Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug show. My name is Doug Cunnington and I’m chatting with my friend, Virginia. Virginia is the founder of Podcast Abundance, a boutique podcast production and content repurposing agency. With over five years in podcasting, she transitioned from personal finance coaching to helping business owners amplify their voices through high quality podcasting.
You’ve been featured all over industry panels. You work with entrepreneurs to expand their reach and authority through expert production support. So Virginia, welcome. How’s it going today?
Virginia: That’s great. Thanks for having me, Doug.
Doug: And we haven’t caught up in a while. So I’m excited to hear about like, changes in your business and all that.
And I think we met probably a couple of years ago at a conference. And I talk about FinCon all the time because there’s no substitute to just Meeting people in person, making that connection. And I’m just curious, how many FinCons have you been to so far?
Virginia: Yeah, this year. So 2024 was my sixth actually.
Now I can’t claim that I was a creator. Like my very first one, I had no clue what was going on and I was very overwhelmed. But since 2019, then I’ve been going consistently and yeah, I can’t believe it.
Doug: Yeah. It’s pretty fun. It’s like you get to catch up with old friends and I’ve met so many people and again, I mean, I, I talk to people online and stuff, but there’s no substitute for like a couple hour conversation where you’re not rushed and you’re just, you’re there in person.
There’s no other distractions. So today. We’re going to talk about your agency. We’re going to talk about sort of the early days and getting started. We’ll get into some tactical stuff too, including podcast SEO. We’ll talk about repurposing and we’ll talk about video first podcasting, which I ended up doing not intentionally starting in about 2019.
And I was just like, okay, we’re going to. Just do video because I already have all the stuff set up here. So may as well publish it out there and a few other things, including you know, some, maybe some concrete like information about revenue. I’m not going to pin you down on that, but it’s always, it’s always fun to get into those.
Now, before we get into the tactical stuff, did you have sort of like an entrepreneurship drive from an early age? Or is this something newer?
Virginia: I think this is newer. My dad was an entrepreneur. I never expected to follow those footsteps or anything like that. I wasn’t like the lemonade stand on the corner girl, anything.
When I, and the big push is I feel like when your parents are entrepreneurs. They didn’t have a college degree to fall back on that was kind of their bread and butter and they felt like Well, this is what we do because we have to write so the storyline to me was go to college get a degree Get the job where you wear a suit you have the corner office and and I did all that and it was great but then when we started a family I was like This sucks.
I want to walk my kids to school. Like I felt like I was missing out. And then that was where I really started to discover the podcasting space and the whole like online business space and the fact that you could kind of just make your own way. And that seemed so separate from the physical, like construction business that my dad had.
Like this whole online thing was. Totally different. But yeah, I think it’s a new almost like a more mature, like, open eyed Hey, this can create money and flexibility and I want both. I want all the things
Doug: so you, you had what sounds like a corporate job. You went to school. What’s your background?
Virginia: Yeah, I have an accounting and information management degree from the University of Texas at Dallas.
Doug: Alright. What is that tone that you have when you say that?
Virginia: It, to me, even when I got the degree, it sounded so stiff. So, I don’t know, like, structured. And honestly, really, as I was going through school. I really enjoyed my finance classes.
I really enjoyed my business law class. I remember thinking like, oh man Maybe, maybe this is the path, but I had signed up for an accounting degree and my initial path was to test for my CPA and go that route and by the time I started to check into okay, can I switch majors or anything like that? I would have lost probably like half my credits.
It just wasn’t worth it at that point. So I ended up suffering through. And getting that accounting degree and kind of not knowing what to do with it even at that point because I didn’t enjoy that work. And then the corporate job that I did end up pursuing was actually audit, which sounds scary. Like I was like a bad guy, right?
But I would actually. Go in on the company side. So as a consultant and help them go through their books and find refunds, actually, so I was a good guy. Auditor.
Doug: Interesting.
Virginia: Yeah.
Doug: Okay. Yeah. I could totally relate my, I have a computer engineering degree and like. You said somewhere along the way, I was like, ah, shoot, I don’t think I like this very much.
And I put together like a weird set of elective. I mean, I took hard classes, but I have a weird set of electives that like didn’t line up to anything. And then I did consulting. So it’s like, I didn’t even use the degree. I mean, it, it helped a little bit, but, you know, one thing that’s interesting is.
