139 – We pull the curtain back on “Screw the Commute”: Tom talks Behind the Scenes

Episode 139 – Behind Scenes Podcast
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey Everybody it's Tom here with episode 139 of Screw the commute podcast. Today we're doing podcasting behind the scenes with the guy that handles all this stuff for screw the commute. His name is Larry Guerrera. And I might add. He's also a graduate of my School and he's making money from what he learned. All right. So I got a big freebie here for you for. Thank you for listening to the podcast. It's my twenty seven dollar e-book how to automate your business. It's just one of the tips and this book has saved me over seven million keystrokes is probably seven and a half million by now. So check that out at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and you should also get the special extra bonus I have there on podcasting because this week and next week we're going to go this week behind the scenes and next week we're going to go in front of the scenes and that will be a good document to have. So screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Now our podcast app's in the iTunes store and you can check that out at screwthecommute.com/app where Larry has made tremendous and complete instructions to show you how to use all the fancy features so you can take us with you on the road and do all the fun stuff that it'll do. And let's say oh please please please tell somebody about the podcast. The more successful it is the more freebies I'll be able to give out to you. So there we go. All right our sponsor is the internet marketing Training Center of Virginia distance learning school which teaches legitimate techniques to make a great living either working for someone else or starting your own online business or both. You can check that out at IMTCVA.org. And again that's the school that Larry graduated from. Now I also don't want you to get robbed in your or your family's higher education endeavors. So be sure to watch the Higher Education webinar we have at screwthecommute.com and you can click on webinars. And keep in mind just because it's in Virginia it's distance learning so you can be anywhere in the world and take classes.

[00:02:52] All right. Let's get to the main event. Quality podcasting behind the scenes now Larry Guerrera is here and he's the guy behind now about 140 episodes of screw the commute. And in the beginning it was kind of a learning process of how this all worked to get our show notes to show up properly and make connections with all the major podcast directories. And I also want to mention again he's a graduate of IMTC high school and I kept getting word from the school that there was this old decrepit guy that was really sharp, he'll probably edit this out, and you know we're used to hearing about younger tech savvy kids but an old guy from Long Island hardly ever hear that. Anyway he does a wonderful job and I'm thrilled he's on here today to fill you in on what goes on behind the scenes on a quality podcast. And also next week on episode 142 I'll be doing the companion episode on what goes on in front of the scenes before I ever turnover the final MP3 file to Larry. So let's get going on the behind the scenes stuff. Larry how you doing man.

[00:04:14] After that intro I just barely stopped laughing.

[00:04:18] You're old and decrepit.

[00:04:20] I absolutely am. And you're right in front of me.

[00:04:25] I'm past you. I'm way past you.

[00:04:29] So we knocked out about 140 episodes now huh.

[00:04:33] Yeah that's about right. That doesn't include some of the test episodes we did and some of the running through the process that we did at the very beginning.

[00:04:42] And I forgot about the youth episodes too.

[00:04:45] That's right. With the youth episodes now we're pushing I guess you can say 140 to 143 maybe.

[00:04:50] Well yeah I got some recording this week and so pushing 150 pretty soon. That's pretty good. So. So tell him about what goes on when I turn it over to you is when everything starts and that's when. And next week we'll tell you how I get to that point but I turn over an MP3 file completely edited to Larry. So Larry take it from there. What do you do with it.

[00:05:18] Ok. So there is what we call the wall between Tom and myself. Tom takes the MP3 file throws it over the wall I'm on the other side of that wall and I catch it once I get that file a whole bunch of things start to go into play. Now what I'm going to describe to you may sound like a lot but once you get a process started and you get into the rhythm of this as I have after close to now 140 episodes you'll see that it really isn't that much but you need to have a process and I'll go through that as I'm describing this.

[00:05:51] Yeah. So before you take off with this though I just want to remind people folks. I put the word quality podcast here because you can turn out a podcast in an hour and have it up on the web. I mean you can use anchor.fm and just slop something out there. So what I'm describing here and all these hoops we jump through is because we want a high quality podcast. So if you want to compete at the highest levels this is the things you do. We just want to get something out there play around with it you don't have to do all that stuff. But if you want to play in the big leagues this is what we do.

[00:06:27] So that's absolutely true. But there are a couple of elements that we all have to keep in mind regardless of whether we go the quick and dirty route or we go the high quality route. I've done a couple of these on anchor.fm using my iPhone and for the purposes that I had perfectly fine but to be able to do something at the level of screw the commute. I would never go that route. So there's there are plenty of paths you can take in order to do this. So let's just start off with some basic definitions here. So what the heck is a podcast for most of us especially this old decrepit guy. I don't know what a podcast was if you go look up the word you get all sorts of crazy definitions it used to be called the net cast for network broadcast the part of the word pod was supposedly from Apple because of their creation of the iPod. It's all a bunch of definitions. Today what it comes down to is it's something you can download or you can stream live on to any device that can provide audio information that you are looking for that that you're interested in. That's pretty much what it boils down to.

[00:07:28] And here's here's the definition I've been using for a long time. It's basically an audio file but podcast is just the way it's delivered. It's still an audio file that you could just play on your own computer for your own listening purposes. But the way it's delivered make it makes it a pod cast it's cast out into the world like a lot of people can hook up their iPhone and then their latest podcasts would be all downloaded to their phone as they picked it up went to work that morning. So that's the delivery method not necessarily it's just still an audio file.

[00:08:03] Yes that's what it comes down It's still an audio file because you could take that audio file put it on a website somewhere and just download it and listen to it and you're essentially doing that as well. But that definition works especially in today's world where everything is so hyper connected that you don't really have to quote unquote download anything. It all happens behind the scenes. So that audio file the very first thing that I do is I take a quick run through it and listen to it in order to create show notes. So why do we do this. Well the first thing you're going to discover is that show notes aren't incredibly valuable piece of information for the listener and also for the person who's actually doing the podcast. So what I do is I run through the audio file from start to finish to make sure it sounds good that there were no glitches in it and knock on wood and all of the podcasts we've done so far we have yet to have a glitch in what Tom generates and throws over the wall. Now that doesn't mean we don't have audio which is a little bit flaky and stuff we do get that but no glitches. So when you download the podcast and play it on your favorite device using your podcast player of choice it sounds exactly as you would want it to sound. Tom's melodious tones and the guests coming through loud and clear providing whatever information they're providing.

