April 14, 2025 • 29 mins
The Trading Post podcast explores how Jeff Bezos's Amazon business principles can be applied to successful podcasting strategies. Drawing parallels between Bezos's customer obsession approach and podcast audience engagement, this episode reveals how consistency, patience, and innovation drive growth in both realms.
• Comparing the evolution of SEO to the rising importance of podcasting for business promotion
• Amazon's "customer obsession" philosophy and how it translates to treating podcast listeners
• The critical importance of consistency in publishing schedule for sustainable podcast growth
• Why audio podcasting works better than video for reaching busy B2B audiences
• How trade associations function as business growth tools through bartering and networking
• Testing different podcast formats, including a seasonal approach to content organization
• Recognizing podcasting as a long-term investment with indirect business benefits beyond direct monetization
• Using podcasts to explain complex business concepts like barter and trade associations
Be sure to subscribe, leave feedback if you can, and join us next time as we continue exploring innovative business promotion strategies.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Trading Post
with Trader Stu, and I justwanted to go over a couple of
things with a article that Iread.
I don't know if you've everheard of Gary Jones, but I guess
you probably wouldn't, becauseyou don't really care unless
you're doing podcasts, whichactually that's what this is all
about.
It's correlating podcasting toBezos and Amazon and using his
(00:27):
methods into a podcast.
So I'm going to give him credit, gary Jones on LinkedIn.
It's just an article that hesent out and I was like man, I
got to talk about this on thepodcast, because this is exactly
what this season is all about,which is kind of like the
experience of podcasting forbusiness promotion and growth.
Because you know, like I said,seo I've said that for a while
(00:50):
now SEO is kind of, I guess, adying thing a little bit, unless
you're using it for AI.
Ai still looks for certainkeywords, I guess.
But you know, like I saidbefore, when I do searches now
I'm using Copilot or Perplexity,or even if you just use Google
or even Bing, just on the main,you search for something.
You're not pulling up any morelinks to websites to get your
(01:14):
information.
You're getting the synopsis,quick shot snapshot of all the
information on those and it putsit all in one paragraph, all
the information on those, and itputs it all in one paragraph
and usually you just read that.
It's satisfying enough.
You don't go any further unlessyou're really into the what do
you call it?
The, I guess information athand and you want to dive a bit
(01:35):
further, then maybe you mightscroll down and then look
through all the articles andpodcasts or webpages and blogs
and Reddit and LinkedIn orwhatever, or websites for
businesses, and maybe you'll getinformation that way, or SEO
that way if you're shopping ordoing shopping stuff.
But really, from what I'veheard from other people is that
they are concentrating on otherthings now other than SEO and
(01:58):
spending hours and hours andhours doing that.
So real quick then not realquick.
I guess we've got a few minutes.
So everyone, of course, jeffBezos today.
It just happened to be notplanned.
I just read the article thismorning.
Is that?
I guess he launched or islaunching or has launched or I
don't know the first all-femalecrew for Jeff.
(02:22):
What is that?
Blue Horizons or Blue somethingor other for his rockets,
anyway, for the all female crew.
So kind of fitting that we'retalking about this because he's
always doing something differentand trying different things,
and I guess this is one of them.
So, of course, and you all knowabout his success with Amazon,
(02:46):
so I like to correlate that intopodcasting, if that's a
possibility, we'll see he had along-term vision for Amazon
since the beginning.
I forgot what he originallycalled it, but basically his
boss told me it was crazy tosell books online and that was
stupid and actually used booksonline and he started out of his
(03:07):
garage.
You know the whole story and sonow you can pretty much buy
anything you want on it onAmazon and he completely
transformed e-commerce, uh, toget any kind of customer
satisfaction, because they'relooking for I hate to say this,
but two day shipping or whatever.
I guess there are certain areasare using drones for same day
(03:30):
shipping or our shipping, but Igotta be honest, I'm in Metro
Detroit and I used to be able torely on that, uh, amazon prime
today and it's not happeninganymore Like it used to.
I almost feel like it's thelike.
Remember ATMs when they werefree?
I know you got certain banksand credit unions that'll
reimburse you the fee if you getcharged I do at certain ATMs.
(03:56):
My credit union does reimburseme whatever the fee is.
But I remember back in the day,like geez, back in 2000, 2001
or something like that, I hadspring break and destined to
Florida.
I think I paid 20 bucks once toget out money.
So then of course you know yougot to make it worth your while
and pull out more than 100because otherwise you're paying
20% to get your own money out ofthe ATM.
(04:17):
It's crazy, but back in the dayit was free.
And now, like you'recorrelating that with the
two-day prime and it's nothappening anymore and people are
starting to, I guess, accept itand honestly, my wife and I are
looking at not renewing theprime and subscription because
it's just not like what it usedto be.
We're getting this cheap likeChinese-made stuff that is like
(04:38):
false advertisement, like theclothes are.
I bought this cool jacket thatlooked like it was crushed
leather or something like that.
At any rate, jeff Bezos wasoriginally really into the
customer service.
He was like customer obsessionis what he called it, and it
(05:00):
transferred that pretty well.
As you can already know, he'smany times over a billionaire.
So the strategies I hope toalign with the Trading Post
podcast by helping theentrepreneurs or business owners
, whatever you want to call,understand barter, networking
and all the trade associations.
Because, like I said, we're allover the not we, as in the
(05:22):
company I work for, metroTrading but there's trade
associations multiple per statein most cases, especially in
metropolitan areas.
So Bezos was quoted by hisfamous line.
He says we see our customers asinvited guests to a party and
(05:46):
we are the hosts.
So you know, of course thatwould transfer into a podcast
because we're the host and Ihope that the customers are
invited to a party which islistening to a podcast.
It might be beneficial for themas well.
So you know, right now, witheverything going on in the world
AI and Internet and trade, allthe trade problems that's going
(06:11):
on, or no problems or success, Iguess we'll find out Right.
But everyone's looking for morecreative solutions, for example,
like barter that shapes theirbusiness and even their content,
depending on what they're intoSelling ad space marketingants
do great with barter.
