122 | Grow Your Impact Business with a Podcast Tour with James Mulvaney
Our guest this week on the pod is James Mulvaney. James is the founder of Radio.co, Podcast.co and Matchmaker.fm. Radio.co is a complete radio station management tool. Podcast.com is a full service podcasting platform for hosting and distributing to outlets like Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, etc. Matchmaker.fm is like Tinder for podcasters - it's a platform to help high profile podcasters and incredible guests find each other.
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THE IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES
To help make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who like to read rather than listen to podcasts, we’d love to offer polished show notes. However, Awarepreneurs is still a startup with limited resources. So we’re not there yet.
What we can offer now is these imperfect show notes via the Otter.ai service. The transcription is far from perfect. But hopefully it’s close enough - even with the errors - to give those who aren’t able or inclined to learn from audio interviews a way to participate.
Grow Your Impact Business with a Podcast Tour with James Mulvaney
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, James Mulvaney
Paul Zelizer 00:06
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer and welcome to another episode of The Awarepreneurs Podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. Each episode I do a deep dive interview with the thought leader in this intersection, someone who has market tested experience and is already transforming many lives. Before we introduce today's guests, and our topic today, just two quick things, one, a quick announcement, if you hadn't yet heard of were printers, gosh, we are getting flooded with incredible guests who want to be on the show. So we are going from one episode a week to two episodes a week just to kind of help. And these very poignant times help you learn and hear more stories about people who are doing good things with business. Number two, quick request. If you could go to iTunes or whatever app you're listening to the show on, do a rating and review it helps tremendously. Today I am thrilled to introduce James Mulvaney and our topic today is grow your impact business with a podcast tour. James is the founder of radio co, podcast co and matchmaker Fm radio.co is a complete radio station management tool. podcast.co is a full service podcasting platform for hosting and distributing outlets like Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, and the like. And lastly, matchmaker.fm just how I met James is like Tinder for podcasters. It's a platform to help high profile podcasters and incredible guests find each other. James, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me, Paul, it's a pleasure to be here, you are doing some things in the realm of audio and business.
Paul Zelizer 01:44
I'm really excited to unpack what you're doing. Before we do that in. We're called Awarepreneurs. And one way we get to know somebody is to ask just one wellness or an awareness practice that you use to help bring your resilient resource self to work as opposed to somebody who's burnt out and a little crispy.
James Mulvaney 02:06
I mean, I think being a city dweller living in Manchester, so in the middle of the city centre, one thing that I've always loved to do is get out to the countryside, go for walks in the countryside, that for me, you know, I think in the UK, we're really lucky that we've got so much great countryside, you don't have to go very far to get to it as well, even if you're are in the middle of the great city. So that's something that I really love to do. It helps me clear my head, it's good to get fresh air, it's good to listen to the birds sing. And you know, just just taking the natural beauty of where we're living
Paul Zelizer 02:37
There’s actually a lot of research on that to that time in nature helps distract us and kind of revive our creative capacity. So there's a lot of research to what you're doing. Well, you are pretty passionate about audio and storytelling, and you've built these fabulous technologies, which we're going to get into and help people understand them. But just like starting question, James, why are you so passionate about podcasting?
James Mulvaney 03:04
Yeah, so my story is that when I was 16 or 17 years old, I was really interested in I've always loved listening to the radio, I've always loved music. And I was kind of looking at going into radio as a career, like as a DJ, you know, like on on air talent. Now, at the same time, I was sort of learning how to build websites and kind of interested in that sort of stuff. So I kind of ended up merging the two together. And so for 15 years now I've been working at you know, since that age, you know, when I was really young, working with audio, and working with online radio stations with podcasters. And just trying to help people tell their stories really, you know, across a huge range of different sectors. We've been really lucky to work with some really impressive companies, but also lots of individuals as well.
Paul Zelizer 03:50
Cool. And I know for me, I I like to joke, my name is Paul and I'm podcast obsessed. But part of it is there's a there's a sinking up with the storytelling part, but also, who listens to podcast? Talk to us a little bit. You've been in the space for a long time. Dan, what do you know about people who hit that subscribe button and hit the play button to podcast? Well, how are they similar? And how they different than your average human?