Now, basically I’m a communicator, right? Like I did a lot of writing, blogging and video and podcasting. And I’m curious, did you have like a communications background or is that something you developed as you were, you know, getting more into online business?
Virginia: No communications background. That was definitely just something that I developed.
So the funny thing is. Now, when I look back, I think about, okay, now I produce financial podcasts. They could be business finance podcasts, they could be personal finance podcasts. I don’t care, but if it talks about money, I want to produce it. So that’s where like the accounting background strikes me as interesting, like, huh, like I knew there was something there.
But then through the years that I was working audit, any time there was a difficult client or a difficult team to work with or something needed smoothing over, They would say, Oh, send Virginia, she’ll be best friends with them in just a sec. And so I was the one that, you know, the controller would end up inviting me to go purse shopping with her and, and stuff like that.
That’s like not your typical consultant, you know, relationship when you go in to help a company perform an audit. So, does seem in hindsight, like the numbers background, the communications. The friendliness had something, you know, there was something there and I just have finally, now that I’m 40, been able to put it all together.
Doug: I gotcha. Interesting. Okay. This makes a lot of sense too. And I’ll draw. You know, I’ll talk about my favorite subject myself here real quick, but I understand that too. I ended up in project management and I wasn’t, I wasn’t like, Hey, Doug, we’ll smooth it over. But like I could negotiate, I was more kind of a fixer.
So if something went terribly wrong. They would just like send me in occasionally to find who owned it, like escalate, escalate, and just like get, get stuff done. Which is interesting and very recently I’ve been, we have an HOA situation going on in my neighborhood. And the details are crazy. I’ll record an episode someday to talk about it because everyone has like a headache with HOAs.
But anyway, there’s, you know, some people working together, a little task force, a lot of engineers on that team. And I have an engineering background, but I forgot how poorly engineers communicate. And I’m like, what are you guys, like, we got other people have to read this. Like, what is this wall of text?
Like simplify folks use chat GPT to like make this legible for other people to understand that you’re talking about anyway, no offense to engineers out there. Just learned it right. Right. A little bit better. It’s tough. So, okay. Let’s get into some of the nuts and bolts about your agency. So how, how many people are working with you?
As far as clients, can you talk about the team a little bit? Just kind of lay out what you have going on.
Virginia: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Right now we’re a little slim, so we are serving about five full time podcast clients at this point. My team is. Six contractors right now. Now like I said, we’re a little bit slim.
So, 22 was It’s our larger year in business and we had a team of 10 at that point and we served, you know, 20 clients that year. So we were hustling and it was fun and I cannot wait to get back there. We kind of slid a little in 23, 24 wasn’t great. I don’t know why, but I just feel like this year it’s just, it’s going to come back.
And so I’m really looking forward to that.
Doug: Okay. Well, I want to, I’ll, uh, dive into it now just cause I’m interested. Podcasting is big, right? It’s, it seems saturated for some people. If you’ve listened to podcasts for like 15 years, but some people are just getting on board with it. And like, from our perspective, like we know that, uh, let’s say you’re a real estate agent.
If you have a podcast in your local area where you cover normal stuff, it is a fantastic like lead generation thing and fill in any small business or entrepreneur. Like if you’re sort of the hub of information, like people will think of you first for whatever your business is. So why do you think 22 was big for you and then, you know, kind of slid around?
I know. You know, from a macro economics perspective, like I think 22, the market was down a little bit, but then 23, 24, it’s up, you know, 20%. So there’s more, there’s more money out there overall. So what do you think, though?
Virginia: The only thing I can figure is that. What I’m experiencing in business is almost like a delayed effect.
So, you know, 2020 was COVID, right? Everything shut down. A lot of people were interested in podcasting, lots of hobby podcasts, and lots of things popped up. And even business owners were almost panicking a little bit, thinking, Well, crap, I gotta launch a podcast because I gotta still have a way to get out there, right?
So, from 2019 when I went full time into this, We tripled business every year. I mean, it was like insane growth. It was so fun adding team members right and left to support the clients. And then what I feel is like the, the start of this like slow drop off for my business for 23 and 24, I do think is like a delayed COVID effect, right?
