Tag: leadership development

How to Capitalize on the Audiobook Renaissance with Tina Dietz

Written by mike@brandrevive.com on March 9, 2021. Posted in Audiobook Marketing, Business Development, Leadership, Podcast, Podcasting, Video, Vocal Leadership.

Audiobooks are the most rapidly growing segment of the publishing industry. Are you ready to capitalize on the audiobook renaissance?(Podcast on The Author’s Corner, February 25, 2021)

Audiobook sales are the most rapidly growing segment of the publishing industry. Registering double-digit revenue growth for the past few years, it is having a renaissance that can no longer be ignored. How can authors capitalize on this massive opportunity? Robin Colucci brings an expert on to the podcast to help us understand this booming industry. Tina Dietz is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, corporate podcast producer, and vocal leadership expert. Her company, Twin Flames Studios, helps authors and experts amplify their voices through audiobooks, podcasting, and other means. Listen to her discussion with Robin and learn why you should be looking into audiobooks as the new golden goose in publishing.

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here

Read to the transcript here:

The Renaissance of Audiobooks and How to Capitalize on It with Tina Dietz

Our topic is audiobooks. Audiobooks sales and consumption have been booming. This is the most rapidly growing segment of the publishing industry. It’s been on a growth surge for the last few years of double-digit revenue growth in the field of audiobooks. In 2019, we had another epic year of audiobook sales with 16% growth. The total sales in audiobooks were $1.2 billion. This is a phenomenal thing that’s occurring. I wanted to bring on an expert who could help us understand a little bit more about audiobooks, how authors should be thinking about audiobooks, and what we might be able to do as authors to capitalize on this massive opportunity. With that in mind, I have brought on Tina Dietz.

Tina is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, corporate podcast producer, and vocal leadership expert who has been featured in media outlets including ABC, Inc., The Huffington Post, and Forbes. Tina’s first podcast, the The Start Something Show was named by Inc. Magazine as one of the Top 35 Podcasts For Entrepreneurs. Tina’s company, Twin Flames Studios, amplifies the messages of experts globally to their target markets via audiobooks, podcasting, and leadership. Tina divides her time between the US and Costa Rica where she’s part of a leadership team building a conscious community called Vista Mundo. Without further ado, let’s welcome Tina.

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Tina, welcome, and thank you for joining me.

It’s my absolute pleasure, Robin. Thanks for having me.

I’m excited to speak with you because even though I’ve been in the publishing world for many years and long before there was such a thing as audiobooks, it’s an area that I don’t know a whole lot about. I’m as excited for myself to learn as I am for our readers.

It’s an interesting world and industry. I’m happy to share.

Book marketing is an evergreen thing. A little bit every day is better than a big push once.

We all know what an audiobook is. A lot of us listen and have them. Audible is the most famous platform for an audiobook. Something I learned or at least got a taste of in our previous conversations is there are other platforms. I want to know a little bit about that because as I said, this is where you have “newbie Robin.”

Audible is the 500-pound gorilla in the room. They’d been around for a long time. Audiobooks have been around in one format or another. Since 1929 was the first audiobook, which was on an album. Audiobooks were on albums and then they were on tapes. A lot of us remember Books on Tape for years then moved to CDs and then, of course, it moved digitally. It was in the digital transition that happened that audiobooks have received a huge resurgence and a huge renaissance.

Prior to that, one of the first audiobooks I listened to as a young adult was Deepak Chopra’s Magical Mind, Magical Body. It was 12 or 16 tapes. I could not keep track of those damn tapes. I was always like, “What tape is next? I don’t remember which one I was listening to.” When digital audiobooks came about, it changed the game and much like the iPod Nano and the iPod in general changed music. Audiobooks changed in the same medium. Audiobooks, music, podcast, all of this audio content has had a tremendous rise in the last few years.

Audiobook Renaissance: Audiobooks are not as popular outside of the English-speaking world. However, they’re having a tremendous rise in countries like China and India.(Image via The Author’s Corner)

It’s such a drastic thing that in my mind, there weren’t audiobooks available. Luckily, I haven’t been in the publishing industry since 1929, so that’s a relief. It’s interesting because you’re right. As soon as you started saying it, I’m like, “the tapes!” It was clumsy. It was difficult to manage. You had to keep track of where you were. You could lose one and lose a whole chunk of the book, and you had to be home. You had to be somewhere where you could also use the equipment.

If you didn’t have a car and Walkmans, things like that, that’s where things got more popular in that era. Prior to that, with albums, you couldn’t do that. I remember being a little kid sitting in front of my record player, having the book, and record from Disney. When Tinkerbell rings her little bell, it’s time to turn the page. I loved those when I was growing up. Those were fun. It was part of learning how to read. Audiobooks have this lovely, rich tradition, but because we live in such a different era now with the internet, digital, Bluetooth, and all the technology we have, as you said, the dots don’t necessarily get connected between the two.

Audible, in that pivot, does hold more than 60% of the market share in audiobooks worldwide. Audiobooks are not as popular in other places of the world outside of the English-speaking Western cultures. However, they’re having a tremendous rise in countries like China and India as the markets have opened up. I’m waiting with a bowl of popcorn. I’m excited to see what’s going to happen there. Going back to your original question, there are a lot more outlets than that.

There are more than 40 other audiobook outlets. This goes everywhere from your libraries. Most people get audiobooks out of their libraries. Those are usually using apps like OverDrive and Libby and sometimes Hoopla. Those are the three big ones for libraries. Those are the apps that they go through. There’s also Audiobooks.com, Downpour, Scribd. Blackstone has their own thing. You can purchase audiobooks through NOOK and other places as well. There’s a large distribution world for audiobooks out there.

I’m curious when a library purchases an audiobook, do they purchase a license or do they purchase a single audiobook like they put a book on the shelf?

The world of libraries does work differently than the retail world and it’s not an area that I have a tremendous depth of expertise. I’ll be transparent about that. To get on the radar of libraries is a lot more challenging. It depends on the types of titles that they’re looking for and their yearly budget mandate. Every community is different. As you can imagine, the number of libraries across the US alone is huge. It’s in the tens of thousands.

Getting into libraries can be an entire strategy in and of itself. The way to get on the radar of libraries is a little opaque because you can’t campaign libraries. You could but it’s a little different. The licensing works different for libraries. They have to purchase more than one license in order to be able to pass it around, so to speak. There are some people in the industry who specialize in selling books to libraries. The audiobook and the book process for purchasing to libraries is, from what I understand, quite similar.

Make a note to get me that contact. That could be also an interest.

It’s a great niche.

I did a little research for a client. They were writing a book that was more for school-age kids. There are over 46,000 school libraries, nevermind other libraries. In K-12, there were over 46,000 libraries in the US at that time. There are all these different platforms but Audible has the lion’s share. I’m curious when you’re working with a client on an audiobook, since we jumped in distribution, what is your goal when someone comes to you for help with an audiobook? Do you focus on Audible or do you try to get them any? How do you look at all these platforms that are available as part of your strategy?