So that's one of the greatthings with doing something like
(06:33):
a podcast or owning thebusiness and using a podcast to
leverage your restaurant ormarketing is that you can be on
more of a personal level,especially if you're trying to
get outside of your immediatearea, because people buy from
people who they know like andtrust right.
(06:53):
So there's that, and if you'rea podcaster, you're probably not
a fly by night kind of snakeoil salesman.
You are going to be in it towin it because you are putting
yourself out there and, uh, it's, it's time consuming and, uh,
very in-depth.
Uh, way of doing business ormarketing yourself is to do a
(07:13):
podcast or radio show orwhatever.
Uh, youtube even right, so samething, kind of.
But and that's the other thing Iwas going to talk about too is
that, uh, with the podcasting,everyone you know know it's a
long game.
So you have to be patient.
Basil Steven says you have toemphasize on patience,
(07:35):
perseverance and building Amazon, and it doesn't happen
overnight and most people allthey see is success and they
just see like, oh yeah, jeff's amultibillionaire, but you don't
know those sleepless nights andthe fighting you probably had
with the wife or whatever youknow divorce now.
So I'm sure there was.
(07:56):
But um and uh, everyone alwayssees the end.
You don't see that?
He was told he was an idiotbecause he's got a real job and
why would he ever want to startselling online used books.
That's crazy, but you know hewas like screw that, I'm going
to do it anyways to see whathappens, why not?
And one thing with working likeburning the midnight oil, as
they call it, is the consistencyis key.
I've noticed already.
(08:19):
I tried an experiment last weekand if you don't know about
Buzzsprout but you probably do,because if you're podcasting for
your business, you probablyhave looked into multiple RSS
feeds and Buzzsprout is one ofthe leading ones out there
because they share to everyother podcast listening device,
(08:41):
essentially.
So consistency is key.
And I was just starting out andI was uploading.
I was trying to upload once aweek, right, well, I didn't.
It works sometimes and I gotcaught up into business and
sales and you know, you know, Ithink, life and whatever.
So.
And it has this really coolchart that shows listeners on
(09:03):
the key thing that I alwaysrecommend to anybody in YouTube,
because YouTube has the samething that the algorithm they
had anybody in YouTube, becauseYouTube has the same thing they
have the algorithm, they havethe chart, the listeners, the
downloads, the likes, thecomments, and they have all the
engagement, all these stats.
If you've never done YouTube,there's all that for you on
there as well.
And same thing with Buzzsprout,right.
So less dynamic, but sameprinciple applies, applies.
(09:28):
So I would say don't look at theactual total numbers, because
when you're first starting out,you're going to have maybe like
tens of listeners, right, tens,maybe dozens if you're really
good, or you know, then later onyou get into thousands, right.
So what you want to do is notlook at the number of downloads,
because Buzzsprout's prettyclever in the way they do things
and that they let's just sayyou have listeners and they're
(09:50):
going like you have five on oneday and then you have one on the
other day and two on anotherday, right, so you got three
days of listening or downloads,right so?
But on their chart it lookslike it's skyrocketing because
by comparison of what you've hadbefore I think that's how it
does it it shows what you've hadlistenership on this day
compared to this day, and thenthree days ago, I think there's
(10:12):
seven days ago, 10 days ago andwhatever goes up from there, I
think, up to a month or two.
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
But their chart is what youwant to look at.
It's like a stock chart, like agraph and the whole thing.
You just get in your head andnot look at the numbers is.
Look at, you want to make it goup, right, planes rise, profits
(10:32):
rise.
You know listenership thatrises.
So when I was doing one a weekor even less, it would shoot up.
But then it would plane out.
Right, it would level outbecause you quit.
You only had so many listenersbecause you're new anyways,
right, so interest, so you mightget a shoot up to four.
You know your first start out,or one, maybe, if you're lucky,
(10:54):
and it'll plane out.
And then you're like, okay,well, next week I'll do it again
and sure enough, it spikes.
And then maybe you get anotherbump now because you're a little
bit two or three into it, andthen it'll plane out and like
level out, so you want to stopwith the level outs.
So now that I'm kind of gettinggoing here with the podcasting
(11:15):
is that I'm trying to do two aweek, so like Mondays and
Thursdays it was Tuesdays, liketrade Tuesday, but it just
didn't work Tuesdays.
I don't know why it just didn'twork.
(11:49):
No-transcript.
I call it side come money,because it's unintentional.
Unintentional money that you'regetting from just doing a
podcast that the original thingwas was just a network and show
your business Right.
So it's kind of cool and that'sthe.
It's like innovating You're,you're trying different things.
Even Amazon talks about heexperimented and he had
(12:09):
different breakthroughs, likethe AWS or prime.
And you know, I've beensubscribed to prime for a while
and you get the movies, whicharen't obviously that great, but
I do listen to the music a lot,and then, just like everything
else we talked about earlier theATMs, you know prime started
out as awesome and then you want, oh, you want good music, like
really good music, like the newstuff.
(12:30):
Oh, okay, that's an extra threebucks a month or I think it's
seven.
Now I don't even pay for it, nomore, because I use a YouTube
music.
But anyway, if you wantedactual good music on prime, you
had to pay extra for above andbeyond your subscription level,
which I was like really, oh,okay, so just put it, just roll
it in the prices up, it doesn'tmatter whatever.
(12:52):
So, uh, but, and honestly, Idon't even know what AWS is.
Uh, it's there's anabbreviation here, but because I
just was uh taking notes to uhfor the podcast, so, uh, I don't
know what it is, I don't use it.
So you know, actually, you knowwhat.
I'm going to Google it rightnow.
Aws, amazon, all right, amazonWeb Service oh, okay, that's
(13:21):
cool.
So they're a cloud provider,cloud Computing Services Okay,
so I guess that's like what?
Google, what's that laptop thatGoogle has that uses the online
servers to do all yourcomputing power?
So the laptop itself isn't allthat powerful, but you're using
cloud-based computing and theirRAM and their.