James Mulvaney 04:20
Right. So I mean, I don't know about your average human, but I can certainly give you the comparisons between, you know, other platforms, other methods of communication, I think we're in a very lucky position with podcasting at this specific moment in time, for two reasons. Number one, it's hit the mainstream, you know, it's not something that was, you know, maybe 10 years ago, it was very much reserved for enthusiasts. Now, everyone's listening to podcasts. If you got someone in the street and say, Do you know what a podcast is? they're most likely to say yes. So you're not kind of in that sort of hitting those sort of specialist people anymore. So it's a really widely accepted and format that everyone's kind of understanding that the other thing is you have people that are And when they get into a podcast, you know, it's very normal for people to listen to the entire length of the episode. And that's really exciting is sort of businesses or marketers, never have, we had someone's attention span for that long with an online form of communication. Because if you think about it, if someone's on Facebook, you know, you've got a few seconds to grab their attention as they're scrolling through the feed. Likewise, on YouTube, people aren't watching videos for that long, and the time just seems to keep going down and down. Whereas in podcasting, you've got, you know, say 20 minutes, in which someone's fully listening to that message. So as a tool for business and marketing, I think he's incredibly powerful. And I think also the amount of growth that we see, both in terms of the number of podcasts that are available to consumers, but also, the amount of people listening to podcasts just keeps going up enough. And, you know, we've seen huge amount of growth over the past two to three years in particular, which is meaning, the more and more businesses now thinking, well, this is something we need to pay attention to, versus, you know, maybe five years ago, when it was a lot of just kind of insert enthusiasts and, you know, kind of individuals making podcasts, there's more businesses and brands turning our attention to it now. Yeah, beautiful. I know, two of North America's leading marketers, Neil Patel and Eric Lu, they have a fabulous podcast and a brand called marketing school. And they just put podcasting and one of their I'll try to remember to put a link in the show notes, but they did a show on what are some marketing opportunities where things aren't saturated. And podcasting is one of the top suggestions they have for that exact reason. It's like hit the mainstream, and people are listening. Matter of fact, I just saw some research that in the COVID-19 era where everybody's quarantine globally, podcasts or listen ins are up 42%. Right, I think that's about right. It's not saturated, people are listening to more of it, especially during this quarantine time. And it's established enough that people know what it is, and you have people listening to a lot of podcasts. And you also are seeing it's not a saturated like a blog or YouTube channel where there are millions of them. podcasters, a couple hundred thousand of active podcasts, which may sound like a lot, but if you go do the comparison, compared to like blog or YouTube channel, there is an incredible opportunity. And I want to say that that 42% statistic that was in a podcast movement newsletter again, I'll try to track that down and put it in the show notes. It was even higher for our audience personal development and spiritual oriented podcast, it was even higher than 42%. So there's a little bit of stats audience of why you might want to be thinking about a podcast or and helping to get your impact business out there. Yeah, I mean, I think as well a podcast tour. And just so people are kind of aware of what that means, when we refer to podcaster. That's basically being a guest on other people's podcasts. So rather than jumping fully into it, and starting your own podcast, which is also a good idea, and I'm sure we'll talk about that in a bit, I think a podcast tour is a great way to kind of get experience in the medium, you know, kind of hone your presentation skills, hone your audio, your communication skills. But ultimately, I think one of the great things about audio as well, it's it's the oldest form of communication, you know, we naturally we talk, we've been talking for a lot longer than we've been writing. So, um, you know, really, it's, it's not something you have to kind of put on a show for you can kind of just be yourself, I think, hmm, nice. And one of the things that I know for me, Dr. printers, podcasts were about three years old now, for a while we just did twice a month, we went to,
Paul Zelizer 08:41
yeah, twice a month, and we went to weekly. And now like I just announced, we're just in the process of going to twice a week. There's the process of like, yeah, like you said, starting a podcast and building momentum. And that's a long build. As far as I know, I don't know too many podcasters that launched a podcast. And then like, two weeks later, we're getting like tons of paid referrals or community members are on that's a longer build. But like what you're saying, James, the idea of a podcast tour and being a podcast guest, if you're smart about it, and we're going to give you some tools in just a second that teams built. To help find podcasts like this, you can get on podcasts that have already done the hard work of building the audience and have a community of listeners that are excited about the kinds of topics that you teach about or, you know, do your consulting or do your healing work or gather up people to help communities that you know, maybe have traditionally been less engaged. So you can go to an established place where people are already listening every week, and bring your message to an audience that's already built. And that is not typical. There are too many marketing opportunities. Like No, it's really good. And also, I think one of the things to mention is you can if you're clever about who You speak to you can you can reach markets that otherwise would not have heard of you as well. Exactly I know for right now Now, we're going to talk about one of your tools that you built. But right now, for instance, matchmaker.fm is a fabulous kind of match. You know, it helps people with shows who want great podcast guests, and people with great messages and great skills find each other. And, for instance, I'm finding a tremendous amount of people outside of the US because you seem to be you know, you're in Manchester, England, as you said, in the UK. And I'm finding incredible folks who I haven't heard of before, and haven't heard of our community, through matchmaker because it's not so North American, you know, focused or biased, if we can say that. That's an example. Yeah, I mean, we're trying to create a platform, that community that's worldwide really, you know, obviously, you can refine based on location.
James Mulvaney 10:57
Obviously, given the current times, most podcasts are being recorded remotely at the moment, which is fine. And but you know, some people prefer to record face to face as well. So we're trying to, we're trying to open it up to anyone and everyone we're trying to be completely agnostic of you know, who you are, where you're based, or anything like that. And, you know, we're building a really, really interesting community, a diverse community of people. Cool. So give us just a sketch a little bit more about these two fabulous podcast focused technologies that you and your team have built. You have matchmaker and you have podcast co, give us a little bit more about what they are and why you built them. Sure. Okay. I'll start with podcast co, because that came first. And podcast.co is basically a platform where your podcast lives. So when you listen to a podcast, perhaps you're tuning into a podcast on Spotify or Apple, you're not actually streaming that podcast from those services, they act just a bit like directories. And so you need to use a podcast host where your podcast actually sits. So that is what we've tried to make as simple as possible with podcast, okay, you can sign up, you can upload your first episode, very quickly. And we do things like distribute it to all those channels. So Apple, Google, Spotify, tune in, etc. And we also track who's listening, how much how long, they're tuned in for that sort of stuff. So you can actually get a full grasp of how many people are accessing your show. And aside from that, we have a huge amount of content available on the website to help you with how to grow your podcast, how to get podcast guests, how to think about monetizing it, and all that kind of good stuff, as well as help and tutorials and video guides on which equipment to buy, how to set that up how to make sure you're sounding tip top. So we're really passionate about creating content for the community, as well as, obviously for our customer base as well. Cool. So the podcasts do would it be fair to say, it's a place where you record, you know, you record a podcast, and you take it and you put it in one place, right, the technology you've built, and then it goes out to all the other places that you would want it to go Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, etc. You don't have to go to each one of those places and put your show or even a link, you put it in one place. And it does all the work for you. Should you want to have your own podcast fair to say, yeah, that's exactly right. And it just makes the process super simple. So you don't need to understand anything that's going on behind the scenes, really, we try and make the process as straightforward for users. Nice. And then you can go to one place and see who's listening to that podcast and these other all these different channels. So fabulous technology, highly recommended, if you're going to podcast, if you are somebody who's doing that, and you're a member of the where printers community, we can talk about those technologies and how you set them up and all that stuff. Or you could go to
Paul Zelizer 13:51
the podcast.co link. Cool. So that's where his death really started. And you were like, Alright, we need to like a nice user interface. And we needed to have this technology that allows people to go and, you know, become a podcaster with less stress and technical knowledge, make it easier. So people can focus on finding great gas getting their message out there and not have to stress about all the different technology part of things.
