August 4, 2025 • 44 mins
KOP introduced Joe Massa, CEO of Podtopia Network, who shared his experience in radio and his transition to podcasting, emphasizing content quality and audience building.
Joe detailed Podtopia Network's mission to make podcasting accessible with resources like their Podcast Accelerator and foster a supportive community, recommending building an email list and offering insights on monetization and guest pitching.
Joe has an extensive background in media, PR, broadcasting, and podcasting, with experience in radio syndication, including working with Westwood One. He developed a strong skill set in technical aspects and finding his voice during his time in radio, where he learned the importance of creating high-quality, consistent content. In 2020 or 2021, he transitioned from hosting radio shows to focusing on podcasting, launching "The Measuring Post," and was later inspired to create Podtopia Network in January of the current year after a problematic experience with a podcast publicity firm.
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Contact KOP for professional podcast production, imaging, and web design services at http://www.kingofpodcasts.com
Support KOP by subscribing to his YouTube channel and search for King Of Podcasts
Follow KOP on X and TikTok @kingofpodcasts (F Meta!)
Listen to KOP’s other programs, Podcasters Row… and the Wrestling is Real Wrestling Podcast and The Broadcasters Podcast.
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Joe detailed Podtopia Network's mission to make podcasting accessible with resources like their Podcast Accelerator and foster a supportive community, recommending building an email list and offering insights on monetization and guest pitching.
Joe has an extensive background in media, PR, broadcasting, and podcasting, with experience in radio syndication, including working with Westwood One. He developed a strong skill set in technical aspects and finding his voice during his time in radio, where he learned the importance of creating high-quality, consistent content. In 2020 or 2021, he transitioned from hosting radio shows to focusing on podcasting, launching "The Measuring Post," and was later inspired to create Podtopia Network in January of the current year after a problematic experience with a podcast publicity firm.
Contact KOP for professional podcast production, imaging, and web design services at http://www.kingofpodcasts.com
Support KOP by subscribing to his YouTube channel and search for King Of Podcasts
Follow KOP on Twitter or X and TikTok @kingofpodcastsListen to KOP’s other programs, Depraved and Debaucherous, the Wrestling is Real Wrestling Podcast and The Broadcasters Podcast.
Buy KOP a Coffee https://buymeacoffee.com/kingofpodcasts
Drop KOP a PayPal https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=3TAB983ZQPNVL
Drop KOP a CashApp https://cash.app/$kingofallpodcasts
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/podcasters-row-hosted-by-kingofpodcasts--5922450/support.
Contact KOP for professional podcast production, imaging, and web design services at http://www.kingofpodcasts.com
Support KOP by subscribing to his YouTube channel and search for King Of Podcasts
Follow KOP on X and TikTok @kingofpodcasts (F Meta!)
Listen to KOP’s other programs, Podcasters Row… and the Wrestling is Real Wrestling Podcast and The Broadcasters Podcast.
Buy KOP a Coffee https://buymeacoffee.com/kingofpodcasts
Drop KOP a PayPal https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=3TAB983ZQPNVL
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Podcasting since two thousand and five. This is the King
of Podcasts radio network, Kingopodcasts dot.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Com from radio to a podcasting podtopia. Welcome back to
Podcaster show which I'm glad all of your happy and
been coming back about having the show back on a
more frequent formats. Right now has been airing two times
(00:30):
a month. Pretty good play for me to go handle
with all my other programming, which you can find over
at Kingofpodcasts dot com. Also find the show over on Apple, podcast, Spotify,
Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, all the major podcast platforms. You can
find all the content there, social media, everything's there. You
want to donate to the program or to myself for
all this hard work. I greatly appreciated that the chip
jar is all set and rady, it's empty, ready for
(00:52):
your donation. So with that said, I want to go
and introduce my guests for this episode. He has over
two decades shaping narratives and medium pr broadcasting and podcasting.
He's did to get his career to helping to think
the brands and voices cut to the clutter. Journey has
spanned from being a music director and program director to
on air host for the local and nationally syndicated radio
(01:13):
programs on platforms Westwood One, and he's also had a
lot of work in crafting impactful media strategies, securing top
tier press for clients as a former podcast publicists, and
cultivating audiences. These are experiences he says he believes aligned
well with the dynamic world of podcast networking. I'm here
with the CEO at Podtopia Network, Joe Massa. Joe thinks
(01:36):
you for being going with me.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah, Orgey, appreciate you inviting me onto the show. Really
looking forward to talking with you today and going over
my experience and just listening to you read everything that
I sent to you. It sounds like I've been doing
this for one hundred years, but you know, the industry,
you just go through these phases where you kind of
start one direction where I did in radio back in
the early two thousands, and it's just so much fun
(01:58):
to watch it evolve to this podcasting world we live
in now. So really looking forward to sharing my experiences
with you today.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
So in radio, I like to go and just say
when you have the kind of skill sets that you have,
you become the Swiss Army knife. But let's just make
this clear I've already tooked my own experience in radio
here on this program, not as extensive as yours, not
as much behind the mic as yours or in front
of the mic. Mine was more behind the mic and
only for so much. But for me you have to
(02:26):
and even now, especially in the radio space, for you
to go ahead and be noticed or recognized. It's not
like it was before where somebody could just have one
set position just be really good at it. You really
have to be multiversal, multitasking and media in general.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Now.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
The same thing goes for anything in media, anything in
just of journalism or being able to go and run
as an honored talent, you've got to know everything else
you got to have behind the scenes because your job
depends on it. I just want to ask real quickly
about what you've done from the nationally rome. So working
(03:01):
with Westwood one, and before we just got on, you
were talking about some of the formats you worked on,
because what you got to do was very fascinating. There's
a lot of radio stations that, I mean, you really
facilitate a service because for some of these radio stations
that are out there that can't provide local talent, can't
provide a full schedule of people to go ahead and
(03:23):
run the format, run a music format, let alone put
out talent that can go ahead and facilitated radio station.
There's a lot of these satellite radio formats, I would
like to call it. And that's what you got to
do with some of what you did at Westwood One.
Tell me about some of that and really what the
experience was for you.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Yeah, So originally, and going back to your point, you know,
the old school radio format was live and local, and
that was sort of the pressing part about it is
every station had somebody's butt in the chair and they
were in your city and they were talking on the microphone.
But as the technology grew, it made it a lot
easier to send Kate that radio format and content. So
(04:03):
I could be in Denver or Chicago or Miami and
I could record a show that plays in Mississippi or
New Jersey or Pennsylvania or you know, pick your flavor,
pick your location. So that's what Westwood One is essentially.
So it's a satellite radio provider. However, it's not like
a serious XM radio, you know, paid subscription. Essentially, we
(04:25):
record radio shows that get distributed via satellite to local
FM markets so they can hear our content in their
local community. And if you're a listener, you would have
no information wiser that I'm not sitting in your town
on the radio.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
It sounds like that was actually because there were times
where you know, and this is where we have. You know,
there's even good people that will do voice tracking work,
and we'll do voice over work for radio stations, but man,
I have heard those times where and you can definitely
if you're listening hard enough, somebody says the name of
a city or a street and they get it wrong,
and I'm like, I'm sorry, Dash on New York. It
might be a great host up there at n iHeartRadio,
(05:03):
but when I hear you say you know Copans wrote,
that tells me you're not from the area. It's like
those things when it comes to doing any of this
right here. I mean, part of it is too, is
that from the syndicated format, were there things you had
to go and do for these local stations, these affiliates
that was from a local flare, anything you had to
go and do in preparation for it to help them
(05:25):
because they needed something. I mean, it was more than
just you know, the voice striking. What else more did
you have to go do when you're in one of
these formats.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, so there was a couple of different shows that
would record at the same time, so we had more
of an over encompassing generic show where we don't mention cities,
time zones, events, streets, nothing like that. It's just like
you would get on a serious XM radio satellite. It's
just the information about the music or whatever we have
going on promotionally for our company. But then certain stations
(05:55):
would pay a little bit extra to get more customized
content and for that. For instance, I would have one
radio break, say the first break in the hour, and
I would have to record that maybe ten or fifteen
twenty separate times in a row because that would have
to change the call letters, so I couldn't say KACL
and then the next one kx YX. I would have
(06:17):
to do those back to back to back, So you
really repetitively say the same thing over and over again.
So in my mind it's like, oh my goodness, can
I please stop saying this? But you know, the local
radio stations don't know that they're not the only one
getting that content. So that's what separates the guys in
gals that are really good at that versus somebody that
needs a little more preparation. It's when you can continue
(06:39):
to do the same break over and over again and
give it that same level of energy and an excitement,
and also to really bring in that local vibe like hey,
I am in your studio, I am down the street
from you. You can trust what I'm saying, which is
it's so much different because I've also been in very
small market radio like Winters, South Dakota, very tiny town
(07:00):
in the southern part of South Dakota, and the same thing.
It took a long time to learn the local sort
of lingo and names of all the streets. But it's
a very different dynamic. But it's equally as scary. It's
just a little different.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
What I want to get is some of the takeaways
you got that you've incorporated now into Pottobiya network and
also into even podcasts or you do yourself. And then
I want to get into the granular about the podcast
network system because I get the gun do the same
thing with WMR dot FM and pat Cannabis Radio. So
first of all, take me into what it is that
you've taken now from be able to go and do
(07:37):
this format where you have whether it's music, where you've
done public affairs radio as well, among other things, and
just doing for that mass audience what works best and
what you took away from radio that made Pottobia Network
your vision.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
So I think the biggest thing that I took away
from radio was the skill set, right, So it took
a lot of time for me to get cotable on
a microphone and again getting into radio, we didn't have
this camera on my face, so that took a whole
nother dynamic of getting used to and speaking on a camera.
But really it was learning the technical side of it,
not only speaking on a microphone, because very large portion
(08:16):
of my career was not on the microphone. It was
behind the scenes. It was running the promotions tense. I
was a promotions director. It was doing audio voice work
and editing, so learning the skills that I needed to
make in broadcast my own show, and then just keeping
up with the technology as it got more and more advanced.
We don't need a whole team to do a show anymore.
