Winning the Content Game: Show Notes Funnel Strategy | Deirdre Tshein

#011: Dylan Williams discusses content marketing for podcasters with Deirdre Tshein. Deirdre shares her coaching business journey, emphasizing intentional content marketing and using diverse formats to engage the audience. She highlights the importance of lead magnets, content creation challenges, and maintaining focus in business goals. Deirdre's insights offer valuable takeaways for podcasters, emphasizing effective content marketing strategies and aligning content formats with audience preferences. Her experiences provide a resource for podcasters aiming to enhance content marketing and achieve success. Listen in for practical tips and a fresh perspective on content marketing..

Show Notes with Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Unexpected Success in Podcasting
00:01:15 - Learning Through Podcasting
00:02:33 - The 7 Hour Rule
00:04:08 - Leveraging Challenge Funnels
00:10:49 - Show Notes Funnel
00:12:33 - Lead Magnet Strategy
00:15:04 - Business and Podcasting
00:15:55 - Email Capture Tools
00:17:31 - Capshow and Content Automation
00:24:41 - Winning the Content Game
00:25:05 - Building an Audience through Email Marketing
00:25:29 - Overview of Capture's Content Creation Capabilities
00:26:08 - Augmented Features and Next-Gen Plans for Capture
00:27:13 - Personalized Content Plan Creation Process
00:34:58 - Rebranding and Social Media Strategy
00:37:14 - The Importance of Focus and Consistency
00:38:49 - Overcoming Overwhelm and Staying True to Your Why
00:40:39 - Learning from Mistakes and Finding Fulfillment
00:45:01 - Sustainable Business Growth and Hiring Strategies
00:47:48 - Encouragement for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Deirdre's Links:
https://www.capsho.com
https://www.instagram.com/deirdretshien

BONUS MATERIAL:
https://www.skool.com/build-what-you-love-2080/about

Dylan's Links:

• 🎙️Podcast: BusinessConfessionsPod
• 📽️YouTube: @BizConfessions
• 📷Instagram: DylanWillx
• Linked-In: /dylan-williams

Other Episodes you might like:

• 7-Figure Blueprint for Any Business | Chandler Saine
• Building a Unique Online Fitness Empire | Lee Maasen
• Land Investing & Building Multiple Streams of Income Daniel Martinez
• Hiring Top Talent Overseas | Stratton Brown

Past Guests: Chandler Saine, Daniel Martinez, Stratton Brown, Lee Maasen, Nico Lagan, Daniel Roman,Tim Branyan, David Van Beekum, Nick Hutchison, Deirdre Tshein, Sanchez Zehcnas, Christina Lopez, Keigan Carthy, Hemant Varshney, Taniela Fiefia, Jennifer Blake, Nicki Sciberras, John Chan

Transcript

Dylan: 0:00

223, 000 in your first year of podcasting. How is that?

Deirdre: 0:04

I know. By the way, during that process, it did not seem like we were going to do anywhere near that. I was surprised when we had our first, 1, 000 in the bank. we look back after our first 12 months podcasting and realize that we had done that much and I was like, Oh my gosh. Okay. We've got to figure out what the system was that we use how do we, actually productize system. that's the short journey, but, basically what happened was I had a coaching business. It was, for e commerce business owners. it was a transition from an agency that we had and, COVID hit and like a lot of other people, it was just like, okay, how do we just get online and serve our clients in the best way possible from there? So that's where coaching, came about and oh my gosh, Dylan, I can tell you that the first few times we launched our offer, it was like crickets, like people would be there, but then there was like no one buying. There was no, it was, To the point where I was like, this, clearly it's, it must be me. I think there must be something wrong with me. and then I remembered, I was actually listening to, Oh my gosh. Who, I think it was a mix of say the likes of, Russell Brunson and other kind of marketers out there. And they were like, you've got to be publishing, you've got to be creating content. and so that's when I launched a podcast. I was like, why not? And I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know how to edit it. I didn't know, I didn't have, I fumbled my way absolutely through it. I just got this microphone that was like not a brand at all off of Amazon. I was like, okay, I'll just figure this out. and so it was great because it felt like I was doing something, when you like. Are learning this new skill and I was learning this podcast and I was like, yes, this is the thing that's going to like. Get me clients. They're gonna love what I'm doing. They're going to buy my thing, which did not happen. So I think that was like the first, at least a couple of months of podcasting. and so I had to really get intentional because you would know, Podcasting takes a lot of time. and I was like, this is not, I'm not actually getting an ROI on this. This is ridiculous. So I had to be really intentional about what it was that. I like why we're creating the podcast and what we're going to do with it. And I was reading, this book called oversubscribed by Daniel Priestley, and he, it was like this tiny section in that book. And he mentioned the seven hour rule. and he was saying that for anyone to become a raving fan, let alone buy from you, you need, they need to spend at least seven hours with you and it doesn't have to be, the conventional way of like. Take them out to dinner and wine and dine them, but spending seven hours with you is just even across content. So that became like my obsession. I was like, Hey, if I'm going to do this podcasting thing, how do I get someone to spend that seven hours with me? And what I figured out was it wasn't just from the podcast itself. It was also from, blogs I wrote. Or from a YouTube video that I would put out, or the emails that I wrote, the accumulation of all of those things meant that once people spent seven hours consuming any of that content, that was when they would actually buy into me and that is when they would actually buy. and that's what we found because the third time we launched, an offer. We, I thought, I was like, has someone hacked our Stripe account? Because we started getting notifications of you got paid. And, it wasn't, we had our first five figure month and that was just because we were really intentional with the content that we were putting out and how we were guiding people through that content so that they actually spent seven hours. With us. So that became the foundation of the content dripping strategy, and that became the foundation of the software that we're working on now, which is called Capture.

