242 – Podcasting done for you: Tom interviews Mike Stewart

Episode 242 – Mike Stewart Podcasts
[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 242 of Screw the Commute podcast. I'm here with one of my mentors, my audio mentor starting over 20 years ago. He got me into doing audio stuff and got me started in podcasting recently and just a good old boy. And I also you know, he's been around a long time. I've been around a long time. We're not one of these flash in the pan. People stand in in front of all an aircraft. They don't own trying to tell you how to get rich. We've been in it for the long haul. Been through thousands of customers and no complaints and no lawsuits. So when you hear this guy, he's he's the real deal now. Hope you didn't miss episode two forty one. I told you all about QR codes. These are these didn't go too well in the beginning because you had to download an app to use them. But now the cell phones will read them automatically. So they're making a big resurgence and they're really a cool way. You can get started for free, using them as a very short episode, but very powerful episode 241. On Mondays, they do an in-depth session on something that's either made me or saved me a lot of money. And on Wednesdays and Fridays, I do interviews with great entrepreneurs like Mike. All right. Make sure you grab a copy of our automation e-book. It's a $27 e-book that you get for free, at least for listening to this podcast. And it saved me seven and a half million keystrokes. We figured it out a couple of years ago, probably more than that. Now, on just one of the tips and we're not exaggerating here or we actually figured it out. So it helps you handle way more customers and prospects without pulling your hair out. So you can grab that at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and while you're at it, you might as well grab a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app and it may be there when you listen to this, but we're working on a video to show you how to use all the fancy functions. But we already have screen captures of every little screen to show you all the cool things will do. So screwthecommute.com/app. Our sponsor's the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia. It's a distance learning school which teaches legitimate techniques to make a great living, either working for someone else or starting your own online business. And I've been living this lifestyle since 1994 when the commercial internet started. So this is not any kind of book reports. This is stuff I've lived and I've turned it into a school. It's the only licensed, dedicated Internet marketing school in the country. And you can check it out in the show notes. And this is episode 242. So whenever you want to go, the show notes it's screwthecommute.com/242. And the actual school is IMTCVA.org. It's a distance learning school. So check that out when you can.

[00:03:32] Let's get to the main event. Mike Stewart is president and founder of Stewart Internet Solutions. It's an Internet consulting agency and services companies and he's located in Nashville, Tennessee. And Mike has composed countless radio jingles, television scores and produced and performed on music heard all over the world. He's worked with countless world famous musicians like those from the Atlanta rhythm section, Alicia brydges eyes, even Isaac Hayes. Think about that. He has a gold record for an 80s hit called Pac-Man Fever. It's really cool. And as a band member, he was with Buckner and Garcia at the time when they got their gold record. And he also recorded the theme to Disney's Oscar nominated movie Wreck-It Ralph back in 2012. Mike, are you ready to screw? We've been screwing the commute since I first met you I think.

[00:04:35] You know, you were the mentor that that got me going and I was trading hours for dollars. That's the only way I knew how to make a living. And I made a good living trading hours for dollars. But you are an inspiration. You were the guy that said Mike put an e-book together and I bet that was. Twenty.

[00:04:56] Eighteen and I took 20 years, had to be over 20 because I've been here at the retreat center for 18 years. And this was when I was back in Maryland. So all my goodness, it's been awhile, but.

[00:05:07] Probably what would ever have been two thousand two K?

[00:05:12] Yeah. There you go. So yeah. So we we helped each other out because you got me started in audio editing and I always I tell everybody about you. I got to the right in front of you. Here I got a cut. Imitators. So. So folks, if you want to be an audio editor now, we're going to talk about podcast today. And if you don't want to be an audio. Okay. We're gonna have a solution for you. But Mike Mikes of you originally from Atlanta. No, I'm originally from Tennessee. Oh, OK. Oh, you're back. Yeah. So you're back. But you still got a little accent there. So there's mikes as you want to be.

[00:05:48] An audio editor says first thing you gotta do is record so that he says and then you cut out what's bad and what's left is good.

[00:06:02] That's that's that's. I'll never forget that. So. So tell everybody what you're doing now.

[00:06:08] And we've got we're going to talk about podcasting today and how great it's been for your career and people that you've helped. And certainly for my thing and I pooh poohed it for a long time because nobody was making any money. But that's that's changed significantly now.

[00:06:25] Well, you know, all podcasting is and we're gonna get into more detail with that. And I want to kind of talk about what I've been doing lately is it's on demand, manageable radio. That's all it is. It's it's the fact that if the content is great, you can build an audience and then the advertiser is you. And it's a very simple principle. And and I think a lot of people become very intimidated with technology to get become a member. You were the guy that, you know, when you laugh about it, must always remember dumb it down like dumb it down. Make it easy. That's right. Hard, right. You know, and I'm going. Well, no, it's not hard. Yes, it is. You know, and. OK. OK. I believe you. Atomically.