So really what I found was the biggest part of
(08:38):
my radio career that made my podcasting successful. Is I
found my voice? I found what I enjoyed talking about. Now,
I've done radio shows on country music and adult contemporary,
in rhythmic classics, I've done AM formats, and those are
all great, and they taught me a lot about myself
and my presenter style. But I wasn't overly passionate about
(08:59):
any one of those objects or topics I should say.
So what I did is I found my voice. What
do I want to talk about now that I enjoy
my own format and I control the pace of it,
how do I create high quality content and how do
I make it consistent so people know that they can
find me every single week, They're going to know that
they can tune in them the same time on the
same day of the week. They're going to get new
(09:21):
content for me. And that's what's been sort of the
struggle for a lot of podcasters that I deal with
and work with. It's being consistent because they don't see
the growth they want right away, so they get discouraged
and they throw in the towel too early. In my opinion,
you've got to really sort of prove that you're the
leader in the space. You're consistent. People can trust you,
(09:42):
and eventually you start to build these brand ambassadors and
these loyal listeners and followers that are hyper engaged with
your audience and your content. And when you do that,
you start to snowball your growth really really quickly.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
So in the syndicated radio world, you were doing that.
I mean at twenty fourteen with Westwood One, did you
get any attachment or were you able to get any
kind of inroads into the podcast one when it first
started or while it was operating right now, did you
get anything the beccause Westwood One and podcast when we're
still in the same both together, I believe with Norm
Pattis bringing it up front, did you get the going
(10:17):
to be involved in anything with that at all?
Speaker 1 (10:20):
So during that time, I had absolutely nothing to do
with podcasting. It was one hundred percent radio for me
then and I left Westwood One and went to a competitor,
which is Local Radio Networks LRN, and they are an
ABC Radio affiliate, at least they were back when I
was working there, so I'm not sure if that's still
the case, but they actually branched off and started a
podcast radio network. I know, Cumulus, which owns Westwood One,
(10:44):
that's the parent company. They have a podcast network as well.
So as I got a little further out of radio
because I stopped doing radio shows myself, and I want
to say twenty twenty or twenty twenty one was when
I stopped hosting my own daily show or week show.
Since then, it's really been an idea of mine to
(11:05):
get a podcast going. And when I first started my
current podcast, called The Measuring Post, I didn't really know
how to do it. I wasn't sure what I wanted
to talk about. I just knew I had a name
and an idea, and then I just sort of played
around in my studio until I got something that was
like an MVP, which is the minimum viable product, something
that I could present and get feedback on and see
(11:26):
what was good, what was bad, what needed to be improved,
what I could keep as is. And then also just
like it's really an overwhelming It can be very overwhelming
when you're first starting. We call it the analysis paralysis
or chasing shiny objects syndrome. It's you go online and
say I need to start a podcast. Where do I
begin in nine million articles and videos and everything pops
(11:48):
up and you can spend weeks and months just researching.
But I highly recommend instead of doing all that. You
probably have a camera on your cell phone or tablet.
You maybe have a laptop it's got a built in webcam.
You probably got to set at earbuds that came with
your phone. Just turn on your camera and start talking.
Play around, see if you even like doing it. Before
you go invest a bunch of time and money into
(12:10):
something that maybe you're not even interested in, start with
what you have. If you're really enjoying making podcasts or
radio broadcasts, then you can upgrade over time, but you know,
save yourself the money in the headache and start with
what you got and just practice. That's the best takeaway
you can have from this.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
What's amazing now is that we have such an easy
bear to entry for podcasting now because if you want
to go through Spotify for creators can go and start
up the RSS feed, set everything up and go and
get your show up and going. And then we know
there's always the attrition where people will go ahead, start
this and just not continue it because if they just
don't like it after a while, they just drop off.
So you got to go in through that process of
(12:47):
finding out Okay, this is something that fits for you,
not to go into the work of trying to get
all the extra equipment and all means. I know, for
me in twenty twelve, still had to go and pay
for hosting, and my thing was I had to go
and work my way through and find go through a
lot of work in terms of building the equipment a
little by little. But you know, the radio background was
good for me because hosting the program and doing the
(13:08):
content was going to be the easier part, and that
was always something just getting to. But again some thirteen
years later, almost thirteen years coming up in December, now
I'm at this point where for doing this here but
also having all that time doing podcasting and learning the
ropes here. So the creation of the Podtopia network, I
want to get into that because in your own work
you learned various areas that were not even behind the mic,
(13:31):
but more of the operations. So when it comes to
graphic design, marketing, sales, promotions, some consulting work, it gave
you the idea to go ahead and say, okay, which
is the format you know, just to be clear what
cannabis radio and what w mart dot fm does. At
first we did have free programming that we provided, that
we had people that wanted to go and do a
(13:52):
podcast where us come on board, and that we had
advertisers that would support on that. But then we had
the evolving change of the industry where we did things
we're at. First we were just giving you some paid
programming where somebody would go and pay time to go
have an episode of a program we would put up.
We would call it a town hall meeting. But now
we ever since, we've evolutionized all the way up to
(14:14):
the point where now we are doing what AM radio
has done forever, which is brokeer to media. So we
have people that are paying for their own podcasts. But
then we've had to go to involve the process of
how much we have to go and do to supply
to the client for content, whether it's the video, the audio,
the transcriptions, the promotion, publicity as you said as well,
because you also do podcasts, publicity you mentioned before, all
(14:36):
those different things that a podcast could use. Plus, like
you said, for people that want to get into this
and don't feel comfortable trying to go through this all themselves,
if they found an outlet that can go ahead and
help them produce their podcast take the heavy lifting off
of them. That's what we've done. Like I can't even
tell you how much I have to go to do
for every client on board, And at one point we've
(14:57):
had twenty six clients. It was just we've had had,
you know, more than a dozen clients on any given network,
and the work to go through with the team that
we had to go and go through, not even the
fact of like we have to go and clean up
the product because post production. We are also with some
of these shows, you know, we're still teaching these people
(15:18):
how to go and host programming on the fly. They
don't necessarily have the idea of how to do a
you know, proper radio show or just the host of
podcast that's going to be with the listeners in mind.
Take me through what you have for yourself in setting
up pod Toopia if some of those same kind of
issues are aligned with what you're dealing with right now
(15:38):
starting up pod Toopia.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah, one hundred percent. And I think that there's there's
two reasons people start podcasts, and we focus on both.
But I'll explain what sort of launched pod Toopia. So
Podtopia Network obviously is for all things podcasting. We even
created an online evergreen course called the Podcast Accelerator. It's
twenty video lessons that teaches people from start to finish
(16:03):
how to start their own podcast. It's very in depth,
and you actually watch me film myself start a brand
new podcast from scratch, and that's a podcast that's currently
in production right now as well. And the only reason
I bring that up is not everybody wants to start
a podcast because they want to be an influencer or
a famous personality. There's a really big segment of the
(16:24):
population that are business owners, that are thought leaders, that
have things to share, but they don't really have the
platform to share it. So maybe I don't want to
be somebody that does a weekly interview podcast. I don't
want to be famous or TikTok famous, whatever you call it.
Maybe I just want to promote my business. Businesses should
start a podcast, even if it's a two or three
(16:45):
episode pop up podcast that explains who you are, what
you do, and why your customers and clients should trust you,
because then you don't have to hop on call after
call after call explaining this. You can send them this
video watch my pop up podcast, Learn about us. Learn
why you should work with my company. And here's why
that is beneficial from a marketing standpoint, because when you
(17:07):
hop in your car and turn it on, whatever's on
the radio is on the radio. You don't choose that.
That's just what you're listening to unless you pay for
serious or you're putting on your Spotify or whatever. So
there's no real loyalty or an engagement in that scenario. However,
podcasting is full of hyper engaged people that will consume
your content. If they went out of their way to
(17:29):
find your content, to download it and save it and
then listen to thirty sixty minutes of it, that means
they're more than likely already interested in what you're doing
and talking about. So if you're doing this from your
business standpoint, this is the Joe Massive Business podcast. Now
you're tuning into me because you like my business. You're
wanting to see if you can trust me as an
(17:50):
individual to be the person that helps solve your problem.
So create a podcast. And that's what Podtopia Network is
all about. What we wanted to create as a place
where not only individuals who aspire to be a personality
can come to learn, they can collaborate with our community,
but it's for businesses, and I sort of created this
course the Accelerator with like a guy like my dad
(18:12):
in mind, who's a bit older now, but you know,
super smart guy, but not really technically savvy, so it
would it would overwhelm him very quickly to do something
like this. So we make it really easy for a
business to come in, create a simple backdrop, simple equipment list.
We go through how to idate your ideas, how to
research competition and target audiences, how to create marketing plans,
(18:36):
and how to repurpose content, make intros and outros, logos,
you name it. We talk about it, and it's meant
to go from zero to hero and have a business
podcast that then we bring also into the Podtopia network.
Your business then gets listed in our newsletter and then
you can collaborate with all the other businesses in there.
It's sort of like in a free market for people
(18:58):
to come in and share their business and podcast and
hopefully we can all kind of grow and learn and
collaborate together.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
How much are you directly involved? How much how much
hands on are you on with one of these podcasts
that you're setting up and promoting. Because the biggest thing
I have on clients is always about I need to
make sure that they're doing as little as possible that
they can completely have the trust in our work because
of all the combined years of experience we have doing this.
(19:25):
And I mean, for me, if I have to go
ahead and it's always been by you know, just experience, Okay,
this person needs they want a prep sheet to the
point where they want a prep sheet to go and
prepare for the guests they're going to speak with. They
don't have the time to do it, so all the
way to basically I can basically put every word of
question in their mouth because they need that. We had
(19:47):
one show in particultar they wanted celebrities only people that
were just very high profile guests from day one and
for me to set them up. He basically told me
that just give me the questions, would just read the
word for word, and I did, and we had what
twenty five twenty six shows we did just like that.
