158 – Behind the Scenes of my Podcast (Processes, Interview Tips and How I Get Guests)

Josh 0:15
Hello, friends, welcome into the podcast. This is episode 158. The last episode of 2021. I wanted to wrap up the year with kind of a fun different style episode in this one, I’m actually going to give you a peek behind the curtain. I’m going to give you kind of a behind the scenes look at my podcast. I’ve been getting more and more questions over the last few months. And over the last really couple of years since I started my podcast, about the podcast, how I run it, how I get guests, what tools I use all that good stuff. So I figured in this episode, I would just have kind of a casual chat with you and just kind of share with you a little bit about the podcast because I think it’s a cool way to end the year. Wanted to have a little bit of fun.

Josh 0:58
And I wanted to just kind of, if you’re like me, you love knowing how things are made. Like I can’t get enough of watching behind the scenes, documentaries on Star Wars or Jurrasic Park or the Mandalorian, or whatever I’m interested in. I absolutely love that stuff. So if that’s you, I hope you enjoy this episode and getting a peek behind this podcast as well. So that we’d end the year off with a little bit of fun, shall we? So what I’m going to do is I’ve kind of just kept track of a lot of the common questions that I get. And these come from listeners, he’s come from students, these come from colleagues, these come from other podcasters. So I figured I would just kind of share with you where we’re at.

Josh 1:38
So the first question I get most often is how do I get guests, and you probably likely noticed that the guests in my podcast first off are freaking awesome. I can’t even like I was funny enough, in a couple of weeks here, I’m going to release one of the first episodes of next year of 2022. I’m going to be releasing kind of a look back at some of the top moments of the podcast for 2021. And man, I was just reflecting on some of them. Like some of the amazing guests. I’ve been fortunate to interview and I just learned from all of them so much. We’ll get to that later. But in any case, the question is, well, how do I get these guests? Actually, we’re just having a little team chat with Kam and Nathan, my, my VA and my editor who helped out with a podcast earlier today. And Nathan asks, you know, how are you getting some of these guests? Do people reach out to you? Or do you reach out to them? And the answer is both.

Josh 2:34
I would say if I could give a percentage on it, I’d say I probably reach out to get guests more often than I do get requested. For guests, probably like 70/30, I’d say about 70% of the time, I’m reaching out to guests, and I’m, you know, intentionally either reaching out to students or colleagues or people I know in the industry or people who I would love to interview if I could get the opportunity to interview them. That’s about 70%. And about 30% Are people inquiring about being on the podcast, or they just mentioned it or if you don’t know, in the podcasting world, once you have a podcast, you generally start getting some podcast proposals.

Josh 3:14
So I get generally, probably three to five of these per week, maybe less than that, depending on the week, where I get people asking, or they’re like a booking agent as simple. Essentially, they’re like, Hey, I’ve got this guest here we think might be a great fit for your show, would you be interested in having them. So I get a lot of guests that way too. But I do have to filter those out. Because I do not accept everyone who reaches out to the podcast, I want to make sure it’s somebody credible, somebody I jive with and somebody who I would feel comfortable having on the show because when I take a guess and this is a good word of advice for any of you who are interested in doing a podcast or doing interviews, when you have somebody on your show or on your, you know, channel, whatever it is, you kind of you don’t necessarily need to agree with everything they say. But you are kind of putting them in a place of recommending them as a person in their message as well. So you do have to kind of take those things with a grain of salt. I don’t necessarily want to bring somebody on who I don’t feel fits with my audience or fits with my goal and my mission.

Josh 4:17
So I say all that to say when those proposals come in, I often have to go through and I have to kind of filter them out, I have to filter them out to make sure that the kind of person I want on the show and that is going to be good for you the listener, I also want to make sure they’re in the same industry. I’ve got some that are like completely different industries. And obviously this this podcast is not just web designers, we really branch into a lot of entrepreneurialship topics as well. But at the same time, I don’t want to go like so far out of the realm that it’s not relevant to web design, business and entrepreneurialship.