James Mulvaney 14:19
Yeah, and you know, it's it's that's how we sort of started so when we were kind of bringing this product to market last year, we were looking at what else is happening in the in the space and one of the things we noticed is there's a lot of podcasts, I think it's something like 60% of podcasts are actually based on interviewing other people. But there didn't seem to be one place where, you know, people could go and find guests or if people want to be a guest on podcast, they could go find podcasts who are looking for guests. You know, the traditional is doing it as you might contact people through social media. You might like trawl through podcasts that you're interested in. So we thought wouldn't it be great if we could build such a community and initially it was like, we thought okay, We'll design an idea will kind of come up some concepts and we kind of saw it more like a marketing funnel, if you like, you know a way to get users onto podcast Co. But the more we thought about it, the more it seemed like this is actually almost like a business in itself. It's kind of a viable platform. And this needs to live on its own brand. So hence matchmaker was born we spent a few months building it sort of a back end of last year. And we launched in February, and about middle of February, initially, just to our current customer base, so so users a podcast or co they were our first, if you like our users for the platform, and we had about three or 400 people sign up to it, then we've now grown to over 3000 members in a short space of time. So we've grown really, really quickly at the moment. Yeah.
Paul Zelizer 15:46
So one of the things I'm really appreciative of, I've signed up and and you all have some smart people who are reaching out to podcasters. You know, it says in your write up, right, it's a platform to help high profile podcast, right? Yeah. That you have people like I was impressed when your person somebody in your team reached out to me on LinkedIn, and I was like, Oh, my God, this is awesome. And I signed up and immediately booked some incredible podcast guests for Awarepreneurs, as well as I got booked as a guest, and some podcasts that were completely aligned that I never heard of. And I was like, why do I not know about these? Thank you, that's very good to hear.
James Mulvaney 16:23
I think that, you know, this is a thing, it was very important to us, when we kind of thought, Okay, well, we'll bring this to public, we still haven't really spent much on advertising, we are still focusing very much on manual outreach. So we are, you know, seeking out people who we think look interesting, or podcasts that we think will be a good fit for the kind of guests that we've got on there. You know, and at the moment, as I say, it's kind of 3000 strong, which is kind of quite a small number in the grand scheme of things. But I think it's enough to really have a good choice. Now. You know, there's, there's people in various different markets and people, lots of different areas of expertise on there can be anything from maybe food, to sort of science through to sort of technology through to things like, you know, business and entrepreneur, entrepreneur, real sort of topics, and marketing, sales, all these kind of topics we've kind of invited lots of guests to so you know, it's a really strong, strong community. And it's great that you've given such good feedback, because actually, this is kind of quite a common story we're hearing from a lot of people are signing up, they are getting results very, very quickly, which is exactly what we want. And for me to set this up, it's very exciting as well, you know, it's quite liberating thinking that we're making these connections.
Paul Zelizer 17:35
And, by the way, listeners, this is a free service.
James Mulvaney 17:41
You know, just as for sort of full transparency, we probably, you know, obviously at some stage, we're going to need to monetize this. But the intention is and will always be, we're always going to have a free tier, we want to try and make connections for free, you know, for as many folks as possible.
Paul Zelizer 17:55
So we'll talk about how that works. In the second part of the show, we get into the you know, business models and all that stuff. But right now, what we're saying is here is tool should you want to grow your impact business, here's why podcasting might be exciting to you, as somebody who's like, smart about helping people but also smart about getting your business in front of more people, you can go to existing channels that somebody else has spent time up to three years and hundreds of hours building the entrepreneurs, podcast, to date and the community, right, somebody else spent many, many, many hours. And if you're got something good to say, and you can provide value to their audience for no money involved, at least for right now you can find great people get onto those platforms, deliver value and get people more aware of your work, sign up for newsletter pitch, if it's very skillfully done, pitch what you're offering, whether it's your new book, or online course program for families who, you know, need resources, whatever it is, so yeah, this is this is a pretty amazing opportunity. Now suppose somebody saying, All right, you got my attention, James? Like, how would I go about if I'm interested in I never thought of a podcast tour, teach me a little bit more about what that might look like? What are some of the things I should pay attention to in getting started with being a podcast guest.
James Mulvaney 19:21
So I will go through, I've got like a top 10 list of recommendations that I would make to people who are looking to be a podcast guest. So I'm sure you kind of will resonate with a lot of these, I'll start at the top. So first things first, you know, once you approach a podcast that you want to be on, I think it's really important and we did this last week, Paul, and the speak to the host before you start recording, you know, kind of get to know you know what they're like, and they can get to know you a bit. And I think having a pre show chat is kind of key. And you just have that you can kind of build that rapport with people. Do you find this?
