[Podcast Series] Dr. Jeremy Weisz | Podcast Production Companies: How Do You Choose Which is Right For You?

John Corcoran 8:04

Right, right. And the in-house team is never going to be totally abreast of all the changes that are happening. There are new platforms coming up all the time, there are changes to existing platforms, you can get kicked off a platform. I mean, when I started it happened all the time, where I get emails from a listener be like, you know, you’re not on this app anymore. I used to listen, this is the app that I listened to podcasts on and you’re not on there anymore. And I, took a look or my artwork was screwed up or something, and I had no one to turn to for these things. Yeah, I was great. And that loses a couple hours trying to figure these things out. The other big con of handling it in houses, frankly, there was no external pressure, which is a good thing to ensure that I produced an episode each week. Not. So that’s why I only put on so what do you mean by external pressure? I mean, either an outside someone team that is depending on me, that is saying, where’s the episode? Why isn’t it? Why haven’t you done it, or financial pressure, I mean, we now spend 1000s of dollars a year paying our own team, owner producer, and that is in pressure. And that is a good thing. Because frankly, so many tremendous benefits have flowed to my life from the discipline of having a great conversation with a great person, a client referral partner, strategic partner on a weekly basis now, twice weekly basis. And the end in that’s that external pressure, the pressure of knowing that I’m paying for this, whether I do it or not, is a good thing. Because it forces me it forces the discipline of making sure that I do it. Yeah.

Jeremy Weisz 9:37

And I think you know, so in the conversation of should you handle it in house or hire an outside company? You know, I think certain people should just do it in house also, you know, we don’t think everyone should, you know, hire an outside company to do it. So in the pros and cons we talked, I mean, there’s a number of cons of handling in house right? From overseeing it. to, you know, just time is money. And the pros are, you know, maybe if someone’s just starting out, maybe, you know, the people we work with tend to have businesses that generate them revenue, they’re not in the business of podcasting, where they’re trying to, you know, basically get as many subscribers and try and get advertising dollars, but someone, maybe they’re just starting out, they’re hot the lifetime of their client values maybe low, maybe they’re just starting out and they have more time than money. If that stage is well, then yeah, you know, just do it yourself, start off doing yourself. And when you build momentum, and you start bringing dollars in the door, and you can’t afford to bring someone in outside, um, you know, it’s not just the money. It’s the, you know, Ed O’Keefe has a great book called ‘Time Collapsing‘, you know, you get the experience of a team who’s done it for a decade, they will shortcut processes that you would, it would take you a long time to figure out or maybe if ever figure out, but some people should just keep it in house and just try it and do it themselves in the beginning.

John Corcoran 11:09

Yeah, for sure. And then you can always change that later. Alright, so let’s move on to the next question. Next question is, do you want to hire an agency? Or do you want to hire one person? Or do you want to hire a team of people? And Jeremy, you’ve had different experiences early on, talk a little bit about the different pros and cons of those different approaches?

Jeremy Weisz 11:32

So do you want to hire an agency or one person or a team? Right? I guess the way we say this, you know, when we talk is it relates to the last question, which is if you hire a person, right, let’s say you go, I’m gonna go to the local high school and find a high school student to take my audio and put it on somewhere, right? Put on my website, or wherever it is, you know, then you have to project manage that person. You have to spend time training them, maybe you don’t know what you’re doing. Let’s say you do, and you still have to spend your time. We when we talk, I guess. We don’t even consider ourselves a podcast agency. We consider ourselves because we are more focused on the results of the podcast, then just like Okay, get it out there. Right. I always tell people John says to like anyone can, speak into a mic and publish it online. Okay, you get speaking of this mic, and just upload it to YouTube. Okay, is it gonna meet the goals of the business isn’t going to be good content, all of those things. So when we talk about we don’t consider ourselves a podcast agency, we are more of an outsourced business development and content team and other things combined. strategist? Exactly. Yeah. Um, so that’s the question: what are you? We’ll talk about goals in a second. But when you’re thinking of, are you going to hire one person, or you just hire kind of a team of people like, as you had, you had not just one person, but you had kind of different people handling different pieces, but it wasn’t a cohesive group. And it didn’t have anything like an overarching, you know, strategy.

