Category: Consulting

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How I do: launch a podcast series from just an idea

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I was asked to write about how to create a podcast series from just the idea. I thought I would share the process I use, the timeframe I do this in, as I do it. Again. I have created a few podcast series over the past few years, so this time I am documenting the process as it happens. Journaling as this journey happens…

Thursday, February 14

Got an idea. New topic for another potential podcast. Not every idea becomes a podcast.

Researched the topic in the early morning before going to work. Looked up how many people do something on this topic via social media and how many people have talked about this already as a podcast via Google and iTunes.

If I was starting another book, I would search the topic in question on Amazon. If zero to a handful of articles or podcast episodes are found, this means a niche has been found. If there are a few thousand people do this, there is an audience. I like niche topics more than overtalked about topics that we hear about too often.

What is the problem you are trying to solve? (what is this for?)

Who is the audience you want to talk with, about and to? (who is it for?) I rarely write just for me, however, it helps to be curious about the topic. So I create for myself first for the level of satisfaction unless I am creating for someone else… and someone else is paying the bill.

Went on Upwork and assigned someone the task of web scrapping 1000 contacts to reach out to people specific to this topic.

Sunday, February 17

With a boilerplate invite message, I invited over 100 of these people (I did not know) via social media to connect and I would send them the interview questions to ponder in advance with context about the podcast idea to be launched.

Why would I give my idea out so openly? The short answer is: who is going to do the work of implementing this idea into reality and follow through? If there was such a person, this would already be available. “Idea theft” is not my fear. It’s an excuse too many people use to not build/create and then share/sell.

Thursday, February 21

A week after the idea was generated. With the goal of scheduling 60 individual interviews for this podcast series to create a weekly podcast lasting 1 year, I already have 15 interviews scheduled. When people accepted my social media invite that showed they were interested in my idea and might want to be interviewed, I emailed my ask (interview them in the coming weeks) with context about the podcast (what’s it for), a little info about me and potential dates to click on so they could schedule the interview with one email. By this day, I had 12 interviews scheduled for the coming weeks of March. 48 more to go.

Why schedule and record 60 interviews for a year?

Weekly interviews equal 52 interviews for a year, however it is recommended to launch with a few interviews day one. And some interviewees may flake out or not respond to approvals. Not everyone is dependable in case this is something not realized. This is also why I have a 1000 contacts to revert back to if needed.

Thursday, February 28

Recorded my first interview for the EIR podcast.

Friday, March 1

Recorded 3 more interviews for the EIR podcast.

Monday, March 4

Recorded 4 more interviews today.  Have 11 more interviews scheduled in March so far. 50 other people interested in being scheduled for an interview this month. Following up on all invites later this week since the goal is 54 interviews recorded, edited, approved and scheduled by April. Still planning to launch in Spring 2019.

Friday, March 8

Have 12 interviews recorded and 12 others scheduled. There are 44 more people interested in being interviewed as I follow up with them each week.

Thursday, March 14

A month after coming up with the idea for the EIR podcast, I have 18 interviews recorded and 6 others scheduled to be interviewed. There are 48 more people interested in being interviewed, however yet to be scheduled. Not all schedules work out for a brief call this month.

Friday, March 22

Interviewed 21 and 13 others scheduled. There are 45 more people interested in being interviewed.

Tuesday, March 26

Interviewed 28 and 9 others scheduled now. There are 32 more people that claim to be interested in being interviewed and following up with them one more time on Wednesday, March 27.

Have 37 people say ‘No’ so far. Thought I would share the fact that the people saying “Yes” [counting recorded and scheduled only as “Yes”. Not counting interested parties] and the people saying “No” is 37 to 37 “Yes”s after a month of work. I hold no emotional attachment nor value to ‘rejection’ since that should be expected as a norm. Just move forward. It is not worth the level of effort to negotiate a “No” to Yes” for this project nor this timeline.

Friday, March 29

Interviewed a total of 35 people and 5 were scheduled for interviews. There are 30 people that mentioned they were interested in being interviewed; however, after 5 follow-ups over 5 weeks…they might not be interviewed. Have a few last interviews scheduled for the first week of April and then wrap up the interview process. Had a few people reschedule several times; however if they can’t find 15 minutes for a call within a month, it’s not worth chasing them with more than a few follow-ups.

