325 - Podcasting to Get Web Design Clients? Pros and Cons

Considering starting a podcast to help build your web design business and get clients?

Podcasting is AMAZING for expanding your network, deepening your relationship with customers and building trust with potential clients but I'm not going to lie...it is hard work. And it's not for everyone.

To make it work, you have to set yourself up for sustainability to do it consistently and in this special Q&A session, I'm answering many common questions from web designers who are interested in starting a podcast with the goal being to get clients and grow your business.

I'm opening up about all the pros and cons of podcasting, the tough lessons I've learned and a clear roadmap of how to do it successfully.

I'm also sharing an "alternative" method of podcasting that you can do as a trial or test run to see if podcasting is for you.

In This Episode

00:58 - Podcasting Tips for Web Design Business
12:07 - Tips for Starting a Podcast
21:30 - Podcast Production and Equipment Recommendations
34:07 - Getting Guests for Your Podcast
43:00 - Podcasting for Client Acquisition Success
47:23 - Mastering the Podcast Production Process

Get all links, resources and show notes at:

https://joshhall.co/325

Transcript

Josh: 0:02

Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast with your host, josh Hall, helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love.

Josh: 0:13

Hey friends, welcome into episode 325, a special episode here for the Web Design Business Podcast. In this one I'm sharing with you a recent Q&A session I did for another web design community about podcasting for web designers. Now this is both audio and video, so if you would like to see the video for what you're about to hear here, which has some visuals and some of the things we talk about I actually show you on screen. You can find that at the show notes for this episode, which is going to be at joshhallco slash three to five. So head over there If you would like to see the video version of this.

Josh: 0:48

If you are interested in podcasting to help grow your web design business, in this video I'm going to share with you some really helpful tips to help you do just that. This is actually kind of a Q and a session. Uh, my friend Tristan over at the agency alchemist asked me some really good questions and he actually prompted his community, his web design community, to ask some questions about podcasting and how to do it as a way to grow their web design business. And this entire Q&A session I'm repurposing for you. If you are interested in podcasting, I'm going to help you decide whether it is a good fit for you. An alternative way to do a podcast that's not actually doing a weekly podcast and, more specifically, how to get clients through this medium of podcasting or this alternative method I'm going to share is a huge thing. So there's a lot of resources that I'm going to cover, including, like some of the gear and equipment I use and recommend we don't go too far into that on this. So there's a lot of links below. Make sure you check those links for additional information on all that. But for right now, enjoy this Q and a session and they get again. Big thanks to Tristan and his community at agency alchemist for allowing me to repurpose this for you guys to help you see if podcasting is a good fit for you. Hey guys, it is so good to be here with you. Tristan gave me some great questions and I know I've reached out to you guys in the entire community here for the agency alchemy community to pop up with some questions about podcasting and how to use podcasting to help grow your web design business and even to grow your personal brand. So I'm going to hear, to give you some help on that and give you some of my tips that I've learned in my journey.

Josh: 2:32

If you don't know me, I'm Josh. I am the founder of a web design community called Web Designer Pro. I've been doing courses and coaching for web designers since 2017. And the podcast my podcast which is called the Web Design Business Podcast right here, is the number one driver for my community and for my business. So what I want to do is shed some light on podcasting in general, based off of the questions that you and Tristan have sent me to help guide you, to see if you're interested in podcasting, how to do it and how to make the most of your time doing it, but also whether it even is a strategy for you, because I actually don't recommend podcasting for everyone, and it is something that if you're going to do it, you've got to stick with it. However, there's kind of an alternative route to podcasting. That's kind of like a podcast that you could do as a web designer to get quick wins in your business and to get some clients fast. So we're going to cover all that and more.

Josh: 3:24

So, first off. Let's look at my podcast. My podcast again is called the Web Design Business Podcast and it is, as I mentioned, the number one driver for my business At the time of recording this video. I've recorded well over 330 episodes to this point. I've been doing it since the fall of 2019. And because I've stuck with it and what I've learned from it, it has really benefited me in a lot of ways. Yes, it's grown my business and it's been the number one kind of trust builder for me, which is harder to come by.

Josh: 3:57

I think that one of the benefits of podcasting is it is an immediate trust builder because when you listen to somebody over and over and over and over again, you can sense bullshit and you can sense someone's real motives and you really get a sense of who they are. It's very authentic. So that's a benefit to podcasting. But it kind of goes back to consistency. I know everyone's tired of hearing that, but the reality is, if you just launch a podcast, do it for three weeks and stop. It's not going to help you in any way. And another harsh reality is that most podcasts do not make it past even. I think 20 episodes is common and that's probably a lot for most people. So it's why I recommend, if you do it, stick with it and it'll it'll real pay dividends.

Josh: 4:40

But there's kind of an additional option for podcasting and it's what I like to call an interview series. So, before we actually dive into podcasting, to make sure it's a good fit for you, I would recommend, as you go through this and you're like I don't know if I want to commit to this week to week or seasonally or however long this is going to be I want to let you know there's an alternative route, which is what I like to call the interview series, and I did this back in 2018. Before I started a podcast, I had the idea of doing a podcast, but you might be right here right now and you might be in the place where you're like I don't know if I want to commit to something every week forever. So what I did was this interview series where I interviewed I'm in the Divi and WordPress communities. I interviewed nine entrepreneurs, business owners who use Divi and who had scaled up their web design business, some to just a couple people, some to like legit agencies. I did this little nine part interview series that you see here.

Josh: 5:43

This will be linked below for you, by the way, and what this series allowed me to do was it gave me kind of a cap, it gave me a trial run to see if I liked interviewing people, and it really helped boost my awareness in the community and to make connections. That's another benefit of podcasting is it's one of the biggest personal growth tools that you could ever embark on and it really, if you're a curious person, it gives you the opportunity to kind of scratch your itch if you're a curious person. So this is a look at the interview series that I did. It was nine parts. I recorded folks on zoom and then I released this once a week for nine weeks and made this a blog series. That was able to boost my awareness in the communities and I immediately got access to all of these people.