[00:09:26] And of course we'll talk about that next week because that's because I go over every once every second of it as in the editing process. So I want to give him something that he can use not that's half baked.

[00:09:40] Right. Exactly. And the way I have this setup is if I do run into a glitch like that it's an immediate response back to Tom hey check this out here because this doesn't sound right. And we haven't had that yet.

[00:09:55] Well well we have had some weird stuff that we still haven't figured out like oh yes like a thing with the ID3 tags it says this is the genre Blues.

[00:10:07] Actually I did find out about it. Yeah I did. I did. I finally found that in a couple of days ago. I just I wasn't really sure if that was the actual answer but I think it is. But there are little things little technical things in the background that things like this come up it doesn't affect the quality of the podcast but it may affect other things like being able to find it the type of genre it falls under and the like. So I review that audio file I create the show notes and the show notes are usually they contain they contain three elements. One is just the basic description of the podcast. The links and any other information at either the host or the guest provide in the podcast that a listener would want to go to. So its links to their website links to other resources that kind of thing. And most importantly for many of our listeners the timestamps of all the important points within the podcast. So at the very beginning Tom will introduce a given guest or if he's doing a training session. He'll introduce that training session. I've got a timestamp for that. Bring it up in our podcast app you'll see that there's an actual time code minutes and seconds of where this starts. So if you've already listened to the podcast or you're so anxious to get to a particular section you can jump to that time code and be able to start listening at that point.

[00:11:30] So we're making it really easy for people to use the show notes. We use some kind of plugin for that right.

[00:11:37] Yes there is a plugin called the Smart podcast player and what that will do is produce an actual player on the website to screwthecommute.com website which actually looks at those time codes so you can click on the time code that you're interested in. Let's say at 15 minutes 20 seconds and the player will automatically jump to that point and start playing at that at that given time code so you can bounce around a podcast or listen to the whole thing from start to finish.

[00:12:04] Are you saying you're putting in the time codes or it generates them automatically and then you adjust them or what.

[00:12:09] No I put them in myself as I'm listening to the podcast. Now Sometimes I have to adjust them because there could be a tiny bit of overlap between let's say your voice and the guest's voice. So I adjust them a couple of seconds either way so that when the listener clicks on it they get at the very beginning of that particular section. Those are manually generated. However what happens is the player itself will automatically generate the necessary codes that the timestamp click works. So you'll be able to actually jump there.

[00:12:40] Yeah. You tell it two minutes and 10 seconds and then when somebody clicks on two minutes and 10 seconds the player jumps exactly to two minutes and 10 seconds.

[00:12:49] Correct. That's how it works. So once I do that once the audio files been vetted and I've got a set of show notes then my workflow begins. That's actually the beginning of my process my workflow. So what does that actually mean. Anytime you hear the word workflow you think of a set of processes starting from A, and going from there we're starting from one. So it's step one get the audio file from Tom start listening to it. Step two generate show notes. Step 3 test to make sure that the time codes that I put in there are accurate as close as possible to where the actual information starts and so on and so on and so on. So once you generate a workflow it makes it easy relatively easy to run any new podcast episode through this process. So we've generated the show notes once I've generated the show notes. I take a look and see what has to happen next in order to get that available for other people to listen to. One of the things we use the generic term as a podcast distribution network. It's a big highfalutin word for a place that holds your podcasts. So there are a couple of ways you can do this. You can actually put that audio file up on a website. People can download it and listen to it from there. If you only have a few audio files it's not a big deal and a few listeners too. One of the problems you run into and you're run into it very very quickly is that as the popularity of your podcast grows so will the bandwidth you're using so will the amount of downloads and also so will your cost because most website hosts providers or service providers are gonna charge you based on the amount of megabytes gigabytes downloads and all that stuff that's being used on your website. So it's very rarely a good idea to do this from a website that you create.

[00:14:49] Unless it's really pitiful and you're just doing it for fun because you could get a bill for a thousand bucks or just get kicked off your hosting service. And it's crazy with how cheap it is to go to the right kind of places.

[00:15:02] Exactly. A lot of these places got terms of service that if you exceed the bandwidth cap is what they call it they'll just cut you off and you may have seen this already because sometimes you'll go to a website and says service unavailable and it says the website at this address has exceeded its bandwidth caps for the month. You really SOL. You're really out of luck.

[00:15:21] You look stupid. For five bucks a month you could fix the whole problem.

[00:15:27] Exactly right. So we use a service called libsyn.com and all of this will be in the show notes because I am going to create them for this particular episode. So Libsyn is the big kahuna It's the 800 pound gorilla in the podcast space and we use them and I can tell you after all of these episodes and going back and forth with this support for a couple of issues here and there it is rock solid absolutely rock solid.

[00:15:52] And it's unbelievably cheap.

[00:15:54] It really is. You can pay as little as you mentioned before Tom five bucks a month to get started.

[00:16:02] Yeah and the super super big popular podcast use this service. Now there's others. Yeah there's others will will tell you some names of others.

[00:16:10] Yeah. I mean there are others this stitcher there's Spotify iHeart radio SoundCloud blueberry that's blueberry without the Es just take the Es out castbox. I mean there's a there's a zillion of these and they all have their pluses and minuses. They all have their pros and cons but here's the one thing about Libsyn, Libsyn is one of the very few that will feed. Oh and can't forget iTunes. iTunes is the second big kahuna the second 800 pound gorilla in this whole thing. What Libsyn will do is feed all of these services so by using a a site like Libsyn and there are alternatives to Libsyn but Libsyn is pretty much the big one. They handle all of this for you. They'll be able to feed Spotify they can feed stitcher they can feed podcast blaster.

[00:16:57] We probably have a list of twenty or twenty five places that you could listen to Screw the commute.

