The Audio Entrepreneur

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Marie Larsen:                      00:01                       What's up everyone? This is Marie Larsen and you're listening to the audio. I spent the last year and half doing podcasts and content creation for some of the fastest growing entrepreneurs today. Their strategies and tips have been life changing once I took action, so I decided to take my audio and speak to the next level by building a seven figure company that teaches people how to strategize and repurpose their content like a bro. The question so many People are wondering is, how is she going to do it? This podcast is here to give you the answers.

Join me as I explained marketing strategies to grow my online business. My name is Marie Larsen. And welcome to the audio entrepreneurial.

Marie Larsen:                      00:40                       What is up everyone? This is Marie Larsen, yet again, and I have a very, very fun guest on with me today. This guest is, um, unique in his abilities, meaning he is not a very common name mark out there and I'm so, so pumped to have him on here because he is a guru and our rocks are when it comes to video, he knows like the back of his hand.

New Speaker:                      01:02                       And, uh, you know, you're probably wondering why the heck do you have a video guy on a podcast that doesn't make any sense, really want what I want to show you what I want to happen, go through and talk with you about is kind of the process that he's gone through to help purpose content, right? And to push out content and help people a lot and how you too can also use video within your own business. So this is nick and nick, will you go ahead and introduce yourself a little bit to us?

Nik Koyama:                         01:28                       Yep, I totally thank you Marie. Um, so my name is nick. I have been a video notes since I was super young. I'm not because I always liked video. I actually started in skateboarding and there's this funny little thing in skateboarding where if you don't have videos of people kind of don't believe that you're good. So there's like a, there's this whole saying like footie or it never happened. So, um, I, my dream was to be a professional and if you want to be a pro you got to have videos. So I started making videos, started working with companies at age nine.

I got my first sponsorship and learned a lot about video for business really early and then everything from there till now has just been basically using my life and my skills to, as experiments to help other businesses use video in new ways. So, um, you know, the way I approached video is a lot different. It's tailored for business in an industry that was not built for business at all. So that's Kinda where I'm at.

Marie Larsen:                      02:23                       That's so awesome. So you got into it because of your passion for, for skateboarding. Yeah, that's right. That's the religion, religious religion. So in this last little bit then, how have you used video to help other businesses?

Nik Koyama:                         02:37                       Uh, yeah. So let me give you an example. I used to own a coffee shop and one day I had a meeting with a client who wanted a video by the way I own the coffee shop because I made a video. Um, I'll, I'll, that's another story. So this client came to me and she wanted a video, uh, for this, for this like pdf thing she was making and then I started learning about our business and I realized she 1200 hours a year on a, on a phone doing sales calls and you know, I had this idea of like, well, what if I could make a video that kind of, you know, not just explain but showcase through she wise and what if we could implement that video in a way where she never had to get on a sales call again.

And I made this video and I invented something I call the video business card and she, when she implemented it, she went from spending 1200 hours a year on the phone to locking in 95 percent of our business without ever getting on a phone. So when I started going down this path of automation and internal business processes, uh, and all this, like the three 60 of business, I started going down like how do we do other things besides just market with video?

And I've, you know, developed a lot of cool things to let businesses save a lot of time, make a lot more money and build deeper relationships. So that's kind of how I use video to keep businesses alive.

Marie Larsen:                      03:55                       Um, so what are some of those steps then that you can share with us that you do to save people time in video?

Nik Koyama:                         04:03                       Yeah, so an important thing to know is like videos kind of like reality. Okay. It really makes people feel like they're there. But with video you can automate reality, you can jump from place to place, you can squeeze time. So the first thing I would ask a business owner to do is to kind of pay attention to the things in their life and their business that they're repeating.

Everything that you repeat can be not only automated but upgraded because if you're repeating something like in, we brought in a Barista to train the new hires on how to make lattes. And I'm like, what do we do this? So we just made one simple video and we never had to do it again. Mind you, that video was never shown to the public, it wasn't advertising, none of that. It was a business automation tool.

So that's like one example of something you can do is to, to kind of look at things that are being repeated and look towards automating and upgrading those things.

Marie Larsen:                      04:55                       Okay. So like for example, like in, in my life right now, like I totally, I was just talking to my assistant this morning about it actually and she was saying, you know, Marie, you spend a lot of time on calls talking to people about the same process.

Like elite, you use the same examples you go through and you talk to them and you use pretty much the exact same pitch, but you waste a ton of time just doing that over and over and over again. Right. And I was like, man, you're so right. Like I've been doing this for months, now I'm just getting on and doing the exact same thing. So this is a good example of when you would use something like that. Correct?

Nik Koyama:                         05:31                       Yeah. So imagine a Marie like before people got on a call with you, they watched the two and a half minute video that explained your mission and explain what you did and how you did it and who you were. And it, it, it preframe you, basically position you as the expert. And then, uh, right before the call they saw a quick video that explains what's going to cover in the call.

That way, by the time they get on the call, you're, you're not having to prove yourself, you're not having to explain what you do. They already know that now it's just a matter of tailoring and seeing if it's a right fit and ask you more specific questions. So that's the kind of processes we built out of different systems. We can do sales videos, sales systems, automation system. So, so I like to use video in a lot of ways.

Nik Koyama:                         06:13                       Not only that though, um, I've been really interested in this thing right here and how um, how a lot of things can be done internally without hiring videographers because mind you video people. Oh sorry, the phone. So I'm video people were not trained in business in the industry, in film schools, they're not trained in marketing, they're not trained in sales, they're not trying to be quick, they're not trained to work independently.

So here we have the most powerful business tool in the world, totally inaccessible by the people who need it businesses. So in a world like that, I mean, come on like we have like the holy grail of, of technology here and it's time that we stop thinking of it as like a luxury item or a self centered, you know, narcissistic tool. No, this is like a real business tool that if we don't get onboard immediately we were going to get left behind.

Marie Larsen:                      07:02                       So what kind of steps do you think that people should take to do videography even just using their own

Nik Koyama:                         07:09                       for one, I think the first step is understanding, having an understanding of the real power of video and the kind of purposes that it could fulfill. So for me, like, you know, video can be used to increase, um, cashflow like it, it could be a good money tool, it could even be the product, not only can it help market products and increase conversions on pages and all that crazy stuff, but it could literally be the product. Uh, I have, I have multiple video products out there that are, um, generating up, you know, over six figures each and it's because it's because it works like it's a really good effective tool impacting people.

The next thing is obviously time automation. So again, look at, look at time, and then next is relationships. How can you share moments with people? How can you be authentic? What, what can you communicate to people that's going to impact them? So before even stepping into the realm of making anything, I think understanding what it could do is the first thing, because we have been clouded and pre framed by Hollywood and we're in, we're in a new world and it's, it's really cool. It's a really great time to be alive.

Marie Larsen:                      08:14                       Okay. I really, really liked the. I think that video is something that a lot of people don't realize how much that they can use that content and make it their actual, their actual product. Can you talk about some of those products that you have and uh, and what you've done to, uh, to push those out like that?

Nik Koyama:                         08:32                       Yeah. Um, so the product I'm really excited about is called zero to warrior. So I do two things. One is I kind of helped businesses integrate and learn video. I have an agency that'll do some premium stuff, but I mainly try to put the power of video inside businesses hands. Then I work with the actual video people to um, what do you call that? An what they're kind of like and them and get them to actually learn how to grow a business and to build their own business.

So I'm really excited about both, but the product is zero. The warriors for the video people and it has, I've sold, I'm like in the last six months. Okay. This is a good story. In the last six months we've done six figures. We never made a logo. We never had a website, never ran an ad, and we did this simply by putting out video content and having a little facebook group of a thousand people so that, that, that program I'm a I'm selling helps people develop, sell and market video business cards for other businesses, which is the video I invented in order to solve all these problems.

Nik Koyama:                         09:38                       I'm like a lot of business.

Marie Larsen:                      09:40                       So do you by chance then go into actual companies and businesses, like do they fly you out to go see them and to do their video or like what, how does that work?

Nik Koyama:                         09:50                       Sure. So, um, something I should mention is I'm on my way out of the agency world, so I'm going to be in, um, so by the time you're probably listening to this, you can actually hire me to make a video for you anymore. But as of right now, I have an 11 person team which is incredibly talented creatives, marketers, animators, things like that. Um, so yeah, companies from all over the place, higher s to make their creative content and their video strategies.

So the big, the big thing with me and I hope for all of everybody who's listening is like, um, when, when people hire me, it's not so much about making the video, it's about making the strategy what happened. Like,

Marie Larsen:                      10:32                       can you say that part again? Because I feel like people don't understand that as much that the content, the actual strategy, that part,

Nik Koyama:                         10:40                       yeah. Like, like video, like everybody's got video, like I just said, here's my phone again. You can, you can, a lot of people do for free. But, but the problem is, is if we don't know what videos to make and what to use them for, than we usually get a bad taste about. Video takes a long time. It takes the last setup.

So what I do is I'll come into a business and um, and basically do what I call a nervous system audit. So I audit like how they're using their time, where they're making money with the processes are and how they're building relationships and all identify videos they can use to automate certain things, increased, grow, like things like that. And then once the kind of system is made, I'll say, do you want me to make it or do you want me to hire someone for you?

Like, what do you want to do? The cool thing is, is I have a whole group of video warriors that are learning how to do my system.

New Speaker:                      11:26                       So if anyone around the world needs video, they can contact me and I can link them up with warrior that's been certified by me personally.

Marie Larsen:                      11:33                       Okay. That is so that intelligent. So I have to ask, are you, where are you going after the agency world? Am I allowed to ask that?

Nik Koyama:                         11:43                       Sure. No, um, I'm trying to spawn more a video people. So like when I worked for an agency, I'm only impacting you, but when I can teach how to make video and, or, or perhaps make a career making videos, I tend to impact thousands of people.

So it's, it's a, uh, it's an impact switch. So something to keep in mind is I'm not actually dissolving my team, I'm dissolving the agency, keeping the team around and using them to grow the agency or to grow my partnerships in my program. So

Marie Larsen:                      12:16                       I'm going to be pretty legit, man. I'm super excited for you. Yeah, no worries. So like as you're going through and training out all these other people, I'm like, do you like, let me ask you this, have there been any influential coaches or mentors up to this point that I've feel like I've really attributed to how you've been able to, I guess, leave the agency world and go, go do some more trainings for people who's been like a big mentor for you?

Nik Koyama:                         12:42                       Some mentors don't know me and some do. Um, so I, I, I seek advice and mentorship from people through podcasts just like this, you know, so, so, you know, the people close to me right now are our buddy Dave Kombucha who is my business partner and mentor, coach, things like that. He was a wild. He's a wild animal to be honest.

But yeah, he, he really helps me. He's, he's the ENF P, which is my personality type. We both deal with similar problems and similar successes, so he's been able to help navigate me a bit from that perspective.

New Speaker:                      13:18                       My other mentor, his name's Paul Orfalea, he started a company called Kinko's and he's really big on like, um, like I think the one thing you told me, he was like, all businesses shouldn't be able to run without you at and, but you should be able to come in everyday and add to it. As far as video goes, I've been always like the masters scientists, the one on the, on the front lines, like testing things.

I don't really have a video mentor but, but yeah, uh, I'm always, I'm always aware of how people are using videos and I luckily get to be in contact with a lot of influencers and top level coaches and we get to share share notes and stuff like that.

Marie Larsen:                      13:57                       Did you take any sort of courses or whatnot to help you acquire new knowledge or what kind of courses or stuff that you do to, uh, to move forward? Just coaching, just mentoring, coaching...

Nik Koyama:                         14:09                       Like I did a, a clients on demand course helped me learned coaching. Um, but the main thing is, is I learned from experience. I come, uh, um, uh, a relentless action taker. You know, ever since I started officially started my business at 15, I've just been nonstop. Like I won't, I can't stop helping people. So, um, which is crazy, which I. so, so I guess my message here just to like shifted a bit, it's like everybody should at least understand the power of the real power of video.

New Speaker:                      14:40                       And what I'm telling you is that the real power of video is, is to, is a three 60 holistic, like it's business. Okay. It can grow businesses. It's not a marketing tool.

It's not just advertising tool, a branding tool. This thing is an absolute beast. It's just as universal as a telephone. Like, could you imagine if telephones were only like people were like, oh, you can only mark it on the telephone...

Nik Koyama:                         15:02                       Like that's such bs. You know, people, people have business meetings on telephones, they do sales calls, they do all this stuff. And it's the same with video. The second we look at video as, as a business tool for what it is. Oh my gosh, like people are gonna buy whatever they want.

Do you want to make more money?

Do you want to impact more people?

Do you want to just have more freedom like video can really get you there and I'm not here to sell you on anything else, but the idea of that because if you do it all yourself?

Marie Larsen:                      15:29                       So I guess then for those who are wanting to get into the video world and really focus on that, um, whether or not they go through and get your trainings or whatnot, but your top three tips that you would get to them as far as, I mean you would use your phone or like what technical work kind of. What kind of tools do they need to get started?

Nik Koyama:                         15:52                       Okay. Step one, going live. Do a facebook live. Here's why we are suffering a very hard time in culture right now called I'm a call it perfection.

Like people want to be perfect. One of the big problems with video and the reason sometimes it takes awhile is because people are trying to emulate it, uh, an image that they have for themselves and that's where, you know, throwing filters on pictures and editing descriptions for 10 minutes straight is coming in and we're basically in a world where we can create ourselves now in video.

New Speaker:                      16:22                       It doesn't work always as good. You know, you got to be able to tap into authenticity and into the present moment. So facebook lives is a huge way to, to be able to tap into the authenticity and find your voice. So if you're looking to, yeah, if you're looking to find your voice and to get over the hurdle and the fears you have around video, facebook live is definitely number one.

Nik Koyama:                         16:43                       The thing you need to do. Number two, and this is interesting, this is just something I found through testing that I didn't think about was make your first videos for other people and serve them and realize that that video is, um, it's a powerful tool and sometimes we are reluctant to do nice things for ourselves and it comes out the cost of great tools.

So I would find somebody that you think is, um, awesome, uh, business as anyone that you want to share their message or just do something for and go make something for them. And I think what you'll find is through that selfless act, you'll fall in love with the tool and, and learn how to use it a little better.

New Speaker:                      17:24                       Then number three is I would stick primarily on the phone for, until you've mastered the whole idea, the purpose side of video and you, I have an understanding so I wouldn't go into the computer and bother yourself with it with a ton of, um, like new new programs and stuff.

Nik Koyama:                         17:40                       I would use your phone. I would download adobe clip, which is a completely free software for both iphone and android. And it's an something together and figuring it out. That's the big thing. Figure it out. Don't be like, oh my God, just don't let something get in your way. Don't, don't give excuses.

Just put something together and do it. Do it for your audience. Don't do it for yourself. And that's the last thing I'll say is the people who are worried about themselves a, um, your, your imperfections are the key to connection.

New Speaker:                      18:10                       Okay? People can connect with something that's perfect. So your imperfections are so key be it's not about you anyways.

New Speaker:                      18:15                       When you make videos, it's about getting so, like, like you're, it's a very selfish thing when you don't do video because of your perception of yourself. It's super selfish. If you really want to help people, you want to serve, you want to have a successful business. You get your ass on video and you do something

Marie Larsen:                      18:32                       and you're vulnerable, right? Yeah, absolutely. I tell people all the time that if they want to do podcasting, that if they decide that they want to sound perfect, that they will always want to have the most perfect thing to say all the time.

Then podcasting is not for them. Right, and it's such a funny thing, but if you're not willing to be vulnerable and really open up to your audience really opened up to your group. If you're not doing that, then what is it? Even worse, right?

Like people are not going to be able to connect to you and you're not going to be able to make any money. Like there's just some. It just spirals down to if you're not being vulnerable, like it's not worth it, you know?

Nik Koyama:                         19:07                       Yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy. The overthrow of authenticity is among us everything. Even the skateboard industry, it's crazy because like, like there used to be a huge skateboard industry. Then know these platforms came out and kids like nine year old kids in Hawaii, he started taking market share from like the pros and it's because like the, the, the quirks and the authentic brand and when your voice can steal attention from anybody because. Because as long as, as long as you allow people to connect with you, you can't do that without vulnerability.

So I'm super stoked. Like what I do, what I do to get people in the state, and this is something that isn't replicated the room, but as I, uh, I, I sit people down for interviews and I don't have a like have these crazy interviews with people. This can be a good trick, like if you want to get good in front of cameras, set up a camera, don't even look at it and just look at someone else while you're interviewing them and have the silliest conversations ever.

