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Introduction 0:00
Welcome to the #PirateBroadcast, where we interview #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. Where you can expand your connections, your community, #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. Let’s get this party started.

Russ Johns 0:15
It's a beautiful day for the #piratebroadcast. We are here again, with #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. I just want to remind everybody, a little housekeeping effort here, that you can always subscribe to the podcast, the YouTube channel, over on Facebook, LinkedIn, or even follow us on Twitter, if you'd like. We want to make sure that this community grows and excels and has the opportunity to meet new people and make new connections and start a conversation. Today, we have Dr. Jeremy Weisz on the #piratebroadcast, sharing some #nuggetsofknowledge. We're going to be talking a little bit about podcasting about business and and a few things that you might want to be involved and engaged in.Welcome. Welcome to the party here. How you doing, Jeremy?

Jeremy Weisz 1:14
Thanks, Russ. I appreciate it. That makes me just like wonder why the #PIRATEbroadcast? You've probably talked about it. I have to watch another episode, I didn't know why it's #piratebroadcast. very intriguing.

Russ Johns 1:28
Well, there's a couple of layers to that statement and one of the main properties of a #piratebroadcast is that you don't have permission. If the FCC, in the early days of radio, found a broadcast sharing information over the airwaves without a license, you are considered a pirate broadcaster. There were many offshore...they had high powered towers in Mexico broadcasting the US early AM radio days. It was one of these ideas that you're kind of a pirate, you know, you're just going out there, no permission needed. You don't need any permission, you're just going out to do that. The Internet has allowed us and afforded us the opportunity to actually do that real time right now. So you are now the media.

Jeremy Weisz 2:25
As a fellow podcaster, I just can't help myself asking questions, Russ sorry.

Russ Johns 2:31
For those that don't know Jeremy, he is a podcaster, longtime podcaster. He's part of the podcasting crew from way back when. So that's a great question. When did you get involved in podcasting? When did you pull the mic up and say, hey, I'm gonna start sharing some content.

Jeremy Weisz 2:49
Yeah, it was 2008, actually, 2008. I'm trying to remember why I started it. I love giving in my relationships, so I found it to be an amazing way to give to my relationships and to as you realize, like, you get to profile other people's thought leadership, and people love to share what they're doing. I knew a lot of #interestingpeople, and it was just intoxicating. You get to talk to people about what they're working on. What they're excited about. So the first version of inspired insider podcast started in 2008. Then I reached out to Andrew Warner, I actually wanted to interview of mixergy, he was one of the first really like interview podcasts out there and I reached out to him to interview him and we got to talking, we really had a lot of fun chatting, and so I became the producer there. I was doing work with them for six years,

Andrew has been doing it for a while. He's a fairly interesting character.

Yeah, yeah. So continued on just interviewing amazing people. It's a lot of fun, and made a lot of amazing, great relationships through it.

Russ Johns 4:08
I i think we both share that. That idea that having a podcast is one of the best ways to start a conversation with somebody and get engagement in areas of business that you would not necessarily have access to all the time. It's just a really, it's a door opener, and it's a great conversation starter. So what are some things that you have noticed over the last 10 years, 12 years of podcasting that has evolved and changed that we might want to start paying attention to?

Jeremy Weisz 4:50
It's gotten so easy over the years. We always say that, but the technology now makes it really easy because the biggest question I get is, what equipment should I use? How do I get downloads and subscribers? Like, those are the biggest questions we get at Rise 25. We help people with their podcast. People are asking me these questions they've been asking that question for for a decade and it's a very simple, solid answer to that question. You've probably talked about this before. You need zoom, or string y, or some other platform to stream it and a USB mic, and that's it. The USB mic does not have to be fancy. This was $100 on Amazon, like, whatever, 10 years ago. I have another one, an ATR 2100, or whatever the latest version is. It's like $70, and you're ready. Now, the biggest thing is really focusing in on what's important and focusing on what's important. Who are you profiling? Who are you going to have on and you don't want to try to do all the pieces yourself. Ideally, it's good to know something, but especially, I mean, there's a lot of different people, we work more with b2b businesses. So we want them focusing on their business, and not focusing on all the other stuff. So I suggest you learn enough to be dangerous, but don't necessarily try and do it all yourself. Because your time is valuable, focusing on whatever craft you have. I think the biggest thing is, over the 10 years, thing to look out for. I mean, the funny thing is, it's still emerging, now it's becoming more of a mainstream word, but it's still emerging and a lot of people don't do it, or don't listen to podcasts or have not heard a podcast still. So there's still a lot of room for growth. People think, oh, it's saturated, or some people because they're just in that network, so it seems like it is, but it's really not. If you compare blogs in their feed, If you compare the number of blogs to the number of podcasts, I don't know what the number is, but it's astronomically bigger with blogs. I'm not gonna start a website, because there's all these other websites out there, that sounds crazy, you know, but the equipment and that's a big one, people ask in, it really hasn't changed that much, Russ. I've used the same exact mic for 10 years and I recommend the same one now. It's the Yeti, Blue Yeti, you get it for like 120 bucks on Amazon, they probably raised the price, because of the pandemic and people are buying a bunch of mics for the house, but beyond that, it's not that different.