That's cool.
(13:42):
Okay, all right, that's neat.
I didn't know about that.
I didn't know he did that.
There's also a lot of things inAmazon, I guess, to help small
businesses or, like you know,universities.
They can take free classes on,you know, and things like that.
It's kind of cool, kind of likeyour library, you know.
So there's some free things outthere that I guess it's a loss
leader for them because theyfigure, well, you're gonna get
(14:03):
new business, hey, you're gonnaremember us and buy all the
things you need for the businessthrough Amazon.
Pretty genius, there you go,there you go, innovating, right,
innovating.
So everyone's like, oh, you know, what you need to do is video.
Do you do video?
I'm like, no, I don't do video.
Why not?
You should do video.
I'm like, okay, actually, wasthat the top 50 podcasts that
(14:26):
you?
You can just look this up totop 50 of them.
I think I said 43 of them.
Uh, do only 43 do video?
So seven don't, and they'restill in the top 50.
Now what are the odds to get inthere without it?
I don't really know.
But here's what I do know isthat I tried doing video
podcasting and it doesn't workfor me.
(14:48):
It doesn't work because why?
It's a lot of setup.
You got to deal with theshadows and the lighting and
your, you know, fix your hair,wear the right clothes, um, the
proper background, uh, I don'tknow.
It's harder for me, it seemslike worse to be able to look
down and read things, uh, fornotes, when you're on video.
And then there's more editingtoo, because now you don't want
(15:10):
to look down all the time andread from your screen or paper
to me anyway.
And then you know you look upand look down, look up, look
down, and to me it just seemslike ugh, it's annoying.
So I don't.
And also, my podcast is for B2B,right, and what do you know
about business owners Busy?
So the whole point, theoriginal idea of the podcast,
(15:31):
was to explain barter, becauseI'm a sales guy, right for
barter, and I'm like hey, if youdon't understand it, here's a
link to a podcast that I made up, and then there you go, listen
to it later, or while you'redoing something, or while you're
picking up the kids or driving,or whatever.
So that was the whole point.
You ain't got time to sit thereand watch a video.
You're busy, you got thebusiness, maybe you got kids and
(15:54):
you got practices to go to.
You don't got time to sit thereand watch a video.
But maybe podcasting you do,right, because the earbuds are
in and it's just easier to dosomething and then do that at
the same time.
That was the whole idea.
So for me except for maybemarketing wise, I might get into
it for marketing eventually onYouTube and, like you know, I
have like cliff notes out there,because, honestly, a lot of
(16:15):
things that I watch about um onJoe Rogan, is all from video
content that they snip.
You know pieces of his two orthree hour podcast, and they do
a minute long short, and you'relike, oh, that's funny, I don't
know.
It doesn't get me to listen toit, though, either.
I don't listen to Joe Roganbecause I don't have two or
(16:35):
three hours.
I don't really care enoughabout many topics to dedicate
two or three hours to listeningto somebody else talk about it,
I guess.
But yeah, I do have 30, 40minutes on the way to work.
I went back from work for longermaybe 45 minutes to an hour, as
I'm going to Detroit.
So going south is not as goodfor me as it is in the morning.
(17:00):
So you know, I try and geareverything towards that time
frame, at least 20 to 30 minutes, right, so it's enough and then
go on about your day orwhatever you're going to do.
So I always say you know, soit's enough and then go on about
your day or whatever you'regoing to do.
So I always say, you know, trynew approaches.
Did you know in your business?
Did you know that I saw a statthis morning that last year was
a record setting year forbusiness applications?
(17:23):
So I don't know why they saidthe video I was watching
actually it was a video in themorning that it's not good
actually, really, because allthe new businesses starting up
were in low income areas and forsome reason it was bad for the
economy, not sure why.
Again, I have like squirrellevel attention span, so I
(17:43):
skipped through it, but I justwanted to mention that.
That everyone's tryingbusinesses now because jobs are
so hard to find essentially iswhat the whole deal was about,
and that you should not should.
But people are tryingbusinesses because they can't
get hired and they need money,so they're trying their bakery
or pizzeria idea or whatever.
All right.
(18:05):
So a couple of tips.
I guess, of course, focus onactionable services and advice.
It says here in a bullet point,for example, I would say,
maximizing barter deals orbarter trades, and that would be
to look for things that you canuse for not having to pay cash.
Trade and barter associationsaround you not just me in Metro
(18:27):
Detroit, but I'd love to bringyou on if you are available, of
course.
But, like I said, we'reeverywhere, all the trade
associations.
So look for what you can do andnot pay cash.
Cash is like rent, insurance,of course, payroll and you got
your utilities.
Most everything else isavailable.
(18:49):
On trade, we get calls in hereevery day to our office of
people that were, you know, saybusy enough on cash jobs that
they're turning away some trade,which is the idea Once you sign
up for, usually with a tradeassociation, at least with ours.
If you're busy enough with cash, then you don't have to take
trade.
Trade is the whole point offilling excess time and capacity
(19:11):
.
That's literally in the salespitch.
Do you have excess time?
Do you have excess capacity?
Do you have excess inventory?
If you do, you're a candidatefor signing up for a trade
association.
If you don't, then you're notmy guy or girl.
Right, or maybe later you willMaybe sign up and then put me on
hold and then I'll call in whenI need more business and then
(19:34):
you know we can play.
That, you know, and that's whatit's all about is filling your
excess time and inventory.
And I mean, obviously, once youget rolling, we have people in
there that are in the group thatI work for since the 80s, and
so you're kind of and I used towork here back in 2013, and now
I'm back it's kind of like oncetrade gets in your blood, you
miss it because it's like alarger version of a chamber of
(19:59):
commerce.
I guess you could say so.
There's no meetings.
Obviously we have one tradeshow a year that I work for the
company I work for and you justfeel like when you walk into a
shop it's like you are living ina small town again, like when I
used to live in Frankenmuth,michigan, I would walk in and
the owner probably knew me, or Iknew them, or I knew their kids
(20:22):
and knew you know, or they knewmy grandparents or my parents.