Josh 4:49
So that’s kind of how I go about getting my guests is I will either ask my colleagues, my students if I have a topic in mind, or I think they’re like often Sometimes I’ll just be having a conversation with somebody in my web design club or a colleague, and they’ll mention something or I’ll see one of their trainings. And I’m like, Oh, that would be great. To dive into like, more recently, I had one of my good colleagues in the case on, I had her her podcast episode with her business partner Emma dour of the designer boss Summit. I heard them talk about setting boundaries, client boundaries, and I was like, Ooh, I would love to talk with Emma and a little more detail about that. So I just reached out, and then boom, she’s on the podcast.

Josh 5:31
So that’s kind of how that works out with with getting guests, it’s really asking colleagues reaching out to people who I would love to get on the show. And then often podcast booking agents will reach out and say, Hey, I’ve got somebody for your show might be a good fit. And that’s how I do that.

Josh 5:47
Now, a follow up question I often get is How do I get bigger guests. And the reason one reason I love the interviews I’m doing on this show is it is so right wide ranging, it is not all top tier expert status entrepreneurs or agency owners, it really is a good mix. I’ve had a lot of people on the podcast, who you likely heard and you’ve likely benefited from and got so much value from who are like in the first year of their journey. And I love that I really, really like doing that. Because I think it’s just as valuable to hear from somebody about those early lessons when they’re just getting started in their business. Because sometimes when you get a decade, or 15 or 20 years removed from the start of your journey, some of the the things that you learned in the beginning can get a little fuzzy, or you’re just you’re talking about things and six figures and seven figures that aren’t even feasible in your mind when you’re just starting out. So that’s one reason I love having bought a wide variety, excuse me of guests.

Josh 6:44
Now, the question of how do I get more bigger name guests has been pretty interesting. I’m learning more and more about that. One big thing this year was I had some really great top tier kind of entrepreneurial folks onto the podcast, including one of my biggest mentors, and one of I’m a fan of his and I follow a lot of his work, and I’m in a lot of his courses. I’m in his membership. And this is Pat Flynn, Pat Flynn was back on episode 100. And I actually when I had Pat on I had several people ask how did you get Pat? How did you land pat on your show? Well, essentially, I’ll just tell you exactly how I got Pat. Let’s see, this started out with me asking to be an affiliate for his brand Smart Passive Income because I had been through some of his courses. And because I started recommending them. I wanted to become an affiliate because I’m really working on boosting my affiliate passive income.

Josh 7:41
So I reached out to his team and I said, Hey, I’m Josh, I’m a student of Pats. I have a following myself. I’m a web design coach. I’m recommending his courses, I’d love to be an affiliate. So I got in touch with his team and they got me all set up. And then a member from their team reached back and said, Hey, Josh, I, you know, we looked at your brand, and we’re really interested in your story. And they at the time, were actually doing a feature for like, just like a an interview style questionnaire type thing. And they were going to feature on their blog on the Smart Passive Income blog. It wasn’t their podcast, it was just their blog. So I was like, Absolutely, I’d be happy to do that.

Josh 8:18
So I did this interview, I was on their blog. I’ll post that story in the links and the link in the show notes if you’d like to read that. And then I got one of the coolest emails ever. A few weeks later, I got an email from Pat Flynn. And it was his assistant who does his email and in her name is Jesse said, Hey, Josh, I think it would have said I should have pulled it up before I did this. But it basically to paraphrase it said, Hey, Josh, I have a really exciting opportunity, if you’re interested in Pat has requested that or he has shown interest in having you on the podcast if you would like to come on to be on the Smart Passive Income podcast, which is one of the top podcasts in the entrepreneurship category.

Josh 9:00
I was like, Whoa, that is freaking sweet. So absolutely, I’m done with it. So we got that all scheduled. When Pat interviewed me for the Smart Passive Income podcast, which was episode number 456 if I remember right, I’ll link that below for this episode as well. At the end of that call. I just straight up asked Pat, once we stopped recording, I said, Hey, Pat, I was like to remember exactly how I said it. I said something like, I don’t want to overstep any bounds. So please, you know, feel free to let me know if you’re not able to do this, but I’m coming up on episode 100 In my podcast, and I would love to feature you as a special guest because you’ve been such a big influence and big part of my journey. Would you like to be my featured guest for episode 100? And he said, dude, I’d be happy to do that.

