Podcast appearances and mentions of craig hewitt

In this episode of The Ross Simmonds Show, Ross was invited by Craig Hewitt of Rogue Startups Podcast to explore how AI is transforming B2B marketing, sales operations, and digital strategy. They cover the decline of traditional SEO, the rise of Reddit as a powerful discovery platform, the evolving importance of LinkedIn and YouTube, and practical advice on AI tools, personalization, and productivity. This is a must-listen for marketers, SaaS founders, and anyone looking to future-proof their growth strategies in an AI-driven world. Key Takeaways and Insights: 1. What's working now?” in B2B and SaaS marketing - Personal brand content from team members on social media.  - Micro-influencers and content creators paid on performance for lead-generating videos.  2. Create “ridiculously valuable” and original content - insightful data or perspectives that AI can't replicate. - AI makes distribution and repurposing easier, but not idea generation or storytelling. - Personalization tools like Loom or LinkedIn voice messages still work well, but are hard to scale. 3. Content Repurposing & Platform Strategy - Repurposing content—doing it well beyond basic automation tools. - LinkedIn → best for B2B buyers and thought leadership. - Twitter/X → still relevant for technical audiences and startup visibility.  - Instagram → underutilized channel with potential.  - YouTube → huge upside for discoverability + long-form value, but tough to execute well. 4. SEO in Decline? - AI has definitely reduced Google traffic—marketers must embrace multi-channel discovery. - YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, and social as the new search engines. 5. Bonus Frameworks: - “Ross's Hierarchy of Needs”: Revenue > Traffic > Channels. - “Distribution Framework”: Audience Attention vs Competitive Saturation = Channel Opportunity. Underhyped vs Overhyped AI Trends - Underhyped: Reddit - Massive influence in buyer decisions. - Google indexing Reddit heavily due to user trust. - Overhyped: Quora - Once valuable, now polluted and ineffective. Resources & Tools:

I reflect on my recent interview with Craig Hewitt, founder of Castos. I dive into the trade-offs between bootstrapping and raising venture capital. I share my thoughts on how AI is changing entrepreneurship and jobs. I talk about my own experiences with product pivots and tough market challenges. I explain how I use AI to boost efficiency in my startup journey. Building products is easier than ever, but getting distribution right is still the hardest part. Twitter: https://x.com/wbetiagoLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiago-ferreira-48562095/Timestamps by PodsqueezeIntroduction and Recap of Previous Episode (00:00:02)Raising Funds vs. Bootstrapping (00:01:20)Valuation, Market Size, and Risks of Raising (00:03:59)Analyzing Competitors and Market Potential (00:09:13)Calculating Market Size and Revenue Projections (00:10:21)How Much to Raise and Lessons from Greg Hewett (00:11:32)Benefits of Not Raising and Work-Life Balance (00:12:54)AI's Impact on Productivity and Hiring (00:12:54)Long-Term Thinking and Consistency (00:13:59)AI's Negative Impact on Jobs and the Economy (00:16:25)Building Resilient Businesses and Diversification (00:18:58)Turning a Landing Page into a Revenue Stream (00:20:01)Iterating the Business Model and Monetization (00:21:08)Distribution as the Key Bottleneck (00:22:15)Leveraging Distribution Channels for Growth (00:23:20)Conclusion and Call to Action (00:24:39)

I chat with Craig Hewitt , founder of Castos. We talk about his journey from running a podcast editing agency to building a SaaS hosting platform. We cover the challenges of bootstrapping, raising funds, and going international. Craig shares how he uses distribution channels, how AI affects small teams, and what it's like to scale in a niche market. We end with advice for indie founders on picking business models, taking risks, and keeping up with tech changes.My twitter: https://x.com/wbetiagoAbout Craig HewittTwitter: https://x.com/TheCraigHewittPodcast: https://roguestartups.com/Timestamps by PodsqueezeGreg's Background and Starting Podcast Motor (00:01:02)Getting First Clients and Sales Approach (00:06:29)US vs. Europe: Customer Acquisition Differences (00:08:25)Localization and Multi-Currency Pricing (00:13:18)Transition from Agency to SaaS: Castus (00:16:30)Distribution Channels and Product Positioning (00:19:06)Impact of AI on Team and Product Development (00:25:28)Bootstrapping vs. Raising Money: Tiny Seed Experience (00:30:25)Agency vs. SaaS: Which to Start First? (00:31:33)Tiny Seed Accelerator: Value and Learnings (00:35:55)Distribution, Churn, and Growth Challenges (00:38:56)Balancing Family, Agency, SaaS, and Accelerator (00:41:05)Using Investment to Scale and the Realities of Raising Money (00:44:05)Investor Returns and Exit Expectations (00:51:19)Podcasting Market Realities and Churn (00:54:10)Pricing, Retention, and Content Marketing Plateau (00:57:23)What to Do When Growth Plateaus (01:00:59)AI's Impact on SaaS and the Economy (01:10:21)US vs. Europe: Entrepreneurial Mindset Differences (01:14:53)Conclusion and Where to Find Greg (01:17:58)Links and MentionsTools and Websites"Castos": "00:01:02""Podcast Motor": "00:01:02""Audacity": "00:05:40""Ecom from Skype": "00:05:40""Blueberry": "00:05:50""Buzzsprout": "00:05:50""Seriously Simple Podcasting": "00:17:36""HubSpot": "00:19:14""Cursor": "00:15:11""Zencastr": "00:22:33""Zoom": "00:22:33""Figma": "00:24:26""Cursor": "00:27:41""TinySeed": "00:30:25""11 Labs": "00:26:30""Claude": "00:26:30""Marnus": "00:26:30""TinySeed": "00:48:33""WordPress": "00:51:19""Podsqueeze": "00:54:10""Apple Podcast Connect": "00:55:13""Rogue Startups": "01:17:58"Books"Steal Like an Artist": "00:19:31"Videos and Podcasts"Nathan Barry's Podcast": "01:08:40"

Craig Hewitt, founder of Castos, joined me on Ditching Hourly to discuss the current state and potential future of podcasting as a medium for building trust with your audience.AI SummaryIn this episode of Ditching Hourly, Jonathan Stark speaks with Craig Hewitt, founder of Castos, about the evolving landscape of podcasting. They discuss the shifting definitions and formats of podcasts, the importance of different content strategies, including private and hybrid podcasting, and the impact of new technologies like AI. Craig also shares insights on leveraging platforms such as YouTube and podcasting for trust-building and discovery, what makes podcasts unique in the AI era, and tips for solo business owners looking to optimize their content. The conversation is packed with actionable advice on how to effectively use podcasting to build authority and nurture audiences.Chapters(00:00) - Introduction and Guest Welcome (01:14) - The Evolution of Podcasting (02:24) - Private and Hybrid Podcasting Explained (03:27) - The Role of Video in Podcasting (05:21) - Discovery and Monetization Strategies (06:44) - Business Models for Podcasters (09:34) - Content Strategy and Audience Engagement (16:14) - The Future of Podcasting and Platforms (29:09) - Content Strategy and Funnel Optimization (30:36) - The Power of Long-Form Audio (31:46) - Podcasting for Authority Building (34:24) - YouTube as a Discovery Platform (34:48) - Shorts, Segments, and Long-Form Content (51:18) - The Role of AI in Content Creation (55:44) - Private and Hybrid Podcasting (59:12) - Conclusion and Future of Podcasting Craig's LinksCastos » https://castos.com/Craig's Website » https://craighewitt.com/Craig's YouTube » https://www.youtube.com/@thecraighewittCraig's LinkedIn » https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-hewitt-78386a66/ The next time someone asks you for your hourly rate, I want you to stop what you're doing and head on over to valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free value pricing email course.Hope to see you there!

saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by https://saas.group/, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies. In episode #39, Anna Nadeina talks with Craig, Founder and CEO of Castos, the podcast hosting platform for growth-minded brands. --------------Episode's Chapters---------------- 00:00 - Introduction to Castos and Craig's Journey 05:02 - Marketing Strategies and Daily Routines 10:29 - The Power of Podcasting and Content Creation 14:10 - SEO and AI in Content Marketing 20:09 - Monetization Strategies for Podcasters 23:31 - Partnerships and Integrations in Podcasting 25:02 - Building Partnerships for Growth 29:46 - The Value of Funding and Mentorship 35:00 - Sustainable Growth Strategies 39:07 - Navigating Challenges and Team Dynamics 42:47 - Community and Mentorship in Entrepreneurship 45:01 - Practical Hacks for Founders Craig - https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-hewitt-78386a66/ Castos - https://castos.com/ Subscribe to our channel to be the first to see the interviews that we publish twice a week - https://www.youtube.com/@saas-group Stay up to date: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaaS_group LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/14790796

This is the last episode for 2024. To make it special, it's a supercut of all the unconventional advice from every single guest that was on the show this year - Kent C. Dodds, Jerod Santo, Rob Walling, Adrienne Tacke, David Khourshid, Saron Yitbarek, Rachel Andrew, Katie Fujihara, Lena Reinhard, Miriam Suzanne, Kirupa Chinnathambi, Craig Hewitt, Jennifer Wong, Jason Lengstorf, Michael Kennedy, and Asia Orangio. This turned out so well, that I will be definitely re-visiting the format in the new year. I hope you have a successful and adventure-packed 2025, with plenty of room for career growth. See you next year!

Craig Hewitt, the founder of the podcasting platform Castos, comes from generations of entrepreneurs, and his own journey builds on the experience and stamina of those that came before him. In this show, we chat about best practices for hiring developers for your bootstrapped startup, finding the right approach to deliver hard news, and how to ensure that your relationships aren't hurt as you embark on the entrepreneurship treadmill.