We have to look at the overall goals of the author. We work with non-fiction authors. Fiction goals and non-fiction goals are very different worlds. Generally, the goals with the fiction author is to sell copies. That’s the only name of the game. Whereas a nonfiction author has their book. It’s being used in service of building their platform. Selling copies is important but if you’re selling bulk copies of your book, you’re more likely to sell them in bulk when you’re speaking or to be handed out as a promotional item as a loss leader, or various other things.

Getting speaking gigs, attracting clients, getting press, media attention, all of those things. The goals are different so the strategies are different. What binds the two together is, first of all, distribution platforms. Secondly, everybody does want to sell copies and wants visibility. The third thing is that book marketing, it’s you and I could agree, is an evergreen thing. A little bit every day is better than a big push once. That’s where authors get tired. We could have a whole conversation about that.

As you said, with the non-fiction authors especially, I always tell my clients, “Look at what activities you already are doing to grow your business or you know you should be doing and do those to promote your book because it will pay you off way bigger.” It keeps the book in the conversation that way too.

Going back to your question about what we focus on: We have to look at the goals and the overall strategy of the company or the individual first. What do you want your audiobook to do for you? What do you already have in place? Do you have a marketing team? Do you already have strategies for your book? How is this going to dovetail with all of that? Usually, in terms of distribution, what we end up recommending for the most part, particularly for a newer book. If you have a book coming out as a launch and the audiobook is coming out right around the same time as your book is launching or say within six months afterwards, then what ends up happening is they’ll be distributed exclusively through Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books for the first year, which takes advantage of a couple of things. One is a higher royalty rate. Royalty rates for exclusive distribution of 40% versus 25% for non-exclusive distribution. The other thing it takes advantage of is being able to focus on pushing your marketing, your customers, and your audience at one platform.

Amazon, Audible and Apple Books, that’s one?

Technically, that’s considered exclusive distribution because Audible and Amazon are the same company and Apple Books has an agreement with Audible for distribution. It’s an automatic also-run thing.

I’m going to guess Apple Books is the second biggest platform. Would that be accurate?

No, because Apple only holds 10% of the cell phone market. It seems like it’s everywhere but on a worldwide basis, Android is a much bigger player in terms of the cell phone markets. Apple is amazing in their marketing and they’re amazing at creating evangelists for their brand.

Audiobook Renaissance: The most important factor in someone deciding to purchase an audiobook is the quality of the narration. (Image via The Author’s Corner)

This exclusive distribution, you said for the first year.

Yes. You then can evaluate after the first year and decide if you want to continue on or if you want to go with non-exclusive and then get the audiobook out to a bunch of more platforms.

What would be a good reason to be on? I’m wondering, if you’re getting 40% royalty and then it goes down to 25% royalty, does it ever add up like getting that extra market share offsets the decrease in the royalties?

It comes down again to marketing and the goals. If you don’t market, it’s not going to make any difference either way what it comes down to. It’s a marketing opportunity to change your distribution. Once you have your book on other platforms, you can make announcements about it like, “The audiobook is now available here. Did you know that this existed?” Much of marketing in our digital age, particularly on the 24-hour news cycle that is social media is coming up with interesting little, “Did you know,” pieces of information. It’s much like being nominated for a book award, getting a book award, having your book in a new place, or having a speaking opportunity. These are all little snippets of information to offer to your audience to stay top of mind. Additional distribution creates an additional opportunity for content to market your book.

What I’m getting out of this is that you’re adding these other distribution platforms, piecemeal, not all at once.

You submit it all at once but they tend to come in onesie-twosie in their approval process because you’re using a portal. The portals that we use and these are a self-serve portal. Not just for publishers but for people who want to self-publish as well. ACX.com is the common self-publishing backend for audiobooks for Audible. FindawayVoices.com can be also used for Audible but it will also help to get your book up to 40 additional platforms. Not everybody is going to take your book but a lot of them will.

What should I have asked you about the distribution that I didn’t?

That’s a lot of the broad strokes of that particular thing. The only thing about distribution that people need to know is that at least in the beginning, it’s something you want to stay on top of and go in. Read your monthly reports, get familiar with the notations that are made because that’s market research for you. What channels are working for you? What is not working for you? What are your best places to define readers? Certain distribution channels also, individually, if you look into them, may have more opportunities for you to promote your book in different ways.

Some paid opportunities usually come up. For example, Findaway and there’s this program called CHIRP, it sends out a daily email for audiobook deals. You can submit your audiobook to CHIRP once it’s been accepted through these other channels. Your book gets pushed out on a daily email to over 100,000 people. Now, you’re going to give them a deep discount on the audiobook as a result. If you’re talking about nonfiction and building an audience, building notoriety, all of that, that can be to your advantage.

I want to talk a little bit about audiobook production because one thing that we see is there seems to be two tracks. We either have the author themselves read the book or there’s a voiceover artist.

That is correct. Occasionally, that’s a hybrid of the two. That’s our third option.

Talk to me a little bit about what are the things like if an author comes to you and they’re like, “I’m not sure if I should read it myself or if I should hire a voiceover artist.” What are some of the things that an author should be thinking about when you’re looking for it?

One of the things the author should be thinking about, again, comes back to the purpose of the book. First of all, most authors who write non-fiction who are building a platform will come to me and say, “I have to narrate my book. Nobody can do it like me.” That is the first assumption that we question because that may be true. However, the most important factor in someone deciding to purchase an audiobook is the quality of the narration. Even if the author can read the book out loud in a way that they feel characterizes the book correctly, whether that translates or not to a listener receiving it the way it’s intended is an entirely different matter. They may feel like, “This is how I need it to be read,” but their listener may be going, “That is not what you’re portraying.” That is one of the things we have to take a look at and evaluate.

A lot of the folks we work with, our speakers narrating an audiobook is different than public speaking. It’s a tool. It’s a different animal. When you’re up on a stage, public speaking, you’re speaking one to many whereas on a podcast or a narration, you’re speaking one-to-one. You can’t get out there and be like, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be doing all of this and talk about audiobooks.” It blows your face off. You also can’t be boring but you have to slow down with an audiobook because audiobooks are at a slower pace than most other kinds of speaking. There’s a balance there. The breathing is different.

Recording an audiobook takes time and that’s if you hire a professional. If you want to go DIY, double that time and add a bottle of vodka.

Even the duration of time that you have to spend recording an audiobook—it’s not just a matter of reading the book. It’s reading the book in such a way that it sounds like you’re not reading it. There are all of these factors that go into it. In the early days of developing the company and the services and all of that, we did experiment with a number of different ways of working with authors who wanted to narrate their own books because it is an important thing. About 1/3 of our authors self-narrate and about 2/3 work with a professional narrator. That’s the way it shakes out. Some because they don’t have a great voice for narration.