Josh: 6:29

So, like Tim Strifler with Divi, life has a huge community of Divi users and WordPress users and immediately when he shared this out, a lot of people got to know me through just through this interview. I didn't even need to sell to them or do a partner webinar or anything. I just interviewed Tim, heard about his business and then he was able to share it with his audience and a lot of people a test run podcast. It's exactly what I would do. It's exactly what I recommend that a lot of my students do, which is to, if you know your niche or your ideal clients, then get a bunch of them, line them up and ask them if they would like to be interviewed by you.

Josh: 7:19

And most people, if they get a chance to talk about themselves and talk about their business, they're gonna be thrilled. They're actually 100% going to be down to talk about themselves and then what you can say is it'll just be an interview about a half an hour or 45 minutes. Ask you about your business, your, your, your story, and then you'll have an opportunity to share this content with your audience, or you could repurpose it for social media, or you can do this interview series and then there's going to be a part of a larger network of interviews and then they can all share all of their interviews and it's a way for you, as the web designer, to host something and be the sponsor for this little interview series. So imagine if you lined up nine or 10 business owners in your network, or whether they know you or where they don't know you, whether you just want to reach out and say, hey, I'm a. I'm a web designer, you know, based in my city, and I'm interviewing a lot of businesses, local businesses, about what you do, and I want to be able to interview you. You can repurpose this. I want to feature you. You'll get a link on my website and you'll be able to use this content and then, more importantly, I'm going to interview a lot of different people and we're all going to be sharing this out. So it'd be a great way to drive traffic to your website or just to build awareness about your brand, and it's presented by me, the web designer. If you need any help with web design, whatever you offer, I'd be happy to, to, to be the guy to request a consultation with and we can go from there. So you, you present it as you're almost like the host and you just happen to do web design, and I'm telling you, when you do nine or 10 interviews with business owners, word gets around, they're going to share it, and then you will build a level of trust that is so much better than doing ads or going to networking events or doing anything that's more proactive with sales, which those are fine methods, but this is a way to sell without selling. So an interview series try that out, and everything that we're going to cover here will apply to an interview series just like it would a podcast.

Josh: 9:10

But I really wanted to start with this idea of an interview series versus a podcast, because they are two different things. A podcast is something that, by nature, is ongoing, even if you do it seasonally, if you do it for one season and never do it again. Podcast apps are not going to feature that and it's gonna be hard to promote that ongoing. So I recommend doing an interview series nine, 10 parts, 10 interviews and then you record it with zoom. You could put it on YouTube. If you record the video which can be repurposed, it's a advertising piece for your potential clients. It can be awesome. So I recommend doing that.

Josh: 9:43

And again, link below is the one that I did for my business here when I started doing Divi tutorials and coaching and courses for web designers, and this was awesome. This also brought some of my team members. By the way, I had two subcontractors that were on my team that came through this interview series just by seeing it and just by them knowing I was interested in scaling. So there's so many benefits to doing this. It also lets you know whether you want to do podcasting or not, because you may do this and think interviews drain me. I don't want to ever do that again, and which case there's a lot of better other ways to market your business than podcasting, which I'm going to have a resource for you at the end of this to dive into.

Josh: 10:23

So let me answer some of your questions with the foundation that we just laid here, starting with advice for someone who has never done anything like podcasting. Yeah, there's a lot of multifacet things involved with podcasting because you are, if you do interviews, it's going to be much more of a Q and a style thing. Like curiosity is one of the best things you can have as a podcaster. So if you've never been somebody who has interviewed people or asked a lot of questions, it's going to be a good trial run with this interview series that I recommend. But my advice would be stay curious and it helps if you're interviewing somebody about a topic that you're interested in. We'll get into topics here shortly.

Josh: 11:11

Um, if, if you do the interview series thing, if you just get to a bunch of different industries, I would keep questions more about, uh, the industry itself and and I mean, I find that so fascinating. I think if I talked to 10 different business owners that were all in different industries I would have loads of questions, because it's like, how did you even get into like a masonry business, or how did you get into a steel business, or how did you become a chiropractor? Where did that stem from? Just curiosity is the big thing, whether you're in a niche or whether you're in a more broad podcast or broad entrepreneurial series. So the biggest tip there is just to stay curious as an interviewer. Don't load them up with a hundred questions. In fact I've found if you have five questions that like are bullet list questions, that's going to be enough to cover at least a half an hour. Generally, I could probably make two questions span for an hour plus. So don't, you know, have like a list of a hundred questions. I think five to 10 on a bullet list type of round of questions would be huge.

Josh: 12:08

I would also encourage anyone you interview what taught like ask them what topics they're interested in or what topics are they curious about, or that might help people know about their industry or their services, cause that'll kind of prompt you the really cool thing about doing a podcast or an interview series. I'm going to keep talking about this, these parallel, is that you don't need to create content. You really don't need to think of new things. You just need to think of a few prompts, of a few questions. And if you absolutely don't know what prompts to to ask or what questions to ask, you can prompt chat, gpt. Give me 10 questions about the steel industry or a business owner of the steel industry or how they help their clients, and then boom, that's a uh, uh, an AI way to go about that. So that's the biggest thing is do the think about it. And I would also think about it in a couple of different ways.

Josh: 12:57

I would think about podcasting. Actually, I would think about it in three different ways. Number one I would think about it as a way of personal growth, because you will be shocked at how much you learn when you do a podcast or an interview series. It really is amazing what I've learned. I have become a thousand times more powerful as a web design business coach for my members of my community, web Designer Pro, because I have a podcast, because I've learned about all these different strategies over the years. One thing I talk about in my business course, which is my signature course inside of my community. One of the lessons is on a launch pack and how to form like format and create launch packs for clients after a website is live. I never personally did that. I had my own moving forward off boarding things. But it was an interview that I did on my show that made me realize that is genius and I was able to include that in my stuff. So, as a web designer, you can learn so much from different people and include that in your services and in your business. So personal growth is a big part of that.