[00:07:06] Yeah. It's not hard for you. An audio engineer with a gold record.

[00:07:10] Yeah. And but you don't need that. That's a whole nother grind. That's that's not what you need to do. But any rate, since I was a kid, you know, going all the way back into the 60s, you know, we all love the Beatles and the Stones and the British Invasion. You know, right. When rock n roll just became what it was in the end, there still millions of baby boomers that still love that period of music. Yeah. There was just so much great music from there. And of course, what you all want to do is like, you know, even John Lennon's went to an Elvis movie and said, that's a nice job, you know? You know, I wouldn't be. They wanted to be Elvis and Chuck Berry. So, you know, you're inspired by the things that you love as a kid. And of course, some most people, you know, squash that dream and go get a J-O-B and they commute. Yeah. Because that's how you're taught. Get a good education, get a good job. Get a government job. You know, all those things. I mean, that's what my dad said. I'm blessed as Rusty. So he was a pay postman. He had a good government job working for the post office. And he said, I can't wait to retire. I just can't wait to retire. And and, you know, and then he retired news bored to death.

[00:08:23] And so I always loved the thing. A friend of ours, he said something always. He said, if you're not fired with enthusiasm, you'll be fired with. Right. And so I'm enthusiastic about. What? The creation of good audio content can do for building relationships. That's what I'm passionate about. Good. A mentor, amazing, great audio content and video content. And that's why I got in in the 70s and 80s, got into records, radio jingles. And basically the only way you could deliver audio and video was either on tape or through broadcast. So I learned that business and I'm. And I was trading hours for dollars, like I said earlier. All I could do is, you know, buy equipment and rent out my equipment to do it as a service for ad agencies, radio stations, songwriters, publishers, record companies. Those were our clients. And and everybody couldn't do it. You know, it took a special skill to be an audio engineer and it took a lot of investment of equipment and a brick and mortar place. And, you know, for 20 years made a great living kid. You know, my my kids never did without. But if you talk about burnout, I'm forty five years old at the time. And I discovered this thing, the Internet and. I was fascinated with it. And I'll I'll never forget the night I saw Bill Gates on David Letterman.

[00:10:03] I was a fan of late night TV. I loved the format. In fact, you got four podcasts. You can learn a lot by watching and studying late night TV. Late night TV has a formula. They have a theme song. They come out and do a monologue. They do a bit. They have to guess a music guest and then they end with their theme. Mm hmm. Johnny Carson developed that 50 years ago. Right. And you can look at, you know, Koenen, James Corden, they all all the talk shows know that formula works, which which we love is the public. So so what I learned from that is late night TV and radio are great teachers. So when Bill Gates was on David Letterman one night, Dave says to Bill, what's the deal with this Internet thing? And of course, Bill, I thought in his great wisdom and say, well, it's the information superhighway. Al Gore invented it. It's gonna change the world. You'll be able to buy underwear and socks, you know, with the click of a mouse. You know, I thought he's gonna that's what I thought he was gonna say in nineteen ninety seven. I think when the show was on and Bill said, well you know what. You'll be able to listen to the radio on your computer. And my ears perked up, I said, oh, my God.

[00:11:20] The Internet is radio and television. And I understand radio and television, the principles of how it works.

[00:11:29] If the Internet is radio and television, all you got to do is be a great content creator and you can transmit your audio or your video to the world. And of course, Dave came back and says, well, that's dumb, Bill. Just listen with the radio on your radio. He's abroad. He's old school, right? Yes. He didn't get it. Bill Gates in nineteen ninety seven said he predict the future. Netflix, Hulu, podcasting, streaming audio. I mean all the things that we take for granted. Nobody and I had no idea that that the cell phone, the smartphone was gonna be arriving in the next 10 years. And I actually tell people all Tom-Tom. I said what do you call this thing? I'll hold up. I'll hold up my iPhone and I'll say, what do you call this thing? And baby say, woops, the phone said, no, it's a computer a million times more powerful than the computer that got man on the moon. Right. It just happens to have a phone in it. And it's connected to the Internet. It is a transistor radio. It is a television set. It is a grocery ordering device. It is a it's a of a hotel. Booker, it's a car booker. I mean, the innovations because of this powerful smartphone computer. Has the world's embraced it? I mean, to the point of nine and a half billion devices in the world, not counting tablets, home devices and computer, a lot of places aren't even putting in phone lines anymore.

[00:13:01] They're giving out cell phones because, well, you're super.

[00:13:05] Now, you know, I mean, land landlines is so 80s.

[00:13:09] I mean, people in Africa that don't have that have a dirt floor, have cell phones. Right. Right. Yes. And I call it another called smartphones because they make you feel so stupid when you can't cover it.