I didn't necessarily like I mean, we did everything, it
(20:09):
worked out fine, but like just what we had to
go through. Plus there's always the ambitions that some of
these podcasts hosts or these clients that we're going to
go on board they all have these ideas of well,
we want to have these people along, we want to
have this, so there's like an instant success, this immediate
return on investment. How do you handle that part of
(20:29):
media expectations and also trying to tamper expectations.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah, So to answer your first question as far as
how much hands on that we provide, really that depends
on you know, a let's be realistic. It comes at
a cost. My time is not unlimited, it's not free.
I've got paying clients that I do work a little
more closely with some people. We you know, we do
offer a lot of free resources. But the point of
us providing a course, and the course is a paid
(20:56):
course just for you know, full transparency. But it's to
teach people the skills to be successful at it. The
old adage give a man a fish, feed them for
a day, teach amount of fish feed them for a lifetime. Yeah.
I could do your work for you over and over again,
but then you're not growing in the space, right, So
we're going to show you the tools, tactics and platforms
that we use so you can consistently create your own
(21:18):
great content, which is a very liberating thing for most people,
because then they're not waiting on me to respond, or
you to respond, or whoever they're working with. So we
want to teach people the skill set and then the
best way to get good at it practice, practice, practice,
Continually make your content better by iterating it and by
learning what you're doing right and wrong, and do some
(21:39):
ab testing. Now we're also in the process of opening
up some like weekly and monthly webinars where people can
join for free and we'll do sort of like a
masterclass on one particular topic, whether that's how to be
a good guest on a show, or how to set
up lighting for your cameras, or a deep dive into
audio editing using Adobe or whatever platform we're talking talking
(22:00):
about that day. But to answer your second portion of
the question, as far as managing expectations, that's something that
is it's always a bit tricky because, and I mean
this with all due respect to anyone that's listening, people
tend to think of themselves very highly, and you should.
You should always consider yourself great. But I've had people
that have never been on a podcast. They're recording on
(22:22):
their iPhone and they have the grandeur delusion that they're
going to be on Joe Rogan next week not going
to happen. You need years and years of practice in
marketing and networking to get to a level like that.
And a guy like Joe Rogan, I'm just throwing his
name out there because he's on my mind at the moment.
You can't even pay to be on his show. It
doesn't matter if you're five hundred million dollars in your bank.
(22:43):
He doesn't need your money. So you have to bring
something unique to that show, or to a show of
that magnitude, and that's going to be a unique story,
a unique scenario of product launch, something that really intrigues
a guy like that. But again, what I try to
tell people is don't worry so much about the size
of the show you get on as a guest. For instance,
(23:04):
I'm a guest on your show right now. You can
be a guest on my show. That's great. So people go, well,
I only want to be on shows in the top
fifty on Apple podcasts. I go, okay, Well, let's think
about it like this. Would you rather be on a
show that's top fifty that has ten thousand downloads per
episode or more? But only one person actually engages with
your business. Would you rather be on that podcast or
(23:27):
a podcast much smaller, maybe has two thousand downloads per episode,
but twenty five percent of their audience is engaged with
your business. Do the math. The smaller show is going
to benefit you more because it's niche, down to what
you're actually selling, talking about and doing with your business,
your product, your service. So don't worry so much about downloads, numbers, rankings.
(23:49):
Those are superficial numbers. Worry about engagement. Are you getting
return on your investment? Are you seeing your needle move
in your business because you were on this Podcast's should
focus your energy.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
On part of this too, that it's not even a
matter about being placed, because that's also the dynamic that
I always have to go ahead and work with with
clients as well, and when I talk to the team
about how we position ourselves, when you talk about the
fact of how a person's voice is on a podcast
when they're hosting it themselves. The biggest thing that I
wanted to make sure of in the last couple of
(24:22):
years especially is that if we have some of the
you know whatever you go to have whatever kind of
social media following they have, whatever kind of work they've
done that preceded them. We want to make sure that
they monetize they actually will leverage the audience they've already
built in for themselves from wherever they came from. That's
most important. But then also that this is my opinion specifically,
(24:42):
but I think with every podcast, like you mention Joe
Rogan because he's one of the biggest names out there,
I'd like to think that if I'm going to listen
to his podcast, it's always based on the guests, and
that's not necessarily because of Joe. Joe just asks good questions.
That's fine, but not every guest is going to be
my cup of tea. So I'd prefer to go ahead
and create a podcast series where it's host oriented, so
(25:06):
it doesn't matter who's the guest on the show. For
this program itself, you know, it's a matter of it
is part of where it's guest intensive, Like this program
is based on which guest you like to bring on
that I want to want to bring on. That are
podcasters to learn about podcasting from their perspective. But the
same time, I want people to go income because I'm
the one doing the show, and then they'll come back
to me because they'll say, Okay, this person has knowledge,
(25:28):
they have a good way of presentation. And then you
come back because you want to hear the host. And
that's the reason you come back, because I think some
of the best programming there is. It's just like as
a DJ for the radio station. You go back because
you want that taste maker, that person you are comfortable with,
you're familiar with, you have that one on one connection with,
that's who you want to go and work with. But
that's what I want to bring up on that point.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Now.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
The other part is the dynamic between how you are
from what it sounds like a Pottobey network you're creating
to do it yourself dynamic and also with your podcast accelerator,
we haven't to talk about that you have, but that's
also something they have right now in the horizon you're
working on right now where it is convincing and telling
that potential podcast client that they can go to themselves,
(26:12):
they can go and apply and take all the knowledge
they need to create their own podcasts. But again, the
entry to come in and to give them the habit
of saying we want to keep doing this, that's a
lot of work to go into versus if you are
doing it for them and you're taking it all for them.
Obviously there's a premium to it, as you said it
should be. We put a pretty high premium on our
(26:32):
own content, but I think in our experience that has
been the best way to go to do it. Sometimes
we have somebody that will come on, they'll have their
own kind of format. We just kind of pick it
up and in some cases, yeah, we're not going to
charge so much for it. But talk to me about
how you pitch a client to take on something like
the podcast accelerator and get them to be convinced that.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
They can do it themselves. So, yeah, we do have
a do it yourself mantra, but we also will do
with you and do for you. So just to clear
that up, we do. We're full service. It just depends
on what we're puking. It.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Sounds like the DIY model is something that you'd like
to try to encourage.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yeah, I think so, because a lot of people want
to do this. You can't always rely on me. If
I'm on vacation and you have an emergency, what are
you going to do? It's good to learn these skills
yourself as well. But again, we have some people, and
I have some that are like older business people, that
they just don't care. They don't want to do it,
they don't want to learn it. They're like, can I
just give you x y amount of dollars and you
(27:33):
do it for me? They just send me raw content.
I'll polish it, edit it, I'll get all the promos
put together, social media clips. Sure, you can pay me
to do things. My time is for sale, you know,
during working hours. So it's not that that's not an option.
But we encourage people to learn the skill set and
the podcast Accelerator course is available online now. It's a
do it on your own pace online course. There is
(27:56):
handouts and resources that go with it that people can
take down learn from. Then they have access to our
network in our communities where they can go in and
ask questions. Here's the other thing. When you're part of
our network and community, go into our chat rooms, go
into one of our private rooms and ask a question.
Maybe I won't be the one that answers it. Maybe
there's another podcaster in there that just did the same thing.
(28:18):
We want to build a space where people can collaborate
together because I find that when I connect a lot
of people. It always benefits me somehow because then when
I need a new graphic designer, I just go in
the same group and I go this guy and gal
looks great. I'm going to pick them up. And you know,
it's a way to find resources that maybe you wouldn't find.
So it's important to get your hands dirty a little
(28:39):
bit and do some of the work. Because here's the
other thing that's really great about podcasting. The networking implications
are massive. So when I'm on your podcast and then
you come online later, we get to share audiences, we
get to share newsletters, we get to share email list
and number one thing I would recommend everybody build an
email marketing list. The togure your email marketing list, the better,
(29:02):
and a great way of doing that is getting them
onto podcasts, tuning them into your social media, create a
monthly newsletter, weekly newsletter. Do the things that create people
that want to be in your email list. Email list
is much more loyal. It converts a lot higher than
an Instagram follower or a TikTok follower. They don't really care.
(29:22):
They just want to see your videos in their feeds,
so they'll click yes, I like you. But they're probably
not going to engage with you. If somebody gives you
their email address, that's a little bit more intimate, And
if they don't unsubscribe right away, you don't spam them
out really quickly, you're going to find that those people
are the ones that buy your courses, they tune into
your webinars, they support your business, buy your products. So
(29:42):
go on podcasts, get your voice out there. Start your
own even if it's a even if it's a short lived,
get a few guests on there, Cross network and collaborate,
cross promote each other. That's how you expand your network exponentially.
That's when you really start to see your needle move.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
It's very interesting that you make the point that before
you started pod Toopia, you had your own podcast before,
kind of just getting your tone in the water. The
same thing happened back in two thousand and three. One
the owners of the company that I work right right
now with, the podcast Networks, had their own podcasts in
two thousand and three, before you even call the podcasting.
And then eventually he said, well, there was a show
(30:21):
that he was doing himself then as a husband and wife,
and the when they got together the husband and wife
decided to go to do a show together. Then that
began creating these podcast networks that we have today in
the current iterations. So to me about what it was
when you got your own set into podcasting through the
measuring Posts, which you have thirty four episodes right now
as we record to date. That took you all the
(30:45):
way to the point of saying, Okay, I need to
be able to make this a model that I can
go ahead and monetize with and make it self sustain.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Yeah. So, originally, after I got off of doing on
air radio, and I still work in radio. I still
do a lot of voice work. I narrate books, I
do all kinds of voice work, but I don't host
a show anymore. But I knew I wanted to get
back into that, but I didn't really have an idea
what I wanted. So I did one season of audio only.
The first season was audio, and there was like twelve
or thirteen episodes, and then I liked it, didn't like it,
(31:15):
wasn't really sure. I took about six months off. Then
I decided to do a video format. So I started
doing video, and you know, the first couple were not great.
The quality got better even with my years of experience.
And this is something to take note of too. If
you're trying to start a podcast, your first couple might
be really bad, and that's hey, you're learning. You got
to practice. They're going to be bad until you dial
(31:36):
in your process, your equipment and all of the equipment
things that go wrong. Because things will happen. You need
to learn how to troubleshoot and handle it on the fly.