Josh: 13:59

The next big piece to that is, yes, getting clients. As I mentioned already, it is the biggest trust builder ever. Now there's a couple of different ways to get clients. You can do it in a way that is more discovery based, like people can find YouTube videos, find ads, find, find your content on social media, find you in a networking event, et cetera. But there's also a second piece to getting clients which is much more relational keeping people coming back to your content, which all those methods we just talked about you can do. But the cool thing about a podcast is, as I mentioned it, just it builds a level of trust because people are literally in your earbuds or you're watching them on YouTube. If it's an interview series, that's video. So there's a couple of biggies. It is a personal growth thing. It is a great way to build trust, to get clients and, thirdly, it is one of the best ways to expand your personal network. It's amazing what type of connections you'll make when you have a podcast, and a couple of examples of students of mine who have podcasts I'm going to show you are shining examples of this, so we'll look at those shortly. So those are a few things to think about if you've never done anything like this.

Josh: 15:06

Now, a really good question here how I got started. Any tips specifically on getting started? I delayed in doing a podcast for a year because I knew if I was gonna do it. I wanted to do it right and I did not wanna just half-ass it. I wanted to know what I was doing and I wanted to be prepared for it. So one thing that I did that helped was that interview series that you just saw. I gave myself kind of a test run.

Josh: 15:29

Do I like interviewing? Do I like this format of podcasting? Am I a good interviewer, even if I'm rough with questions and I over-talk my clients or my interviewees. Do I at least have a knack for this and am I interested in it? Do I like it? Does doing an interview fill me up or does it just completely drain me and I dread seeing it on my calendar? If that's the case, podcasting is not for you, but I really liked it. I loved connecting with new people and getting to expand my network, and I really was curious. I got to learn a lot, so I felt like podcasting was was good for me, so it was a good fit.

Josh: 16:03

As I mentioned, I did not want to just fly blind and start a podcast having no idea what I was doing, no roadmap, so what I did is I actually took a course. I took Pat Flynn's Power Up podcasting course, which is available if you go through my link at joshhallco slash SPI courses. That'll take you here, where you'll get access to all of the courses that Pat Flynn and the team at Smart Passive Income have here. But one of these is the Smart Passive Income, the Power Up podcasting course that I took and it was extremely beneficial. So let's head over to the course real quick. This is the course that I took. Again, I'm a proud affiliate of this because this course this is the course that I took. Again, I'm a proud affiliate of this because this course, literally I went through it in 30 days and by the end of 30 days I had my podcast artwork ready, the title, I knew all the tools I was using. I had a game plan moving forward. I already had three episodes recorded and I was able to launch the following month with three episodes ready to go. And here I am, four and a half years later and I'm still loving what I'm doing with podcasting. So highly recommend this course, which you can again get through my link at joshhallco slash SPI courses, because this full podcasting course is available for you in that all access program, along with all the other courses that smart passive income offers. So that's what I did.

Josh: 17:24

Now there is a free resource that you can dive into that I went through. That's a good precursor to this course. I'll make sure this is linked below as well. It is the podcast cheat sheet. So I went through this cheat sheet and it was what sold me on going into the course. So this is free and this is a really good well, just that, it's a cheat sheet to help give you a bit of a roadmap, because I don't have this personally. It's not something I offer. I don't teach podcasting, yet at least but this is a good place to start. Get the cheat sheet and then use my link, joshhallco slash SPI courses, to get access to the full podcasting course, along with their other SPI courses to help you out, get and go on there. But that is what helped me get started, is going through a proven path that worked, and then I'm ready to go, and a lot of what we're going to cover here is, uh is what I learned from that course.

Josh: 18:10

One tip, though, before we move on to the next question here when you start a podcast, think about it like a concert, as in. You don't want to just come out with one episode and say see you later, maybe I'll be back next week or not, not sure. Come out with at least three episodes at once, because a lot of times you may want to do kind of a meet the host style episode Talk about what the show is going to be, about letting them know what to expect, but then you want to follow it up with a couple episodes of the actual show. I see a lot of people start a podcast and they're like I'm really excited to do this, this is what it's going to be about. Ok, see you later. And then the person's like, well, don't tell me about it, let's do it, give me something. So come out of the gate with three episodes and then I would have at least a few more in the bank ready to go to launch every week or every month or however often you're releasing episodes through YouTube or through your podcast. But make sure you come out of the gate with a few and a few cataloged and backed up and ready to go, because the worst thing you can do is just launch one episode and say see you later, and especially if you don't follow it up with actual episodes.

Josh: 19:20

So next question what type of podcasts do you recommend? Solo or guests or both? I like the mix of both. My my podcast, the web design business podcast, is mostly interviews, but I do interject solo episodes. Uh, my, my frequency has fluctuated, but I generally do one interview every month or, excuse me, every week, and then I'll do a solo episode, maybe one or two times a month, which are usually a little more coaching based, and if I happen to be a little dry on interviews, then sometimes I'll replace a solo episode with a, with a um what was typically an interview episode. I really like both and I think a lot of my listeners like both, because if you just have an interview show, you will be really tempted to take up. A lot of my listeners like both because if you just have an interview show, you will be really tempted to take up a lot of time during the interviews with questions and your thoughts. And I've seen this with a lot of people who are early on in podcasting and I used to do this too which is where you end up talking a lot more than your guests. If you record via zoom or whatever and you record an interview and then you look at the file size and your file size is way more than your guest, then you've been talking too much. Your file size for your audio should be like a fourth of your guest.