Dylan: 3:29

Let's go back to the beginning, on the coaching. What was your initial offer with coaching?

Deirdre: 3:34

So we were helping e commerce businesses. It was, Oh my gosh, this feels like it's going way back. It was a six month program and basically we would help predominantly, they were predominantly female, starting their online e com business and we would basically help the market and grow that business that was essentially the offer. Yeah.

Dylan: 3:55

So what was that funnel like for them, or would you create that funnel for them or reframe that? What'd that look like?

Deirdre: 4:00

in terms of our funnel, like how we got people, how we got clients in?

Dylan: 4:03

yes,

Deirdre: 4:03

your funnel. Yeah. So our funnel, so we leveraged mainly a challenge funnel. so it was a five day bootcamp that we would do, where I would go through the entire, the strategy. and basically at the back of that, I would pitch. so it was like day. For, I think I would pitch, and then day five do a repitch and yeah, that was the funnel that we took people through.

Dylan: 4:22

Nice. Nice. So was that funnel that would be considered what challenge? Kind of webinar, funnel, essentially on that end. Yeah,

Deirdre: 4:30

I guess so. It was a challenge funnel. Yeah. So I wouldn't fully call it a webinar in the traditional sense.

Dylan: 4:35

When you got them in there, was that kind of, was that a high ticket, low ticket? What did you consider that

Deirdre: 4:41

on your side? Yeah, it was a high ticket. So it was an 8, 000 offer. Oh, it, went up. So I think when we first started it, it was something like 5, 000 and then we kept, increasing it until it ended up at around 8, 000.

Dylan: 4:51

Who'd you learn the funnel and the coaching aspect from?

Deirdre: 4:54

Oh, so I came across this, amazing, woman by the name of Melissa Ricker. so she basically herself, her whole thing was just like. Challenge funnels. that was her whole thing. I don't think she does that any, anymore. but that was at the time that, I came across her. It was, she was basically just focus on this one funnel. and then she would basically just keep. we would do the reps and she would help us, identify the hot spots of where things maybe weren't as optimal in terms of, from a conversion perspective, because there's so once people get into building funnels, you realize that there are so many points that where there is potential failure, whether that's someone. Not signing up for the thing, whether that's someone not opening emails, whether that's someone not knowing where to go for the webinar or the challenge, whether that's someone not, there's so many points where things can fail. and so that was what she was really great at helping us with was like, okay, where do we optimize our efforts?

Dylan: 5:50

So moving into, you had your coaching company. That's what led you to podcasting? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So what's the framework with. Podcasting and how do you market that now? And now let's talk about how you marketed it back then when you first started.

Deirdre: 6:05

Oh my gosh. Yeah. So what I realized, I think a lot of us, when we start creating content, whether that's a podcast or YouTube video, or even just on social media, we we think that the creation of the content itself and the public. The publication of it is the end of our job and what was really tough for me to learn. It was pretty hard pill for me to swallow actually, was that it was actually just the beginning, creating the contents, just the beginning because, and I actually have this mapped out in what I call a traffic pyramid, but that's almost in my, in the traffic pyramids. Which is, that's a bottom tier, right? It's I call it passive organic marketing because it's incredibly passive. You're creating this content, which feels not passive because it's a lot of work, but it is because all you're doing is you're putting it out there and you're hoping that it's going to. Get, find its way to your ideal audience. And I think we all know that hope is not a strategy. And for me, it was like, okay, what does that mean then? So if it's, if I have to change my mindset around, it's actually not the end, but it's the beginning. What I had to figure out was how do I activate that content? So that's actually the second tier of the pyramid, which is active organic marketing. And what that looks like is. You have to actually like in and of itself, the content in and of itself is something that has to be marketed. So I had to figure out ways on to leverage things like social media, like my email, everything's a cycle, like you're going from your podcast, for example, to, Hey, join my email list. And then for people in your email list, it's Oh, I just actually released this new podcast episode. go listen to the podcast episode because you have to keep marketing it. And it's the same thing, even if it's on social media, like we're even now getting into the habit of using our email list to send people back to a post that I did on Facebook, for example, everything has you have to market everything and that's really how you activate it. there's a ton of other ways that you have to activate it. But at its core, it's like, how do you actually market the content that you're creating? and so that's. That's the mindset shift that I had to make to actually get my podcast heard by the right people. so I didn't, and it took me a while to get to a point where it was like a little bit more efficient, but at the beginning it was very much just, I was just trying all the things. I remember cause I was getting told. In inverted commas that I had to be everywhere, it's you have to be on all of the platforms. Like it's, I think, what did Gary V call it? Like content domination or something, like he has a word. And so I was like, Oh, okay. I have to be everywhere. And so at the time I was like, we were literally trying to create, we're creating reels for Instagram, and because we're trying to do it really intentionally as well, that's, I'm very, I'm like. If nothing else, I know that being on a platform just to be on a platform, does not work. So I was like, Hey, if we're going to be on these platforms, we have to be really intentional. So we were creating Reels for Instagram and then we were creating different TikToks for TikTok. And then we're creating, trying to create different shorts for YouTube. And then it was just, it was insane. It was crazy and, to the point where I, I, I don't feel so bad about it. It's never good for you personally to burn out. Like you cannot get to that point, but I felt really terrible because my team was burning out. Like we actually had someone who had to quit. She had to leave because it was just all too much. and so that was a moment where, honestly, for me, I was like, there's, there has to be a better way. To do this, and that's when I really started going deep on automation on AI before chat GPT and everything else, it became a thing and, and really learning the, which I'm still learning, by the way, I wish I had it all figured out, but I'm still going through the process of the importance of focused, and discipline and. To me being intelligently lazy, which is, why our spirit animal is a sloth because I am all trying to remind myself that we just need to always be intelligently lazy.