That comes with practice. So we decided to get into
the video format, so I did a couple of those.
Then I took a job as a podcast publicist for
an international PR firm. And the reason I did that
(31:57):
is because I was like, this is a perfect way
for me to to launch my podcast back into the
world and also make some new connections and networking. Well.
I won't mention the name of the agency, but needless
to say, they were not a good agency. The owner
was a bad dude. He was ripping clients off, he
wasn't taking care of people, and it was a really
(32:19):
bad look. And I was not willing to bring my
contacts and twenty years of friendships and relationships into this
guy's agency for him to abuse and take advantage of them.
So I knew after the first thirty days that I
was going to be leaving, so I sort of positioned myself.
I said, you know what, he hired me to build
this for him, this is my experience, this is my contacts.
(32:41):
Why not do it for myself. That's the reason pod
Toopia was born. We just launched in January of this year,
so our network is relatively new, but as an individual
in the space, I am far from new, clearly from
this conversation. So it was more about getting out of
working for other people and building something that I could
control and really be proud of, but then also treat
(33:03):
my clients with respect and integrity, do the right thing,
and then show people that you can do. It's not
that hard to do it yourself. It's daunting, it can
be overwhelming and scary if you're brand new, but with
a little guidance and a little patience and consistency, this
could very well be something that you bring on as
a passive stream of income and eventually maybe even your
(33:24):
full time income if you really enjoy it. There's ways
to monetize this through sponsorships and advertisers, and you know,
you can even get donation set up. Like you mentioned
at the beginning of this episode, it's really common if
you enjoyed the content I put out there, consider putting
some dollars in my pocket because that makes it so
I can continue to make that content. But again, it's
(33:45):
not people think, well it's a handout. It's not a handout.
It's a tip. You tip your local waiter and waitress.
You're tipping me for my content. So that's sort of
the way I look at it. But we go over
a lot of ways to monetize as well, and people
think they're going to get rich off this most likely not.
So just you know, be patient with yourself, but be
consistent with the process and you'll get to where you
(34:06):
want to go.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Oh so make you mention of for if you're going
to be tipping service workers, consider Uber drivers. I'm a
part time Uber driver. Yeah, please do your Uber drivers,
please do that. Just making that point absolutely. The other thing, too,
is in your area of PR. I am curious about
that because I get to interact with a lot of
pretty prominent public relations companies, and you know, part of
it is we met together through the website quoted, which
(34:29):
is you know, basically kind of the replacement for help
reporter dot com, help reporter out, which I like those
kind of sites where I can go and connect with
possible podcasts, guests or just guests in any media and
medium in general. That was the part that felt good
for me when I got that I cite and finally
got I had to go and find an alternative. But
(34:49):
in the PR room, a lot of PR companies will
go ahead and reach out to me from there, and
I've gotten PR companies from for years that have reached
out to me and from that perspective too to get
those people to be guests on other programs. What have
you learned from that experience? Because for me, I always
had to go ahead and train from what twenty fifteen,
twenty sixteen or going forward to go ahead and supply
(35:12):
guests for some of these programs because most of our
programs they are all guests intensive. It was always having
to go and teach them. Okay, if you're gonna pitch
be a guest that you want to bring on, part
of it is okay, I'll give you one of your
guests on from a particular company to come on for
a free interview, no problem. And they're gonna get a
great showing for me, but after that, we're gonna have
to charge you because we've got to do something and
(35:33):
make some money back on this. We just can't take
every time there's an appearance necessary. We gotta do something more.
Or can we get a podcast series from them? They
can go and invest on that, or even the PR companies,
we've done that too. What I want to know is
there's obviously the idea that these guests that you can
try to bring on board, there's paid earned media that's
gonna come back to you if you get them secured
on a podcast, But also the pitch you have to
(35:56):
go and do to get these other media outlets to
be invested and to say yes and commit to making
the time. Tell me about the party. You've learned about
that part because that was the one thing I always
had to do is and these are bigger companies. You
would think, Okay, a lot of this is for cannabis,
but there are oother mainstream outlets and I'm like, all right,
this is the cannabis space. Don't just tell me the
(36:18):
background on somebody that you think would be a good guest.
Make it relevant to stories or headlines or things or
announce what they're doing right now that make me have
a reason why are you here on the show. It's
like a Tonight show, what are you plugging? I want
to have that part. How much of that that do
you already get from that takeaway from the people you
work with in that publicity realm, at that other agency
(36:38):
and at Pottobia today.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah, so we kind of work on all sides of
this topic. We help people become guests on podcasts, so
we call those podcasts tours, so we do get people
through podcast tours. We will help if you own a
podcast and are looking for guests, we can help you
secure guests. We also get a lot of guest requests
(37:02):
to be on my show. I get people requesting me
to be on their shows. So I kind of see
it from all angles and in some pitches are much
better than others. Again, yeah, I don't need a sixty
five paragraph background in biography on your life. I'm not
going to read it. Give me a one pager, very
high level overview, your five or six talking points that
you really want to hammer away, so I can look
(37:23):
at it quickly and say yes, no, yes, no, and
that way, it's nothing personal I'm going to be able
to tell if you're going to be a good fit
for my audience, and vice versa, if you're talking about
something completely different that makes no sense for my audience.
I'm not going to waste your time or mind because
it's not going to be something that really moves either
of us in the right direction. So the goal is
to keep it short and sweet, to keep it concise,
(37:46):
have a hook, have the meat of the conversation, and
a call to action. Here's how you get a hold
of me. Make it as easy as possible to pitch yourself.
But also here's whe're going back to that previous conversation
managing expectations part. If you come to me and say, hey,
I've never been on a podcast, but I want to
be on all top ten shows, the answer is no,
I'm not even going to entertain it because you're not ready.
(38:08):
You're not and it doesn't matter. You're like, well, I
got the money, I'll pay you. It's not a money thing.
I can't make Mel Robbins or Joe Rogan put you
on their show. It's I can't force anybody to do that.
And I have very good connections in the industry admittedly
not that good. But even if I knew a guy
like Joe Rogan, which I don't, he's not going to
(38:29):
just take on Billy Biscuits because you gave me a
ten grand paycheck. And again, i'd imagine his name's not
Billy Biscuits. This is in my head, but you know
it's you have to manage. You have to understand. You've
got to crawl before you walk. Go to the smaller shows,
learn and hone your craft, get good at being a
guest on shows, because that is an art. How do
(38:52):
I dial in my story? Sometimes it's a fifteen minute podcast.
Fifteen minutes seems like a lot of time, but once
you start talking, I mean we're already forty five minutes
into this conversation and I feel like we're just scratching
the surface. So how do I cut through the noise
and get to the actual content. That is an art
that people need to learn, and you can't learn that
by watching me or Jorge do it. You've got to
(39:14):
go through the gauntlet yourself a couple of times, and
by doing that, you're going to find ways to do it.
But for a very long winded answer, the best way
to pitch people, whether it's yourself or if you're doing
it on behalf of a third person, is really do
a little bit of research to make sure that the
show you're pitching is even a good fit to start with.
If you cut through all the noise and you know,
(39:36):
sometimes you'll get a database with one thousand shows, Maybe
only six of those shows are good fits for you.
So do the leg work up front and really target
shows that would really be a good, honest fit for
your brand or product. Once you do that, they're going
to likely feel the same way, like, oh, Joe's really
a good fit for this podcast, So I'm going to
(39:59):
entertain his pitch a little more than the person that's
cookie cutter emailing and blasting it out to five hundred
shows at a time. You can tell the ones that
are well crafted and personalized and the ones that came
from an AI bot that sends out one thousand per day.
So take the time to personalize each one and make
sure you're sending it to the show that makes the
(40:19):
most sense for you.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
So in the lineup right now to a website real quickly,
let's go ahead, go to the website you already have
right now, Podtobia network dot com and your podcast Accelerator
dot com, Podtobia p O d t O p i
A network dot com. You have twelve featured podcasts on
the page, including yours, The Measuring Post, and the other
one that you've brought on board. What can you tell
me about some of the programming you've already featured on there?
(40:43):
Is there any kind of rhyme or reason as to
who comes on the network and the kind of programming
that they do to kind of complement each other. Tell
me if there's anything about that that comes into place
and who is able to make the entry into being
part of the network.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah. So the website actually as of today, which is
June we're in early June of twenty twenty five, is
being completely revamped. Our podcast database is up well over
two or three hundred at this point. Wow. So those
are just some featured ones. That website was a bit
of a cookie cutter placeholder until we could get our
course done and some of our other things built out.
(41:20):
We're a small team, but you know, it's a lot
to undertake to start a brand new business. So you know,
creating the course took several months, and you can find
that at your podcast accelerator dot com. Building out the
social media platforms and all the forms and the CRMs
and all the stuff you don't think about for a business.
That's what's really been the key. But right now, the
(41:40):
new website we're hoping to have out in the next
two to three weeks, it's going to be much more
advanced the show and.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Get promoted and pushed out. You'll have the new of
us website up, so for those of listening in, ideally, yes,
it'll be brand new and you just know that, yeah, yeah,
just know that.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
You'll you'll notice a significant difference. If there's twelve podcast
on the homepage, that's the old one. So hopefully by
the time we get this out, we'll have the fully
site up and up and functional at that point. But
to answer your question, we want every show, any any
and every show is welcome to join our network one
hundred percent for free. And what we do is we
just we put you out in front of our audience
(42:15):
and it helps us because we do get people that
want to be guests on shows. And if you're one
of the podcasts that join and is willing to accept guests,
we'll send people your way you can say yes or no.
We don't control any of your content. We don't tell
you what you can and can't create. We don't say that.
You know you have to pay us a monthly subscription.
It benefits my company to have you and your show
(42:38):
on our platform. It also if you go through my
podcast Accelerator and you create a podcast, we will automatically
add you to our network free of charge. We'll put
you in our newsletters, we'll put you in front of
our social media audiences and share you around the everywhere
we can. Because your success breeds our success. So we
don't have like you only can be a health and
(42:59):
wellness or business or personal development show. Any show, cannabis shows,
health and wellness, conspiracy theory, shows, political, we don't care.