Thursday, April 4

With all interviews recorded for this project, I am now in editing mode. Bulk review and writing of the edits needed for each episode. These edits will be sent in bulk 10 episodes at a time to an audio editor via Upwork for all audio editing to be done. Seeking an intro and outro (audio clips) for this series for the start and finish of each episode of the EIR Podcast. Need to record a ‘Welcome to EIR podcast’ now that I heard common themes from many EIRs during the interviews.

Friday, April 5

Too much going on to work on this project for now. Vacation is coming up on Tuesday, April 16. Plenty of time to catch up then.

Wednesday, April 17

While on vacation in Santa Rosa, FL, trained two people (Addie and Emme) to review and write the editing instructions for my podcasts. Walked them through the process with one episode, provided them an emailed template per episode to fill out, and gave them most of the episodes to listen and write down instructions in an email. These instructions include links, phrases to start and stop on along with timecodes.

Saturday, April 20

All editing instructions are completed. Still waiting for my intro/outro to be re-recorded.

Tuesday, April 23

Received Intro/Outro. Added this to editing instructions for each episode. Sent first 10 episodes for editing through Upwork.

Thursday, April 25

The first 10 episodes were edited and received. Sent the second set of 10 episodes for editing. Downloaded images for podcast cover/logo art.

Friday, April 26

20 episodes edited. Sent the rest of the episodes for editing on Upwork. Approved the podcast cover art after three iterations and some feedback from a few people.

Sunday, April 28

All 39 episodes were edited and sent for approval. This will be my latest MVP (Minimum Viable Product). If I get more along the way, that will be for the next season. Got 2 approvals already. Building the website now and connecting to the distribution for many podcast channels.

Wednesday, May 1

Entrepreneurs understand what an MVP is. So I am launching a podcast series with the first 14 interviews approved to date. 4 other interviews need more edits per the interviewee to be approved. Week 1 will have a welcome episode plus 2 interviews to provide content right away based on those first approved interviews. First approved interviews become the first released interviews.

When do I interview these people?

Since I work 10am-6pm EST for a remote consulting client, I schedule interviews between 7am to 10am EST for people in the Eastern time zone and after 6pm EST for people in the Pacific time zone. A few were interviewed during the weekend if that worked better for those schedules.

How long are the interviews?

The actual interview lasts about 4 to 15 minutes. Most calls are 10-15 minutes in duration including the interview itself (when I am recording). I often schedule 15-30 minute calls to work out any technical difficulties.

Changed this to 15-minute calls only since I was not using the second half of the 30-minute time block for calls and saw that as an inefficiency to be eliminated. Don’t need the time break either. I would often have 2 to 4 calls scheduled back to back in the morning or evening. It is a process of batching tasks or grouping similar tasks together back to back. Recording 4 interviews in one day equal 1 month (4 weeks) of weekly podcasts. Get it done. Move forward.

Everything is done in bulk by time-blocking tasks daily

As you can see, this is just another exercise in bulk tasking. No start-stop-repeat.

  • Bulk research for idea validation.
  • Bulk invites. Not sending one invite or email per hour/day, but rather 15-50 per hour.
  • Bulk scheduling. Once a day for the month of February.
  • Bulk follow-up once a week.
  • Bulk interviewing. Time-blocked to 30 minutes per call to record the 5 to 15-minute individual interview. During the last three weeks, I changed this to a 15-minute time block per call for 5-minute to 10-minute individual interviews.
  • Bulk reviewing of raw interview audio to create editing instructions. Insourced this thanks to Addie and Emme.
  • Bulk editing with instructions with Upwork with an offshore resource using different timezones to my advantage so work gets done while I sleep.
  • Bulk approvals.
  • Bulk scheduling for release after approvals for the next 35 weeks.

And this is how I launched a 7 month-long series of weekly podcast episodes.

Want to listen to this podcast series? Find EIR Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.

Want a course on this? Want more details, costs, links, and all the tools used? Let me know

Want to create a podcast series? Schedule a call to discuss how

Questions?

Tools I Use: digital mind mapping

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Ryan Holiday explains “The Notecard System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And Using Everything You Read.”

This system may work in the physical world (I respect that if you need everything to be physical for some reason).  I see all this possible as a digital mind map to minimize duplication (it is just a link or lines drawn to the same dot), less rewriting, simpler organization that travels with you anywhere and easier categorization for those comfortable using digital tools.

I find it interesting to watch people squirm while I explain how I do this using digital tools as they still have a reluctance (resistance) in giving up their legacy methods using paper due to their own comfort zones. If they don’t want to change and get out of their own (way) comfort zone, it is their own problem to solve.