Get ready for a unique and insightful conversation as we explore the impact of relationships in the podcasting industry with a  true expert, Craig Hewitt. His passion for fostering connections has elevated his business and played a pivotal role in the success stories of numerous entrepreneurs. Craig brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table, making this conversation a must-listen.    Craig is a multi-time founder currently running Castos podcast hosting and analytics.  Castos provides podcast hosting alongside their Seriously Simple Podcasting WordPress plugin to thousands of podcasters. Their goal is to make podcasting easy to understand and accessible to all. They are a fully remote team remaking how podcasters create great shows, grow their audiences, and further their brands Key Highlights:   [00:01 - 04:31]  Building Relationships and Empowering Creators  Craig's background in podcasting and the founding of Castos A glimpse into Craig's coaching philosophy and the impact he aims to create The importance of relationships in the entrepreneurial space   [04:32 - 08:45]  Relationships, Transformations, and Connections in Podcasting The role of relationships in the podcasting community Craig's experiences with Rob Walling and the transformative impact on Castos Insights into the genuine connections that drive success in podcasting   [08:46 - 10:55]  Nurturing Lifelong Connections in Entrepreneurship Kevin and Joe Polish two decades of impactful connection.  The ripple effect of a single act of kindness on a broader entrepreneurial community The enduring influence of authentic, generous relationships in the entrepreneurial space   [10:56 - 14:35]  Branding Strategies and the Entrepreneurial Spirit Castos' recent success and profitability Craig's focus on personal and business branding The power of giving back to the entrepreneurial and podcasting communities   [14:36 - 17:23]  Closing Segment Connect with Craig through his website https://www.castos.com! Key Quotes:   "B2B podcasting is the most significant networking opportunity. It's a chance to meet interesting people and get to know them on a different level.  It's like going to a conference and having the hallway track from your spare bedroom whenever possible." - Craig Hewitt   "Someone did something incredible for me. While I may not be able to repay them directly, I can pay it forward by helping someone else. This principle guides much of what I do." - Craig Hewitt   Connect with Craig: Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009779889936 Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-hewitt-78386a66/ Website:  https://www.castos.com       Honoring: Rob Walling   Thanks for tuning in!  If you liked my show, please LEAVE A 5-STAR REVIEW, like, and subscribe!    Find me on the following streaming platforms: Apple Spotify Google Podcasts IHeart Radio Stitcher    

In this episode, I had the pleasure of hosting Craig Hewitt, the CEO, and founder of Castos. Craig is not just an entrepreneur but a third or fourth-generation business owner. His journey has taken him from Orlando to Nashville, San Diego, New Orleans, and even France. Now based in Providence, Rhode Island, Craig's story is a testament to the power of entrepreneurship and the importance of carving your own path. Throughout our conversation, we delve into Craig's background and the creation of Castos. We also explore his entrepreneurial roots, dating back to his great-grandfather, and how this lineage has influenced his career path. In addition, we talk about how podcasters are using Castos to seamlessly create content, the future of Castos Original Content, the monetization of their blog, the company culture, and a new Castos feature called "Castos Commerce," which helps indie podcasters get paid. Episode Highlights: Craig shares his experiences growing up in Orlando and living in various cities worldwide. His travels have significantly influenced his identity and core values. Craig comes from a long line of entrepreneurs. This family history has influenced not only his career path but also his perspective on work-life balance and the importance of making your own way. The inception of Castos, a podcast hosting and analytics platform. He shares how he identified a gap in the market and used his entrepreneurial spirit to fill it. We dive into the unique content produced by Castos Originals, the company's podcasting arm. Craig shares the vision behind this initiative and how it's creating unique, engaging content for listeners. Together, we highlight the value of the Castos Blog, a resource hub for podcasters of all levels. He discusses how the blog is used to share industry insights, tips, and best practices. As well as how the money it makes pays for the company's annual retreat! The launch of Castos Commerce, a new feature that allows podcasters to monetize their content directly through the platform. This feature empowers podcasters to generate revenue from their passion. We talk about the role of technology in podcasting, from the importance of high-quality audio to the potential of AI in content creation. Video first podcasts, and the necessity of being the face of your company and brand. Explore Our Podcast Archives: How To Make Money With The Amazon Influencer Program Three Online Marketplaces To Find Sponsors and Monetize Your Podcast Travis Brown: The Side Hustle King | Unlock The Power of Social Media Growth and Leverage Your Brand To Create a Winning Strategy 5 Steps To Build An Engaging Podcast Support The Podcast: Show your appreciation and keep us energized! Please take a moment to rate and review the podcast at Rate This Podcast. Your feedback not only helps us improve but also helps others discover the show. Connect with Craig Hewitt Castos Craig on LinkedIn Craigs Podcast Rogue Startups Stay Connected with Clipped The Podcast Haven Instagram YouTube LinkedIn      

Craig Hewitt is the Founder and CEO of Castos, a bootstrapped podcast hosting and analytics platform with a services arm for podcast production. He's been in podcasting almost a decade, having started his own show, Rogue Startups and his production service Podcast Motor (which he folded into Castos). Craig not only shares his ponderings on his show, but he also writes a weekly newsletter called Founder Insights.What we covered in this episode: Craig's background in sales Launching a podcasting productized service in 2014 Stair stepping to SaaS What is Stair Stepping? Acquiring Seriously Simple Podcasting Product positioning Growth and marketing for Castos His approach to podcastingCastos Originals Bootstrapping vs raising Founder Insights newsletter Recommendations Book: Who Not How by Dan Sullivan Podcast: Startups for the Rest of Us Indie Hacker: Moritz Dausinger Follow Craig Twitter Personal website My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - AhrefsThank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring Indie Bites. Ahrefs is the most complete and valuable SEO tool on the market. Bootstrapped companies such as VEED and Transistor have used Ahrefs extensively to understand how to craft their SEO strategies, which have been such a pivotal part of their growth.If you want to get more traffic from Google on your side-project, I'd recommend first trying out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free. You'll see what keywords your pages are ranking for, understand how Google sees your content and discover what changes you need to improve your search ranking. You should also check out their YouTube channel to understand both the basics of SEO and some more advanced techniques.To try out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, head to ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools

On this episode of Voiceworks: Sound Business we have a go at unpicking the "dark art" of Podcast SEO. Getting your podcast heard by more people is one of the most challenging problems that content creators can face and in this chat with Castos CEO Craig Hewitt, Jim drills down into the Do's and Do Not's of Podcast SEO and identifies some key tips and tricks that you can adopt today to get your podcast heard by more people. You can find more about Castos here: https://castos.com and Craig is on Twitter via: @TheCraigHewitt For more on Voiceworks work or to get in touch about podcasts or audio strategy visit www.voiceworks.ai Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Craig and his family moved to France for 5 years, but they've moved back here to the states. We unpack life and business abroad vs. stateside and the many tradeoffs.Watch this episode on YouTubeCraig Hewitt:Craig's company, CastosCraig on Twitter: @TheCraigHewittBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

Building in public ain't all about the highlight reel. Craig Hewitt and I agree that there's so much more to learn from our fails. The question is, how can we share them publicly in a helpful (and healthy) way?Watch this episode on YouTubeCraig Hewitt:Craig's company, CastosCraig on Twitter: @TheCraigHewittBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

Podcasting is a powerful tool for marketing for learning industry professionals. Craig of Castos.com shares how he runs an entire business on podcasting on this episode of LMScast. The post How to Create a Private Podcast For Your Course or Membership Site with Craig Hewitt from Castos appeared first on LMScast - LifterLMS Podcast.

In this week's episode, we speak with Craig Hewitt, Founder and CEO of Castos. Castos is a podcast hosting platform designed for creators. It provides subscribers with the tools to engage their audience and monetize their content.In this episode, we learn about Castos and how it works. We also hear about Craig's background and career journey.Castos has been in the business for around five years now. PodcastMotor, Castos' predecessor has since been taken under the Castos umbrella. The combined service provides podcast editing and production for about 85 customers right now.Craig has been in the podcasting business and working with subscription-based revenue businesses for around seven years now. He also has a background in sales. Craig was originally in the medical field, selling disposable medical products to cardiac units and hospitals. This was when he saw the value of subscription-based models and recurring revenue.Craig was always into podcasting and this spurred him to change career paths. He had started a podcast of his own, and in doing so, realized that there must be new ways to make money in the industry. This was when Craig moved into post-production podcasting work.Learn all about podcasting hosting platform Castos's subscription model by tuning into the latest episode of Subscriptions: Scaled with Craig Hewitt, Founder and CEO of the company.CastosReady to get started with Rebar?Head to rebartechnology.com or email info@rebartechnology.com to schedule a call today.

In episode 606, Rob Walling chats with Craig Hewitt, the founder of Castos. They talk about company building, staying up to speed when you are no longer doing the day-to-day tasks as well as their thoughts on a recent string of acquisitions happening in the podcast ecosystem. Topics we cover:  [1:24] 2 MicroConf Local events […]Click the icon below to listen.       

Welcome to The Business of You Podcast, where you'll discover how to turn your big idea into big business. Learn how to grow your personal brand into the business of your dreams. Each week, you'll hear from the founder of successful companies and find out how they walked their epic journey to achieve a flourishing business. Then, listen to learn how you can use their roadmap to create a thriving company and pave your own road to success! Meet Craig Hewitt This week's guest is Craig Hewitt, founder, and CEO of Castros, a full-service podcast hosting and distribution analytics platform. He started his own podcast five years ago and decided to get into the business of podcasting by starting a podcast hosting company. Two years later, Craig has expanded his company to include all aspects of podcast production to become a one-stop podcast service shop. From One Podcast to One Hundred Podcasts Craig started out with his one personal podcast, Rogue. When he reached episode three, he decided to take on his co-host to share podcast production's responsibilities and creative genius.  Starting out with podcast hosting then adding production services, Craig enjoys helping other podcasters get their voice heard. He is a firm believer in owning your own brand and doesn't produce much content on social media and other platforms outside of his own. Early on, he decided that he wanted to put his content on platforms that he owns and only amplify what he is saying on channels outside of his control. The Importance of Communication in Business Craig believes that his most important personal brand asset is his ability to communicate well with others. He prides himself on building a team with communication as their focus. Craig only hires team members that can communicate well and get the job done. Discover how Craig has used his personal brand to engage others through speaking gigs, how he defines his personal brand, and why he posts his values on their website and their importance in the hiring process. Podcast Resources Visit Castos on the web Connect with Craig Hewitt on LinkedIn Connect with The Business of You Visit the Business of You on the web Like The brandiD on Facebook Follow The brandiD on LinkedIn Join us on Instagram Learn more about Branding on The brandiD Blog   Show Highlights [01:37] Craig's journey as an entrepreneur owning a podcast production company. [05:53] How Craig went from podcast consumer to podcast producer. [08:27] Why he chose to take on a co-host for his personal podcast. [14:41] Craig speaks about how your personal brand can become a liability to your business. [17:16] How Craig defines his own personal brand attributes. Quotes “Productizing a service or a skill is the easiest way to scale your business.” “We all want to feel a connection to someone's journey.” “The decision you have to make when you want to grow is if you want to own your own real estate or play in someone else's sandbox.”