So it's kind of like thatone-on-one personal touch.
It's just people miss that.
People miss that villagefeeling, and so that's why I got
out of tangent here with trade.
But anyway, that's kind of whatit's all about.
I always call it the small townor big town, big city feel,
(20:43):
with big small town appeal.
So you know, you get the bigcity version of it, but you also
get the small, the village,like one-on-one kind of sale
that you miss by moving out froma small town and going to a
city.
So discuss Amazon's growth iswhat I have here?
(21:05):
I don't know.
I think I'm going to skip thisone.
Becoming a global marketplaceoh yeah, what else we got here?
Oh yeah, one way you can scaleyour show is collaborate with
other podcasters or anyone inyour industry.
So for me, I use Alignable andI'm in podcasting groups, and
(21:26):
I'm actually in a podcastinggroup or two.
I think it is in LinkedIn aswell, which I think is where I
found this article from.
So you just never know, by justjoining a group you know those
things you might learn throughan email.
That's all this was was anemail and just talking about an
email right now.
So you just never know whereyou get your next big idea from.
(21:46):
Monetizing is another thing Iwanted to talk about too.
Everyone always talks about oh,you must make, are you making
money yet with your podcast?
No, no, no, I'm not monetized.
I would like to be one day.
I'm kind of sponsored.
I guess you want to say Am Isponsored?
I don't know.
I thought about changing myintro to, or having mid-rolls
(22:06):
actually for Metro TradingAssociation, because I'm doing
the podcast and they know it onyou know the company watch,
right, but it's good for them,it's good for me, it's good for
everybody because their name isout there.
I talk about Metro Trading allthe time.
It's the best thing, I think,for a business.
I think every business shouldat least look into it and try it
.
Or a nonprofit, for sure,definitely nonprofits,
(22:28):
definitely nonprofits should doa trade association For sure,
definitely nonprofits,definitely nonprofits should do
a trade association.
So, yeah, it's a win-win and Iprobably should make that like a
demo sponsor.
I guess I don't know how thatworks for taxes and all that
stuff.
Like I said, I look it up, butit doesn't matter.
I digress.
Repurposing Okay, yeah, we weretalking about repurposing
content, right?
So Rogan has a whole team thatdoes this.
(22:50):
They take clips and snippetsout of the show and to put it
into 45 second long format andboom, put it on social media and
then I guess they might getclip clicks or whatever.
But uh, anyway, I, for me, ithasn't worked on me.
I don't, I don't like oh, Iwant to tune in and watch.
You know that whole the wholeshow, even with Trump, I didn't
watch the whole thing.
Or was that Neil deGrasse?
(23:12):
He had cool things, I didn't.
I didn't either.
You know, it doesn't matter.
So what else we can talk abouthere?
A couple of things before wequit.
Prioritize your audience.
It says, yeah, well, I mean,obviously you're going to
prioritize your audience, buthonestly, I think your audience
will prioritize you as youraudience.
(23:32):
But honestly, I think youraudience will prioritize you and
that's the whole point withblogging or podcasting YouTube
videos is that you are going tobe in a niche and then you have
marketed and then those peopleautomatically are going to like,
tune into you, right?
So, and like I said before,podcasting is the long game
You're going to burn out longbefore you're going to see any
monetization or, uh, I thinkeven maybe any benefit.
(23:52):
Uh, in in in the podcast.
So there's a natural uhthinning out of the herd, I
think, for podcasts, I thinkit's one of those things.
I'm going to try it that if youcan make it happen, it's you
know.
You know you're going to winbig, but also I won't say you'll
lose big but you'll lose time.
(24:16):
You uh, and try experimenting.
I'm experimenting right now.
I'm doing this thing thatnobody else is doing with the
seasons.
I'm using seasons as a category, you know.
So, uh, I'm.
Season one is all about trade.
Uh, let me look here, gothrough, here we go.
So season season one is trade,education and member spotlights,
and then two is networking andnetworking ideas.
And I'm trying this networkingwith kids idea where business
(24:39):
owners, entrepreneurs, realtors,whatever, come to a networking
event, bring the family, bringthe kids, and we're in a
kids-friendly environment.
The kids can go play or theycan participate in networking,
like I used to with my grandpa,and then go from there.
You know now you hand outbusiness cards.
You stop by on the way homefrom school, maybe grab a snack
at the concession stand thatthey had there, like we're at
(24:59):
Jungle Java, for example.
Then you got to worry aboutdinner.
That night you network, thekids played, they met new
friends, bada boom, bada bing.
You know, next month, rinse andrepeat, right?
So that's what season two isall about, which is networking
chambers, alignable, uh,linkedin, my networking group
that I started, uh, all of it so.
(25:21):
And then season three is thenext category, and that's what
you're listening to right now,is experiment experience,
podcasting for businesspromotions.
So I got to find better termsfor this because no one's going
to remember any of this stuff.
But, like I said, I'm tryingnew things, I'm experimenting.
So it's all about my I hatesaying my experience of
podcasting because it's almostlike what do you care?
But I know there's no other wayto say it or do it.
(25:42):
But people only, it seems like,are popular once they're
successful.
Once they're successful, I amshowing you the live struggle, I
guess you want to say, of doinga podcast for promoting a
business or marketing so, andthe ups and downs and pros and
cons and mistakes, essentiallyright.
(26:04):
So let's see what else we gothere.
So thinking like Bezos can helpnot just build a successful
podcast but a thriving businessand trade association too.
The guys who thought of thetrade and barter back in the day
(26:26):
, metro Trade was one of thefirst, back in the 70s, late 70s
78 actually to be specific.
So you know, he does never know, and trade associations come
and go, so you gotta be, I think, almost like first in.
Uh, wins are one of the firstright, you got the first and you
got the competitor, kind oflike uh, lyft followed, um, uber
(26:48):
, you know, and are they thesame?
Now they wouldn't buy out theother.
Yet I can't remember.
It usually happens too, youknow.
So there's that All right.
Well, that's it for now.
Thanks for tuning in to thetrading post.