Josh: 20:34

You want to allow your guest breathing room to talk, which is why if there's a topic you're really passionate about, I recommend recording an interview and then following that up with like a solo episode to be able to expand on that, because you interview your guests. You don't want your guests to be listening to your own coaching episode. You know you want to interview your guests and let them have a platform to speak. So hold your tongue, interject, obviously at some point and give a little insight, but don't make a an interview a solo episode. Save your episodes for solo episodes. So I like the mix of both, cause what you're really dealing with is an interview episode and then solo episodes which are more coaching based. So I personally like the mix of both.

Josh: 21:16

Even if you wanted to do for the sake of of scheduling and all that stuff, if you wanted to do like one interview a month but then mostly solo episodes, you could do that and you can always fluctuate. Just remember when you start a podcast, it doesn't mean that you're doing the same thing every week forever. You could try four, four interviews a month, or you could do three interviews a month, or maybe even two interviews a month. What have you staggered at? One solo episode and then one interview a month. That way, in one month, if you recorded two interviews and then after that you recorded two solo episodes the next day, you've got a month of content ready to go right there. So I would do both. I recommend doing both.

Josh: 21:53

Now here's the biggie equipment I know you're curious about what do I use, what do I record with? To save us time in this, I'm gonna recommend that you check out the I a whole video on my home studio gear which includes what camera I use, the microphones I use, the cords, lighting and all that stuff. This I'm actually in a new office so I am going to be replacing this with my new studio, but most of my gear is all the same. It's just a couple of different lighting elements in a new office because I'm in a uh, a new home. But I'm going to link this below. You can just search Josh Hall home store to do, uh, excuse me, josh Hall's home studio tour. If you're listening to this and not watching it, um, but check that out. That has a lot more advanced gear.

Josh: 22:42

On this, again, to save us time, but I will say, uh, as far as tools go, you can get started with a mic. That is not a big fancy mic that you see here. This is a USB mic, meaning or, excuse me, this is an auxiliary mic with meaning. It is a legit mic that has a cord that plugs into a sound interface that goes into my computer. That's a little more complicated. I recorded most all of my tutorials and started my podcast with a USB mic, which was a blue Yeti.

Josh: 23:08

Blue Yetis are super affordable. There's a lot of different versions. They plug right into your computer so you don't need to have a sound interface, like I'm actually. This mic goes into a Rode Procaster soundboard and I can put multiple channels in here. It has effects. It has a lot of different all kinds of things, but it's more advanced.

Josh: 23:28

Start with a Blue Yeti microphone that plugs right into your computer. You're good to go to actually record podcast. If you're using Mac, you can use garage band, as simple as that. You can use screen flow. Uh, there's a variety of other ones. I actually just recommend uh for interviews. Just start with zoom. I actually use a platform called Riverside Riversidefm which is really nice and handy and you can export snippets and stuff like that. So if you're on a pretty legit level, I would just invest in Riverside. It's not much I think it's 20 bucks a month, something like that but you can do a lot with it, so it's worth it. Otherwise, just use Zoom to start your interviews. I recorded over 150 interviews on my podcast with Zoom and then I switched over to Riverside. Just has a little better audio quality and a little better video quality as well. So those are some tools that you can use. One question, which kind of leads to the next question, is how do you put this podcast live to the world? Am I uploading an episode to Apple Podcasts and to Spotify and to wherever else? No, the good news is, there's platforms that you upload your audio to and those will get kicked out everywhere.

Josh: 24:37

I use and recommend and wholeheartedly enjoy Buzzsprout. Buzzsprout if you go to my link, joshhallco slash buzzsprout, you will get a credit to try this out. I love Buzzsprout. It's super intuitive. It's like dirt cheap for everything that you get. There's all sorts of options to be able to upload audio. Here. You don't load, upload video, it's just audio only. But this is what kicks things out to Apple podcasts, spotify and all the directories. You set up your directory separately and then you integrate them in buzzsprout. It will walk you through how to integrate Apple Podcasts, et cetera, and it's awesome. So I highly recommend using Buzzsprout. The reporting is great, it's really affordable, you get really good stats and analytics and it just works and it's just awesome. So highly recommend Buzzsprout. Again, that's audio only. So if you're going to do video. I would recommend doing like putting something separate over on YouTube, recording the video through Zoom YouTube, or the video goes on YouTube and then the audio goes through Buzzsprout and then you can just link them together on a post or on your website. However, those are going to marry with each other, so that's how we do it.

Josh: 25:49

Which one question I had got was um, yeah, video or audio? Yeah, or do you do video or just audio? It's a lot easier to just do audio, but it's a lot harder to make more reach and more impact with an interview If you just do audio. I would recommend doing video simply because you could repurpose it, especially for the interview series idea. Like, if you give your client an audio file, they're going to be like I'm not going to share this out. No one's going to just listen to this on my website. Very few people would maybe their mom or something. But I would do YouTube because you could post it on YouTube, you could SEO it up. That could be a resource that you could splice up and create shorts out of. You could give your your interviewee the full YouTube video, the shorts and, of course, the audio will go on to all the audio feeds as well. But yeah, they really marry nicely together. It's just a lot harder to go further with just audio. So I would recommend, if you're at all apt or interested, to do the video route too, because you could just repurpose it in so many ways. You could actually record less interviews. You could do one a month but then repurpose it over a month if you wanted to to get started. But again, I would try it out with the idea of this interview series. So yeah, great question there Overcoming limiting beliefs.

Josh: 27:06

So I guess it would depend on what beliefs you have that are limited. I'm imagining in the realm of podcasts, the context of podcasts. Limiting beliefs might be like what have I stumble? What have I hate my voice? What have I don't know what to say? What have I get tongue tied? Anything that is to do with being on camera or recording yourself. You will get better as time goes on. I'm very comfortable on camera right now, but it's only because I've been doing it every day almost for years. When I was just a web designer and I got on camera barely, it was a whole different business. It was all different ballgame. I was very nervous on camera, so as well you should be. If you're not used to doing it, of course you're going to be nervous, so just keep at it, you will get better and better and better.

