Tis I, Lord Podcast. Are you yearning to equip yourself with the confidence to record?
Elijah, the skilled podcast professional, is preparing himself for a tale of tools and
skill that only a mighty podcaster may employ in one's podcast journey. Elijah, I do believe
that we shall teach our weary wanderer the confidence that they strive to achieve. Shall
we start a podcast? We shall. It's settled. Let's start a podcast.
My name's Elijah. I'm the host and Coraline is here to talk about launch and strategy.
She has a lot to say about what you should be doing to podcast launch. But first, Coraline,
I really need to understand that you're qualified. You have the street cred to talk about launch
strategy. So I have a few questions. You ready?
Let's go.
You're ready for anything. I love this. And you're in the dating scene. You're taking
these cool selfies like way up in the angles and getting getting the sweet angles going
so you can have that perfect date, right? Maybe lunch turns into breakfast. Maybe not.
But I need to know. It's been a long time since I've dated. I need to understand when
is the appropriate time to text a person back your interest? Is it right away or do you
let them wait, play hard to get for a couple of days?
So I've been I'm a big fan of testing things like I like to try a bunch of different strategies
and then see what works best. So the A B tests with Yeah, so I've been doing both so far.
The just replying when you have your phone in your hand seems to be the best bet. I don't
seem to notice that like leading them on or making them wait for it, you know, does any
better for the situation. So as long as I'm on my phone and my phone's around and I see
the notification, I I'm the type of person who will answer it right away. Yeah.
I'm sorry to say this, but I don't think you're in your 20s anymore. And maybe those games
just aren't for you. Yeah, just get it over with. Yeah, yeah. I have no time. You're a
female founder. You have no time to waste. Just let's go. Let's have lunch and move on.
Yeah, exactly. The sooner the better because then I feel like it's easier to to gauge someone
in person than it is, you know, be a long, long, long text conversations, which also
seems to be a thing in the dating world. So I prefer to just get let's grab lunch, let's
grab dinner or drink and see if there's anything there.
And if there is anything there, when is the appropriate time to talk about the bedroom
romance under the covers? Again, it's been a while. I never really knew. My friends are
all impatient. What's your take?
I think everybody is a little bit impatient. I feel like there's a little bit of I have
I have a mind that just lives in the gutter. I'm going to say that my brain just lives
in the gutter. So, you know, if the conversation is good, it usually comes up. If it doesn't,
then it doesn't. I think everybody's different. But I tend to make offside inappropriate jokes
sooner rather than later, just just to see what the person's like.
Just to feel it out. And if it's if they're not taking your segue off of bacon and eggs
and tomatoes, then it's over. Yeah, no, not exactly. You ride motorcycles too, right?
I do. Yeah, I drive a BMW F 900 R right now. Yep.
That's more of a some I'm six five or 196 centimeters. So there's probably no way that
I would ride well on this bike.
We wouldn't do too bad. I'm a little short for it, to be honest with you. I'm about five,
six, and I struggle with it on hills and stuff like that. It's a heavier bike than what I'm
used to, I would say. I mean, you probably do OK. Your knees would get uncomfortable
on long rides, but for the most part, the seating position is pretty upright. So it
is pretty spacious for long legged folk. Perfect. And when you're upright to you to hit the
gas, hit the handle all the way back to the wheelie.
Is that? No, I'm not a wheelie girl. I'm more of like
a long, slow drive through the country girl. I haven't been riding that long, so I tend
to take my time. It's also a very dangerous activity to do. So I tend to err more on the
side of safety in that part of my life and risky in the business side of things.
So when it comes to launching off a motorcycle, you have to really play to your strengths
in your comfort zone. You have to know what doesn't work. And in this case, it's falling
over and breaking something, which is probably bad.
Definitely, definitely bad. Yeah. Know your strengths. Know your weaknesses. You know,
I'm not great on hills. Sometimes stalling out on hills.
Sometimes launch can take a bit. Needs a bit of patience. Got to get up that hill and kind
of chug along. And eventually you'll start to go right once the road's flat.
Yeah, exactly. Perfect. So I think this is great. You qualified.
You're putting up with my strange and wonderful questions to prove your worthiness. So thank
you for that. My pleasure.
Absolutely. When we're talking about worthiness, what is the worst kind of strategy for launching
you ever seen that something just kind of tanking go? Oh no, I can't believe they just
did that. Got anything? I love gossip.