Dylan: 9:41

you touched a lot of points there. When I initially had the idea to start a podcast, I thought, like you said, if I just take clips and post it, I'll just magically grow. And now looking, I have a 90 day period now that I can see. On our servers to where our podcast host website, where I can see the downloads and I see little spikes like this. Yes. And then I can see every time I promoted or did something for it, I would get a spike. But when I didn't for those four or five days where I'm prepping for other podcasts and not doing it, it's just there, and I'm like, I was listening to a few of your other podcasts that you've been on before, before the show and you going into that made me realize that I was like, that's. That's it. it's just, you have to do more. so we'll get into that more but tell me about, so that's how you market it as a whole. What about lead magnets? What works for you right now for lead magnets in your podcast?

Deirdre: 10:33

Yeah, we try a bunch of different things, but from the podcast, I actually really like this one. but I do, I call it the show notes funnel. and basically I have a, my. My podcast is, different by way of like I do narration. So it's still an entrepreneurship podcast. but when I do an interview or when I have someone on a mastermind session for my community, the Capshobians, then I basically like to. Edit it in a way where I am joining the dots in between. So I narrate, in between now the, it's a lot of work to do that. So I definitely don't recommend that, if you don't have the time or the world, don't go down that path. but the great thing about it is that I found was that there were some really great. tips, hacks, tactics that my guests and the experts were sharing that didn't really have a neat place in the podcast. And so I would actually say, in my narrations, I would be like, Hey, I actually asked this question and they had this amazing, and it was generally a hook some kind of hook and there's, they have this amazing answer to it. Listen, go over to the show notes. and grab the bonus clip completely free, but they have to give me an email address. and so that's what I started doing. And it went from, Oh, okay. The reason why I started doing this, by the way. So I was, speaking to a Kapshovian. We were having just like a Q and a session. And he was saying that since he's been, he was using capture because we do like email subject lines and we help draft that. he was like. He was like, there was some email subject lines that I would never use, but I was like, you know what? I'm just going to try them. I'm just going to try you and see. And he said that he went from like a 23 percent open rate to something like over 65 percent open rate from using the email subject lines that we were recommending. But he said, the thing is that I have, even though those emails were about getting people back to listen to his podcast episode, he didn't find a big bump in his. In his listeners, in his downloads. And so that got me thinking about Oh, okay. Why would that be? So I started asking him, I was like, okay, how do you get people onto your email list in the first place? And he was like, on my website, the primary lead magnet is a PDF. And so they download this checklist thing and they get on the email list. And I was like, okay, this is interesting. What if I had a hypothesis? I was like. if our primary aim for some of our emails is to actually get people to listen to our podcast, then I wonder if it's because the audience that he's collecting aren't the right. Audience by way of that type of behavior. Because if the lead magnet itself, as in, IE, it's a written lead magnet is different to how you want them to be consuming your information, IE audio. There's a bit of a, there could be a disconnect there, not to say that they're mutually exclusive, so that was a hypothesis that I had. And I was like, okay, I'm going to test this because I had a similar thing before lead magnet was like a checklist and stuff. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to start to use. Audio like an audio lead magnet as a checklist. And that's what led me to the show notes funnel to be like, if I could get people who are audio first, IE, they enjoy listening to tactics or tips or whatever, then the likelihood that they will actually want to then listen to an audio podcast is a lot higher. and so that's why I actually tested it to begin with. And we found I think in the first time that we bought, that we, created that lead magnet, we had something like. 167 audiences or something like that. which was, pretty good for lead magnet. yeah, so that's that's a lead magnet that I love from a podcast to email. Now for people who don't do narrative style, what you can do. And what I ended up doing was if it's something like this, where it's an interview, podcast, I would actually carve out a question, I'd ask it at the end, and then I would just make sure that I chop that. And then just as I do, because I think even if I did a guest, interview, I would still probably just narrate the intro and most likely an outro. And so at least then I can still see that as a call to action in the outro to be like, Hey, go listen to the awesome. I know that you had this question that you wanted to get answered. They answered it. Go get that in the show notes.

Dylan: 14:38

I'll probably do that on this one too, because that was going to be my next question. Hey, what would you do for this inter style interview style podcast? So I've been wondering a lot of that too, because I honestly, I got into this. I won't get into my backstory too much, but I got into podcasting from business. I had businesses, successful businesses, failed businesses, all kinds of businesses over the last few years, but ended up taking a break and getting into podcast because it's. Really what I wanted to do, essentially it, it aligned with my passions, so I enjoyed talking about business. I enjoyed talking to others, building with others, and this just felt like a good, led me to this. So here I am on this end, but doing so. My business mind came back to me and realized, Hey, I need to build something out of this as well as I do this, so that's what I've been doing now, for, and I've been thinking of, Hey, I know my audience. I generally know my audience. We're still figuring that out right now. So I was thinking I have to, I need a leak magnet to start getting them into my newsletter, Yes. So that answers that on that end. What tools are using to capture their emails from a podcast?

Deirdre: 15:44

so we use, yeah, you can really use any of them. right now we use our email platform, to do that because it's just really simple and pretty much all email platforms have like simple landing page style things. before we were using ClickFunnels, you can use literally any funnel like type software, any, landing page software or your email provider software.

Dylan: 16:04

Knowing, knowing that you've used ClickFunnels now, and then also to an email provider, like what ConvertKit, Beehive, those kind of providers.