Like when everybody started go back to work or like their kid’s soccer schedules came back full force or whatever happened. For people as like a human experience in those years, kind of getting back to things and getting over the whole covert hump. And then I think some things as a business owner happened as well.
So when we were, you know, serving 20 clients had a huge team. There’s so much. To orchestrate and coordinate and communicate to everyone. So I think I took my eye off of marketing the business and not that I didn’t post on social media or something like that. I still was there, but I wasn’t as intentional about where I’m showing up, how I’m showing up, what the messaging is.
It was just kind of like post, you know, something today. Right. I think the intentional. I will search for who is my next ideal client. And who do I want to start creating conversations with fell off a little bit because I was busy handling clients, right? So several things go into that it’s structure and responsibility of team members so that I would have the mental space and ability to be the marketing face of the business.
And. And when you grow quickly, it’s really hard to put systems in place fast enough. And so 23, and I know for sure 24, because I hired a consultant to help me do this, we started leaning into the EOS system. And so there was some really intentional work around systems there that now, if we Grow again.
I know that everything will be supported and smooth. It’s just like, it’s that natural. I think entrepreneur growth, like you, you see some things go wrong. And so then you’re going, okay, well, how do I fix it? What do I do? How can this year be different? Long answer.
Doug: Yeah, no, it’s, I. Totally understand. I mean, an agency is tough because you have to have like a pipeline of clients coming in.
There’s always a little bit of churn and then, you know, market changes. And to your point, I mean, if you hire a handful of people. your communication channels just exponentially went up and there’s a great likelihood of just miscommunication or lack of communication unless you have things set up. Did you have, is that kind of exactly what it was?
It was just like, ah, there wasn’t, there wasn’t as much I guess like keeping the pipeline full and then like you were trying to make sure delivery was solid. Yes.
Virginia: It’s so easy and this is like, um, Almost like a personality thing, right? It’s so easy for me to lean into. Like you said, you’re a fixer.
Right? So let me get in here and let me do this. Let me fix that. And let me make sure these files are here and there and and I can lean into the work so easily. The challenge for me is to be Out and about talking to people being that face being live on YouTube or whatever that stuff feels Challenging to me.
I’m a natural introvert. So I have to really gear myself up to get out there so I think I got comfortable right I sat in and leaned into doing the work and Delivering for clients, which is awesome Very important part of the business, but I wasn’t conscious at that time to divide and conquer
Doug: Right.
What’s the um Ideal number of clients. Do you think say for 2025? It sounds like you’re a goal setting kind of gal like Did you plan for this year?
Virginia: Yeah, I would really like 15 full time weekly shows now what that doesn’t count are And it, which I would still accept would be the shows that are bi weekly and there’s someone that came to me recently for a once a month show.
And there’s different conversations we have around why someone would choose that route. But we can support those, but also keep our eyes focused on getting those 15 consistent weekly clients. So yeah, that’s where I want to be.
Doug: Gotcha. And then how many Contractors or employees would that require to deliver those 15?
Virginia: Yeah, I think based on the way the work is divided, because there’s someone that does reels, there are a couple of video editors on the team, you know, even if they’re not. A couple of audio editors, there’s two copywriters, so we could easily go back up to that 10 number. We were really happy there. It was a good it was a good cohesive team.
Everyone worked well together, so I would love to just have those people stay with me.
Doug: They are contractors, is that correct?
Virginia: Yes. So, I’ve structured things so far. We are an LLC. And We just have contractors as part of the team. Everyone is very, like, task based. I only have a couple people that are hourly, and those ladies are in the U.
And then that’s the other Key component of this is that I’ve been really cautious as I build this business Because I don’t want to be one of those businesses where it’s like, oh just you know, just outsourced to the Philippines Like that’s cheap labor. I don’t believe in that. That’s not in alignment with my values so no matter where someone is in the world and I want them to be paid appropriately for their location, their living expenses, all of that.
So I actually do the research based on where they are and what is a good living wage for the work that they’re doing. So that’s something that’s super important to me. But yeah, most people are actually international, even though that wasn’t intentional at first.
Doug: It’s interesting. Yeah. I mean, like when you don’t have to hire people, like in your geography, like the best.
Person that you’re able to get in touch with. Timing has to line up. I mean, there’s a lot of things that have to line up, but like, may as well hire people that, you know, want the job they. You know, they’re trained or they have skills in that area. So it totally makes sense.