[00:17:04] Yeah exactly. And there are more coming on line just like the other day I recently put us in for radio.com. So that's an that's in progress right now. So this is an ever changing landscape and it takes a lot to really keep up with all that's going on. But using a service like Libsyn gives us the ability to feed Libsyn our audio file and all the notes and everything else we have to give them and they take care of the rest on the back end and to use a term that Tom uses and I use a lot. It's dirt cheap really is dirt cheap considering what you're getting.

[00:17:34] We pay 20 bucks I think for 400 megabytes a month and once in a while I go over and have to pay an extra 5 bucks but I mean that's twelve podcasts a month.

[00:17:50] On a typical month that's 12 podcasts a month unless you have a special like a youth episode or there's something else going on and you throw an extra one in there. But yeah. We can fit in just about a month's worth of podcasts and at 20 bucks. How could you go wrong with that. Yeah it's such a cheap amount of money so there are lots of choices in that field and in that in that realm to to get you started and to and to allow you to continue to build on that. So if you're really on a tight budget how can you beat five dollars a month. Really really it speaks to what's available now on the internet this is 2019.

[00:18:23] If you try to do this on your website it's going to cost you more than 5 bucks for sure for any number of downloads and then and then you have the potential of getting cut off and it's not optimized for streaming this stuff there's never a glitch with Libsyn or these big podcasts highly optimized for streaming where your website if you're on the cheap godaddy or some cheap hosting stuff for 5 bucks a month. It's not optimized for this and there could be ten thousand other people on there on your same hosting computer slowing it making it glitchy and you're just going to look stupid. So there's just there's no question that this is ridiculous. If you don't do something like that.

[00:19:11] Well I think just from a value standpoint I can guarantee you that if you do it on your own without using a company like libsyn you'll be paying a lot more than 5 bucks a month right off the bat.

[00:19:20] You won't statistics and all the stuff that they give you is crazy and you're trying to do it by hand that distribute the 20 places.

[00:19:30] That's the other thing. And that goes back to what I was mentioning before about workflow. You will be doing a lot more manual work in order to make sure that this gets out by doing it yourself. It's just there is no way you can justify the ROI on doing it for yourself so that's why we take advantage of these distribution networks like Libsyn to make sure that it gets out to all the different places that it has to get out. If you're doing it just for the heck of it and you want to put out a crappy podcast you can do it on your own. But for listeners of this podcast I would be hard pressed to find anybody who would want to do it that way.

[00:20:08] Yeah and one other nice thing about libsyn they have their own podcast for podcasters and I was featured on there. You can just ask them and they'll feature you on their podcast in front of thousands of other podcasters and keep you up to date on changes and things that are happening. So so yeah it's just crazy not to do this. All right.

[00:20:34] Ok so along with the audio file and then along with the workflow. So let's get back to the workflow just for a second. So this is part of the plan. Part of the plan in order to get you to do a podcast in order to do this effectively is you have to lay it out ahead of time as to what exactly want to do. So one of the things we decided to do upfront was to make sure we had show notes which were comprehensive enough that the listeners could take advantage of it but not so overwhelming that they would just throw their hands up and give up because I've seen other show notes from other podcasts which are really rather skimpy like just a couple of lines just a description of a podcast which really doesn't help. And I've seen others that have gone the actual opposite way that that are just so detailed it's almost like eye popping. So I think we've picked a pretty good middle ground in order to provide our listeners with what they're looking for and also at the same time to be respectful to the guest that's on that episode showing their Website address all the resources they have available what they're offering for the listeners if there's any specials you know things of that nature. So that's part of that workflow is to really be able to understand exactly what you're trying to present when you want to present it how you want to present it and then using a service like Libsyn in order to present that audio file to the masses all over planet Earth. So the workflow itself starts from the time he throws it over the wall till the time you download it you the listener who's listening to this right now to the listener who's downloading it to their device and listening to the podcast. So having a plan even a rudimentary one even if it's just step one step two step three and you're right you're on a back of a napkin that's probably 90 percent more than most people do. So it's something that you really need to take seriously. This way you don't drive yourself crazy. And more importantly you don't miss any steps. There's one of the things I've discovered since we started doing this at the very beginning that if you try and take a shortcut it's going to come back and bite you and it could come back and bite you pretty bad so don't take shortcuts. This is not the kind of thing you want to take a shortcut on. Fortunately we've been able to maneuver around some of the things we have to do at the beginning since we were brand new at this but I think we've got a pretty good flow now and a lot of experience that shows where the pitfalls are and how to how to maneuver around them to present a well produced podcast episode every episode. One of the things I want to harp on because I've harped on this before and other in other conversations we've had is audio quality. Tom's audio file can only be good as the audio quality that's in it. You can have the best guest in the world. Tom could be at his absolute peak as a host. Asking the right questions and all that stuff. But if you're set up on the other side is just lousy. It's going to sound lousy. Tom has got all sorts of crazy stuff going on over there. That's why his audio sounds so good.

[00:23:29] Yeah and I'm going to cover that. It's also covered in the freebie if you go and get that screwthecommute.com/automatefree. That's the automation book but the extra freebie covers all the stuff that I use equipment wise and everything in there.

[00:23:47] Yep definitely worth getting because it gives you a really good idea of what you would need to do and what you need to get in order to make this quality.

[00:23:54] So let me make a distinction there. If you're only doing yourself and not doing guests that aren't like sitting in your living room with you. This can be way easier equipment wise but you have to come up with all the material yourself. If you're going to do guests that's when the equipment goes a little bit crazy because you got to you know I'll cover it more next week. But but you can start if you're just doing your own without interviewing for just a decent microphone USB microphone and some audio software. So. So you don't have to go full blast until you're ready to do interview.

[00:24:32] And you know what that's not a bad way to start either right. Because that'll give you at least a little of an experience using your own equipment getting a feel for how the flow of a podcast actually works. Like Tom when you do your training sessions it's just you.

[00:24:49] This one is going to you know I've had Marc on for video and I'll have Lakia on for social media on a Monday Monday are my training sessions. And you know this is what you're on today the Monday but still the bulk of them like one hundred and you know. Well out of 130 episodes and however many weeks that is once a week it was just me. So you don't have to have the super equipment for that but when you're doing interviews it gets crazy.

[00:25:17] Yes. So that's why audio from a quality standpoint is critical even for yourself as a guest you want the audio as good as it could possibly be so that your listeners will want to come back and listen to more. I've heard many podcasts where the audio is just so bad.