They’re great for a keynote, but if you had to listen to them for 6 or 7 hours, no. Again, a different animal. There may be some physical issues. One of my favorite authors, brilliant book, brilliant man, and a rare form of head-neck cancer. He couldn’t narrate his entire book. There was no way. We did what I like to call the Tony Robbins Sandwich with his book. Tony Robbins narrates the first chapters and the last chapter of his book and has a professional narrator do the middle. That’s what we did with that particular client. It worked out well. Those are some of the factors.

Audiobook Renaissance: There need to be more opportunities for a diversity of narrators. One of the reasons people didn’t listen to audiobooks more is because they were boring. (Image via The Author’s Corner)

There’s something in here because when you were talking about a speaker on stage being one-to-many, an audiobook is a one-on-one. I want to point out an idea that goes along with that. It’s something that I speak about fairly regularly is this idea of how a book is the best way when you’re thinking about a marketing avenue to create intimacy to your prospective client or with your reader when we’re talking non-fiction. It’s often your prospective clients or somebody who’s going to be influenced by you in some way. What you’re saying about audiobooks and even the tone of the voice, the pace of the speech, volume, and everything else, I never thought of it before but you’re right. It is a one-on-one conversation, just like the writing is but it’s important to get that across. It’s even different if you’re standing at a book signing in front of the room and reading an excerpt.

You have more bodies there and different energy.

That is one-to-many, but an audiobook is a one-on-one conversation. One of the things is vocal quality. Even the amount of time the author is willing or able to—

The time is a big factor. I’ll give you simple math, 10,000 words of a book are about one hour of audio. You’ve got 40,000-word book, you’ve got about a four-hour audiobook. That four hours of the audiobook is going to take about 10 to 12 hours of recording time. This is working with a professional organization like us. This is not DIY. For DIY, double that and add a bottle of vodka. It’s not just me saying this and do a shot for every hour of audiobook you do, it’s a drinking game. Split up into 2 to 3-hour chunks because that’s about as far as you can go with our vocal fatigue and energy issues and all of that.

What we do to work with the author and take the technology out of their hands and also to give them the objective feedback and a person to play off of, is we do the full direction of our audiobooks, but we do it remotely. We have software we’re able to remote in to wherever the author is anywhere in the world, help them make sure that their sound is tuned correctly, we’ll suggest a microphone, make sure they’re in the right place in their home or office to record. We then fully direct and record the audiobook for them to the entire process. That creates a wonderful product. It also takes a lot of the stress and pressure off of the author. All they have to do is focus on delivering their message and being natural about it and that helps a lot.

You’re able to give them feedback.

Yes, so it makes it a lot easier to catch issues. A lot of our authors have charts, graphs, and exercises in their books. There are industry standards on how to narrate those. We’re able to live coach people through all that process as well.

Let’s talk a little bit about the other side of hiring vocal artists to record your audiobook. What are some of the things that you advise authors to consider when they’re trying to make that decision? Let’s say they’ve decided, “I’d like to use the voiceover artists.” What are some of the things that they should be thinking about as they’re deciding? What’s that going to look like?

I have done professional narration. My background’s as a therapist. As an entrepreneur of multiple businesses, did business coaching for years, but the voice acting was a paid hobby for me because I love a stage and a microphone. The masterclasses I took on audiobook narration had me have this epiphany about all my colleagues and clients who are doing bestseller campaigns, why aren’t they doing audiobooks? That was the rabbit hole I went down. That’s how I got there.

Between the podcasting and the audiobooks, microphones are a big part of my day one way or another. Narration and voiceover work in its industry. It has its own language and standards. Coming into that world as an author or as a business owner, there are some things you need to know about that industry. When we send out auditions, there are key pieces of information you need to provide to an author in terms of, what are you paying? What section of the book do you choose for an audition and how long it is? Where do you choose from the book?

Other key pieces of information that the narrator is going to need. If you want somebody to emulate your energy and have similar qualities to your voice being able to articulate, what are those qualities that are most important? What are the key pieces that somebody needs to know if the book is going to, first of all, resonate with them and what they need to deliver to you in terms of an audition? A lot of mistakes that authors make doing this on their own are putting an audition piece out that’s way too long and then being offended when somebody only sends back one minute of an audition. Auditions need to be short. Another thing that happens a lot is getting into the production of the audiobook and not having been clear upfront about the number of characters or the type of characters, even in non-fiction.

A lot of the pronunciation issues can come in regionalisms. We had an issue a while back. We keep a running list of these and this one we hadn’t run into yet. We had 38 replacements. You can’t go back when in audio like you can in text and do a find and replace. This narrator had to go back and we worked with the other because normally, we wouldn’t even allow that change at the end. That’s something that needs to be discussed upfront. Fortunately, the narrator was game and it all worked out but she would have had to replace entire paragraphs or entire sentences depending on the situation in the book. These are the things we get ahead of and get on top of. Occasionally, things happen as I mentioned. We get ahead of it 99% more than working through it on your own. Those are a few things.

What is the question that an author asks themselves even going into that? How do they know to tell somebody that they want that? It made me think of The Chicago Manual of Style which we both know is the publishing industry bible for punctuation and everything. It’s a perfect book except you have to know there might be a mistake to look for the correct way. How do you help authors figure out what to ask for in even a situation like that?

We have a whole onboarding process where we go through things like that. We have protocols, guidelines, and all of these things that we walk people and authors through to help prevent things like this. Everything from names to medical terminology and other types of regionalisms even down to looking at, “Are there any characters in your book, even if it’s nonfiction, who are they? What do they sound like?” One of my favorite books we ever did so far is called Tiger Bravo’s War. It is a ten-hour audiobook about the Vietnam War that I would put up against Ken Burns any day of the week.

Our narrator who works with us in the company now on our podcasting divisions. He’s a wonderful guy named David White. He did an incredible job of nuancing about 15 or 20 different soldiers’ voices inside of this documentary-style memoir. Getting those characters out front, getting a sense of who they are, and having the narrator demonstrate that before you get too deep into the production, that’s important.

I want to bring up something because you cleared a memory for me of an audiobook that I was listening to and I was enjoying. I believe the author Red Moskoff. They did a character and they brought in a different voice. By the way, this was traditionally published—New York Times. Not only was it a terrible Middle Eastern accent, it was so bad that it sounded racist to me. It’s offensively bad.

They went full Apu from the Simpsons.

That’s a perfect analogy. I was going to say it was like a Breakfast at Tiffany’s nightmare. I still enjoyed the book but every time that would happen, unfortunately, it was more than once in the manuscript. I would cringe and it nearly ruined the experience for me. What about characterization, especially when it’s clearly across cultural narrations? This seems to me to be a real potential minefield. If you could you say a little bit about that.

There is always something to get better at.