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GUESTS: Mark Asquith co-founder and MD of Captivate.FM talks about their acquisition by Global and what's next for Captivate and how the line between radio and podcasting has blurred?Craig Hewitt founder and CEO of Castos talks about the latest version of their platform and their upcoming support for Value4Value and why advertising is not the future for podcast monetisation.  NEWS: Google is randomly switching podcasts in its app to point to pirated copies with ads. Jason Calcanis noticed his podcast, All-In, mysteriously had ads in it; Google's Danny Sullivan replied: “we appear to have mistakenly pointed to a duplicate version of the podcast”Buzzsprout's data suggests that the Google Podcasts app is losing market share, from 2.6% to 2.3% in the past year. Buzzsprout's global stats for January, calculated to the IAB standard, show the company hit 100 million monthly downloads for the first time.A website using Google Fonts has been fined for breaking GDPR privacy rules, since it leaked the visitor's IP address to Google without their permission. Podnews phased out use of Google Fonts for privacy reasons more than two years ago.When publishing a show to Spotify, you are now reminded to read the platform rules; though not to explicitly agree to them.SiriusXM has launched AudioID. The BBC says it saw a total of 257m podcast downloads globally last quarter. That would make it the #3 podcast publisher in the world.TECH: TECH: JustCast is supporting the podcast:person tagJohn Spurlock has released MiniPubHelipad is being updated to a new version, v0.1.8

Craig Hewitt, the founder of Castos, talks to Doug about growing the podcast hosting company. Castos The above is an affiliate link so if you buy I get a commission. Thanks! Shout out to Odys, a sponsor of the podcast. $100 (USD or EUR) added to your account as a welcome bonus if you are accepted! Contact me. Ask Questions! Send me an email here: feedback@doug.show Leave a voicemail: (406) 813-0613

Craig Hewitt, the founder of Castos, talks to Doug about growing the podcast hosting company. Castos The above is an affiliate link so if you buy I get a commission. Thanks! Shout out to Odys, a sponsor of the podcast. $100 (USD or EUR) added to your account as a welcome bonus if you are accepted! Contact me. Ask Questions! Send me an email here: feedback@doug.show Leave a voicemail: (406) 813-0613

Craig Hewitt, the founder of Castos, talks to Doug about growing the podcast hosting company. Castos The above is an affiliate link so if you buy I get a commission. Thanks! Shout out to Odys, a sponsor of the podcast. $100 (USD or EUR) added to your account as a welcome bonus if you are accepted! Contact me. Ask Questions! Send me an email here: feedback@doug.show Leave a voicemail: (406) 813-0613

Ep. 108 - Have you ever considered starting your own podcast? In this episode Chris brings on a very special guest, Craig Hewitt. Craig is the founder of Castos, an industry leading podcast hosting and analytics platform. They discuss the history behind Castos, what's in store for the future of podcasting with the private podcast movement, and how to market your podcast with email to generate sales. If you have a podcast or have ever considered starting one, you don't want to miss this episode.

Have you ever considered starting your own podcast? In this episode Chris brings on a very special guest, Craig Hewitt. Craig is the founder of Castos, an industry leading podcast hosting and analytics platform. They discuss the history behind Castos, what’s in store for the future of podcasting with the private podcast movement, and how…

My guest today has created a much more modern solution for podcasters. I wish his company had been around when I started Mixergy over 10 years ago. I invited him here to talk about why he chose to build a SaaS in this space and how he’s grown it to over $1M ARR. Craig Hewitt is the founder of Castos, podcast hosting and analytics. Craig Hewitt is the founder of Castos, podcast hosting and analytics. Sponsored bySendinblue – Sendinblue is the smartest and most intuitive platform for growing businesses. They will guide your business with the right marketing & sales tools and help you reach the right people and produce the right content. Mixergy listeners who sign up will get one month free with 100,000 emails by entering the coupon code SIBMIX at checkout. More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

Podcasting 2.0 for November 5th 2021 Episode 61: Remember Remember The 5th of November Adam & Dave discuss the week's developments on podcastindex.org where Craig and Matt from Castos join us to talk interop and integration of Value4Value streaming payments and more! I'm Adam Curry in the Heart of Hill Country Texas And In Alabama, - Transmitting his viral load worldwide - My Friend on the Other End -- Dave Jones! Crank those value sliders up on any of these value4value streaming payment apps: Download the mp3 Podcast Feed PodcastIndex.org Preservepodcasting.com Check out the podcasting 2.0 apps and services newpodcastapps.com Support us with your Time Talent and Treasure ShowNotes Positioning Boost Bait Castos Craig Hewitt - Founder & CEO Matt Medeiros - Director of Podcaster Success Castos Curiocaster Genny Social Tag LPCF Lightning Podcast Charity Fund Per word transcripts Ryan transcripts service idea Music v4v Last Modified 11/05/2021 14:00:26 by Freedom Controller  

We sat down with Craig Hewitt who took a deep dive into what it really means to be a podcast hosting platform, how to succeed with private podcasting, why monetizing podcasts with ads is “garbage” and the value of community within the podcast sphere.

How do you play product offense? In the decision-making process, how can you tell the differences between elective decisions and core features? Customer retention. Customer experience. Team priorities. Everything is affected by the product process.  Today, host Craig Hewitt is talking with Craig Zingerline about the product process, which is a process both Craigs feel […]

Every Friday at around 8:30 am PST we host the WP-Tonic Round-table Show where we discuss the latest WordPress and the general web news of the week. You can also watch the show LIVE on our WP-Tonic's Facebook Group Page:https:https://www.facebook.com/groups/wptonicmastermind or the WP-Tonic YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/c/Wptonicgoogle

About Craig Hewitt: Craig is the founder of Castos, where he leads of team of 15 extremely talented individuals that are crafting the best podcasting platform in the industry. He's a husband to an amazing wife, and father to two incredible children. About Castos:Castos is a full-service podcast hosting, distribution, and analytics platform, with an industry-leading production service built right in. In our platform, you can easily create, promote, and distribute your podcast and grow your audience. Learn more about starting and growing a podcast at the Castos Blog:  https://castos.com/blog/www.castos.comwww.baremetrics.comwww.baremetrics.com/founder-chats

Craig Hewitt

Even in 2021, it feels like everybody has a podcast, but the percentage of podcasts to blogs, websites, or social media accounts is minuscule. In this episode, Jean and Gaby talk to Craig Hewitt about starting a podcast with Castos, a podcast hosting and production service. At Castos, Craig comes across people who got their start on some other channel and want to expand to connect with more of their audience. Podcasting is one of those content channels. Episode Highlights and Topics Target Audience: Castos is for podcasters and creators who value, appreciate content. Where’s podcasting popular? Mainstream in the U.S., but catching on quickly elsewhere. Podcasting Process: Audio file is attached to RSS feed (i.e, list of associated site items). Recommended Podcast Platforms: Amazon, Google, Apple, Stitcher, and Spotify. Call to Action: Website brings people back to one place to engage and comment. Video vs. Audio-only: Podcasting is super efficient in creating content in multiple ways. Two Flavors of Transcripts: Castos’ transcriptionists or machine-generated AI transcripts. Listener Demographics: Depends—everybody is different when consuming content. Cost: Don’t buy the best or most expensive equipment; spend $10,000 or less to start. Common Questions: Why are you podcasting? What do you want to achieve? Who's your audience? What are they interested in? What are they worried about? Castos Process: Sign up for an account, give your podcast a name, upload first episode. Castos Stats: Track popularity, number of listens, top episodes, and listening platforms. Resources/Links: Castos Castos Academy Seeking Scale Podcast YouTube Republishing Spotify Apple Podcasts iTunes Samson Q2U Audio-Technica ATR2100 Squadcast Hardcore History Podcast

At this point, most companies understand what a branded podcast is. And marketers are starting to learn how to use a podcast as a foundation for a lot of great content for both prospects & customers. But your normal, publicly-accessible podcast is typically used as a way to grow your audience. How can your business gain a competitive advantage with an internal podcast? In this episode, Tristan Pelligrino speaks with Craig Hewitt, the Founder of Castos. Castos is a podcasting platform that helps podcasters grow their audience and offer exclusive content through public or private podcasts.During the conversation, the two uncover the difference between a public podcast and a private podcast...and discuss how a private podcast can help build a stronger workplace culture and bridge the gap between marketing and sales teams.

Craig started as a “want-repreneur” with an idea and the desire to build a business of his own. And from that personal vision, he has built what is now Castos, one of the best podcast hosting and education platforms available. Join us as Craig, Josh and Chad discuss creating a podcast as a “digital resume,” what gear you need to create a good quality podcast, and creating service and value for your clients, whether digitally or as a brick and mortar business. If you’ve ever wondered about the inner workings of a podcast, or if you’ve thought about starting one of your own, this episode will be an invaluable resource for you! Resources: Find out more about Craig Hewitt and Castos on castos.com, and check out the Castos free courses at academy.castos.com! Follow us on social media! Instagram: The Entrepreneur Adventure: @theentrepreneuradventure Josh Melton @sidegigprophet Chad Brown @serialcfo Castos @castoshq Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theentrepreneuradventure/ https://www.facebook.com/CastosHQ

In this special episode, Jay sits down with Craig Hewitt, CEO of the podcast tech company Castos, to share some exciting news. SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER FOR CREATORS Every week in Playing Favorites, 3 Clips host Jay Acunzo shares a new idea or story all about making things that make a difference. If you're tired of all the tips, tricks, cheats, and hacks, and you just want to make more resonant things, join thousands of your peers who get Jay's note every week, plus exclusive access and discounts to other projects: Subscribe: https://jayacunzo.com/newsletter PODCAST COURSE: GROWABLE SHOWS Jay's on-demand course deconstructs dozens of real-world show examples and offers 10 original videos plus a guided system for developing your ideas to be more deeply resonant, refreshingly original, and worthy of your audience's subscription. Don't just make Yet Another podcast. Make the podcast that only you can make. INSIDE THIS EPISODE: Learn more about Castos here: https://castos.com/ Follow Castos CEO Craig Hewitt on Twitter here: https:/https://twitter.com/TheCraigHewitt/ Follow 3 Clips host Jay Acunzo on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/jayacunzo/ You can find all episodes of 3 Clips wherever you listen to podcasts, or by browsing the show's NEW home page at https://3clipspodcast.com/