Let's trade ideas and serviceswith each other eventually,
hopefully, one day, maybe.
Anyway, be sure to subscribe,leave feedback if you can, if
(27:12):
you want to, and next time wewill talk about something, maybe
in a different season, probablythe networking thing.
Actually, I don't know, we'llfind out.
I kind of play these.
I shoot from the hip.
I'm not a really good planter,so I just shoot from the hip and
try it and go from there.
All right, that's it.
Be good or be good at it.
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Trading Post
with Trader Stu, and I justwanted to go over a couple of
things with a article that Iread.
I don't know if you've everheard of Gary Jones, but I guess
you probably wouldn't, becauseyou don't really care unless
you're doing podcasts, whichactually that's what this is all
about.
It's correlating podcasting toBezos and Amazon and using his
(00:27):
methods into a podcast.
So I'm going to give him credit, gary Jones on LinkedIn.
It's just an article that hesent out and I was like man, I
got to talk about this on thepodcast, because this is exactly
what this season is all about,which is kind of like the
experience of podcasting forbusiness promotion and growth.
Because you know, like I said,seo I've said that for a while
(00:50):
now SEO is kind of, I guess, adying thing a little bit, unless
you're using it for AI.
Ai still looks for certainkeywords, I guess.
But you know, like I saidbefore, when I do searches now
I'm using Copilot or Perplexity,or even if you just use Google
or even Bing, just on the main,you search for something.
You're not pulling up any morelinks to websites to get your
(01:14):
information.
You're getting the synopsis,quick shot snapshot of all the
information on those and it putsit all in one paragraph, all
the information on those, and itputs it all in one paragraph
and usually you just read that.
It's satisfying enough.
You don't go any further unlessyou're really into the what do
you call it?
The, I guess information athand and you want to dive a bit
(01:35):
further, then maybe you mightscroll down and then look
through all the articles andpodcasts or webpages and blogs
and Reddit and LinkedIn orwhatever, or websites for
businesses, and maybe you'll getinformation that way, or SEO
that way if you're shopping ordoing shopping stuff.
But really, from what I'veheard from other people is that
they are concentrating on otherthings now other than SEO and
(01:58):
spending hours and hours andhours doing that.
So real quick then not realquick.
I guess we've got a few minutes.
So everyone, of course, jeffBezos today.
It just happened to be notplanned.
I just read the article thismorning.
Is that?
I guess he launched or islaunching or has launched or I
don't know the first all-femalecrew for Jeff.
(02:22):
What is that?
Blue Horizons or Blue somethingor other for his rockets,
anyway, for the all female crew.
So kind of fitting that we'retalking about this because he's
always doing something differentand trying different things,
and I guess this is one of them.
So, of course, and you all knowabout his success with Amazon,
(02:46):
so I like to correlate that intopodcasting, if that's a
possibility, we'll see he had along-term vision for Amazon
since the beginning.
I forgot what he originallycalled it, but basically his
boss told me it was crazy tosell books online and that was
stupid and actually used booksonline and he started out of his
(03:07):
garage.
You know the whole story and sonow you can pretty much buy
anything you want on it onAmazon and he completely
transformed e-commerce, uh, toget any kind of customer
satisfaction, because they'relooking for I hate to say this,
but two day shipping or whatever.
I guess there are certain areasare using drones for same day
(03:30):
shipping or our shipping, but Igotta be honest, I'm in Metro
Detroit and I used to be able torely on that, uh, amazon prime
today and it's not happeninganymore Like it used to.
I almost feel like it's thelike.
Remember ATMs when they werefree?
I know you got certain banksand credit unions that'll
reimburse you the fee if you getcharged I do at certain ATMs.
(03:56):
My credit union does reimburseme whatever the fee is.
But I remember back in the day,like geez, back in 2000, 2001
or something like that, I hadspring break and destined to
Florida.
I think I paid 20 bucks once toget out money.
So then of course you know yougot to make it worth your while
and pull out more than 100because otherwise you're paying
20% to get your own money out ofthe ATM.
(04:17):
It's crazy, but back in the dayit was free.
And now, like you'recorrelating that with the
two-day prime and it's nothappening anymore and people are
starting to, I guess, accept itand honestly, my wife and I are
looking at not renewing theprime and subscription because
it's just not like what it usedto be.
We're getting this cheap likeChinese-made stuff that is like
(04:38):
false advertisement, like theclothes are.
I bought this cool jacket thatlooked like it was crushed
leather or something like that.
At any rate, jeff Bezos wasoriginally really into the
customer service.
He was like customer obsessionis what he called it, and it
(05:00):
transferred that pretty well.
As you can already know, he'smany times over a billionaire.
So the strategies I hope toalign with the Trading Post
podcast by helping theentrepreneurs or business owners
, whatever you want to call,understand barter, networking
and all the trade associations.
Because, like I said, we're allover the not we, as in the
(05:22):
company I work for, metroTrading but there's trade
associations multiple per statein most cases, especially in
metropolitan areas.
So Bezos was quoted by hisfamous line.
He says we see our customers asinvited guests to a party and
(05:46):
we are the hosts.
So you know, of course thatwould transfer into a podcast
because we're the host and Ihope that the customers are
invited to a party which islistening to a podcast.
It might be beneficial for themas well.
So you know, right now, witheverything going on in the world
AI and Internet and trade, allthe trade problems that's going
(06:11):
on, or no problems or success, Iguess we'll find out Right.
But everyone's looking for morecreative solutions, for example,
like barter that shapes theirbusiness and even their content,
depending on what they're intoSelling ad space marketingants
do great with barter.
So that's one of the greatthings with doing something like
(06:33):
a podcast or owning thebusiness and using a podcast to
leverage your restaurant ormarketing is that you can be on
more of a personal level,especially if you're trying to
get outside of your immediatearea, because people buy from
people who they know like andtrust right.
(06:53):
So there's that, and if you'rea podcaster, you're probably not
a fly by night kind of snakeoil salesman.