[00:13:22] Wow. You know, it's it's it's just they didn't call it software. They called it apps because it's a powerful computer and it's connected to a network that can get on the Internet. It is the ability for us to get our great content to that device and more that, you know, because of Bluetooth technologies. Smartphones connect to the dashboard of cars. Now they're they're putting in apps right in the dashboard. You know, and they're you know, they're putting 4G and 5G connections. So the connectivity. For audio and video content, it's we're not waiting on it. It's here.

[00:13:59] Yeah, it's the podcast listenership has exceeded XM Radio and it's free.

[00:14:05] Absolutely. It's because the cream rises to the top and and the beautiful part is in the old model of broadcasting. And I don't know if I ever told you about Ted Turner story, but you need millions of listeners for a network. Or you need hundreds of thousands of listeners for a local broadcaster, like a radio station or TV station to sell third party advertising. Right. OK. And a lot of podcasters, especially old radio people, don't get podcasting. They think build a podcast and go find an advertiser.

[00:14:42] And that's not your model. That's not my model not go into detail about that. Here's what's established. The reach in the of the radios are in place, the transmitter is in place, make great content. That's it.

[00:14:59] That's it, then. The only advertiser is what makes you money. And be sure to have lots and lots of things. And at least high ticket items such as consulting. I know the consulting business is supposed to just explode because there are so many baby boomers with great expense experience that young people want and they rather get it through a podcast and get it, you know, on a on a vinyl album or a CD. They don't worship a seedy. They want to. They want this it on the phone.

[00:15:29] Well, also, I was doing some research on promoting my school and the school promotion consultant said don't bother with webinars for the younger crowd. They won't sit down and watch him. There's going to be audio. And still I've always been preaching. Audio is the only mic medium where you can learn and do stuff while you're doing something else.

[00:15:54] So you only laugh. Yeah, and I know I got off on another tangent. Could you said, what am I doing today? Well, I kind of want to lay this foundation, you know. And the foundation is I'm a musician. I believe a very good one. I'm a creative guy. And I recognize that the Internet and and mobile devices, all of the mobile devices, whether it's a dashboard or a car or a home device like an Alexa.

[00:16:19] They're all mobile devices.

[00:16:23] Ah, there are the transistor radios and the television sets of today. And, you know, it's like my kids, they don't even own TV sets. They watch everything on their phones. Right. Right. And and so the the the infrastructure is in place. But the difference between the infrastructure of the 40s, 50s and 60s of radio on television, the broadcast that I studied in the 70s and 80s.

[00:16:46] Is that everybody wasn't allowed. Now, the words you could be most creative human being in the world, you unless you paid big money, you weren't getting your content on cable TV or television or even radio. You know, you could buy time on radio, but, you know, you could lose a lot of money to find out. Nobody cares.

[00:17:07] Right. And so the thing that I love about the Internet and podcasting, the principles of radio and television that I worked many years to understand and and know how to work in that world apply to today because all those old principles.

[00:17:29] And that's where a lot of the younger generation are ignoring the old principles that work. But everybody's welcome. And you don't need hundreds of thousands of listeners to make money. You just need your audience that knows, likes and trust you two to connect and engage with you.

[00:17:48] I used to say podcasting is the only social media that you own and control. You know, I've had I've had businesses of all time help me with my social media. I say, well, what media are you making worth being social, you know? You know, if the content you know, if you're just Posten, you know, happy Valentine's Day and cute little bunny rabbits. Great. You're just clutter.

[00:18:10] No, no. You need to post important stuff like what you had for lunch. Yeah, that's what my wife does. All right. Let me lay some groundwork here, though, so I'm OK. Because, you know, I want my podcast to compete at the highest levels. So, you know, I got a good microphone. I got a mixing board here. I got a computer interface. I got to backup things here. I got a compressor limiter. All this stuff you told me 20 years ago to get it, I refuse to get.

[00:18:45] But now you don't have to do that. If you got a really I mean, one of the things you should have is a decent microphone. But there's ways and you have a way that people can get in podcasting without all this big array of stuff. And I had to have pay 50 bucks an hour to have somebody hook it up for me.

[00:19:07] Then I try to Windows 10 computer. And then, you know, I went down to the Mac store and I said, hey, if I was going to shoot a Windows 10 computers, should I use a pistol or a shotgun because it kept failing, it would work.

[00:19:21] And then it would the guy would leave. And the next day I'd boot it up and it would work again. It was just crazy. So I got to a Mac to run it. So I had to buy a Mac. And so I had to do all this stuff to do a high quality podcast. Tell them how they could do it with just a good microphone.