Russ Johns 7:46
No. No, not at all. In fact, I would argue that, because of the ease of access and ease of use, even if you wanted to just test drive a podcast out, Spotify bought anchor a few years ago. So firing up an anchor app on your phone. The new phones nowadays have fairly decent, actually quite quality microphones, for the most part, in a quiet space, you can jump in your closet, and record a nice video on your phone on a tripod or something on a shelf and create something that's pretty amazing nowadays. I'm not saying that's what everybody needs to do; however, I think it's really about discovering the process that you enjoy working with. Not everybody thinks they need a podcast because everybody else is doing a podcast and that's not necessarily true. It's the same with blog posting, there's multi millions of blog posts out there. You just have to enjoy it. You have to do it for yourself and understand, hey, this is the way I want to process this information and deliver it to the community.

Jeremy Weisz 9:03
That's a great point, Russ because here's the thing, I hate writing. I don't like writing. My background is in biochemistry, okay, I just never got into writing. So the thought of writing a blog post a week or two blog posts a week just makes me want to crawl into a ball. All right. But over the past 10 years, I've produced almost two episodes a week for 10 years. That's two blog posts. That chaneel is going on iTunes, Spotify, Google, well Spotify is recent, but Google Play, Stitcher, but if you ask me to write two blog posts a week, that would never, ever happen. So you're right, you want to choose a medium that you love, that you enjoy, but that's also not super time consuming. So that's what we're talking about.

Russ Johns 9:53
I'm not a huge fan of editing, so I went to live stream and you know, I've been in podcasting and editing and I've helped start hundreds of podcasts. The challenge that a lot of people run into is, how do I start? What equipment do I need? Then you move into the, how do I brand it? Then you move into how do I build it? How do I grow it? It's those things that you have to say, okay, well, like yourself, two podcasts a week for 10 years. That's a body. That's a huge body of knowledge that you've been able to share and deliver to your community.

Jeremy Weisz 10:33
Yeah, yeah, totally. It's authentic and that's another good thing about the podcast medium. It's authentic conversations. I was listening to a podcast the other day, I won't mention the name of it, but it was so overly produced that it got annoying to me. I was like, just let me listen to the conversation, like cutting it there chopping it. So I agree with you. For instance, I don't cut anything out of it. I remember one episode, there was a bee flying around and the person almost got stung. I thought it was hilarious. I mean, it was hilarious. They didn't get stung. That sounds funny, but it was just funny. I didn't cut it out. I was like, oh, they were swatting around at a bee. But I though, just leave it in, who cares?

Russ Johns 11:26
The reality is, Jeremy, we are all storytellers at the heart of our DNA. So being able to craft these stories and be able to share them, I think, is really a gift to the universe. It's a legacy that we can leave behind. It's always gonna be there. One of the things that I think people fail to understand when they start a podcast is they think that if they get the right guest on, it's gonna blow and explode their podcast. If they have the right production, the right guest, the right intro, or the right image, it's gonna blow up, and they're gonna be the next Joe Rogan or something like that. I think that that needs to kind of move away out of the industry, because it's really a personal story about how the process is built and the love of the love of the process, is really what the focus needs to be on. As a business owner, if you're doing b2b like yourself, there's a lot of opportunity to start a conversation with your ideal audience and develop and nurture that and build relationships that far exceed the numbers. You can't even measure the value of that. I think that's what people need to really understand when it comes to podcasting and creating content.