Summary How has Craig vetted and acquired a SaaS company as a non-technical founder? How has he embedded it within his existing productized service business? And what is the ShapeUp development methodology which he uses within his remote team? Find out on today’s show! Listen to the episode or read the transcript below. Episode Victor […]

On this episode of The First 10 Podcast, I talk to Craig Hewitt, founder of podcast hosting and analytics service Castos, and host of the Rogue Startups Podcast.Key PointsYour business is your customers. Your business is not your product.Convincing a customer that their current solution could be better is easier than trying to take them all the way through a brand new conceptDon't be afraid to sell to people. If you have conviction in your heart that what you have is valuable to a specific person, go talk to that specific person.Show Noteshttps://twitter.com/CastosHQhttps://castos.com/https://roguestartups.com/Figma.comSPIN Selling by Neil RackhamThe Great CEO WithinWho Not How by Dan SullivanContact Detailshttps://twitter.com/thecraighewitthttps://www.craighewitt.me/https://twitter.com/CastosHQ

Can we apply customer success practices to books and courses? And how can infoproducts help SaaS customers succeed? Season 2's first guest is Alex Hillman, founder of Stacking The Bricks and author of The Tiny MBA. We discuss the company's conception and philosophy, how they handle customer service, what makes a great course, and so much more.Visit our website for the detailed episode recap with key learnings.Show notesStacking The Bricks — Alex's company together with Amy HoyNoko, EveryTimeZone — products by Amy Hoy, Alex's partner30x500 — Alex and Amy's flagship productIndy Hall — Alex's famous coworking space, now a remote work communityJust F#*!ing Ship — a book by Amy and AlexWrite Useful Books — a book & tool by Rob FitzpatrickUI Breakfast Episode 206: Writing Useful Books with Rob FitzpatrickBear — a note-taking appThe Essential Podcasting Guide — a book by Craig Hewitt of CastosNathan Barry's ConvertKit AcademyMastering ConvertKit — a course by Brennan Dunn available at Double Your Freelancing RateFundamental UI Design — a book Jane wrote for InVision (currently a free course)BadAss: Making Users Awesome — a book by Katy SierraFollow Alex on TwitterThe Tiny MBA — Alex's book (use promo code BDTP20 at checkout for 20% off)Thanks for listening! If you found the episode useful, please spread the word about the show on Twitter mentioning @userlist, or leave us a review on iTunes.SponsorThis show is brought to you by Userlist — the best way for SaaS founders to send onboarding emails, segment your users based on events, and see where your customers get stuck in the product. Start your free trial today at userlist.com

Knowing of which metrics to track, and which to ignore, is an essential part of growing your SaaS business. The ability to filter out good, actionable, data from the ever-present noise that just distracts you is what separates many successful businesses from the ones that never get off the ground. By creating a system of how you can collect, review, and take action on the data in your business you'll be able to take action with confidence that your business is going in the right direction. https://microconf.com #microconf #microconfeurope2019 MicroConf Europe 2019 Castos: Podcast hosting and analytics tool. https://castos.com Join the conversation → http://microconfconnect.com Twitter →

In this episode you can hear Craig Hewitt and Andrei talk about how to run 2 successful companies, finding talent and what to do with it to grow. Show notes on https://techieleadership.com/show64

Subscribe & Download Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Google Play Follow us onSoundCloud Listen on Spotify Guest: Craig Hewitt ​Company / Business name: ​​​​​​ ​​​Podcast Motor Craig Hewitt is the Founder of PodcastMotor, a productized service which offers done-for-you podcast editing and production. Podcast Motor has a team of 15 remote members spread across 4 continents and are responsible for around 40 podcasts on a regular basis. Craig is also the founder of Castos podcast hosting and analytics with a to enable everyone to create their own podcast and share their voice with the world. Castos just celebrated it's 2nd birthday and more than 1,000 customers are on the platform. Tools / Books / Resources mentioned: Books: Profit First by Mike Michalowicz, Traction by Gino Wickman. Show Notes: 01:32 minute mark: Agile entrepreneur takeaway: If there is no solution for a problem you are facing, most likely other people are struggling too. Solve that problem and you have a business.  Craig starts off by talking about how he stumbled his way into starting podcast motor when he actually started his own podcast but found it cumbersome to get it edited and published. He calls it ‘scratch your own itch' way of starting a business where you solve your own problem and in the process build a business to start similar problems. 04:52 minute mark: Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Figure out your calling in life and focus on what you can accomplish.  Craig calls himself a hopeless entrepreneur who is practically unemployable in a corporate world. Instead of spinning wheels in a corporate world, Craig really wanted to accomplish meaningful things by being on his own. Even though he started by selling capital equipment to hospitals, Craig is now in a 3rd iteration of his entrepreneurial journey. 06:47 minute mark: Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Be agile and nimble in starting your business. Craig is a big believer in productized service business and a prime example of get started quickly. He went from an idea to a paying customer in 3 weeks and a monthly revenue of $5,000 in 2 months. Start with a problem you can solve for customers and find a way to do it soup-to-nuts for them. Then you can keep pivoting from there. 08:30 minute mark: Agile entrepreneur takeaway: If there is no solution for a problem you are facing, most likely other people are struggling too. Solve that problem and you have a business.  Craig gives examples of where his friend Justin McGill started a challenge to start a business in 24 hours and his SAS business lead fuse did exactly that. In this segment, Craig also talks about building a customer pipeline with a combination of organic traffic (70%) and paid traffic (30%). 15:04 minute mark: Agile entrepreneur takeaway: There are always multiple sources of motivation: personal and professional. Find yours. Craig talks about the motivation needed to build his business. (1) He wanted to quit his full-time job and the side business he started seemed like the path (2) And the pipeline of customers who needed him provided him the additional motivation. 17:37 minute mark: Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Read the following books if you can: The Profit First and Traction. Craig mentions two books that were instrumental in shaping him and his business. The first is ‘Profit First' by Mike Michalowicz which talks about paying yourself first from the profits. The second book is ‘Traction' by Gino Wickman which is kind of a blueprint for running a business. Craig also mentions Dave Ramsey's thinking on how you need to tell the mon...

I love getting new perspectives on our “little” WordPress business world we live in. Today, I'm happy to bring you Craig Hewitt and Dave Rodenbaugh of RogueStartups fame to help us distill the differences between the WordCamp go'ers and MicroConf business builders. How do two business owners living with one hand in the WordPress ecosystem and the other in the SaaS world look at the economy of plugins vs hosted software solutions? From podcasting to freemium business models, to ideal customer acquisition channels this is a MUST LISTEN episode if you're in the WordPress business space! Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners SaaS vs WordPress vs MicroConf vs WordCamp with RogueStartups Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:35:28 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:35:28 Craig's businesses: Podcast Motor Castos SalesCamp Dave's businesses: Business Directory Plugin Recapture.io ★ Support this podcast ★

GUEST BIO: Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of Recapture.io an automated abandoned cart recovery for Magento & Shopify. Dave started his entrepreneurial career by acquiring businesses and making the developmental changes that turned them into profitable companies. Dave is the host of the Rogue Startups Podcast alongside his co-host Craig Hewitt where they have weekly conversations about entrepreneurship, eCommerce, and marketing. SHOW SUMMARY: Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of Recapture.io and the host of the Rogue Startups Podcast. His provides an automated abandoned cart recovery for Magento & Shopify businesses. Dave initially started his career acquiring small businesses, where he learned where businesses needed the most help to create profitability. In this episode, we talk about how much Dave acquired his first companies for, where to find those same deals today, and how he acquires new customers for Recapture.io. This is The Lean Commerce Podcast. TOPICS: How did you get started in business acquisition? 1:46 I joined a group of micro-entrepreneurs over a decade ago. What we all had was a skill to build something but we didn't have an understanding of how to sell it and how to sustainably set up a business that can scale. Overtime, the founders of this group created a conference, called Micro Conf, which is now held in Miami. 4:42 I spent time looking around at various marketplaces, such as eBay, and found smaller businesses with potential and bought them at a low costs. Then I started figuring out what parts could be outsourced and how to scale these businesses. How much did you initially acquire these companies for? 5:46 I had a $2,000 budget. Now a days, you could do it for under $5,000. I bought a small business making $100 a month, tried to grow it and make it legit but it turned out there were a lot of fraudulent users on there. I cleaned up the platform, marketing, and sales page and then sold it for the same price. What I came out of it with was knowledge and experience. The second time I did that I found a bunch of Wordpress plugins and a business that was drowning in support. The women in charge wasn't systemizing it or funneling it, so I spent time setting up a pricing page, making a free version vs. premium version, and created a support forum and turned it into a $3,000 a month business from a $300 a month business in three years. Where would you find these smaller deals today? 15:00 I'm on a lot of little lists. Side Projectors is one for example. You'll find a lot of good businesses and some really bad ones. For example, people will rewrite Slack and want you to pay for it. 16:19 The only thing that truly adds value to a business if it's make money. If it's not generating money, it's not worth anything. In some cases, you might be able to say that it can be monetized. For example, a Shopify app that needs another distribution channel. Now, you can use that to cross promote your other Shopify app and use it to make the other one more money. How many acquisitions have you made? 29:50 I think I'm somewhere around eight or nine done deals, not including the ones that haven't worked out. What does it look like to acquire new customers for Recapture.io? 31:20 I won't lie, it can definitely be a struggle. We also have a high LTV. You have to find the right channel. You can try cold emails, pitch to agencies or store owners, etc. All of this takes time and money and as an individual founder there is no way I can do all of it by myself. I have to hire out to get it all done. 36:58 The hardest thing to overcome is trust. You need to show people that you know what you're doing and they can account for your services. Where are the distribution channels to get in touch with store owners today? 38:19 The problem is that there is no one answer to that. Even if you had an answer, it could change in 6-12 months and then change again. Communities come and go. I compare the l

