is it, the journey of a thousand steps gets started with one step, or whatever it is. I botch quotes all the time, but you get the point, I mean, just take one step, and then decide what you want to do for step 2, or if you want to take it, but just take one.
Yeah. Yeah, and... I think that's perfect, and I'm really curious about your thoughts on this, because how do you think podcasts, how do you think doing those live videos has really impacted your podcasting? Because I know live video is really not something I've jumped into a lot yet. It's coming down the road, mainly because, busy recording a bunch of other content, but how has that helped, or has it helped? Has it improved your ability to be a podcaster? Yeah, it definitely has. It gets rid of fear, and you would think it would be the opposite of that. You'd think live would create fear, and that's what I used to think, too. What I actually found is that when I record a live video, or go live on Facebook, whatever it is, in the morning, most days, it's almost always really good, and it's because I know, or my brain subconsciously knows, like, "Dude, if you mess up, you just have to keep going." You can't do a retake, you can't do anything like that, and so it's made me much more authentic and real, and it's made me not worry as much. It's really funny. Now, when I go back and try to do just a video, like, I don't know, I guess a prerecorded video for something, I mess up all the time, and I get all frustrated, and I'm like, "Man, I just need to do this live," so that's been... The live video has been huge. It's kind of like the analogy of just jump into the deep end and sink or swim. That's what I would recommend. I mean, you saw at the mastermind group that we were in, I mean, how many people did I kind of somehow convince to do a live video? I mean, I think there's at least 5 people at the event that did, and they're like, "Oh, that was so much easier than I thought," and like, "Thank you, and now I feel so much better," and it's like, just go do the very hardest thing you can do, do that first, and now everything else is easier, so from a podcasting standpoint, it's done a couple things.
One, now I have a ton more content, so now I can pull from ideas, because I'm having to create content at least 5 days a week for those live videos, so now I have all these new topics that I'm thinking of, so I can combine those and make one really great podcast, and it's also just made me realize, "Look, it is what it is." I mean, I'm going to give it my absolute best when I do it, and not really worry too much about what other people think. One thing, almost going back to the tips section, but when I do write my notes for when I'm going to record, a lot of times, I mean, I write them on, like, a really small sheet of paper, because if I write them on a really big piece of paper, I can put too much information on there, and then you catch yourself trying to read, and then now, it's no longer authentic. Yeah. You can't read. You just got to be you, and at the top of every post-it note where I write my notes for every show, I write in all capital letters, "ADD VALUE," and I just remember the point of the podcast is not for me to feel perfect or be perfect, the point is to add value, so if I mess up, it just doesn't matter. Oh, I love that. I think that's awesome, and I think the big takeaways, everyone just needs to do live video. That's what it comes down to. Do it. I know. I agree completely. I actually had... Hal Elrod, for those of you who don't know what we're talking about, but Hal's trying to convince me to do a course for, what does he call it, to... How to get over the fear of doing video, and share your message
with the world, so you might see a video course coming out at some point soon, because I really do believe that much in it, and remember, you're talking to a guy that 2 years ago, you could not have got me in front of a video camera for pretty much anything, and I actually have some really old video that one day I'm going to post, just to show the difference in what it was like when I started, and what it's like now. That's awesome. I think that's cool, and that's the only way to really do it, is just to jump in whether... Even if you're not ready for live video, just at least start recording. It's all 1 step, like, just start getting there, start getting used to speaking into a microphone, into the camera. It just comes with practice. Everybody hates it right away, let's be honest. It's uncomfortable, we're awkward in front of it, but just start going, and it comes together well. Yeah. Yeah, don't worry about the sound of your voice. Like I said, your voice is what it is, and what I tell people, and this is probably not the most politically correct thing in the world, but what I told myself to get over it is, "Look, there's people out there that have much, like, crazier, weirder, maybe worse voice than I do, so mine's really not that bad," and then the same with video. I mean, there's people out there that, they got all kinds of crazy, weird hair, and they look all funny, so I'm not the craziest looking person out there, so just, I am who I am, and don't worry about that. It's really selfish to let that get in front of you sharing a message with people. Yeah, and, I mean, let's be real, people see you walking down the street every day of your life, so there's people seeing you all the time, so put it on video, it's... They're used to it.
It's huge. Great point. Stephen, where do you see, kind of, the future of podcasting, specifically, podcasting within your business? Where do you see that, kind of, heading within the future? It's cool. I think that there's going to be a separation, so right now, in my opinion, I mean, there's just... You probably even know statistics. I don't know how many new podcasts are introduced every day or every week, but it's just, I mean, it's crazy how fast they're coming onboard, and so, I think some people are assuming that they've missed the boat on podcasting, but, I mean, we're... Think about it. We're really in its very infancy, so we don't even know what's going to happen in the next couple of years, but my thoughts are that we're going to start to see a big separation, so the people that are continuing to do it, and continuing to just, kind of, innovate and share their podcast with the world, or with their networks, and find a little way to grow that market share just slow and steady, I think that in the near future, they're going to start dramatically taking off, and we're going to see a lot of these other podcasts that... These people were just starting because it was a trend, or because they're looking for the next best thing, and those are going to start to fall off really quickly, so now we're going to see this much bigger gap in between the 2, and just as far as where podcasting is going, I mean, Nick, again, you probably know a lot more than this than I do, but podcasts are going to be in cars soon.