John Corcoran 13:25

It was still the person who had to oversee that, you know, one person couldn’t access some file or needed to be transferred to some other person who didn’t have access to it. And I needed to, you know, be the person who got them working together on it. Or, you know, I’ll give you another example, in which why we don’t consider ourselves an agency is we are business owners, we’ve been entrepreneurs for 20 plus years, between our various different businesses. And I was talking to a podcast agency owner the other day, who was saying, when he talks to new clients, he tells them that when they estimate how much time it’s going to take, they should triple it. And I was just, I was kind of shocked by that. Because I was like, one, it sounds like you’re doing things really inefficiently? Are you making the client really inefficient. And as a business owner, I know, our clients don’t want to triple the amount of time they’re spending on doing a podcast. I know, they want the podcast to be an asset that saves them time. And that that builds great relationships for them. But this isn’t a time suck, because that’s the cure that’s that will kill your podcast is if people have to spend a bunch of time on it. So you know what we’re as strategists we’re looking at, how can this save time? And what are the ways in which you’re operating this initiative, that maybe initially were not that efficient, just like with me, where it was taking so much time and Jeremy came in and said, you’re doing these things wrong. We’re going to do it much more efficiently. It’s going to take you less time, you’re going to produce five times as many episodes.

Jeremy Weisz 14:55

I think you bring up a good point. It’s funny when we’re talking about How do you choose a podcast production company? before you even start the podcast? We’re talking about killing the podcast. But I think it’s an important conversation to have. Because what we find is the two things that kill a podcast, really, there’s main, one main one that’s killed that kills a podcast, which is, you don’t get ROI from your podcast that will kill it, no matter. We’ve seen people with the best of intentions, like, Oh my god, I’m so excited at this passion project. And I’m just so excited to get this out in the world. If that doesn’t produce ROI, they’re going to quit at some point, because it is time there is time involved in like, there’s no, you know, we always say we are an easy button for people to launch and run their podcast. But there is still time involved in it, right? It’s not like you just lay back and push a button. So the one is you don’t get ROI. And the second is way to kill it if you are totally inefficient. And you’re spending way too much time on the things that you shouldn’t be spending time on. Right?

John Corcoran 15:59

Yeah, absolutely. And that happens all the time is the and I say to people that doing a podcast is a blank slate. And so people can layer in all kinds of different complexity. And it gets very paralyzing. So let’s address the next question. Next question is, what is your overall goal? What is your overall goal in doing a podcast? And that is a really important question to ask yourself when you are thinking about hiring a podcast production company. And some of the options are, maybe your goal is you want to build a huge audience and sell a bunch of ads and sponsorships and get big name companies advertising on your show. That’s one goal. Maybe another one is you have an existing profitable business, you want to use it as a tool for business development, use it as a tool for marketing. That’s another one, maybe you want to create some content, and you want to do it very efficiently, so that you don’t spend a ton of time each week producing videos. Maybe another one is you want to build your personal brand. Maybe another goal is you want to get exposure. Maybe another goal is you want to get a lot of people to download the episodes and listen to you. But you really should think about what is your overall goal?

Jeremy Weisz 17:16

Yeah, I mean, I think that is the case, you know, people want to the kind of fit into different buckets, right, there is an authority bucket, right? They want to get more, you know, authority exposure, and that’s really when people are talking about downloading subscribers ranking, building a brand, you know, it’s authority. Getting across is, you know, like a 130-minute conversation. We can put across over 15 different channels, right, that 130-minute conversation, you know, doing two or more episodes a week over a 10 year period, is you already know this if you John asked me to write a blog post now you’ve written for some of the top sites out there you’ve written for Forbes, you’ve written articles in Inc. you’ve written in Wealth, I mean,

John Corcoran 18:06

yeah, Huffington Post, Psychology Today. Yeah,

Jeremy Weisz 18:09

all of them and I could never I mean, I wouldn’t say I could not but I just would get paralyzed with writing an article but over I can do I’ve done over two or more blog posts a week for a long time. Which also go on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. And so it ‘s exposure that’s building a brand with just one conversation. Yeah, right. Yeah. So there’s those are the goals and so you know, there are they kind of fit into the revenue and the authority but really what people and John you can talk about this to really when someone’s saying authority, they want authority because it brings more possible deals clients referral partners their way exactly right.