Hosts can talk faster than they can type. Followers can listen while doing any number of other tasks. A business that comes with a podcast following of 15,000 is more valuable than one that comes with a 35,000-person email list. Podcasts are pretty hard to get wrong. They can diminish the laborious reading and writing aspects of emails and blogs by automatically offering content within the conversations with guests. Today we are talking with podcasting expert Craig Hewitt about ways that adding a podcast to your business can be beneficial both for a recent acquisition and a potential sale. Craig is the owner of Podcast Motor, a company that handles the end to end podcast production process for businesses. He's an entrepreneur in the podcast space, running two service companies and producing 35 podcasts. He believes, and we here at Quiet Light agree, that a good podcast is a great tool for building your business. Episode Highlights: How podcasts differ from blogs. Where podcasters should get started. Whether they need all the "stuff" to get up and running. Why podcasters use external services to create their episodes. Craig's solution for launching a podcast quickly and easily. Challenges hosts face in getting started and putting themselves out there. Why it's important to find the right guests and create relevant conversations for your business. How podcasting can be a fit for different types of businesses. Ways starting a podcast with a newly acquired business can help promote ownership. Why businesses need fewer followers for a podcast than for a blog. How a podcast can create repurposable content. Ways a podcast can benefit a business you are getting ready to sell. Whether podcasts are transferable. The basic technical tools you need to get started. How long you should test for success. Transcription: Joe: So Mark today's episode we're going to talk about why someone should start a podcast. Stutter, stutter, stutter, Chris edit that. Mark: Chris don't edit that just keep that in there. Joe: Yes let's keep it in because folks this is about podcasting and I was going to ask Mark a question … oh, man, did somebody put something in my coffee this morning [inaudible 00:01:34.2] in my coffee … it's a Northern thing. Do you have to be well spoken, intelligent, and an expert on the subject matter to start a podcast? Of course, the key is to have a successful podcast to build an audience and a brand and a reputation but what do you think? Do you have to have all of that to really begin? Mark: No absolutely not. And look at the risk of narrowcasting and just talking about what we're doing here which is running a podcast, I thought it would be interesting to have Craig Hewitt on the podcast here. Craig owns PodcastMotor. They do the editing for all of the Quiet Light Podcast episodes. He also has a podcast hosting service Castos.com which he's recently started. He's an entrepreneur cut of the same cloth that all of us are made of. He likes to start, he likes to buy, he likes to grow businesses and living in France actually. He's an expat living in France so a pretty cool backstory there which unfortunately we didn't have time to get into. But I wanted to talk to him about why anyone who's out there looking to buy or even grow your business and create something really unique and special might want to consider adding podcasting to the mix. And look I get it we're looking a little bit at our own experience here and how beneficial a podcast … the Quiet Light podcast has been at Quiet Light brokerage, but I asked Craig this question. Joe, I'm going to ask you and put you on the spot here again like I do on a third of these intros I try and ask you a question that we didn't prep for. If you're looking at a business for sale and it's got 30,000 e-mail subscribers, okay and that's one option and then there's another business in exact same niche but they have 15,000 podcast downloads per month, where do you put more value in your opinion? Joe: Oh without a doubt on the 15,000 because those people are listening. They're hearing your voice and they feel like they know you already. We've gone to events where people have come up and said hello and they joke and they say I feel like I know yo. I've heard Mike Jackness talk about that as well. But I think the number one thing that this podcast has done for us … and John Corcoran was a guest on the podcast as well where we talked about networking and how important it is to a business. And I think if you're a business owner, if you're launching your own products, if you're a SaaS product owner, you just look to prior examples of huge podcast success like Michael Jackness or Scott Voelker for instance. Scott has got a quarter of a million people that listen to him every month. You network and learn things from the people that you network with to grow your business and grow your brand and I think it's invaluable and it blows away the e-mail. Although the e-mail is something specific and different because you're probably trying to sell a product right then and there, I think on a podcast you're talking about the bigger picture and your brand. If you're a SaaS business owner I think it's a great idea because you can talk about what updates you've got to your product and the market in general. But I love the podcasting and obviously, I'm not very well spoken or eloquent so if we can do it anybody can. Mark: That's right. So this is a bit of an advertisement for starting a podcast and I feel confident in doing this because I know a lot of people out there probably will listen to this and won't start a podcast. You'll think about the technical challenges, you'll think about the fact that your voice has to be out there and Craig and I go over this. There is an element of fear because you're a little bit more intimate with your audience when you have a podcast. There's a third dimension that gets added, right? When you are just writing a blog post it's very two dimensional, you're words are out there, you can go back and edit it whenever you want, people don't hear your tone … your voice, they don't hear you screw up because you get to go and edit it. And of course you can edit a podcast but there's still … it's still you, a little bit more real and raw. So I know a lot of people are going to listen to this and not start podcast but I'm going to make a pitch to just say look if you're trying to build something unique, if you're trying to build something valuable, if you're trying to grow your existing business with the [inaudible 00:05:24.7] towards selling it down the road, there is some value to starting up a podcast which is going to make it different if you are able to grow a good sizable audience. And I think in the 11 years we've done Quiet Light Brokerage I can't think of a single business that we have sold that actually came with a podcast attached to it. Joe: I don't think I've ever had one. And as far as return on investment I would think that the podcast and the cost associated with it, the ROI would be huge and probably not measurable; an invaluable. But one other thing look this is we've got Craig from the podcast company that manages ours but we've talked to lots of people like Taz from the Amazon Entrepreneur. He launched his podcast, does two a week and he does it all himself. So it's possible to do it for very little or nothing at all if that's … if it's a budgetary problem and you still want to get started. Mark: All right let's hear it directly from somebody who's been in the podcasting niche for a long time. He knows all … a ton of what he's talking about, Craig Hewitt. Let's get to it and cover this topic and I'll hopefully inspire maybe one or two of you guys out there to go ahead and start a podcast with your business. Mark: Hello Craig welcome to the Quiet Light podcast. Thank you so much for agreeing to come on. Craig: Hey Mark thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Mark: All right you and I know each other from a ways back at Rhodium; do you remember the … I don't remember when we met each other at Rhodium, do you? Craig: Gosh yeah. Like I'm optimistic with my time projections these days I want to say it's three years but it might be four years ago. It will be four years in April probably yeah. Mark: All right my wife does this thing I call it Megan math where she'll … something would be 2 months away and she'll somehow compress that down to like just two weeks away. Craig: Yeah [inaudible 00:07:06.4] great exactly. Mark: Again full disclosure and I'm sure I probably said this in the intro. We always do the intros after … we record the intros after we record the interviews themselves but I'm sure I will say this just out of full disclosure I do pay you professionally. You have been doing the editing … probably it's your group that has been doing the editing for the Quiet Light podcast so thank you for that. Craig: No it's my pleasure. It's my pleasure, yup. Mark: Awesome, all right so we're going to talk about podcasting today and whether or not somebody should consider adding it to a business. And I obviously with Quiet Light I want to focus a little bit on does it make sense to add on to an acquisition like if you buy a business, does it make sense to add that on? What's involved in starting up a podcast? What are the impacts that you might see? And I also want to … if there's time allowing probably talk about the personalized aspect of podcasts and how that's going to affect the buying and selling of businesses as well. We can all just talk a little bit about SaaS. I know you have some SaaS work as well which could be an interesting thing to get into as well. But let's start off real quick with your background and your history and kind of how you came into doing what you're doing. Craig: Yeah so we know each other through kind of why my first successful online business and really the way I escaped the rat race of the professional kind of corporate world which is called PodcastMotor. So PodcastMotor is a product tied service that does podcast editing and production, really kind of like end to end everything from Mark records an episode, sticks it in Dropbox and an episode shows up in iTunes a week later. We really try to take care of every aspect of that whole process for our customers. And that business has been going since … it just turned four this year so a couple of months ago. So we've been doing it a long time in the podcasting world. And we have about 35 customers that we service on a regular basis. So weekly or every other week that they have a podcast come out. About two years ago I acquired a WordPress plugin also in the podcasting space called seriously simple podcasting. And on top of that, we built a podcast hosting platform that we now call Castos. So I run two different businesses in the podcasting space and it all happened just by chance. To be honest I started a podcast … jeez, four and a half years ago I guess and saw it really quickly like a lot of people that podcasting is really difficult. There's a lot of nuts and bolts and technical stuff and gear and all this junk that you need to start a podcast as opposed to like a blog where you just get a WordPress site and a keyboard or your iPhone and you could start blogging as good as anybody else. Podcasting there's a technique and gear and equipment and all this stuff that you have to have to be decent. And then to be really good is a whole other level. So we started offering the PodcastMotor service based on me seeing that pain I guess. Mark: Yeah and I don't want to scare people right at the gate but let's get into that kind of a scary different world of podcasting because it is a little bit different. Let's start with just the hosting side and you talk about Castos your podcast hosting service. Isn't it enough to just have a regular website? I mean I think one of the things that was confusing to me with podcasting when we got into it before we started the Quiet Light podcast was well why do I need all this stuff? Why do I need Libsyn? Why do I need all these other things? Why are we … why do podcasters use these extra services? And what are some of things that if somebody is thinking about podcasting what do they need to consider from a technological standpoint outside of the equipment just from the webhosting setup, the technical setup? Craig: Yeah so the logic around having a dedicated media hosting platform with you know hear, Libsyn, and SoundCloud, and Castos or whatever, the idea there is so you have a hopefully a very popular podcast and you have thousands of people downloading your podcast every Tuesday morning when it comes out right? Mark: Just like the Quiet Light podcast, thousands and— Craig: Yeah okay so thousands of people listening to your podcast and downloading this 60, 80 megabyte file every Tuesday morning. If you're a business like all of your customers are and a lot of ours the last thing you want is this enormous strain on your web server on Tuesday morning when customers are coming to your site and trying to buy your stuff or schedule a meeting or something like that because both the streaming and download of the podcast will be bad. And your website will at least be very slow if not crash. So you separate the resource strain from podcasting and serving up your website and have a dedicated hosting platform just for those audio files and let your website run on you know WP engine or flywheel or wherever it's running so that the two aren't using the same resource. That's kind of the logic around why you needed a dedicated media hosting platform. It's just like you don't put your video files under use Wistia or something like that. It's the same kind of idea. Mark: All right exactly. Okay so there's this whole other technological world with podcasting and then there's also the equipment side of it. And then there's the editing side of podcasting as well. Craig: Yeah. Mark: And then there's the distribution to the different podcast networks. And we're kind of jumping on the deep end or I guess we'll swim to the shallow end because I'm going to talk about listing the praises of podcasting here in a little bit. And specifically as kind of a leading tease here for anyone listening why I think it's a really, really good idea for any acquisition that you do, any business that you're looking at to potentially acquire to consider adding a podcast and potentially even on the sell side as well. But let's talk about the setup here a little bit as well and the equipment. Now I've got as you can probably see from the video that you can see and we do these podcast over video is just a little more personal. Craig: Yeah. Mark: I got the road podcaster and I got like three other mics back there as well. [inaudible 00:12:52.1] and everything else. And you, you got I see a pop screen of yours, there's pop screens, there's mics, there's the Vulcan power stuff, it's a whole different world, isn't it? Craig: Yeah I mean so it is totally a different world and this is the bad scary thing about podcasting is that there's more opinions and resources out there than are necessary honestly. And there's so much information that so many people get scared and they go and read five or six different articles just about the best podcasting mic and what web … what podcast hosting platform to use and there's everyone has an opinion about that and you know how long should you're episodes be and blah, blah, blah. Do you need a pop filter? Do you need a boom mount? Do you need all this stuff and so actually we created a resource to kind of counteract this and we call it launch in a week. And the idea is we're going to give you like one or two options not like all these million things out there that all these other resources give you is like they create the analysis or paralysis by analysis. So we … so castos.com/launch takes you to launch in a week and we give you like in a week seven day, seven e-mails and videos exactly what you need to launch a podcast to dispel a lot of that over information and misinformation that's out there a little bit. Like microphones I only recommend two microphones you know it's like this one that I'm using Audio Technica ATR2100 and another one is called the Shure SM7B. That's a really really really good mic. This one is $65 that one is about $500. And so it's like kind of whatever you feel like you want or need. We try to do a lot of that like you can do this or this and don't overthink any of it because you can get in way over your head. And the unfortunate thing is a lot of people never get started because they just think so much about all this stuff. Mark: All right let's talk about that point because I think this is the biggest obstacle to podcasting right? With writing a blog you can put it out there and you can get it up and going. Everybody knows how to write something even if it's not very good but there doesn't seem to be as much of a barrier to getting