We have sports shows, we have shows on cooking, so
we're not against any any format. We want all shows
that are willing to be on our network. And again
it's just for more discoverability. We don't control your content.
(43:23):
We're not going to say, oh, you're with us, you
can't go put your show on Cumulus Podcast Network. We
don't care. You should be on every network that will
accept you, because that's just more visibility for you. So
there's no format requirements, there's no cost to join the
network again. Once our website is fully up and done,
there's going to be an awesome onboarding forum right there.
(43:43):
We'll collect things like your URL to your website, your logos,
your RSS feed if you want to share that, and
then we'll put your show on a platform and blast
you everywhere we can.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
There you go, perfect, Joe, I really appreciate you taking
the time out. Now, website, by the way, for that
is your podcast accelerator. Do your podcast accelerator dot com.
Make sure to good and take a look at that
and Podtoby network dot com. Joe Massa here, CEO of
pot toby a network, appreciate you taking time out to
go and talk to us about all this area of
the podcast network and what is necessary for those to
(44:15):
go really learn and understand marketing and even a do
it yourself way that it can be done and it's
very efficient if you do it yourself and just learn
to wherewith all the gun to be able to do that.
So thank you for making time. I really do appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Appreciate it or hey, thanks for having me on and
looking forward to the next one.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
All right, and listeners, we think you're listening to the podcast. Joe,
we'll talk to you next time.
Podcasting since two thousand and five. This is the King
of Podcasts radio network, Kingopodcasts dot.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Com from radio to a podcasting podtopia. Welcome back to
Podcaster show which I'm glad all of your happy and
been coming back about having the show back on a
more frequent formats. Right now has been airing two times
(00:30):
a month. Pretty good play for me to go handle
with all my other programming, which you can find over
at Kingofpodcasts dot com. Also find the show over on Apple, podcast, Spotify,
Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, all the major podcast platforms. You can
find all the content there, social media, everything's there. You
want to donate to the program or to myself for
all this hard work. I greatly appreciated that the chip
jar is all set and rady, it's empty, ready for
(00:52):
your donation. So with that said, I want to go
and introduce my guests for this episode. He has over
two decades shaping narratives and medium pr broadcasting and podcasting.
He's did to get his career to helping to think
the brands and voices cut to the clutter. Journey has
spanned from being a music director and program director to
on air host for the local and nationally syndicated radio
(01:13):
programs on platforms Westwood One, and he's also had a
lot of work in crafting impactful media strategies, securing top
tier press for clients as a former podcast publicists, and
cultivating audiences. These are experiences he says he believes aligned
well with the dynamic world of podcast networking. I'm here
with the CEO at Podtopia Network, Joe Massa. Joe thinks
(01:36):
you for being going with me.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah, Orgey, appreciate you inviting me onto the show. Really
looking forward to talking with you today and going over
my experience and just listening to you read everything that
I sent to you. It sounds like I've been doing
this for one hundred years, but you know, the industry,
you just go through these phases where you kind of
start one direction where I did in radio back in
the early two thousands, and it's just so much fun
(01:58):
to watch it evolve to this podcasting world we live
in now. So really looking forward to sharing my experiences
with you today.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
So in radio, I like to go and just say
when you have the kind of skill sets that you have,
you become the Swiss Army knife. But let's just make
this clear I've already tooked my own experience in radio
here on this program, not as extensive as yours, not
as much behind the mic as yours or in front
of the mic. Mine was more behind the mic and
only for so much. But for me you have to
(02:26):
and even now, especially in the radio space, for you
to go ahead and be noticed or recognized. It's not
like it was before where somebody could just have one
set position just be really good at it. You really
have to be multiversal, multitasking and media in general.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Now.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
The same thing goes for anything in media, anything in
just of journalism or being able to go and run
as an honored talent, you've got to know everything else
you got to have behind the scenes because your job
depends on it. I just want to ask real quickly
about what you've done from the nationally rome. So working
(03:01):
with Westwood one, and before we just got on, you
were talking about some of the formats you worked on,
because what you got to do was very fascinating. There's
a lot of radio stations that, I mean, you really
facilitate a service because for some of these radio stations
that are out there that can't provide local talent, can't
provide a full schedule of people to go ahead and
(03:23):
run the format, run a music format, let alone put
out talent that can go ahead and facilitated radio station.
There's a lot of these satellite radio formats, I would
like to call it. And that's what you got to
do with some of what you did at Westwood One.
Tell me about some of that and really what the
experience was for you.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Yeah, So originally, and going back to your point, you know,
the old school radio format was live and local, and
that was sort of the pressing part about it is
every station had somebody's butt in the chair and they
were in your city and they were talking on the microphone.
But as the technology grew, it made it a lot
easier to send Kate that radio format and content. So
(04:03):
I could be in Denver or Chicago or Miami and
I could record a show that plays in Mississippi or
New Jersey or Pennsylvania or you know, pick your flavor,
pick your location. So that's what Westwood One is essentially.
So it's a satellite radio provider. However, it's not like
a serious XM radio, you know, paid subscription. Essentially, we
(04:25):
record radio shows that get distributed via satellite to local
FM markets so they can hear our content in their
local community. And if you're a listener, you would have
no information wiser that I'm not sitting in your town
on the radio.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
It sounds like that was actually because there were times
where you know, and this is where we have. You know,
there's even good people that will do voice tracking work,
and we'll do voice over work for radio stations, but man,
I have heard those times where and you can definitely
if you're listening hard enough, somebody says the name of
a city or a street and they get it wrong,
and I'm like, I'm sorry, Dash on New York. It
might be a great host up there at n iHeartRadio,
(05:03):
but when I hear you say you know Copans wrote,
that tells me you're not from the area. It's like
those things when it comes to doing any of this
right here. I mean, part of it is too, is
that from the syndicated format, were there things you had
to go and do for these local stations, these affiliates
that was from a local flare, anything you had to
go and do in preparation for it to help them
(05:25):
because they needed something. I mean, it was more than
just you know, the voice striking. What else more did
you have to go do when you're in one of
these formats.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, so there was a couple of different shows that
would record at the same time, so we had more
of an over encompassing generic show where we don't mention cities,
time zones, events, streets, nothing like that. It's just like
you would get on a serious XM radio satellite. It's
just the information about the music or whatever we have
going on promotionally for our company. But then certain stations
(05:55):
would pay a little bit extra to get more customized
content and for that. For instance, I would have one
radio break, say the first break in the hour, and
I would have to record that maybe ten or fifteen
twenty separate times in a row because that would have
to change the call letters, so I couldn't say KACL
and then the next one kx YX. I would have
(06:17):
to do those back to back to back, So you
really repetitively say the same thing over and over again.
So in my mind it's like, oh my goodness, can
I please stop saying this? But you know, the local
radio stations don't know that they're not the only one
getting that content. So that's what separates the guys in
gals that are really good at that versus somebody that
needs a little more preparation. It's when you can continue
(06:39):
to do the same break over and over again and
give it that same level of energy and an excitement,
and also to really bring in that local vibe like hey,
I am in your studio, I am down the street
from you. You can trust what I'm saying, which is
it's so much different because I've also been in very
small market radio like Winters, South Dakota, very tiny town
(07:00):
in the southern part of South Dakota, and the same thing.
It took a long time to learn the local sort
of lingo and names of all the streets. But it's
a very different dynamic. But it's equally as scary. It's
just a little different.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
What I want to get is some of the takeaways
you got that you've incorporated now into Pottobiya network and
also into even podcasts or you do yourself. And then
I want to get into the granular about the podcast
network system because I get the gun do the same
thing with WMR dot FM and pat Cannabis Radio. So
first of all, take me into what it is that
you've taken now from be able to go and do
(07:37):
this format where you have whether it's music, where you've
done public affairs radio as well, among other things, and
just doing for that mass audience what works best and
what you took away from radio that made Pottobia Network
your vision.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
So I think the biggest thing that I took away
from radio was the skill set, right, So it took
a lot of time for me to get cotable on
a microphone and again getting into radio, we didn't have
this camera on my face, so that took a whole
nother dynamic of getting used to and speaking on a camera.
But really it was learning the technical side of it,
not only speaking on a microphone, because very large portion
(08:16):
of my career was not on the microphone. It was
behind the scenes. It was running the promotions tense. I
was a promotions director. It was doing audio voice work
and editing, so learning the skills that I needed to
make in broadcast my own show, and then just keeping
up with the technology as it got more and more advanced.
We don't need a whole team to do a show anymore.
So really what I found was the biggest part of
(08:38):
my radio career that made my podcasting successful. Is I
found my voice? I found what I enjoyed talking about. Now,
I've done radio shows on country music and adult contemporary,
in rhythmic classics, I've done AM formats, and those are
all great, and they taught me a lot about myself
and my presenter style. But I wasn't overly passionate about
(08:59):
any one of those objects or topics I should say.
So what I did is I found my voice. What
do I want to talk about now that I enjoy
my own format and I control the pace of it,
how do I create high quality content and how do
I make it consistent so people know that they can
find me every single week, They're going to know that
they can tune in them the same time on the
same day of the week. They're going to get new
(09:21):
content for me. And that's what's been sort of the
struggle for a lot of podcasters that I deal with
and work with. It's being consistent because they don't see
the growth they want right away, so they get discouraged
and they throw in the towel too early. In my opinion,
you've got to really sort of prove that you're the
leader in the space. You're consistent. People can trust you,
(09:42):
and eventually you start to build these brand ambassadors and
these loyal listeners and followers that are hyper engaged with
your audience and your content. And when you do that,
you start to snowball your growth really really quickly.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
So in the syndicated radio world, you were doing that.
I mean at twenty fourteen with Westwood One, did you
get any attachment or were you able to get any
kind of inroads into the podcast one when it first
started or while it was operating right now, did you
get anything the beccause Westwood One and podcast when we're
still in the same both together, I believe with Norm
Pattis bringing it up front, did you get the going
(10:17):
to be involved in anything with that at all?