Josh: 27:52

Limiting beliefs are often overcome by work in practice and quick wins and small wins, so I would have that mind frame with that. As far as limiting beliefs, um, I, and also, if you're, if you're, if you're wondering, like who am I to have a podcast to talk to guests that are maybe high profile or something, I would say if you are truly interested and curious and you have an idea that's going to help people and help get clients and help your business grow, then any marketing strategy you could have limiting beliefs with, it's just what do you want to do, and this is a great way to sell without selling by having an interview series or a podcast. So, uh, and honestly, limiting beliefs in any, any category. Life is just so dang short. That's how that's my, my key to overcoming any limiting beliefs. It's like let's just freaking go, have fun, do what you want to do in your business. Life is too short to to let something standing in your stand in your way and, honestly, you're standing in your own way with limiting beliefs. No one else cares, no one. This sounds weird, but like no one cares about you, they're caring about themselves. Like no one's going to be like, oh, that interview with Josh uh, you know, he just he fumbled on a couple of words no one cares, just have fun and live life and enjoy making connections and doing a podcast and help people. If you want to do a podcast, so yeah, screw, screw limiting beliefs, just get out of your own way. I'm scared to get on camera and hate my voice. So, as I just mentioned again, that kind of leads into the limiting beliefs. The more you do it, the more you will get better, and everyone hates their own voice. Somebody once asked me how do I find my radio voice? And I'm a big proponent of do not change your voice for a radio. We're not in the 1920s anymore. We don't need to be like hey, that's Josh. Hey, welcome to the web design business podcast. We're going to help you get new web design clients. See, I talk on my podcast exactly like I would talk with you and me if we were going to get coffee or having a beer together, and I recommend that you do the same, because that's what's going to breed that trust and authenticity.

Josh: 29:57

I did an interview recently I'm not going to call them out, but it was kind of funny because I did an interview with somebody who was really cool and really like calm and charismatic, off camera and as soon as the record button hit it was kind of like hey and welcome to the show. Our guest this week is Josh. And I was like why, why did you even do that? Just talk like you were talking, cause I didn't want to talk to this person now, or like this is like a fake version. Just be you, be 100% you on the camera, on the mic, uh, and that'll help with the, the feeling of presenting to or the feeling of like being too polished or too corporate-y by just being you. So that's my biggest recommendation there, even like right now.

Josh: 30:36

Years ago I would have been. I would have been like ah, I got to take a drink, I got to pause for a second. Let me chop this out and edit it. But if you get into a lot of editing and you edit out all the ahs and ums and every little drink of water, that's a nightmare to keep up with. So I've just more more recently. I'm like I'm just going to keep it completely real. I'm going to try to be succinct. I don't want to be fluffy or ramble too much, but if I need to take a drink of water, ah, it's good. Did anyone get annoyed there? Maybe a couple of people, but they're still here. So let's, let's continue on.

Josh: 31:07

How do I know, um, or how do I go about defining topics? So this will largely depend on the premise of your show. As far as what questions you're going to ask, what type of guests you're going to have with my podcast, the web design business podcast, it's, it's pretty cool because it's very entrepreneurial. I do try to have an emphasis on the business side of web design, which you might think. If it's just the business of web design, how far could you possibly go? Well, I'm 330 some interviews in and episodes in, and I can tell you we're just scratching the surface. That's how complex and in-depth the industry of web design is. Plus, it's always changing, so it's a lot of new things to talk about. But I would have that mindset too, like just curiosity. That'll help you be interested about what questions to have, what topics to address.

Josh: 31:53

If you absolutely do not know what topics to dive into first, whether you're a solo episode or interviews. You could prompt chat GTP Just say, like, give me 20 different topics about my industry, boom, there you go. One hidden gem of topics is an FAQ section. So if I were to start a podcast for web designers to help grow my business for my clients and I wanted to help my clients what I would do is turn to my FAQs. What common questions do I get from my clients? You record a podcast about that. You record a YouTube video. There you go. You can repurpose your podcast and your YouTube videos all the time and if you do your podcast as a YouTube, like video wise, you can use that as like a client resources page or you could put a little video in each one of your FAQs. So that's a great way to start.

Josh: 32:38

But I have a feeling you know what questions are for the most part. You should have probably at least a year of questions that you know would be really beneficial for your show, depending on the topic. But again, that's where, if you do interviews, you don't need to worry about. You don't need to worry about topics as much, because they're going to have topics and they're going to have interests and all you have to do is prompt them and just be curious, or just if you get someone like me who likes to talk a lot, get them on your show and give them one question, then, boom, they're off. Good luck getting them to stay under an hour Speaking of other people getting guest speakers.

Josh: 33:11

So I would start with the people who are in your network and who you know and already work with, for example, an interview series. If I were to do one today, like I think about when I was in my networking group uh, actually, one of the guys in my networking group did an interview series for his business. He wasn't even in web design, he was an insurance agent. It's actually what prompted me to do an interview series. He was an insurance agent who started the new business and he interviewed, I think, over 15 people in the local community who he knew and his business blew up, like because he was immediately exposed to all their networks through this interview series and he didn't have to cold pitch anybody or reach out, he just he knew, he knew a lot of people and asked hey, I'm doing a little interview series, We'll talk about your business, it'll go on my YouTube channel. I was his web designer, so I was putting it on his website and that's what we did. It was great.

Josh: 34:01

So, as far as getting guests, I would start with people in either a networking group or your local community, people who you know, who are in your network, even if they're not clients or potential other industries. I would say, if you're a web designer, you probably know photographers, you might know videographers, you might know SEO people, you might know copywriters. Talk to them and they could be your first set of interviews and, wow, what a great way to boost awareness for them and they can share again. It's all. You see how this is all leading back to you, your personal brand, your business, all through a podcast or an interview series. So I would start there Guest speakers wise. A level up from that or a level back from that is where you get into pitching people, and there's a lot of different ways to go about this.