started. Maybe it's because of the technical challenge but I think there's also a mental challenge of getting out there. And I know for a podcast standpoint we toss around the idea forever. I actually had a false start at starting the Quiet Light podcast and I think I recorded three episodes, launched two, and then stopped because I didn't record enough episodes. I think one of the challenges people have is the idea of being out there and trying to get this audio presentation perfect from the get go. But like you said just get out there and start. You have to actually start doing it. Craig: Yeah I mean I think part of it is with writing you can write a blog post and save it come back two days later and edit it and tweak it and you haven't even be published by someone else on your team if you want maybe it's your name it's not associated with it. But like right now you and I are seeing and talking to each other and like covering a lot of the senses all at one time. And when you're podcasting your literally in someone's ear for 45 minutes every week or whatever it is. So I think it's just the senses that you're covering and the emotional connection you crave with somebody which is why it's so great if you can do it and get it right. But it's also why it's so scary to just get started and overcome some of this fear of putting yourself out there. You know I think about … I've done a little bit of video work and it's a lot harder because then you have to get the voice and the physical kind of presentation right the first time and there's no editing. You can't just edit out a flub in a video it looks horrible. And so I think in a way if you're already doing video podcasting is so easy because you can just cut it up a million ways from Sunday and it's no big deal. But it is so much harder than writing. Mark: Yeah and I think one of the other obstacles that we run into is written content can be repurposed in so many ways right? Craig: Yeah. Mark: And there's different focuses that we can really measure written content from an SEO standpoint. So you can definitely say hey I'm going to optimize for this keyword. And I know I'm going to get this keyword density out there and then I can actually turn this into a downloadable white paper. And I can go out and I can maybe use the same sort of topic and write you know 10 different guest posts and get involvings. So there's that other benefit as well but you actually lead into one of the benefits and maybe this way you could [inaudible 00:17:18.0] to segue into that. And probably the number one reason that we started the Quiet Light podcast and the number one benefit that we've received from it is that personal touch that having a podcast creates. I'll tell you a funny story. You'll actually like this because you listen to our podcast by default from doing some editing. Craig: Of course. Mark: And I know you're not doing all the editing yourself but- Craig: No I do listen to the show though, yeah. Mark: Okay well here we go … thank you for that. That makes me feel better. So obviously Joe and I host the podcast and we were at Brand Builder's Summit. And somebody came up to our table at Brand Builder's Summit and said "hey it's Joe here" I'm like "ah no Joe is [inaudible 00:17:54.7] right now" and they go "oh man I really wanted to meet Joe, I absolutely love his podcast" I'm thinking "wow that's great you love Joe's podcast, I'm so glad that you love Joe's podcast" and he goes "yeah I know I was really hoping to meet Joe". And Walker was staying right next to me and goes "no this is Mark over here he also does the podcast" he goes "ah is Joe going to be back soon?" I'm like "yeah Joe will be back soon". Craig: That's wonderful, that's wonderful. Mark: But you know one of the things that this podcast has been able to do is it gets us in people's cars. It gets us in people's ears for a certain amount of time and it really breaks down some of that barrier that I think can happen when you're writing. Like you said it's very two dimensional. Craig: Oh yeah. Mark: It's the words on a page, you don't have the voice of the person in your head. This is … it's not as full-on as video but it's a little more personal. And I'm sure you've seen that a ton with what you're doing because I know you work mainly with businesses right? Craig: Oh yeah I mean for PodcastMotor all of our customers are businesses like yourselves. You know like small, medium size business and entrepreneurs, startups. And I think that the medium of podcasting is unique in two ways. One like we're having right now it's a conversation. It's not you on a video and your YouTube channel talking and everyone else is listening. That's not so helpful. And it's not so helpful in a very particular way when it comes to businesses and that is rapport building and networking. And this is like the secret sauce I think when it comes to like B2B podcasting is you have this podcast to reach a broader audience of buyers and sellers … of buyers maybe but really probably to get sellers in the door right? And so like for PodcastMotor we have a podcast. If we're going to go kind of strategically and think about who we're having on the podcast it's thought leaders in the podcasting like B2B podcasting space. So they can say wow you know I had this podcast with Craig last week, we talked for like an hour and he really knows his stuff. Dean my friend over here who runs a coaching business who wants to start a podcast should really talk to Craig because he really knows what he's doing. He can help him be successful. Like that really like micro networking opportunity that you have in interviewing a thought leader in your space on a podcast is not something you can measure by like download statistics or something like that. But for a lot of people should be the reason they do a podcast. It's not your listeners that you do the show for it selfishly a little bit is yourself and the networking ability that the podcasting medium allows for. Mark: Yeah I would agree 100%. And this is one of the main ancillary benefits that we received from the Quiet Light podcast. One of the biggest benefits is that it just keeps us in touch with people in a very personal way. And in some ways it's a little bit weird when people do come up to you and [inaudible 00:20:44.9]. Craig: Yeah. Mark: But I shouldn't listen to my voice that's weird but kind of cool at the same time. But that secondary benefit of that micro networking that you talk about I know we've had this happen actually recently we had Ezra Firestone on the podcast. And sure enough I had opened up my e-mail the other day and there's an e-mail from Ezra promoting his podcast episode with Joe, Joe's podcast. And I mean just think about that, I mean he's just one of the biggest Internet marketers out there right now promoting this one episode. And how many extra people are going to be exposed to the business, to us in general just because of that one episode. So this is definitely a benefit and might not be my number one goal but it's definitely one of those goals of the podcast is to be out there spreading our network for referrals. I think any referral based business that's out there this is a fantastic medium and probably a must that you should do is having some sort of a podcast if for nothing else to be able to bring in that network and grow that small network. Craig: So just to pile on there a little bit for folks who might be a little bit outside of the agency or consulting world so like starting from really high dollar and down to more transactional type businesses the other thing I think that podcasting does is it allows you to showcase publicly your knowledge and expertise. So if somebody sees you on another person's podcast they're going to say "wow Mark really knows what he's talking about when it comes to buying and selling businesses". It automatically boosts your credibility with that person if they're looking to do this thing down the road. Yeah, I think that's massive. It's kind of like your little online CV that you build along with your social media and YouTube and all this kind of stuff but podcasting should be a part of that for a lot of people. Mark: Well and that actually leads to my next question really well and that is what do you think about podcasting on the more just B2C side as somebody selling baby shoes online. Craig: Yeah. Mark: I mean how can podcasting fit into that fold … with that type of business? Craig: Yeah I mean there's really two … in my mind there's two ways to go and admittedly this is a bit outside of the wheel house of what we do at PodcastMotor but there's really two kind of schools of thought or areas that you would run into there. One is just hobbyists, right? And so like you're a hobbyist you like the Pittsburgh Penguins, you want to have a podcast about that. That's just a hobby and that's great but it also does the thing about like building your social proof in the world. And so you want to go do something with that later on. You have this bank of 200 episodes that you want to do something with. If you're thinking about like a B2C area I think that you can either provide useful content to … you have a show about being a parent, provide useful content to other parents about how to be a good parent, organic parenting and all this kind of stuff. Or you have what's called like sponsored content and this is where a company would pay a creative agency like I believe it's Pacific Media is the real big one in this to create a show like Serial. So Serial is the Gimlet Media podcast from a few years ago. They would create a podcast like that and it would just be you know this podcast is brought to you by Huggies Diapers or something like that. And it's this totally awesome show about parenting and motherhood or whatever but it's just sponsored by this B2C company. And you see more and more sponsored content out there these days where a business is saying look this is a massive branding opportunity for us. We're going to create this piece of content that we know our audience will love. It probably doesn't have a lot of like direct business impact, people are not going to go buy our diapers because of this podcast but they're going to know our name really well because every week the show they love the most has our name all over it. Mark: Yeah that makes complete sense. I also think of the episode we did with Mike Jackness from colorit.com and the show is on email marketing. So it had nothing to do with podcasting but we were talking about how often he was sending emails. They were sending emails to their subscribers every single day but the vast majority of what they're sending is ridiculously useful content that is not selling their clients in any way, their customers in any way. And the result of this is that people end up looking forward to communications from them. So I can imagine that impact as well if you have a B2C company and you're in this hobby, this niche, or you really have a very unified sort of product that you're selling. Or it can even be a type of service as well. You're growing an audience that is kind of a group of raving fans for what you're doing. And you're offering so much value that when you do offer that sale when you do go out there and promote something you have this group out there that's just super excited to hear from you. And that's a nice problem to have, right? Craig: Yup. Mark: Yeah all right let's talk a little bit about this from an acquisition standpoint. Obviously, we should bring this back into this and I want to talk about from an acquisition standpoint and also selling and we'll end with the selling question because I think there is a pretty significant question there. But on the acquisition side the one struggle I can see … I did an acquisition recently my guess and that's almost two years ago now and – Craig: It's not funny, math coming back in there. Mark: Yeah [inaudible 00:25:57.8] absolutely, time flies too. And you and I have actually talked about the starting up a podcast on this acquisition. It's a little bit weird though you know like Quiet Light Brokerage has started … I own, I've kind of grown with it so I feel like I own it. It is a little bit weird to start a podcast with something that you don't own. But I wonder if there is almost a sense of growing ownership if you start building something on top of that like a podcast with an acquisition. Craig: Hmm. Mark: Kind of an open ended thought but I don't know if you've had any experience with that or any thoughts on that. Craig: Yeah I mean I think that … so I had not run into this personally like with some of our customers having acquired businesses that they didn't want to start a podcast around. But having acquired several businesses the one thing that I think is really important and often times really difficult is for an acquirer to really know the business model and the types of people that kind of live and breathe this product or space that you're in. And there is nothing better than to say I want to go interview the 50 best people in Instagram for kids whatever … whatever niche it is you know than a podcast. Mark: Instagram for kids sounds like it should have some predatory laws about it I'm just saying. Craig: Yeah sure whatever it is right … it's underwater basket weaving. I mean you interview the 50 best people on underwater basket weaving. You're going to know basically everything there is to know about the influencers and the things that really matter to people in that business. So for me it's like someone who is always looking to acquire businesses and kind of dabbling as like a serial entrepreneur if I was going to get into a business I didn't know a lot about lot about starting a blog or really continuing a blog would be really daunting because I … there's a lot of opportunity to waste a bunch of time and money there. You can write a bunch of articles about things people don't care about but it's really hard to have a podcast that's bad if you will in a space you don't know a lot about because you just go interview people and ask them interesting questions. And what they have to say is the content it's not what you have to say, it's what the people you have coming on the show. So I'd say for people looking to … who have acquired a business that might be a little out of their wheel house just start a podcast, interview the thought leaders in that space and you have like the nexus of all the really interesting content for your audience. And you as the new owner know exactly what's so important to everybody in that space. Mark: Yeah and I'm going to compare this actually to the blogging world because I went from the blogging world pretty heavily into the podcasting world almost exclusively now. Libby has been writing blog posts on every one of our podcast episodes so we can keep up with some blog content. But in the blogging world, you would have to sit down. You would have to come up with your own idea for a blog topic. You would have to research that topic. And then you would have to write on that topic. And the way blogs are going you have to write more and more and more. I was writing 1,500 to 2,500 word blog posts. I was doing four of those per month plus four outside of Quiet Light blog posts per month. So I was doing eight blog posts on average 2,000 words a piece. And then best practices after you publish that blog post you should go out and you should do outreach. So you should reach out to the influencers and say hey take a look at this and how easy is it for an influencer to ignore your e-mail or give it a cursory look. I'd flip this around for this I'm doing my research right now on this interview with you I'm reaching out to you and you're an influencer on the podcasting world so I already got my influencer locked in as well. We're getting great content at the same time. It kind of brings all of this into one hopefully easily digestible format. So that's a huge benefit I think as well. And when you're looking at getting into a space like you said trying to network and get to know the influencers in a space that you don't know is one of the biggest challenges. And having a podcast I'll tell you what when I ask people to be on the podcast I'd get one of two reactions. One is no I'm super shy I don't want to do it. And two is yeah that sounds great because who doesn't want to be in front of a big audience and get heard. People like to be on podcasts. They'd like to think that they're important enough to be interviewed. Craig: They want to take their Joe Rogan. Mark: Exactly even though … you know I'm not going to tell them that there's like three people that listen to the Quiet Light podcast but they're still excited. Craig: So you brought up two things I really want to touch on quickly. One is three people listening to the Quiet Light podcast, one is not true right? But in a B2B sense and even a B2C sense in your niche, the number of people listening