[00:25:35] Well and also if you are going on a podcast tour which I have been doing that where I'm on other people's podcast the better you sound the more likely they're going to be to invite you back. The more professional you sound so if you use your own equipment for that rather than just getting on a telephone or something you'll be invited back more often and you'll sound more professional out there when people are listening.

[00:26:00] Yes. Telephones cheap headsets those little boom microphones that you could pick up for five bucks online. Those are all terrible.

[00:26:09] Yeah yeah. I'll get into that next week. All right so what's the next part of your flow.

[00:26:12] Ok. So we have shown notes. We've got stuff uploaded to Libsyn. We have a distribution network all set up and ready to go. The next thing you need a central hub. You need a place where your listeners can go to find everything about your podcast and anything else you're actually doing for that matter. That's why you need to have a website to do this. So at screwthecommute.com that is our central hub for all the podcast activity for the screw the commute podcast for the screw the commute community and so on and so on. Tom has all sorts of stuff up there for people resources and the like. We have not only the show notes from Libsyn that I generate but far more extensive show notes that have images video other audio content links to PDFs and so on and so on and so on.

[00:27:02] Affiliate links you want to make money with as folks if you're going to put this kind of investment in you're going to have a mechanism to make money. So a lot of affiliate links are too weird to say on the podcast you know so you need to have them where somebody can just click on them. If you're going to do affiliate marketing and then also just even for my own products and stuff. I'm not using the model that a lot of beginning podcasters do. They try to get sponsors and what happens folks is you only get anywhere from 10 to 25 dollars per thousand downloads and it's not easy to get a thousand dollars right off the bat. Let me tell you. But if you promote your own products I've been the sponsor of every single podcast. One of my products so I get all the money. So that's kind of the model that we use here we don't try to get sponsors and get a few dollars here and there. We want to promote you know get people to buy my stuff and get in my database show notes are where you can have all that stuff that's easy to click because people are driving or on the train or something that they may not be able to easily click over to anything but the show notes does it and then you can talk about transcripts to it.

[00:28:20] So speaking of clicking over on show notes and stuff that's one of the things I'll talk about in a minute. But the so the website having all the extensive show notes with video and images and other content and these links and affiliate links look pretty pretty weird. So you're better off having a link saying it on the actual podcast really doesn't help. That's why we do all the links we put in those show notes. So what happens is the website becomes a one stop shop. Tom can just mentioned very simply go to the screwthecommute.com website You'll find all the information there and sure enough there it is. It just makes it very easy.

[00:28:56] I've said it a couple of times already today. Go to Screwthecommute.com/app to download our app for your tablet or cell phone. Screwthecommute.com/automatefree. That's where you get your freebie for listening and your extra freebie for the podcasting. And so we've got screwthecommute.com/webinar. Screwthecommute.com/resources and there's individual sales letters up there for individual products. So I've moved a lot of stuff off of my old sites because of the Screw the commute site is fully responsive which means it works on a cell phone and tablet where some of my older sites I would just have a skinny sales letter but now it's all modernized we're moving everything into that hub so that it's all easily accessed on a cell phone or a tablet.

[00:29:44] Yes. And that that all comes under the term of integration. You'll see that term a lot all over the place I'm integrating with this. This one's integrating with that we're integrating all of our information in one central place and that's what the website provides us. Now Tom mentioned a couple of other elements that you'll find up on the website. We have things like upcoming guests. It's one thing to be able to put podcast episodes up there after the fact. But what we try and do as we're lining up guests and getting ready to make their episodes we put the list of upcoming guests that are coming up in the near future. The next week the next next couple of weeks and the like so you can see who's coming up and prepare for that. So it's an ongoing revolving thing.

[00:30:23] I usually don't put them up or give him to Larry until they're already recorded because people cancel on you or reschedule and then so. So I don't even give them to Larry until I've already got it in the can. I may not have edited it yet but it's still recorded.

[00:30:40] Yeah. And I need that because I put episode numbers up there so I know that that's locked in for a particular date. Now that could always change if some emergency comes up or something else happens. But for the most part when you see up on upcoming guests it's pretty much what the schedule is going to be. The other thing you'll find up there are Tom's appearances on other podcasts which is just as important so if you're doing as Tom mentioned earlier our podcast tour you want everybody to know who's who goes to the website. Where else have I been.

[00:31:07] And also if a podcast host didn't know you and you send them to there and they say oh my god look he was an entrepreneur on fire and conscious millionaire and all these all these big shows then they're more excited to book you.

[00:31:23] Yes exactly. And we add to that as well on a regular basis as Tom continues to do his podcast tour.

[00:31:30] Yeah one little tip there I put the biggest shows at the top and then we put a list of all shows underneath that so that they're hit right in the face. I don't want to you know I'll do all kinds of shows but I don't want to have a two listener show as the the top one when somebody hits the page. So I put all the big shows at the top and then I do a full listing by date below that.

[00:31:55] Right. Right. As of right now I'm looking through the page itself. You've got multiple pages here of of recent appearances. A lot of stuff up here. And usually if I can provide them I'll put links up there with the actual link to the to that particular episode so that anybody who shows up there and looks at that page can see that and go directly there.

[00:32:16] Yeah. And another thing we do is on bigger shows we'll give the host a complete page on screw the commute you know so so that they feel like wow this guy is really a great guest. He's professional he's doing everything possible to promote his appearance on my show. And so they want you back. So I'm going to be back on another major show I won't say the name of it yet until it's actually done. Normally they only have people once you know and that's it. So I made so much money for this guy in affiliate commissions because I gave him an affiliate commission. That's another thing. Behind the scenes you're going to do a podcast tour. You know we're getting off topic a little bit here but this all important because you have to make money with this folks so. So if you if you get bigger host to put you in front of their audience you make sure they get paid for it if possible with an affiliate program and affiliate commissions. So this one guy's made 5000 bucks off of my appearance so far and it's going to go towards around 8000. And so I was talking to him the other day. Yeah let's have you back here pretty soon.

[00:33:25] Gee I wonder why why would he want you back.