Josh: 34:45

The way I personally get guests on my show is now I'm getting a lot of requests, which is a whole nother ballgame. I actually am in the process of making a better system because I've been ghosting a lot of people. If I review something and I just don't think it's a good fit, I hate to ghost people at the same time. I can only handle so much. I have a very small, lean and mean team behind me and we're just not set up right now to go through like a hundred requests a month. I don't get that many, but it is time intensive. If you want to look at somebody, get a feel for them, look at the type of topics they cover. So if you have a show that gets any amount of traction you will get requests. So heads up on that. Sometimes podcast agencies like I could sign up for a podcast agency that kicks me out to a bunch of podcasts and I'll have like a one sheet or a portfolio page and they try to get me another podcast. You, you'll get a lot of those, um, but I tend to do a very organically.

Josh: 35:38

I might. I might hear a show like here, one of my podcasts I listened to. I might hear a guest and be like oh, I would love to ask them about a similar topic. So I might reach out and say like hey, I'm Josh. I I'm the host of the web design business podcast. I loved your interview on this podcast. Would like to see if you'd like to come on my show. Side note, if you're listening to podcasts and hearing people. If they're on other podcasts, they might likely be on your podcast saying they might likely have a mic and actually might sound good. So just remember, if you talk to a business owner who's never done a video or a podcast before, if you try to set up a call with them, they may have like the worst lighting and mic ever. So ideally you'd have some resources to help. Let them know, like, have a decent mic, have somewhat decent sound and lighting, and we'll be good to go. So that's kind of how you can go.

Josh: 36:21

Go get guests that are in your sphere or the next level up, I will say, with more like top tier guests, like I've been fortunate to interview Amy Porterfield, author Derek Sivers, who's made famous from the Tim Ferriss show, mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First, and a lot of really, really high tier people in the web design world. The way I've got a lot of them is I reach out in a variety of different ways. The people who are not like A-list or B list, you know, entrepreneurs who have a huge team. Generally you can get to them directly. So, like a lot of the popular people in the WordPress and web design realm, I just DM directly on Facebook, instagram. Um, like, we're recording. I'm recording this for for Tristan's crew. Uh, I think Tristan and I got connected through Instagram I can't remember if I reached out first or if he reached out to me but, um, that's.

Josh: 37:12

Generally, you can get in touch with people through DMS, unless they're at a level where their DMS are just unmanageable and in that case I would go through their website. So, in all of the cases I mentioned Amy Porterfield, derek Sivers and specifically Mike Michalowicz I went through their website. I was actually a student of Amy Porterfield. I went through one of her courses and I sent a video testimonial in and I told her team like, hey, I've actually been. I found I think I searched how to get Amy Porterfield on your podcast and I found a media page and it said for requests for Amy, go to this link. And I went through the contact form and I actually sent in a loom video with a little minute video that said hey, I'm Josh, I've been through Amy's course. I really enjoyed it. My, my community could use help with list building, so I would love to interview Amy and talk about her journey on my show. And then I heard back and said hey, we received your request. We're going to review it next month and see if you'll be in the running to move forward.

Josh: 38:08

I got through the first wave, I got through the second wave and then somehow that got up to Amy and they said all right, she's down to come on your show. And there we go. I sent the link and talked to her assistant and we went from there. Pat Flynn has been on my show and he was actually the first biggest guest I ever had. Go back to episode 11 or 100 on the web design business podcast If you want to check that out.

Josh: 38:35

But the way I got Pat Flynn was I actually uh, same thing. I said I went through his podcasting course. They did a call for testimonials for that course. I sent in a video testimonial there. One of the team members reached out to me and said hey, we really liked your testimonial. We'd love to feature you as a full success story. We'll interview you for 45 minutes and then we'll write a blog post for the smart passive income blog. So I did that was really cool experience and I thought that was it.

Josh: 38:57

And then, I think, like a few months later, I got an email from Pat Flynn's direct assistant and said hey, josh, I have exciting news. Pat read your success story and would love to feature you on his podcast, on the smart passive income podcast. So that's how I got on the smart passive income podcast. And then at the end of that call I was like I'm never going to talk to Pat on video one-on-one, so it's my only chance to do this. And I didn't think I'd be able to get in touch via DM. So at the end of our interview I said, hey, pat, I, um, I, I remember I said, uh, if I'm stepping out of line, no problem, no pressure on this, but I'm coming up on episode a hundred of my podcast and it would be an honor to interview you for the hundredth episode.

Josh: 39:35

Would you be interested? And he said, heck, yeah, dude, no problem at all. He's like, reach out to my assistant and, uh, she'll arrange it. So that's how I got Pat Flynn. Uh, derek Sivers, I just messaged him through his website, through his contact form, and, same thing, I sent a little 30 second loom video that said I'm a huge fan of your books. Hell, yeah, I know, it was like one of my favorite books of all time. So I would love the opportunity to interview you. And he said, yes, mike Michalowicz. Same way, I went through his contact form and uh, said you know, profit first is something that I actually recommend to my students. It would be an honor and a half to have him on the show and I got to have Mike Michalowicz on for a half an hour.

Josh: 40:11

So those are some ways I've got guests, but those are advanced strategies. I would start with people you know in your circle and kind of kind of go up from there and in most cases you don't need like a high profile guest. I'm kind of semi in the entrepreneurial world and semi in web design, so I was hoping to get some higher profile guests and as my show grew, quite frankly and transparently, I was like it'd be cool to be able to say, like I've interviewed Pat Flynn, I've interviewed Amy Porterfield for leverage, when I do want to get some other high profile guests. So that's exactly how I did it. I bought courses, I sent video testimonials in. That's how most of those started for me.