Paul Zelizer 19:53
Absolutely. Matter of fact, I've made it mandatory because it's like, yeah, I want these. I want these shows to provide value for years to come. And it's like, oh, hit the record button. Hi, James, I've never talked to you before, we don't even know like what your voice sounds like, now make a legacy piece of content that people are gonna listen to years to come go. Like, yeah, no, it just doesn't work like that. Right.
James Mulvaney 20:18
But then that's the thing, I think, you know, this is kind of simple stuff. It's one of these things where, you know, if you're new to it, you might not not realize. So I think, you know, that's, that's tip number one. Tip number two, you know, when you go to record, don't go in there all guns blazing, you've got to respect the host, and understand that they have a certain direction, they might want to take the show. And so allow them to sort of lead the way really. Tip number three is think about what the host and what the podcast is about what they want to achieve on the episode and trying to sort of deliver as much value as you can as there. And also, number four is try and make each you appearance you do unique. So don't just kind of go to every single podcast and just say the same stuff. You know, I kind of see people doing this time and time again. And it does get tiring, especially if you start your audience starts hearing you on different podcasts. And each time you just say exactly the same thing. So try and think about how you can tailor it to their podcast, at least a little bit. And number five, is use a good microphone, if you're going to get serious about you know, doing a podcast or being booked booked onto lots of podcasts, you can invest in a USB microphone, it doesn't need to be expensive, you could spend maybe $50 on it. And it will make you sound 10 times better than, you know the the microphone that's built into your computer or your laptop. And also the host will appreciate that so much more I'm sure you can resonate with that for
Paul Zelizer 21:35
Absolutely, yes. So appreciate when people are, again, mandatory at a bare minimum, I asked people to have like I won't interview somebody if the only mic they have is their computer bare minimum a pair of earbuds with a microphone. And a step up from that is a USB headset is like kind of used to be called the Skype headset or I think they just call it a USB headset. Now they're about 20 $30. But I'm like if you really want to do this and feel professional for $50. You know, you can get a microphone that will you'll sound world class. And people really appreciate it if you are going to do a tour. I mean, back in the old days, people would like get in their car and like go to every bookstore and do a book tour that way. Yeah, exactly like it's less than a couple tanks of gas. So like if you want to make this work, it's a really easy way to communicate your care for stepping into an audio environment.
James Mulvaney 22:35
The other thing to bear in mind as well, the audio quality is important to listeners, especially if you know bear in mind, you're going to be exposing yourself to a new audience as a podcast guest. And if you're sounding like you're, you know, on the telephone or underwater, they're going to switch off, they're not going to listen to the whole episode. So it's really in your best interest. Next up is make some notes before you start. So each episode you go to just have a kind of a rough idea doesn't have to be script word for word, but just have some ideas. You know, like this list I've got here I've got this prepared in advance. So I can say, you know, come to the podcast with something useful, you know, I'm kind of not relying on my memory for I can just go down, take it off as I go. And, you know, obvious stuff. Before you start recording an episode, you know, switch your phone off, make sure the kids are locked out, lock out the pets get a glass of water, all these kind of things just to make sure that you kind of you can devote yourself 100% to the recording, and get a quiet room if you can as well. Again, if you're recording in a big empty space, it can sound quite echoey so the smaller room you can be in with you know, sort of soft furnishing or hang up some clothes or bedsheets just to make it sound a little bit better is always a good little tip. And next up, you know on on the recording, remember to sort of try and stay upbeat, and you know, keep it happy. And remember to sort of keep it conversational, it doesn't have to be formal, you're not on a news broadcast. Make sure you remember the host names It was important. And and just enjoy it you know and and remember at the end also just thank the host for the recording, and leave them a review as well. I think podcasters love getting reviews. So those are kind of my top 10 tips for being a guest on a podcast.
Paul Zelizer 24:14
Those are great tips. What was your name again?
24:16
No. Those are awesome.
Paul Zelizer 24:20
Thank you so much. So those are those are some tips about the actual kind of process and mechanics of being on the show. And you know, some things to think about before and after. Yeah, like you want to be a rock star guest if you leave a review when you're on the show. iTunes is sort of the gold standard of metric that many podcasts. You know, just it that if somebody's trying to figure out is this podcast for real or not, and there's only one metric they're going to check. They're probably going to check your reviews on Apple podcasts. So if you want to be a rock star, but any platform it just it just makes a huge difference in terms of if somebody's like trying to get higher profile guests, or they have advertisers or they're trying to get advertisers, etc. There's many reasons why those metrics really matter. So simple things like that make a huge difference.
James Mulvaney 25:10
And also, as well as being a podcast guest, you know, if you want to get more exposure and you're living at reveal will just help with the, the overall algorithm of how iTunes or Apple podcasts ranks everything. So you're kind of doing yourself a favor to.
Paul Zelizer 25:22
And then also, you know, if I have a guest that comes on the show and rocks it, right, like James, you're an awesome podcast guest, you're paying attention to relationality and bringing great values, and you did work and you have this list. I'm gonna turn around and say to my podcast, somebody invested hundreds of hours in building out a podcast, they probably know that other high profile podcast hosts, and they'd be much more likely to say, hey, there's this guy named James Mulvaney, you need to interview him. He's awesome, right? So your opportunities to be a guest on shows that have that kind of quality, host attention, and they built something out. And they're very thoughtful about who they invite we know each other, and it's just more likely to lead to great interviews for your parent.