Jeremy Weisz 12:49
Yeah, I mean, the number one thing in my life, and probably people would agree, is relationships, and whether it's health, whether it's wealth, whether it's whatever it is, relationships, people who have done what you want to do, or people in your tribe and community for that. I joke around and say, almost everything in my life, like my relationships, almost everything, good things go back to a podcast. John Corcoran and I became business partners because of podcasting. We were introduced because we were both podcasting at the time. We did an event in San Francisco together because we didn't know each other and just did it on a whim because of podcasting. A lot of my best friend, I've gone on family vacations with people because of the podcast. So you're right. It is priceless, like the relationship. So when people ask how do I get thousands of subscribers? If you're trying to be the next Joe Rogan, that may be important. But listen, if you go back to his hard work and what he did in his body of work, he traveled and did comedy shows he was the announcer of the UFC, he did a lot of things to build his audience. It wasn't just showing up and doing podcasts. He did a lot of other stuff and hard work to build his audience. It wasn't like, you said, one interview that he did with someone that blew him up. Maybe people look at that now. But it's like an overnight success after 20 years in the making. When we were working in strategizing people to RISE25. It's, especially for a b2b business. Even if you've got a million downloads, I say, what are you going to do with that? It doesn't really matter to you as a b2b business, what matters is your relationships in that industry and giving to those relationships in that industry. That's what it's about.

Russ Johns 14:38
Well, it's also one of the things that I want to point out to everybody. I want to kind of have you expand on is the ability to grow your authority in a subject matter. If you're talking about a subject and I I could point out podcasters all day long on certain subjects in the industry, and it's really about knowing and sharing and developing and delivering information on a subject in a niche that really builds authority and visibility in that niche. They're famous people that no one knows because they're in a niche. I think that's an area that needs to be expanded in this idea of podcasting.

Jeremy Weisz 15:25
Yeah, it's a good point. That's one of the first things I recommend brainstorming in is what niche or, again, the beautiful thing about doing a podcast is you can change, you can iterate. People think they need to have it all figured out in the beginning, Russ, I remember when I first started, I thought I was gonna be the foremost podcast for productivity. I love productivity 80/20. I love being able to leverage time, so I was like, yeah, I'm gonna have the foremost podcast on productivity. After five episodes with some of the biggest experts in productivity, I was like, okay, they keep saying the same thing. I got it, I'm shifting to another one. So I tell people, you know, you don't have to have it figured out, you can experiment. I've gone and done maybe 100 interviews in CPG companies and e-commerce companies and over 100 interviews with direct response, copywriters, and marketers. So, like you said, anything that's of interest to you, but make sure it serves what you're working on, whatever you're working on, the main goals. You can be known and it's not like you are the authority necessarily, but, you become known with the people who are the authority, and after doing 100 plus interviews in direct response and I do a lot of research, I may do 5-10-15 hours of research. So, I've done a lot of research. You actually get to become somewhat of an expert when you research it, and you start to use it in practice. I do use that stuff. So I think it's a great point. You can go in and experiment with different niches. Right now, I've been interviewing top VCs, just because I found it to be really interesting. I had a VC on and I found the conversation was interesting and so I was like, cool. I'm gonna actually dig deeper into this realm and see what else is out there?

Russ Johns 17:27
Yeah, it's amazing what you can do. I want to share something interesting also, Gabriel's in the house. I'm not sure if you know, Gabriel yet. He's a live streamer. Amazing individual that everyone should know. Good morning, Gabriel. Thank you so much for being here. Wendy's in here. Good morning, pirates. Welcome Dr. Jeremy. Weny's a force of nature as well, that I think everybody should know. Cathi Spooner. Good morning. Cathi. How are you doing? I hope you're well. I switched over to YouTube, LinkedIn stopped working. What is up with LinkedIn? LinkedIn.com. I could tell you a story. I could get distracted. I'm not gonna go there today, okay. I love LinkedIn and their LinkedIn live stuff is not always as well as it could be. It's all about finding your voice and conveying your message. That's absolutely consistently true, Gabriel. Wendy says, to me, there is a selfie podcast where we go it alone and then there's the interview podcast. Booking guests, and doing the research for a great convo seems daunting. Is that how you find it? That's how you discover it.