Yeah, absolutely. Now, driving down the road in your car, people are going to have the option to just say, "Okay, what kind of podcasts do I want to listen to," as opposed to just whatever, radio and stuff like that, so there's about to be a whole new world that opens up for podcasting. I mean, this really is a big part of the next, or... Yeah, the big part of what's next for audio, and even the whole, like what we're doing. I mean, I can see you, and we're podcasting, it's cool, so that's where I kind of think it's going to go, and I think that just like anything... I mean, look back at blogging. Blogging, like the big, the people that started it at first did, they grew really fast, and then everybody started a blog, and people would start a blog, and then now you go to a lot of sites, and it's like, "Oh, last blog, August of 2014. Haven't updated it in 2 years." People lose interest, and it's just like anything with successful entrepreneurs. The people that make it are the ones that are persistent, so I think podcasting still has a long way to go until it reaches any sort of a maturity, so, but the biggest thing is going to be persistence. I mean, stick with it. My podcasts, I don't even really know... I kind of know what the numbers are, but I don't really watch them. I do it to truly just add value to people, and I think over the long run, when I get to episode 100 and 200 and 300, and it has maturity to it, now it's just going to really start to separate from the rest of the pack...... and even if the podcast never takes off, now when somebody's looking at hiring our company, and we say, "Hey, Stephen's been running a podcast for 3 years," that helps them see what kind of a person I am, and what kind of a company I run, and what kind of a
company... What kind of people our staff are, so... I don't know, podcasting's in its infancy still. I think there's a lot of cool things that are going to happen that we can't even really even know about yet, but yeah, don't be worried about all the crazy people out there starting a podcast every week. I mean, Nick, I don't know, man. I'd love to... If you, do you know any stats on how many podcasters start and don't get past episode 10, or- Oh, yeah, episode number 7 is like the killer for everybody. I can't remember what the actual stats are, but there is a significant portion of podcasts that never make it past that episode number 7. Yeah, it's crazy, so many people, just because it's new and shiny, and the newness carries the momentum for a few weeks, but then it starts becoming work, and really, consistency is the key. Just like you were saying, it's persistence, just showing up day after day and just being consistent. Adding that value week after week is the key, for sure. Yeah, it's crazy. I was talking to Jordan Harbinger from The Art of Charm not too long ago, and he said that the average episode of a podcast gets 200, it was either 200 or 250 downloads. That's the average, so you think about these podcasts that are getting millions of downloads a month, I mean, what is the bottom 50% getting, like 10 downloads a month or something, or per episode, something crazy like that? Yeah, there's tons of space to play in this market. Don't let all the people starting podcasts deter you from doing this, if it's really a good way for you to get out there. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Stephen, it's time to kind of wrap up this interview. Do you have, first of all, where can our listeners find out
about you, follow your podcast, find all your live videos? Where can they learn more about you? Cool, so to find, kind of, all that stuff, for the podcast, you can go to www.bizrevolution.com, the name of my podcast is Business Revolution. To see the Facebook Live videos that you mentioned, you can just go to Facebook and search Stephen Christopher. Generally, I should be the first one to show up, and then check out the live videos. I do them, like I said, most of the time I do them 5 days a week, sometimes 4, just based on travel schedule, and content, and stuff, and then, if you ever have any questions, I mean, make... I've known you for a couple years now, and I believe very strongly in everything that you do, and everything that I've seen you put into your business, so if anybody just has questions about podcasting or anything else that I've talked about, by all means, email me Stephen, S-T-E-P-H-E-N, @seequs.com, that's S-E-E-Q- U-S.com, and I guess just for clarity, Seequs is my digital marketing agency, so yeah, feel free to reach out. I love talking about this stuff. Awesome. Well, Stephen, it's been great talking to you. Do you have any final words of encouragement, final pieces of advice for our listeners? The biggest thing is just to reiterate what we talked about in the beginning. I mean, how you do anything is how you do everything, so if you're hesitant on starting a podcast, look and see where else that's showing up in your life. Just remember, we only get 1 life. Live your life today like you would live it if today was your last day, and don't worry about what other people are going to say or think. You are unique. If you've made it to this point, and you're listening to this show, and you have some interaction with Nick, I
promise you, you have something valuable to say. I guarantee it, so don't worry about all the little stuff out there. Really, at the end of the day, and at the end of our life, none of that stuff matters, so just enjoy it. Smile, laugh at your own mistakes, because you'll make plenty of them. That's what actually makes people connect with you, so just enjoy it. Awesome. Well, Stephen, thank you so much for joining us on this episode. Yeah, Nick. Thanks so much for having me on, man, I really appreciate it. I appreciate you, I appreciate your audience, and thank you for all that you do to give back and help people grow. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the podcast. If you want to get, to connect with Stephen, get all the information, all the resources that he mentioned in this episode of the podcast, simply head on over to yourpodcastguru.com/021, the episode number 21, and everything will be linked up in the show notes there. Also, if you haven't done so yet, please go subscribe to the podcast on itunes by going to yourpodcastguru.com/itunes. Click on the little subscribe button, and then if you would, please leave a rating and review, because rating and reviews are the best way for more people to find out about the podcast, and decide if this is the one for them, and I also really want to encourage you, if you got some value from this, go connect with Stephen, because he's delivering great content on a daily basis over on Facebook with his live video, so go check those out.
You're going to really appreciate it. You're going to get some great value from him, and hey, if you are ready to jump into the podcasting boat, just simply text the word, "podcastblueprint," one word, "podcastblueprint" to 33444, and you're going to get our blueprint to actually starting a podcast, and that'll help you move down that, yeah, move further along in that journey to actually creating great content, and adding value to your audience. Now, until next week, it's time for you to go out there and maximize your impact, and your income.