Josh 9:45
So that’s how I got Pat Flynn. It was started with an affiliate program where I just got accepted. They did a feature on me. And then that feature worked its way up to pat and then his assistant reached out I got the interview with him and then I asked And this is the big thing. This is something I want to encourage you to think about because I don’t want to just share everything that I’m doing and you thinking like, Oh, Josh is so awesome, good. That’s that’s not what this is about. I want you to take the lessons that I’m learning and implementing to help you as well. In in this case, it is just to ask, there is no harm in asking. And I’ve asked a lot of other people to be on my podcast, and they’ve either not gotten back to me or had to decline for some reason. But Pat said, Sure. And if he would have said, Man, I’m sorry, I just can’t commit to that right now. I would not have been offended, it would not have been a bit like you have to get used to whether it’s interviews or sales or anything in business, you have to get used to denials and not landing every time you ask something.

Josh 10:43
So but in this in this case, Pat agreed. And I was like, Wow, that’s awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So that’s how I got Pat Flynn on my podcast for episode 100.

Josh 10:52
Now, a couple of other big guests that I’ve had more recently I’ve had a couple James actually, I’ve had three James three, James’s three, James, what’s the plural on that? Three James’s that’s we’ll go with that. Recently, I had the CEO of WPM you, Dev, James Farmer. I’ve had James Rue from Gravity Forms, and I had my Business Coach James Schramko, with superfastbusiness.com and he is the author of one of my favorite entrepreneurial books, work less make more. How did I get all those guests? Well, with James Farmer from WPMUdev it worked almost exactly like the Pat Flynn thing did because I asked to be a part of their affiliate program, they had reached out with some sponsorship opportunities for some of my content. And I said, yeah, that’s, I’d be happy to do that. I’d love to be an affiliate. And then I just asked the guy I was talking to, I said, Would anybody on the WPM you dev team, be interested in coming on my podcast? And I heard back a day later, and they said, Yeah, it looks like our CEO, James would. And I was like that, that is awesome. I wasn’t expecting that.

Josh 11:54
So that’s how I got James Farmer James drew from he’s the community experience and content guy from Gravity Forms who had me on their podcast called input. I did the same thing with him. I actually signed up to be an affiliate for Gravity Forms. And I asked the same thing. I said, Do you guys have anyone on your team who might want to come on to my podcast? They referred me to James, who had me on the Gravity Forms podcast called input. And then I just asked James after that. I said, Hey, I’ve really enjoyed talking with you. Would you like to come on my show? And he agreed.

Josh 12:25
And then James Schramko. My business coach, that was a little easier, even though he is a top tier entrepreneur, just because he is my business coach. So once I had my podcast going, I just messaged him, and I wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to or if he would say yes, but I said, Would you like to come on my podcast? And he agreed to it? He said, Absolutely, I’d love to. So that was episode one, a one by the way, with James Schramko. So that is how I’ve got a lot of my bigger guests. And one final example on getting guests. In the next episode that you’re going to hear it will be the first episode of 2022. I’ve got WordPress legend, and none other than Troy Dean of agency Mavericks coming on to the show.

Josh 13:07
And what’s funny about getting Troy on the show is I had reached out to him a couple times through a website and through Facebook Messenger and never heard back but again, didn’t take it personal. It’s likely he didn’t even see those inquiries. But I did see that he had commented on another one of my colleagues post, which another James know a lot of James is James rose, the founder of content snare, one of my good buddies. I just saw that Troy had commented on one of James’s Facebook posts. So I just emailed James and I said, Hey, James, I have been trying to get a hold of Troy, I would love to get him out of the podcast, would you be able to make an introduction for me and James did and Troy said, Absolutely. I love to be on the show. And that’s how I got Troy.

Josh 13:50
So that is just an actual inside look at how I’ve practically got some of the guests on my podcast of late. So hope you took some inspiration and tips out of that, which if I could sum up some tips for that it would be to don’t necessarily try to go right to the top. Use your existing network and colleagues and kind of work your way up. There’s always going to be a different method like, no, no random person is going to email Pat Flynn and Pat Flynn say yeah, I don’t know you or know anything about you. But sure, I’ll do your show. Like he’s a busy guy, he’s got a team, you got to kind of figure different ways to get to the top people. Sometimes you have to work your way through the B’s or the C’s as type of people who are assistants or virtual type of folks working for them. And then sometimes you just need to start with affiliate programs.