Jeremy Weisz 18:46
You know what? No, actually. I mean, it can be but like, here's the thing, what I would say is, maybe then you don't have the right guest. Because if you have the right guest, and you're super interested in that guest, it's not daunting, right? So that's assigned to me. Maybe I just don't have the right guest if the research seems daunting. By the way, there's ways to shortcut research also. You don't have to be like me and do five or 10 hours of research per guest. If they have a book, I like to listen to it, but you can have an interesting conversation by looking at their "about" page, looking at their LinkedIn. To be honest, the the best conversations go and you do research. I remember when I interviewed Wim Hof, right. I don't know if anyone's heard of Wim Hof, but he's The Iceman, I mean, he has, I don't know, 20 Guinness Book world records or whatever it is for cold exposure. I did like 20 hours of research because he's been interviewed so many times. Those are the toughest ones. I didn't want to ask the same questions. I wanted to be interesting, but I was really interested in what he was doing. So that didn't seem daunting to me. But you can shortcut it as well and you don't have to go crazy. I can look on your LinkedIn page and find some interesting things. Oh, you know, you're a history major, but now you're a pro athlete. That's interesting, or whatever it is. So you can always find something interesting with a little research also.

Sometimes you can find a lot of interesting things just through conversation.

Gabriel, or somebody mentioned something really interesting about finding your voice. I think people say, well, there's so many podcasts out there, I don't want to be like everyone else, or whatever it is. Some people say that and I say, listen, you're not like everyone else. So if you start a podcast on... let's say there's 10 other podcasts on e-commerce and you start an e commerce podcast, yours is gonna be different just because you're different. So you don't have to try and be different. Right, Russ? I mean, you're different. So you will end up going in a direction that that leads you.

Russ Johns 20:58
Yeah, that's absolutely true because it's just like, SlapTagz, actually, Sheri Lally, you know, it feels like coffee talk with my buddies when it's live. It's true. It's just like, what kind of goal do you have for it? For me, it's like, hey, I just want to share and highlight a few people that I like, and enjoy hanging around with or someone that I find interesting that I would like to know a little better. I invite them onto the podcast, we have a conversation just like this. If you've ever been in a coffee shop or restaurant, and you're hearing a really interesting conversation nearby. It's just like that. It's like you could listen to our conversation all day, and you might even want to replay it. You might want to play it again. Howard Kaufman, good morning, how are you doing? I hope you're well. Nurture is such a meaningful word. I think that's really true. Donnie Ray says, good afternoon, sir. Thank you, Donnie Ray, good afternoon to you. I think it's really about what kind of emotional feeling do you want to deliver in the podcast? What emotion do you want to trigger? What is the attraction factor? What is the thing that's going to bring people back to the table and say, hey, that was great. I want more. How do you communicate that to business owners that are really on the run, moving forward, and they're too busy to really stop and pay attention to half the time?

Jeremy Weisz 22:39
Yeah, do you mean as far as people saying it takes a lot of time to do it? Is that what you mean?

Russ Johns 22:46
Yeah.

Jeremy Weisz 22:49
It depends on the goals, like when we're working with and talking to b2b businesses, I say, well, are you too busy to talk to your best relationships? Are you too busy to talk to your best referral partners who send you a lot of business? Are you too busy to talk to your best clients that you have? I mean, the answer should be no, right? Obviously. The other thing is, well, you should already be having those conversations. If you're not, you should be having those conversations. So when people give me the argument, well, I'm too busy. Well, are you too busy for your best relationships? The answer should be no, obviously. Right? By the way, I tell them you're already doing it. You're already having these conversations. So you might as well make them go further. We could have this conversation on a phone without recording it. Then there are some lessons that people will get from it, and we have an engaging conversation with people. So it can never happen unless you actually put it out there.

Russ Johns 23:54
Yeah, put it out there. So the one question I want to wrap up with and I know you have lots of things going on in your world...I know the one question I get asked all the time, and I want to dive into this a little deeper is how do I grow my podcast? How do I grow? How do I get more exposure? How do I build on it? I have my own thoughts about that. I think you could imagine what those are; however, as a podcaster, for years in developing this, what are your thoughts? What are your suggestions or recommendations to your clients?