[00:33:29] So you got to be professional about this if you want to maximize everything and part of that is a podcast tour but you take care of your podcast hosts and we have specific pages so that on the whenever and it's already made before I do the recording. So when I do the recording I say Yeah I go over to so-and-so.com or screwthecommute.com/ and then whatever the show name is that I'm on and then that guy's or woman's picture's at the top of the page and the freebie that I'm giving away that they have to opt in for. That's got an affiliate link attached to it so that anybody that comes from that person show that he gets cookied then or she gets cookied and they make money from it. So so these are all the behind the scenes behind the scenes things that make up a profitable podcast.

[00:34:22] And also on those on those pages we also include links to all the different services that I mentioned earlier so that you can easily find this particular podcast and you could also listen to other episodes of that particular show. Yeah it makes it very convenient and very easy for them to do that. So it it really. As Tom mentioned it really shows a level of professionalism that we're taking the time to do this and it's always done ahead of time this way when they go there. The page is already there and people can see that wow this guy really knows his stuff and he's right on top of things. So we have host pages we've got upcoming guests.

[00:34:58] Now we also have a page for me. You know I kind of almost like an about page for me that all the cool stuff I've done in my life like 20 things you didn't know about Tom Antion and funny guest will make money for your show

[00:35:12] I have to correct you it's 22 things we didn't know.

[00:35:14] Okay. Everything to show how I'm going to take care of their audience I'm going to customize for them and you know that's how you get on the better shows because a lot of guests are just they don't do anything that is entitled. You know they think oh just show up and just talk. Talk a little bit. No I want that person to know this guy's a pro going to make my show look great and potentially make me a lot of money. So.

[00:35:39] Exactly. And just to just to make sure this is in the show notes it's screwthecommute.com/about and you'll see Tom's smiling face in the picture right at the top of the page.

[00:35:49] Is that the page. I thought we'd have one for a podcast hosts or something.

[00:35:54] Well for you it's about, because it's about you.

[00:35:56] Yeah. But I think we have a specific page about it's called podcast hosts. I think that's the link we'll get the right link for the show notes but that's where. If I'm talking to somebody I'd send them there to show them all that let them read all the topics that I have.

[00:36:13] Yes that's it. Screwthecommute.com/podcasthosts. I'll make sure that is in the show notes as well. And again it shows your smiling face you're always smiling.

[00:36:23] Yeah I'm a happy guy.

[00:36:25] Why not. Right. So we have all of those we have giveaways their sales letters as Tom mentioned before there's also a resources page which is very extensive which has all sorts of resources on there that you can take advantage of.

[00:36:39] Many of them are affiliates and many of my specific products.

[00:36:43] We have internet marketing links we have entrepreneurship links public speaking links copywriting miscellaneous.

[00:36:50] And a lot of free stuff too a lot of free webinars and all kinds of stuff you know. So yeah. So. And when he gets into talking about transcripts This site is becoming really enormous. Very quickly because each time I do a podcast you know there's six eight 10 pages of text that's going on my site three times a week.

[00:37:14] That's on the low side.

[00:37:15] Yeah. So it makes you look great to the search engines too.

[00:37:21] Well that just happened to be the next thing I was going to mention. So let's talk about it. So I have show notes generated. I've got an audio file I have Libsyn all primed and ready to go. So let's talk about transcripts. One of the things that I noticed long before we started doing this and before I got deeply involved in the back end of screw the commute podcast.

[00:37:45] Glad you said deeply involved in the back end of screw the commute and not deeply involved in the back end of Tom.

[00:37:53] Yeah I did avoid that. Thank you. If you'll notice.

[00:38:00] So one of the things that I did notice is that there is it's either a lack of transcripts meaning the show host does not offer transcripts at all or they only provide certain sections in the trance within the transcript that either contains a link or something else like that. In other words not very satisfying. Let's just put it that way from a listener standpoint. So what Tom uses is a service called Sonix.

[00:38:35] And I got an affiliate link so don't go to sonix go to my affiliate link. You get 30 minutes free. But tell them all about that.

[00:38:44] Ok. So Sonics is a transcription service where you upload an audio file. And it accepts a variety of audio file formats. It doesn't have to be MP3. They'll accept a whole bunch of things. They will also accept stereo audio files meaning if you've got two people talking on a podcast and you separate out the channels between the guest and the host it can actually process the transcription so that it can label who's talking about what. So that's another thing that they do which a lot of other transcription services don't and what they do is they'll upload the audio file grind it around in the background and after about five 10 depending on the size of the podcast episode maybe 15 minutes it's done transcribing and what you get. Is a pretty good representation of what was spoken about on that particular audio file. Now it's not a hundred percent perfect. None of these transcriptions probably will ever be but it comes pretty close. Our average. I'm going to say is about nineteen ninety one percent Sonix is confident that about 91 percent of the transcript that it generated it court correctly. And after doing all of these episodes at this point I have to agree with them there. Their percentage is pretty close. So you're gonna have to do a little bit of editing. Sometimes it doesn't get names exactly right. The links sometimes get a little mangled because of the way they're spoken but for the most part it is a great way to convert your audio into the written word so you can provide that transcript on your website through different medium through different methods in order to have it as a compliment to the audio file.

[00:40:21] Let me jump in here folks. The reason I'm so psyched about this transcription service is that I used to pay a minimum minimum of 30 dollars per recorded hour and frequently sixty dollars per recorded hour and had to wait a minimum of 24 hours and most of the time two three days to get it back. This is five dollars per recorded hour and it's back in ten minutes. It is crazy. In the show notes we'll put this Camtasia video screen capture video I do showing you how it works and everything. And so if you sign up for my affiliate link you get 30 free minutes. But for everybody I get the sign up. I get 100 free minutes. So for virtually all of these one hundred and forty podcasts which are anywhere from 30 to to a little bit over an hour I've only paid a couple dollars for 140 episodes of transcripts just because I was an affiliate. Now I don't get paid in money I get paid in free minutes. So you could do the same thing.