to your show doesn't matter at all. So if you have a hundred people listening to your podcast that is great. Those are a hundred really passionate people about what you have to say. As opposed to a hundred people reading a blog post that has almost no impact whatever. You need tens of thousands of people reading a blog post for it to really be impactful in the in the greater sense. But 100 people in your niche listening about your podcast is fantastic. So they're really high intent people for whatever your business purpose is. The other thing is talking about repurposing content. I think podcasting has the ability to repurpose content really easily right? We're doing audio, we're doing video, it will be created in to show notes for a blog post, you have it transcribed, you can syndicate the video to YouTube. Like you can do all of these things with one … what we're going to talk for 45 minutes today piece of investment and your time and you have a team or someone do all of the extra work to produce all that for you and you have two or three or four pieces of content you can syndicate to everywhere that people consume this media. As opposed to writing a blog post it can ever only ever be in your blog. You can't go create a podcast out of a blog [inaudible 00:31:29.4] could but that's just kind of silly. Mark: Right and you're absolutely right as far as the repurposing content. Again if people haven't checked out in a quick plug in the Quiet Light brokerage blog, I think it was last fall we brought on [inaudible 00:31:41.3] and she listens to every one of these podcasts. Hi, Libby thanks for all the work you're doing. And she's putting together awesome blog posts like I've been reading these myself and she's taking the information that we're picking up in the podcasts and then she's going out and supplementing it with outside research as well by putting together a full on blog post with quotes from the blog post as well but bringing out a slightly different narrative than what we cover in this this conversation. It's a great way to be able to repurpose this content and give it just a little extra layer and a little extra dimension. And so that is one way to repurpose the content. And again I can't emphasize this enough the amount of time it takes to do a podcast significantly less time than it takes to do the blogging side. Let's address the question of a podcast in a business that you hope to sell someday. And I think this is a question that is a little bit more difficult to answer here because we talk a lot … let me ask you this have you seen the Princess Bride? Craig: Yeah of course. I have an eight year old daughter, yup. Mark: Well I always like to say that getting a business prepared to sell is you have to follow the Dread Pirate Roberts rule right? You don't want to be actual Dread Pirate Roberts. It's the name that counts right? That's the quote from the movie; it's the name that counts. The actual Dread Pirate Roberts has been retired and living like a king in Patagonia. That's what we want to be able to do. We want to pass on the name of our business. We don't want to actually have to be tied to the business. Well, we just talked about podcasting, it's being in somebodies ear and being that personality in somebodies ear. And so from a standpoint of selling maybe, it's a little bit of a disadvantage on that when you go to sell. But I don't think it has to be a disadvantage but I'm going to put you in the uncomfortable spot here and see first have you thought about this much and what are your thoughts on it? Craig: Yeah so I guess two things; one, I know that podcast themselves have definitely been bought and sold more and more right? We're recording this in beginning of 2019, you hear more and more about people selling and buying podcast especially in a space. It's like buying and selling a blog in a space. If you're a business and you acquired this blog redirect it and then pour your content into your domain and you already have this audience that's seeing your brand. The same can be said for podcasting so people want to come in and buy a podcast in a space because it has a built in audience. I think it's a really good kind of audience and customer acquisition strategy for a business that already kind of exists and has their own podcast to look at selling the business and transferring the podcast to the new owner. I think that a lot of the standard knowledge and business process transfer things apply there. Like if you have a process around Mark how you identify the guests that you want to have and how you invite them and you send them a [inaudible 00:34:23.3] like an as a zoom thing in it and you have an outline you send them three days before and all this kind of stuff and you have a team behind it to edit and produce the podcast. Then someone buying your business that has a podcast in it is not nearly as daunting as just saying like I wing it every week. And the new owner is saying holy crap I can't imagine doing that. So I think that … I mean the truth is a podcast is not really hard. Like once you do a couple of them it's not really that hard. So giving the buyer of the business that would acquire this asset but kind of responsibility of a podcast, give them the tools to be successful and I think it's definitely a net win. The worst thing I can see though is you have a podcast and you have an audience and people that really enjoy and want to connect with you through the podcast and the acquirer comes in and drops the ball, obviously, a big negative. So if people have podcasts and they're going to be selling their business or business with podcasts I would definitely make sure like the rest of the business like you said with the Dread Pirate Roberts thing it's like make sure that it's totally transferable and that the person's going to be successful. That intimate nature of the podcast I think can transfer from one person to another pretty easily. You know the new person is going to have some level of domain expertise and you'll love a different spin on the podcast and that's cool. Yeah, I think it's definitely a net win as long as the person is set up to be successful. Mark: Yeah and I would agree. And the other thing I would point to is that when talking about an exit strategy when looking at what you need to do to prepare a business for sale there's going to be this push and this pull on various factors of the business. And when you're looking at this, when you're looking at the business holistically it's always going to be better for you to build a strong, loyal, happy, faithful audience right? Craig: Yeah. Mark: That's way, way more valuable than anything else. And is there maybe a little bit of a demerit when it comes to having something like a podcast which may be tied to your voice. Yeah, okay there's … I think just being honest yeah I think there's going to be a little bit of concern about the transferability. But that can be addressed right? That can be addressed pretty easily. You can agree to do the podcast and co-host with the new owner for six months and have a very warm hand off that way. That would be a very natural way to do it. I think the benefits that a podcast adds in building an audience, let's think about this real quick here what is the value of an online business when we actually look at it and when we do all the tax returns and everything else on it we allocate most of the purchase price towards goodwill. The sort of nebulous who knows what it is that makes this business successful. Successful and having a podcast is really a big part of building that good will. So if you take the time and build a lot of good will through a podcast and that's a good source and driving avenue for customer acquisition within your business that's going to be a net plus in the grand scheme of the things. So I think people that are out there thinking about podcasting thinking well I don't want to start that because it's going to hurt the transferability of the business. I wouldn't necessarily say that. I wouldn't necessarily say don't do in fact I'll probably say the opposite especially if you have enough time. If you're looking at a year, two or three years before selling and you're able to build that audience I think it actually makes more sense because it's really hard to replicate that. Craig: Yeah the value you can get in those two years is so much more than the potential drawback of the new owner flubbing it and your audience being upset which is basically the worst thing that could happen right? Mark: You're totally biased in this but I'm going to ask you this question right now. If I could give you a business with 30,000 e-mail subscribers or a business with 15,000 podcast listeners what would you take? Craig: Yeah I mean the podcast listeners are going to engage with your message a lot more. You probably also would get all of them on an email list so you're already halfway there to having both. I mean you're literally … and we say it all the time, you're literally in someone's ear creating like some kind of like different neural connection with those people. I get your e-mail; I read your e-mails fine. I hear you on the podcast; I hear you talking about your kids and the Dread Pirate Roberts and all these kind of stuff that like has a different level of meaning. And it is that personal stuff that in a situation where you're going to be transferring it to a new owner is a little different. But for the time that you have the business or you're looking in acquiring a business that has a podcast it is a huge benefit. Because a lot of people are scared, right? You didn't start the podcast for some period of time probably because you're like … I don't know this is an onerous task I don't know if I'm up for it right? I mean maybe I did sure like I didn't start a podcast because I was like I'm not going to talk into a microphone and then put it out on the Internet for anyone who wants to hear it to hear because I sound like an idiot right? Like a lot of people don't like the sound of their voice and you just have to get over that stuff because the net is such a huge win. Mark: Yeah. Craig: Think about like you're at a conference now and like you know Mark I heard you on the podcast right? Mark: Right well it was that conference question that actually led us to do the podcast because we've been going to so many conferences and conferences are expensive. You have to fly out there for sponsoring and now that the sponsorship fees are ridiculously high and … but the benefit of being there in front of somebody and having those little jokes here and there or just playing… we'll play it a game. Well, we've done golf, we've done jenga, we've done darts … or something like darts it was actually sharp objects that we're throwing out our booth but that'd be dangerous they wouldn't let us do that. But that actual physical presence being there it really relaxed people so much more and allowed us to connect on more of a one on one basis. And that's why we started the podcast and sure enough, I think that happened. Given that choice between e-mail list and podcast, I would take the podcast audience as well. I think you can mobilize a podcast audience much faster. I think they're more engaged. I think they're more likely to quite literally listen to you but be more attentive to what you're saying. I think there's … that's just different [inaudible 00:40:07.3]. Craig: Yeah I would say like that one look at guys like you know Gary Vaynerchuk right or Pat Flynn or whoever that you look up to in the business and marketing world they all have podcasts right? So like that says something I think. The other thing is the volume of information that we are relaying in this episode is massive. Like … you know we transcribe episodes for customers a podcast and a typical you know 45 minute conversation is about 15 pages in a Google doc. Mark: Wow. Craig: So you're like how are you going to relay 15 pages of content to anybody ever? That's impossible, right? No one is ever going to read that blog post or email but they'll listen to that podcast every week. Mark: Yeah absolutely, in fact, I have our director of content marketing now Chris Moore who also listens to the podcast, hey Chris how are you doing? He's been going back through every one of our podcasts and pulling up quotes. And he was telling me just earlier this week about how much volume is there that we put together in what feels like a very short amount of time of doing this podcast. It is a ton of information. Craig: Something … a bit of a carrot I think for both the buy and sell side you know of your audience is you can bet your bottom that Google will be indexing audio very soon. Mark: That's a really nice tease. Craig: Oh you know the SEO impact of podcasting ya-da-da-da-da, you're going to create like show notes that are like 700 words or whatever for an hour long conversation. 100% guarantee that there will be an audio tab in Google whatever soon in the next couple of years. Mark: Yeah all right so let's go to this. We're almost up with our time I want to end up with what does somebody need at a bare minimum if they want to test a podcast for their business? How long … we don't have to get in the details of the equipment like we don't … I mean you want to give a couple of recommendations there and what are the basic things they should think about if they want to get and test it out for say two or three months and how long should they test it? Craig: Yeah so I think that the basics you need a microphone. I mentioned the two microphones before. If you really just want to test use the Apple ear buds they're actually quite good. Mark: They are actually. Yes, I'll second that actually, yeah. Craig: Get in a quiet place; don't have your kids running around or the train going by with the window open or something like that. Do some kind of environmental safety measures for the sound quality. You need something to record and edit the audio with. A tool that does both of those is called Audacity. It's open sourced and free in cross-platform so Windows or Mac. So you can record and edit with Audacity. Something to record with select a microphone or the Apple ear buds perfectly good and then you probably want something to store the files on so like a podcast hosting platform like a Castos or Libsyn, or SoundCloud and then you need to create what's called an RSS feed. And that is the thing that places like iTunes and Stitcher and Spotify read. And then share information about your podcast like as a whole like the title and description and image and all likely stuff and about each episode. That's kind of how podcasting works is you submit this RSS feed to these directories and the directories read the meta information about your show as well as information about each episode as it's published. So that's kind of a 20,000 foot view of podcasting. How many episodes? I think if you can't come up with 20 good guest interview or topics to cover or something like that then you have a couple of problems. But you probably shouldn't get into content generally but you really, really, really need to think about at least having a couple of episodes to launch with. Two, three, four something like that and but you really should have a general idea of what the first 20 episodes is going to look like. Mark: Yeah and I recommend actually recording probably about two months' worth just to start. If you're running a business as well I know like the recent first … my first go with Quiet Light podcast didn't really happen as I recorded three episodes and then I got busy and three weeks goes by really, really fast. And we do this here at Quiet Light we will get like a nice buffer of about two months but next you know we're staring down an empty set again of episodes. So get a nice buffer set up for that first trial and see what happens. It's a great medium and I'm going to do a plug for you just like you don't have to come across self-promotion. Honestly, your service makes this whole thing dead simple. Like I don't think about it at all, I don't think about what I'm doing. The only thing I thought about was what sort of graphic are we going to use for the podcast. Outside of that everything was set up, everything was done, the introduction was done. It makes it really, really simple. And so if you are looking to go this direction don't add a bunch more to your plate. Go out talk to PodcastMotor I recommend your guys service highly enough. Craig: Cool. Thanks so much that's great to hear. Mark: Hey thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. If you guys have questions feel free to reach out to Craig@podcastmotor. We'll put contact information in the show notes and yeah if you have any other questions or suggestions for podcast episodes send me an email mark@quietlightbrokerage.com. Thanks, Craig. Craig: Thanks, Mark. Links and Resources: Podcast Motor Castos Contact Podcast Motor