James Mulvaney 26:08
Absolutely, yeah. So yeah, that's kind of like the top 10. And that though, all those top 10 are available in the video as well. So if I'll kind of send these to Paul afterwards, if you want to list but I think that's a really good solid foundation to kind of get started for anyone,
Paul Zelizer 26:22
you're gonna have some long show notes on this particular episode, which is not a problem. That's great. So let's do this. Let's take a break just for a second. And I want to thank our sponsors, and then we're gonna hear how it actually works as a social enterprise for you, James, and also a little more suggestions on setting up the tour itself, not just from interview to interview, but how do you make it feel like a cohesive tour. But before we did that, a lot of podcasts have, you know, a sponsor, like a website service, or meal plan delivery program, we don't have such a sponsor, we actually have hundreds were printers as a member supported community. And the reason we do what we do with the were printers is because of some very real science. Science tells us that if humans want to change and succeed in their life, the single biggest predictor about whether you're going to make the change and reach your goals is something that scientists called social support. This kind of makes sense. Think about it if like you're trying to, like work on your fitness or change something in your eating or learn a new language, if you have other humans that are supporting you, right? Yeah, good job. All right. Yeah, you fell off the horse with your fitness. That's cool. Don't worry about it. Let's just miss Monday. Let's like start a workout today. The same thing with growing an impact oriented business. If you have people who are also working on growing their businesses, and they can introduce you to podcast shows that might be a good fit, we have a conversation going in the community on that exact topic today, or where partners members are supporting each other and growing our skillfulness and our followings. Right now we have a pod, we call it on Instagram and one on LinkedIn. So very grand people put in a sales page to call the aware printers community. And if you could use a little more support to help grow your impact oriented business go check out the word printers community where printers.com forward slash community thank you for your support where printers. So James, talk to me a little bit like how do you start to they go from just sort of randomly kind of getting on a couple of shows to kind of making it a podcast tour? How do you make it a thing?
James Mulvaney 28:42
Okay, I think the first thing is to be organized. So rather than if if you want to set yourself a goal, for example. And and this is very, very kind of current for me, because I'm actually really is a sort of tutorial slash marketing exercise. I'm setting myself a goal, which I just started recording this and we're kind of doing a vlog style thing where we're doing 30 podcasts within 30 days. This is actually the first podcast Oh, yes.
Paul Zelizer 29:07
Number one - right on!
James Mulvaney 29:10
Yeah. So So what I've done is I've thought about, you know, first of all, what sort of podcasts do I want to appear on as a guest, which are going to be relevant for the sort of the message I'm trying to put out there, obviously, you know, I want to give people value. But I also want to promote matchmaker and talk about, you know, what we're doing with matchmaker. So, you know, I split into three categories. So the three categories are sort of PR sales and marketing podcasts. And then next up is kind of like business, entrepreneurship startups. So this podcast, I'd say falls into that category, but also maybe the next one as well. And the next one is kind of personal development, public speaking and personal branding. So the thing I've done for each of these categories is sort of written in a slightly different pitch. So basically looking at my skill set and what I can bring as a guest to that podcast and how I can kind of then tie back into, you know what we do with matchmaker. So obviously, for each of those sort of different types of podcasts, your pitch is going to be slightly different. So you don't want to just be saying the same thing, like I said before, over and over and over again. And I think every podcast you appear on should try and make that appearance slightly unique. But you know, you need to be thinking about thinking about their audience. That's the first thing. You know, what, what value? and What experience do you have as an entrepreneur that can inspire that audience? And how can you kind of link it into the theme of that podcast, and, you know, let's say you're an expert, you're your chef, okay, you're obviously not going to want to appear on a podcast about business and entrepreneurship, unless you want to say, talk about how you've lost the restaurant business, and you can bring, you know, your experiences running a restaurant to that you're not gonna be talking to that podcast about food. Whereas you might be appearing on another podcast and talking about food or cooking techniques. So you need to just think about how your skills can apply to sort of different categories. Once you've done that, you've defined the kinds of podcasts that you want to sort of appear on. The next thing to do is just create like a simple Excel spreadsheet, list down kind of go through Matchmaker, find podcasts that you think look good, we are hopefully adding like a favorites tool to it soon. So you can kind of start at, you know, actively building a list. But for now, you know, one of the things you can do is just have an Excel spreadsheet, list all the podcasts that you think would be relevant. And then again, separate them to different categories, and then start, you know, building connections and try and tailor your message to that podcast and saying what, you know, what makes it relevant for you as an entrepreneur? Does that make sense? So far?