It can be. We produced a book that was author narrated and it was an emotional book. As I’m talking with potential clients and scanning through their books, a lot of them are highly emotional. I was crying in the first two pages of this guy’s book. He was writing it and he was an angry, abusive man. It was about his healing journey and what he wanted men to know. He had traveled to many countries as a professional Rugby player. He had voices of these people from different countries and cultures. He had a lot of facility in doing this.

He was able to slip into their skins—which most authors don’t have that ability to do. One of the things that the director did is he went and listened to other authentic accents to see how far off or how far on the author was and to make sure it didn’t come off as mocking or disrespectful in any way. There are ways to handle it in the direction process. Professional narrators are sensitive to this because they want things to be represented accurately. That comes down to the audition process and vetting people.

I didn’t feel like we needed the accent in that book I’m telling you.

A lot of times it’s not necessary or there’s a shade. You don’t have to hit it hard.

Why is this even happening?

It happens a lot with male narrators doing female voices as well. Some are brilliant at it. Some of them will characterize female voices as whiny, shrewish, or childish. That’s an issue in the industry that gets brought up regularly and on both sides. Women doing male voices, men doing women’s voices because it’s one narrator. Full cast recordings are still quite rare in the industry because of the cost of production. Some of them are great, like The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, but particularly in non-fiction full-cast recording.

I’m glad we got a chance to talk about that. It left quite an impression on me.

If we have culturally diverse authors and one of our authors is from China. We opted not to have him do the narration. His articulation isn’t quite up to speed. It might be hard for the listener. He’s a brilliant speaker from the stage—he’s fantastic. But 8 to 10 hours on an audiobook will be harder. One of our biggest challenges has been finding somebody who is Chinese-American or Chinese immigrated to the US, a professional narrator who can do this voice authentically.

Have a hint of the authentic accent without being thick.

It needs to be real.

That’s another aspect of this. If the author is an immigrant or something in the US.

We have several books in the pipeline that we know our narrator searches expanded because there need to be more opportunities for a diversity of narrators. For years, it was, “This is Audible. I’m an Audible guy.” That’s one of the reasons people didn’t listen to audiobooks because they were boring.

“I’m a suburban white man Audible.”

“Can you see my blue suit just from the tone of my voice? I bet you can.”

“On weekends, I wear khakis.”

“I play golf.” I’m a professional instigator, I should warn you.

What I wanted to say is this sounds like a heck of an opportunity. Let’s talk a little bit about investment-wise. What’s the difference when we hire an artist to record our audiobook for us versus doing it ourselves?

There are a couple of levels. We try to keep the cost of author narration and the cost of professional narration very similar. The business model we’ve created has allowed for that because counterintuitively to a lot of people, it used to be in our company that author narration was way more expensive. I run into that all the time but think about it. We had to train the author on a whole new skillset. We had to research studios. We had to pay studio time, which is hourly, and studio time, depending on where you are in the world, is anywhere from $50 to $250 an hour. The editing was a lot more intensive because we weren’t doing what’s called Punch and Roll recording. We weren’t doing live direction. Studios will give you a sound engineer who’ll tell you if you’re screwing up but they just record the whole session. We stop, back up, and record again to get rid of a lot of those errors.

The comfort level of the author was tense because even with training them ahead of time, it was crazy. All of those factors make for a much more expensive prospect. We’ve got things down and we have a negotiated rate with our narrators that we’ve got a sweet spot. However, we do also have a premium level for narrators. These are folks who are in the Actor’s Union, SAG-AFTRA. The minimum required hourly rate to work with those folks is $225 an hour. That’s what’s called a per finished hour rate. That can include multiple things. That’s not studio hours. I go back to that 40,000-word book is four hours long. It would be $225 for four hours. That’s the math we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about 15, 20 hours in a studio at $225 an hour.

Audiobook Renaissance: It’s always better to experiment, beta test, and interest focus group things out before making a big launch. (Image via The Author’s Corner)

That’s a lot more reasonable than I would have been imagining.

The average audiobook that we produce is somewhere in the $2,800 to $5,000 range.

I’ve heard of people charging 2 to 4 times.

It can get high depending on how much margin they’re adding. If you’re working out of New York or LA, your price automatically goes up because the cost of production is much higher in those cities.

If you’re hiring the talent or as you said, you were able to do it remotely, that’s not as expensive.

All the companies I’ve ever owned, except for my first one, was in completely remote. For years, we’ve been 100%t remote and my team is across North America and Europe.

A lot of businesses like mine are similar. We were already working remotely. The pandemic added my social life to the remote category.

I lost all my coffee offices for a while. I know that talk about first world problems, but nonetheless.

This has been informative. We talked about production, distribution, costs, and talent. The thing that’s occurring to me now is, you don’t have to reveal any names or anything. Do you have any stories of audiobooks either gone extremely well or horribly wrong? I always love a good story.

One of the reasons we changed the way we were doing things and I looked for solutions around author narration is because of both the amount of time that it took to work with authors that way and then having to go to the studio and the cost involved. Like with many things in business, a lot of what has to be handled upfront is expectation management. For people who don’t understand what it takes to edit audio and rerecord audio versus text, we call it a repeated education process and 90% of people get it. We occasionally do end up with someone who resists the training and coaching, and then after recording wants to go back and rerecord the whole thing because “now they have a handle on it” and think that’s included.

That is not the way that works. You can’t go back and do another ten hours of recording because you feel like it. You haven’t taken the coaching and been willing to do the work that needs to be done. Similarly, managing expectations on the professionally narrated side of things, it’s important upfront to get all of the expectations, voices, cadence, timing, pacing, and all these things are done. We do all that in what’s called the first fifteen of the book. We take about the first 15, 20 minutes, produce it, and make sure that it’s what the author wants before we produce the rest of the book.

We have an audiobook that created a tremendous amount of havoc in the author’s life because they realized in listening back to their own work, that they hated their work and wanted to shutter their company. It was intense. In hearing a third party deliver their work back to them, they had a breakdown. I’m a therapist by training but they were also in a different country, difficult to reach, and a long time difference. It ended up being an abandoned project with them not paying their bill because they decided to not move forward with their company. That resulted in some policy changes on our side of things.

Once you’ve been in business for a while, there are always a few items in the contract that were created in response to a specific situation.

That’s why contracts end up being so long.

They’re like, “We can’t let that happen again. Let’s set this.”

Making people’s initials in certain paragraphs is something we do because it’s easy like the terms and condition page to scroll to the bottom and check, “I have read it.” It is important to read. I don’t read all the terms and conditions either, but in contracts, I definitely read every word because there could be some questions there.

I’m thinking about that. They should have paid you but it could have been a great thing that happened for them.

That’s the thing and I don’t disagree. It was a case of somebody who was extremely well-meaning, had gone out, and they were putting themselves forward as an expert in an area that they had no experience in. It was all academic knowledge. It was all from synthesizing reading and going to workshops. They had never had a single client ever. They, unfortunately, spent over six figures in trying to launch this company. This is a lesson in entrepreneurship. I know there’s somebody out there who needs to know this. I’ve never told this story or alluded to this story anywhere in the media before. I built many businesses and companies my time and helped many other people do the same. It’s much better to experiment, beta test, and interest focus group things out before you do a big website, a book launch, or anything like that.