[00:41:32] Yeah and it's all Web based. So you don't have to worry about downloading anything to your P.C. or your Mac or any of that stuff. Everything is web based you simply drag and drop the audio file it uploads it. You click the transcribed button and off it goes. It also handles multiple languages. It's got a custom dictionary. It does as I mentioned earlier multi-track uploading as all sorts of stuff that this thing provides. And it really is an inexpensive way in order to do this. There is no way you could have somebody else do this for you for that price. Not possible. Just not possible. So it's not a hundred percent but it comes really really close. So you're going to get a high quality transcript out of that that you could repurpose for whatever you want to do out of it and just keep in mind that there's a really important part to this that a lot of people don't think of. So let me say this now. There are your audience is comprised of a whole bunch of different people. People that are audio listeners people that are quote unquote visual listeners what's a visual listener. Well somebody who can look at the read listen to the podcast but they really get a lot more out of it by reading the transcript. And there are some people that are like a hybrid they'll actually follow along with the transcript as they're listening to the podcast. So there's plenty of different types of listeners out there that you want to appeal to. Not everybody is a complete audio listener. They want other types of medium to actually look at that. I know we get a lot of people that view our show notes on the screwthecommute.com website. They're looking for the different videos that are up there. They're looking at the different images that are up there is a whole bunch of ways to attract and keep those listeners in this transcript function using Sonix is just another way to do that.

[00:43:15] I think we make them opt in for the transcript right.

[00:43:19] That is correct. Yeah. You provide your name and your email address and then you get access to the transcript.

[00:43:23] You don't have to do that. Just to look at the show notes but to get the full transcript it's a way to build your list right.

[00:43:29] Exactly. And that's available right there on the website. You don't have. Again. You don't have to do a download. You'll have to wait for a file to show up in your email. Once you opt in bang the transcript is available right there on the show notes page for that particular episode. So there's no waiting. Tom doesn't like to wait. Neither do I.

[00:43:47] Tell them about our app.

[00:43:54] So the app we have. We have an app which is provided by Libsyn So this is one of the reasons why you want to use a service like Libsyn because they do provide a whole bunch of other things that you could use in order to promote your podcast to keep engaged with your listeners and so on and so on and so on. So what is this app. They have an app for the Apple platform as well as the Android platform so all of your iPhones your iPads iPods all of that stuff.

[00:44:21] Okay hold on. So if you do hear howling in the background it's not me so excited about the app. We have all these dogs. So I think they're excited about it. There's about 30 dogs here. So go ahead.

[00:44:45] Ok. So why an app. Why do you have to have an app. There's a lot of at first I thought the same thing. Why do you read. Do we really need a separate app for this. It turns out yes. You really do. And there's a lot of good reasons for it. One of the main reasons why we have a screw the commute app is to make sure that our listeners are engaged. And it's also good for branding we because I'm looking at my phone right now and on there is the screw the commute app and it says screw the commute and we'll I have to do is tap on that app and up comes the latest episodes of screw the commute podcast. I have a little screwy there. His image comes up and simply by swiping on there I get a download of all the episodes that have been in our feed since the very beginning. And any new ones that have been put in will show up immediately as soon as I open the app. So it's a great way to keep all of these episodes in one place. Keep in mind Tom does a training episode every Monday. These are the types of training episodes you don't listen to once and that's the last time you ever listen to them. They are chock full of information. Way too much for just one listen. Even with show notes and transcripts. So these are the kind of things we can pull up that particular episode you want to listen to again run it right through the app and out it comes out of your iPhone out of your Android device out of your tablet. And that kind of thing.

[00:46:04] Yeah I think I think if I recall it only costs ninety nine dollars. For them to develop it for me and I just have to provide the graphics that they told me what to provide. So you can't go to an app developer. Oh yeah or what can I get for a hundred bucks an hour. Nothing.

[00:46:25] Maybe this conversation that's about it.

[00:46:28] Yeah. So the app is definitely worth it. And there's a couple of other things that go along with that which make it even more enticing. I mentioned show notes links and all that stuff. I can have those links that you see on our website the screwthecommute.com website are in this app. So I'm looking at one of our latest episodes and there's all clickable links here. All you have to do is tap the link. It will open up in another window and show you the content on that particular website. So this is a great way to have your audience engaged all the listeners to make sure that they take advantage of these resources and all and everything else that's part of that episode. So even if they're on the go and they're pretty much a mobile type person they can still take advantage of these links especially affiliate links and all sorts of other things that come along with that. So there's special features that you can put in there are links to other mentioned resources. Also the fact that once you put the app in there and you start downloading you'll won't have to worry about downloading another episode again because it's done automatically so you don't have to worry about is it Monday. Oh yeah. It's time have an episode today. Yeah he might. You have to worry about that the episode automatically shows up.

[00:47:39] Yeah. Doesn't it do a thing like if you're in the car listening. And you get a phone call. Tell them about that.

[00:47:49] Ok. So one of the features of this app which I think is the coolest thing one of the coolest things is it has what's called Car mode. So what's been happening lately in the past two years I'd say there's been a real real push to get devices like your iPhone your Android device and everything else more car friendly. What does that mean. That means that it provides the least amount of distractions when you're driving. So one of the things that this app does say you're listening to this episode right now in your car if you get a phone call during this episode the app will pause the episode allow your phone to take the call when you're done and you hang up. The episode picks up exactly from where it left off without you having to do a thing you're you have to touch the device and it does this all on its own. Also the app itself has a built in car mode where you can actually lock the screen so that the episode will continue to play and you won't be distracted by things beeping on your phone or any type of notifications or any of that stuff. And it gives you very simplified controls that allow you to control the device even while you're in the car. So for the most part it's hands off and it's a great thing because we want that where people focusing on the road we want. We don't want to lose any listeners because of car accidents. So we want to make sure that they're getting the best experience out of this. And this app provides that as well.

[00:49:13] You know what would be a cool news story though if both people in the car accident both Cars hit each other and they were both listening to screw the commute. That would be kind of a sick way of promotion because you shouldn't have been commuting anyway and then you wouldn't have got in the car accident.

[00:49:35] And you'd have media all over your compound over there that would actually be pretty funny. Not for the people involved.

[00:49:44] All right. Then what do you do.