Speaker 1 (10:20):
So during that time, I had absolutely nothing to do
with podcasting. It was one hundred percent radio for me
then and I left Westwood One and went to a competitor,
which is Local Radio Networks LRN, and they are an
ABC Radio affiliate, at least they were back when I
was working there, so I'm not sure if that's still
the case, but they actually branched off and started a
podcast radio network. I know, Cumulus, which owns Westwood One,
(10:44):
that's the parent company. They have a podcast network as well.
So as I got a little further out of radio
because I stopped doing radio shows myself, and I want
to say twenty twenty or twenty twenty one was when
I stopped hosting my own daily show or week show.
Since then, it's really been an idea of mine to
(11:05):
get a podcast going. And when I first started my
current podcast, called The Measuring Post, I didn't really know
how to do it. I wasn't sure what I wanted
to talk about. I just knew I had a name
and an idea, and then I just sort of played
around in my studio until I got something that was
like an MVP, which is the minimum viable product, something
that I could present and get feedback on and see
(11:26):
what was good, what was bad, what needed to be improved,
what I could keep as is. And then also just
like it's really an overwhelming It can be very overwhelming
when you're first starting. We call it the analysis paralysis
or chasing shiny objects syndrome. It's you go online and
say I need to start a podcast. Where do I
begin in nine million articles and videos and everything pops
(11:48):
up and you can spend weeks and months just researching.
But I highly recommend instead of doing all that. You
probably have a camera on your cell phone or tablet.
You maybe have a laptop it's got a built in webcam.
You probably got to set at earbuds that came with
your phone. Just turn on your camera and start talking.
Play around, see if you even like doing it. Before
you go invest a bunch of time and money into
(12:10):
something that maybe you're not even interested in, start with
what you have. If you're really enjoying making podcasts or
radio broadcasts, then you can upgrade over time, but you know,
save yourself the money in the headache and start with
what you got and just practice. That's the best takeaway
you can have from this.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
What's amazing now is that we have such an easy
bear to entry for podcasting now because if you want
to go through Spotify for creators can go and start
up the RSS feed, set everything up and go and
get your show up and going. And then we know
there's always the attrition where people will go ahead, start
this and just not continue it because if they just
don't like it after a while, they just drop off.
So you got to go in through that process of
(12:47):
finding out Okay, this is something that fits for you,
not to go into the work of trying to get
all the extra equipment and all means. I know, for
me in twenty twelve, still had to go and pay
for hosting, and my thing was I had to go
and work my way through and find go through a
lot of work in terms of building the equipment a
little by little. But you know, the radio background was
good for me because hosting the program and doing the
(13:08):
content was going to be the easier part, and that
was always something just getting to. But again some thirteen
years later, almost thirteen years coming up in December, now
I'm at this point where for doing this here but
also having all that time doing podcasting and learning the
ropes here. So the creation of the Podtopia network, I
want to get into that because in your own work
you learned various areas that were not even behind the mic,
(13:31):
but more of the operations. So when it comes to
graphic design, marketing, sales, promotions, some consulting work, it gave
you the idea to go ahead and say, okay, which
is the format you know, just to be clear what
cannabis radio and what w mart dot fm does. At
first we did have free programming that we provided, that
we had people that wanted to go and do a
(13:52):
podcast where us come on board, and that we had
advertisers that would support on that. But then we had
the evolving change of the industry where we did things
we're at. First we were just giving you some paid
programming where somebody would go and pay time to go
have an episode of a program we would put up.
We would call it a town hall meeting. But now
we ever since, we've evolutionized all the way up to
(14:14):
the point where now we are doing what AM radio
has done forever, which is brokeer to media. So we
have people that are paying for their own podcasts. But
then we've had to go to involve the process of
how much we have to go and do to supply
to the client for content, whether it's the video, the audio,
the transcriptions, the promotion, publicity as you said as well,
because you also do podcasts, publicity you mentioned before, all
(14:36):
those different things that a podcast could use. Plus, like
you said, for people that want to get into this
and don't feel comfortable trying to go through this all themselves,
if they found an outlet that can go ahead and
help them produce their podcast take the heavy lifting off
of them. That's what we've done. Like I can't even
tell you how much I have to go to do
for every client on board, And at one point we've
(14:57):
had twenty six clients. It was just we've had had,
you know, more than a dozen clients on any given network,
and the work to go through with the team that
we had to go and go through, not even the
fact of like we have to go and clean up
the product because post production. We are also with some
of these shows, you know, we're still teaching these people
(15:18):
how to go and host programming on the fly. They
don't necessarily have the idea of how to do a
you know, proper radio show or just the host of
podcast that's going to be with the listeners in mind.
Take me through what you have for yourself in setting
up pod Toopia if some of those same kind of
issues are aligned with what you're dealing with right now
(15:38):
starting up pod Toopia.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah, one hundred percent. And I think that there's there's
two reasons people start podcasts, and we focus on both.
But I'll explain what sort of launched pod Toopia. So
Podtopia Network obviously is for all things podcasting. We even
created an online evergreen course called the Podcast Accelerator. It's
twenty video lessons that teaches people from start to finish
(16:03):
how to start their own podcast. It's very in depth,
and you actually watch me film myself start a brand
new podcast from scratch, and that's a podcast that's currently
in production right now as well. And the only reason
I bring that up is not everybody wants to start
a podcast because they want to be an influencer or
a famous personality. There's a really big segment of the
(16:24):
population that are business owners, that are thought leaders, that
have things to share, but they don't really have the
platform to share it. So maybe I don't want to
be somebody that does a weekly interview podcast. I don't
want to be famous or TikTok famous, whatever you call it.
Maybe I just want to promote my business. Businesses should
start a podcast, even if it's a two or three
(16:45):
episode pop up podcast that explains who you are, what
you do, and why your customers and clients should trust you,
because then you don't have to hop on call after
call after call explaining this. You can send them this
video watch my pop up podcast, Learn about us. Learn
why you should work with my company. And here's why
that is beneficial from a marketing standpoint, because when you
(17:07):
hop in your car and turn it on, whatever's on
the radio is on the radio. You don't choose that.
That's just what you're listening to unless you pay for
serious or you're putting on your Spotify or whatever. So
there's no real loyalty or an engagement in that scenario. However,
podcasting is full of hyper engaged people that will consume
your content. If they went out of their way to
(17:29):
find your content, to download it and save it and
then listen to thirty sixty minutes of it, that means
they're more than likely already interested in what you're doing
and talking about. So if you're doing this from your
business standpoint, this is the Joe Massive Business podcast. Now
you're tuning into me because you like my business. You're
wanting to see if you can trust me as an
(17:50):
individual to be the person that helps solve your problem.
So create a podcast. And that's what Podtopia Network is
all about. What we wanted to create as a place
where not only individuals who aspire to be a personality
can come to learn, they can collaborate with our community,
but it's for businesses, and I sort of created this
course the Accelerator with like a guy like my dad
(18:12):
in mind, who's a bit older now, but you know,
super smart guy, but not really technically savvy, so it
would it would overwhelm him very quickly to do something
like this. So we make it really easy for a
business to come in, create a simple backdrop, simple equipment list.
We go through how to idate your ideas, how to
research competition and target audiences, how to create marketing plans,
(18:36):
and how to repurpose content, make intros and outros, logos,
you name it. We talk about it, and it's meant
to go from zero to hero and have a business
podcast that then we bring also into the Podtopia network.
Your business then gets listed in our newsletter and then
you can collaborate with all the other businesses in there.
It's sort of like in a free market for people
(18:58):
to come in and share their business and podcast and
hopefully we can all kind of grow and learn and
collaborate together.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
How much are you directly involved? How much how much
hands on are you on with one of these podcasts
that you're setting up and promoting. Because the biggest thing
I have on clients is always about I need to
make sure that they're doing as little as possible that
they can completely have the trust in our work because
of all the combined years of experience we have doing this.
(19:25):
And I mean, for me, if I have to go
ahead and it's always been by you know, just experience, Okay,
this person needs they want a prep sheet to the
point where they want a prep sheet to go and
prepare for the guests they're going to speak with. They
don't have the time to do it, so all the
way to basically I can basically put every word of
question in their mouth because they need that. We had
(19:47):
one show in particultar they wanted celebrities only people that
were just very high profile guests from day one and
for me to set them up. He basically told me
that just give me the questions, would just read the
word for word, and I did, and we had what
twenty five twenty six shows we did just like that.
I didn't necessarily like I mean, we did everything, it
(20:09):
worked out fine, but like just what we had to
go through. Plus there's always the ambitions that some of
these podcasts hosts or these clients that we're going to
go on board they all have these ideas of well,
we want to have these people along, we want to
have this, so there's like an instant success, this immediate
return on investment. How do you handle that part of
(20:29):
media expectations and also trying to tamper expectations.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah, So to answer your first question as far as
how much hands on that we provide, really that depends
on you know, a let's be realistic. It comes at
a cost. My time is not unlimited, it's not free.
I've got paying clients that I do work a little
more closely with some people. We you know, we do
offer a lot of free resources. But the point of
us providing a course, and the course is a paid
(20:56):
course just for you know, full transparency. But it's to
teach people the skills to be successful at it. The
old adage give a man a fish, feed them for
a day, teach amount of fish feed them for a lifetime. Yeah.
I could do your work for you over and over again,
but then you're not growing in the space, right, So
we're going to show you the tools, tactics and platforms
that we use so you can consistently create your own
(21:18):
great content, which is a very liberating thing for most people,
because then they're not waiting on me to respond, or
you to respond, or whoever they're working with. So we
want to teach people the skill set and then the
best way to get good at it practice, practice, practice,
Continually make your content better by iterating it and by
learning what you're doing right and wrong, and do some
(21:39):
ab testing. Now we're also in the process of opening
up some like weekly and monthly webinars where people can
join for free and we'll do sort of like a
masterclass on one particular topic, whether that's how to be
a good guest on a show, or how to set
up lighting for your cameras, or a deep dive into
audio editing using Adobe or whatever platform we're talking talking
(22:00):
about that day. But to answer your second portion of
the question, as far as managing expectations, that's something that
is it's always a bit tricky because, and I mean
this with all due respect to anyone that's listening, people
tend to think of themselves very highly, and you should.