Like I will ask people the most ridiculous questions just so that they associate the video camera with some of these funny moments. Let's start rewriting that narrative in your head. It's amazing.

Marie Larsen:                      20:15                       I'm totally gonna. Do that. I'm totally going to do that and I'll send those to you.

Nik Koyama:                         20:19                       Well, you should come down to Santa Barbara is so I can do for you and then you can, um, you can share with the audience it was

Marie Larsen:                      20:25                       and then I can take over the world. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. I'm there. I'll catch the next flight out.

Nik Koyama:                         20:30                       Yeah, no worries. So, um, if you're doing a podcast, it's really interesting. You Do, you put out a video podcast, Marie, so that is something that I'm trying to change right now and it's the reason why I'm doing a video recording right now. I do video recording and after you take the video recordings, then they take rip off the audio transcriptions, repurpose content. Then we have so much information to build out your facebook posts, your instagram posts, right? And it's just like constant. There's so many ways you can repurpose content. It's insane. 

I don't think people realize how easy it can be. Um, it does take time for sure, but if you can sit down and build out an insane amount of content in one sitting, you know, and just have all this content behind you, then take that content and build out, you know, I guess your content calendars have all these scheduled posts or whatever, like you were constantly engaging into people's lives. Right?

And that's exactly what I want to do. I want people to realize that being engaged doesn't have to be like this crazy big feet. You know, if you just take your content, people are not going to remember what you, what you talked about on a facebook live like three days ago. I don't remember what I talked about. I'm on a facebook live every day, right? I'm still remember how it makes them feel. Right.

Nik:                  21:44                       And they remembered that. I did it. Yeah. And it builds A. I don't want to get too deep into this, but it builds a subconscious habit and trust for people. So our whole goal is business owners is to build enough connection and trust where people will take the risk of buying our stuff are coming into our tribe or taking whatever action we want. That culture. Yeah. Like this is big with Tai Lopez. I've done eight training for him. Uh, I'm, I'm like, I teach video to his people and what's crazy that I've learned from his video team is that Tai Lopez, when I say his name, you already have an emotional reaction and that didn't happen through you, like the audience in him and not. This doesn't go for everyone, but like having engagement with each other. It happened.

                  22:29                       What do you call that? Like it happened like without you thinking about it, so you just saw him, you didn't ask to see him, you skipped his ad. But once that happens 50 times, guess what, you're building a relationship with them and now you're already building rapport. So like just having the podcast is the most intimate content of all like video reality. But talk about being in someone's head.

Marie Larsen:                      22:50                       You're the only person talking to them at that time were the only, you are the only thing going through their head at that time.

Nik Koyama:                         22:56                       Yeah, it's just, it's just now Marie Larson and my thoughts and like you know, soon enough I wouldn't even be able to distinguish that.

Marie Larsen:                      23:07                       Yeah. So the biggest thing that I've had success with, with my clients who do podcasts and I do video, I think having a video podcast is good for zoom stuff like this. But, but I think the real jackpot situation is cutting those 32nd snippets, any titles to them and using that to promote the full episode. I will tell you something very. How freaked out do you get when someone starts a song like twinkle, twinkle little and then they don't finish it and you're like, wait, how do you call it in marketing, we call that opening a story loop.

So when, when you have like a little snippet like that and you don't tell them like people kind of freaked out and it's a human nature. So I'm having like little 30, 62nd snippets of the interview is a perfect way to open a story loop and drive them onto the, uh, the podcast platforms.

Marie Larsen:                      23:54                       Absolutely. And going off of that as like an extra weird little tip. So you'll go through my facebook posts and you'll see a lot of dot, dot, dot, ellipsis or whatever the heck they're calls. Right? And the same thing. It's the same concept that people will start reading and they won't be able to stop reading because they'll be like, wait, she didn't finish that thought. What else is she going to say? And they'll keep going, wait, she didn't finish that thought. What else is she going to end? And it keeps going. We do the same thing. I'm blogging. We do the same thing at facebook posts.

We do the same thing. If you can get in the habit of doing those little.dot dots, people freak out and they can't figure out, wait, she's not done. I have to keep going and figuring out what the finished thought the complete thought is going to be.

Nik Koyama:                         24:33                       Right. That's what it is. We live. Oh my gosh, I'm sorry. I get so stoked. Like we live in a time where we can all have our own platforms. Don't have to rely on CNN or this anymore. It's like you have your own show and there's a Russell Brunson, please tell me, you can remember this story, but Russell Brunson tells the story about how there's this guy who had a show, right? And then, um, and then he didn't have a show anymore and he went on someone else's show and they were like, how are things going?

He's like, yeah, no one picks up the phone when you don't have a show. And it's like this whole idea of, uh, being, creating content and having a podcast. It's more than just branding yourself.

Content is communication. So if you refuse to speak, if you refuse to create content, you're basically suffocating and starving your audience from getting to know you and, and, and I can't praise podcasting enough because again, it's so intimate and it's just ground level connection. Like it's nothing more than just sitting with somebody and talking to them.

Marie Larsen:                      25:32                       I couldn't agree more with that. And it's same thing with video, right? Like if you have amazing video, amazing podcasts and you're crushing it and those industries you will never lack in clients, right? You will never lack in support for it. You will never lack. And having built a culture where they're so enthralled with who you are, that they're going to jump. When you say jump, right, they, they're going to buy. When you say buy, they're so excited of who you are because you are constantly giving, right? They are so excited of who you are and they want to see. I don't, I can't even tell you.

So like when I go on instagram and I see Russell Brunson has jumped on and as done something else, like I instantly watch it right there. Right? And it has nothing, historians have nothing generally to do with click funnels or anything like that has to do with his family and he's being vulnerable is being in your life. And so you want to be part of his.

Nik Koyama:                         26:21                       Exactly. That's amazing.

Marie Larsen:                      26:22                       Love it. Love it. International world. So going back to video, sorry we got on like this crazy tangent, but going back to video, um, how often are you trying to get your people to publish?

Nik Koyama:                         26:37                       So my whole process is purpose, idea, production, delivery. So like before I come up with an idea, I first we have to have a purpose. So for instance, I'm that client that I told you I made a video business card for and we automated 1200 hours. Uh, she's still using that to this day and if she never made a video again, she'd be, she'd already generated millions off it. So the question is, is, so the question is, is what is, what are your goals? Do you want to be what I would call the legend of your industry?

Do you want to make a lot of money selling video pro, like each different purpose requires a different prescription of content strategy. So for you, if you're trying to blow a podcast, so you need to be posting content, you need to be going at it every day.

Nik Koyama:                         27:24                       If you want to automate your sales system, it's quite possible that you could bang out a bunch of videos in one day and have that stuff automated for the rest of the time. So to me it really depends. If you're trying to build, the more classical way to talk about is if you're trying to build an audience in a relationship with that audience.

My whole thing is daily, like you should be able to do a facebook live and bring people into your reality daily. But, but to be honest, I'm not, I'm, I'm not so romantic with that side of video. You know, I'm just saying to helping businesses solve problems and I'm not just here to create celebrity. So it's really all about what are you trying to do?

New Speaker:                      28:03                       And then once you know that, then we can come up with ideas that fulfilled that purpose and will make them and put them in. But

Marie Larsen:                      28:09                       I love that. Um, so how, how often will, you said you're, you're building out kind of a training system, right? You're going to go through and you're going to train a bunch of people. So if, I mean, you said that we weren't able to get you personally, right?

Nik Koyama:                         28:25                       To make you a video, but, but yeah,

Marie Larsen:                      28:27                       go ahead. But if there are people who are listening to this, so like, man, this guy's on top of it. He's done videos for Tai Lopez, he's done videos for dateline and he's done so many people's videos. How are we going to be able to get in contact if it's not with you then with your trainees, right? People who are learning from the master himself.

Nik Koyama:                         28:46                       Sure. So something I will say is I'll give you a peek into my vision. My vision is for me to actually make videos for people for free, though I don't want to be paid to make videos. I have this blog called the nick of time and basically in this blog I take crazy trips and I go and do projects and I, I let you in on the behind the scenes of the thinking and the execution and I do it in short windows of time so that Dave went and bombed a video that I made that played at click funnels.

Yeah, that was shot, directed, edited, and finished in 48 hours. And you can go online and look at all the thinking behind it and you came and watched it premiered at click funnels.

New Speaker:                      29:26                       So I'm going to be doing a lot more at that. And then at the end the whole thing is, is I, do you want to take the power of video into your own hands and quickly make videos for business? You can go to my website. And so that's where I'm going to send you now, which is I'm Nicole [inaudible] dot com and I have a really cool free resource.

They're called the eight sacred laws of video and you can kind of like really, really, really get like just with this, um, with this free thing, get into the mindset of what video can do and how you should be thinking about video programs that you'll be introduced to. But, but to get started, just understanding video is going to make the stuff you make by yourself and this stuff you hire out for 10 times more effective.

Marie Larsen:                      30:09                       Dude, I'm jumping on that as soon as we get off here. Like I'm jumping on that for sure. Nice. Something that I need to be incorporating even more. I'm taking over the audio industry right now and it's awesome. But uh, but the video industry, I understand the power behind it. I just haven't, I just haven't done it right. Like I'm constantly doing facebook lives and whatnot. But when it comes to others, like I guess other types of video that you can use video for, I just, I haven't done it. And so I guess what are some of the false beliefs that you do to crush some of those?

To crush some of those possibilities that people have kind of like I do like, I dunno, I guess trying to figure out how to get started or I guess. I mean you gave us some resources, but how do you, what are some of the common false beliefs that you hear about video?

Nik Koyama:                         30:56                       Oh man, they, they go out the door. I mean that takes a long time. You got to be tech savvy. You have to be perfect. It's expensive. It's unsustainable. It's not for the business owner to be doing this stuff goes out the door. What I do to crush these things is I'm a practitioner so I go out and do it and I do it really quickly.

So you could watch, um, I have this other series called just to film it that I think I'm going to bring over to my personal brand. It's from my agency brand where I'll walk into a business and I'll shoot and edit a video right there on my phone and leave a giving it to them. And a lot of times they don't even know I'm making it.

New Speaker:                      31:32                       So like, I think there's a lot of false beliefs and if you stay in my world and you come in, I think just by giving, just showing you how I do things, you'll, you'll rewire your brain about video.

Like I hate it. Like when you introduce in, you're like, yeah, he's a guru about video and I could just feel like 95 percent of people's heart sinking because they're like videos and everyone's got their own baggage with video and it's, um, it's, it's a shame because I really do believe it's the most powerful business tool in the world when you know how to use it. I will continue to use my life as an experimentation field for you guys to, um, to get the best, uh, I guess strategies out there.

Marie Larsen:                      32:10                       I love it too because by you going through and training other people, it gives them not only that hope that you're going through and you're giving people the opportunity to have another, another nick right around to actually go through and do the process with them. And so you're building out, I guess more voice for people, right? You're building out more of this voice, more of this reality where they can also incorporate that into their business. What caused you to make that jump? Why? Why are you changing that?

Nik Koyama:                         32:38                       Because don't care about video as much as I care about people being helped. I think businesses are designed to serve people and to do it sustainably. And I see a lot of businesses failing for reasons that are ludicrous and have nothing to do with like not having the right product. I think a lot of people are on the right track. They're just wasting way too much time.

New Speaker:                      32:58                       People don't understand them. They don't know them. They, um, they're not preframing correctly. They're not, they're not like, like how many people do you know are super bad ass. But when you look at their platforms, it's like what? Like this does not align. So there's. So to me, I'm more excited about a world where solutions are more abundant than they are now. And I know the key to that is business.

And I know the key to business is video. So the reason I stopped is because I can only make so much impact with my premium team, but it's time that I, uh, we democratize this for real and all of us need to get on the front lines for this. So that's, that's kind of why I've decided to do it. And it's already working. When are you launching this? When are you like completely out of all launched?

Are you serious? Yeah, everything's going. Yeah. Everything's on where we're in the midst of it. I'm, I'm shutting down my agency in the next 30 days, but everything, the agency isn't, it's just a decelerator I'm still, we're still going. Um, it's just things are going to accelerate when the agency stops. So super contract, all that.

Marie Larsen:                      34:02                       Were you referred to earlier? Is that where someone would go jump on your training board?

Nik Koyama:                         34:07                       If. Yeah, if you're into what we're talking about, go to Nick's point. I'm a com and I. Okay, my, My name is n I k k o y a m a, I'm sure we will link it somewhere and uh, come, come check it out and get yourself some free education because I'm can't, like, this is not a creative tool guys. Like creativity is just a, a thumb note on the, on the spread of what this tool can do. I don't like if you don't consider yourself a creative person. Good. That's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt you more than help you anyways.

Like being creative. If you're a business minded person who cares about the success of their business and the impact of others, you get on video and you start living in the new world that I would call the visual era, which is the name of my agent.

Marie Larsen:                      34:54                       I love that. So good. Oh my goodness. That's awesome. Hey, well thank you. So thank you so much. Is there anything else you want to add on here before we jump off?

Nik Koyama:                         35:04                       Yeah, I would like everybody who's listening to this to please leave a comment and tell Marie Larsen to come to Santa Barbara to allow us to make a video for her and if you have to extra brownie points for Instagram, dms and facebook wall posts.

Marie Larsen:                      35:22                       Okay, sounds good. I would love. I would love it. I actually want. So, uh, I'll probably catch you around over there soon. That'd be sweet.

Nik Koyama:                         35:30                       Well, hopefully your, your people don't let you forget.

Marie Larsen:                      35:33                       They won't, I promise you. But uh, hey. Thank you so much. Appreciate. We'll catch you next time. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to rate and subscribe. You have questions for me. Go to the facebook group, profitable podcasting strategies for entrepreneurs and I'll be sure to do an episode to answer your next question. Again guys, my name is Marie Larsen and this is the audio entrepreneur.

ClickFunnels:

http://bit.ly/ClickFunnels-marie

Click Above To Listen In iTunes...

Lindsey Bache Demonstrates Online Success Through Other People's Products..

     What's up everyone? This is Marie Larsen and you're listening to The Audio Entrepreneur. I spent the last year and half doing podcasts and content creation for some of the fastest growing entrepreneurs today. Their strategies and tips have been life changing once I took action, so I decided to take my audio, his to the next level by building a seven figure company that teaches people how to create, strategize, and repurpose their content like a pro.

The question so new people are wondering is, how is she going to do it? This podcast is here to give you the answers. Join me as I explained marketing strategies to grow my online business. My name is Marie Larsen. And welcome to the audio on.

Marie Larsen:     Yo. What's up everyone? This is Marie Larsen. I'm excited because today I have a good friend of mine who is crushing it also in the affiliate world. Um, I love finding cool people because cool people are just fun to be friends with more than anything, but I'm super excited because this certain friend of mine I guess I should say is I'm going about and finding ways to really blow up the affiliate world and continue to do so by helping other people and as provided lots of resources to do so.

And if you've ever been, um, I guess if you ever questioned how to get started in the affiliate world or jump in and have no idea where to get started with, um, this is a good mentor and leader for us to I guess get started with and understand a little bit more of how he got started as well. So anyway, this is Lindsey Bache. I'm super excited. Lindsey, thank you so much for joining us today and I haven't seen any super fun. I'm super pumped.

Lindsey Bache:                   01:35                       I'm glad to be on here. Thank you for having me.

Marie Larsen:                      01:38                       Uh, yeah, so good. Um, so Lindsey, I have to just, I just have to ask, how did you first hear about the affiliate marketing world? There are a lot of people who haven't heard of affiliate marketing or a lot of people are listening to this and probably don't know I'm more than anything what it is. So how did you hear about it and why did you get started into it?

Lindsey Bache:    02:00 

 Well, um, I, I had known about affiliate marketing for a long time. Obviously I've known about Internet marketing, but I was always a little hesitant to get involved because, you know, it always seems a little scary to jump into something you don't really have any background on. I didn't really have a technical background or anything.

So I guess about two years ago I started paying attention to a guy named Ryan Stewman, actually the hardcore closer, uh, so, uh, you know, and I knew that he was using funnels basically to, um, to capture leads and stuff and to do sales.

And so I started following Ryan and over time I decided, well, I'm going to buy some of his programs. And I got into his break free academy, learn how to build some funnels. He was using lead pages versus click funnels, which were kind of ClickFunnels people.

Lindsey Bache:                   03:00                       Um, so I learned how to do that stuff. I knew he was doing a lot of affiliate marketing. He was pushing people to all the different, you know, when he taught you how to build funnels and things like that.