[00:19:39] Well, you know, that's the whole thing is that, you know, Tom doesn't do anything halfway. And you've never done that. You've always been a you were a successful speaker. When I met you 20 years ago and you were a successful marketer. And so, you know, you spend the money to do it. Right. And for the production. Yeah. Well, and and if you if budget is no issue, it's not what I was buying equipment to, to be an audio engineer with a recording studio and compete in the Atlanta market. You know, I was borrowing hundreds of thousands. I said one time, I have so many lanes on my house, it caved in, you know, because I didn't you know, I wasn't. My dad didn't have the money. I couldn't go to family and borrow the money. You know, a multitrack tape recorder was, you know, thirty thousand dollars. None. That's all the reason I got Ellen. Yeah. I got out of the studio business because I saw that a laptop computer and a microphone was a recording studio. Exactly. And and I and I look at let's relive that that conversation. I don't remember who introduced us. But I get on the phone and Tom says, and this is what Tom says to me. He says, Mike, I travel a lot as a speaker. Huh? I have a really hot, powerful laptop of the day. I wonder what laptop you had 20 years ago. But it was the laptop. I said it has a USB port. He says, What do I need to make? Record audio and edit audio. So as an audio engineer, I said to you. Well, you need a large diaphragm condenser microphone, big microphone. You need a shot. Now you need a pop filter.

[00:21:23] You will probably want to put it on some sort of scissor boom or a bone stand. You need an exile or cable. You need to plug XM our cable into a compress compressor memory from the one. Or do you need to have a multi-channel mixer? Now, you wanna make sure the mixer has phantom power so that the power, the microphone. And then then you're going to need a USB to line level interface and then you'll need some digital software something. And I recommend Sony Sound Forge. But there's a lot of out there. There's gold wave of laughing.

[00:21:48] I remember this conversation vividly and I want to share with folks as a audio engineer. I'm basically saying how to spell cat. OK. Now get the perspective here. Now, Tom is a very brilliant man. I would never tell him on a podcast or to his face that he's a dummy. I would never do that. He. He could. He could level me. So I've I've never gone and. My buddy Tom. But I thought that was dumb down. And Tom said that's too much that I don't exactly use. It is too hard. That's too complicated. Dumb it down. Might make it simpler. Is it simpler?

[00:22:37] I said, yeah. That's about as simple as it gets. He said, Huh? He says we'll see if it see if you can figure out how to do it simpler. And I'll never forget this, folks. This, this. I'm almost gonna cry. I think about this.

[00:22:51] He says, here's my credit card number. Go figure out what I need and tack on a couple hundred bucks for yourself. And I said, oh, no, Tom. I'm glad to help out a friend of a friend. He said, no, your information is worth it to me. And that was an aha moment for me, Tom. And that so should be an aha moment for you as well. I mean, I didn't value my own information. I thought it was water, you know, like you're asking for a glass of water. And you told me it was champagne and I should charge for it.

[00:23:24] So anyway, yeah, I hate me and get to where I am. I don't forget pivotal moments in my life.

[00:23:31] So that tells me I forgot. I forgot that one. Well, I if you want to edit this out, that's a no no. I forgot that. But I didn't just like I I remember that vivid phone call.

[00:23:46] So I'll never forget I went to the music store because the music store is where musicians go by recording equipment, microphones and such. And I called you back and I said, Tom, I found a microphone, a box and software, and you plug the microphone into the box and you plug the box into the computer and it works.

[00:24:04] He says, Send it to me. You remember that? I remember that.

[00:24:08] And then then it's software. It's you know, it's not tape. Back when I was recording, it was, you know, multi-track tape. It was, you know, magnetic tape. And you had to put the reels on the machine and you run the machine back and forth. Now, I mean, it was just it was like. And you edited it with a razor blade. I remember when Digital Audio came about in 92, I had the first ProTools system in Atlanta. And we were like, you know, kids in the candy store highlighting what was bad. And what was left was good running backs where that came from. And in fact, I've got it here. I've got it. I'm going to show you this. This is this is an old audio trip. We used to record a lot of narration and I got a box here. I still keep this as a reminder.

[00:24:57] I've got a whole I'll come. I'll send you one of these. I got in it are all sitting right here somewhere. You I'll go through. I don't go, but they don't go bad.

[00:25:07] But any right back then, you couldn't mark your edits. So we found these clickers. In fact, Otta send you one, hey, this got my old phone number on it.

[00:25:16] This is good. Your eyes. I think I learned from you without I didn't have the clickers, so I just snap my fingers.

[00:25:24] We used to give the voice guy a clicker and when he made a mistake he would click and that mark the mistake on digital. And that's because the old programs didn't have marking. So we learned to market with a clicker.

[00:25:35] So anyway, I still actually do. But snapping a finger?

[00:25:39] Well, it's nice that I figured out you could snap your fingers. Didn't have to remember the clicker. I've got a handful of left I want to mail you just for all. That's not great. So any rate, my point that I'm getting across, too, is all these digital principles.