You should always consider yourself great. But I've had people
that have never been on a podcast. They're recording on
(22:22):
their iPhone and they have the grandeur delusion that they're
going to be on Joe Rogan next week not going
to happen. You need years and years of practice in
marketing and networking to get to a level like that.
And a guy like Joe Rogan, I'm just throwing his
name out there because he's on my mind at the moment.
You can't even pay to be on his show. It
doesn't matter if you're five hundred million dollars in your bank.
(22:43):
He doesn't need your money. So you have to bring
something unique to that show, or to a show of
that magnitude, and that's going to be a unique story,
a unique scenario of product launch, something that really intrigues
a guy like that. But again, what I try to
tell people is don't worry so much about the size
of the show you get on as a guest. For instance,
(23:04):
I'm a guest on your show right now. You can
be a guest on my show. That's great. So people go, well,
I only want to be on shows in the top
fifty on Apple podcasts. I go, okay, Well, let's think
about it like this. Would you rather be on a
show that's top fifty that has ten thousand downloads per
episode or more? But only one person actually engages with
your business. Would you rather be on that podcast or
(23:27):
a podcast much smaller, maybe has two thousand downloads per episode,
but twenty five percent of their audience is engaged with
your business. Do the math. The smaller show is going
to benefit you more because it's niche, down to what
you're actually selling, talking about and doing with your business,
your product, your service. So don't worry so much about downloads, numbers, rankings.
(23:49):
Those are superficial numbers. Worry about engagement. Are you getting
return on your investment? Are you seeing your needle move
in your business because you were on this Podcast's should
focus your energy.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
On part of this too, that it's not even a
matter about being placed, because that's also the dynamic that
I always have to go ahead and work with with
clients as well, and when I talk to the team
about how we position ourselves, when you talk about the
fact of how a person's voice is on a podcast
when they're hosting it themselves. The biggest thing that I
wanted to make sure of in the last couple of
(24:22):
years especially is that if we have some of the
you know whatever you go to have whatever kind of
social media following they have, whatever kind of work they've
done that preceded them. We want to make sure that
they monetize they actually will leverage the audience they've already
built in for themselves from wherever they came from. That's
most important. But then also that this is my opinion specifically,
(24:42):
but I think with every podcast, like you mention Joe
Rogan because he's one of the biggest names out there,
I'd like to think that if I'm going to listen
to his podcast, it's always based on the guests, and
that's not necessarily because of Joe. Joe just asks good questions.
That's fine, but not every guest is going to be
my cup of tea. So I'd prefer to go ahead
and create a podcast series where it's host oriented, so
(25:06):
it doesn't matter who's the guest on the show. For
this program itself, you know, it's a matter of it
is part of where it's guest intensive, Like this program
is based on which guest you like to bring on
that I want to want to bring on. That are
podcasters to learn about podcasting from their perspective. But the
same time, I want people to go income because I'm
the one doing the show, and then they'll come back
to me because they'll say, Okay, this person has knowledge,
(25:28):
they have a good way of presentation. And then you
come back because you want to hear the host. And
that's the reason you come back, because I think some
of the best programming there is. It's just like as
a DJ for the radio station. You go back because
you want that taste maker, that person you are comfortable with,
you're familiar with, you have that one on one connection with,
that's who you want to go and work with. But
that's what I want to bring up on that point.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Now.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
The other part is the dynamic between how you are
from what it sounds like a Pottobey network you're creating
to do it yourself dynamic and also with your podcast accelerator,
we haven't to talk about that you have, but that's
also something they have right now in the horizon you're
working on right now where it is convincing and telling
that potential podcast client that they can go to themselves,
(26:12):
they can go and apply and take all the knowledge
they need to create their own podcasts. But again, the
entry to come in and to give them the habit
of saying we want to keep doing this, that's a
lot of work to go into versus if you are
doing it for them and you're taking it all for them.
Obviously there's a premium to it, as you said it
should be. We put a pretty high premium on our
(26:32):
own content, but I think in our experience that has
been the best way to go to do it. Sometimes
we have somebody that will come on, they'll have their
own kind of format. We just kind of pick it
up and in some cases, yeah, we're not going to
charge so much for it. But talk to me about
how you pitch a client to take on something like
the podcast accelerator and get them to be convinced that.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
They can do it themselves. So, yeah, we do have
a do it yourself mantra, but we also will do
with you and do for you. So just to clear
that up, we do. We're full service. It just depends
on what we're puking. It.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Sounds like the DIY model is something that you'd like
to try to encourage.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yeah, I think so, because a lot of people want
to do this. You can't always rely on me. If
I'm on vacation and you have an emergency, what are
you going to do? It's good to learn these skills
yourself as well. But again, we have some people, and
I have some that are like older business people, that
they just don't care. They don't want to do it,
they don't want to learn it. They're like, can I
just give you x y amount of dollars and you
(27:33):
do it for me? They just send me raw content.
I'll polish it, edit it, I'll get all the promos
put together, social media clips. Sure, you can pay me
to do things. My time is for sale, you know,
during working hours. So it's not that that's not an option.
But we encourage people to learn the skill set and
the podcast Accelerator course is available online now. It's a
do it on your own pace online course. There is
(27:56):
handouts and resources that go with it that people can
take down learn from. Then they have access to our
network in our communities where they can go in and
ask questions. Here's the other thing. When you're part of
our network and community, go into our chat rooms, go
into one of our private rooms and ask a question.
Maybe I won't be the one that answers it. Maybe
there's another podcaster in there that just did the same thing.
(28:18):
We want to build a space where people can collaborate
together because I find that when I connect a lot
of people. It always benefits me somehow because then when
I need a new graphic designer, I just go in
the same group and I go this guy and gal
looks great. I'm going to pick them up. And you know,
it's a way to find resources that maybe you wouldn't find.
So it's important to get your hands dirty a little
(28:39):
bit and do some of the work. Because here's the
other thing that's really great about podcasting. The networking implications
are massive. So when I'm on your podcast and then
you come online later, we get to share audiences, we
get to share newsletters, we get to share email list
and number one thing I would recommend everybody build an
email marketing list. The togure your email marketing list, the better,
(29:02):
and a great way of doing that is getting them
onto podcasts, tuning them into your social media, create a
monthly newsletter, weekly newsletter. Do the things that create people
that want to be in your email list. Email list
is much more loyal. It converts a lot higher than
an Instagram follower or a TikTok follower. They don't really care.
(29:22):
They just want to see your videos in their feeds,
so they'll click yes, I like you. But they're probably
not going to engage with you. If somebody gives you
their email address, that's a little bit more intimate, And
if they don't unsubscribe right away, you don't spam them
out really quickly, you're going to find that those people
are the ones that buy your courses, they tune into
your webinars, they support your business, buy your products. So
(29:42):
go on podcasts, get your voice out there. Start your
own even if it's a even if it's a short lived,
get a few guests on there, Cross network and collaborate,
cross promote each other. That's how you expand your network exponentially.
That's when you really start to see your needle move.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
It's very interesting that you make the point that before
you started pod Toopia, you had your own podcast before,
kind of just getting your tone in the water. The
same thing happened back in two thousand and three. One
the owners of the company that I work right right
now with, the podcast Networks, had their own podcasts in
two thousand and three, before you even call the podcasting.
And then eventually he said, well, there was a show
(30:21):
that he was doing himself then as a husband and wife,
and the when they got together the husband and wife
decided to go to do a show together. Then that
began creating these podcast networks that we have today in
the current iterations. So to me about what it was
when you got your own set into podcasting through the
measuring Posts, which you have thirty four episodes right now
as we record to date. That took you all the
(30:45):
way to the point of saying, Okay, I need to
be able to make this a model that I can
go ahead and monetize with and make it self sustain.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Yeah. So, originally, after I got off of doing on
air radio, and I still work in radio. I still
do a lot of voice work. I narrate books, I
do all kinds of voice work, but I don't host
a show anymore. But I knew I wanted to get
back into that, but I didn't really have an idea
what I wanted. So I did one season of audio only.
The first season was audio, and there was like twelve
or thirteen episodes, and then I liked it, didn't like it,
(31:15):
wasn't really sure. I took about six months off. Then
I decided to do a video format. So I started
doing video, and you know, the first couple were not great.
The quality got better even with my years of experience.
And this is something to take note of too. If
you're trying to start a podcast, your first couple might
be really bad, and that's hey, you're learning. You got
to practice. They're going to be bad until you dial
(31:36):
in your process, your equipment and all of the equipment
things that go wrong. Because things will happen. You need
to learn how to troubleshoot and handle it on the fly.
That comes with practice. So we decided to get into
the video format, so I did a couple of those.
Then I took a job as a podcast publicist for
an international PR firm. And the reason I did that
(31:57):
is because I was like, this is a perfect way
for me to to launch my podcast back into the
world and also make some new connections and networking. Well.
I won't mention the name of the agency, but needless
to say, they were not a good agency. The owner
was a bad dude. He was ripping clients off, he
wasn't taking care of people, and it was a really
(32:19):
bad look. And I was not willing to bring my
contacts and twenty years of friendships and relationships into this
guy's agency for him to abuse and take advantage of them.
So I knew after the first thirty days that I
was going to be leaving, so I sort of positioned myself.
I said, you know what, he hired me to build
this for him, this is my experience, this is my contacts.
(32:41):
Why not do it for myself. That's the reason pod
Toopia was born. We just launched in January of this year,
so our network is relatively new, but as an individual
in the space, I am far from new, clearly from
this conversation. So it was more about getting out of
working for other people and building something that I could
control and really be proud of, but then also treat
(33:03):
my clients with respect and integrity, do the right thing,
and then show people that you can do. It's not
that hard to do it yourself. It's daunting, it can
be overwhelming and scary if you're brand new, but with
a little guidance and a little patience and consistency, this
could very well be something that you bring on as
a passive stream of income and eventually maybe even your
(33:24):
full time income if you really enjoy it. There's ways
to monetize this through sponsorships and advertisers, and you know,
you can even get donation set up. Like you mentioned
at the beginning of this episode, it's really common if
you enjoyed the content I put out there, consider putting
some dollars in my pocket because that makes it so
I can continue to make that content. But again, it's
(33:45):
not people think, well it's a handout. It's not a handout.