Paul Zelizer 31:42
It does. Totally,
Paul Zelizer 31:44
I love what you're saying. And what I just want to highlight James is how it's fitting in your business goals, like with Matchmaker, right, so more typically, in our community, maybe less a tech platform. But let's say you're launching a book, or you've got a new online course, right? That would be more typical. You've got something that you've worked on, and you've built, it's not just not that you can't do it for one on one clients. But it's typically exciting. And I think it's worth the effort. Right? In your case, James, you built Matchmaker, you got it up and running, like you said, first you started with your internal users. And now you've got this like base of 3000. And you built a good strong baseline. And now it's kind of like the coming out party. Right? Like you're ready for it to grow and scale a little bit. When, when you're at that place. Keep in mind the tour. It's not just like an occasional interview, which is, which is fine. There's no reason one shouldn't do that. But when you put a lot of time and energy into building something and got it to that place of quality, and started the ball rolling, let's say the snowball, but you want it to go into an avalanche. When you start putting podcast interviews together in close proximity, especially the way human psychology works. Tell me if this makes if this if you agree with the stapes show, if I'm a podcast listener, and I'm like, Alright, cool. I hear about James and matchmaker once all right, maybe I don't even listen to the episode, I just see it on an entrepreneur podcast I love or on a personal development podcast I love Okay, great. Now multiply that by I see it like 12 times on the next 30. I don't, I don't follow every single of those 30 podcasts you're in, but like I see seven of them, or 12 of them. I'm like, I don't know what they're doing. But they're this Matchmaker, suddenly, like everybody wants to talk to James about matchmaker. That's the difference between doing an occasional interview and making an intentional, remember, we're talking about growing your impact business with the podcast tour, making it a tour, it's a really worthwhile and great strategy. When you've put a lot of time and energy into a new product or service that has some scale to add a book an online course, you're launching a new platform. That's when I would suggest really consider this is a fabulous way It takes some time and energy. But it's not like Facebook ads where you have to have a huge budget, right? This is just time and skillfulness and an Excel spreadsheet and the willingness to deliver great value to an audience that already exists. That's pretty powerful. Yeah,
James Mulvaney 34:17
Completely. I totally agree with everything you've just said there. And I think, you know, being organized is this is the step one, you know, you've got to if you want to take this seriously, you want to give yourself a goal of the number of podcasts over x period, you know, and you know, you can fit it around your day to day activities. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to spend 24 hours a day on it for you know, a week. You can split this over like a couple of months and also bear in mind. You've got to be patient with the host as well. Not everyone released podcasts like some people, you'll record it and it won't go out for like three months, or then some people will record it. It goes out two days later. It just really varies on their sort of schedule and how they they release it. So remember to be patient with the people who are interviewing you as well. But you know, as you said, I think if you can kind of get some kind of consistency in terms of you know, you're really hitting a lot of podcasts and you're talking about one thing, but try and also not just make it all about you and try and talk about some things, some stuff of value that's really interesting to the audience, you're going to get better results, ultimately.
Paul Zelizer 35:18
Beautiful stuff. Talk to us a little bit more about like how in specific Matchmaker can help people with their goals as a podcast guest. You talked about there's categories and like, as somebody who let's say, you didn't build Matchmaker, but you did. Suppose suppose that wasn't your skill set. But you had this awesome new thing that's about making a positive impact. And you say, oh, wow, okay, I listen to James and Paul, I'm with you guys. And I have this new book, or I have this fabulous member who's launching an online yoga teacher training program. That's just fabulous name, Susanna Bacharach. If I'm Susanna or somebody in our community is launching a book right now, right? And I'm like, I'm with you. Alright. Help me like really nuance How do I use matchmaker? So I really rock this podcast or,
James Mulvaney 36:11
okay, I'll, I'll sort of start from the beginning there. So if you had to match matchmaker.fm, that's matchmaker.fm. And you can connect currently using LinkedIn using Facebook, we're going to add an email signup on there as well, very soon. Once you signed up, you then get two routes to go down, you can choose whether or not you want to be a guest on podcast, or if you have a podcast yourself. Or if you like Paul, you can choose you have both. I'm guessing a lot of people listening to this will want to be guests. So choose that option, then it's a case of just completing your profile. So we have something called like a tagline, which is effectively like your elevator pitch, you know, and you can describe it's a bit like a Twitter blend for text, basically, in a few words, why would you be great for someone's podcast and try and think about that, because that's the most important thing, because when people are browsing for guests, that's the first thing they're going to see along with your kind of profile image as well. And then when they click on to you, they'll see more details, they'll see a description. And that's where you can write perhaps, if you've been on any other podcasts before, because it's always good to show that if you've got some experience, people got to listen to some other interviews you've done to make sure that you're a good match for them. And you know, also just tell tell people as much detail as you can about your experiences, you know what you know about. And in terms of finding people and finding podcasts that are relevant for your sort of skill set. There's two ways you can search, you can either search by keyword, so for example, you might just want to type in something like yoga, or you can refine based on category and location. Now the categories are all based on the apple podcast category. So we don't actually dictate those categories. That's that sort of set by Apple if you like. But that that list is always up to date with what Apple have announced as the category. So there's like top level categories, and then they have sort of subcategories. But
Paul Zelizer 37:58
just as a quick question about that, James, because it came from our community. I think you added a feature since we last spoke, but one of our members said, Okay, I love what I'm seeing, she saw me posting about this interview, and one of her questions was exactly on this. At the time we spoke, you can only search by categories, but you said a keyword search was coming. And I think you just answered her question, which is she can go in and do a more nuanced keyword search in the platform itself. Is that
James Mulvaney 38:26
Yeah, just actually launched that like I think two days? Oh, yes, yeah. So it's one of these things that was kind of, again, a bit of an oversight when we launched and now, and so you can search for people's names or podcast names. You can search based on keywords. So for example, if someone says that they're an expert in yoga, or whatever it might be, they will come up and and once you've done your search, you can then also apply those filters so you can further refine by location, language, category, etc. But it's made the process because especially now we've got a few thousand people on the platform, it's become harder to sort of refine again, and to begin with it was okay, but now, obviously, we need more of unsession we continue to update By the way, so, matchmakers mentioned I think we launched two and a half months ago or so. So it was middle of February. And since then, we've added a bunch of features. We're keen to continue innovating over the coming months and adding lots more stuff, just to make it a better experience for everyone. But I think overall, it's pretty straightforward to use and kind of, we've had a lot of compliments on the the signup process, we've had a lot of compliments on the user experience as a whole. So I think we've kind of got it right.