I want to add to that because this has shown up many times in my business that somebody will come to me in that situation. They’re like, “I want help writing a book.” I’ll be like, “Cool but I’m not going to be the one helping you.” You have no business writing a book about your expertise until you’ve developed some expertise. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who will tell people, “You need a book so you can have a business.” It isn’t true. It’s such a dramatic illustration of a big problem but this is investing over six figures to launch a brand with nothing behind it. By the time he came to you, most of that money was spent.

It doesn’t matter what religion you are. When it comes to sales, you have to become a Buddhist at that moment.

This is an aftereffect of it.

I will let people write a booklet. Quick turnaround, test, and we do help people with that. That’s why I came up with that idea, by the way, was because I turned away thousands of people over the last years who came to me wanting to write a book in exactly that situation and said, “Go become an expert and then come back.”

Come back when you have some chops in what you’re doing. That happens more on the podcasting side of our company. I will pivot people from, “I need to start a podcast.” “No, you don’t need to start a podcast. You need to build some clientele, sell some stuff, and be in business.” I’ll pivot them from having their own podcast to podcast guesting. That’s a great way both to network, to generate content, to build authority, all of those things that you want to do without the massive commitment that it is to have a quality podcast.

I know we’re a little off-topic, but I agree with you. There are people reading this who need to know this. When people start a podcast, what they need to do is get clients. When they decide to write a book, what they need to do is get clients or do an audiobook. The problem is if it feels productive. They can get up in the morning and say, “I’m growing my business,” “I’m recording a podcast,” or “I’m working on my book.” What they’re not seeing is what they’re avoiding. If people don’t have clients yet and everything’s theoretical, it’s because they don’t feel comfortable with doing sales.

A lot of what shows up looking like productivity is an expensive, very long avoidance strategy that could eat up somebody’s entire savings and set them back in terms of their ability to generate momentum in their business because they’re trying to avoid sales subconsciously. What’s they’re saying is, “This is what I do. This is how much it costs, Mastercard, American Express, or Visa.” That’s what innate and they can tell themselves they’re being productive. That’s why it’s so destructive when people tell people that. It’s a double whammy. When they figure it out, their resources are drained.

I bootstrapped my businesses in the beginning for years working other jobs, whatnot is exploring, and all of that. Sometimes you get sold the dream. I grew up in a situation, my parents owned a business, and I was surrounded by sales. Even I wasn’t comfortable with sales until I was in my late 20s, early 30s, it’s always something to learn. There’s always something to master or get better at. It never has anything to do with making the sale, it has everything to do with your internal conversation, your personal growth, and your ability to create relationships. The sales has nothing to do with sales.

We can do a whole episode on sales. I look at it that the sales conversation is a quest for clarity and to help the person that I’m on the phone will come to a place of clarity. If the clarity dictates that we work together, we work together. If the clarity dictates that we don’t work together, we don’t work together. That takes all of the pressure off everybody. I don’t feel pressure to make the sale and they don’t feel pressured too or people like they’re being sold because that’s not what the conversation is about.

This was a mentor of mine that created a lot of clarity for me around sales. Robin, how do you feel about cookies?

I love cookies.

If I were to bake a plate of cookies, I would say, “Robin, would you like a cookie?” Assuming we were together and not social distancing, you would say yes, right?

Yes.

If I were in a room, I walked around, and I offered 100 people a cookie, some people are going to say yes and some people are going to say no. The people who say no, is there anything wrong with my cookie?

Nothing is wrong with your cookie.

The people who say yes, is there anything magical about that cookie special or does it mean anything?

No.

There are all reasons they could have said no. They could be diabetic, not like that particular cookie, allergic to one of the ingredients, not hungry, or on a diet. The cookie has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with my worth or even with my ability as a baker. People say yes or no. Ultimately, you go out into the world and you think about “selling something.” You’re offering them your cookie, and there’s nothing wrong with your cookie.

That’s a great analogy. That was the hardest thing for me to get over because I went from a place of being afraid of sales to I’m almost addicted to sales. I love selling. It’s fun. The big thing that I had to get over was taking it personally either I was lacking or what’s wrong with me. That’s how I did. I was having a lot of conversations in a short period of time to the point where I didn’t care.

That happens a lot with people learning how to like their own voices. They have to listen to themselves over and over again. I say all the time, “It doesn’t matter what religion you are. When it comes to sales, you have to become a Buddhist at that moment. You just have to practice non-attachment.” Temporary conversion. You can convert back afterward.

You can pick up all your baggage. Tina, this has been wonderful and informative. Thank you for sharing your insight, wisdom, and great stories with us.

Thanks, Robin. This has been awesome. I appreciate it.

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About Tina Dietz

Tina Dietz is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, podcast producer, and influence marketing expert who has been featured on media outlets including ABC, Inc.com, Huffington Post and Forbes. Tina’s first podcast, The StartSomething Show, was named by INC magazine as one of the top 35 podcasts for entrepreneurs.

In 2016, Tina was the recipient of the Evolutionary Business Council MORE award and in 2017 she received the award for Outstanding Audio Company from The Winner’s Circle. She is also a member of the EBC leadership body and a founding member of the Forbes Coaches Council. Tina was also the lead interviewer in the podcasting documentary “The Messengers” and featured in the film.Tina splits her time between the US and Costa Rica where she’s part of the leadership team building a community of conscious leaders called Vista Mundo.

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Strengthening Your Voice of Leadership in Uncertain Times — Tina Dietz

Written by mike@brandrevive.com on January 19, 2021. Posted in Audiobook Marketing, Blog, Leadership, Personal Development, Podcasting, Video, Vocal Leadership.

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Executive & Corporate Podcasting Trends & Applications – Tina Dietz

Written by mike@brandrevive.com on January 5, 2021. Posted in Blog, Business Development, Leadership, Marketing, Podcast, Podcasting, Sales, Video, Vocal Leadership.

Presentation for PodFest Global 2020

Chris KrimitsosI’ve known Tina for quite some time—she actually was very active in our local group and has helped quite a few of us. And she’s gotten into the B2B niche. So, Tina, if you’d like if you want to just share your screen, and then we’ll open it up to Q&A.

Tina DietzYeah! Sounds good.

So, the floor is yours.

Why thank you.

Hi, everybody! Thanks for joining us here today. I’m excited to talk with you. And I’m not much of a PowerPoint fan, but I’m gonna do my best here.

What I’m really excited about, though, is just having an opportunity to talk with you all, and have some Q&A afterwards, because this is an area—Executive and Corporate Podcasting—that I got into… Well, I started talking about it about five years ago now because I was in podcasting, and looking at podcasting trends, and where I saw it was going, I knew it was going to take a while for larger organizations to get into podcasting.