It's a tip. You tip your local waiter and waitress.
You're tipping me for my content. So that's sort of
the way I look at it. But we go over
a lot of ways to monetize as well, and people
think they're going to get rich off this most likely not.
So just you know, be patient with yourself, but be
consistent with the process and you'll get to where you
(34:06):
want to go.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Oh so make you mention of for if you're going
to be tipping service workers, consider Uber drivers. I'm a
part time Uber driver. Yeah, please do your Uber drivers,
please do that. Just making that point absolutely. The other thing, too,
is in your area of PR. I am curious about
that because I get to interact with a lot of
pretty prominent public relations companies, and you know, part of
it is we met together through the website quoted, which
(34:29):
is you know, basically kind of the replacement for help
reporter dot com, help reporter out, which I like those
kind of sites where I can go and connect with
possible podcasts, guests or just guests in any media and
medium in general. That was the part that felt good
for me when I got that I cite and finally
got I had to go and find an alternative. But
(34:49):
in the PR room, a lot of PR companies will
go ahead and reach out to me from there, and
I've gotten PR companies from for years that have reached
out to me and from that perspective too to get
those people to be guests on other programs. What have
you learned from that experience? Because for me, I always
had to go ahead and train from what twenty fifteen,
twenty sixteen or going forward to go ahead and supply
(35:12):
guests for some of these programs because most of our
programs they are all guests intensive. It was always having
to go and teach them. Okay, if you're gonna pitch
be a guest that you want to bring on, part
of it is okay, I'll give you one of your
guests on from a particular company to come on for
a free interview, no problem. And they're gonna get a
great showing for me, but after that, we're gonna have
to charge you because we've got to do something and
(35:33):
make some money back on this. We just can't take
every time there's an appearance necessary. We gotta do something more.
Or can we get a podcast series from them? They
can go and invest on that, or even the PR companies,
we've done that too. What I want to know is
there's obviously the idea that these guests that you can
try to bring on board, there's paid earned media that's
gonna come back to you if you get them secured
on a podcast, But also the pitch you have to
(35:56):
go and do to get these other media outlets to
be invested and to say yes and commit to making
the time. Tell me about the party. You've learned about
that part because that was the one thing I always
had to do is and these are bigger companies. You
would think, Okay, a lot of this is for cannabis,
but there are oother mainstream outlets and I'm like, all right,
this is the cannabis space. Don't just tell me the
(36:18):
background on somebody that you think would be a good guest.
Make it relevant to stories or headlines or things or
announce what they're doing right now that make me have
a reason why are you here on the show. It's
like a Tonight show, what are you plugging? I want
to have that part. How much of that that do
you already get from that takeaway from the people you
work with in that publicity realm, at that other agency
(36:38):
and at Pottobia today.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah, so we kind of work on all sides of
this topic. We help people become guests on podcasts, so
we call those podcasts tours, so we do get people
through podcast tours. We will help if you own a
podcast and are looking for guests, we can help you
secure guests. We also get a lot of guest requests
(37:02):
to be on my show. I get people requesting me
to be on their shows. So I kind of see
it from all angles and in some pitches are much
better than others. Again, yeah, I don't need a sixty
five paragraph background in biography on your life. I'm not
going to read it. Give me a one pager, very
high level overview, your five or six talking points that
you really want to hammer away, so I can look
(37:23):
at it quickly and say yes, no, yes, no, and
that way, it's nothing personal I'm going to be able
to tell if you're going to be a good fit
for my audience, and vice versa, if you're talking about
something completely different that makes no sense for my audience.
I'm not going to waste your time or mind because
it's not going to be something that really moves either
of us in the right direction. So the goal is
to keep it short and sweet, to keep it concise,
(37:46):
have a hook, have the meat of the conversation, and
a call to action. Here's how you get a hold
of me. Make it as easy as possible to pitch yourself.
But also here's whe're going back to that previous conversation
managing expectations part. If you come to me and say, hey,
I've never been on a podcast, but I want to
be on all top ten shows, the answer is no,
I'm not even going to entertain it because you're not ready.
(38:08):
You're not and it doesn't matter. You're like, well, I
got the money, I'll pay you. It's not a money thing.
I can't make Mel Robbins or Joe Rogan put you
on their show. It's I can't force anybody to do that.
And I have very good connections in the industry admittedly
not that good. But even if I knew a guy
like Joe Rogan, which I don't, he's not going to
(38:29):
just take on Billy Biscuits because you gave me a
ten grand paycheck. And again, i'd imagine his name's not
Billy Biscuits. This is in my head, but you know
it's you have to manage. You have to understand. You've
got to crawl before you walk. Go to the smaller shows,
learn and hone your craft, get good at being a
guest on shows, because that is an art. How do
(38:52):
I dial in my story? Sometimes it's a fifteen minute podcast.
Fifteen minutes seems like a lot of time, but once
you start talking, I mean we're already forty five minutes
into this conversation and I feel like we're just scratching
the surface. So how do I cut through the noise
and get to the actual content. That is an art
that people need to learn, and you can't learn that
by watching me or Jorge do it. You've got to
(39:14):
go through the gauntlet yourself a couple of times, and
by doing that, you're going to find ways to do it.
But for a very long winded answer, the best way
to pitch people, whether it's yourself or if you're doing
it on behalf of a third person, is really do
a little bit of research to make sure that the
show you're pitching is even a good fit to start with.
If you cut through all the noise and you know,
(39:36):
sometimes you'll get a database with one thousand shows, Maybe
only six of those shows are good fits for you.
So do the leg work up front and really target
shows that would really be a good, honest fit for
your brand or product. Once you do that, they're going
to likely feel the same way, like, oh, Joe's really
a good fit for this podcast, So I'm going to
(39:59):
entertain his pitch a little more than the person that's
cookie cutter emailing and blasting it out to five hundred
shows at a time. You can tell the ones that
are well crafted and personalized and the ones that came
from an AI bot that sends out one thousand per day.
So take the time to personalize each one and make
sure you're sending it to the show that makes the
(40:19):
most sense for you.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
So in the lineup right now to a website real quickly,
let's go ahead, go to the website you already have
right now, Podtobia network dot com and your podcast Accelerator
dot com, Podtobia p O d t O p i
A network dot com. You have twelve featured podcasts on
the page, including yours, The Measuring Post, and the other
one that you've brought on board. What can you tell
me about some of the programming you've already featured on there?
(40:43):
Is there any kind of rhyme or reason as to
who comes on the network and the kind of programming
that they do to kind of complement each other. Tell
me if there's anything about that that comes into place
and who is able to make the entry into being
part of the network.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah. So the website actually as of today, which is
June we're in early June of twenty twenty five, is
being completely revamped. Our podcast database is up well over
two or three hundred at this point. Wow. So those
are just some featured ones. That website was a bit
of a cookie cutter placeholder until we could get our
course done and some of our other things built out.
(41:20):
We're a small team, but you know, it's a lot
to undertake to start a brand new business. So you know,
creating the course took several months, and you can find
that at your podcast accelerator dot com. Building out the
social media platforms and all the forms and the CRMs
and all the stuff you don't think about for a business.
That's what's really been the key. But right now, the
(41:40):
new website we're hoping to have out in the next
two to three weeks, it's going to be much more
advanced the show and.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Get promoted and pushed out. You'll have the new of
us website up, so for those of listening in, ideally, yes,
it'll be brand new and you just know that, yeah, yeah,
just know that.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
You'll you'll notice a significant difference. If there's twelve podcast
on the homepage, that's the old one. So hopefully by
the time we get this out, we'll have the fully
site up and up and functional at that point. But
to answer your question, we want every show, any any
and every show is welcome to join our network one
hundred percent for free. And what we do is we
just we put you out in front of our audience
(42:15):
and it helps us because we do get people that
want to be guests on shows. And if you're one
of the podcasts that join and is willing to accept guests,
we'll send people your way you can say yes or no.
We don't control any of your content. We don't tell
you what you can and can't create. We don't say that.
You know you have to pay us a monthly subscription.
It benefits my company to have you and your show
(42:38):
on our platform. It also if you go through my
podcast Accelerator and you create a podcast, we will automatically
add you to our network free of charge. We'll put
you in our newsletters, we'll put you in front of
our social media audiences and share you around the everywhere
we can. Because your success breeds our success. So we
don't have like you only can be a health and
(42:59):
wellness or business or personal development show. Any show, cannabis shows,
health and wellness, conspiracy theory, shows, political, we don't care.
We have sports shows, we have shows on cooking, so
we're not against any any format. We want all shows
that are willing to be on our network. And again
it's just for more discoverability. We don't control your content.
(43:23):
We're not going to say, oh, you're with us, you
can't go put your show on Cumulus Podcast Network. We
don't care. You should be on every network that will
accept you, because that's just more visibility for you. So
there's no format requirements, there's no cost to join the
network again. Once our website is fully up and done,
there's going to be an awesome onboarding forum right there.
(43:43):
We'll collect things like your URL to your website, your logos,
your RSS feed if you want to share that, and
then we'll put your show on a platform and blast
you everywhere we can.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
There you go, perfect, Joe, I really appreciate you taking
the time out. Now, website, by the way, for that
is your podcast accelerator. Do your podcast accelerator dot com.
Make sure to good and take a look at that
and Podtoby network dot com. Joe Massa here, CEO of
pot toby a network, appreciate you taking time out to
go and talk to us about all this area of
the podcast network and what is necessary for those to
(44:15):
go really learn and understand marketing and even a do
it yourself way that it can be done and it's
very efficient if you do it yourself and just learn
to wherewith all the gun to be able to do that.
So thank you for making time. I really do appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Appreciate it or hey, thanks for having me on and
looking forward to the next one.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
All right, and listeners, we think you're listening to the podcast. Joe,
we'll talk to you next time.
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