Are we talking podcasts? Are we talking business products specifically?
I'm here for any of the juicy details. So if you want to hit me with business or podcasts
or both, I'm for it.
So I mean, I feel like the same answer probably applies to both kind of. So like on the business
product side, if you're launching like a digital product, like a course or something, you know,
the worst thing you can do is build it before you sell it and to build it before you build
a community of people to sell it to. Right. And I think that coincides with podcasts as
well. I think a lot of people, you know, just pop a podcast up without having even a small
community of people to launch that to, to share that with when that first episode goes
live. And I think that can make for a slower buildup of community of traffic of listens,
et cetera, over time. And so I think sometimes having that community in the front end set
up in the beginning just gives you a smoother launch, a much smoother launch.
And if somebody is not privy to smoother launches, do you think 10 or a hundred or a thousand
listens on the first episode is good? Or is there a particular number that you usually strive
for to say, okay, this is going to make it, this is going to be a good one.
Yeah. I mean, I think it all depends. You know, I'm a big fan of averages. So, and I,
I teach this when I talk about like YouTube or social media content as well is it's less
about like the first episode and how many views you get on the first episode and more
so like what's the average of the first 10. And can we use that as a benchmark then moving
forward to kind of, you know, set some goals, set some objectives and like work on growing
our viewership, et cetera. Perfect. So it depends. Is that fair?
Yeah. I mean, it's, I just don't want to get too political. Everybody's different. Everyone's
communities are different. The size of what everyone starts with is going to be different
and it's less about like, oh, you know, 10,000 views is a great benchmark and more so like,
are you having fun doing it? Does it feel in alignment with you? Are you having conversations
you want to have? And if you've checked all of those boxes and you're sharing that organically,
then your growth might look different than someone else's. So let's figure out your benchmarks
and compare you to you instead of somebody else in the industry.
Before we flipped the 180, sort of speaking, get to the red carpet, you talk a bit about
that red carpet approach that the plan, the plan to 45, the launch plan on your website.
Can you remind me where that is again? The website,
d2cell.com. Perfect. So that's one of your courses. You have a ton of them. You have
great strategies and different models to follow. Can you kind of walk me through that, what
that offers? Yeah. So the, I believe the product you're referring to is something we call momentum
launch system. And what that really is about is setting up your social presence in a way
that allows you to kind of create, yes, a red carpet buying experience or listening experience
for your end user, whether that be, you know, someone purchasing a course or someone listening
to your podcast. And what it's really about is building anticipation, right? I mean, you
talked a little bit about like, you know, bedroom stuff earlier. And if we can talk
a little bit about that, you know, the anticipation, the buildup before something happens is sometimes
more important than the action in and of itself happening. And so one of the key elements
of a red carpet experience is creating demand, creating anticipation, creating a buzz around
things. If we look at, you know, Taylor Swift, who seems to be a bit of a controversial woman
these days, but one of the reasons why she's been so successful, why she has so many viewers
from so many different demographics or listeners rather from so many different demographics
is because she's been teasing and building anticipation for new albums for years. Right.
And so that is that product is really, how do we build that excitement within your community
before you even launch it out there? So that when you do launch, they're either excited
to listen or they're excited to buy or they're excited to, you know, sign up for whatever
it is that you're actually offering.
Now countries are begging her to come because it's like, she's the end all be all for, you
know, pandemic rejuvenation of economies and states and countries and even Toronto, Canada.
Well, you live there. You're probably super excited for all the traffic blunders and a
thousand dollar a night hotel tags and all the dates are going to get really muddy if
you can't get the T-Swift tickets.
Yeah. The moment that she announced, I think she's doing six separate Toronto shows in,
you know, well I call it the sky dome. That's not what it's called anymore. I'm old enough
where the Blue Jays played. Yeah. Where the Blue Jays play. I'm old enough that it's still
the sky dome to me. But yeah, within, you know, I think it was something like five hours
of her just announcing the dates, all of the hotels were sold out. Every single one of
them in Toronto, gone, just no available options. Right? So the ability for her to create demand,
yes, revive, you know, economies is insane, but it's because she has so much anticipation
baked into her marketing method.
How long do you think you'll take to get to the front row ticket price point that Taylor
Swift has? Do you think you'll match that pretty soon? A couple of months, a couple
of years? Or do you think that's just way too much pressure?
In terms of like how we price our products?