Josh 14:35
And I would say to, you’re never just gonna have random talks with these people. They’re never just gonna do a call. It’s one benefit of having a podcast and any type of show is your it’s gonna open the doors to talk with a lot of cool, amazing people. But again, my goal for this podcast is not just to talk with experts and talk to your entrepreneurs. I love talking with everybody across the spectrum you get equal amounts of value. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed that guts. benefit from that. And again, just remember, just ask there’s no shame and just asking.

Josh 15:06
Now one question I often get is tools are tools, what tools you use for your podcast? The cool thing about a podcast is if you just do audio, it’s actually very, very simple even doing video, I record the interviews and we post those on YouTube. But it’s, I’m just using zoom for that I just use Zoom to record the interviews, I might upgrade to a different software one day, but excuse me for right now, Zoom seems to be fine. But the big question is, how do you get your podcast to all of the directories like Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts and all the other stuff?

Josh 15:40
Well, there’s a couple different Well, there’s quite a few different software’s for this, but I use a platform called Buzzsprout. I love Buzzsprout. But sprout is really user friendly. It’s really sleek, it’s been a solid foundation for this podcast. Cool thing about that is I upload the video or the file the audio file to Buzzsprout. Actually, I don’t upload it now. We’ll talk about that next. But you upload it to Buzzsprout. And then it automatically kicks out to all the directory. So I am not manually posting an episode up to Apple for Apple podcast into Google, then the Spotify I am, all I’m doing is putting it in Buzzsprout. And then through Buzzsprout, you can set the parameters and set the connections for it to go out to the channels you want.

Josh 16:24
So love Buzzsprout if you are considering starting your own podcast, I can’t recommend them enough. Go to Josh hall.co/buzzsprout and you will get a special deal because I am a part of their affiliate program as well if you would like to try them out if you’re doing a podcast. So Buzzsprouts the main tool I use.

Josh 16:41
Really, as far as the other tools like as far as I’m not going to cover necessarily my studio setup our gear, I am gonna do a video coming up pretty soon about all the recent tech that I got and the microphone I use and stuff like that. But the good thing is, with a podcast, as long as it sounds decent, you do not need to have a huge fancy microphone like I have. I’m using the Procaster microphone, the RODE Procaster microphone, if you’re curious, does have like a boom stand and stuff. So but you don’t need to go that wild. I was for a long time using a Blue Yeti mic, which those are like 100 200 bucks on Amazon, I still use that mic for some stuff, although I use my legit mic that you’re hearing right now, which is my Procaster.

Josh 16:41
And then you can basically, without going too far into the gear. There’s a diff to all types of gear from premium to to less expensive, like a Blue Yeti mic that can help you out with a mic. Now one question I get is what do I record with? Well, I generally do all my videos through Screenflow for Mac, which is just a Mac platform. But there’s also Camtasia for screen recording, but you can do audio recording. And then I’m actually recording this right now through QuickTime Player. Because I’m not doing a video of this, I’m just recording the audio, I just do audio for my solo episodes. I just do QuickTime to record the audio, it’s worked fine every time. Knock on wood. Have you heard that to make sure hopefully this doesn’t stop on me, that would be very likely that I say it works fine, then it would like crash or something. But I just use either Screenflow for Mac, to do editing and then QuickTime just to record audio.

Josh 16:41
And then I will use a couple other tools that are in the toolbox here, which will transition to the next question I get. Because I have scaled the podcasts and because I don’t just do it myself. Now, the question is how do you keep track of episode titles and all that kind of stuff? Well, two things I use, I use Google Docs that’s actually just a Google spreadsheet to basically keep track of all the episodes that are upcoming. And then that helps my team, which we’ll talk about next because they can keep track of all the episodes and where they are. And then I just use Google Drive for actually uploading the audio files and any graphics and things like that, for the episode to be distributed.

Josh 18:58
Now. The next question, what has the I guess I often get questions about because I’ve made it known that I don’t do everything in my podcasts anymore, right? I did. I started doing everything in my podcasts about 50 episodes in, I hired my wonderful VA Kam, who now does all the distribution. She does the transcriptions, she excuse me, transcriptions, she does the show notes. She does all sorts of district distributions for the podcast, and then at 100 episodes in I hired Nathan, good old time a colleague of mine who does the editing so he actually edits the video and the audio puts all the graphics together and then gets out already for cam who takes it over and does the show notes and trips, clips and and so on.