[00:25:53] Became evident that people could do it themselves. And you weren't. Like I said, you were a big inspiration. This is pre podcasting. We were talking about making audio.

[00:26:00] So yeah, making what was even CD was a tape sometimes about distributing on cassette in the early days.

[00:26:10] Right. Right. So. So at any rate. As as time went on, we learned more and the Internet really became a broadcast medium. YouTube came along, proved that people will watch television on the Internet. Netflix proved that Netflix is in fact it was entertaining. Last week I saw a publishing, a broadcast publisher magazine mentioned that now CBS network is streaming. Having streaming only shows. I mean, they're at the Star Trek thing. You can't get on CBS television. You have to join their membership site.

[00:26:49] Just about had to get in the game because Hulu and Netflix and Cluedo and all these other ones were just still in their business.

[00:26:57] They said they had to get in.

[00:26:59] So. So obviously, you know, get up, get a show on Netflix. That's that's. That's wonderful. But everybody can create content and get it to the world. Right next to my Netflix app is my podcast app. Mm hmm. So so that gets back to all of this experience of of creating content and and and tips and tricks and shortcuts is what my years of experience taught me. And I said, OK, everything that worked in radio and television in the 80s and 90s works today on streaming, which is that's all podcasting is. It's streaming on demand audio. It is essentially a Netflix radio station. You know, you but but you generally want to do it as a lead generator for business.

[00:27:46] And it's infinitely easier to create audio than it is video. Well, yeah. Because you don't need to worry about lighting. You can have a bad hair day and you don't want to see my hair. Right.

[00:27:59] But but it's it's just it's talk radio. It's it's up. You know, Howard Stern. I Imus in the morning.

[00:28:10] I mean, his law passed away. Really? Yeah, he did as well.

[00:28:14] But I'm just saying that we're great interviewers and talk radio. This is a form of talk radio. But the models of talk radio and going back well, like I said, the models of late night television is how you make it broadcast like. And and that's what I got excited about. In fact, I probably you know, I usually tell you, hey, you need to look at this and. And any I've ever you know, you hated PowerPoint. You hated webinars. That's OK. But, you know, you realize there's there's places for everything. If it accomplishes the goal.

[00:28:47] Tell me about the bug guy. Tell him about the bug guy.

[00:28:50] All right. So I'll tell you the story. So anyway, let's let's just assume if you're listen, this podcast, there's a reason for everybody in the world to podcast. There is. If you got something to say, you could build an audience. And if you've got a back in. Of things to sell, you can make money. So my good friend, Hal Coleman. Oh, Norfleet, an exterminator in Atlanta. And I did his Web site. I used to do a lot of local business Web sites. Back when I met you. How how? I mean, should I be on time for the time that I don't be? And and and I was really good. Tom Bakhit, when you met me at selling local business right side. You know, the Web was new. You could go to a networking meeting. How many people have a Web site and probably half the room said no.

[00:29:36] So it wasn't easy to create. Then there was my press. There was nothing in the early. I was doing front page either. Front page 90 some.

[00:29:45] Right. I had that. But I could build a nice little business Web site. So I did haoles web site. And how trusted me. That was the whole thing. He know he knew me. He liked me. He trusted me. And when I told him to do some, he didn't argue with me. And when we did these things, they worked well. He did so well with his pest control agency that in around two thousand twelve or so 2001, he sold it. He sold it for, you know, seven figures. And so now he's a night that he had a 15 year payout plan. He didn't get it in a lump sum. But he's saying, OK, I don't want to sit on my laurels and do nothing.

[00:30:25] He said, you know, I could, but he said he said, I think I got a lot of wisdom that business owners could could really benefit from. So, so listless. Talk about the model here. Here's a man with years of experience that wants to parlay his experience and to others and then charge him as a consultant or coach. Kind of similar. Some things we do mentoring programs. Call it whatever you want to. So he said. I said, what do you want to do, how? Because he was my buddy. He said, I want to be the networking ninja. And he tried that for three years. And I said, What's the networking ninja? Well, I'm everything to everybody.

[00:31:05] Not one piece of business and very rarely works.

[00:31:09] Yeah, it was it was too broad. And I said, Hal, you're a bug guy. You've killed bugs for 40 years. You know the bug business. Be the networking ninja for bug guys. Oh, OK. And I said, how do you think Bug Ghazal search will pest control advertise? So we set up pest control marketer and we set up a block. Everything that you teach in all of these hundreds of episodes. How? And I did. And so about two and half years ago, I said how podcasting is exploding, more and more people are getting them, liking them. And I said all we gotta do is just. Meet once a month and parlay the information, you know, just have a subject. Look, look, nothing is scripted this morning and we're going to a mile a minute. Yeah, that's cause passion, passion of what we love. So we started our podcast. Now how? Couldn't do technically squat. I did send him a good night. I did sell him a good microphone and he saw the value that he created a back end of training programs and a consulting. He uses Skype with his microphone and is. You don't know everything he needs to do to make his good money. And so he's able to get a good sounding podcast. And then when we get done with the shows, I do the editing and the. And all the other stuff that needs to be done with it. So two and a half years later. It keeps growing and growing, and the only people that listen to this podcast called the Pest Control Marketing Podcast are pest control owners.