Virginia: Yeah. And in this case, most of them reached out to me like from inside a Facebook group, like maybe I made a post or something and, and they pursued me.
I saw their work. Through the process, I’m able to see that they are a good communicator, because that’s one of our core values is over communication, actually. And so, the more clearly I feel like someone’s communicating through the process, I’m like,
Hmm, I mean, looks like you’re a good fit.
Doug: Yes. So before we get into a few of these tactical things, you mentioned that you have been doing this full time since 2019.
Can you talk a little bit either about revenue in a relative sense or, you know, growth or whatever, just so people have an idea of the scope of your business?
Virginia: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So Yeah. In, and the years get to be a blur but our first year in business first full year. So it was like the tail end of 2019 through 2020 I was a solo printer to the max doing the edits and everything myself.
And I was so proud to have brought home 20, 000 that year. Because I made that myself, right? So from there though, it’s so easy to scale that. It’s just you, you know, can you handle more time behind the screen or not? So we tripled two or three years in a row. And at that point, That’s when I started hiring help.
Then, like I said, in 2022, that was a great year for us. And that year we were just about 160, 000 in revenue and, you know, paid the team. Paid myself was very happy with my bring home. I matched my husband’s salary. He’s a teacher So not a ton of money, but plenty for us to live on. We’re simple people.
I’m good with a You know teacher income, right? So but then that’s where I was a bit nervous in 23 and 24 when it’s we didn’t backslide very much but Here’s the difference that I saw. 2022, not only were our numbers higher than we’d ever seen, but it was consistent. If someone fell off, there was a new client right there.
It, it was very consistent across the board. 2023’s numbers were lower. Not mad, not bad. Um, you know, probably, I think I was near like 130, 140. So a little down, but again, I saw that consistency. Month after month, you know, you’ve got this little wavelength going, you know, across the year. The scary part was in 2024, it was extremely volatile.
You’d have a high month where you made A month of income that was similar to 22, 2022, but then the next month would be low, right? Because you did like maybe a batch production for someone. You knocked out all their episodes real quickly. They paid you just a one time contract, something like that. So then you’re, you’re having this real serious volatile, and it just doesn’t feel good, right?
The roller coaster. Is happening. And so that’s what I’m really focused on smoothing out going forward. So even in 2024, we were down a little bit more from 23. So we were about like 120. And so I’m trimming team members, that doesn’t feel good. I’m trying to get back into the editing work myself, which I had intentionally stepped away from because I was trying to be a good boss and give that to the team.
And stay out of it, right? So there are all these adjustments that were being made, and that compared, or that paired with the volatility. It just felt scary. So.
Doug: Yeah. I want to thank you, Virginia, for sharing all those exact numbers. And for the listeners out there, I do a little pre interview chat with everyone.
And I’m like, Hey, I’m probably going to ask you revenue numbers. You don’t have to share them. You Can just answer whatever you want, but I want to make sure that I have it in there. So everyone Virginia was very generous to share those exact numbers. A lot of people don’t. So, okay. I think
Virginia: it’s, I think it’s important, right?
For when, when we all look at someone and think, Oh, they’re a business owner. Oh, look at their social media. Oh, look at this, look at that. They’re so successful. Maybe they are. But maybe their revenue is at 160, 000, like maybe it’s not so unachievable to build an agency of this size. I mean, I think it’s important to break it down.
Doug: Yeah, very, very cool. So people have real numbers to think about and like the struggle. I mean, being an entrepreneur is depending on the industry and a million other things. Like the volatility is just hard to deal with. Did it stress out like people? The family and everything, or are you like, and feel free to dodge that question too.
Virginia: I tend to, yeah, I mean, I tend to shoulder all the stress for our family, which is not healthy for me. But whatever’s going on, you know, I am the coordinator of all people’s schedules. I’m the meal planner. I’m the grocery shopper. I’m the business owner. I, you know, just do all the things.
So I ended up shouldering all the stress anyways. But yeah, I mean you can tell it’s like oh things are great this month. Oh, let’s pay this and let’s pay that and let’s take care of this thing that’s broken or whatever and then the next month it’s like like no, no. You need new shoes? Oh, um, let’s let me see if I got some cash in my pocket, you know.