Josh 19:42
So a lot of the questions I get is how what is my role now since I’ve started scaling this and this is the really cool thing about delegating and hiring somebody, whether it’s a team member or subcontractor to do stuff for you. Even if you don’t do your own podcast. This is just a good rule. For business in general, I have freed myself up dramatically to be able to focus on creating better content for you, the listener to really work on better interview skills and really get my focus to the interview because now I’m not bogged down and doing all the actual work for editing and distribution. And I picked this up from Pat Flynn and episode 100. Because he told me that he was similar. He liked editing his podcast, but he knew he could not serve his audience to the best of his ability if he is stuck in the weeds in editing his podcast.

Josh 20:36
So I took that to heart, I listened to somebody who was way ahead of me in the game. And I actually applied what he said. And it’s worked amazing. Because since having Kam, do the outlines and the transcriptions and stuff and posting the actual episodes, and then having Nathan doing the editing audio, with video and doing the graphics, that has freed me up so dramatically, to be able to, again, focus on content and focus on interviews. So all I do for the podcast now is I book the guests, I do everything I talked about with how I get my guests, I will kind of have an idea of the next couple months or so for topics and what topics I think might be a good fit and where we need to switch around interviews and stuff like that.

Josh 21:19
And then I just record the episodes, and then I still will write up the initial description for the episode that you see when you get emails from me which if you are not on my email list, I definitely recommend going to just go to Josh Hall co you can sign up to get aqworlds Go to Josh hall.co/podcast. And you can sign up to get the podcast emails, I we email every time there’s a podcast up. And when you see the initial description, I do write that. And then Kam does the outline in the timestamps and the full transcription and linking and all that stuff. And she actually posts the episode on my website now too, which is really, really handy for me.

Josh 21:56
So literally, all I do is I record the episode, I upload the files to Drive in the right number. And then I in Google Docs, I have a little templates saved with any special links I mentioned or want to feature and then I write up a quick description. And then the team takes it from there. And it’s freaking awesome. Like it is really the best. So hopefully, that’s a little inspiration for you to start to scale if you’re interested in your business as well. Because even just I did it one step at a time started with having Kam do outlines and then eventually we added more to it. And now it’s a full blown thing. And the same thing with Nathan, I had him start doing editing and then doing the graphics and it’s really freed me up to focus on the bigger picture stuff. So thank you, Kam and Nathan, sincerely for helping me out with that.

Josh 22:44
Now, as we get ready to wrap this talk up, there’s a couple other questions I’ve been getting more recently that I thought you might find interesting if you’re still with me to this point. And that is one of them is the secret to interviewing. So I get a lot of questions about how do I interview? Do I have like a bullet list of points that we will cover in depth? Do I have? You know, like a paragraph of text that I try to get through? The answer is more so now, not at all. I’ve Well luckily since I’ve been doing hundreds of podcasts now, I’ve learned how to interview better. I feel like I don’t know maybe if you’ve seen this too, if you’ve been a listener for some time. Or maybe if you’re just new to the podcast and you listen to some of the earlier episodes, you might hear a difference in my interview style and my questions, or my rambling or the words that I make up all my filler words. But I have learned I feel to interview better to have more concise questions to have better questions. But I really do not follow a guided bullet list like time sensitive type of format.

Josh 23:50
I, I don’t like podcasts, that you try to fit a huge topic into 20 minutes and you’re trying to just rush through the points to be done. That is not what I’m about nothing against those type of podcasts. I don’t really care for them. And I think those conversations lend themselves to really surfacey talk without being real and transparent and tactile because I feel like a lot of the interviews on the podcast here. They’ve just got better and better like every 15 to 20 minutes. So I was just listening to back to as I get ready to release the episode in the next couple of weeks here have the look back on this year. Some of the episodes that I feature like it was the end of the talk where it was like really, really good, which is sometimes over an hour in.

Josh 24:31
So anyway, I’m not big on having a time sensitive style podcast. I like the long form. I don’t know how you listen to your podcast, but for me, I’ll listen to one podcast if it’s an hour, an hour and a half or longer. Over a couple days I might listen to it in the car. I might listen to it when I’m on a walk or doing dishes. And I just listened to one podcast numerous times. That’s why I’m not. That’s kind of why I love podcasting. There’s no reason to rush yourself. Yeah, you might get some you might get a higher number count of episodes. You’re shorter, but I’d rather focus on quality over quantity and you listening, your quality. You are a quality listener because you like I’m guessing you like things that are in depth and detailed and real and not surfacey. You want actual results, which are hard to get with quick service he talks.