[00:32:46] Because now it is not millions of them. Now there's only sixty thousand in the US. Yeah, yeah.

[00:32:54] And and we have probably two thousand of them listening to us every episode.

[00:32:58] So this is tiny numbers, folks. And where do you hear what it's meant to the hell? And the. Well.

[00:33:07] Well now because we are the number one. And if you go to Google and search pest control marketing, we dominate. And if you search pest control marketing podcast, we're everywhere. We're in Spotify, weren't we? You just like your everywhere through the commute. We're everywhere. And and if somebody found us. If they're not a pest control or like, why would I listen to the pest control marketing? You know? Well, you're not you're not interested. I mean, I hope somebody would go check it out because it's it's you could substitute any other business. And the information is still good. But we narrowed it down to our audience units that be niched it. And then we started advertising house coaching program, our membership site, our annual avante and everything that we can think of that is a higher ticket item. I don't want to sell a five dollar e-book. We give e-books away. I learned this from Tom years ago. We we wrote an e-book called How to Grow Your Pest Control Business. We give it away at how to throw you control, how to how to grow your pest control business.com. You know, it's a lead generator. We advertise the book on the podcast. We give it away free. And then that builds our list to advertise the podcast.

[00:34:24] And in the podcast, we do consistently for things. Subscribe to us. Share. We'll see what we have for sale. Tune in next week. I mean, no.

[00:34:38] No. So you're interviewing him. All right. That's the format for this.

[00:34:42] Well, the format for us is it's Mr. Online, Mr. off-line. We've got to stick like a T like, not sugar.

[00:34:51] You know, it's like, hi, my commissaire online. Hi. How honest are off-line? Today we're going to talk about vehicle graphical.

[00:34:59] One of our biggest show was had graphics put on the side of your truck. Another one is jingles. Was very pop, at least we had a client and let me liberté the results. It built a six figure coaching program for how it sent all kinds of new clients that I sell domains hosting. In other words, I have back inside services and we get leads every week. I've been listening to your podcast. You guys are great. What do we got to do to get started? That that's what is the written result. I've probably generated more. Off the radar business that most people, you know, why go to a podcasting meetup, which I do here in Nashville, and they say, what's your podcast about how to promote your bug business? They laugh a lot. Why would you do that? Because how Mike's over a hundred grand a year. All the stuff. The business. He gets an X. He could do more, but he only want and wants to work two days a week here. He doesn't work five days where he goes hunting and fishing during turkey season nearly right now.

[00:36:12] And I don't want to. It's a lifestyle business. It's a lifestyle. Remember, you're on your boat doing stuff.

[00:36:18] I continue to do that. So you go to Lake Delton in Tennessee. Oh, I got to have a man. You got to come down here. I live on Percy Priest Lake Man. OK.

[00:36:28] What was the lake up in the IT linear in Georgia?

[00:36:31] And then we got Old Hickory Lake after the. Who was the president? That was Old Hickory. Andrew Jackson, the adult. I live about five minutes from his old mansion. And that's why it's Old Hickory Lake, because he was called Old Hickory. So any rate, as we do our podcast, we realize that the elements and the models of radio and television still work because what you're doing, it's still human beings listening to content. And when you don't speak with enthusiasm that you when you don't give great information, when you don't break it up and say now a word from our sponsor and and you don't have same music. In fact, if you remember when you started. I'm proud to say I am the composer.

[00:37:22] That's right. I forgot. Yeah. The opening to this show and the closing was Mike's music.

[00:37:28] That's right. You know, you need music. You need you need all the elements of radio to sound like radio because you don't. You know, there's a lot of people that that record really poorly recorded content. There's no music. There's no transitions are no ads. There's no self-promotion. That's nothing technical. That's just the map. Cross the T's and dot the I's of your of your content.

[00:37:52] They're just ego. They're just, you know, hearing themselves talk. But I mean, this is money. We want money for this. And then like. So. So my model and the model that you're just talking about, there's Cee Cee, folks. You can get a lot of podcasters are just trying to get sponsors. Well, here's the the cold reality of that.

[00:38:12] You can make between twelve and twenty five dollars per thousand downloads. And is think of Mike Show and niche market, even if he had two thousand downloads for an episode.

[00:38:27] Maybe they made 50 bucks for that episode. That's crazy.

[00:38:32] So saw, you know, it didn't ever work.