Deirdre: 16:12

Yeah, we're on River

Dylan: 16:13

right now. Yeah,

Deirdre: 16:14

you're on what now? so we've tested quite a few in our time. and I can't say that there's any one that's just amazing. They all have their really good things and they all have things that aren't as optimal. so it's just really what is. It really comes down to personal preference, really, at the end of the day, so for us, we've actually, okay, so we use a mix of, so Brevo is our email provider. We also use Heartbeat as like our community, and Heartbeat also does you can put in, I guess I call it courses, you can basically embed like an, like the, like your, whatever your lead magnet is in a course and have people now it's a little bit finicky because people have to sign up for a heartbeat account, which I don't love. so if I were to go, okay, probably the least painful, least effort way of doing it is probably to leverage something like ClickFunnels, if I'm going to be honest,

Dylan: 17:03

good to know. Yeah, we're working out a funnel right now, click funnel. So I'll, probably just plug and play that. Just use what you have. Just create another funnel, be the easiest thing. Yeah. Good to know on that end. so let's talk about CapShell. You touched base a little bit on it, but I want you to really dive into that and talk about the benefits of that.

Deirdre: 17:22

Yeah. basically from when we had our first podcast and I spoke about all this content that we were creating because we had to find out, figure out a way to market it, I was like, this is crazy. what we're doing is just crazy. we started first with the. The automation side of things. So that's really AI. we started that journey at the beginning of, 2022. So almost a couple of years ago, we started that journey and it was because in my corporate, gosh. Over a decade ago now, I was actually, I knew about AI because, I was actually in the innovation team. And so we were actually exploring even 10 years ago, the uses of AI in banking. And so I knew that, what I had in mind was a really good use case for AI. And so we actually started that journey, beginning of 2022. Where essentially I wanted this really seamless workflow where I could upload my podcast episode. and basically just off the back of that, it would create all of this content for me to be able to use to market my podcast. So that's where we started. and then, cause I'm. I've always, I have a marketing brain, so that's where I, my, my mind goes, but I remember we were at podfest 2022. So it was like May and we're about to launch our beta. And basically when we were talking to podcasters at podfest, the one thing time and time again, that came up as an issue for them was their show notes. and because I never, I didn't really put a lot of stock into show notes. So I'm going to be honest when I had my podcast, I just, it just didn't occur to me that was such a big need, but it makes total sense when I really think about it. And so we really led when we launched CapShow in June. So it was beta June. We went live July of 2022. it was really about, Hey, we'll CapShow, we'll. Draft your show notes. and then off the back of that, we did do some social media, caption, some social media posts and emails and things like that. But really we live with show notes. and so basically we were really trying to solve this problem of time. Like how do we time and also creativity, the whole like staring at a blank page thing, cause that was a big thing for me. It's I cannot stare at a blank page. I will get nowhere. So if we at least have a first draft, then we can actually. build upon that. And so I really started with that automation. How do we just, how do we give a lot of content to people that they can pass through and decide for themselves what they were going to use, where, and then fast forward. So that was, close to 18 months ago. And, and then chat JPT came a thing and then, there were a lot of, a lot more competitors in the space and we had to be really intentional then about I call it like the content vomit, like on the internet, because I didn't want us to be enablers of just dumb, I'll put it in inverted commas, dumb content going out there, and AI, yeah, exactly. can very much be that way. So we put a lot of in 2023, which was last year, we put a lot more effort into the, personalization process by way of, Templating and editing, like just some of that core functionality. But, what I was sorry, I don't know if this is quite answering your question, but essentially I will come back to here's my tagline, but I just, I just want to go like talk about this journey because it's cathartic for me, I think. and then by the end of 2023, what I was realizing was that. What we're now enabling was this, what gets, when we're overwhelmed by anything, we end up. Breaking these micro commitments that we make to ourselves, because when we get overwhelmed, we're like, okay, oh gosh, I don't need to post today or I don't need to, do this. like I, that can get parked. They can get parked. And the more that happens, the more that you, and we don't realize that we do this by the way, it's all subconscious, but the more that we actually break these micro commitments to ourselves, which means that we actually start to lose confidence because we're not who we say we are. And content is such a, it's such a superficial example of this. Cause it's it's just content. Like it's just stuff, but it is actually one of the highest fidelity, examples of us doing this because we feel like it's incredibly public. Even though no one's kind of there going, you didn't post today. what, you broke your promise. but because we ourselves make a commitment to ourselves around this. Cause I don't know about Dylan, do you make a commitment to yourself around publishing things? Some days and times and frequent, We all do. and there are probably times, I know if you're anything like me, if you don't hit a certain thing, like you feel really. Not great. And then.

Dylan: 21:38

Awful

Deirdre: 21:38

feeling to let down. And then you stack that up. And then before you know it, you're having, cause I went through this, you're having this confidence crisis because you're who am I to be this person to tell, to help other entrepreneurs. When I can't even do the thing that I promised to myself that I would do. And what I was realizing was that Cabshow was actually enabling that because we would be overwhelming people with all of this content that they could create and should get out there. but there's a lot more that goes into. Creating, publishing content than just having the content, if that makes sense. and so now what we're really looking at doing, to get to your point about the benefit and what it, what the problem is that we're really trying to solve here is how do we help people find the channels that they, and focus, by the way, the focus, focus on the channels that they need to be on because their audience are on there wanting the information that they're providing, An example of that for me is like when I had my hospitality business, almost a decade, almost 10 years ago. So this was straight after corporate. I, my husband and I had, we had dessert bars and burger restaurants in Sydney, in Australia. And at the time we really grew. Based off the back of Instagram, like that was the primary channel and we, again, with influencer help and things like that, like Instagram became the vehicle for our growth. And so when I went into coaching and especially in the SAS and in CAPTCHA, I was like, yeah, Instagram is a no brainer. I know the platform, it's. It's going to be the way that I can grow. And it just was not working. And so when I really started to think about it, and I'll use the example of now, like we speak to entrepreneurs who create content, so whether that's a podcast or a video, YouTube video, or live stream, that is who we speak to. Now, are they on Instagram? Yes, we can. everyone always says when they're a social media person, they're like, be on the channel that your audience is on. The problem is that our audience is on every channel, every single channel they're on there. But what we need to think about is what are they on there to do? And what I realized is that. my audience are on Instagram to promote their own thing. They're not on there to try to consume the value that I can provide. No, exactly. and so for me, I, I figured I found out through some experimentation, but I really found out that LinkedIn and Facebook was really where my audience was on there to consume the type of information that I'm putting out. And so when I say focus on channels, that's really what I mean. And so it was like, okay, so Captcha will help you. Identify and focus on the channels that you need to be on and then create a plan for you, a plan that you, that, cause those are the commitments, right? Like we all have that plan of we're going to publish a podcast on this day of the week, and we're going to do it weekly. And then we're going to off the back of that due to whatever that plan is, so we'll help create that plan in a way that is achievable. And then we'll help you execute that plan by way of we'll help you create the first draft of the content. We'll give you recommendations around how you can edit it. For, to make it as impactful as possible. and then, and it's all about how do we just help people execute their content plan and win the content game. So that's what we're here to do. We're here to help people win the content game.