He was pushing you through all his affiliate link so he was making money on top and not just as programs but so after a while, after about a year, just like going through his stuff spin and a lot of money feeling kind of frustrated actually.

I decided I didn't want to do what he was doing because he was pushing a lot of stuff towards real estate and mortgage people and things like that. And then along the way I found Russell Brunson, um, you know, yeah, he's pretty cool.

Marie Larsen:                      03:49                       And I was like, oh my gosh, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen. You know, Russell's awesome. And so, you know, I bought funnel hacks, jumped into click funnels and just like starting to just soaking up everything I could learn about it.

And I wanted to create a product eventually and I was like, I don't just like everyone else out there, you know, you don't know what to do, you don't, you don't have like a set, I want to create this product, this is what I'm going to do, you know, so many people see that out there. So it's like, well, what do I do until then, because this is what I want my life to be, you know, this is what I know I'm passionate about.

Lindsey Bache:                   04:27                       I've felt it. So I was like, I saw the affiliate program out there and I was like, you know what, I'm just going to just go into it and see until I decide what I want to do. I'm going to try affiliate marketing. So I started in on the bootcamp with Russell and click funnels and I'm just like anybody else. I started going through it, started feeling a little frustrated running ads and things like that. Not getting a lot of, um, traction.

And then, you know, I just started reaching out to different people in that world. And I met a guy named Catlyn betteridge who was just like, I'm very, I mean this guy's a machine out there and I saw the things he was doing for building groups. I mean just building his group, just insane. And he's one of the most knowledgeable guys across the board I've ever dealt with them.

So I reached out to him, got some coaching and from there it just kinda started moving in the right directions and I started connecting with the right people. But you know, that's basically the story when it comes to me deciding I wanted to get into affiliate marketing.

Marie Larsen:                      05:41                       I love it. I love it. You stress more than anything that people get frustrated with it at some point. Oh, sorry, I totally have my, my uh, what's it called? Alexa is trying to talk to me. But anyway, I'll cut that part out. Um, uh, so I love that you said more than anything, there are a lot of people that goes through and, um, get frustrated with it.

And the same thing goes with podcasting a lot of the times as well, you know, is that people within the first couple of episodes that are like, I'm Marie, I'm not seeing success in those, therefore I'll stop. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no.

You just have to keep pushing past or you know, it's something that builds out what time and sending that. My brother Steven told me is the affiliate marketing in order before you are really going to start seeing a lot of profit from it or at least some profit and you have to be building stuff out for a solid year or something like that, right?

Marie Larsen:                      06:37                       Where it really does take a lot of preparation, a lot of things in order to get those links all set up to get the audience that you're looking for a people who are consistently buy from you. And so not to get frustrated within that first year.

And I would say the same thing goes with podcasting, with audience creation and just in general as you go into business.

And there've been so many times for me, and I'm not sure about you, but that I've been frustrated more than anything, um, at times, you know, when I think within the first couple months I should be making, you know, millions of dollars or something like that

. It's been a good reminder to me to just keep plugging along and to keep trying. So what was that like for you as you were going through the affiliate process?

How did you not give up as far as you know, there were those frustrating moments. How did you push past those moments that you wanted to give up and

Lindsey Bache:                   07:30                       to look back at my life, I've had a lot of ups and downs and stuff. I was raised in a good family. We had money and stuff like that, but like I was kind of spoiled growing up. So my work ethic didn't go real well.

And then eventually I figured out the I wanted to be an entrepreneur after I graduated from college, started working for my dad and I was like, this is just not for me working for anybody.

So I've had some different businesses along the way, you know, some ups and downs, things like that went through a pretty nasty divorce at one point in time.

So I guess my point would be the, I, I, I've been searching for something all along, you know, like the would fulfill me as a person, you know, like obviously I think that always needs to be inside yourself anyways, but I've never been real happy with what I was doing and when I came up to me I've found, you know, Russell Brunson and click funnels and stuff like that.

Lindsey Bache:                   08:35                       Um, and I realized I wanted to do this. I just knew there was something about it that just like, you know, was, was there for me and like I felt it in my heart. So when I started to do affiliate marketing I, I just like, I just knew that this is what I to do. It just like, it Kinda hit me, you know, like I, I was still, like I had another kind of business.

It was making a living, but like I knew like I was every waking moment and I wasn't focused on that. I was focused on like building a group for affiliate marketing and going out there and trying different things and like, I mean I'd be up all night like on, in the affiliate marketing groups, like just talking to people, connecting with people, like getting like, you know, maybe I wasn't always the most technical guy, couldn't answer every question you have, but Dang it, I was the first one to jump on your, you know, your post and let you know I'm, I'm here this.

Yeah. And so that's just kinda the way I started moving along and it helped me build my affiliate marketing group, which in turn helped me get some of my first commissions. Yeah. So you know, it's always a game of up and downs and you just have to keep taking action. And then

Marie Larsen:                      10:00                       I love that. There are a lot of people who I've talked to in, they're like, I started getting into the marketing but I gave up because it seemed like a lot of work. And again, rapping is back into business in general.

The digital marketing world is a world where you have to keep plugging along where you have to keep trying or you have to keep going. You're not going to see instant success. I mean, there are those rare few, but you're not going to see instant success overnight like you're hoping to.

It takes a lot of building and a lot of trying. And, um, even though people will try and push you aside and say, you know, I mean, I'm this 20 to 22 year old squirt little college kid, you know, and a lot of people try and brush me aside because of it.

But as I've learned as well that if you just keep pushing along and plugging along, I'm the better. Right? He really will. He really will find success along the way as you're going. I'm, I wanted to help this audience understand the difference between affiliate marketing and Mlm. Um, so if you could go through and just kind of explain like, a lot of people were like, you know, it's, it's like secondhand sale stuff and whatever.

But what, um, what would you say is the big difference, I guess, in those?

Lindsey Bache:                   11:14                       I think you're doing amazing. I enjoy following you. So, so I always try to explain the affiliate marketing to like the people who have no idea about online marketing at all by just like, I always present it this way, you know, somebody will show me like something that maybe they bought like a new here's a, here's a perfect example.

I was out like hanging out with a friend of mine and he had this like, like electronic, like it was like a fan, but it, it, it missed it on you.

And this is a perfect example. I, I, and I was like, man, that thing is so cool. Like I've never seen one like that before. It's awesome. Where did you get it? And I knew I was about to explain to them about affiliate marketing. So it's like, well I got it on. I got into Amazon or Africa where he said he got it, but like I'm just using Amazon.

And I was like, well cool man, why don't you. Oh my gosh. I was like, well cool man, why don't you send me your affiliate link and I'll buy one?

Marie Larsen:                      12:35                       And he was just like, what? What are you talking about man? I was like, well, you know, I'm always telling you I'm doing affiliate marketing. Well, this is a perfect example. I'm like, you just showed me like something very cool that you bought from Amazon. I would never have even known about that.

And so you know, because you, you showed me, you showed me the value of it. You basically explained to me how great this thing was. Like I'm going to pay the same amount whether I go through your link or Amazon.com, but I feel the need to give you a commission because you provided me with lots of value when it came to this and now I want to buy it.

Lindsey Bache:                   13:26                       And I was like, that's how I kind of like explain how affiliate marketing works. Now most of the time affiliate marketing isn't like a tier system, so you know when it comes to like network marketing and things like that. And I'm not saying that I know everything about network marketing. I've all, I've done some of it just like anybody else, you know, but um, I just, most of the time affiliate marketing only has one tier, which means you get paid one time.

Now there is something, there is some times where like ClickFunnels where they do have two tiers, sorry, where they had two tiers and you do get paid off of like different layers, but it's not, it doesn't happen a lot in affiliate marketing and it's usually two tiers

Marie Larsen:                      14:19                       which is really good. And which is awesome. And as far as like good resources that were, that would be helpful for this audience that they were looking to find ways to get started into the affiliate marketing world or understand a little bit more what it is or what they should be doing just to, I guess get started. Where would you direct them to?

Lindsey Bache:                   14:41                       Um, I would say some. I mean obviously there's always a good youtube channels. My Youtube channel's always a good one. Lindsey Bay, my affiliate Marketing Group, affiliate marketing, send the kid for entrepreneurs with Lindsey. I'm click affiliate bootcamp is a good free resource.

 I'm not gonna say it's gonna like get you everything you want out of affiliate marketing, but it's still got awesome information in it.

Marie Larsen:                      15:18                       Absolutely. I couldn't agree more now as someone who is trying to keep learning as we are trying to learn more and keep going together, I guess a, actually, give me, before we get started on the next question, give me more information as far as what's, uh, what mentors would be a good one or I guess what mentors helped you get to the level that you're at your.

You mentioned someone beforehand. I can't remember who it was. Katelyn.

Lindsey Bache:                   15:51                       Yeah, he's definitely the. Russell Brunson obviously is just like everybody's mentor in my little world, but you know, Katelyn betteridge was the first person that like I hired as a coach and you know, he, he, he helped bring me along to the point to where I am now.

Now there's guys like, uh, I would definitely say Spencer Macomb is. I mean he's, he's definitely, he's a good friend of mine and he's definitely been a big mentor to me. But I would say out of those two guys up till this point have been the biggest influencers on my affiliate marketing.

Marie Larsen:                      16:37                       Oh, I have to ask as well, what are some of the easiest things to start going out and finding affiliate links for? Um, in your opinion there, there are a lot of people out there that are probably looking just to even get started in ways. Um, what are some of the, I guess, whether it's a product, a service, a course or whatever, um, that you would say is one of the, the best intro things as well, um, to get in the affiliate world.

Even just if it were something like that, Ms.fan or something like that that people should, should try. What are some of those things?

Lindsey Bache:                   17:20                       It's difficult. I would say anybody in reality could do affiliate marketing. You can find products in any niche that you possibly can. You know, there's just so many. I've a friend who does like $10,000 a month making blog sites for mattresses.

Marie Larsen:                      17:41                       Are you serious?

Lindsey Bache:                   17:42                       Yeah. All organic. So I'm, you know, he's doing, his name's Kevin Holoman, but he's, he's crushing it. So my, the, the, you know, the truth is you can get affiliate products for anything that you like are passionate about and you can add that to whatever you're doing. For me personally, I like technology and products that are, are really occurring every single month. Like that's why I chose click funnels.

Not only because I love the culture around clickfunnels, you know, I, I like how their affiliate program is set up. I love the commissions and I love that. Once you get somebody to sign up, once you provide somebody with enough value, you give them support, you know, it's a reoccurring commission every single month.

Like you can, you can stop focusing on it and it'll just keep coming in. And then, you know, for me I would say, you know, you got to find an organic traffic source from like getting a youtube, our youtube channel facebook group or then you or you go out and do a paid traffic source to do good things to get started with.

Marie Larsen:                      18:59                       I love that. That's so great. Hey, well as we wrap up here in this next little bit, is there any, I guess, last advice that you give to beginners?

Um, again, will you actually reiterate for us the best way to get in contact with you or I guess find your information, your courses and a sense that you have available and resources that you have available for beginners as well?

Lindsey Bache:                   19:26                       Sure. Yeah, so my biggest, my biggest focus right now is my facebook group, a affiliate marketing syndicate for entrepreneurs for Lindsay. Um, I do have a youtube channel. It's just Lindsey Bache.

I've been uploading videos pretty consistently. There's a lot of good information on there, but those are the main two. You can reach out to me on facebook anytime and connect with me. I'm pretty open and talk to most people. Um, so those would be the best ways.

Marie Larsen:   That's great. Hey, well thank you so much for jumping on here. Really appreciate it and for the value that you've provided to the audience today, have a good one and we'll chat with you. Hopefully you're staying in on, on our facebook group.

Lindsey Bache:    Thank you very much. Now they get one, boom. Thanks.

 Don't forget to rate and subscribe. Do you have questions for me? Go to the facebook group, profitable podcasting strategies for entrepreneurs, and I'll be sure to do an episode to answer your next question. Again guys. My name is Marie Larsen and this is The Audio Entrepreneur.

ClickFunnels: https://affiliatebootcamp.com/retire-in-100?cf_affiliate_id=596892&affiliate_id=596892

What's up everyone? This is Marie Larsen and you're listening to the audio entrepreneur. I spent the last year and half doing podcasts and content creation for some of the fastest growing entrepreneurs today. Their strategies and tests have been life changing once I took action, so I decided to take my audio industry to the next level by building a seven figure company that teaches people how to create, strategize, and repurpose their content like a throw.

The question so new people are wondering is how is she going to do it? This podcast is here to give you the answers. Join me as I explained marketing strategies to grow my online business. My name is Marie Larsen and welcome to the audio on.

Marie Larsen: Yo, what's up everyone? This is Marie Larsen. I'm so excited because today I have a friend of mine who I met through the digital marketing connections world. I guess you can say that it was through a friend from a friend, from a friend that I found this guy and he's been crushing and the reason that I wanted to bring on this specific person was because he has a relatable story that the majority of you are able to relate to. Right.

And so I wanted to jump on and have him kind of relate his story as to um, I kind of, I guess more than anything, I hope you guys understand that you guys really can be starting this now and it's not something that, especially with podcasting, a lot of people think that you need all this extra time on the side in order to do it and that's not the case.

So anyway, this is Ryan Helms. I really wanted to have them jump on. Ryan, it's such a pleasure to have you on here. I can't wait to get started with you.

Ryan Helms: What's up Marie? I'm stoked to be on here. Like you said, average guy here literally just battled traffic on the way home from work to come down here and hop on this podcast. But I couldn't be more excited. Thanks for having me on.

Marie Larsen: Absolutely. Absolutely. I saw, I, I love that. Before we jumped on here, Ryan was kind of going through and explaining the story to me a little bit and I'll have him go through, but honestly the thing that I really, really loved about Ryan's story is that he went through and explained to me that he, he has a nine to five job, right?

And that he's trying to do a side hustle in order to create the dream that he wants to. And I kind of wanted to go through that process, Ryan, as far as, what mindset you had in order to create a, a new world for yourself by living in the current one that you're in and what experience that's like. So if you could tell us a little bit about your, you know, what you can about your job and why you decided to start a side hustle, that would be awesome.

Ryan Helms: Yeah. So I work in a huge chemical company I manage are around 12 to 14 people and depending on the day and it, it can get super stressful. And for awhile there I was putting in 14 to 16 hour days every single day, Monday through Friday, working on the weekends a lot and this was probably in 2016 after about two years of working that I haven't always worked in that, you know, hectic, but you know, who was about two years where it was that kind of life and it started to catch up with me.

I wasn't at the point of burnout but I could like that was on the horizon, like I saw it coming and I was like alright. So I was literally. Yeah, exactly. I was sitting on the couch which is about six feet behind me on a Friday night. I'll never forget it. And I was somehow I got started looking at plane tickets and I came across the plane ticket to Nairobi, Kenya for like 750 bucks.

Ryan Helms: And I was like, you know, I never really looked at plane tickets. I didn't know if that was a good deal, but it seemed like an amazing deal to me and that was round trip from Atlanta to, to Kenya. So I bought it, like, didn't know what the Hell I was going to do, had had no idea about anything. So I sat on it for about three months, decided I asked your plan something.

So I went over Thanksgiving here in the...I right. So end of November of 2016. I just took a solo adventure to a Kenya and Tanzania and you know, it sounds kind of Cliche, like, oh, I found myself when I was on this trip, but truly it was, it was a life changing experience for me and you know, not only because, you know, I got to go on a safari and go to Zanzibar and be on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

Ryan Helms: But, you know, I met people there that had, you know, that were traveling as well and they had these amazing stories and a lot of people were there through a lot of different paths. I mean, I met a guy who, you know, him and his best friend had been climbing the corporate ladder and then his best friend got killed in a car wreck and he like had this epiphany that he didn't want to do that.

So He'd been saved up money. I've been traveling for 18 months. I met people that had sold everything and had just like, went total nomad style. I met people that were working like digital nomad lifestyle. So they were building businesses on the beach in Zanzibar and I didn't know how I was going to do it or what I was going to do, but I realized that I wanted to be able to make a decision like that if the point came in life when I wanted to do that because, you know, I don't hate my day job.

Like by any means, like I'm not, I'm not that kind of person where I'm resentful towards, you know, the life that I have. Like I've get great opportunities and I'm, I'm grateful for it. But I knew if that point came when I didn't enjoy it anymore, I wanted to have the liberty and the freedom to say, you know, what, screw this, like throw the papers up in the air like the little memes you see and walk out. And so I got back and I decided I needed to put myself on a path to do that. Unfortunately for me, I was never good with money.