Paul Zelizer 39:31
Cool. Thanks for bearing with I'm sorry to interrupt there, but I'm like, Oh, I think I just I think he's answering one of our members questions right there. So I just Yes, I will make sure that she knows that.
James Mulvaney 39:40
So yeah, so there was a once you once you kind of identified potentially a good podcast and the best thing to do is be proactive, you know, you can sign up as a podcast guest and of course, it works two ways. podcasters can reach out to you. If they think that you look like an interesting guest for their podcast, but also you could reach out to them. So I'd recommend being proactive. You know, don't just sit there and wait for someone to get in touch, they might do they might not. But I think, you know, if you're proactive, everyone's going to win. Right?
Paul Zelizer 40:05
Nice. Can we talk about the message that you actually send because like, once I love what you said about greyton, you know, profile and the picture and the write up that all matters. And then like, as a podcast hosts, I'm getting people reaching out. And some of those reach outs feel very skillful. And I lean in and some of them feel a little less skillful. And I lean out. I guess about that.
James Mulvaney 40:30
I think one of the things we were debating when we were building the platform at the moment, when you create press contacts, okay, press contact to show a contact, I guess, there's like a default message, which, what does it say? Let me have a look. It says, you know, I'm interested in being on your show, if you'd like to know more, please get in touch. Now, I advise not just sending that message, I would advise because again, like, like I said, there's going to be people now who are just pressing contact, show contact, show contact, show as much as possible. So it's a bit like when you're writing, kind of like a witty tweet, or a witty email to a potential prospect, you need to try and get their attention, you need to be to the point, I think, friendly and to the point, and really outline the benefits of, you know, outline your skills, why why should they listen to you, you know, why should they interview you on the show? So, I think, you know, don't just go and send people a generic message, make sure it's personalized. And, you know, ultimately, remember to compliment people. So, you know, I listened to this episode. And, you know, I thought it was really interesting, because ultimately, then, the podcaster, who, whose podcast is, will they listen to my podcast that sort of, you know, that's gonna be a good way of kind of building that rapport.
Paul Zelizer 41:37
Nice, and not quite through Matchmaker, but I kind of did that with you. Somebody reached out to me, you did that with me, you had a great person, a team member who reached out to me and said, check this out. And I signed up, and I'm like, this is awesome. And I reached back to that person and said, This is awesome. Can I interview your founder, and here we are, right. And that was all done in this case through LinkedIn messaging. But the end result was your relational reach out to me brought this to my attention. And I reached out with great appreciation for what you've built with management, this is really a valuable thing. And I'd love to help spread the word and all of that was custom crafted, nobody sent a boilerplate communication and all that
James Mulvaney 42:20
just said, exactly, just start with the conversation. In essence, that's the main way to do it. But you know, try and this is a don't just mass mail, people, I think, be be specific and try and tailor or at least tailor your message to each each, each person or each podcast you're sending it to.
Paul Zelizer 42:36
Cool. Let's talk a little bit about the industry. You're like been in this industry, like you said, 15 years built these fabulous platforms to help podcasters and people who want to be guests, people have shows who want to find great guests, in this time of quarantine, and, you know, so much financial impact and change and disruption due to the virus James? Like, how do you how are you thinking about podcasting? Are you hearing from the, you know, podcasts to members and people in matchmaker like, what podcast? How is podcasting being affected by the economic disruptions that we're facing globally? Right now?
James Mulvaney 43:19
That's a good question. I think it's quite hard to kind of define a single answer to that. Like, interestingly, overall, we've we've seen an increase in usage in terms of listeners, more pollute, I think you mentioned at the beginning of this episode, actually, and I can't remember the exact statistic. But we've noticed this on both podcasts are CO and also radio co as well, because radio CO is live radio streaming. And it's there's a slightly different markets like different product, but my goodness, we've seen so many more listeners tuning into radio stations. And apparently, services on the other hand, like Spotify, are seeing a decrease in people listening to music. And I think that's, that's because people want to listen to the radio because they want that human connection, it probably goes exactly the same with podcasts, they want to have that human connection, which obviously you're missing at the moment, because we're all on lockdown. Everyone's just sat at home. So I think, you know, now is a great time to get involved with podcasting, either as a guest or starting your own podcast, but also as well, the platforms and the medium itself just does open itself up to this kind of environment because you know, you don't have to be in a studio You don't have to be sat face to face with someone you can actually be getting involved with people like we are right now, you know, on the other side of the world, which I think is really exciting. And and ultimately, you know, building those connections, which you never know where they will go.
Paul Zelizer 44:40
Beautiful. And I love everything is that dams and for our audience in particular, when you have an impact business, impact focused business can be hard to figure out like what's the what's the two second version of like, how your business works and how it works. as positive impact, right? What's that like? Instagram like meme. That's it's like, gosh, where printers is complicated and people are looking at intergenerational trauma and who's been left out and inequality and positive, you know, psychology and awareness practices and business as a force for good. All that's kind of hard to put in a meme. And one of the things that I think it is so grateful to find out about podcasting, here we are James, we've been like talking for 40 minutes, and some people are still listening. They didn't all leave, right. It's not a like, it's not a 12 word, meme to grow your business, you can have it, you have to provide value, don't waste people's time. But if you've got the right gas, and you have the meaningful conversations, people are willing to invest our episode length is between 50 and 55 minutes, you can have a really fabulous, meaningful, nuanced conversation about your topic. And in this time, of where there's so much disruption and uncertainty, somebody who's willing to have an honest conversation about a topic that your audience cares about, or the audience of the podcasts that you're coming on as a guest, that is an opportunity when I realized you could count that as marketing. I was like, Oh, hell yeah, sign me up. Now, I don't have to do that means I'm, like, truncate what I'm trying to do here, we can have really honest conversations. And when somebody hears you, and here's the value you're providing, you know, I bet that patternmaker gets a bunch of new signups because James invested this time in a careful, value packed way. And we didn't have to do it in 12 seconds.