[00:38:34] Exactly. It's just not worth the trouble. So. So you want to develop your. You know, it's OK to start that way if you have nothing. But you want to immediately develop your own products and make yourself the sponsor, for instance. My school was the sponsor. My mentor program is the sponsor. My professional speaking mentor program is the sponsor on some episodes. You know, hundred-dollar and UPF products are sponsors on some episodes. So that's where you can make the money very quickly with very small amount of audience to start with because everybody starts with a small audience. And so you don't have to wait and build up for years if you're even lucky, because there's a lot of podcasters coming out now. You don't have to do it if you use our model. So tell them how they could get started with this right away. Because there's another thing that we we see is a lot of people want podcasts, but they never get started. They just look at a big mountain in front of them. But I don't know what to do, how to get started. In this case, Mike has a service where you do all you've got to do is get a decent microphone. If you have a computer and tell him, tell him about it.

[00:39:48] Ok. Well, what I was doing for how is the reason we were successful is because Hal didn't have to do the hard parts. All he had to do is show up.

[00:39:59] Would this have happened if hell had to go set up this big mess I have now? No, it would never happen.

[00:40:05] Never happened in a million years. I used to get on stage and say, if you go to Wikipedia and type in technophobe, there's a picture of how you know of how is a sweetheart. He's brilliant, man. He's not a dummy. But when it comes to technology, he struggles. And that's the mindset of a lot of people I've worked with over the years. And I built a course on how to do it yourself and I. And you help. We did a webinar. We did a restaurant, and I sold a lot of that course. But I can watch what people do and I don't think. I hate to admit this, but not many people. I'm not gonna give you a real number, but a majority of the people got excited. They didn't ask for a refund. They're not mad at me.

[00:40:48] I agree. Course, it was a great cause.

[00:40:50] It's just they just something overwhelm them, too. They went. I give up.

[00:40:58] Now, I thought what if I created a service that was profit that was worth my time. You know, I'm kind of disguising coaching as a service. Yeah, but the result is all you've got to do is show up and answer questions.

[00:41:17] On a decent microphone, on a decent microphone plugged into your computer, that's all you got into your computer.

[00:41:23] And of course, there is ease. There's great mind. There's great microphones out there, Snowball and Yeti and Rowden all there's a thousand. And, you know, finding the microphones, I'll send you a link. I don't even sell microphones anymore.

[00:41:33] Yeah, I mean, you can get a used yeti for fifty dollars on some of the buying apps like Facebook Marketplace there.

[00:41:39] They're everywhere. Yeah. The microphones are in fact. Interviewing you over Skype with your iPhone, the microphone in the iPhone is good enough to get started.

[00:41:50] Exactly. Get started. It was really high quality. You did?

[00:41:54] Well, there's there's some high end marketers of that record, their podcasts on their phone from the dashboard. In other words, they digest and you listen to it. You can hear the road noise, but you can read that they speak clearly. They have great information. And then they have a production team to dress it up with, you know, with all the other pieces of the equation. But they're, you know, all mention the names of Russell Bonson and Ryan Dyce, record their podcasts on their phone on the way to work. Mm hmm. So and I don't if you know those guys. Yeah. I'm not I'm not a I'm not promoting them. I'm just saying they're very successful in their business. I knew that I shared the stage with those guys and I listened and studied their podcasts. And I know the podcast producer for one of those guys is in my podcast group. It's like I don't get a little plug out for a podcast group. Ever come to Nashville where the Nashville podcasters. This is another thing was interesting about that. I watch that group in the last two years grow from 60 members to a thousand. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So that shows you a trend there.

[00:42:58] But just like Rutgers, a thousand doesn't mean there's a thousand in your niche. You know, whoever is. Oh, no, no. This. Yeah. There's a thousand. In fact, one of the guys in my group has the beer podcast.

[00:43:11] And all they do is sit around, talk about beer.

[00:43:13] And they have two million downloads and they have sponsors and they go to the beer belly contest for chips.

[00:43:21] So, you know, they. They laugh at my our model, but our model works. And any right with all of the national podcasters, you can even if you can't come to Nashville, their Facebook group has a lot of people that you can reach out to and get and get questions answered. But the point I'm getting crossed to is this service was was an inspiration to me. I said, what if I hold you accountable? You got to have you got to send me questions to ask you every month and I'll record it. Do everything for you. That's the service. That night I said I want I want to help some people be successful. And and that's why I told you about it as part of the things I'm doing, the things I'm doing now as I'm getting I've set up podcasts for music. We just did the Gary Morris podcast. Gary Morris was I had a hit record called Wind Beneath My Wings. He was the first hit on it. And we've got several music artists that are really izing. Nashville is full of content creators that creating great content is not their problem, but the Internet is. So that's why I moved here. So what am I doing? I'm setting up podcasts for people and in our niche of marketing speakers, coaches, consultants, people who make a living building relationships with companies. If you struggle with this, I've got I have a solution. And we'll get we'll we'll put a link here on the show, notes of how you can, you know, take part of that. But, you know, it's a done for you interviewer. In other words, hi, it's Mike Stewart and welcome to the Tom here. Antion podcast today. And Tom is an expert at speaking onstage with colorful shirts. Now, let's talk about the shirts that you wear any and and, you know, just I just ask the questions and let you answer questions and everybody can answer questions if they know their stuff.