Josh 25:18
So it’s one reason I love podcasting. And as far as interviewing goes, It’s one reason I tell my guests, you know, sometimes we’ll go over an hour if you need to be done in an hour, no problem, let me know, we’ll make sure we get you out. But I don’t want to do a rush 25 minute talk. But I have learned some secrets to interviewing. The number one secret I’ve found to a good interviewer is curiosity. It alleviates all the stress of trying to think of the perfect question or trying to figure out exactly where the conversation should go. I mean, guiding the conversation is a biggie when you’re interviewing people. But the biggest thing that I’ve found that way, I’m never like, Oh, crap, I don’t know what to ask now is just to be curious. I am genuinely curious about every person I talked to, and topic that we’re going to dive into.

Josh 26:06
And this goes back to how I filter those proposals that come in. Because if if somebody is in an industry or a, you know, they have talking points that I’m just not terribly interested in, then I don’t want to dive into that necessarily. I want to talk with people who I’m curious about and curious about what they know and what they’ve experienced. So curiosity, Curiosity is huge, because it will open up all the questions you ever need for a good talk. And honestly, one of the thing for interviewing one of the secrets to that is I try not to put too much pressure on it to be super polished. Like I don’t know exactly where the conversations gonna go. I don’t like to have bullet lists.

Josh 26:43
Occasionally, if there are like some episodes are a little more like, Okay, we’ve got five things we want to talk about. I think about recently, when I had my buddy Tim strife ler on and we talked about site speed, we had like five points that we wanted to get to. So I knew we would get to each one of those. But in most of my interviews, it’s very open ended. And I like that we do have a topic in mind. And I kind of have an end goal for where I want to end off on that episode. So you have some takeaways. But I like like some of the best points I’ve ever discovered in this podcast as a learner, when I’m talking with somebody, we’re not planned, like, we did not plan to talk about this, it just happened. And that’s some of the best conversations. And at the end of the day, a podcast is just that it’s a conversation.

Josh 27:29
If you want to do a fancy planned out video, interview, you can but a podcast, mostly, I think there’s a shift in and what’s going on now, particularly in entrepreneurialship. And in podcasts, were just having a good old conversation is key. Like that’s what people want to hear. People want to be a fly on the wall and hear really good conversation with people who are being open and transparent and real and helpful. That’s what it’s all about, in my mind at least and I think yours too. So that’s why I love not feeling the pressure for the perfect conversation I, I have a topic and we have a topic, we have a goal in mind to get to. And I’ll try to guide the conversation to hit certain things or you know, cut somebody off if they’re rambling on too far. But we don’t need bullet lists to go through each one. And it really is just all down to curiosity for doing a really good interview. Because if you’re curious, and you ask good questions, and you empower your guests to be open and real, they will do that.

Josh 28:27
And that’s another little tip I have for you. That’s not mentioned here in my notes. But if you are transparent and real and open up with your guests that will make them feel comfortable to do the same. Because if you’re stiff and rigid and awkward, and you’re trying to stick to the script, like a you know, like a newscaster, the guest is going to feel like that too. And they’re not going to feel necessarily open to share everything that they’re really feeling. So the more open and transparent you are and curious you are the helpful, the more helpful it is for the guests. So yeah, yeah, that’s kind of how some of my tips and secrets for interviewing now.

Josh 29:01
Last thing I want to talk about here real quick is a lot of people are wondering, sometimes it’s my family who still don’t quite know what I do. And they’re like, so you have a podcast right? By how does that? Like? Do you get paid for the podcast? How does that help grow your business? That’s the question I’ve gotten a lot more recently is how does a podcast help grow your business? Well, you could 100% monetize a podcast with sponsors, but I don’t do that right now. I do not have sponsors on the podcast. So technically, I don’t make any money directly through my podcasts although the video versions of the interviews do go on YouTube and those have I do have monetization on my YouTube videos. So I might get a little bit on there. But I technically do not make any money right now directly through my podcast because I’m not currently taking on sponsors.