Josh: 40:47

Let's talk about getting clients through a podcast. Again, I think the easiest way is to do the interview series. A podcast itself needs to be ongoing. You could do it seasonally, but it's like, especially if you're a generalist, if you have a lot of different types of um clients. A steel company client is probably not going to listen to a podcast that a chiro or a hair salon company is going to listen to, or you know it's going to be very hard to be a generalist style approach. So what I would do is, if I want to specifically get clients through podcasts, I would do what one of my members and web presenter pro does, marie, who has a podcast. Her brand is called beyond the kitchen table, but, as we see here, if you're watching this, she has a podcast that's called the Website Coach. Now, what's interesting about this is she is not a podcast for web design. She is a podcast for people who want help with their website and she's been really consistent with this. So check her out. It's beyond the kitchen table, is is her brand, and you can search the website coach podcast. She has positioned herself as a coach for business owners for their website, so, very particular. This is a great way to go.

Josh: 42:04

I'm showing you a couple of examples now while we're here. One example uh, if you have a niche like, like, so this is Mark, one of my students, who is getting a lot of his clients through his podcast. But his podcast is different. It's unrelated to business. He helps primarily a lot of churches with their websites and he has a podcast called Real Talk Christian Podcast. So it's not directly related towards getting clients for his web design business. He just happens to be the host of this real talk Christian podcast and guess what? Well, anytime he drops the fact that he's an entrepreneur or maybe he is the owner of a web design business, naturally that's going to build leads for him and they've already trusted him. Now you could do this in a way that is kind of an offshoot but is particularly leading into to getting clients. But just goes to show that there's a lot of different ways to get clients through a podcast. That's not direct. You don't need to say, hey, hire me. In Mark's case, he's the host of this podcast and that has elevated his personal brand and people get to know him. And anytime somebody finds out that oh, by the way, he's a web designer, they're going to be like oh my gosh, I could work with Mark and be amazing. He doesn't need to sell a dang thing because he's already got a podcast. They already know, like and trust him. So that's a good example. And then finally, uh, andy, who you know, here we go. Here's the right podcast. Uh, andy, one of my members of my community has a podcast called the creatives journal where he interviews a lot of up and coming entrepreneurs.

Josh: 43:34

And this is actually how I met Andy. He just cold pitched me, he submitted a contact form submission and I could tell instantaneously that Andy was legit. He was. It was not a like copy and pasted, jank, cold outreach. It was like hey, josh, I actually really listened to your podcast and I'm a designer, I'm young, I'm getting into the world of web design now and entrepreneurship and I have this podcast called the creative journal. He said I'd love to feature you on my podcast and I like to talk about my journey and stuff and I thought, even if he just has a few listeners, it would be cool and seem really legit. So I was on his podcast and since then Andy has come into my world and now is a member of my community Web Designer Pro and he's actually got exposed to a lot of other members of my community and folks like my friend, james Bernard. James Bernard is one of the biggest up and coming designers on Instagram and TikTok and I know James personally. So Andy had this show and said he's looking for more guests and I got him in touch with James and James, a top tier entrepreneur up and comer, went on Andy's show.

Josh: 44:35

Even though it's a new show, you see how this is working out. Andy sent me a real good pitch and I came on his show and he came into my world. He got to know my community, is stuck with it and done a really good job and is now being able to interview people that I've known and built up through my networks. This is how it works when you end up getting in in certain communities and working with people. So I also highly recommend getting into communities like Web Designer, pro or other entrepreneurial communities, because you meet somebody, you meet somebody else, they know somebody. It's just like networking, it's networking 101, but online via podcast. So Andy is a great example, mark is a great example and Marie is a great example of ways to do podcasts that will get you clients more directly. The interview series will work even better. It will go further, faster, but if you're going to do a podcast ongoing, I would have any of those approaches All right.

Josh: 45:28

Last couple of questions here the challenges I face and how to overcome them. I think consistency is the hardest thing with a podcast, particularly if you do um like, if you do it ongoing for years, like I'm doing. But the thing is I absolutely love it. If I had to strip out a lot of things of what I do in my business and I could only keep a couple, I would keep my podcast for sure. It's my favorite. I enjoy talking shocker, you're still with me. Uh, I enjoy the format of audio. I don't love short form stuff. I don't love snippets, I don't love clips. I I'm not a short form guy. I like really in-depth interviews and I like getting to know somebody and really going deep on something if I'm interested in it. So podcasting suits me. So a challenge with consistency is just the fact that I love it. If I didn't love it, I wouldn't stick with it. So you got to love it, which is why I recommend start with an interview series, give yourself a test run, then do podcasting for the long term if you love it. The other challenge is just keeping it going.

Josh: 46:27

Podcasting is a lot of work. I'm not going to lie to you. It's a lot of work, especially if you're going to do it consistently. There's recording, there's post-production, there's everything we talked about with uploading it to Buzzsprout and YouTube. If you do video, there's show notes. What are your show notes look like? If you do have a website where all that goes, are you going to make show notes for everybody? Are you going to rely on AI to put a sloppy show notes page together for you? You could try it. I can tell AI immediately. Still. So I have a VA, cam, who actually does my show notes. I write a little description for each episode but then she puts the show notes page together and links buzzsprout and uploads the video and her imports the video.

Josh: 47:03

I have an editor. I have an editor, nathan, who has been doing my, has editing my podcast since episode a hundred. Pat Flynn was the first episode that he started working with me on and he has done every one since then. I record the video on Riverside and then I'll separately follow up with a little intro and a little outro. We put that all in one folder and drive. Cam and Nathan have access to it. Nathan edits the, the audio posted to buzzsprout and YouTube and then Cam goes in and does the show notes for my website, the Buzzsprout description and the YouTube description and that's our process. So we just run. We do it all through Google Docs. Right now we have a Google Doc that is our schedule and I have little tags that say recorded, ready for Nathan. Once Nathan's done, Nathan has a tag that says ready for Cam. She goes in there. I kind of run everything off that one Google doc, which is just a spreadsheet.