So when I started this I was about $55,000 in debt, that being student loans, credit cards, stupid ass sports car, stuff like that. So I just immediately jumped into it with the mindset that I wanted to start creating like little businesses on the side, these side hustles to help me first get out of debt in.

Ryan Helms: I did that. I paid off that debt if about, oh, I think about 14 or 16 months. I paid off that 55 k in debt. Uh, which was an amazing feeling. And now I'm tackling the mortgage and I should have my mortgage for my condo that I lived in, paid off, uh, by November of 2019. So a little over a that and being super, uh, super aware of what I'm doing with my money, so being very intentional with how I look and not like not doing things, not like eating rice and beans and staying inside 24 slash seven, but just being intentional with what I do. So, you know, that kind of brings us up to like current state in life, why I started moving this direction. And then in particular about podcasting. So actually I skipped a big part of this. So I launched a kickstarter last year.

 I created a physical product called side Hustle Journal. And when I did that I realized that it was such a difficult process because I didn't know any entrepreneurs. It's like, like we were talking Marie before this and you said you kind of grew up in this lifestyle. Like you're, you've been around like digital marketing and marketing and entrepreneurship for a long, long time. I didn't know anybody.

Like honestly, I had not one person that I could reach out to and say like, Hey, like I know you're on social media or I know you own this business. Do you know anybody that could help promote what I'm doing here? And it had no one. So I ended up spending like 500 cold emails to people like trying to promote this product. It did. Okay. I mean it raised like $14,000 and I got it made. I got it funded so I was able to produce it and put it out into the world.

 But through that process I realized that one, I didn't know anybody in to that I did want to know people so that the next time I did something like this, uh, it was such a struggle. So I started the podcast extremely selfishly because I wanted to meet people and I knew if I wanted to meet people I had to get very intentional about building those relationships. Uh, and I knew that having a nine to five job and being, quote unquote busy, was not going to be an excuse if I wanted to make this happen.

So a march, I believe it was March 28th is when I officially launched the podcast. And uh, I put out seven episodes or so, one episode every day. The first week, and I've put out two episodes every week since then, so in about five months I'm over. I met, I think we just released episode 53 today if I'm allowed to ask, what are downloads looking like because of your intentional posting or I guess publishing twice.

Ryan Helms: Yeah, no, this is a great question and it's, it's, I think it will be enlightening because some people may think it will be lower and some people may think it would be a lot higher. So going into this with no audience, no background really in this space or anything and podcasts, not having the best search seo functionality built into it. Uh, I started with like, you know, I was hoping my mom would listen to it, that, that type of audience and, you know, slowly slowly started growing and uh, the past two months I've been at about 11, over 11,000 downloads a month on it.

Marie Larsen: I hope we are understanding the importance and how incredible that is. And how many, how many months have you been doing this for again?

Ryan Helms: Uh, I think, uh, just came up on five months.

Marie Larsen: Okay. So I just have to reiterate, because I tell my, tell my audience on a constant basis, Ryan, that people, as you were saying, need to get intentional, right? And, and in my words, I tell people to get loud with their audience, right? If you whisper into your audience, into your industry, then they won't hear you, but if you scream into your industry, then people might notice that you're there. Right? And so again, by doing that, he posts twice a week, like he publishes a podcast twice a week and he's about to cry. I mean he's crossing over 11,000 downloads. That is amazing. That's incredible. And that starting out with no audience beforehand and I didn't even ask and so that people could be aware of what is the name of your podcast so that people can jump on and listen along with you throughout your side hustle journey.

Ryan Helms: Sure. It's called hustle to freedom. And you know, we, we can get into this in more detail, but I, I really have two types of guests that I bring on. So you'll know what you're getting into when you come to my podcast, which I think is important and something that I preach to people starting a podcast.

So you're, my guests are either going to be people that nine to five job that have a side hustle that's generating at least $2,000 or b they have within the past three years taking their side hustle into their main source of income. Um, so those are the kinds of criteria for the type of guests that you'll, you'll hear my show, which also makes it difficult to get these really big numbers because you know, a lot of, a lot of people didn't have a podcast. One of the strategies to get a lot of downloads and a lot of listeners is to bring on influencers, right?

Ryan Helms: To bring on these big name people will. Nobody's heard of 99 percent of my guests. Nobody. I mean, like I, I, I've had brought on one person that I'd ever heard of before. That's it. Everybody else or just people like, you know, they've got a wife and kid at home. They're probably coming home after work in, you know, eight, nine hours at some corporate job, but they, they're doing something on the side that makes them interesting, that will inspire people and show people that it's possible. So, um, so yeah, those are, that's the podcast hustled of freedom and that's the type of people that are on it.

Marie Larsen: And I love that because I was telling Ryan before this that, that this is such a relatable story because there are so many people who are working their nine to five and you are looking for that hustled of freedom as written said like he loves his job and everything, but you know, one day there might come a time that, that you know, he, he's done, you know, for some reason or another.

And it's not like he'll just finish one day and have nothing behind them. It's because he's doing these little things on the side, like podcasting, like going through and building out an audience, like making those network connections and stuff like that.

That push come to shove if something were to happen or if he decided he was done as he could turn around easily and go through and, and make those connections explode two different levels.

Marie Larsen: Right? And being able to take it to the next level with his podcast, with his side hustle, with everything like that. I also had to stay. Um, I, I heard Ryan talk once upon a time about his blog and the reason that he goes through and builds out a blog via his podcast.

And I kind of wanted you to go into, um, tell us what your or your, uh, your blog is and the reason that you go through and build out your blogs behind you. I tell my audience a lot about the blogging process and the reason that I do behind it and a lot of them sometimes don't believe me on it. So, um, I would love it if you could go through and kind of explain that process and the reason that you do that

Ryan Helms: right direction. Just guide me back. Here's what I think we're getting at here. Um, so with the podcast, like I was mentioning earlier is hard to get, you know, visibility to your podcasts and things like that. So I think it's important to create ways that people can find you organically through Google and things like that.

So having a blog post for that reason, but also giving, giving your audience or your guest ways to promote your products cast as well.

So I want to give my guest is many ways as possible that granted they might be posting on facebook and on and they're not, you know, marketers like us and our facebook friends. We like Maria tried to add, you know, like a week ago and I couldn't because you had, you were at the Max number of friends. Like most of these people probably are friends like their parents and stuff like that.

Ryan Helms: But anyway, like I, you want to give your, your guests is many ways as possible to help promote your, uh, your podcast and you want it to be as painless as absolute possible for them. So one of the things that I do is that blog and I, I do mine in a template format.

You May, there may be other strategies out there, but I asked a couple of questions in each blog post and it's basically a, who is it, what's their side hustle, why should I listen a, how can I find out more about them and then a link for the show notes and things like that. So that's how I build out that a podcast or that blog. It has a podcast player embedded in the episode itself. So I can get some plays from that, from people who, who find it to help the stats.

I'm in a couple of other things I do when I reach out to these people, to my guest on today's episode comes out, I give them a link to the, to the blog post. I, I give them probably like at least three to five different social media graphics and all different formats for instagram stories for a youtube, for just the normal square ones, a bunch of different things.

I give them the embedded player code itself so that they can put it on their website if they want to because you know, people, especially if they're not like big name influencers, they like to, they like to show themselves as that at expert, they liked to present themselves with that expert.

So if you can give them that player and they can just easily pop it on their site, like quick win, if they do it like, I don't know, I just say, Hey, here's this embedded player, this the same code that you'll find for the player on the blog post that's above. If you want to feel free to put it on your site, I think that, that'd be awesome.

Yep. Yeah. So for me, I just, the blog posts are just one mechanism, one to get hopefully get some organic traffic, but to just to highlight my guest and highlight the episode in and give just another asset that they can share in a way people can come into my ecosystem.

Marie Larsen: I love that and I, and I have to ask this then going off of that, because a lot of people say that's awesome, but creating a blog sounds like a lot of work and stuff like that and betting a, you know, a player is going to be super, super hard. What are some of those top softwares that you have used or something like that so that people don't have to go through and I guess trial and error figure out which one is really, really good. What are some advices that you would give to those people who are looking for good softwares that you've already gone through and looked at?

Ryan Helms: Yeah, so for the embedded player, uh, I used a simple cast for my podcast host. I love them. I mean, I wish they had an affiliate partnership because I promote them all the time, but they don't. So I just promoted out of just truly I enjoy them. So I use it well.

One of the reasons that I went with them, there was a couple of reasons, but one of them was they had this hello person behind you. They had this amazing, amazing, beautiful embed player and that was super important for me because I knew I wanted to do this in my blog post, so I was like, hey, how you know there's all these options out there. What, what can I do to start with the widow these down? So one of those was, you know that embedded player, so simple gas has it in there. Literally you don't have to know anything about the internet at all to be able to do it.

You simply go in there, copy that code and you just paste it directly. Like in your wordpress site, you would go in, not in the visual editor, but the text editor paste that in there and hit save and Bam the players right there on your site. So super. Yeah, and I use a wordpress and simple cast, so host the blog on wordpress.

Marie Larsen: There are a lot of people who asked me constantly. It seems like you have experience in this. What are some other ways that you go about to, I guess, verbalize your podcast and get it out to as many different people as far as like when you're starting out, you probably, I dunno, just like totally family and friends like hey, I'm doing a podcast and it's really, really great, but with time I'm getting to 11,000 downloads.

What were some of those ways that you went about to really, I guess promote that you actually had a podcast?

Ryan Helms: First? I'll start with some ways to be careful doing it because I've been blast 100 times already. I'll read it for trying to promote my podcast. But um, I eventually found a way for my podcast is a good way to promote it on reddit. And actually I, I get some pretty good traffic from this. So uh, with reddit always lead with value first, always more than any other platform that's out there.

Lead with value because they will call you spammy and block you and kick you out of these subreddits. But so I go on there and I use a tool called track reddit. So go to track reddit.com for me, my podcast is more focused on like side hustles and stuff. So what you can do in this tool is you can track key words, right? You track keywords on Reddit. So I track the words side hustle.

So every time somebody posts with the word side Hustle and title of the post, I get an email notification. I can quickly hop in to that at post and see if I can add any value. And typically how to add value to you is I like to provide an example from one of the guests that I've had all my show at the end of that. I like for example, if they're asking for like, oh, I'm trying to figure out how to start a side hustle. I don't know, washing windows or something. I could be like, oh, you should go, you know, I interviewed a guy on episode 13 of my podcast hustle to freedom. This is what he did.

Here's a couple of the key bullet points that I took away from that interview. Like if you want to go check it out, here's a link. And people think that's a little bit more authentic.

Ryan Helms: Before I would've been like, hey, go check out episode 13, here's a link and that was it and I was getting bashed for that. So definitely read it could be one of those ways to get the word out there. Just lead with value and see. And it'll depend on the type of podcast you had. But that may be a good strategy for some I'm getting reviews I think is a big one to get the word out because in that may sound counterintuitive because it's like the chicken before the egg I guess. But I asked my all my guests for reviews on my podcast and for some people it may feel inauthentic, but for me I'm okay with it.

And I think it's a great strategy, especially in the beginning because what you have to realize with people looking for podcasts I listen to, it's like they're window shopping.

 So. And I think there's two things they look for when they're window shopping for what's their next podcast that they're going to invest themselves in. Because most people don't listen to one episode of a podcast. They're gonna go, they're going to listen to two, three, they're going to listen to you like everyday for the next four days, right until they get tired of your voice. So in order to qualify you, they want to listen to you. They are going to look at how consistent are you putting out content?

Are they going to have to listen to your latest episode and it's going to be a month before you put something else out. So consistency. And the next thing I'm going to look at is your reviews because they may not read your reviews, but they're going to look at the number of reviews and ratings you have because it adds some legitimate CTU.

 So if you're consistently putting out content and you have some reviews, and that's gonna be a big, big help. Uh, unfortunately, regarding the reviews for us, apple, which is the main platform that reviews matter on, makes it extremely difficult for your people to leave reviews on it, is it seems completely counterintuitive, but it's not easy for them to leave reviews. So if this is one of the approaches that you want to take, be sure to leave a very detailed instructions on how they can leave reviews and here's a tip for you.

So a lot of people don't realize is even when they are giving their guests instructions to leave reviews or just anybody to leave reviews when someone is on an iphone or something like that and they go to your podcast to leave a review. They may type out this, they may say five stars and give this awesome review and they type in their name right?

Speaker 3: Because it asks for your. Like a user name or a nickname I think is is they had asked for. Then they hit enter and it just Kinda refreshes and it doesn't do anything and you'll get so many people that come back to you and say, well, I tried to leave a review, but it wasn't working. The reason that that doesn't work is because that nickname has to be unique and there was already a gym before that left a review on a podcast. So that nickname is taken. So when you ask your guests to leave reviews, tell them to pick a very unique niche name and that in that field and if it just refreshes and doesn't look like it saves, then just add another number to it or something like that to make it more unique. And then, uh, that a review we'll save. So that's just a quick little tip. Something I had to learn the hard way.

Marie Larsen: Yeah, I love that. Especially I've used that and I've told people specifically to take that and I'll. And I'll tell them to put that in their call to action and an Outro, right? So if you're entering your outfit and podcasts a lot of the time and now you say, hey, thanks so much for listening. Don't forget to rate and subscribe guys. You'll hear at the end of this podcast episode, you know, and then I had my call to action of number one being a, don't forget to rate and subscribe. And number two, as, oh, I'm, by the way, if you've enjoyed this or if you have more questions, go to my facebook group that, you know, profit of podcasts and strategies for entrepreneurs or in whatever it is, right? And, and so there's all these, there's all these different calls to actions that you can have at the end of that. Now I really liked the fact that you tell people to give them really specific instructions and I think that a lot of times, um, people have a hard time doing that and we'll just say, go do this, you know, and, and if there's not detailed information, then a lot of times will freak out and they will give up again, as you were saying earlier, to make the process as painless as possible.

Speaker 2: Make the instructions really specific. The more specific you're going to get, the more people are actually going to follow through because they have step by step instructions rather than a broad, a broad spectrum of what they should be doing. They'll give up halfway through if they don't understand the rest of what they should be doing. And you won't be getting the results that you're looking for.

Ryan Helms: Absolutely, because if somebody goes to try and leave a review and it just refreshes and they, it doesn't save the chances that they're going to make the effort to come to you and say, Hey Ryan, I tried to leave you a review, but it didn't save are very, very slim, probably like one percent. So you would just be losing all those reviews for the people that didn't really understand the process and didn't understand that at little intricacy about apple podcasts.

Marie Larsen: Yep, absolutely. I love that. I think it's so good. Now. I also have to ask, especially as like your experience of having, and I'm going to wrap this back as far as I want wanna, I want to know more as far as having your nine to five job, how you have time or what process that you're going through in order to create time for yourself to do things like podcasting, to do a side hustle, to build out those connections. Because a lot of people think that it has to be full time thing. Um, how are you? How are you delegating that time so that you, you're able to do all of that?

Ryan Helms: Yeah, I still live a life as well. I mean I just got engaged like four weeks ago, three or four weeks ago. So I still have time for other things in life as well. But you, again, I've used the word intentional a couple of times. You have to be very intentional with your time and how you spend your time and I think it all just comes back to systems, right?

Having systems in place to increase your effectiveness in your efficiency in, in what you're doing. So, um, the first 35 episodes I did everything myself. That's a source. The guests do the interview, edit the audio, write the blog post, right the email. So I sent out an email about every episode, create the social media graphics posted on social media. Like I did everything myself for the first 35 episodes and that's, that's while working a job in, in, uh, having a relationship and wanting to hang out with friends and all that kind of stuff.

So it all comes back to systems and I personally manage everything in Trello, like I've got this bad ass trello board that takes everybody through a, all my guests through the entire process. Uh, I've got all these different lists for the different stages within the podcast process. Each episode itself is a card. So in theory, each episode is its own little project and as I progress along through the process of bringing that episode to life, a checklist get added automatically through this process. I use a cool little power up in Trello called Butler to really create a lot of amazing automation within Trello. I'm a huge automation person because I have to be based on my time constraints.

Um, so for me it's, it's Trello. Everything is in Trello, Trello, Google drive, evernote. They're all linked together with Zapier or Zapier, however you want to pronounce it. They all work in tandem off each other and talk to each other based on specific actions that are taking place throughout the process. So yeah, Trello is Keith to, to everything and systems are where it's at.

Marie Larsen: Yeah. It's funny. I am. I'm currently part of Russell Brunson's two Comma Club coaching and literally one of the first things that they had us do was to go through and build our systems, right? And at first I was like, oh my gosh, this is gonna take so much of my life way, like I cannot go through and do all this because I have to accomplish all those things right now. Right.