But, like with any trend, it was almost inevitable that it was going to happen.

So, let me back up and share a little bit more. It’s really about how to give a nameless, faceless corporation human personality. And this is about half my more executive team. And what we do at Twin Flames Studios is we amplify the messages of trusted brands of leaders, sometimes really well-established entrepreneurs. And we do that in three ways:

Through full-service podcasting, getting things going, very high touch, kind of white glove, concierge service, podcasting, and ongoing production
I, one-on-one, work with executives and CEOs on vocal leadership—which I’ll touch on a little bit later when we talk about podcast guesting
And we also do nonfiction audiobooks. Full production, publishing and distribution.

So everything audio, to get your voice out to millions of people.

And I’ve been building businesses for more than 20 years. I started my career as a therapist, but I grew up as an entrepreneur. And I never met a microphone I didn’t like, I say all the time. So, eventually what happened is, after building businesses in about 20 different industries in eight different countries over the course of years as a consultant and a coach, I felt this pull towards doing more with podcasting, doing more with audio, that was where my heart was.

And I had this epiphany that if I could work with enough leaders, who are doing enough amazing things in the world with low hanging fruit like podcasting, and audiobook—some of the lowest hanging fruit for people to start to change their lives—then there was a good chance, you know, what was important to me, I can make a bigger impact in the world, leave the world a better place than I found it.

So that’s why we do what we do. We have a global team. We’ve got folks overseas, we get folks here in the US and Canada, Portugal, Scotland, and I adore my team. So, I love to show them off whenever I can.

So Corporate Podcasting trends—how and why are companies using podcasting.

And like I said, most companies are—well, they’re familiar with what podcasting is. But getting it into their own systems is a little different. Because how corporations handle their marketing is quite different than how entrepreneurs handle their marketing. And this was actually a learning curve for me, being a very pure entrepreneur. With all the businesses I’ve owned, I actually don’t come from a corporate background at all. It was my ability to be flexible, and for my company to be flexible, that has really made this work in the corporate and in the B2B space.

So, what we found is that companies are using podcasting for a number different reasons. We’re going to break it down, but they’re primarily using it in three different ways and wanting to use it in three different ways.

So External Podcasting, which is the type of podcasting, of course, we’re all the most familiar with, out into the universe available to everybody. Internal Podcasting, which we’ll go into a little bit more, that is when a podcast is only available to the people inside of a company. And Podcast Guesting.

Let’s break down these three—and I’m going to move through these slides as quickly as possible so we can get to the juicy meat of the matter talking about what you’re most interested in and how it can serve you best.

External Podcasting, of course, they’re generating brand awareness. If you look at the research on sticky branding or sticky advertising—it means when it’s not directly an ad necessarily, or maybe it’s something more narrative of a mention or it’s a brand that gets featured in a podcast—that really is the stickiness that sticks to people. And so, they find that with podcast advertising or podcast branding, people who listen to podcasts are about 70% more likely to do business with a brand mentioned on a podcast or a brand offering a podcast. So, very important.

Attracting new clients and customers is what most of us are trying to do in podcast and podcasting on the business side of things. So, in this case, we’re not talking about narrative podcasting, we’re not talking about NPR style, business podcasting. That is a trend and I think what some of the people who do it best are “Pacific Content” out in Vancouver—they run Charles Schwab’s external podcast, they run Facebook’s external podcast; I had the pleasure of interviewing one of their executives recently, and I have tremendous respect for what they do. But every one of those episodes is tens of thousands of dollars in production, because it is a full-time, massive deal.

So, most of the podcasting we’re seeing externally, with corporate, with B2B, is not quite in that range. We can—we do see that sometimes in enterprise level companies, like Facebook, like Charles Schwab, some other large, large corporations. But companies that are in, say, the three to $35 million range—some of them maybe even considered, you know, small to mid-sized business, rather than super large corporations—they’re really looking to expand their presence in a way that allows them to keep their humanity. You know, remember a lot of these are well established businesses, they’re used to doing their marketing and their networking, face-to-face or as we say, belly-to-belly. And so podcasting is very appealing to these companies, particularly at this time as they’re having to pivot and still wanting to keep the relationships, in their marketing, in their networking, and particularly creating relationships with industry influencers to widen their professional network.

Very rarely do we ever find that if you reach out to somebody and ask them to be on your show, or any of our companies, they reach out to an influencer in their industry—lots in finance, in particular that we work with—that somebody turns them down. It’s basically “Hey, would you come and have a really friendly conversation with me for half an hour about things you’re most interested in and passionate about?” Not a hard sell. So, our clients get really thrilled at having this media platform to share, that allows it to open doors for them.

And of course, that leads to creating collaboration. My favorite, favorite value out of B2B and Corporate Podcasting is what happens after the interview. Yes, there are audience members; yes, you have downloads; yes, we have, you know, growth. And we’re generally not looking at podcasts that are necessarily in the thousands of downloads per episode, because we’re looking at very niche podcasts. And we are also looking at the collaboration and the relationships that happen with the guests—between the guests and the host between, the guests and the company—as these podcasts come along. It does improve SEO to the websites. SEO is one of those things that seems like more magic than anything else these days. A lot of the things we all knew to do years ago with meta tags, and keywords, and all this other stuff… It’s really kind of gone away and really gone the way of organic.

So, corporations are using the podcast to generate long form content that can then be repurposed into transcript-based articles on their website—which are fantastic for SEO, particularly paired with a few other important pieces. So that’s External Podcasting—the main reasons and why—we’re seeing for External Podcasting.

Internal Podcasting is another animal, and this is a rising area. It’s just starting to come forward and flourish a little bit, particularly in enterprise-sized companies. So, this has more to do with development and reinforcement of company culture. Culture development is key to things, like you know, making sure that things actually get done. Efficiency, particularly now that everybody is working from home, or so many people are working from home; it’s how we can create a little bit more glue, and have people not feel quite as alone or lonely.

And it also really helps to prevent things like screen fatigue: if you can listen with your earbuds while you’re doing the dishes, or taking your dog for a walk, you don’t have to be staring at a screen like you are all day for regular work. And screen fatigue is a real thing—it has shown to decrease productivity, it increases a certain number of health risks in a big population. And corporations are always looking at corporate wellness inside of their corporate company culture. So, this is actually more to it than meets the eye when we think about culture.

It’s also great, of course, for dissemination of important information. We’re moving fast. There’s a lot of town hall meetings that happen inside of companies, or they’re rolling out new products, or particularly with some of the companies we work with in the pharmaceutical/healthcare side of things, everything’s changing right now with Coronavirus, and people need to be kept in the know. Podcasting internally is a way to disseminate that information in a more intimate way than a newsletter. And also in a more human way, than they’re used to, you know, providing this, you know, very kind of cold, documented information. We’re still seeing people doing everything written, but adding on the voice, adding on the relationship, and the warmth.