Dylan: 24:41

Oh, that's good. I just had a light bulb moment whenever you were just going through that. So the whole, where's your audience at and what are they doing? cause I'm thinking, I'm, and this is why I know that, you Of me just asking a question and, my podcast, throwing it on Instagram, I'm not going to gain much out of that because my target audience isn't consuming content, they're creating the content. So what are they doing there? Typically they could be on LinkedIn, or they could even be more so email address and listening or reading in on the tips or tricks that I'm providing through the email address or through the newsletter. Yes. Oh, that's big. I just had That little moment right there, so keep going on that. And I want to learn, I want to know more about cap show and what else. Cause that's just, I know that just scratches the surface of this. I've done some research on it.

Deirdre: 25:28

Okay. Yeah. So basically, capture as it is right now. what you do is you upload your podcast or, video. And it will create a ton of content for you. So it'll do, it'll create a title. It'll create your description, which you can use as your show notes. It'll create, social media posts on all the different channels. So Facebook, Instagram, Twitter slash X, LinkedIn. And I feel like I'm missing one. Why am I? Yeah, anyway, yeah, those channels and, so it'll create posts. And by the way, it'll do three different types. So it'll do educational engagement and promotional style posts. It'll create emails, so promotional email and an engagement email. It will create a YouTube description for you. It'll create a LinkedIn article and it will create. blog posts. So we have, the two most popular, SEO optimized blog posts, which are the how to and listicle. so that's on the copy side and then on the creative side, it will actually identify soundbites, for you. It'll identify a whole bank of quotes. It has a short form script generator as well, based on the topic, some of the questions that you answered in the podcast episode, and so it creates a ton of content. So that's capture as it is now, and now we've also to, to the things I was talking about around, Hey, how do we actually help you, identify the channels that you, that will best serve you and your audience and how do we actually help create that plan? We've actually augmented the software with our own process to help people through that process. Through that system because we're actually in the middle of rebuilding Capture Next Gen. so we're actually, so we're all of that will be automated. But right now some of it's automated and some of it is a process that we take people through. We hold their hands through

Dylan: 27:05

what's that process. So other than inputting their content or their long form. what other process does that involve

Deirdre: 27:12

on user's part? Yeah. So for, so we basically, for people who want our help to identify those channels and create their content plan, we actually have I hate calling it a chat bot because there's so many, there's so many like preconceived notions of what a chat bot is, but it's essentially, a place where we garner some automatically can garner some. Things from you around, like who you're serving, i. e. your audience, what it is that you're doing so that we can actually very intelligently, create some recommendations and then off the back of that, and that's just like a really quick two minute thing that a user would interact with this. This quiz bot. and then we would take that and we're currently using Asana, but that's all going to become, our next gen system will all be in the one platform, but we create that content plan for people. Dylan, you might be like, yep, I do. I publish a podcast episode every. Wednesday, Tuesday, Thursday, whichever day that is. and then off the back of that, I want to be on LinkedIn and Facebook. we follow a strategy that we call the four post social media strategy. that a really good friend and social media expert, Katie Brinkley, taught us. And so we would actually put that into your plan. And then we would say, Hey, and do you email. Once a week, twice a week, let's put that into your plan. And then a combination of your plan and what Capture is now, which will help you get the first draft of the, it'll, you'll basically know it's Oh, okay. I have to do my social media posts for Facebook. I'll go because I've already uploaded my podcast episode. I have first drafts of Facebook social media posts, so I can just go straight there, edit that. Great. Oh, okay. Today I have all tomorrow, depending on how far ahead you'd like to work, and batch work, but it's let's say you do it on the day. Oh, today I have to send out this email. Okay, great. I'm going to go over to CapShow. I'm going to look at the email first draft, edit that, put it into my email autoresponder, done. It's out the door. so that's it's, we're right now doing a mix of, like automated and hold handing. but with the rebuild of Capture Next Gen, that's all going to be in the one platform.

Dylan: 29:09

Oh my gosh. I picked my jaw off the floor. I was like, I know that my mouth was opening up as you were talking more. I was like, Oh, I better stop. Wow. Cause I say that as I'm frustrated with all the time. And hours it takes to do what you just said, as a new podcaster. Oh my gosh, that is

Deirdre: 29:25

huge. Yeah.

Dylan: 29:26

Yeah. I have so many more questions. I don't want to get into too much of that because. This is own selfish questions. I have on that end. I'll keep those to myself, but

Deirdre: 29:34

we'll make them the bonus questions that you can get for free. If you go to the show notes.

Dylan: 29:38

Exactly. I'll be digging into more of this later. So you're going to essentially, that's an agency in a platform.

Deirdre: 29:46

Yeah.

Dylan: 29:47

Yeah. That's you're holding somebody's hand telling them, Hey, do this, and this is going to create this for you. Just plug in this. And then this is when you do it. And just do 1, 2, 3, 4, and you're done. And that's a whole marketing plan. That's a whole marketing team right there.