And after I sat down and actually decided to do it, um, it, it cut my time in half. It made, you know, the availability to be creative and innovative and other ways an actual, you know, reality. Right? And so, um, I couldn't agree more with that. And so as, as you're going through and creating your own side hustle, the lesson that I'm currently learning from Ryan is to go through and really systemized and really figure out ways to automate your life.

Marie Larsen: Great ways to go through and do that. Yes. Is via click funnels. Yes. Is there, there's so many ways that you can go through and automate your, your, excuse me information and things that you are learning and things that you can bring down and create projects and stuff like that.

If you have systemized projects and things that you're going to go be going through and you can link, you know, your google drives to it and stuff like that so that your team, as you start growing out a team or something like that, that they are able to find those links and really be able to cross reference guys systemized and make your life easier and you can do that with podcasting. You can do that with any hassle. I'm just like Brian was talking about, right? Yeah.

 You said you, you alluded to a team and things like that, so I said I did all of that for the first 35 episodes. So what did I do after the first 35? Obviously I outsource part of it and this comes through into a very important point. I think you need to go into whatever you're doing, whatever type of project you're doing, one with, with systems from the beginning, you need to develop, and this is my personal opinion, you need to develop your systems with the intention that at some point they will be outsourced.

I think you will, you will create your processes and a totally different way if you have the assumption that someone else who will be following the process that you're creating at some point in the future. So that's what I did. When I got to episode 35, I found somebody that helps me out with this process. Now he does my editing. He writes a blog post for me and he, my social media

Marie Larsen: graphics. So there are some in there that I still do, but he does a big chunk of my time commitment. He handles that for me. Um, I got an amazing deal on it. I, I met him through the process of launching my kickstarter and uh, it's been awesome, but it was easy to do that because I built those processes and those systems with the intention of, at some point I knew I was not going to want to be sitting in front of the computer editing that audio forever. I'm Alex Charfen is one of my mentors through all this, and he went through and he told me, he's like, make sure that you're growing your position rather. He's like, yes, the people, he's like, great, your position because the people will outgrow you one day. And I was really thinking about that. I said, that's true. If you grow up position where the trainings are all, there were literally everything's there and available.

The process is painless, right throughout the entire thing. Once all of the processes painless, once the position is really created and after that, and then when that person has their own innovative, creative ideas that when they walk away, your whole life doesn't just collapsed, right?

We're instead, you have a position that's still available, that's there, that's been created. So when that person leaves, when a new person comes in, that position is still there and all they need to go through is learn how to do trello or whatever and go through your trainings that have already been created for them. Um, so you, you're building up a position rather than a person that will lead your team one day, that will leave what you're doing one day. So really grow up position rather than grow out the people. People will continue to grow and we want them to grow.

 We want them to become innovative, we want to watch them become successful in other areas of life. But, but we need people to be able to fulfill the things that we need as well. And so creating that position is something that is extremely important as well. So, I wanted to thank you so much. I know that you have had, you have limited time, but what are the best ways for people. I don't even think we mentioned what the name of your blog was. Now that I'm thinking about it, what is the name of your blog so that people can jump on and find your resources with podcasting was side hustling. What is the best way to get in contact with you?

Ryan Helms: So the blog is grit and Hustle Dot Co. So grit and hustle, you can find that brand on social media. MoSt of the places at grit and hustle co, um, if you're specifically interested in podcasting, which maria, I think a lot of your listeners are in, you really liked systems. Uh, I just actually, it's not even, I don't know when this will go live, but I did create a course and it, I haven't even talked about it yet.

So this is really the first time you could find that at it a bit not fly. so you know, the little bitly, short links, not l, y slash podcasting made easy.

So you can go check that out if you don't like systems, don't go to that link because it's a very structured, systematic process on how I do everything related to my podcast from editing to managing my trello board, the whole nine yards a outsourcing, everything is all in there. So if you're interested in, in a very structured approach to podcasting, you can check that out. Yeah. And if you want to find Me on the interwebs, Ryan Helms and just search it and you'll see a beautiful beard, on a guy, and you'll be happy. I love that.

Marie Larsen: Hey Ryan. Thank you so much. I really appreciate all the value that you've provided today. Awesome. Thanks for having me on. Maria. Had a blessed. Have a good one. See ya. See ya.

Thanks for listening. Don't forget to rate and subscribe. You have questions for me. Go to the facebook group, Profitable Podcasting Strategies For Entrepreneurs, and I'll be sure to do an episode to answer your next question. Again guys. My name is Marie Larsen and this is the audio entrepreneur.

Resources From Ryan Helms: 

http://bit.ly/podcastingmadeeasy

website: www.gritandhustle.co

social media: @gritandhustleco

Hey guys, don't you love it when you find people who are rock stars within your own industry, then all of a sudden you have like these two minds that are just going crazy at it, figuring out new strategies and ideas that you can use in order to improve your audience and take them to the next level. I have Daxy Perez on here with me and I'm super excited to talk about the things that we're going to talk about of guys. We'll catch you in there. It's going to be awesome. What's up everyone? This is Marie Larsen and you're listening to the audio entrepreneur. I spent the last year and a half doing podcasts and content creation for some of the fastest growing entrepreneurs today. Their strategies and tests have been life changing once I took action, so I decided to take my audio industry to the next level by building a seven figure company that teaches people how to create, strategize, and repurpose their content like approach. The question so many people are wondering is how is she going to do it? This podcast is here to give you the answers. Join me as I explained marketing strategies to grow my online business. My name is Marie Larsen and welcome to the audio entrepreneur.  I love finding people who are doing similar things to me because that I'm doing because it gives me the opportunity to figure out new strategies and figuring out how the heck I can improve and therefore help you guys improve. I'm always trying to find new ways to encourage you guys to improve and to help your audiences grow and by bringing on this specific individual, it is a great opportunity to go through it and figure out if the strategies that I'm teaching you is there any way, shape or form that I can go through and improve it as well. And so anyway, this is my friend, taxi. Um, do you guys have probably heard of him before? If not, I've mentioned several times in a few of my lives on the group profitable podcasting strategies for entrepreneurs. And so make sure that you're jumping on that because you'll hear more of his knowledge bombs here and this next little bit. But anyway, thank you so much for being on here. And if you want to jump in and just kind of introduce yourself to us and kind of tell us who you are and how you got into the audio industry, that would be awesome.  Hey, what's up guys? Daxy here. Audio entrepreneurs. It's really good to get to know you guys. I listened to your podcast with Tom Murray. Like, just like you say, you learned from me. I actually learned from Youtube because you know, if you're in something and you're like, that's all you're about. You have to learn everything that's, that's in that field. So I'm just obsessed with podcasts and I listen to somebody parked testers because you can learn from everyone even if it's what not to do, which is sometimes the best lesson, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like most of the time, like I only want to take a few things for people at distances. But uh, I'm so quick back story. I got into music when I was in high school because that kind of changed my life. I was not in a good state. I was, I didn't have any people around me.  And Music is, how is that? Hi, kind of escaped their sound and um, you know, I used to watch live streams. I don't know if you're at a dead mouse. Oh yeah. The keys to produce music live like before anyone, like it was on Ustream, like I didn't know if that exists anymore. She pretty much and lifted the curtains of how to create music for me in a world where, you know, I wasn't surrounded by the right people and that kind of changed my life. I start producing music once a remix contest and then college came around and then I was like, wait, what am I doing with my life? I'm not really sure how many skills I changed majors like three or four times trying to figure out what I was going to do. And college felt like high school. I wasn't learning from anyone and I didn't like the process.  The teachers weren't people that they were teaching things but they weren't experts at what they were teaching. There was teaching because they had to. And I knew I had to learn from people who are actually doing what they talk about. So I dropped out of school pretty much and I started looking online how to make money online. I used to watch a lot of udemy courses. I don't know if you guys know about denny. I'm still up now. Got into Ebay, drop shipping, got into ecommerce. I was, I was pretty successful for me. I went out to Thailand, became a digital nomad, try that out a little bit. And throughout that whole process I was freelancing and I was using one of my skills, I knew audio and I was helping people edit their podcast, just hustling on fiverr and upwork just sticking straight to audio. And then I met some guys in Thailand who had some big agencies who are producing podcasts for some big people. I can't name some of them because it's confidential, but I mean Tim Ferriss was one of our past clients and some of the big people. And I kind of got into that world. I learned more about the agency side of podcasting and now where I'm at now, I started my own agency about few months ago, have some dream clients. And uh, I just, I'm helping people out right now with podcasting, so yeah, I love the podcasting world. So any questions you got for me that can help out your audience, just let me know. Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing is, well, thanks for telling us about your background. That's so awesome. I currently am in college, but um, I'm taking all my classes online part time and just trying to like finish it out because I have a year left of school and at this rate, like I might as well finish it, but I love those stories. I love having the stories of where people are understanding that what they are passionate about is actually something that they could do to make a substantial amount of money off of. Right. And so going off of that, the audio industry is something that can be aggressive at times and there's a lot of people in it, you know, trying China to fight to the top and everything like that. And I also Dexia at one point was, you know, like music, music has always been my escape.  Like when I go for runs, like I listen to music, I listen to podcasts that you know, and it's just, I have to not think of anything but what's going on right there and so it's helpful for me, but for a lot of people in my audience, they're always asking questions about specific audio questions, right? Like how to improve their audio and little things like that. And you are an audio genius. Right? And so I thought that it'd be awesome if we kind of Chit chatted a little bit on some of the audio tips that you give to people so that they can get higher quality podcasts or you know, just audio in general for their businesses. So what would you say are some of the top tips or strategies that are, I guess, top tips that you could give to someone for their podcast as far as to improve that sound quality?  Okay. I'll start kind of from the start of the fundamentals. Um, and also, yeah, like you were saying music, like I tell people music is the language of the universe. Like a good song can touch anyone.

I think like audio is like that too. So first of all, equipment you only want like the end consumer doesn't really care if you're pocket if like they just don't want it to sound bad, you know, so you just need equipment that sounds good at, you're not anything after that. It's like a small percentage gains. So don't spend a lot of time on equipment despite the basic standards that atr 2100 and just go with that Blue Yeti, which, you know, I was just talking to you about the, the cable breaks a lot. So don't buy the Blue Yeti actually. And um, it's just um, making sure that when you're looking at your levels, depending on a, you use audacity or audition that you're not peaking, that you're not in the red because then that's not good. You don't even know if dynamics in there. So you can't do the awesome stuff to after. I usually use a prerecording checklists with my clients. So pretty much it's a checklist of things that should always be reminded of it before they record. So you know, make sure that your voice is actually recording because cast were like, that's the most important one, right? I've been podcasts where 30 minutes with a guests and we're like, and I'm like, Holy Shit, I didn't record that. Sorry man. And then you know, you waste your time and their time and that's the worst feeling in the world. And you lose a lot of work.  Checked an extra. Yeah. We're implementing this right now. Your brother said the same thing. I remember he wasn't a story, uh, Steven Larson and he was like, I just record an hour long thing and I forgot to record it. And I saw the look in his face. I'm like, dude, I know that feels like  you dropped some insane value bombs during those times and you know, it's like in the moment your mind is just going and it's awesome and you get done and you look at your mic and it's like muted. And I'm, you're like, no,  that's the second time around. You are not as passionate. Passion is how do I get through this quick without being mad. So yeah, the prerecording checklists, I usually, that's the first thing. And make sure you're recording. I like to tell me guests like, uh, that, you know, make sure you don't have any fans on any loud noise in the background. Make sure you're not drinking or eating when we're interviewing because that makes noises or like this right here, I'm clicking. That's not good to do.  I'll start drinking. My water bottle will demonstrate what not to do. Yeah. And that just doesn't sound good and noise is like, it causes dissonance. People think quality doesn't matter, but like imagine your favorite song and you listen to it on the radio and it was like a Shitty, like it was like, you know what it's like half static and have, you would probably only like 91 to listen to it because it causes cognitive dissonance, which means you can't focus on it and it doesn't have a clear message coming to you. And I think your voice is the same way. Yes. It has to be clear for people to grab onto it.  Yeah. No, especially as like sounds. Some of the. I liked the, I liked that you said not to worry, it just needs to sound good enough. Right? I have people all the time that come to me and say, Marie, I can't work with you yet because I have to go spend three or four grand on audio equipment and then I can come back to you every single time. And I'm like, why? Why you possibly think that you need that kind of equipment when in all honesty, when I started podcasting or when I started doing audio and stuff like that, I would literally just grabbed my phone and um, and I will go through and I would, I would do it off my phone.

So I started putting in my headphones and just as I would be driving in the car and as I will be driving, like I would seriously take my headphones, plug it in, use voice memo and start recording. And a lot of people would freak out over that and be like, that's not how you start podcasting. I was like, well that's how I started and it's great and it was cheap and I was a broke college student. When I started, so at that point like it was the best I could do and it's still, it's still provided great quality at times too. So.  And it's funny because I know some of your listeners are like into clickfunnels world and the Russell Brunson world and I've actually heard this multiple times where they're like, oh, Russell Brunson records in his car and anyone can do it, which is true. Anyone can do. I'd rather get people get started. Not started, but Russell Brunson is also talking to his hot audience so people will listen to him no matter what. Like you can literally be like in a, like a trash compactor and no. See like, what is he saying? What is he saying? Like. And I don't think his, his car thing like that was enriching a cold audience. Like from what I was looking at, like he's not as big as Gary Vaynerchuk. So yeah. So it depends who you're trying to build new audience or if you already have an audience purity in the audience, they'll listen to you. But if you've started out new audience, you know, you want to make sure you sound good or first impressions are very important.  Yep, absolutely. And so going off of that then, as far as building your audience, building an audience via podcasting, a lot of people, and I think I was telling you this before we started recording, but a lot of people will jump on and say, you know what Marie, I posted my first three episodes and I only have a hundred and 50 downloads or something like that. Unlike, there'll be all discouraged and everything and I'll say, actually let's, that's pretty good if you're starting out, you know, if. Especially if you don't have a name and audience, anything like that, that's awesome. You know, I'm pretty good. And so I laugh when people are jumping on and they say, you know, Marie, like where am I? Thousands and thousands of downloads. So what, what little tricks and tips would you give to someone who is trying to build out their audience via podcasting?  Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So firstly, podcast downloads are much more powerful than like a thousand youtube views compared to a thousand podcast. Downloads is not even comparable because usually the statistics, you know, most people who don't want a podcast like four to five, we'll listen to the whole thing. I mean if you're starting out, maybe it's not that good because they're more just listening to you. Now. It is and people are more intentional when they download a podcast. When I download a podcast, it's not like it's part of a feed and I'm being fed the podcasts. It's like, alright, let me download this podcast. I mean some apps it's like automatic. So one of my favorite ways actually is instagram because right now eventually you want to have proper call to actions and you want to create listener engagement to get them in your facebook group, to get them everywhere else, get them in your opt in.  You don't want passive listeners because passive listeners, I've had a lot of clients who had this problem. Passive listeners are like the devil because that's what I tell them because you don't get any feedback so you don't know what's working, what's there, so you have to train your listeners to engage and there's ways to do that, um, you know, creating listener segments so either, you know, shouting out people who reviewed your show, answering questions that people send you a highlighting people's posts and your facebook group encouraging people to post in your facebook group and such, um, you want to create, engage listeners.

Um, I love instagram because I feel like every type of person or every type of industry is on instagram and it's really easy to get your message out there and engage and use certain hashtags and follow on. I mean, a lot of people don't agree with me on this, but there's some bots you can use in the start that'll grow your instagram account pretty fast. Just falling on following, not like comment spam. And if you have a good enough biography districts to your instagram, you get enough images and you have a call to action to your podcast. Um, that's how I got one of my podcasts, so I've got a ton of downloads and I was just talking to people, interviewing people who are big on instagram and then having them shout me out on instagram and in my instagram bio was a child and my podcasts and I'll do a lot of like teasers to the episode on Instagram. So just mastering one platform off of podcasts as well in addition to otherwise, you know, organic traffic is not, that's huge for podcasts to be honest. It could be when you got a new and noteworthy section, but you've got to get in the new and noteworthy section. I think so. Yep. Yep. So how would you advise people to get into that new and noteworthy section for podcasts? So it's definitely, it comes down to Itunes, looks at um, how much of the episode people are consuming and how many downloads you get. So you know, launching, like you said, with a lot of podcasts in your batch. So you, people like you don't want to launch with one podcast and songs and be like, oh, I really liked the episode. And they're like, wait, what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want to give people additional content. You want to have some sort of giveaway attached to your laundry podcasts so you know, and your outro or intro wherever feels comfortable for you. I like the outros. Um, you tell them, you know, hey, we just launched this podcast, get as big, bold, big vision. I'm giving away this blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, it's, it's Kinda harder if you're newer because you don't have anything to give away, so you can just be more honest about it, you know, like if you'd leave a review that helps a lot. [inaudible] reviews do help a lot from them.  Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. You can do giveaways. I mean, you can do cash giveaways every week. Amazon card giveaways. Yeah. So it's, I mean it's, it's not that complicated. It's really just reviews and downloads.  Uh, I've told a lot of my audience and they've heard this before to create like a call to action and your outro, right? Whether that's to a good giveaway or you're going more towards, um, having like a lead magnet that's pushing them towards their funnels. Or some call to action to their facebook group or something that you are creating that ultra so that people are upbeat and excited and knowing that if I go do this and I'm going to receive a ton of value, and I have told my audience several times over that a lot of customers need at least seven contacts with someone in order to, you know, before they're going to purchase from you. Right?