Josh 29:51
Maybe I will one day I don’t know but right now, I kind of like having a sponsor free. But I do pay for this podcast through my courses. My Courses support everything. And my web design club. Those are that’s how you pay me through my courses and through my web design club. And that’s how I get back to you. With all this free content. Those are what keeps the business going and keeps the engine running.

Josh 30:15
As you’ll know, if you’ve been listening for a while, generally, I will feature a course depending on the topic for the episode. And I’ll, you know, I try not to be overly salesy, but I will sprinkle in courses and a web design club or whatever I think will, will be applicable to that episode to help you. But again, that’s what fuels this podcast, I could not have this podcast if I wasn’t making more sales or having anybody in my club. So I tried to against kind of sprinkle those in there. And that’s why often I will kind of basically sponsor my own podcast with a course I’ll say this web this processes or excuse me, this podcast is brought to you by my web design process cores, for example, what we’re about to talk about will will help you and then my process course will be available for you when you’re ready for the next step. That’s essentially how I pay for my podcast.

Josh 31:04
Now, how the podcast helps grow my business over all. And this is an insider look at the podcast. And this is kind of weird, because you’re the listener. Normally I would teach this to somebody who wants to start a podcast, but here you go, you’re going to you’re going to hear it anyway, you’re going to, you’re going to hear the the tried and true lessons and why I love podcasting so much. It builds trust. When you listen to somebody over and over and over and over and over again, it just builds a level of trust that you can’t get with quick videos or ads, or any other form of marketing. There is such power in having repeated content, long form content, where somebody really gets to know you.

Josh 31:42
And I found this out practically. And I know this works because I’ve had so many students come in over the past couple years. And a lot of students into my full program, I bundled my web design business course my higher in the top ticket type of courses, who say I love your podcast, your podcast got me, it’s helped me out so much, I started getting instant results from just your free episodes. And a lot of people say and you listening may have been somebody who told me this, you may have said, I couldn’t believe how much value you gave in your podcast for free. So I can’t even imagine what your courses are like. And that’s exactly what I want to hear. And that’s what that’s exactly what people will find out. It’s like holy crap.

Josh 32:19
Well, there’s a lot of great stuff in the podcast. But the course is that’s where the real stuff is. And that’s where the true start to finish. Point A to Point B type of programs and trainings lie. So but in short, it builds trust. And there is a kind of a really important new thing that trying to think what to call it. It’s not a commodity, but it’s kind of a currency, we’ll call it a currency for business growth. And this is for videos, blog posts, anything online, and it’s called average time spent. This could be your average time spent on a blog post, it could be your average time spent on a YouTube video, which by the way, YouTube is actually rewarding videos where people last longer on the video doesn’t mean that a video needs to be fluffy and an hour long. But if it’s a 20 minute video, and people stay 18 minutes on average, that’s amazing.

Josh 33:08
So average time or average time spent is a massive currency right now and digital online marketing. For example, recently, I got some notifications on my Instagram, which by the way, my Instagram is fairly new. But if you want to hit me up and connect with me over there, just go to Josh hall.co/instagram. And give me a follow there, I’ll follow you back if you’d like I would love to connect with you there. But recently Spotify released like your your top podcasts in your feed, and shout out to Miguel, who tagged me and said that he had listened to my podcast in 2021. So far, for 3328 minutes. That is amazing. That’s over 55 hours of Miguel listening to this show. And that just shows you and that’s just Miguel, there’s a ton of other people who are listening that much, or maybe even more.

Josh 33:57
So there is so much power in that because people get to know you, they get to like you and trust you. And there’s just nothing better than somebody listening to you over and over and over again. And you can do this with video. And you can do this in other mediums. But I just love podcasts in particular, because you can be you, you don’t have to feel rushed. You can you can talk like you talk and share your experience. And I just love it. So that those are some of the main ways it’s helped grow my business as it’s really established that trust and the average time, it’s led to, you know, a real big boost of my core sales and in my web design Club, which is open to you. If you’d like me to coach you directly. I would love to welcome you into my web design Club, which is essentially my coaching community where I’ll coach you and you have community around you. You go to Josh hall.co/web design club, if interested in that.