Deirdre: 30:00

Thank you for saying that. That's it. It's good. It's good validation because sometimes, when we think about these things, it's is people actually going to want, are people going to actually want this, but, yeah, we've been having some really great feedback already, in some of our initial testing, so yeah,

Dylan: 30:12

that's big. That I've had a marketing team with other companies, like I know what that is. And I know that the amount of work that goes into that. So I want to talk a little bit about though, because you changed my frame of thought on the target audience and where to post and who to post to. So you mentioned. Your clients are not on Instagram. Your clients are typically going to be on podcast, the ones listening, the ones you're interviewing typically. what is your content strategy right now?

Deirdre: 30:43

Personally, what's out. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, cool. So I do a podcast every week, which by the way, I'm in the process of, I'm going to be rebranding and I'm going to come up with a new strategy. So I can also, maybe that can be the bonus in terms of what I'm planning. cause it's not yet solidified and I haven't actually shared it with anyone else. So it'll be like, actually it's, yeah, it's the cutting edge of what it is that we're doing. so I'm going to be rebranding our podcast. So currently the podcast is called Grow My Podcast Show. because we were really talking to. podcasters now, I'll tell you a little bit of the background, if that's okay around so we always knew because we come from a marketing entrepreneurship background that we wanted to by and large talk to entrepreneurs, but I think a part of us got caught up in this whole, without really knowing what podcasts were. Being a podcaster meant, and so I was just like, we need to niche down. so we're just going to target podcasters. Now podcasters are whole range. You have everyone from like true crime and, like fiction stuff to like, Joe Rogan. Let's just. Crap for, have a long to, really structured, like entrepreneur, like it's a whole big range. and so when I started my podcast, growing my podcast show, it was really, I wanted to be about entrepreneurs, but it wasn't really quite, I found in the basically year that I've been doing it, that it was. Not quite a true, very, it wasn't like, it's not like a dart board. Like I wasn't like bulls eyes, I'm just credit away, the people that I wanted to attract, and I had, we had to go through that process by the way, to figure this out. and so now like we're very intentional to say that we speak to entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs first. So if you're a coach, a consultant, a service provider who creates content, so you either podcast and long form content. So you either podcast, YouTube or live stream because you want to amplify your message. and you're going to use that as a lead gen. tool to, create more clients and monetize for your business versus a podcaster who is creating content first in order to then monetize by way of sponsorship or, some other means, whether it's affiliate marketing, et cetera, that's not really quite who we talk to. and I started, so basically grow my podcast show was it started, started there, I think it's in the, it started getting a little bit mixed in terms of the, what I was trying to do and, and the name of it and things like that, so we're actually going to be rebranding it to win the content game. Because that's what we're doing and what we're helping people do. We're helping them win the content game. And, so I have a weekly podcast. it's going to be rebranded and basically off the back of that, because I have two accounts. So there's my personal DJ Shan, and then there's the cap show. and so what I do is I have, I'm only on two platforms. I'm on LinkedIn and I'm on Facebook. If you go to my Instagram, you will see that I have not posted in like months and months, so it's pretty much a dead, so LinkedIn and Facebook and then, email. So I, we email. Minimum three times a week, minimum. if not more, depending on what we have on. So those are my primary, podcast it's LinkedIn, it's Facebook and it's email. Now, do I want to be on YouTube? A hundred percent, 110%. It's like one of those things that if you listen to grow my podcast show, it's like one of those recurring themes. I'm like, this is what we're going to try on YouTube. And then we go really silent on it because we try the thing and we realize it's just so much. Time, effort, and mental capacity that goes into that. And so what we're doing is we're phasing it out. So right now we're like, we're really focusing and going all in on. Mastering social media, LinkedIn and Facebook. And what that means is I mentioned the four post social media strategy that Katie Brinkley, my, my friend taught us. it's a really amazing strategy. And, so basically we use CapShow as in the software to build. All four posts for the CapShow account. So if you go to the CapShow account, either on LinkedIn or Facebook, you will see it in action. The Deidre Shen account, we don't use CapShow because it's a personal account. Like it's a little bit different. and but that's not to say that at some point we won't be able to, it's, we're like the testers of all things. So we try the things then we're like, Oh, this is working. Okay. Let's build it into the software. So basically that's our, so does that answer your question? That's our content. Our plan is podcast goes live on Tuesday. We have four posts, during the week, Sunday. Between the two, okay. Between the two accounts, we do eight. So basically every day we're doing at least one post and then we email three times a week as well.

Dylan: 35:03

Yes. That answers my question. And it answers my next two questions I was going to ask based around like your content strategy with also aligning with your business. So I didn't even have to ask that one. So no, that's perfect.

Deirdre: 35:14

Yeah.

Dylan: 35:14

Go ahead. If you were going to say

Deirdre: 35:15

anything, yeah, no, I was just going to finish the thought of right now we're going all in on social media. but we've gone to the point where that's we've built that muscle. I'm I've spoke about focus before and what focus means to me is like putting the reps in day out. we can't until that muscle is built and it's just muscle memory, right? It just, it's, It just happens, that's getting, that's built into the team. Now I'm confident that by the end of this month on, from the social media perspective, like we will have built that muscle memory for LinkedIn and Facebook. and so then I'm like, cause I mentioned YouTube, I'm like, I really want to get onto YouTube. So then we're going to work with an implementation advisor. So it's going to be another good friend of ours to help us with the strategy of okay, how do we have to tackle YouTube in the right way? Because I, if I'm going to create content and if I'm going to be on a platform, like I want to do it well and I want to actually get results from it. And so that's why we've pretty much, we've made the decision to park, to just park YouTube, focus on what it is that we're doing now. Knowing that we're going to get back, we're going to, we're going to do that. and I want to, I just wanted to raise that because I know that a lot of people, again, we have the shoulds coming at us. we should all over ourselves. and because we get told that we should be doing all these things. And I just, I wanted to say that because. We just need to have the confidence that at some point you will, you'll get to that point, but we cannot, build Roman a day and it just doesn't make sense to, and so I just want people to hear that it's okay to just really cut down and focus on just one or two things now. Build that muscle memory, knowing that you're going to go on to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. because I don't want anyone to get, disempowered by Oh, I can only be on one platform or only be on two platforms. No, if you want to do this really well, you will get. Everywhere you will build your media empire, but there's a way that you do it with focus. That means that you'll actually get results as you're doing it.