Also, to educate and inform teams, particularly sales teams as they’re rolling out new products, features of those products, how to sell them, who to sell them to—issues that might be coming up talking about your sales numbers. A lot more interesting to celebrate your wins, by meeting your sales goals over a podcast and to hear somebody announcing your name—it’s like “Hey, a big shout out to John Smith! And, you know, Amelia, for you know, blowing away the sales numbers this month, you know, make sure when you see them in the hallway today, you know, give them a shout out, send them an email.” It’s great to hear that. That celebration, acknowledgement of achievements is a really, really big one—who doesn’t love to hear their name being mentioned by leadership, right, or being interviewed?

And the sharing of stories and inspiration, particularly Leadership Development. Leadership Development is the biggest area we’re seeing for internal podcasting, and in internal employee resource groups. And I’ll talk about a specific example in a minute about that.

So, I wanted to dive in and talk about a couple of specific instances where we can see how Corporate Podcasting is being used, you know, directly. And so, we have been working with the folks at Tri-Merit. They’re a corporation outside of Chicago, and they have a very, very niche business. They had no marketing team up until about a year ago, and their marketing team actually contacted us to help with the podcast. They find R&D tax credits for technology companies. Can you hear the crickets, thinking about how you would create podcast content about this?

But what they do mostly, is they have relationships with CPA firms. That’s where they generate most of their business. And they are passionate about the world of public accounting. Again, not something I would ever find myself naturally drawn to be passionate about, but these guys are thrilled, and finding the stories in the public accounting world that are unique, that are interesting—they’re getting them out there. And they’re using this as a beautiful networking tool. You have never seen a more excited group of folks talking about public accounting than these guys. And they do fantastic work in the world. So, this podcast for them has been the hub of their content marketing, allowing them to then create social media, allowing them to then follow up with their guests afterwards, and generate collaborative opportunities, generate other guest speaking opportunities. All kinds of networking happens when the host or their team follows up with these guests after the fact.

Now let’s talk a little bit about Internal Podcasting. I have to talk about the Podcast Inc. conference, which is going to be online this fall. And I don’t know if any of you know Jennifer Crawford. Jennifer Crawford is the founder of DC PodFest. And you know, Jennifer and I have known Chris for years, and know the folks from She Podcasts for years. And there’s this wonderful collaboration and cross promotion that happens in the background with all of these podcasts’ conferences, which I love. And Jennifer saw a need in the industry to have a one-day conference specifically in this area, because it really wasn’t being addressed a whole lot of places. It’s very, very niche.

And so, what we did when we moved the conference from May to November, is—I went out and I said, “Jennifer, why don’t we do a limited series podcast on Internal Corporate Podcasting and use this as a lead up?” So, this just came out about two weeks ago. And we’re just ramping up the promotion of the conference. But if you want to look up PodcastInc.co/podcast, you can find this and listen to these episodes from different aspects of the Corporate Podcasting world specifically talking about Internal Podcasting, but also Corporate External Podcasting sneaks in there as well.

So then we talk about things like security and the use of a podcast intranet. One of the biggest issues for Corporate Podcasting is security. And so, platforms like PodBean, Blubrry, and Libsyn all have internal podcasting capability, and you have to find out what works for you. What we’re finding is that these corporations want to use their already existing intranet to disseminate podcast information. And that’s actually what we’re doing with the folks at Novo Nordisk right now developing an internal podcast with them, for their women in leadership employee resource group. And what’s cool about that is, as we’re getting further into the process, the folks from the women in leadership resource group are reaching out to the other employee resource groups to see about developing a collaboration so that the podcast can live over time.

It’s a very different development art—for those of you who work with podcast show development—then an external podcast. It’s a much slower process, for the most part, and also there’s a lot of little baby steps. So, what we’ve learned in this process, in the back end, is just to let things play out and have some patience. But people are really, really coachable, really, really interested in learning, and very excited about making their workplace better. So it’s very, very cool.

One of the ways we’re using podcasts a lot in corporate, both Internal and I’ll also reference back to External, is Limited Series like this podcasting. Podcasting doesn’t have to go on forever: For companies that feel like it’s a high risk to commit to a full year or an ongoing podcast, we work with them on a limited series. A to 10 to 12 episodes to start, and we say “You know what? If this doesn’t work out for you, if you don’t feel like you want to keep going, then you’ve got a really great marketing asset and a series that you can use.” So, we always bring up seasons, we always bring up limited series podcast, and we find that most of the time when they get into the groove, they do want to keep going.

We also see in Internal Podcasting, the use of External Podcasts for internal purposes. So, you can repurpose the material you’re sending out to folks, and make sure that your team, you know, is actually getting that information. And we’re starting to develop databases of podcast information for say a group of financial advisors to then be able to keyword-in and then send out articles, and podcast episodes, specifically to their clients and really use the podcast as a resource.

Podcast Guesting—we’re just going to check on this real quick. This is some of the companies that I’ve worked with, some of their executives, in one capacity or another around their vocal leadership and/or Podcast Guesting. And so, Podcast Guesting, we’re finding a lot of usage for executives who are looking to set themselves apart, to have third party credibility, to develop their personal brand, and to do personal leadership PR, which is different than company PR. I work with a wonderful company out of Manhattan, and they help leaders get their leadership profile amplified. And we do a lot of work with their folks around getting them prepared to be on a podcast knowing that they can have this laid-back intimate, conversational relationship. They’re not teaching, they’re not reporting. They’re in a relationship with the host. And we work with them heavily on their storytelling, so that they’re not boring guests. And they come across as the people they really are, which is warm and professional, and really out to make a difference in the world. And that conversational interview style and format makes this possible. So, Podcast Guesting we’re seeing a lot of rise in the director and above level of executives in corporations.

Okay! 20 minutes.

So all right, and I wanted to leave 10 minutes for Q&A, and seeing if there’s any other examples we want to talk about if we want. You guys can go to TwinFlamesStudios.com/PodFest—I’ve got a bunch of materials for you there. I’m not a funnel girl. Don’t sell things via email. But I do have our Vocal Leadership Workout, our package on How To Be a Guest and more podcasts, and some additional articles on Corporate Podcasting that we will just send you in an email if you go to that particular link.

That’s it.

Awesome, Tina. So I’ll put it back to speaker view, if you could just unshare for a second there.

You’ve got it.

Alright, so we have a couple questions. When it comes to Internal Podcasting within a corporate culture, how do you know what to charge? Is it per minute, or? Because you’re dealing with very big companies—like how do you figure out what to charge?

Yeah, so with these large companies, we’re generally not dealing with the umbrella of the company; we’re dealing with a small section of a company. So, these Employee Resource Groups have their own budget. So, the first thing is to find out what are their budgets to work with. They don’t have tremendously large budgets, and if you can work with them—I usually work with them on a consulting basis and then go from there. Because many times they have internal resources even to do the editing and things like that. They need to know how to get things going.

So, an internal podcast, is that open on an Apple feed? Or is it, you know what I mean, so it’s internally?