You are going to be in it towin it because you are putting
yourself out there and, uh, it's, it's time consuming and, uh,
very in-depth.
Uh, way of doing business ormarketing yourself is to do a
(07:13):
podcast or radio show orwhatever.
Uh, youtube even right, so samething, kind of.
But and that's the other thing Iwas going to talk about too is
that, uh, with the podcasting,everyone you know know it's a
long game.
So you have to be patient.
Basil Steven says you have toemphasize on patience,
(07:35):
perseverance and building Amazon, and it doesn't happen
overnight and most people allthey see is success and they
just see like, oh yeah, jeff's amultibillionaire, but you don't
know those sleepless nights andthe fighting you probably had
with the wife or whatever youknow divorce now.
So I'm sure there was.
(07:56):
But um and uh, everyone alwayssees the end.
You don't see that?
He was told he was an idiotbecause he's got a real job and
why would he ever want to startselling online used books.
That's crazy, but you know hewas like screw that, I'm going
to do it anyways to see whathappens, why not?
And one thing with working likeburning the midnight oil, as
they call it, is the consistencyis key.
I've noticed already.
(08:19):
I tried an experiment last weekand if you don't know about
Buzzsprout but you probably do,because if you're podcasting for
your business, you probablyhave looked into multiple RSS
feeds and Buzzsprout is one ofthe leading ones out there
because they share to everyother podcast listening device,
(08:41):
essentially.
So consistency is key.
And I was just starting out andI was uploading.
I was trying to upload once aweek, right, well, I didn't.
It works sometimes and I gotcaught up into business and
sales and you know, you know, Ithink, life and whatever.
So.
And it has this really coolchart that shows listeners on
(09:03):
the key thing that I alwaysrecommend to anybody in YouTube,
because YouTube has the samething that the algorithm they
had anybody in YouTube, becauseYouTube has the same thing they
have the algorithm, they havethe chart, the listeners, the
downloads, the likes, thecomments, and they have all the
engagement, all these stats.
If you've never done YouTube,there's all that for you on
there as well.
And same thing with Buzzsprout,right.
So less dynamic, but sameprinciple applies, applies.
(09:28):
So I would say don't look at theactual total numbers, because
when you're first starting out,you're going to have maybe like
tens of listeners, right, tens,maybe dozens if you're really
good, or you know, then later onyou get into thousands, right.
So what you want to do is notlook at the number of downloads,
because Buzzsprout's prettyclever in the way they do things
and that they let's just sayyou have listeners and they're
(09:50):
going like you have five on oneday and then you have one on the
other day and two on anotherday, right, so you got three
days of listening or downloads,right so?
But on their chart it lookslike it's skyrocketing because
by comparison of what you've hadbefore I think that's how it
does it it shows what you've hadlistenership on this day
compared to this day, and thenthree days ago, I think there's
(10:12):
seven days ago, 10 days ago andwhatever goes up from there, I
think, up to a month or two.
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
But their chart is what youwant to look at.
It's like a stock chart, like agraph and the whole thing.
You just get in your head andnot look at the numbers is.
Look at, you want to make it goup, right, planes rise, profits
(10:32):
rise.
You know listenership thatrises.
So when I was doing one a weekor even less, it would shoot up.
But then it would plane out.
Right, it would level outbecause you quit.
You only had so many listenersbecause you're new anyways,
right, so interest, so you mightget a shoot up to four.
You know your first start out,or one, maybe, if you're lucky,
(10:54):
and it'll plane out.
And then you're like, okay,well, next week I'll do it again
and sure enough, it spikes.
And then maybe you get anotherbump now because you're a little
bit two or three into it, andthen it'll plane out and like
level out, so you want to stopwith the level outs.
So now that I'm kind of gettinggoing here with the podcasting
(11:15):
is that I'm trying to do two aweek, so like Mondays and
Thursdays it was Tuesdays, liketrade Tuesday, but it just
didn't work Tuesdays.
I don't know why it just didn'twork.
(11:49):
No-transcript.
I call it side come money,because it's unintentional.
Unintentional money that you'regetting from just doing a
podcast that the original thingwas was just a network and show
your business Right.
So it's kind of cool and that'sthe.
It's like innovating You're,you're trying different things.
Even Amazon talks about heexperimented and he had
(12:09):
different breakthroughs, likethe AWS or prime.
And you know, I've beensubscribed to prime for a while
and you get the movies, whicharen't obviously that great, but
I do listen to the music a lot,and then, just like everything
else we talked about earlier theATMs, you know prime started
out as awesome and then you want, oh, you want good music, like
really good music, like the newstuff.
(12:30):
Oh, okay, that's an extra threebucks a month or I think it's
seven.
Now I don't even pay for it, nomore, because I use a YouTube
music.
But anyway, if you wantedactual good music on prime, you
had to pay extra for above andbeyond your subscription level,
which I was like really, oh,okay, so just put it, just roll
it in the prices up, it doesn'tmatter whatever.
(12:52):
So, uh, but, and honestly, Idon't even know what AWS is.
Uh, it's there's anabbreviation here, but because I
just was uh taking notes to uhfor the podcast, so, uh, I don't
know what it is, I don't use it.
So you know, actually, you knowwhat.
I'm going to Google it rightnow.
Aws, amazon, all right, amazonWeb Service oh, okay, that's
(13:21):
cool.
So they're a cloud provider,cloud Computing Services Okay,
so I guess that's like what?
Google, what's that laptop thatGoogle has that uses the online
servers to do all yourcomputing power?
So the laptop itself isn't allthat powerful, but you're using
cloud-based computing and theirRAM and their.
That's cool.
(13:42):
Okay, all right, that's neat.
I didn't know about that.
I didn't know he did that.
There's also a lot of things inAmazon, I guess, to help small
businesses or, like you know,universities.
They can take free classes on,you know, and things like that.
It's kind of cool, kind of likeyour library, you know.
So there's some free things outthere that I guess it's a loss
leader for them because theyfigure, well, you're gonna get
(14:03):
new business, hey, you're gonnaremember us and buy all the
things you need for the businessthrough Amazon.