Dylan: 37:03

I feel like you're directly talking to me. As the visionary, I guess I would say, you go into an endeavor and you have such high hopes and such big dreams and want to accomplish, take down the world. But in order to do that, you have to lay that first brick. And you have to lay that brick very nicely. and that next for each and every day. And I had to, I have a son, I literally, I'm looking at it right here on my computer screen. It's a little sticky note. It says focus on one thing for six months. Yes. And my question is, does it grow the podcast? That's all I can look at right now because that is my focus right now. Yeah. And every day I'm doing something. I'm like, I look at that sticky note. I'm like, I need to go back to what I was doing. Yeah. I love that. That is so great. And that is so true with business in general. So many people, and there's so much distraction nowadays and every little bitty thing. I heard an analogy. Actually, I want to say this. I was reading something earlier. It was an analogy of somebody was I hope this was an analogy you said on when I was listening to some of your podcasts before this doing research on you, but somebody was talking about building a bridge to an island and it was this guy started building the bridge to this success island is what it's called. So he's on land. He sees this island success island, so he wants to get there. So what does he do? He starts building the bridge and then halfway. To the island, he sees that other people around him are building bridges as well. But they're building them faster with different material and going further than him. So he starts over again and builds another bridge with that material. And it just keeps compounding and compounding. And he's building all these bridges, comparing them to everybody else, instead of focusing on one thing and building one bridge. Yes. Really nice, the perfect bridge and going and completing that task before he starts on the next bridge with other shiny objects. So I just thought that was a good comparison on that. And that is so big. It was Russell Brunson, I believe, who actually told that story now that I was thinking through it.

Deirdre: 38:49

but thanks for thinking that it might've been me. That was, that's great. I'll take that as a compliment. You can

Dylan: 38:53

take the credit if you want.

Deirdre: 38:54

Yeah. I actually went through this, for something else myself, and this is why I'm so passionate about it. I actually only went through it literally in the last quarter of last year, of 2023, which was not that long ago. Where, in my mind, I was like, I had the shoot of what assess. The trajectory of growth in a SaaS business, right? Like you hear the words hypergrowth and things, and it's all about like getting more people, getting more users, et cetera, and building a really big team and things like that. And so that was like my should. And so for a lot of 2023, we had. Gosh, we'd doubled our team. We had, yeah, we had this like dev team with all these people. We had this marketing team and it literally got, I think I got so overwhelmed by it that I actually had not really a full on breakdown, but it was close cause I was starting to feel, those, when you can feel a panic attack coming or you like your chest feels tight and you're like struggling to breathe, it got to that point, And literally like on October 31, we just cut a whole team. we just cut them because the thing is that we were shooting all of ourselves around how our business had to look and operate, but that meant that we were actually not focused on what it was that we had to be focused on, which is what is just that one path to your point? What is that one bridge that will help our Capshavians? Get success. that was not what we were focusing on all these other, cool features and all, and this marketing stuff and this community things here. And like that, we were just focusing on all these other things that we lost sight of. What is that one thing that like at the end of the day, if this happens, then all the other things will fall into place, actually. that's a crazy thing about focus. Like everything else just falls into place. and so that's why, yeah, I just wanted to share that because it happened again for me really recently. And I'm, and that's just why I'm so passionate about it.

Dylan: 40:38

that's big. I actually, I can relate to that. I had a seven figure company, honestly, that I've just shut the doors on. I just let everybody go and shut the doors. I just wasn't fulfilled. And I'm talking back about it to my, I think we actually had a podcast, probably one of my earlier podcasts, I talked about it of just getting unfocused and what it came down to is steering away from why you got into it and what you're doing and who you're serving and becoming unfocused. On the end result of where you're going, essentially, and and it becomes about money or something else or growing it or meeting payroll, and that, that was becoming the big tipping points and it's not why you did it and why you got into it. And I looked back and this is honestly what led me to podcasting is I looked at my businesses as a whole. I looked at the one that's huge. I'm very successful on, on paper and all that very profitable, but, it's just, I'm not happy doing it. And I look at my other business that I had, to where I spend literally like three or four hours on it a week and. That is like my most, my, my favorite one, I don't have to do too much on it. it's, I get fulfillment out of it and, it's just, and that's the one I kept and, made better and got rid of another one, and things like that. It's crazy. We go, I guess it goes back to, we have big intentions, and if going down that path, if we haven't been down it before, there's a lot of things that can get in the way. And we lose focus. That's a bit, I just keep coming back to that. It's just losing focus on the inhale. What did you learn from that? And I know you just went over that a little bit, but what's the big picture that you learned from that?