Yeah. Yeah. That services, products, courses, all that sort of stuff. Or if you go singing
on stage, maybe they'll pay for that. I don't know.
I mean, I'm not the greatest singer, you know, I can talk forever. Singing, maybe not my
strong suit. But I mean, if we look at our pricing structure, I think it's similar to
when you are buying concert tickets where you have, you know, kind of nosebleed type
offers where they're lower cost, they're more accessible to more people. You know, that's
something like the MLS system we just chatted about. But then we do have higher ticket offers
that are, you know, probably more in alignment with her front row seats in the five to $12,000
range. So I think we're already there, funnily enough.
Easy. That was, that was a piece of cake. Just made it. It's great. And there's something
for everybody. And I'm trying to hit home that it's hard to do it yourself. If you're
going to you figure this out, a business entrepreneur, hobbyist, whatever you're doing with your
podcast strategy really kind of should be having someone to at least guide you through
this process if you want to succeed. Or you could just kind of stumble through it a couple
of years, but that's not for everybody. Yeah. I mean, I always say like the, you know, the
goal of being a mentor, hiring a strategist or a coach, like whatever term, you know,
feels best for you is collapsing time. Right? So if you're to start a podcast on your own
and you don't Google anything and you don't look up any YouTube videos and you don't leverage
any resources, it's definitely going to take you longer than if you maybe got on YouTube
and started, you know, watching a few videos. And so the whole point of having a business
mentor or strategist who's or a podcast strategist who's done what you already want to do is
they can, you know, cut out the mistakes that they made. And the idea there is that you
don't end up making them. Right? So with anything that we do, there's so much free information
that is so unbelievably helpful. But I strongly believe that, yeah, having a mentor, having
a strategist, having someone to help you launch that idea out into the world, it's not going
to save you all of your headaches. You're definitely still going to make a bunch of
mistakes, but you'll also have someone to talk to when that happens, who's been in your
shoes and who can guide you through it a little bit better.
Pat you on the head, say they're there and then give you a swift pat on the rear end
like the football coach does and say, see ya. Good luck.
Yeah, yeah. Go get a touchdown or sports points or whatever it is.
Yeah, you're going to fail a million times, you know, and I think most people don't take
that into account when they launch something like a podcast or a digital product. I can't
tell you how many failed podcasts I have. If you search my name on Spotify, I think
there's like four or five in there that I launched and kind of gave up on and didn't
go the way that I planned until we finally, you know, we have the one that we have today
and it does really well and you know, the community loves it. But that took us a few
rounds to get it right and to kind of get into a groove with it. So there's a lot of
failure involved in any success that you're going to have.
I was going to say you're holding out on me on the gossip. All this stuff that you failed
to mention that conveniently talking about now, but in all seriousness, I've had a ton
of that stuff too. I talk about nerdy things or games or whatever is hot and cool or try
different things that are kind of just fun and go, well, life changed or somebody gets
married, somebody gets promotion, or you just say, I'm just going to shift course. And I
guess the moral of the story is it's okay. You just, even though I really want to Google
your name right now and search for all the failed podcasts because I love the gossip,
it's good to hear that I'm not the only one that has failed attempts, if you will, in
trying again. So it's cool.
Yeah. And I think anyone you talk to that you look up to or has a business or a podcast
or a product or anything really, anything in life that you deeply desire or you admire,
they will tell you that they failed so many times trying to get there. And anybody who
doesn't, I think that's a massive red flag. I think that's a red flag. We're like, it
was great. First time around. Run.
Those sales system ads on Instagram. I've done this. I've done this a hundred million
times. I have big muscles. Look at me be successful. I love those ads. They're entertaining for
me. It's nice.
Yeah. They are entertaining. I think advertising is a super funny part of this industry that
keeps getting, I don't know about water, but more interesting. Yeah.
So when you develop the interest, when you get the success going, I'm going to roll out
the red carpet for you. Somebody is when you get that podcast going, how do you get there?
What are some steps? What do you, what do you talk about? Maybe some systems, maybe
we can implement how, how the courses work, whether it's nosebleeds or T swift ticket
prices. It helped me understand that to get to that red carpet.