So that's first their first year podcast to you know, your lead magnets to over to your funnel, to your facebook group to whatever. All of a sudden you have seven different contacts with them and they realize, I liked this guy, I know who they are. They provided a lot of value and they're going through this entire list where they're so excited of about who you are. They falling in love with you as a person and not with your services. Right? And people hate it when I say this, but people buy people and people don't buy things.  Even when you sell, you're not selling your product a lot the times you're still you.  Yes. And so the podcasting world, and it's why I urge people like crazy to get really good at doing podcasts and to get really excited and really, um, really improves their podcasting voice, their self, who they are and everything because people, it's one of the most intimate parts of marketing or, or you know, about your business that you could possibly do because people are choosing to put you in their ear.

They are choosing to listen to you, which is hard because you go to all of her facebook and you're trying to grab attention, you're trying to go to all these different social media platforms and you're begging for that attention for just one light or something like that. But in podcasting, people are literally selecting to put you in their ear, to listen to who you are, to what you have to say and to listen to the value that you're going to provide for them. So it's very intimate and the end, you're creating a relationship with people and that you couldn't do on, on a facebook post, right, per se. It's very intimate. It's very, you know, you're, you're very there.  So it's Kinda like, and I told people who are in more of the social media marketing agency world and I tell them like, it's like a one way you sales call man, like if you don't want to make it sound like a sales call, like you know, you're just pitching new thing, but it literally like, it's like you're on the phone with someone but you just scaled that and you multiply it and you can overcome people's objections or their false beliefs. Like you can tell stories like there's so much to do, a podcast, so you can't really do with any other platform really as good as a podcast because they're usually like, they're in areas where they're just listening to you whether they're gardening or they're in the gym or sometimes it was doing the shower. Like I listen to podcasts everywhere.  Yeah. That's like my, I got to like clear my head of everything. I just want to learn something that I enjoy. So I'll throw on Russell Brunson or whatever it is and I'll go for a run. So as far as going through some of the softwares and stuff like that that you use in the podcasting world, what are some of the softwares that you use that you would encourage someone who's just starting out and slash or the people who are I guess already at that next level and looking to improve their softwares? What would be a good start out software for people.  Gotcha. Some people use audacity. I actually tell my clients to see and that's only because I haven't been recording I would ask is just easy to record, but if you're going to actually like do your own podcast, starting out and you don't have someone to do it for, you definitely use audition, adobe audition. If you already have the adobe suite it should come with it or if not it's just like $10 a month and it's worth it because of all the awesome features they have there. Also I liked using auphonic.

I don't know if you've heard of that because I don't like adding Id. Three tags to like in the you can do it like id three tags, like this right click and whatever it all manually is a software that you just upload the file and it has it all templated out like your artwork, your show title, your keywords like everything and you can just upload the episode, say different title, whatever it is, and then it'll shoot it out. It'll just like do some mastering to it. Some boosting stuff. If you're not good at that, it'll just make it sound better for you and like normalize the levels of the audio and then it'll be sensitive to your dropbox or to your Google drive wherever you store it and you can have your whole database for your team or for you or whatever other softwares.  Tell me about your postings. What kind of hosting?  I mean I'm simple. I hear everyone telling me about all these hosting platforms. Like I'm hearing about the simple tasks like yesterday in the lab and all these other people, but like I just stick with Libsyn because like if it's not broken, don't fix it. Alright, listen works. That's not really a big issue with me hosting, like I just clicked the lips. I'm not trying to complicate things because it's simpler. Things are the more effective you're going to see how a host that's hosting. That's pretty much it. Like I try to just make it more about the quality and the content and being consistent for people. And how often are you trying to push out content? How often are you? Well, I mean ideally, ideally if you're like someone who's really like you have something going like every day, like if you could do that every day, but you know, normally if they're sign a podcast that you want to just build trust, get people to know you, to like you to trust you.

That's what I tell people like Klt, like that's where it's at. You want me to know you and then they got to like you and then they got to trust you and then you can do whatever you want from there. So right now it's the same method you're using. It's worked so good two times a week. It used to be weekly, but people usually have more than one podcast on their APP, so you, you're competing with attention, so you want to feed people and get them in that routine, so at least two times a week daily would be awesome if you can do that, but that's more for people who are like coaches and consultants and really trying to like put out value, value, value and get in people's heads, you know?  Right. Absolutely. And I cannot agree more. There are a lot of people will say morale just published, you know, once every couple of weeks, and I'm like, how are you supposed to build out an audience or a trust with an audience that is going to be so excited about who you are that they're going to want to build out that trust and buy the things that you have available. You need to be pushing out more content and so I highly encourage people to, as you're starting out, do that at least twice a week, but the more that you can get it out, the better.

Like I will never. I will never complain to the amount of content that you want to push out to your podcasts. If you want to push out once a day, twice a day. I will never complain with the amount of contact twice a day yet. I mean I think there are people doing it, but I don't. I feel like once day. I mean it depends how long your episodes are. Yeah, absolutely. Can do what you want and sparing with everything and kind of goes off the examples as far as like people like how, how are you supposed to consume that amount of content and I tell people you're not. The reason that you push out an insane amount of content is that you know that your, your client base, your customer base is that they are not going to be able to consume the amount of content that you have, but that it will be extremely useful for them. As far as like Russell Brunson, he has hours and hours and hours, hundreds of hours of content that is out there and there's no possible way that I could sit down and consume all of it. But when I do see that he has produced something, I get so excited and I stopped to listen to it as much as I can. And so building out an audience to the point where they're so excited just because you have a new episode out or anything like that is absolutely amazing. Something that I've also seen wrestled this last little bit that I've started to push out with my own client base is um, automation emails for podcasts. And so that's been sending that. We started doing a little bit more and as soon as we push out these automation emails, you know, and pretty much it's just a transcription or the show notes of what is going on, you know, with a, with a hook and some stories and sort of offered within those automated emails to push out whenever there's a new podcast episode to come out. That's been life changing for a lot and it's increased your because it's another point of contact, right? Where people can find your episode in some form. Right.  And a lot of people actually look at their email on their phone. So it's like an easy transition for them as well. They're just like, oh, it was straight to the pocket of sap, so. Yup. Absolutely. Absolutely. Hey, well thank you so much. We are probably going to wrap up here in this next little bit, but if there's anything else you want to add in here as far as like, uh, your facebook groups are the best way to get in contact with you. That would be awesome.  Yeah guys. So on facebook, on Instagram, I am backseat and my facebook group legacy podcasting for entrepreneurs, influencers, personal brands. Um, if you just add me on facebook backseat pres, I could shoot you the link. And there I've been interviewing more people who are also podcasters, so giving more context because everyone has different experiences with podcasting depending on our industry or what they're doing and it should help. I feel like it should help all types of people who are starting out to already have a podcast to learn. And then also like it's also a community where you can network with other podcasters. I see people climbing guests in groups as well. You can find a cohost in a group, you know, some people don't want to. That's a whole nother topic, a cohost and host, whatever. There's pros and cons to that. But um, yeah, I mean I'm, I'm building some cool things out. I'm going to be launching a course. I kind of want to podcast. I'm going to be starting a mastermind soon and uh, yeah, just uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, it should be fun. I really want to help people one on one because of all the things I've learned over the years, like helping people with so many different kinds of podcasts and industries that I probably never want to work in again.  But uh, yeah. Yeah. So just if you just follow me there, I'm on facebook. That's cool. Yeah. Maybe one day we'll, we'll hop back on and just like go over podcasting world again. That would be awesome. And I'm sure the guys have you have a continuous questions or anything like that, questions that are going about podcasting and let us know, ask them in the facebook group profitable podcasting strategies for entrepreneurs and we'll make sure to answer that. And I'll get back on here for another interview as far as some of the tips and strategies that he's learned that are different from mine so we can go through and really strategize what is going to be the absolute best way that you guys can implement this into your podcast and eventually monetize it. So anyway, thank you so much actually. I really appreciate it and I'll catch you here next time. Thanks for having me. Boom. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to rate and subscribe. Do you have questions for me? Go to the facebook group, profitable podcasting strategies for entrepreneurs, and I'll be sure to do an episode to answer your next question. Again guys. My name is Marie Larsen and this is the audio entrepreneur.

Yo guys what's up! So I actually am excited because today I get to celebrate the fact that I got my first group of haters that ask why the heck would you be excited about that and I'm going to explain that here in this episode...

What's up everyone? This is Marie Larsen and you're listening to the Audio Entrepreneur. I spent the last year and half doing podcasts and content creation for some of the fastest growing entrepreneurs today.

Their strategies and tips have been life changing once I took action, so I decided to take my audio industry to the next level by building a seven figure company that teaches people how to create, strategize, and repurpose their content like the throw the question so new people are wondering is how is she going to do it? This podcast is here to give you the answers.

Join me as I explained marketing strategies to grow my online business. My name is Marie Larsen and welcome to the Audio Entrepreneur.

Yo! What is up guys! I'm so excited you're in here and listening.

So I have to jump in, after listening to that intro you're probably saying, "Marie, why in the world would you be excited about something like getting your first group of haters?"

And I have to say when I got some messages on Facebook just a little bit ago, they went something like, "Hey Marie." Like you know I was going through and it was like, "Marie! You're awesome! Thanks for this. Thanks for that. You provide value."

Then I got my first group of haters...first few messages that said "Marie, you stink at this. You don't provide value here and..." And they're going all off, right?

And at first I kind of took it personal and I was like, "Man this kind of sucks." Like. I did to hurts to have people say like, "You're not bringing stuff to the table."

But then after a while I sat back and I thought I was like,

"Actually you know what this is. This is a good thing." And as I was going through looking at some of these...you know my pulse started rising and the adrenaline started pumping, and it kind of stinks to think, "Man there are people out there..." that you know like...

"Why doesn't everyone like me?..." you know that kind of thing.

And I was like, "Dang it, this kind of sucks."

But as I kept thinking about as I said...I was having a moment of, "Actually this is going to be a really, really good thing for me because truth truth be told I actually don't want everyone to like me."

Which is really funny because if everyone likes me, I don't know what specifically my actual audience came from. Now I know that that is by far one of the funniest things that most people are like,

"Why the heck, Marie, are you excited about your hater group?" Now as I've going through and really figured out that specifically people who come come to you and say, "Hey I don't like it when you do this or I don't like when you do that..." That is like customer feedback and research that they're given to you for free.

Now, yes, there are haters, and there are people who are just being blatantly mean...

But in all honesty, having haters like that is probably one of the best things you can have for your business. Just so you know specifically what people are looking for to provide more value for them.

So this podcast is kind of funny because I'd like to thank all the haters out there. I know that a lot of times people are like, "Marie, you know, you do so great at so many things," and I really appreciate it, but I also appreciate the people who give me true honest feedback on the things that I'm doing well and the things I should continue to improve on. Now as I was going to continue to read through some of these hater comments has gone down I was like, "Wow."

If people are taking the time to stop and really voice their opinion on something, that's knowledge and information I can use to not only better improve myself, but improve what people are looking for within my products within my services, within my lead magnets, it's within you know the value in information I'm trying to get them, right?

And so that right there was one of the best lessons that I could have learned just about how haters are great...

You know, I know that sounds so funny, and I'm going use that all over my facebook feed in the next little bit...

I actually am so grateful for my haters...

I asked some people kind of specifically what what they appreciate about their haters. And they said this, "I would say don't be afraid of complaints. The fact that your customer is taking time out of their day to give you feedback means that they care. They should be appreciated. If someone didn't care then they would not necessarily feel the need to complain. They go straight to your competitor."

Someone else said, "Think about when you unfriend someone on Facebook. You don't reach out to tell them, 'Hey screwball, I'm unfriending you because you're an idiot.' People just go and unfriend people. If they really care, then they'll call you out and talk about it before they give up on you. Customer service is the last call before you lose them. So don't assume just because they said that they hate you doesn't mean that they actually hate you. They're telling you they're upset with you, and they still do kind of love you. Otherwise they would not be taking the time to ask your help."

Guys I cannot stop laughing at those two comments that were written to me by some friends who were in the digital working world as well. I was dying.

I thought it was so true...

We went on and continued to talk about complainers provided a road not for increasing revenue.

Now a lot of people were were saying you know, "Why would you take the time to increase your revenue on people that hate you within your haters group?"

And someone said, "5 percent of your unhappy customers who do care enough to complain give you a roadmap for how to fix whatever ails your business. Because while the people who take the time to complain are a small percentage of your overall customer base the conditions of their to despite his dissatisfaction applies to all customers. And this way the haters are the vocal representatives of everyone your company serves."

I love this. I was going through, and as I said I was chatting with some digital worker friends on this topic because I really was upset first...

I was like, "Man I thought everyone should like me." I thought everyone should really care about what my voice has to say. And I had a really hard time with it.

But when I went through, and I started thinking about it, and getting this kind of information from some friends I seriously was like, "Holy cow the people stopped to complain and really tell you what they don't like or the people who are literally giving you a roadmap to how for how to fix whatever ails you in your business whatever thing is that you really really struggling with." I totally believe and I truly believe in making sure that you go through and fix what you can in the past for people but also to be careful that you don't get bogged down by this information.

And this is how I've gone about to really discover how I can continue to improve on the value that I'm giving to my customer base to my audience base to people who take the time to listen to me.

It was one of those moments I was like, "Man I really appreciate people who take the time to complain."

They're tasteful ways to go about it, and there are people who are just being mean of course. But I was so grateful for that, and I really think the complaints are valuable because it's pretty much free information of how to continually improve yourself, right?

I totally believe in having, I guess, constructive criticism and going through and really building that out with your good friends and stuff like that. However at times they'll just tell you that you're always great...

So those haters groups are so awesome, right?

Sometimes praises is massively overrated because people don't take the time to really stop and tell you what you should improve on and so having a haters group is actually going to be one of your most helpful groups on the planet.

So thank you to my haters group is all I am trying to say.

Thank you to my haters group for really trying to help me improve. Before you give up on me, I really do appreciate that and I know that there are times that other people feel the same way that if they fail at something or someone says something rude to them that they shouldn't give up giving up on you, and instead you should find ways to take the information that someone said before giving up.

Realize that you could succeed and push forward with the information that they gave you.

Anyway, guys...

This is a short episode today. Just had to celebrate with you guys about my haters group because I have officially made it to the point where I get a haters group. 

Have a good one guys! 

 BOOM! Thanks for listening. Don't forget to rate and subscribe. Do you have questions for me? Go to the facebook group profitable podcasting strategies for entrepreneurs and I'll be sure to do an episode to answer your next question. Again guys, my name is Marie Larsen and this is the Audio Entrepreneur.

What's up everyone? This is Marie Larsen and you're listening to the Audio Entrepreneur. I spent the last year and half doing podcasts and content creation for some of the fastest growing entrepreneurs today.

Their strategies and tips have been life changing once I took action, so I decided to take my audio industry to the next level by building a seven figure company that teaches people how to create, strategize, and repurpose their content like the throw the question so new people are wondering is how is she going to do it? This podcast is here to give you the answers.

Join me as I explained marketing strategies to grow my online business. My name is Marie Larsen and welcome to the audio entrepreneurial. Hey, what is up everyone? I'm so excited because today I wanted to go through it and ensure the four steps that I use to create a social media content calendar calendar.

Now, for those of you who know a little bit about me, I have gone through in this last little bit on my social medias and ask what you guys are doing for your content calendars and kind of share what I do in order to boost up my social media is, and the way that I have now.

I will tell you right now, the first thing is to make sure that you are willing to be consistent in this next little bit. I have four different steps that I want to share with you on how I have created my social media editorial content calendars or whatever you want to call them. 