I prefer tools and information to follow me anywhere/anytime rather than going to where it is all physically located in order to review/iterate it. Especially since new ideas are fleeting, need to be captured (vs. vanish with memory) and get linked to other ideas/needs at some point.

Yes, one of the tools I use is digital mind mapping. Not on a paper, but rather fully editable ideas. I find it a good tool for forming and dissecting ideas. Before creating an outline for a book, I start with a mind map. As I continue existing projects, I mind map them.

Mind mapping helps create dots (ideas) and connect those dots (drawing lines/relations) such as:

  1. keywords/keyphrases
  2. related articles (links)
  3. related images (links to drawings, photos, infographics whether they are mine in Google Drive or from the internet)

Then, it becomes clearer to see what gaps are there and which gaps you want to fill.

Once you are comfortable with scope (self-imposed limits) of ideas you want to cover (and what you don’t want to cover), it is easier to form an outline for writing a book.

I also use mind mapping to cover who and what topics I have covered with my podcast interviews and what I want to do in the future.

Here is a list of mind mapping tools you can use (free or paid). I happen to use Mind Meister.

And that is how I use mind mapping. How do you use mind mapping?

Need help with tools like this for your business?

Questions?

 

Webinar Video Recording: Why Ignoring Rights Management Will Cost You

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Creating a Kickstarter project?

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Disclosure: Links to other sites may be affiliate links that generate us a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Back on 2013, I completed a Kickstarter project. It took months to plan, a month to fund and months to complete. For the most part, all went as planned.

Kickstarter is one of the most popular means of crowdfunding because it is rewards-based crowdfunding and it is an all-or-nothing funding model lowers the risk for all parties. It is also great for idea validation.

Many people have a lot of questions about Kickstarter, and they ask about this quite often due to the platform’s popularity. I want to answer your questions about Kickstarter.

I have given a presentation on Kickstarter: Lessons Learned to live audiences multiple times this year and crowdsourced all their questions.

After gathering audience questions, interviewing some other successful Kickstarter creators and compiling thoughts on what it takes to succeed with Kickstarter, I wrote an ebook about it.

I am presenting in person at GW on October 5, 2016, with this new ebook.

I wrote a short ebook about how to do a successful Kickstarter.

Success with Kickstarter: Lessons Learned

Success with Kickstarter: Lessons Learned

 

Follow this blog if you wish to be notified about the upcoming webinar where I will answer your questions.

Questions?

Launching Rights.tech

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RightsTech1400x1400.jpg

Disclosure: Links to other sites may be affiliate links that generate us a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Since no one else has done this to my knowledge, I thought it would be interesting to launch a series of audio interviews with professionals talking about Rights Management. It is called Rights.tech

Questions like “What is copyright?” and “How to register copyright?” has already been done by others. I am not interested in repeating it because that broken record has little success of audience engagement. The size of that issue is mentioned in several interviews. I was more interested in sharing the perspectives of professionals on the status of this market.

I reached out to the top professionals in the field of Rights Management globally about what they thought about the market.

Here are the 5 questions I asked everyone interviewed:

  1. Who are you and what do you do?
  2. What are the biggest challenges and successes you have seen with Rights Management?
  3. What is changing with Rights Management or needs to change?
  4. What advice would you like to share with people interested in Rights Management?
  5. Where can we find more information about Rights Management?

A few declined to be interviewed, but most welcomed it because this is an underserved market (IP and content licensing not so sexy) and it is complicated. I like niche markets for this reason.

Starting in May 2o16, Rights.tech will have new interviews throughout the summer with standards bodies, vendors,  licensees, licensors, consultants, create creators and associations with interests in Rights Management.

I reached out to a few conferences about this, but since I am leveling the playing field and I am one of the few consultants not in the pocket of any vendors (yes, I remain vendor-neutral), do not expect to me to be headlining anywhere on the conference circuit. That is what consultants call ‘partnering’ or ‘preferred’ solution providers. I don’t prefer nor partner with any vendors because I am a vendor-neutral consultant.

How do I remain vendor-neutral and interview Rights Management vendors at the same time?

No sales pitches allowed in the interviews. No money exchanged either way. Release all the vendor interviews on the same day. Everyone is interviewed based on who they are and what they do, however not who they work for. No favoritism. I bet most people did not know there were this many Rights Management vendors on the market today. There are others, but they declined to be interviewed.

Same with the standards bodies. There are too many of them. Not all were keen to be interviewed. Sadly, some were just too disorganized to be interviewed.

To listen to this series about Rights Management, visit Rights.tech

Questions?