It gets it gets intense, but yeah, if you can create a business With some level of guarantee is a bad word to use here, but if you can create things in a way that almost guarantees you some level of stability, whether you’re looking at long term contracts, whether you’re looking Um, you know, collecting payments via ACH instead of allowing them to pay the invoice whenever they damn well feel like it or Whatever you can do in the business to create some consistency for yourself I think as a business owner you’re going to be happier and reduce the potential volatility That you can control right and then the other piece is what I spoke to is You’ve got to find a way to divide Client delivery and marketing as a business owner.
So whether that is fully delegating delivery to a team member and trusting that and not getting back into it so that you can be marketing. And I think that’s like where I really just took my eye off the ball and was getting comfortable doing the work instead of recognizing like, Oh, I need to be out there.
I need to go to this conference. I need to get on stage. I need to. Yeah. Do whatever.
Doug: Let’s, let’s transition. I feel like, uh, I’m realizing we haven’t made it through much of my outline here for the album you created, so, um, we’ll, we’ll move fast and maybe we’ll talk again in the future to cover some other stuff, but I love the tactical business stuff that we’re going over right now.
Sure. But we’ll, we’ll talk about podcast SEO. So one of the bullet points you have here is how to optimize your episodes to get found on Google and YouTube. So. Yeah. Break it down for us.
Virginia: Yeah. Yeah. So. The main three things for SEO it starts with your title and then it goes into your description and then Down the down the list here is a transcript We were talking before the call here that you know, nobody’s really gonna get in there and read your transcript It’s the same thing that the way you would treat SEO for blog posts, your title, subheadings, any kind of you know, title type things should have keywords in them.
Then from there, your first paragraph and the first few things that someone would see are most important. So any other keywords, any long tail keywords, any questions that you’re answering in your episode, as much as possible should be in the first paragraph from there. You’re really just looking to make it.
Readable, skimmable and valuable. That’s the key. If someone can read over your podcast show notes and get nothing out of it because you were just so high level and didn’t really tell them anything, those show notes aren’t helpful. So not only is it not helpful to the person, but it’s not helpful to Google or YouTube or anything else.
The other thing that we’ve been doing is. You know, when you’re coming up with titles for your episodes, I’ve actually been titling my YouTube videos differently than my podcast episodes, depending on where I think the audience is going to go or their preferences. Sometimes, I don’t know what it is, but a title will feel better for a video versus an audio only episode.
So I’ve been separating those pieces, but yes, focus on keywords in your titles. That’s the primary spot, titles and subheadings. And then that first paragraph in your show notes, then make sure that you’re attaching a transcript.
Doug: Okay. And how much is AI playing a role in this portion of it? I think it’s going to come up later as well, but I’m just thinking of you mentioned titles and titling it differently.
And, you know, that’s one thing. That AI is really good at is like looking at a transcript and giving you, you know, 20 titles that might work. So go, go on about that a little bit.
Virginia: Yeah. There are a ton of, you know, especially for podcasting or any kind of recording content. Uh, AI platforms where you can just upload your audio, it spits out everything you could possibly need, including social media posts.
Now it is up to you to look over that information and say, that sounds so cheesy, not going to post that, but it is great to help jog your memory of like, what the heck you even talked about in that episode. Cause if you’re anything like me, you’ll record something and then have no idea what you said. So I’ll drop.
The audio for, for mine, for clients, for everybody into any AI platform there’s podium, that’s one of the more affordable options. There’s pod flow, there’s flow send. There are lots of opportunities there. It will create show notes for you. There is a space on a lot of these for like a custom prompt where you could actually tell it the format that you want your show notes in.
So that’s an opportunity there. And the, the place I found helpful as far as titles, it’ll give you like 10 suggested titles. Sometimes they’re great. Sometimes they’re terrible. And you’re like, no, no, that you didn’t. You didn’t get it, and you can still come up with your own title, but I find a lot of inspiration there.
I will say that never, never, never do we just copy titles and show notes and social media posts out of these AI platforms. The way we use them is for inspiration. Most of the time they require some tweaking, but it is helpful
Doug: Exactly. What you said is is what I do. So I Use descripts, but I have a couple I have a couple shows.
So I have two different editors who work on it It is a little pricey. So I’m paying like for the three of us I’m paying like 90 bucks a month or 100 a month But it’s so much easier to use the script and other tools and it’s not great A lot of, especially video editing, it’s kind of horrible, but like as an overall tool, it’s pretty good.