[00:45:11] Yeah. So so basically all the you know, most of the time people have heard me say a million times that most done for you program should be called done to you programs because the people don't actually do stuff for you. But in this case, this is real. All you have to do is get on, send some questions to Mike and he does everything editing. You also set up the distribution with i-Tunes for them and all that stuff, too, right?

[00:45:41] It's it's done for you. And one of the other things that we're done and I'd love to talk about this, how are we doing on time?

[00:45:48] Because God knows we're going to wrap it up at about five minutes or so.

[00:45:52] Okay. Well, one of the things that I noticed this year and I put in podcasts and I do a whole we could do a whole another podcast on what I call sort term. Jingle YouTube ad and search term podcast ads.

[00:46:08] All right. Well, let's go. Let's do it next time.

[00:46:10] Okay. Now, if people search Antion, you are number one organically for that one word.

[00:46:19] It's kind of it's not OK. It's not like drawing. Yeah.

[00:46:25] If I search Tom Antion, you dominate Google. So those are your search terms. If people know to search your search terms, they're going to find you. Right. So what we do is we saying your search terms in a jingle. To create an earworm so that people can't get your search terms out of their head.

[00:46:51] All right, so hold on to that thought. Let's well, we get off here, we'll book another episode and go and deepen that very, very soon.

[00:46:59] So anyway. Yes, sir. Search term jingles are a very powerful. In fact, we our jingle goes Google put pest control marketing. We'll take your business to number one. Call 770-933-3000. We put our phone number, what we do and our search term. And that's the jingle. And and this will be a teaser. I'd love to do a search term. We could go a whole hour on search terms and jingles. But I'm going to do a little test with Tom and then we can we can win this up. This has been great today. Do we cover everything you once covered? Make sure of that.

[00:47:32] I just want to make sure they know everything. They would get in the service with you so you would record it, edit it, interview them, transcribe it, post it, transcribe it, post it, get them signed up with i-Tunes and all and other distribution services, too.

[00:47:50] All they gotta do is answer questions and and do it with enthusiasm. That's all I got today. There you go. And and we leave some others in because, hey, we're human normal.

[00:48:02] Yeah. I mean, it's just it's conversational is better than scripted. You don't want them reading their answers. I'm not sure. I'm sure that you will coach them a little bit on their performance if they if they have trouble with that. Because I had somebody read every answer to their question and I just stopped. You know, since we're pre-recording anyway, I said, look, you know, that sounds like you're a robot on the other end. Put the thing away and just talk to me. And it just it was 100 percent better, you know?

[00:48:32] Well, if somebody couldn't answer questions, I would refund their money and say practice and come back.

[00:48:41] You know, it is the last thing anybody that's knows their field should be able to answer questions in their field as if they were sitting across talking to a client or something. So. So it shouldn't be that hard, but it's OK to have some bullet points of things you want to remind yourself. But just don't read it.

[00:48:59] Don't write a script. Please don't write it. Just. Hi. I'm interested in that computer. What does it do? There you go. Yeah. Hey. Yeah, I have a toothache. What can you do about this toothache? You know, my my sink is leaking. What do you recommend I do?

[00:49:14] Yeah. Yeah. So this can be good for any profession.

[00:49:17] Yes. It doesn't matter what the businesses and every business can use this. So any right will.

[00:49:23] Ok. So we'll have that. We'll have that in the show. Notes for you folks. This is episode what they say, 242. Yes. So you go screwthecommute.com/242. We'll have a link there for you to to click on and. And a way to contact Mike if you have questions on anything. I'll be all there in the in the show notes for you. So. So thanks, Mike, for coming on, man.

[00:49:46] I loved it. You know, I was just looking here. I was episode number two.

[00:49:50] So I'm now two who are already, too. But, you know, we should book this other one within the next week or so. And just to do that jingle, because that's a very unique thing I want the audience to hear about.

[00:50:03] Ok. Well, all right. Let's let's talk about search terms next time.

[00:50:06] Ok. All right, folks. So. So this has been Mike Stewart, one of my mentors, and I mean the original mentor to get me to create hundreds and hundreds of audios over the last 20 years that have made me a fortune. He he bared with me with my dug a dummy it down, dummy it down. And then 20 years later, I know I cut all this crap in front of me. So.

[00:50:35] So that's the way it goes. So anyway. Thanks, Mike. And we'll catch everybody on the next episode. See ya later.

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