Yeah. You know, I think it always starts with an idea. And the thing that I think a lot
of people get tripped up on is thinking that they have nothing of value to talk about or
to share, or, um, you know, they have no skills to create a course or to build a digital product
around. And I always tell people to do a little bit of like internal market research in your
life first and foremost, to kind of figure out what your topics are going to be or what
people usually come to you for. So I'll often go, you know, when I first started in a task
that all of our students do is I have them ask their friends and family, like, what do
you, what do you value my opinion on? You know, what do you notice I light up when I
talk about, what would you say are my strengths and my weaknesses? You know, and then doing
kind of like an audit in your life as well of what do people ask you questions about?
Right. And what could you stay up all night reading books on or watching YouTube videos
on or, uh, you know, what, what gets you going down a tick tock rabbit hole really well.
Right. So the first thing is having that really valuable idea. And from that idea, can you
find different unique perspectives or themes that you could create something like an entire
show or like an entire course on? Right. So you've built up this anticipation whilst
you're doing this research. And then the next element honestly is to sell it. So, you know,
with a podcast, I would probably record my first one to five, maybe even one to 10 episodes
first and foremost, just so that when you do launch, there's 10 episodes for people
to watch and listen to, to get them hooked in and ready to be there, you know, and excited
to keep continuing. And what that also does for you as the podcaster or as the business
owner, um, is it also gives you space to maybe not record every single week like you need
to. Right. So I made this mistake really big when I launched a YouTube channel was I only
batched two YouTube videos. So I had two YouTube videos available for people to check out and
listen to. And I planned on or watch, sorry, I plan on doing one every single week, but
as, because it was a new process for me, a new workflow, I had to record it, edit it,
you know, do all these different things with it. It took more than a week for me to get
a video out. And so if I had planned ahead and maybe batched five or six videos, I would
have given myself more space to create those systems, to understand how long it takes to
do things like that. Um, and probably wouldn't have been so, you know, stressed out trying
to hit those deadlines every single week from a systems perspective, you really want to
ask what are the things that I'm doing consistently and just document those from a, you know,
step one to step 10 to step 20, whatever it is. So, you know, if you have a, for example,
you're recording a guest episode, step one is finding a guest. Step two is reaching out
to them. Step three is, uh, you know, sending them the link. Step four is making sure that
they've submitted that information. Step five is getting that, uh, link to them before they
join step six. We got to get on the podcast and record it. Step seven, we might have to
do a little editing and we plug it in our podcast software. Then we schedule it out.
Right. And so with the systems and the automations and stuff like that, you want to write down
what everything is step one to step Zed, however many steps there are. And then I like to go
through and ask, do I need to do this or can my computer do this for me so that I'm taking
myself out of the process as much as possible. And that's where we start to have, you know,
businesses that become more sustainable or podcasts that become more sustainable when
we can remove ourselves as much as possible from the actual process of getting something
from a to Zed. Somebody has startup capital, which is like next to nothing or bleeding
cash. How, how soon do you think it'd be good to push or getting assistance or getting those
automations in? Should I do it from day one or if I absolutely zero, no chance I have
to do everything in a small team of people, will that hinder my chances or should I try
to plan ahead to get a budget to get help? Um, I think you should do it yourself for
as long as possible. And that's a pretty controversial opinion. Um, I think especially in this space,
a lot of people will tell you outsource if you don't love it outsource. Um, but I also
deeply believe that like your podcast as a whole, let's say it becomes a show with, you
know, a hundred thousand weekly downloads. You need to also make sure that when you have
a team managing those hundred thousand downloads and those episodes creating that, that you
can really understand every single part of the process so that you can ensure that quality
is maintained throughout the whole thing. So if you outsource too soon, there's a chance
that you're going to miss the opportunity to learn the key skills in the process. And
therefore you might struggle to lead a team to that next level in the future. Right. Um,
you know, there are so many cost effective ways that we can outsource things. For example,
like the, you know, the tool that we're using right now, I'm sure it can be used to send
reminder emails to your guests. Like I got one before this, right. Um, there was a link
that you sent me where I can book things like that's an automation already in place. And
it's like having a team member on your side. Um, and so you want to look for softwares
and stuff like that, that you can invest in that are lower costs before you go and outsource
to a person. Um, at least that's my philosophy personally. I got, I got one right on the
Coraline checklist. Sweet. Fantastic. This is good. And so part of the design to sell
is the podcast and that is designed to sell podcasts. There's a ton of explicit episodes.
So I think that's just transparency and off the cuff stuff, meaning that it's not perfect
and polishing and super scripted, which is nice because then I get the real deal. Uh,
what's inside your mind, even though that could be a risky business to check in their Coraline,
it's really good. But I, one caught me building a sustainable scalable business just for funsies.