Now, do you use descriptor? We have,
Virginia: We have in the past, we don’t have it right now, but that’s, I guess, another caveat to being on my team. I don’t police what they use. If they want to use descript and the end result looks good and passes quality control, then okay, whatever.
Doug: Makes sense. Okay, moving on to the next one here is repurposing content.
And this is one of my least favorite emails that I get 14 times a day. From people who obviously don’t know anything about what I do, but they’re like, Hey, let’s repurpose content. And I actually, I don’t repurpose content overall. I’ve tested it before and I’m like, I don’t think it’s worth it. But what, at least for me, it could work in other industries, of course.
Um, but yeah, what’s your approach to repurposing content here?
Virginia: Yeah, absolutely. So most of the folks that we serve our financial professionals could be business finances or personal finances. And so a lot of the language and subject matter that they’re talking about on their shows can be kind of technical.
So. It’s really helpful for us to not only publish their YouTube video and podcast episode, but to also pull out those snippets that you’ll see on Instagram or YouTube Shorts and really hone in on like the very specific item that they were talking about in the episode or like a specific instruction.
Or another fun thing to do with it is to like almost create a teaser about, Hey, like, do you know what to do with your Roth IRA this year? You know, it’s like, so that’s helpful and it drives traffic to their episode. The other really. Important thing for them. The whole purpose for them to create a podcast is to establish connection with people.
That is a profession in general that people are scared of, right? And so for them to connect well with a client, the client has to really feel like they have a relationship with them already just from seeing their content. So the more we can do to repurpose. Their episode into a very friendly newsletter that feels welcoming, informative, inviting all the things and have a blog post made about whatever they were, you know, the Roth IRA or whatever they were talking about and just create these various different pieces where someone could consume that content so that it feels like, you know, for one cohesive across their brand, but also that this financial professional Is really informative and helpful and putting it everywhere because truthfully, you know, a blog reader isn’t necessarily a podcast listener.
A podcast listener isn’t necessarily a YouTube video viewer, so you’ve got different segments of your audience and if you want to kind of hit everyone, you know, I’m constantly encouraging people to repurpose in this way.
Doug: Do you have. Any kind of gut feeling on the value of the different content consumer?
So blog versus podcast versus YouTube or short video as
Virginia: well. I think they all serve different roles. So as far as the value goes, I mean, I’m not going to say that. The clients they would get from podcasts are, you know, this much million in asset management value or something like that. But they serve different purposes.
Someone who’s scrolling YouTube Shorts and sees your face, might do a double take if they were in YouTube and happened to been advertised one of your, Videos because YouTube knows that they stopped and paused and watched your short, right? So it’s all about Utilizing all these different opportunities in a way that Will hopefully serve that person when they’re ready So when they are googling a question and they’re looking for a blog to read Honestly, sometimes that’s me.
I don’t want to watch your five minute video about whatever, you know, hype that’s going on. I want to be able to skim your blog and get the information I need quickly and go. You’re still a expert in my mind because I got my information from your site. Cool. You have a YouTube. Okay. I’ll subscribe. I’ll check that out later, right?
It may not serve me at the moment, but when I’m ready, it will. And so I want. My clients to have content in all these different spaces. Choose do that.
Doug: Got it. Makes sense. Okay, one thing I’m going to try that I haven’t before is I’m gonna do it right after this. I’ll report back to you, Virginia.
Virginia: Okay, so I can’t wait
Doug: So I I try not to consume the short form video content typically but occasionally I do so I was scrolling through YouTube shorts and there were people live streaming on there and I was like, okay, they were doing a horrible job by the way.
They were, they weren’t, they were used to just creating content. So they weren’t talking, like they were like looking at the chat, kind of trying to figure out what’s going on. I’ve
done. Like probably a thousand live streams or something like that. Anyway, so I’m going to try to do my normal live stream in a vertical format to see if more people pop on via shorts.
So I’m not sure. Have you heard of anyone doing this? Do you?
Virginia: I’m so curious. I wonder if this is like a new feature or what, because shorts were 60 seconds. Then I think there are 90 seconds now, but so now if you can do a live stream in a vertical format, then. There’s not a time limit, like, I don’t know.