Yeah, so these are being—

How do you set them up? I’m just curious.

Well, it’s actually, again, because these are larger companies, they want to handle the tech themselves. So, it’s really a matter of teaching them, showing them how to create the content, how to manage the workflow. These are a lot of things we do, you know? Conceptually, how do you internally market a podcast? And then it requires interfacing with multiple departments to actually find, you know, work with them to get the show loaded up onto their intranet. Like I said, there are the—

That’s right, they all have Internet and MI Departments, computer guys, you know, people.

Yeah, yeah. So, it’s a different animal, you’re not going up on a hosting platform, unless they do want to use Blubrry or PodBean, or Libsyn—are the big three right now that have Internal Corporate Podcasting platforms. We’re gonna see that happen more in mid-sized companies that don’t quite have intranets, but still want to have control and security.

So then you’re seeing that… I found it interesting you’re seeing a lot of C-Level executives wanting to grow their brand by going out on other podcasts—you’re seeing that?

Yeah, there’s an interesting point in an executive’s career—you’re rising up in these in these large industries, you know, they’ve distinguished themselves and they’ve kind of hit a certain level and to go from say, what we call a Director Level executive, into a C-Level executive really requires distinguishing oneself with Thought Leadership in some way.

And so, Podcast Guesting is a way to distinguish oneself on Thought Leadership, that is outside the company. You know, there’s an old saying that says, you know, “it’s hard to become a hero in your own hometown.” So, if people know you really well, they think they know you. Well, if you’re out there, and all of a sudden, you’re on a podcast or a bunch of podcasts as a guest, that gives you a third-party credibility in your leadership and your development of your Thought Leadership. This is usually paired with a whole package of executive PR, of articles, or press releases, or other types of materials, that kind of all go together to help develop somebody’s leadership. Getting on Boards of Directors is another really big thing. And when boards go out and research potential candidates, one of the things they look for is have they done media, and most of these folks haven’t done any media because most of the media that’s taught at a corporate level is high pressure crisis media.

You’re right, “how to protect yourself when everything hits the fan.” That’s true. There’s no… This is a… I have to tell you… This is… The more you talk, it’s like the beginning of a new era, because you’re right, the C-Level executives are only trained, “Don’t talk to media, unless you talk to your PR department before you go out there.” Now, they’re being proactive, and they’re interfacing with podcasts. And I guess they also have to build their personal brand, because who knows how long they’ll be an executive with that company till the next one. And, you know, there’s—

Yeah, there’s a fair amount of mobility and talent even, in these times, you know, top talent is something that companies are always looking to retain. It’s a big issue. And we find that podcasting is a way to really bring out their voice not so much in a technical way. Working with the executives on their storytelling is one of my absolute favorite things, to have them go from this kind of teaching reporting style, that they’re used to doing in meetings and things like that, and kind of teasing out the humanity. And the really cool thing is that once they learn that, now they’re bringing it back to their teams and having different conversations with their teams. And that’s what we go deeper into Vocal Leadership training.

So, this is really a cutting edge field of consulting, if I hear you correctly, like a media training, which they always have, but on the podcasting side, and you’re at the forefront of it.

Yeah, I’d like to think so.

No, you are I mean, it’s only going to grow as we move forward. What trends are you seeing with corporations and B2B type stuff? So, there’s Internal Podcasting going on, you’re doing external facing… Any other trends that you see? Obviously, they’re trying to build their PR cred by going on other podcasts shows—

Yeah, what we’re seeing a lot is that the internal marketing teams in these companies really, really want to do podcasting. I spoke at a conference a little over a year ago in Scottsdale, big B2B conference, had a packed room of 100 people speaking at a panel, and two thirds of the people in the room raised their hand when they said, “Are you trying to start a podcast in your company?” And they were running into issues with time, they were running issues with knowledge, they were running issues with budget.So coming in and being able to stay the course—these are, of course, much longer relationship building sales cycles than, most entrepreneurs, generally care to go with. I have people ask me all the time, “So can you introduce me to your people at GE so I can be a corporate, you know, trainer there?” And I’m like, “That’s not how this works.” It’s not the warm introduction cycle that we’re used to as entrepreneurs to build our network. So, there’s a lot, there’s a fair amount more to it than that. It’s a fascinating world, but it’s definitely growing.

Yeah, a few years ago, I had, I was approached by a big $800 million, like trust, and I just remember, for them to make a decision was like 10 different committee meetings, and they still hadn’t decided and they said, “Oh, this is too cutting edge.” I’m like, “This is actually not”—this was just a couple years ago—and I’m like, “It’s not cutting edge. And you guys have money by the time you implement it,” you know, but it’s just amazing to see how they make decisions. And you’re right. It’s not the entrepreneurial world.

No, they’re much more risk-averse.

So yeah, when you do get the contract, because there’s a huge lead cycle in this kind of field. So, I’m excited for what you’re doing.

Thank you.

Tina, your numbers—we started at like, 50, we ballooned to 70. We have 60-something people here is amazing. I just want to give a shout out to Ross Brand, Al Mega, Dr. Ellen, Rachel Hernandez, commenting, chatting.Anything that you see for artificial voice in corporate or is that going to take time? Like the [Alexa] skills, are you seeing anything there?

Any artificial voice—any truly artificial voice that it’s not a human voice—we find a lot of resistance to and I also have a tremendous amount of resistance to it. Because to me, that is the polar opposite of what podcast gets used for. You know, when you and I worked together and I did a bunch of the interviews for The Messengers movie—if you haven’t watched it, watch it—you know the thing that came up across all those interviews that we did was the word intimacy and podcast and creating intimacy. And so, an AI voice is the opposite of intimacy. And I don’t think we’re going to see mechanized or automated voices, takeover things anytime soon. Will we see things go into voice activation? Will we see more happening with Alexa? Yeah, I do think we’ll see that. But there’s a lot of privacy concerns, particularly in corporations. So that’s the last place we’re gonna see that; we’re gonna see that in the consumer market way way sooner.

Oh, well, Tina, people can reach out to you through the app, connect with you. Thank you for taking the time out. Just tell us your website one last time.

Sure. You can go to TwinFlamesStudios.com and if you want to grab that package of stuff we put together for you. It’s just TwinFlamesStudios.com/PodFest.

Awesome. Tina, thank you so much. You always knock it out of the park. You’re a pro.

Thanks everyone for joining us.

I know you got a lot on your agenda. So, thank you for being part of this and supporting what we do. And also thank you for—I forgot but you did… Tina did the initial interviews, probably half of the movie. The Messengers came out with interviews Tina did while we were running the second ever Pod Fest. And if you haven’t seen The Messengers: A Podcast Documentary—I’m gonna have Andrew upload it to the conference so people could see it. But thank you for mentioning that, Tina. Thank you for doing that for us.

It’s a great project. One of my favorite things.

It was awesome. Thank you.

Take care.

Goodbye now.

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