Pretty genius, there you go,there you go, innovating, right,
innovating.
So everyone's like, oh, you know, what you need to do is video.
Do you do video?
I'm like, no, I don't do video.
Why not?
You should do video.
I'm like, okay, actually, wasthat the top 50 podcasts that
(14:26):
you?
You can just look this up totop 50 of them.
I think I said 43 of them.
Uh, do only 43 do video?
So seven don't, and they'restill in the top 50.
Now what are the odds to get inthere without it?
I don't really know.
But here's what I do know isthat I tried doing video
podcasting and it doesn't workfor me.
(14:48):
It doesn't work because why?
It's a lot of setup.
You got to deal with theshadows and the lighting and
your, you know, fix your hair,wear the right clothes, um, the
proper background, uh, I don'tknow.
It's harder for me, it seemslike worse to be able to look
down and read things, uh, fornotes, when you're on video.
And then there's more editingtoo, because now you don't want
(15:10):
to look down all the time andread from your screen or paper
to me anyway.
And then you know you look upand look down, look up, look
down, and to me it just seemslike ugh, it's annoying.
So I don't.
And also, my podcast is for B2B,right, and what do you know
about business owners Busy?
So the whole point, theoriginal idea of the podcast,
(15:31):
was to explain barter, becauseI'm a sales guy, right for
barter, and I'm like hey, if youdon't understand it, here's a
link to a podcast that I made up, and then there you go, listen
to it later, or while you'redoing something, or while you're
picking up the kids or driving,or whatever.
So that was the whole point.
You ain't got time to sit thereand watch a video.
You're busy, you got thebusiness, maybe you got kids and
(15:54):
you got practices to go to.
You don't got time to sit thereand watch a video.
But maybe podcasting you do,right, because the earbuds are
in and it's just easier to dosomething and then do that at
the same time.
That was the whole idea.
So for me except for maybemarketing wise, I might get into
it for marketing eventually onYouTube and, like you know, I
have like cliff notes out there,because, honestly, a lot of
(16:15):
things that I watch about um onJoe Rogan, is all from video
content that they snip.
You know pieces of his two orthree hour podcast, and they do
a minute long short, and you'relike, oh, that's funny, I don't
know.
It doesn't get me to listen toit, though, either.
I don't listen to Joe Roganbecause I don't have two or
(16:35):
three hours.
I don't really care enoughabout many topics to dedicate
two or three hours to listeningto somebody else talk about it,
I guess.
But yeah, I do have 30, 40minutes on the way to work.
I went back from work for longermaybe 45 minutes to an hour, as
I'm going to Detroit.
So going south is not as goodfor me as it is in the morning.
(17:00):
So you know, I try and geareverything towards that time
frame, at least 20 to 30 minutes, right, so it's enough and then
go on about your day orwhatever you're going to do.
So I always say you know, soit's enough and then go on about
your day or whatever you'regoing to do.
So I always say, you know, trynew approaches.
Did you know in your business?
Did you know that I saw a statthis morning that last year was
a record setting year forbusiness applications?
(17:23):
So I don't know why they saidthe video I was watching
actually it was a video in themorning that it's not good
actually, really, because allthe new businesses starting up
were in low income areas and forsome reason it was bad for the
economy, not sure why.
Again, I have like squirrellevel attention span, so I
(17:43):
skipped through it, but I justwanted to mention that.
That everyone's tryingbusinesses now because jobs are
so hard to find essentially iswhat the whole deal was about,
and that you should not should.
But people are tryingbusinesses because they can't
get hired and they need money,so they're trying their bakery
or pizzeria idea or whatever.
All right.
(18:05):
So a couple of tips.
I guess, of course, focus onactionable services and advice.
It says here in a bullet point,for example, I would say,
maximizing barter deals orbarter trades, and that would be
to look for things that you canuse for not having to pay cash.
Trade and barter associationsaround you not just me in Metro
(18:27):
Detroit, but I'd love to bringyou on if you are available, of
course.
But, like I said, we'reeverywhere, all the trade
associations.
So look for what you can do andnot pay cash.
Cash is like rent, insurance,of course, payroll and you got
your utilities.
Most everything else isavailable.
(18:49):
On trade, we get calls in hereevery day to our office of
people that were, you know, saybusy enough on cash jobs that
they're turning away some trade,which is the idea Once you sign
up for, usually with a tradeassociation, at least with ours.
If you're busy enough with cash, then you don't have to take
trade.
Trade is the whole point offilling excess time and capacity
(19:11):
.
That's literally in the salespitch.
Do you have excess time?
Do you have excess capacity?
Do you have excess inventory?
If you do, you're a candidatefor signing up for a trade
association.
If you don't, then you're notmy guy or girl.
Right, or maybe later you willMaybe sign up and then put me on
hold and then I'll call in whenI need more business and then
(19:34):
you know we can play.
That, you know, and that's whatit's all about is filling your
excess time and inventory.
And I mean, obviously, once youget rolling, we have people in
there that are in the group thatI work for since the 80s, and
so you're kind of and I used towork here back in 2013, and now
I'm back it's kind of like oncetrade gets in your blood, you
miss it because it's like alarger version of a chamber of
(19:59):
commerce.
I guess you could say so.
There's no meetings.
Obviously we have one tradeshow a year that I work for the
company I work for and you justfeel like when you walk into a
shop it's like you are living ina small town again, like when I
used to live in Frankenmuth,michigan, I would walk in and
the owner probably knew me, or Iknew them, or I knew their kids
(20:22):
and knew you know, or they knewmy grandparents or my parents.
So it's kind of like thatone-on-one personal touch.
It's just people miss that.
People miss that villagefeeling, and so that's why I got
out of tangent here with trade.
But anyway, that's kind of whatit's all about.
I always call it the small townor big town, big city feel,
(20:43):
with big small town appeal.
So you know, you get the bigcity version of it, but you also
get the small, the village,like one-on-one kind of sale
that you miss by moving out froma small town and going to a
city.
So discuss Amazon's growth iswhat I have here?