James Mulvaney 46:49
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think you're dead. Right? Because, you know, as I say, the way that marketing and advertising traditionally works is you've got to craft the message, it's got to kind of almost hit people around the face and be like, yeah, you know, buy this or whatever sale now on. And everyone's so used to having those kind of messages and we kind of almost becomes immune to them. Now, as marketers, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, as aware printers, we've got an opportunity to have, you know, long form conversations that are much more meaningful and actually will have more impact on people's lives. And ultimately, you know, if you're selling products, if you're selling services, you know, it's a fantastic way to do it. It doesn't have to be salesy. It doesn't have to be kind of a traditional advertising like what you think. Right.
Paul Zelizer 47:29
So as an enterprise has helped our podcast, SEO has been up and running longer. And basically what you have is people paying you to use the service, they use it to host they upload their episodes, and then that distributes around the web. How many users do you have a podcast CEO right now?
James Mulvaney 47:47
I think there's around 2000 podcasts on the platform we launched. And although we've we've been around for a while, we're still a relatively new business. radio.co has actually been around for a long, longer time now. So we launched radio CO in 2015. podcast Co. We launched that last year. So it's been it's still relatively new. It's about a year old now. And matchmakers essays is a couple of months old
Paul Zelizer 48:12
call so so podcasts that co 2000 people who pay you monthly, most of them to have this service. And that's the revenue part of how podcasts SEO works, right.
James Mulvaney 48:24
Yeah, that's, that's right. And we also do full service production. So we actually create podcasts for mainly businesses and brands. We have a production agency as well. And sometimes work with people to monetize podcasts attracting sponsorships. And so we're really involved in the whole process for some clients. And the matchmaker,
Paul Zelizer 48:45
how's that gonna work? Right now? It's kind of in beta mode, and it's free for like across the board, but eventually you're gonna it's going to be like a freemium model, some people will pay you for enhanced services.
James Mulvaney 48:58
Yeah, precisely. I think there's there's two different monetization sort of model models we're looking at. I think we will always be completely free for podcasters. Just because we were talking, the more people we speak, I think, you know, quite often the value is, you know, there is a more value sometimes for the guest and the podcaster. In terms of, you know, the guest has got opportunity to feature a lot of podcasts. And as you've said before, the podcasters have all done this work. They've built the brands, they've spent ages kind of getting the audience. So we think it would be unfair to charge podcasters I think it's always going to be 100%, free for podcasters. Think with guests, we'll have a freemium model, we'll have you know, we'll always have a free tier. But we'll probably expose more premium features for a monthly fee. And the other thing we're looking at doing as well as introducing a plan for sort of marketing and PR agencies, we've had quite a few inquiries about this already. So it'll be a case of, you know, influencer agencies, PR companies that represent lots of say high profile entrepreneurs, they might have 10 people on their books, and that they want you know, those PR companies will be tasked with getting them but on Poker, so it makes sense to have a kind of, you know, a multi use plan, I guess, for PR companies, marketing companies, that sort of thing. So they can represent lots of clients. And that that I think is going to be our strategy with matchmaker. But I think it probably won't be for another store three or four months before there's any money involved. So sign up and use it as much as you like for free right now. That's, that's that's the that's the winning formula. Nice. James, if
Paul Zelizer 50:29
there was something about growing an impact business through a podcast or or anything that you're doing right now that you were hoping we were going to get to in this interview, and we haven't gotten to, what would that be?
James Mulvaney 50:41
Well, that's a good question. I think we've covered everything to be honest. I think, for me, growing businesses has always been something that I've been insanely passionate about, you know, I've never know, I've never actually had a job working for anyone. So I started when I was 16. And I kind of think, you know, everyone says this, but there's still we still see people holding off. So just jump in and do it, you've got to just start trying ideas, validate ideas, as well. So with matchmaker for example, before we start building the product, we we had a couple of forms, if you like on the website, we have one for guests, and one for podcasters. And we just started mailed out to our customer base and sort of our mailing list and said, Look, guys, if you're interested, be a guest fill out this form. And if you're interested in sort of getting more guests fill out this form, we saw a lot of people filling out this form. So that's kind of an illustration, there's a clear demand there. So I think testing ideas before bringing stuff to market, so is really useful as well.
Paul Zelizer 51:31
Right? Okay. It's been fabulous having you on the show. So appreciate what you're doing, and you coming on and telling us about it.
James Mulvaney 51:39
No problem. Paul, thank you very much for having me. It's been a really interesting conversation.
Paul Zelizer 51:45
So go check out matchmaker.com and I'm sorry, matchmaker.fm. And all the links that we talked about, including matchmaker podcasts, radio co the resources we talked about, they'll be in the show notes below. Thank you so much for listening. Again, if you could use a little more support and growing your impact business, please go check out the our printers community at our printers.com forward slash community. And for now, I just want to say thank you for listening. Thank you for the good work you do and for all the positive impact that you have.
What is Awarepreneurs?
Awarepreneurs is a popular conscious business and social entrepreneur podcast. You can find out more at www.awarepreneurs.com.