[00:49:48] So we have transcripts we've got the app we've got our show notes we've got everything else. Ok. What's next. Social media. This is the one thing that a lot of people forget and I've seen this time and time again with podcasts that that seem to have great audience numbers and all that stuff. They drop the ball when it comes to social media. And at this point in the 21st century that should not be the case. So what do I mean. We have a screw the commute Facebook group in fact we have two screw the commute Facebook groups. We have a Twitter account we have an Instagram account. We're working on Snapchat looking at Pinterest there's a whole bunch of things you can do on social media.

[00:50:24] YouTube also. We turn the audio into a video. Even we don't record in video we can still plaster the audio on top of a video.

[00:50:35] That's right. So you're making a video podcast out of it for lack of a better term at this point but the one thing that that really should be done. I'll give you an example. Our Facebook group screw the commute Facebook group. A lot of people in there there's a lot of chatter going back and forth on a daily basis. It's a lot of stuff that we talk about in there that you won't find anywhere else. That's the paid group. But even if you don't have a paid group even if it's a free Facebook group you still want to be able to reach out to your audience in a manner that they are accustomed to. And many people are still using Facebook. The demographics of Facebook have changed like the age range of stuff you know old decrepit guys like me. I'm still on Facebook. This is just a fact. That's just where we are. I'm also on Twitter I'n on Instagram I'm on Snapchat I'm all over the place. It's just the way I roll. But for your podcast you should be rolling the exact same way. It costs you ZERO to set up a Facebook group that promotes your podcast. You invite people in. You send out an email to your email list. You do have an email list, don't you? And then invite them in to the Facebook group and you have another way of communicating with your listeners and another community that interfaces with you in order to promote your podcast and to grow it. Twitter is the same thing. Instagram is the same thing there are so many things you can do in order to promote in order to get the word out in order to keep people engaged. The real thing here is engagement. I lost count of the number of podcasts I used to listen to that I thought were pretty good but there was absolutely zero engagement no outreach by the host. No real resources available. Nothing on Facebook really to write home about zero appearances on Twitter. That kind of thing. And yeah it is a little bit of work. What you're trying to you're trying to make something here that's worthwhile for yourself and for your listeners. So you want to make it that they feel comfortable coming in joining your group following you on Twitter and so on to build up that audience to build up your listeners and to make sure that your podcast keeps growing growing and growing. I just went back and took a look at our numbers from Libsyn and from the time we started. To right now in terms of audience growth we've had hundreds and hundreds of percent growth since the very very beginning. And just as an example this is only June 2nd. As we're recording this and the download numbers for June already several hundred downloads and it's only less than 48 hours. So these are the types of numbers you can have once you build up an audience and using all of social media as well in order to do that. It doesn't cost anything. The only thing it'll cost you is time. But once you set it up a lot of times Facebook groups they take off on their own. For example I'm an admin for our screw the commute Facebook group. So Tom does not have to be in there all the time checking things out answering questions and all that stuff myself and one other admin can handle that. And if anything needs to rise to his level we make sure that he gets a hold of that. He comes in where appropriate. So there's a lot of ways to do this. There's no reason not to be on social media at this point because it really does help. OK. So one of the other things that goes along with that. We're talking about social media and reaching out to your listeners and the end to growing your audience is reaching out to your guests. One of the most very important aspects of my job as the back end guy for the screw the commute podcast is making sure that I keep an open line of communication with the guests that Tom books. It is extremely important. It's beyond important actually. You need to keep a channel open with your guests to get the things that you need like just for example headshots. We get headshots on a regular basis so we can include them in our show notes in our podcast player on the screw the commute app and so on. We want make sure we get the best headshot. I don't necessarily like to use Google images to try and pull out something from there because it's not normally the best headshot we can get I'd rather get it from the guest. So it's important to keep that channel open. I also need show notes approval. I want to make sure that the show notes I've generated especially the links that they mention in the podcast are correct for them. And there have been times where there've been changes between the time they recorded the podcast and the time it went live. So I've made those changes to the show notes I want to make sure that there if there are any affiliate links that they'd like to provide for the listeners that those get into the show notes as well.

[00:55:16] Also I tell them they can update their show notes if they have anything else they want to promote as this part has to have a long life so they might have some other new thing and I just assume they'd come back put it in the show notes there and that'll give them another excuse to tell people about the podcast.

[00:55:34] Absolutely and I've gotten that I've actually gotten follow up e-mails from several of our guests where they said you know it's not ready right now whatever it is when the link is ready I'll let you know and sure enough there's the link I update the show notes and it's in it's both on our website and in the app. So this is an ongoing process communicating with the guests is an extremely important part of this not only for their products and services but just. It promotes a certain level of professionalism. And it shows that the way Tom has set this up that this is not a fly by night thing. He's in it for the long haul. It's a professionally run podcast. And we do things that are that are beneficial to both us and to the guests as well. One of the other things that I make sure that the guests understand is when their podcast is going to go live. Lot of the guests kind of forget. You know sometimes they record the podcast it's not going to be live for a couple of weeks sometimes it's delayed even further because of other things going on. And we understand that the guests have busy lives. So I make sure that I ping them on a regular basis say hey listen just I'll let you know your podcast is going to be going live on this date. Here's some resources you can use to promote it on social media. As I mentioned earlier just as important for the guests to promote it as it is for us to promote it so they know if there's enough time to do it I tell them two weeks out I tell them a week out I tell them the day before and then I tell them when it goes live. So that gives them plenty of time to set up whatever processes they use in order to blast it out to social media send it to the e-mail lists let their friends and family know and so on and so on and so on. So this allows them this gives them plenty of time to prepare for that because if once we go live it's out. So if they wait until after the fact you get to lose momentum by doing that and that's not a good thing. So we want them to prepare up front. So if I had to rank them in order here communicating with your guests is probably one of the top ones. It has to be a because if this just goes into a black hole and they don't know when their episode is going live they don't know when they should be promoting on social media. They haven't even looked at the show notes. I don't even know if the links are correct that kind of thing. We have to make absolutely sure that we get this right for them because honestly we only get one shot at this once that podcast goes live. Once Libsyn publishes it to the entire world it's out. So we have to make sure that we get this right before it goes.

[00:58:02] And we also do follow up a month later.