(21:05):
I don't know.
I think I'm going to skip thisone.
Becoming a global marketplaceoh yeah, what else we got here?
Oh yeah, one way you can scaleyour show is collaborate with
other podcasters or anyone inyour industry.
So for me, I use Alignable andI'm in podcasting groups, and
(21:26):
I'm actually in a podcastinggroup or two.
I think it is in LinkedIn aswell, which I think is where I
found this article from.
So you just never know, by justjoining a group you know those
things you might learn throughan email.
That's all this was was anemail and just talking about an
email right now.
So you just never know whereyou get your next big idea from.
(21:46):
Monetizing is another thing Iwanted to talk about too.
Everyone always talks about oh,you must make, are you making
money yet with your podcast?
No, no, no, I'm not monetized.
I would like to be one day.
I'm kind of sponsored.
I guess you want to say Am Isponsored?
I don't know.
I thought about changing myintro to, or having mid-rolls
(22:06):
actually for Metro TradingAssociation, because I'm doing
the podcast and they know it onyou know the company watch,
right, but it's good for them,it's good for me, it's good for
everybody because their name isout there.
I talk about Metro Trading allthe time.
It's the best thing, I think,for a business.
I think every business shouldat least look into it and try it
.
Or a nonprofit, for sure,definitely nonprofits,
(22:28):
definitely nonprofits should doa trade association For sure,
definitely nonprofits,definitely nonprofits should do
a trade association.
So, yeah, it's a win-win and Iprobably should make that like a
demo sponsor.
I guess I don't know how thatworks for taxes and all that
stuff.
Like I said, I look it up, butit doesn't matter.
I digress.
Repurposing Okay, yeah, we weretalking about repurposing
content, right?
So Rogan has a whole team thatdoes this.
(22:50):
They take clips and snippetsout of the show and to put it
into 45 second long format andboom, put it on social media and
then I guess they might getclip clicks or whatever.
But uh, anyway, I, for me, ithasn't worked on me.
I don't, I don't like oh, Iwant to tune in and watch.
You know that whole the wholeshow, even with Trump, I didn't
watch the whole thing.
Or was that Neil deGrasse?
(23:12):
He had cool things, I didn't.
I didn't either.
You know, it doesn't matter.
So what else we can talk abouthere?
A couple of things before wequit.
Prioritize your audience.
It says, yeah, well, I mean,obviously you're going to
prioritize your audience, buthonestly, I think your audience
will prioritize you as youraudience.
(23:32):
But honestly, I think youraudience will prioritize you and
that's the whole point withblogging or podcasting YouTube
videos is that you are going tobe in a niche and then you have
marketed and then those peopleautomatically are going to like,
tune into you, right?
So, and like I said before,podcasting is the long game
You're going to burn out longbefore you're going to see any
monetization or, uh, I thinkeven maybe any benefit.
(23:52):
Uh, in in in the podcast.
So there's a natural uhthinning out of the herd, I
think, for podcasts, I thinkit's one of those things.
I'm going to try it that if youcan make it happen, it's you
know.
You know you're going to winbig, but also I won't say you'll
lose big but you'll lose time.
(24:16):
You uh, and try experimenting.
I'm experimenting right now.
I'm doing this thing thatnobody else is doing with the
seasons.
I'm using seasons as a category, you know.
So, uh, I'm.
Season one is all about trade.
Uh, let me look here, gothrough, here we go.
So season season one is trade,education and member spotlights,
and then two is networking andnetworking ideas.
And I'm trying this networkingwith kids idea where business
(24:39):
owners, entrepreneurs, realtors,whatever, come to a networking
event, bring the family, bringthe kids, and we're in a
kids-friendly environment.
The kids can go play or theycan participate in networking,
like I used to with my grandpa,and then go from there.
You know now you hand outbusiness cards.
You stop by on the way homefrom school, maybe grab a snack
at the concession stand thatthey had there, like we're at
(24:59):
Jungle Java, for example.
Then you got to worry aboutdinner.
That night you network, thekids played, they met new
friends, bada boom, bada bing.
You know, next month, rinse andrepeat, right?
So that's what season two isall about, which is networking
chambers, alignable, uh,linkedin, my networking group
that I started, uh, all of it so.
(25:21):
And then season three is thenext category, and that's what
you're listening to right now,is experiment experience,
podcasting for businesspromotions.
So I got to find better termsfor this because no one's going
to remember any of this stuff.
But, like I said, I'm tryingnew things, I'm experimenting.
So it's all about my I hatesaying my experience of
podcasting because it's almostlike what do you care?
But I know there's no other wayto say it or do it.
(25:42):
But people only, it seems like,are popular once they're
successful.
Once they're successful, I amshowing you the live struggle, I
guess you want to say, of doinga podcast for promoting a
business or marketing so, andthe ups and downs and pros and
cons and mistakes, essentiallyright.
(26:04):
So let's see what else we gothere.
So thinking like Bezos can helpnot just build a successful
podcast but a thriving businessand trade association too.
The guys who thought of thetrade and barter back in the day
(26:26):
, metro Trade was one of thefirst, back in the 70s, late 70s
78 actually to be specific.
So you know, he does never know, and trade associations come
and go, so you gotta be, I think, almost like first in.
Uh, wins are one of the firstright, you got the first and you
got the competitor, kind oflike uh, lyft followed, um, uber
(26:48):
, you know, and are they thesame?
Now they wouldn't buy out theother.
Yet I can't remember.
It usually happens too, youknow.
So there's that All right.
Well, that's it for now.
Thanks for tuning in to thetrading post.
Let's trade ideas and serviceswith each other eventually,
hopefully, one day, maybe.
Anyway, be sure to subscribe,leave feedback if you can, if
(27:12):
you want to, and next time wewill talk about something, maybe
in a different season, probablythe networking thing.
Actually, I don't know, we'llfind out.
I kind of play these.
I shoot from the hip.
I'm not a really good planter,so I just shoot from the hip and
try it and go from there.
All right, that's it.
Be good or be good at it.
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