Josh: 47:52

So those are the challenges keeping it going, because it can be extremely time intensive and unless you love video editing and audio editing and that's your jam, even if it is your jam, if you have a business to run, you need to run your business. And one thing that Pat Flynn told me, uh, on our episode when I was interviewing him, is he was like, even though I loved audio editing, I knew just because I can do this doesn't mean that I should do this. I've got bigger things to work on. Nothing against that task. But, like, I hired Nathan because Nathan can't run my business, nathan can't vision, cast and coach for my business, but he can edit my podcast. So that's really important if you're going to stick with this long term. And finally, last question here video links, short audio podcast, et cetera.

Josh: 48:36

There's so much on this because a lot of people say you want to keep your interviews under an hour but at the same time I guarantee if you're watching or listening to this, you're probably listening to podcasts that are one, two, three hours plus. I don't necessarily think everyone should do that. That's a whole different model and situation, but a lot of my interviews will go over an hour. I try to book out an hour and a half for interviews just because I feel like if, if we're really in it, I hate to be like, ah, gotta go. So that helps a lot. Some of my interviews will be 45 minutes, but some of them will be an hour, sometimes an hour and a half plus if we're really going. So I don't limit myself time-wise there. On solo episodes, I try to keep them under a half an hour.

Josh: 49:17

This is a bit different because this is kind of like an hour long Q and a session. Um, so and again, great questions from Tristan and the whole, um, the whole crew here, because you guys have given me a lot of good questions that I want to take some time on and I'm going to continue to post more resources specifically that are a little more concise. But the cool thing about this is. This is going to be video and audio, so you could just listen to the audio, uh, but you could also listen to the watch the video that has some of the the actual visuals that we looked at and some of the websites and examples we looked at. That's one important thing to remember is, if you're gonna do a podcast episode that is really visual, then I would not do the audio version. I would have a YouTube channel that's more tutorial-based and more screen recording and then have a more coaching-based or more interview-based for audio.

Josh: 50:08

So you do need to be careful about mixing content that is on audio, that should be video and vice versa. You don't want to be showing something on a screen constantly and talking about that and then the audio person's like dang it, I have no idea what you're looking at. So that's the only time I would be wary about doing the exact same content for repurposing audio and video. So that's a challenge that I have is whether or not this should be a YouTube video and it should not be on my podcast, or whether it could be on a podcast. This particular talk right now is both and it it could also be both. I I could do a condensed version of this and I might. That's just video, just on my YouTube channel. That's purely. We're just looking at screen stuff. I could also do a more audio route that's not looking at anything and just more talking.

Josh: 50:51

So this one's probably a little more audio than it is visual, because if I were to do a video on this, I would probably keep it under 20 minutes and I would have everything lined up and there'd be a little more post-production Probably. It's kind of why I like audio. Uh and again, editing is the death of sticking with a podcast. It's the death of post-production, is the death of consistency If you're doing it all yourself, which is why I recommend, if you're at a point where it's a big driver for you, start to hire it out. It's one of the best decisions I ever made. So, yeah, I really don't think lengths matter too much on the audio end of things, because we tend to stop and start podcasts of, depending if we're doing dishes or mowing or whatever, um, but videos. Naturally shorter videos are going to get more more views because people are going to stick with them. Now I do have my full interviews go on my YouTube channel and those do. Okay, I get about three times as many downloads as I do video views on my full interviews.

Josh: 51:46

But, um, in an ideal world, one thing I'm thinking about, and probably will do, is I will siphon off and cut up my youth my full interviews into little like clips, like, uh, you know, like I think the Joe Rogan experience is probably the show that either started or capitalize on this clip game, because what Joe's interviews being three and a half hours sometimes, what, what they've done and I don't know if his team did them or fans, that I don't know but you'll get these five to 10 minute clips that are about one little topic inside of a larger interview and then it all kind of links to the larger interview. It's the best way to go. So I haven't done the best job of that yet to this point, but as I look towards the next version of my show, the web design business podcast that is definitely in the plans and in the works is to take an interview that's an hour, chop maybe some of the best clips that are five to 10 minutes, used as those YouTube videos, and then link them to the YouTube video, which then links them to Web Designer Pro, my community. You could do the same thing with shorts too. If you use Riverside, you can actually, while you're recording, you can click M and that'll tell Riverside that, hey, this was a really good point. You go back in, you could make a short that's less than a minute, repost that on Instagram, linkedin, tiktok, whatever. That could go to the bigger clip and that could go to the full interview. Then they come into your world, you get paid, then your bank account fills up and then you can chill. So that's, uh, some thoughts on video links et cetera. So I hope you enjoyed this one.

Josh: 53:13

Friends. Again, podcasting is not for everyone, but if it is a medium that you enjoy and you would like to do it and you're serious about it, the rewards are incredible. So I hope this in-depth look at the roadmap to podcasting success or at least what I've learned in my journey in doing it has helped you decide whether it's something you're interested in or whether you're not interested in it. In any case, I would do an interview series and please let me know when you do either an interview series or podcast. Shoot me a comment for the show notes at this episode, which is again going to be at joshhallco slash three to25. You can drop a comment there.

Josh: 53:50

I read all my podcast comments. I would love to hear from you and just if you enjoyed this episode and again, we talked about a lot there are links, resources and even a special offer for you to get my guide to getting web design clients. If you would like to have some additional strategies, I'm going to have all that over for you over at joshhallco slash 325. So I'll see you over there. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you'll get the next ones and you'll get notified when they go live. Every Monday is when the podcast goes live right now, although I am going to start to work in some more solo episodes here, so we'll probably get back to five or six a month instead of just once a week. But I digress. Thank you for being a listener. I hope you enjoyed this. I'll see you over at joshhallco slash 325 with your comments, your thoughts, your feedback and your podcast.