[00:58:05] Correct. Yes. What I do is 30 days out from when the podcast goes live. I send them a reminder e-mail say hey listen you're screw the commute podcast went live a month ago. Why don't we send out another e-mail to your listeners and let them revisit the podcast. Also for people that haven't heard it this may be the first time they hear that you're on a podcast with Tom Antion. So that gives them an opportunity to grow their own audience as well as our download numbers go up. We grow our audience so it's an ongoing effort. It's never a one shot thing where Tom books a guest the guest sends back an e-mail. The recording is done and we never hear from them again. That wouldn't work. That doesn't make sense. So communicating with the guests is probably an extremely extremely important part of this whole thing. And personally for me as the guy on the back end I'm behind the scenes I've made a lot of friends with these guests. I have ongoing conversations on Facebook with a lot of these people. You would not believe the quality of the people that Tom has booked in the past and probably will be booking in the future. It's just an amazing thing to see what these people are doing in their lives and how they're willing to take the time to talk to other people about what they do. And you know in just many cases I wind up being friends with them on Facebook was sending jokes back and forth with talking about Tom behind his back. You know that kind of thing.

[00:59:29] So we were going to break for a sponsor message now but I think about at the end of your checklist.

[00:59:36] I am just about at the end of my checklist.

[00:59:39] So hold up whatever you have final comments then instead of me doing a sponsor message since you actually graduated from the school and became gainfully employed because of it just tell people about the experience. The opportunities by you know learning the Internet stuff.

[00:59:57] Ok. So I am a graduate a very happy and proud graduate of the Internet marketing training center of Virginia. I first ran across the school back in 2016 and I signed up back then because I knew that there was there was something else I wanted to do I had a full time job. I was I am I guess I guess I'm a recovering I.T. guy. You're always recovering. I mean there's never an end to this. And I can consider myself retired from that but I'm still an I.T. guy. So it's it's gonna be in my blood. But I knew there was something more that I wanted to do and I've been following Tom for several years before that. So I knew what he was all about. I knew what he was up to when the school opportunity came along I decided I got to jump into this and see one of the very first conversations I had with Tom was I mentioned to him that I'm an I.T. guy I've got decades of experience in all of this stuff and I'll never forget the words Tom that you said to me. You said and I quote you could probably run rings around me from an I.T. point of view but you don't know marketing the way I do and that's what you need to learn. And I took that to heart and that's exactly what I did. I ran through all my school assignments got through that got through the all the courses I learned so much from there that it was just an incredible eye opening exercise. And I know that I learned a lot because at one point you wanted to know who is this guy that's constantly asking questions.

[01:01:31] This old decrepit guy.

[01:01:32] Yeah this old decrepit guy. Yeah well that was me. And then after I graduated I got to the point we said you know I feel sorry for this old decrepit guy. I think I'll just hire him. And so you did. And here I am. And it's been an incredible ride.

[01:01:48] As a contractor. Yeah. So you're working out of your home in Long Island.

[01:01:52] I have my own company. I have a swimming pool I've got all sorts of crazy stuff out here on Long Island. So yeah. The school made a big difference a big difference in how I view what I'm going to do for my quote unquote second act. And thanks to you and thanks to IMTC. That's why I'm here right now.

[01:02:17] Great. So that's the story folks on that so IMTCVA.org. We just got approved also by the Department of Defense for a military spouse program. And we do give big discounts to all military but particularly military spouses. There's a special program that we're approved for for scholarships for them. So if you know anybody who'd like to have a portable one of the things about it it's a portable career. And that's the problem. See I mean big area military here in Norfolk area Virginia Beach and the poor spouses get a low paying jobs because people know they're going to leave in two years. And so then they have to go try to fight it out to find another low paying job. So with this the scholarship program specifically said they wanted a portable skill and there's nothing more portable than being able to go to North or South Korea which is one of the military spouses that used to work for me is working right there to South Korea. Used to be in San Diego used to be in Northern Virginia. So she's never missed a beat because she has this portable career. Anyway it's a distance learning school. IMTCVA.org. All right. So what the parting thoughts do you have for them there old decrepit guy.

[01:03:37] Ok all right let me do this quickly before my brain rots any further. So just to give you an overall review of what we've mentioned on this particular episode of the Screw the commute podcast there are a lot of moving parts that go into making a successful podcast quality podcast. A successful quality podcast. Yes because you can have a successful one may not be quality. Believe it or not there's plenty of them out there in order to do it with quality. There are certain things you have to do. First of all you have to make sure you understand what the reason is you're doing your podcast. That's one of the important things. The second thing is you got to take care of your guests must make sure that you stay in communication with them. The third thing is if you're on a podcast tour if you're doing other podcasts make sure you take care of the host of that podcast. And Tom has done that brilliantly with having host pages and having their listeners come to view what we're doing over here. So there's a lot of mutual stuff going on there. You want to promote that. And one of the critical elements of all is quality and by quality there's a whole bunch of things that go behind it but the biggest thing is audio. Make sure you have a setup that sounds good. Most people could put up with lousy audio for a little while but if it's a consistent ongoing thing you're going to lose listeners faster than you could possibly imagine. So quality should be that watchword that keyword that you use in everything you do in communication with your guests in the audio files you generate in the content you produce in the show notes and the transcripts and the links and all of that. Always use that word and keep that word in mind quality because that's how you become a success.

[01:05:18] Awesome awesome awesome. So this has been Episode 139 and remember next Monday I'll be doing by myself what happens in front of the scenes before I pass that file on to Larry when you put this all together I said we're pushing 150 episodes so far over I don't know when we started.

[01:05:42] Coming up on one year.

[01:05:42] Yeah. Coming up on one year I know some people don't do this frequently because it's a lot of work. So you may start once a week and then improve it but I knew I had a crew around me that could we could do three per week but you don't have to do that many but don't do once a month. That's not enough to make any impact. But at least minimum of once a week. So that's the story and I'm sticking to it. We'll have some great guests this week. The sister to this will be episode 142 next Monday. Make sure you download your freebie automation book and your podcasting white paper at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and get that app at screwthecommute.com/app while you're over there look around the entire site and you'll see exactly what we've been talking about. All right Larry thanks a lot man. Appreciate it. All right catch everybody next time.

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