Jeremy Weisz 24:34
Yeah, I mean, that's not what I focus in on really. When people ask, how do I get subscribers, downloads, whatever on my podcast, I think it's the wrong question to ask, depending on who you are, right? For me, the right question is more, who are the relationships you want to give to? That's the question I asked. It's about consistency. If you want to grow your audience's consistency, what I always look at is giving to people. I'm not looking to grow my own thing, I'm looking to grow other people's stuff. If I'm looking to help them and help them grow their stuff and post on LinkedIn, or Facebook, and my podcast about what they're working on, what they're doing. Are they going to be sharing it because they're proud of it and they want to share what I'm sharing about what they're doing? Of course. So instead of focusing on myself, I'm focusing on that person, and helping that person grow what they're doing. I used to listen to audio cassette tapes, Russ, in my car of the Zig Ziglar's of the world and Zig Ziglar would always say, you get what you want, when you help enough people get what they want. So it's really focusing on helping people get what they want. That's really what it's about, it's about relationships, giving your relationships. Like you said before, you're not gonna have one episode that because you have one guest on, that blows up. It's not going to happen. The funny thing is you could have a big guest and the person who's got a small niche audience guest is going to share it and get way more exposure for you, then a big guest even, so you just don't know where it's going to come from. It's not even a question I think about, really. I think about giving to people, and who are the people I want to give to, and the rest will come with consistency.

Russ Johns 26:31
Consistency over time is really what it's all about. I think there's a huge misconception about what it takes to actually produce a show. Busy people, if they need help, they want help, they enjoy help, they can contact someone like you or I and there's a lot of help and assistance out there. Growing a podcast or growing a broadcast or live stream or even blogging, there's help out there. There's no shortage of help and information. So it's really about who do I get along with? Who do I resonate with? How can I help them? When you pour value back into your network, it always seems to come back. I know, that's my experience. I suspect it's yours, as well.

Jeremy Weisz 27:25
Totally, totally. Yeah. So that is the most common questions how do I grow? But start with one person, help one person get their message out there and help them grow and it will just, over time, happen. It's not like a push button, easy button solution. Or if you're a paid traffic expert, you could probably shortcut that, and start driving a lot of traffic and money to episodes. But most people, that's not gonna happen. It's not worth it, even.

Russ Johns 27:57
Not necessarily. So I want to say good morning, Angie Schuman. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you're having a lovely day.

Jeremy Weisz 28:04
I love those little skeletons.

Yeah, it's like she's representing. She's representing the #pirate#broadcast. So the pirates are out there. Cathi Spooner says helpful discussion. Thanks for the ideas, information and #inspiration. Thank you so much. Helping others is the best way to help yourself. I love that. I love that. So what's next for Dr. Jeremy and the crew over at Rise25? What's taking place? What's on your horizon?

Yeah, I mean, really, at Rise25, we're just heads down, helping b2b businesses run and launch their podcast, so it makes sense for their business. We focus on the best relationships and not worrying about getting huge audiences. That's not the focus, the focus is how does it serve the business and relationships and that's it. So, John and I, we have a video on our Rise25 page of us bantering like an old married couple. You know John and so people can check that out if they're interested. But that's really what we're focusing on.

Russ Johns 29:14
Well, I suggest everybody go check out Rise25. If you're interested in nurturing relationships through podcasts, in actually monetizing your podcast, there's some ideas out there that I know we didn't get to. We'll have to look forward to it on another show in another episode. Thank you so much for being here. I love the opportunity to connect and catch up and it's been awhile, so I thought it would be nice to kind of evolve the show.

Jeremy Weisz 29:42
That's fantastic.

Russ Johns 29:43
Also everyone, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate the audience and the community. If you're not connected, get connected. Reach out, say hey, Russ sent you. Russ told me to connect with you. So reach out to Dr. Jeremy and let him know that you're a pirate, now that he's a pirate, too.

Jeremy Weisz 30:04
I'm always open to questions. So if you have questions, you can message me on LinkedIn or, or wherever.

Russ Johns 30:11
Yeah, I'm sure you can be found after 10 years of podcasting. There's no doubt that you're somewhere. Yeah, somewhere you'll be found. So, everyone, it's a pleasure. It's always a great time and for the #piratebroadcast, #smilesarefree, #kindnessiscool and I want you to #enjoytheday. Thank you so much. Take care everyone.

Exit 30:41
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