Today we've got Craig Hewitt on from Seriously Simple Podcasting. Now this is something that I can really relate to, and if you have (or have ambitions to have) a podcast, then this is going to be worth listening to. Seriously Simple Podcasting makes podcasting, erm… seriously simple! It's not a joke it really does. Lovely show!

Today we've got Craig Hewitt on from Seriously Simple Podcasting. Now this is something that I can really relate to, and if you have (or have ambitions to have) a podcast, then this is going to be worth listening to. Seriously Simple Podcasting makes podcasting, erm… seriously simple! It's not a joke it really does. Lovely show!

Today we've got Craig Hewitt on from Seriously Simple Podcasting. Now this is something that I can really relate to, and if you have (or have ambitions to have) a podcast, then this is going to be worth listening to. Seriously Simple Podcasting makes podcasting, erm… seriously simple! It's not a joke it really does. Lovely show!

On today's episode, we welcome Craig Hewitt and Justin Jackson to the podcast. Jordan is having some time away. On today's episode Craig, Justin, and Brian all discuss how to build and keep a company on track. We discuss what drives us and what we're working on at the moment. If you want to know how to plan a product or just try to set a trajectory for your business, this is the episode for you! Craig is the CEO of Podcast Motor, a podcast editing and production service. Justin is the host of his own podcast Mega Maker 3000 and a teacher of marketing for developers. We all have great insights to growing a company and how we've been able to stay on track. [tweetthis]I just really want to have a comfortable lifestyle, but also build valuable assets. - Brian[/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: Justin relaunch of Marketing for Developers. Brian's update on Audience Ops. Craig's update on Podcast Motor. The lessons we've learned from starting and maintaining our businesses. Our long term goals. The disadvantages of working solo. Why businesses choose to keep their companies small. Justin belief in doing something uncomfortable for growth. How you can over-plan. Why you need to look at the bigger picture. The importance of visibility and building relationships. How to use evergreen content. How we use automation in our businesses. What keeps our ambition going? [tweetthis]You can never retreat too much in working because you have to maintain a certain amount of visibility. - Justin[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Market for Developers Podcast Motor Audience Ops Carthook Rogue Startups Podcast Justin's website As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review in iTunes.

We're are having a “party” episode with some special guests today. We've got Dave Rodenbaugh, Craig Hewitt, and later on Brad Touesnard joining us. We are all involved with Big Snow Tiny Conf. Brian is head of the Vermont event, Dave is head of the West event (Colorado.) Craig is taking care of our European event in France. Today we talk about the conference and why we love it. [tweetthis]It's [Big Snow Tiny Conf] half retreat, half mastermind. -  Dave Rodenbaugh[/tweetthis] We also discuss living abroad and working remote and with remote teams. The startup world is going global and we want Big Snow Tiny Conf to reflect that. Here are today's topics: What is Big Snow Tiny Conf Big Snow Tiny Conf East Big Snow Tiny Conf West Big Snow Tiny Conf Europe Why the events are awesome! Jordan's meetup with his team Why traveling is a perk to the Bootstrapped lifestyle If you have an interest in Big Snow Tiny Conf tickets go on sale Oct. 10th. Remember these events are meant to be small so space is limited. Big Snow Tiny Confs East and West (Vermont and Colorado)  are scheduled for Feb. 6-9.  Big Snow Tiny Conf Europe (France) is scheduled for Jan. 16-19. [tweetthis]I think travel specifically is one of the big drivers of why I do this for a living. - Brian Casel[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Big Snow Tiny Conf Bootstrapped Web Sponsor Indeed Prime - Get a $5,000 bonus when you get hired through Indeed Prime using Bootstrapped Web's link.   As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a  review in iTunes.