So let's start with the first one being figuring out what content really resonates with your target market. Now, it really doesn't make sense to take content or, um, go through and grab content or create content that isn't what your, um, I guess what your audience is looking for. Right?

And so I have gone through in this last little bit and I've really done some research to figure out what my audience is, is really looking for, right?

What you guys are looking for in order to grow and to feel like that I'm helping you in the best way, or you know, if you're doing it for you and your audience, what you can be doing in this next little bit to help your content to really resonate with your target market or with your tribe per se.

And so going through and really figuring out what content resonates with your people and is really, really important...

I've done this by going through and asking on social medias for a long time-in my facebook groups, on my instagram stories- to go through and figure out what is of most interest...

Now a lot of people, what they do is that they will just assume that they understand what their audience is wanting. And I will tell you that is not the right thing to do. Assumption never gets you in the, in the right direction, right? Like, you can't just assume things. And so I figured out that if I go and actually asked my audience literally through, you know, these really hard, you know, harmless ways of via the highlighted stories are just stories on instagram or in my facebook groups to really peak questions so I understand what they are looking for.

I'm doing this podcast episode because while I've been doing it for a long time for my personal company, but I know that it's something that you guys are really interested in as well, if that makes sense.

So going through and really doing like a, like a social media audit, right? And figuring out what, what that really includes and I will include in here in my blog like a social media audit and what you should be doing for your social media strategies. But you should make sure that you have a clear plan of how your business will use channels like instagram, facebook, twitter, and significantly increase, uh, it will significantly increase your chances of success if you go through and really plan this out.

I did this with my team just a little bit ago and I will tell you it was one of the most helpful and successful things that I've done to really sit down and realize what a use as we have for twitter and, you know, analytics that we wanted to use for instagram, going through and doing facebook analytics and really just pushing that out and all different ways.

And people asked me what do I mean by the social media audit. A social media audit is the process of reviewing what's working, what's failing and what can be improved across all your social media channels. And most people don't look forward to audits because it's a lot of numbers and people don't really have a good feel for it because you know, normally the last time you heard about an audit, it was usually from the irs, right? Or issues that you have with your tax returns...

However, I'm not out of, not all audits are bad, especially for your social medias. And so I'm going to go through a lot of what I've learned from this has been through sprout social.com, which has been super, super helpful for me to go through and really understand how to create a social media audit and they have templates there in everything that I am more than willing to share here as well...

So the audits can be a fantastic thing...

So I'd tell you figure out what content resonates with you and go through a social media audit, really figure out what you want to, I guess, hit really hard for each social media platform and the reason that you're going through and hitting that content for each one. The second thing I would say is decide how often to post...

Now I will tell you, um, you are supposed to be posting on your personal facebook profile three to five times a day and your facebook group a five to seven times a day.

Twitter at least five times a day. Linkedin, two to five times a day. Google plus three to 10 times a day. And pinterest five to 10 times day.

Guys, there are so many ways that this can get overwhelming, like crazy, and there are lots of guidelines to help you figure out what times are best to really push out, I guess, really push out this information or really push out at the time of day where this content is going to be consumed in really good ways as well.

Now, something that I've learned is if you go through and look at facebook, facebook is a low volume to high volume network, meaning you don't want to post too frequently or else fans will get too frustrated with too many posts. So make each post really count by offering something valuable or interesting to your audience. And so your minimum should be a three times a week and your maximum you should aim for like 10 to 15 and aim for quality versus quantity in facebook.

Now in twitter...

Twitter is a high volume to low volume network, meaning you can share it more here because of twitter's fast paced nature, a shared content created by you or curated from other sources...

Just make sure it's relevant and interesting to your followers...  Linkedin, it's a low to high as well. Make sure your content doesn't dominate the feed, but that you're sharing content that's relevant to your business and industry.

Google plus, and it's a little high volume as well. Uh, for, I mean value for networking. I'm posting more frequently on Google plus gives google more content, keywords and expertise to index and search results in pages for you. So google plus you definitely should be posting as frequently as you can and pinterest...

If you want your pins to get found and the high volume of content being shared on Pinterest, you should be posting more frequently.

Use interesting, beautiful images and the right key words to get your content found and links that go back to your website.

I will make sure to put this all in my blog so that you guys can go through and really walk through this as well.

And these steps that I have found have been helpful for me and for my team and clients as well...

So make sure that you really check that out and look for trends between publishing rates and engagement.

There are a lot of facebook analytic reports. There are so many different kinds of analytic reports that you can get, um, for both, for twitter, instagram, Linkedin, for all of these different places you can easily go through and find that... And that's, that's awesome.

Number three would be create or source great content to share.

So after you've gone through and you figured out what content your audience is liking, how often you should be posting, and then going through and creating your source of uh, or sourcing great content to share can be one of the hardest things for people. Honestly.

Step number three as the hardest thing for so many people to do.

And it's the reason why I encourage so many people to start a podcast. And the reason for that being is that as soon as you have a ton of organic information, that is all you, it is so easy to go through it and push your content out like crazy because all, you know, people really find you as credible source like crazy.

So once you have an idea of what content your audience enjoys and how often you need to be posting, it's time to find links to share. Whether it's someone else that your JV, you know, doing a joint venture with or someone or just your own links courses or things like that...

If you don't have your own content to fill your calendar, you can use tools like buzzsumo or feedly, um, or stumble upon.

There are lots of different types of social media content that's out there that, um, if you don't have the opportunity to, or I guess you're not creating your own content.

And then there are ways that you can build out your social media a with other people's content as well.

But I would highly, highly, highly suggest that if you're going to build out an audience that you take the time to go through and build out an audience, guys, that's really excited who you are, right? And what you stand for? and that you're building out a culture rather than just an audience... And there is a difference...

I would also continue to go off and say be careful with the amount of content that you share from other people just because it can bog down your likes and the algorithms that facebook and twitter and all these different social media platforms have.

It might bog down your algorithms for those places a lot...

Now fill up your social media, editorial or content calendar as much as you possibly want. Right?

So there are places where you can schedule out your messages via chatbots or go through and really visualize your entire calendar. I would sit down and take two weeks.

Make that your first goal is to build out enough content for two weeks as far as social has built lots of powerful publishing tools just for this purpose. So check out their stuff for that as well. It's so helpful for me to see the big picture...

So I would use them, but I love using Google calendar and I'll sit down and each client has their own color. Right? And I'll go through and say, okay, at this time, each day so and so stuff needs to be published.

Now a lot of people freak out at times because their like, "Oh Marie, if I use these social media platforms that go through our pre publish or publish it for me, then the algorithms also bog that down a lot."

Guys, that's not true. As long as you get...the biggest thing that you should look for is that the interaction that you have for timing, each time that your podcast go out or any other social media content that you have going out, that you are jumping on there and getting as much interaction within that first couple of minutes as fast as possible. The more interaction you can get, the higher chances that you will get a lot of engagement for the rest of that post lifespan, you know per say.

I would also say go through and put together hashtags that are really good. I have used a lot different hashtag generators in my day. And I will tell you that I love using...it's called Allhashtag.com,and it's a free generator. It goes through and really if you have keywords that are going really well and your certain target market, then use those and it will come up with different ideas that people will probably be looking for your information under as well. So I love that.

There are so many different ways that you can go through and really create that process out. But I would definitely say that that is one of the most important things is really sitting down and figuring out how much content you're going to be doing really hitting out those four points, right?

Those four points that we've talked about today. And the first point being figuring out what content resonates. Decide on how often to post a number three being create or source great content to share or create your own right and the podcasting or fill up your and also number four, it fill up your social media content calendar.

Guys, if you have all four of those things, you are creating a very, very helpful and wonderful content calendar and I will go through in this next little bit in my facebook group it's called Profitable Podcasting Strategies for Entrepreneurs. I'll go through and do a whole audit session for you guys so that you can see what our sessions I take both my clients through and take 'em everyone else through as well are like.

This is the process I take myself through to continue to grow up my social medias as well... If you guys have any other questions. I know this was not as a fun or anything like that of a podcast, but I know it's a lot more informational, but I know that, um, this can be something that's really, really helpful.

A few tools that might be useful for you could be Trello or wordpress or edit flow. As I said, Google calendar...and there are so many different ways that you can go through and really build out these social medias. As the common saying goes, "Practice makes perfect." Um, I would like to change it and say, "Perfect practice makes perfect."

So the more that you can go through and really practice this out, and really set up your social media is so that you have an effective workflow and you're really creating out and posting out tons of social media content. This can be a really, really great resource for you to go through and really push this out to its fullest potential. And you guys, you guys are awesome and I know someone was a lot more information on it as I said, but hopefully it was helpful.

Anyway, I will chat with you guys soon and if you have any questions, be sure to check out the facebook group called Profitable Podcasting Strategies for Entrepreneurs and we will make sure to get all of your information in there and answer your next question on this podcast. You guys are and I will catch you guys next time.

BOOM! Thanks for listening. Don't forget to rate and subscribe. Do you have questions for me? Go to the facebook group profitable podcasting strategies for entrepreneurs and I'll be sure to do an episode to answer your next question. Again guys, my name is Marie Larsen and this is the Audio Entrepreneur.

What's up everyone? This is Mary Larsen and you're listening to the audio entrepreneur. I spent the last year and half doing podcasts and content creation for some of the fastest growing entrepreneurs today.

Their strategies and tips have been life changing once I took action, so I decided to take my audio on his feet to the next level by building a seven figure company that teaches people how to create, strategize, and repurpose their content like a throw.

The question so new people are wondering is how is she going to do it? This podcast is here to give you the answers. Join me as I explained marketing strategies to grow my online business. My name is Marie Larsen and welcome to the Audio Entrepreneur.

Marie Larsen: Yo. What is up everyone? This is Marie Larsen and I am here with a good friend of mine. This is Rick Hernandez. I'm. I'm super pumped. I'm Rick is the, how do I say this? The Co-founder, right? Of Sparkki team here in Salt Lake, so I'm super excited for this podcast. It seems super good.

Make sure that you were sitting. Now we're going to give you as much value as we possibly can, everything from how do we say this, everything from the, uh, what your coach is, what your life coaches are not going to share with you is what we're going to share with you today.

So anyway, this is my buddy Rick, will you jump in and tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are and how you got into this. Uh, this whole business stuff.

Rick Hernandez: Yeah. I'm really excited to be here. First of all, a huge shout out to you for guests for your podcast.

I'm really excited to be sharing with you guys, saw my story and really giving you tons of value for you guys so you guys can really take away and really learned something of value here for you today. So I'm really excited to be here.

Marie Larsen: I'm so pumped. It's going to be great. So we have three secrets that Rick's thought up beforehand that he wants to share with you as far as stuff that you need to know with your life coach. Um, what your life coach isn't telling you.

He's gone through and figured it out as far as things that you need to go through and improve in your own life and your own business. And I go about it that way.

So we're gonna jump in right away here. There are three secrets that we're gonna hit here in this next little bit. So, um, will you just jump in and let us know what those top three are?

Rick Hernandez: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So before we jump into it here, like the whole entire term life coach, like this is something of a new thing that has come up about. Have you heard that term?

Marie Larsen: Oh yeah. You know, everyone is out there claiming to be a life coach like crazy. I, I have a podcast is all the time that come to me and say I want to become the best life coach.

I'm going to be a life coach out there. So you're, I guess in your words then like what, what is a life coach for people who have no idea what that is or I've never heard of that before.

Rick Hernandez: Yeah. So the way that I like to turn specifically live coach, part of it is that somebody has something but you don't have that you want to get and they're going to coach you on how to get that thing that you want.

So this could be, you know, in sports, it can be in business, it can be personal relationships, whatever it might be. They have something that you're seeking that you want to get and they're essentially going to go ahead and give you that scale coach up to that level, get you up to that speed.

So that's what a coach...

Marie Larsen: And you know, I, I personally have coaches like crazy. Um, some of my coaches are out, Steve Larsen and James P friel, Julie Stolen, um, and uh, and John as well. So there are seriously, there are so many coaches out there that you can use. One of my biggest ones is Russell Brunson as well.

And so I'm grateful for that, but those have been, excuse me, awesome life coaches that I have used as well. Um, they not only care about what you do in business, but they care about your life in general and how your life is going to improve and what they're going to be doing for that.

So, um, what were some of the life coaches that you've had in your life?

Rick Hernandez: Yeah, I mean, so there's, I mean coaching comes in many different forms in person coaching, through learning through their entire system without our training program or reading their book, you know, watching their videos, following them on social media.

That is a form of coaching because guess what, you learning by Osmosis, really following them along. If they're providing value in your life, more than likely you are doing some sort of value from them, whether it's they're doing it in person or not.

So Don't think that coaching is, does this thing where you jump on a call and specifically help you coach you can be committed different for.

Marie Larsen: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, there are many things. I've had all sorts of life coaches where people are life coaching me as far as physical health or to business health or to relationship health.

Um, there's so many different kinds of industries out there that have these amazing life coaches out there, so that's really awesome.

There are some of these coaches, they'll a good chunk of 'em that are missing a huge part of, uh, I guess we have some secrets that we want to share with you and rick is going to share these three secrets for you and what those secrets look like.

Um, and how you should be approving that if you are a life coach or I'm to I guess kind of suggest this to your life coach.

Rick Hernandez: Yeah. So these are Kinda the three things that they will not tell you.

So this is, these are kind of like, did they keep them in like, you know, behind closed doors, they don't go in and discuss these things openly specifically if they are sort of community training or they're touching you on some specific skills, whether it be sales, marketing, engineering, whatever type of skill you're learning.

They're not just going to come out and tell you.

Like Tai Lopez is just going to be like, oh, and by the way, like here's the three things of why I'm really successful, so that's what I'm going to be sharing with you today, so I'm going to go ahead and kick it off with number three, which is build culture.

Any massive influence or that you find out there, they're building cultures. If you go into their influence, if you go into the influence of circle their community, guess what? It's all about the culture.

How do they call themselves? Why do they call themselves? How are they speaking to each other? What words are they using? How are they using those words? On what type of logos? I mean using like do they care about your message to the care by your values?

This whole entire thing is a big, big, big deal. As you know, we don't. We don't do culture with the colts.

Marie Larsen: Yep. We do build. It's one of my favorite shirts that I have from clickfunnels actually, is that we are not a cult, but we really are in the funniest way. Right? And the reason for those of you who have not heard that saying within marketing I have on my personal profile that I help people build out their cultures.

Right? And the reason that we build up cultures is to build out a group of people that are going to buy. When you say buy, they're going to jump. When you say jump, that they're going to be such raving fans and that they're going to love everything that you're saying in doing guys.

A huge way that you can go about doing that is getting loud in your market. You know, I share that with you guys a lot. I'm going through and making sure that you are building out and insane voice, right?

Those who whispered into the market are not going to be hurt, but those who are going to scream into the market, no matter how annoying it might might seem to you, the more that you scream into the market about your specific topic, you will be hurt. Right?

And I'd rather be hurt and non for something than not be not at all right? And so going through and making sure that you have all that is going to be really great and really useful within your own market.

Rick Hernandez: Super, super, super key point, building that culture, and there's a specific reason why I call this one, number three, because this one has to happen before the next one.

Really, really important that you build up that culture first because he doesn't think he never wanted the culture to get defined by itself. You always, always, always wanted to find the culture before the quarter starts.

Building out super, super important because then the culture starts building and it's something that you did in design. Something you don't want to end up showing to places you don't like talking to people you don't really care about.

So it's really important that you decide what language is going to be before you move on to secret number two, which is building a massive audience. 100,000. I'm talking millions of people.

That would be following your message, following your beliefs, falling when you have to say so it's really, really important that you pay close attention.

Number three, which is building that culture, and then finally number two, being able to go out there and actually start building that massive audience. Yeah, yeah,

Marie Larsen: absolutely. You know, there are times that I actually jumped on with someone the other day, actually it was just this morning that I got on this call and I did a whole training for them, a coaching training in one of those life coaches and I jumped on and I shared with them how to go out and optimize their facebook profile and what things that they should have and what they shouldn't have and you know, I will tell you they, they jumped on and I said, oh, I have 500 friends on facebook, get no one likes my stuff. And I kind of chuckled and I said, you only have 500 friends.

And I said, yeah, you know, like my grandma and my, my mom, they jump on and they like all the stuff and it's great. And I said, you gotta reach passed out that man, you know, like you really do.

Marie Larsen: And so we went through and I showed them how to build out an audience via facebook. Now, I will tell you right now, one of the best ways that I've seen to build out an audience is to get loud and in other people's groups that are already doing successful.