Josh 34:43
The other thing interesting about that is like in my web design club, those are that’s an inside look at a lot of my top colleagues in my network. That’s another big part to this podcast. It’s really helped me expose my network to you because now all the people I’ve met and made connect With and got to know and work with over the past decade or so, now I’m able to feature them. So I can feature my network and a lot of my colleagues and a lot of the folks on the on the podcast here have been colleagues of mine for years that now you get to learn from just like I did. So that’s awesome.

Josh 35:15
I also love being able to feature my students, students who have done a really good job and who have got results, whether again, they’re early on in their journey, or whether they made it to six figures within a year and are more expert status. Now, it doesn’t matter I love featuring students successes, it’s also a really great way to kind of have an advanced case study, which by the way, you definitely want to work on case studies for your business and interviewing them is a great way to do that. And it’ll help you boost your sales just like it’s helped me. So that’s biggie.

Josh 35:46
And then the last one, as far as kind of how I’ve grown my business through a podcast is I’ve learned, I have learned so so much from these amazing guests. And again, in a couple episodes, I think it’ll be episode 160. Here in a couple of weeks in the new year, we’re going to look back at this year at the top 10 moments for the podcast, and you’re going to hear some of my top lessons learned that you probably already heard a lot of the episodes, but maybe it’ll be a nice little recap for you. But I have learned so much from my guests. And I just can’t thank everyone enough if you’re listening and you’ve been a guest, thank you for coming on and for sharing your expertise and transparency in your business because I’ve learned so much and I know all of you listening have as well.

Josh 36:27
So yeah, guys, that’s a look at my podcast behind the scenes. Last question I wanted to address that came to me more recently, somebody wanted to know, who would you love to get on the show, I’ve got a few people I would personally love to get onto the podcast. I’m a big fan of Seth Godin entrepreneur and author of some of my hair books, I’m gonna see what I could do about getting him on the show.

Josh 36:49
I’m becoming more and more familiar with Amy Porterfield, who is an amazing online marketer and course creator, I’d love to get her on. And then I would also really, really love to get Matt Mullenweg, the creator and founder of WordPress, reached out to Automatic never heard back, but that’s not gonna stop me. So here is your here here is a live case study that we’re going to see play out over the next few months or however long it takes. Because I have yet to get Matt’s attention and to get him on the show. But that is my goal. That is one of my goals. So would love to get those three on the show.

Josh 37:25
Question for you. Who would you like me to interview on this podcast? Now I’m going to I’m going to throw it to you as we wrap this up. If you have a guest that you think would be awesome on the podcast, hit me up, go to Josh Hall co slash contact, just send me a note. And let me know you’ve heard this episode, which is 158. And let me know who you would like on the show. And I’ll see if they’re a good fit. And I’ll see if I can line that up. So I will do that for you. And then lastly, make sure you subscribe. And if you would leave a review, I can’t tell you guys how impactful the reviews are. I love reading them, I read all of them. It really does go a long way when people are searching for a podcast, they look at the reviews. And they can tell if it’s an honest real review. Or if it’s a purchase review. I’m not about that I want, I want you to share how the podcast has helped you. So wherever you are listening to this, go leave a review a rating and review for the podcast, particularly if you’re on Apple, it would be super impactful because that’s still the largest directory. So leave a five star rating and give me your review. And just let me know how this show has helped you out I would read it I would just it keeps me going. I really love that and I’ll help grow the show as well.

Josh 38:37
So thanks for joining for this one guys. I hope you’ve enjoyed this year of the podcast. Hope everyone had an awesome very Merry Christmas Happy holidays to everybody. Hope you get a chance. If you’re not already to take some time off for the rest of this year. Enjoy your family enjoy your friends, get ready for a strong 2022 and get ready for the podcast because I’m telling you right now we’ve got some awesome ones lined up including again Troy Dean, which is going to be next up WordPress legend and then we’re gonna take a little trip down memory lane and highlight some of the top episodes 2021 coming up. So thank you for listening guys. Love you guys. Thank you so much for being listeners of the show. Thank you for your support. And if I can help you in your business, just go to my website, Josh Hall co if there’s a course if there’s a resource I can help you out with, shoot me a note. I don’t get that many emails. And I’m hesitant to say that but I really don’t. So don’t feel like you are bothering me. If you shoot me an email I will get right back to you. I promise you that. All right, everybody. See you on the next episode. Happy New Year. Let me pull a dad joke on you to wrap this up and say see you next year.