Could you kind of walk me through that? I've listened, but somebody else hasn't helped
me get excited again. Yeah. I mean, I think that we are in a time and you know, for those
of you guys who like, aren't super familiar with me, I deeply love technology. I love
everything about analytics. I deeply love AI. I think AI is fascinating. I love the
software that we're sitting on. You know, I really love social media. I think technology
has done nothing but enhance our lives. And when it comes to building a sustainable business,
one of the reasons why we can do that is because of technology. Um, and I always say, you know,
it's never been easier and it's never been more cost effective to build a business than
it is today. It's the easiest it's ever been to build a website. It's the easiest it's
ever been to build a course. It's the easiest it's ever been to market your business. It's
the easiest it's ever been to automate things. It's the easiest it's ever been to sell products
on the internet, you know, and that's a really big piece of building a business that is sustainable.
You know, I think the other element that kind of goes into sustainability is simplicity.
And I think a lot of people over complicate business, especially for podcasting, like,
especially in the first one to three years of business, we think if I have more products
and if I have more offers and if I have, you know, a more complex website, then it's my
business is going to grow. And it's the exact opposite of that. So a sustainable business
is really a very simple one with a very clear direction that you can really optimize and
optimize and optimize for over time. I've seen a lot of businesses fizzle out because
they over complicate it, right? They have one really great product, that product is
doing extraordinarily well, it's selling extraordinarily well. And instead of continuing to focus on
selling that product to more people, they build a different product where they, you
know, they go and focus in a different direction. And I always say that, you know, your business
is trying to tell you what it needs to be sustainable and to grow. You just have to
look at the information, you have to look at the data, you have to look at your metrics,
you have to know your numbers. And that stuff is also super, super easy to find, and not
hard to digest because of some of the tools that we have today. Right. So sustainability
really comes down to keeping it as simple as humanly possible, leveraging as much tech
as you humanly can so that your profit margin is still high, right? So we're not, we're
not looking to have massive teams, we're not looking to, you know, have the most expensive
consultants, you know, we're really looking at how can I keep my expenses as low as possible
so that my profits can be as high as possible? And how can I stay really, really, really
focused on the one thing that I really, really want to do?
I heard about a popular podcaster that interviewed Drake and Mark Cuban, but she's done about
six or seven podcasts so far. And she's in heavy debt. She isn't making any money even
from just ad sponsorship because she's flying around doing all these things, living a baller
life, but she's not keeping it simple. So you have these big names, but you're like,
well, it might fizzle out because I'm going to run out of cash because I'm first class
everywhere to meet up with these celebrities. That's not going to work, is it?
Well, I mean, it's one of those super interesting things where the celebrity names obviously
bring clout and obviously are going to bring eyeballs and attention. And attention is our
most sought after commodity. I think in 2023, that's the thing that every tech company
in the world is fighting for. That's the thing that every advertiser in the world is fighting
for is attention. So it's a challenging question to answer because on the one hand, she's definitely
gaining attention. But we don't know at this point if that attention is going to be enough
to have her business turn a profit in the long run or if she's going to continue to
be in the hole. To me, I mean, you can look at businesses like Airbnb. They've never
once turned a profit, not a profitable company by any means. It doesn't mean that they're
not a company. That doesn't mean that they're not huge, but they don't turn a profit. To
me, if you don't turn a profit, then why are you in business? Right? Like that's the monetary
side of things is part of the reason, especially as small business owners and entrepreneurs,
why we start a business is because there's a financial opportunity there for us to detach
ourselves from the typical nine to five. So I mean, time has yet to tell us if she's going
to be able to turn the ship around. But I think history will tell us that it's probably
going to take her a little bit longer than she thinks.
People are probably taking side bets by now. The cruel world of behind the scenes, right?
The bookies are getting out and playing it up, but hopefully for her sake, she makes
it.
Yeah, I think so too. 100%. Yeah.
So you have a lot of systems in place. You have a lot of ideas. You have the home of
a design to sell. I think we're doing okay. I think we're going to give people a chance
to get moving, especially if they come to you, Coraline, your partner saying, I need
a little help to get launch ready. And if you forgot your digital home is Coraline,
we can get to the show notes and description, have all that good stuff, make sure that people
are doing the linky links and clicking, make sure they know where to go if they need the
help. So thank you. This has been awesome.
Thank you so much for having me.