John Corcoran 19:03

Right, that ultimately the ultimate goal behind the authority. It’s not just authority for authority sake, but what’s the ultimate goal behind it? it and then any final thoughts on this really, I think

Jeremy Weisz 19:16

You know, it’s funny because when we talk about podcasting when we’re talking with a client or someone we are sometimes helping them map out a product ladder that is going to get them more business they may even come with Okay, here’s my offering right now. And we help them map out a product ladder. And what I mean by product later I’ll maybe let you expand on it. But if you look at you know, we’ve talked about Tony Robbins has an amazing product ladder, right he puts out if you put on YouTube Tony Robbins you probably have over 2 million views. Also free content, you can get free content. And then he’s got books and audio books and regular books you can buy for 20 $30. And then you can go to one of his, you know, virtual right now conferences or when they’re back in person, there are three to $5,000. And then you can also join his business mastery that’s maybe, who knows seven to $15,000. And you still haven’t talked to or touch Tony Robbins at this point, and I’m sure there are other things I’m missing. But then you could hire him as your coach and go to Fiji and probably, you know, pay multiple, six or seven figures for that, right. So he’s got all these entry points in his business. And so some of the people we work with, kit, we help them create, you know, think about creating different entry points, so that other people can engage in their business. And so if the overall goal is making sure the business is sustainable on the podcast is sustainable. We need to map out not only a path of what’s going to be good content, and what are they going to be good, you know, mapping out the strategy, which we’ll talk about next time in part two guests and other things, but also mapping out what is the bit how can the business like you say, we’re business owners, we’ve operated multiple businesses, what is going to be best for them to create that they don’t have? And there’s another one of when people have said this, that our people would do it? If no one was listening, you want to talk about that?

John Corcoran 21:30

Oh, for sure. Yeah. So you know, as far as overall goals go, look, do you? Is it helpful to you to talk to smart people to have the opportunity to ask them questions, it’s incredibly helpful, you know, some of the best insights I’ve gained, and ideas and strategies for my business before your business together, has been from the ability to invite a smart author, speaker, thought leader, expert, peer to come on the podcast and be able to just give that opportunity to ask some questions and to learn professional development. It’s amazing personal development. I mean, I say that, that the podcast is like content marketing that doubles as personal and professional development.

Jeremy Weisz 22:19

Yeah. So I want to make one point on this, what’s your overall goal, because they fit in different buckets for us. It kind of our overall goal is not to actually, I’m going to contradict myself in a second. The ultimate goal is, is not to produce revenue. The ultimate goal is to give to our network, and to have a vehicle to give to our best relationships. And when you give first and you give your best relationships, that’s when everything else flows, right?

John Corcoran 22:52

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. People build life-changing relationships that lead to great results for their business. All right, last question. What is the track record of the podcast production company that you’re talking to? What’s their track record? Or a person podcast talking to a person or person? Yeah, what’s the track record? How long have they been doing it? Did they just start a year ago, two years ago, and they’ve been doing it for a little while. Now, Jeremy, you hopped in this space, I want to say 2008 2009, something like that, in that timeframe. I think I started, I first interviewed a client. So I was practicing law, I had a good client who came to me for a tiny little matter. And I kind of on a whim, asked him. If I could interview him over the phone, which I did. I said I would publish it on the web. I didn’t even know how to do that. But I figured I would figure it out, which I did. And at the end of that conversation, he said, Well, that was a lot of fun. You know, can you help me have some more stuff? I got some other legal projects that maybe you could help me with? And I was like, that worked really? Well. I’ll just keep on doing it. So I’ve been doing it for 10 plus years since. And so you know, Jeremy, I’ve been watching this space for a long time seeing what works, seeing what doesn’t work. And we talked to people all the time, who, you know, frankly, have made certain mistakes that people make over and over again.

Jeremy Weisz 24:21

I mean, even people we know that there are people we’ve consulted, they’ve been doing it for three, four or five years. And there’s still a lot of things that they could be doing to up level, right. I mean, there are people we’ve worked within a short period of time, they’ve been doing it for multiple years, and we’ve helped cut time and just made them think about a certain way. So it actually made sense for their business. So you just have to be careful when something’s hot. Everyone starts to jump on it and all you know, calls himself an expert. So you just you have to be careful that

John Corcoran 24:56

right so we’ll wrap that up next time, part two We will talk about whether the company that you use will take ownership over helping to ensure that you get ROI and also does the company that you are considering using have a methodology a repeatable system for building a successful Podcast. I am John Corcoran. This is Dr. Jeremy Weisz on his behalf of Rise25.com if you want to learn more about what we do. Thanks everyone. We will talk to you again soon.

Outro 25:23

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