Deirdre: 42:07

oh my gosh, can I distill it to one thing? cause I learned a ton of things, but it does, it, it does come back to the focus. and I think, and I touched on this as well before around almost like the, again, I call it the micro commitments, because I was getting so overwhelmed with. You think that you grow a team in order to get more off your plate, but what I was finding was actually more was getting put onto my plate because, and whether call that we just didn't have the systems or the setup or whatever, but I just found that we were spending way more time having to manage, manage these teams and these people than focusing on that end goal on what it was. And and because I was feeling that overwhelmed. I was just dropping the ball on everything, I talked about that, crisis in confidence. that was when I start dropping the ball on a lot of things and cause I take, because I take commitments, so like I have really high expectations and high standards for myself. And I'm like, I was just not serving. in the way that I wanted to, like my team was suffering. I was suffering, like obviously our clients were suffering. Like everyone was suffering off the customer board. and so I think that was a really big learning. I think a really big learning is also really interrogating constantly what your why is, and I don't mean why by way of like big. vision statement thing, but like, why are you in business? again, if I go back to, okay, I was should I have this, yeah, this vision in my mind of how a software business had to look. And I was like, do I even want to, do you even want that business? I don't think I even want that business. Like, why am I even doing this? And what I realized was that I actually just want a really great sustainable business that I enjoy, to your point, and that will fund a really good lifestyle for me in terms of that, I want to be able to have a three day weekend if I want to, I want to be able to just part way, have half days and just be able to. Nerd out on things that are completely unrelated to business. Just things I'm interested in. I might not do anything with them necessarily, but I just, it's just, I'm just curious about them, And so the more that I started thinking about that, I was like, Oh, that's actually my why not from a, cause yes, I do want to help people succeed. Like that, I think. Entrepreneurs have that in pretty much in common by much. but like my personal why in terms of what I wanted out of my life and therefore my business was actually really different to what I had built. and so that was a really big learning for me as well was just like, I need to build a business that will facilitate that not this business that I thought that I needed to build.

Dylan: 44:31

How did I know exactly what you mean. How have you done this with cap show now knowing because cap shows, I feel like you could, you're almost going to have to put a bottleneck on it because it could grow very large. How do you not get into those same issues as before and still live the life? Is it hiring out? Somebody or what is that?

Deirdre: 44:51

Yeah. So I think that what we found happening, when I talk about the team and stuff was because when you're a startup, you don't have a lot of money. Obviously that's, and we were totally completely bootstrapped. it's not like we have investment money or anything like that. and so the caliber of people that we found that we, that we could afford were probably not, they were, they. Clearly had something about them, but they didn't quite have either the experience or the expertise or the leadership to actually just run with the things that we needed them to run with. And so for me, again, this is another learning was like, okay, that's one way to build a team and get help into your, in your business sooner rather than later. But as I said, I was finding that I was getting more overwhelmed because we were spending way more time on. Getting them up the curve, then we should have. And so for me, it's okay, how do we sustainably grow our revenues to a point where we can actually hire someone in at a level that they can be a leader, that they can just run with it, just grab, hold and run with it. They don't need us to be so involved in it. and so that's. That's probably going to be my strategy going forward is let's grow this to a point where you can actually afford that rather than trying to afford what we can to try to get to a point where, yeah, it just, the other way just doesn't make sense. when I, even when I say it, it's like, of course, that doesn't make sense.

Dylan: 46:08

Yeah, those are good things to think of beforehand too, because. Back to what I was saying, at the beginning, when you start something, you're just so ambitious to get anything going, but those are big things. Those are things that take down companies. And that's a big, what is the saying? It's like company only last five. Small businesses typically only last like less than five years. Yeah,

Deirdre: 46:26

12 months is like the first big milestone, because we do all make, we make all these mistakes in the first 12 months and then, yep.

Dylan: 46:33

And then five, five years, essentially, if you have the capital to withstand 12 months, you're okay. there's the curve right there. Yeah. Oh gosh, that's so true. That's good, man. I could keep going on this, but I know we need to be wrapping up here. You've got a book out that we haven't even touched base on. Tell me about the

Deirdre: 46:48

book, let me show it up. I think I mentioned, in our conversation, things like the traffic pyramid, things like about how to tackle, content channels and marketing channels with intention that they're all things that I go through in this book. They're all learnings that I had in literally the last decade of my entrepreneurship journey. and also how to, and it's very much a marketing book. So it's all around how to systemize the marketing, part of creating content. yeah, so if you're an entrepreneur and you're looking to, create content, market smartly, I call it intelligently lazy, intelligent, lazy way, then, HoneyTrap, check it out, HoneyTrap Marketing.

Dylan: 47:26

We won't get into too much of it now, but, Deidre, I really appreciate you coming on. You've been awesome. is there anything you want to leave anybody with before we get off here?

Deirdre: 47:33

Oh, that's a tough one. No, I thank you for having me. This has been an awesome conversation. I can't wait to hear your other episodes with other guests as well, cause I'm sure that they have so much to, to teach. But, yeah, I guess if we're talking to aspiring entrepreneurs, I think it's. get in the game, first of all, get in the entrepreneurship game. That's the only way that you're going to like, there is. There, there is no tomorrow. Like you have to do it now and enjoy the process. Like this stuff that we talked through was like, it was all really hard things, but I honestly. Enjoy it. even the downs because you've learned so much from it and you become such a better person. I fundamentally believe that. yeah, so I just, hopefully that's encouraging for anyone listening to this. And yeah, if you need, if you heard me on this episode and you're like, I'd love to hear more about it, then reach out to me. I'd love to hear from you.

Dylan: 48:20

I really appreciate it.

48:22

Hey, if you're still listening, hopefully you got some value out of this or amusement. Either way, I really appreciate you for listening. My goal with this podcast is to build something of value while also showing others that it's possible to do the same. And what I mean by that is, I'm not perfect at this. I fumble, I stutter, and I just want to show that it's okay. If you've been putting something off. This is me telling you to go for it. So I need your help in growing this and there's two main ways a podcast grows. One is through ratings and reviews and two is through word of mouth. So I can only do it with your help. If you can leave me a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify as well as post this to your social and it doesn't grow without you. Thank you. Talk to you all next week.