If you can go in and provide a ton of value for people, your voice will start being heard. Another thing that I have gone and done is I go hack, you know, my, um, my coaches, my life coaches or those influencers who are already doing super well and see what friends they already have on facebook.

Then I go through and I see if I'm, my rule starting out for was I would have 25 mutual friends or above. Then I can add them on my facebook profile. I can add them as a friend, as you're supposed to have at least five facebook stops at 5,000.

Marie Larsen: And that's, that's the limit on facebook friends that you can have and you want to get to that as quickly as possible. And building out that audience is going to help lead generation like crazy. I've never lacked in clients or customers or in a culture or building out my audience in any way.

As soon as I built out and got to that 5,000 mark things to josh 40, he went through and explained all this through for me and so I would highly, highly suggest that you jump on and that you explained to people.

Um, all right, what I'm saying is you should jump on it and you should increase like crazy the amount of paper amount of people that you have as your friends on facebook, on Linkedin, on twitter that you go and you explode yourself by going through and finding those people who are already doing well in the market that you desire to be in.

Marie Larsen: Go through, find their friends, go to their friends and start adding the friends. Now guys, I won't accept anyone at this point who is below 200 mutual friends because I built it out to that point because you can do the same thing.

Build it out, build it out to the point where now I will get two to 50 where I won't accept anyone. I've already hit my 5,000 mark, but I've gone through, I'm starting to glean out audience members who are not active or not doing well.

So building those massive audiences, as rick is saying is one of the most important things you can do. You will never lack and lead generation if you have an amazing audience

Rick Hernandez: I am going to tell you, oh hey, you should be my competition. So like start building an audience like, you know, started getting millions of subscribers on youtube and I know a couple of youtube or is they have like three point five, five point five, five point two, $600,000, 100,000 subscribers, right? They're not going to come out and like be like, hey, you should start a youtube channel.

Usually started talking about this things. No, they're never going to tell you that. And then I'm going to tell you the secret number one, which is building that culture because guess what? That's how they're able to grow that big.

Go to any single youtube, like we're pretty big on youtube, so title, why you took your specifically, but if you go to any youtube channel and you start watching videos, one, they called themselves by a word or something. They have some work to be able to identify themselves in the trial.

Right. And they're able to actually grow that audience because once you step into that circle of that channel or page or whatever it might be, they want you to be part of it. So it's a big, big part that your coaches will tell you this. They won't tell you to start building an audience.

Marie Larsen: Absolutely. I love. I have not built up my youtube channel yet that as the one social media that I have yet to really touch. I know, I know I'll post my podcasts on there all the time, but I really have not sat down and really try to build out an audience in that, in that realm.

So I guess on a side note, what processes have you gone through to start building out that youtube channel for people to, I guess, get an idea of where they should start? Me included?

Rick Hernandez: Yeah. So just kinda give us a minute here. I am a separate youtube channel outside of spark you, which is the software company that right now and the other channel grew it up to two point 2 million views a year. So it isn't like a whole lot of views or is it a whole lot of audience, but it is really, really targeted.

So I'm able to generate between 15 to $20,000 passively on that channel with just a couple of videos for that to be able to go ahead and lead into the being able to monetize those, those videos from those audience members. So here's the thing with Youtube building, building an audience building all day.

If you understand step number one, which is building that culture and it becomes irrelevant, you will succeed no matter what. This is why people felt this way before it won't work. This is why people would be like, well, it's too far.

Well, like what? How, how are you? Just another another me too product. I actually just another me too. Youtube channel lunch other than me to like etc. Right. People want to Relate with people that they like.

They don't want to just be out there and just seeing the same thing. Another Person is saying it's really, really important to define that culture.

Marie Larsen: It's so key. Having that. That's that step number three, you know, going through to one, having step number three, building out your culture and having an audience behind that to back it up again, guys, you will never lack and lead generation you really will like, you will never have a moment of like, oh man, I don't have a client.

I'm, I'm so grateful for the chance that I've had to build out the audience to the point that I have because of it and it's still continuing to grind, which I'm grateful, but because of it, and I'm not saying this to be conceited or anything like that, but I have a waiting list now as far as my client base and I'm so grateful for that because I know that if at any point something we're not was not going to work out with a certain client or whatnot, and then I can go through and that's fine.

Marie Larsen: Like I will give them as much quality content as I can to help them along their way. But then I always have a list of people behind me who I can use as far as like, hey, are you ready now? I'm having building out those audiences is amazing and it's, uh, it's, it's my goal. I've got to do the youtube stuff for sure.

But one of my favorite youtube gurus at this time is Marlin Bird. She is amazing when it comes to the youtube industry.

She's awesome. She's made hundreds and hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars on um, on, on youtube, and it goes through and teaches people. I'll do it. So that might be a good resource for you guys as well. Third or I guess.

Rick Hernandez: Yeah, the final third one actually number one. So it's either one. I'm a three. Number two in, silently leading up to number one. So here's, here's another reason why people will excel at this.

And Mary, your testimony to this part because you've been able to connect the. So the way that I explain it is being able to connect the loop of this entire three things. So you have your audience.

You're building up that audience now long as long as you go, here's the, here's the part where you deal with culture, audience building, and you're doing the whole entire thing. It doesn't matter if it's instagram, youtube, whatever it might be. Blogging, blogging, it's irrelevant. Here's where you'd have to connect in.

The place you'd connect is when the dollar section kick your bank account. Because the moment that happens, because I remember what's happened to me when I was 14, 2015, that luke went ahead and connected at the end when the moment that when connected, that's when my life changed because I was like, wow, somebody from someplace in this frigging planet went ahead and bought my thing.

They need seems dollars for my value and the loop connected moment. That loop connects is when you look back to building culture club, that audience and monetizing you and away you go. So building, building, building, building, building, and sometimes the mistakes that most people make is that they start working on their facebook pages, are working on their instagram and start working on their blogs.

They start working on their book. They start working on this course and this and that, but guess what? They don't make a single dime for years

Marie Larsen: because they don't have an audience behind it,

Rick Hernandez: right? Because they're not able to create the audience because they don't have a culture to build it so that they will never connect with the market that will never make any money.

So this is why, you know, these are things that people typically share with you. These are things that they won't discuss because one, obviously that people don't want the market saturated specifically in that niche they're in.

So if they come out and start telling like, oh, this is an excellent man, so I was able to build it. This is how I did it.

Got the beliefs, here's what the things that I wasn't gonna do, you know, they're not just gonna come out and tell you these things and they're more, they're not even telling you like the principles behind it, which is even more more useful because you know, tactics come and go. Principals are here to stay

Marie Larsen: All the time. One of my favorite quotes that I just read from sam ovens the other day was actually the gimmicks are constantly going to be changing, right? And you can't get, you can't make money off of gimmicks, but if you learn the fundamentals and learn how to build out fundamentals really, really well and master that, you will always make money.

You will always be monetizing no matter what you do, right? And having these three tips that rick has gone through and explain, it's so true, building out that culture, having an audience, and then going through and figuring out how to monetize it.

Guys, I can't tell you what a relief it was the first time that after I had been over-delivering and giving insane amounts of value to my audience and really building out that culture that was so excited for the stuff that I was sharing with them.

Marie Larsen: There were so pumped about it that as soon as I said I have a course or I have coaching or I have a, you know, you could become my client. Or a little things like that. They were like, oh my gosh, marie already overdelivered so much upfront.

I wonder what it would be like to work with her to see what she would deliver. And the backend. Right. And it was just like it was mind blowing. There's so much value that comes to learning how to monetize. And as soon as you get that monetization down, it changes your life.

I will tell you there's nothing more great than waking up and it's like, you know, waking up and you look at your phone. It's like while you're sleeping, you made a grant or something like that, just because of your course or whatever it is because people are trading your money for value, right?

Because they know that you have value behind you and they're willing to pay for it because you built a culture that believes in you and in your.

Rick Hernandez: Yep, And you

have the audience suit to back it up. There's this one type of term like a 100 true fans. There's also a thousand true facts, but we'd like to go here specifically with 100, two fans like do. You can get 100 people to believe what you believe.

You'll never go hungry. You have more than enough money, more than enough work. There's plenty of different things to get done and it's all like building up those 100 people like I want millions, millions. Like, no, no, no. See, see where that will take you. Because I can take you a lot with complacent places.

That will be the truth. That will buy everything you do. If you make a homemade scarf, they'll buy that home. A scarf. If you read a really crappy book, they'll buy that crappy book, but here's the thing. You have to start building it. Yeah, let's get going.

Marie Larsen: You have to start the momentum and be able to get there. Now, the company that run now, it's sparking, which is online learning platform and what we do specifically, so we help coaches, authors, consultants, speakers, bloggers, vloggers, be able to monetize their impact.

We do this, we do this with online education. We have a platform where we allow you to be able to bring in your course content, whether it be a coaching program or a self paced course, would provide the tools and the resources for you to be able to not only post the content itself, we're really do one thing which is get your students or outcome they desire.

Right now, the average graduation rates for pretty much everybody online is 10 percent. Then that goes both traditional and nontraditional education. So even if you bought like a program before and you've pretty much bought it, you went into it and watched like the first video, then it was done. I'm guilty with that exercise programs as well. Continue.

Rick Hernandez: So what we really, really, really care about increasing graduation rates. That's what sets us apart from any other platform out there is we really care about the ration ration reads and we really empower the instructor and with the tools they need in order for them to be able to increase those graduation rates.

So this is by providing that if it's provided the data and be able to see where exactly your students fall off. So you need to go in and revise the lesson if you need to go in there and quizzes, if you need additional information, you can go ahead and start managing all the entire content of your students all the way from initial point of contact of they're enrolled to graduating them and credentialing and what with the blockchain.

So there's tons of different parts that involve into that. Um, I think getting some of those questions.

Marie Larsen: No, absolutely. So I actually myself, I'm going to be needing needing services like tHis as well. There are so many times that I feel like I jump in and I built out courses or whatever I've built out that um, my clientele or whatever the people were jumping on and consuming information that there's some sort of drop off point guys having a mentor or a life coach who is going to tell you specifically what you should be doing within your business or what specifically within your courses and your blogs and whatever it is that this is what's dropping off.

This is what's not converting. Well guys, that's going to be so useful as can be so helpful to go through. now. Specifically were your issues and problems are. I know that more than anything when I have a blog that does well or when I have a podcast that does really well, it's awesome.

Marie Larsen: Everyone loves that, but there are moments when you realize that there is a drop off period for like a week or that you have something.

But then again, like it picks up again doing that customer research and really figuring out what's going on and having people like this are willing to do it for you and go through and figure out specifically what the issue is. It's going to help you through that monetization process a lot quicker.

Um, I have gone through several times and thought, you know, I'll just figure it all out on my own. I can do all this by myself. But as soon as I've sat down with companies like sparky and gone through and tried to figure out specifically what my issue is, whether it's for a client that I have for my personal stuff, that's when I started to excel a lot faster than if I were just to stop and try and figure it out on my own.

Or even with my own team. It's so good to have a third party come in and really see it from a different birds eye view.

Rick Hernandez: There's a huge value to be added there. Specifically on the mentoring side of no. So like, oh, you already went through this.

I've been teaching online since 2015 and I've been teaching specifically to millennials and you know that comes with a full bag of, you know, attention span is very short so you have to like certain key skills, like video can be longer than 10 minutes, make sure it's entertaining and you're telling a story like all these different skills that people won't tell you, but it's like you have to actually go out there and learn these things and if you can learn from somebody that's done, if you can learn from someone that has what you want, they'll save you that one tire off pain of trying to figure it out all on your own.

You know, I'm guilty as charged as well for like, oh, like I can fit it all myself.

Marie Larsen: Oh absolutely. You think you can take on the world google. I can google that. Google that. Yeah, absolutely. Which google don't get me wrong. It's saved me from, you know, changing car filters and everything.

It's great. I love, I love google and Youtube and everything, but there are times where it's like you need a coach, you need someone to coach you through things and something that I love that Russell Brunson has taught me actually is going through and he talks about using a mentor.

I'm using your mentor, I'm digesting it and applying it and then go teach it to your audience. Right, and so be that kind of person that you were using, the information that you're constantly learning and growing, whether it's through formal education or not, that you can go through and you can use that information that you're learning, apply it, use it within your own business, see what works, see what doesn't work, and then go through and teach people guys.

There's nothing more gratifying and it will solidify the fact that you know that topic very, very well and so having these three different secrets, building a culture, building a massive audience and monetization and the impact that that can have guys that will change your life.

It's changed mine as I've gone through it and I've done these three steps. It's changed mine as well and I can't wait to keep doing it.

Rick Hernandez: Yeah, I mean it's, it's Really Amazing. Once you actually started seeing some of these things happening.

Right now in our platform, we have 24 different instructors are teaching different types of skills. we, everything from augmented reality, virtual reality, ai programming, marketing sells, like all different types of concepts that are being taught on our platform. And one of the most gratifying point is where they started hitting that 7,000, 10,000, 15,000 a month.

I'm teaching the theme that they love to talking about. So it's really, really, um, impactful. What's, that actually does become a reality. That's why I saved it to number one is being able to connect that feedback loop, that feedback loop. You go from that crazy person that's talking about these things, you're going to do

Marie Larsen:  Crazy

Rick Hernandez: due to that person that's like, oh, are you hiring? There's a big, big difference there. So

Marie Larsen: So Fun... I've had fun reach outs just in this last little bit where at first I was like, there is this crazy girl who talks about podcasting all the time and whatever. To the point where now friends and family are like, wait a second, you're actually making money off of this.

You're actually building out culture. You're actually doing all these things. Are you hiring right now? And the answer is yeah, actually I am. And because of that I've been able to do that just because I've built out these three things in my personal business.

Rick Hernandez: Yeah, we're actually hiring too, social media president then three different programmers. So.

Marie Larsen: Oh,

Rick Hernandez: or just reach out to me on Facebook. Definitely him yet we're constantly looking for new players all the time. Cool. So we have a giveaway.

Marie Larsen: Yeah. Okay, good. We've got to talk about this. I'm so fun when you jump in and listen to the podcast, listen to lives and whatnot.

So I just want to see what kind of extra value that they have. Just kind of spark it up. No pun intended. Sparky is this company. Um, so talk about the giveaway. It's going to be awesome.

Rick Hernandez: Yeah. So we're actually doing a giveaway specifically for independent structure. So you want to teach something online. We're doing a giveaway specifically for you.

So if you've been, if you have a skill, if an expert already, if you are getting paid for something that you know, whether it be facebook ads, twitter ads, social media, instagram, whatever it is, a skill you're highly proficient in, we want to go in and empower you to be able to go out there and have a bigger impact in the world.

So right now we're doing ar studio, keep awake for creators and the previous student giveaway because a couple things here. I'm going to read off the screen. We have a green screen, so just start pretty much anyone in the world.

We have a dedicated video camera that we will sent out to you, a $50 starbucks card, And then let the microphone so you make sure you get good audio recording. So I did see your video about your microphone. I tried them all. It's looks good.

Marie Larsen: That's why I tried so many microphones in my days, but I can't even tell you. and I've had insane amount. I have so many microphones on my house right now. It's not even funny.

Rick Hernandez: Yep. So if you want to enter the giveaway and it's 100 percent for you to enter, we're going to give away, give away. So if you are a creator, you want to create content but you still need to have money or you just don't know exactly what tools to use, we're giving away this entire package for free. If you want to go ahead and sign up for it just https://www.sparkki.com/giveaway

And that's going to go ahead and get us and get you in contact with Julian via messenger https://www.messenger.com/t/sparkkiLMS. And what I want you to send her a message. This is a giveaway type that is a giveaway you just are sending us all the information.

Marie Larsen: That's awesome. I love it. I love it. I love it guys. This is huge value. Make sure that you're checking out, https://www.sparkki.com/giveaway Sparkki a that's two k's in there that you are going through and that you're checking out everything that that this team has to say, especially what Rick has said. I'm trying to provide extra value to you as well.

Um, I'm super excited for this giveaway. I'll probably apply to it too and I'm super pumped and guys, we will, um, we're gonna wrap up here. Just a second. If you found this valuable at any way, shape, or form, make sure that you're going through that you were hitting that rate and subscribe button down below and it's super, super awesome and super helpful.

So thanks again Rick. Really appreciate your time and we'll catch you guys next time.

Boom. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to rate and subscribe. If you have questions for me, go to the Facebook for profitable podcasting strategies for entrepreneurs and I'll be sure to do an episode to answer your next question.

Again guys, my name is Marie Larsen and this is the Audio Entrepreneur!