Doug: That’s my understanding. Yeah. And I think like once it’s finished, then it’ll, it’ll go into my normal, like live stream tab on the screen or whatever,
Virginia: your playlist or whatever. Yeah.
Doug: Yeah. So I’m going to give it a shot. I’m not sure. I did. I saw some creators that I follow say. Oh, wow. Like I, instead of 300 views, I got like 15, 000.
Now I know those are swipes, but it still, that’s a lot more eyes. And if somebody hung out for a minute or two and they interact with the, with the chat and all that maybe. It could be something that I, I do more often all that to say, I, I don’t think it worked every time the person did a vertical live stream.
So I have no, I have no idea if it’ll work or not, but anyway, I’ll report back because I like doing a live streams and if, you know, whatever, a lot more people can find it just because. It’s sort of unfairly treated and pushed to the front, uh, as a live stream. I’ll check it out. So,
Virginia: yeah. Cool. Well, I’ll check out your channel and like see, see what I see.
Doug: Yeah. It should. Yeah, it should be. It should be cool. And the other thing is, you know, if people are on their phones. If they’re lucky, they have it on a tripod, but probably the audio is not that great. And I’m going to be using like my good mic here and all that kind of stuff. So anyway next one here is video first podcasting.
So talk about the approach and why it might be what people should do moving forward.
Virginia: Yeah, absolutely. So just, Yeah, the whole world moved toward video in 2020, just because we were all so dang lonely, but it, the language around. This space is so funny how it’s shifted so quickly these past few years. At first it was like repurpose your podcast to video and I think people really quickly figured out.
Oh, well that that’s harder to go from like a Audio only show and then put a camera in front of you. It’s like so awkward. How do you do this? It actually works better to Think of the video first approach where you’re creating something for video. Then it’s edited down. The audio is stripped off and that’s what goes up on pod podcast platforms.
It’s a simpler workflow, not only for the host, but also for the post production team. And then of course the benefit there is that you have video so you can chop it into reels. You can repurpose into shorts. You can send a link to your friend and it feels. Personal, there’s a large majority of people at this point that are leaning toward video as viewers and they’ll say, Oh yeah, I listened to your podcast.
They aren’t on Apple podcast or Spotify or whatever they are on YouTube and they have you and your face sitting there on their iPad playing and they’re listening to you out loud while they’re cooking dinner. So, yes, they’re listening, but they’re using that video format because they can glance over and see your face and they feel.
Like they’re connected with you. So that’s a huge opportunity right there for business owners to allow people to feel a connection where there probably wasn’t one before.
Doug: Do you have any tips for people that are scared of video?
Virginia: It’s always going to be so much easier to chat with someone. So like this, you know, Doug and I just hop on, we can see each other on the screen. But yet we’re, we’re in our own spaces. We’re comfortable. Right? So it’s, it’s almost. It’s always easier to chat with someone. It doesn’t have to be a stiff interview.
You can prompt someone with questions if you want them to ask you something about your business and you can kind of plan it out in that way. But it also doesn’t have to be so structured. I think the fears that I generally hear have to do with doing video by yourself. You feel silly. You’re, you know, you’re in a room alone talking.
And the trick there is to really just imagine that you’re talking to someone, whether you want to picture your best friend, a crowd of interested clients, like whatever you want to picture, you need to be able to. deliver on camera as if you were delivering in person. So forget that it’s an electronic device in front of you and imagine that it’s people in front of you.
Doug: Great tips. I haven’t heard having someone else with you, although that’s a great one because then you could just have like a normal conversation that you happen to be recording and then hopefully should take the pressure off most people. Yeah. Were you nervous when you started doing YouTube?
Virginia: Yeah, actually, early on in the business, even when I would, um, way back, I launched my own show.
That’s how I got into this. I would actually have like voice shake. Like, I don’t know what I was scared of or why, but I would. Have this internal, like, heart pounding, my voice would shake. I was comfortable with the topic, like, you know, even just introducing myself, right? If I hopped on and said, like, hi, I’m Virginia with Podcast Abundance, I would almost, like, choke while I was trying to say those words.
I don’t know what it was I think it’s truly just Doing it over and over again, getting comfortable, almost like forcing yourself to get comfortable and just, and then also like the mental work of like, why, why am I embarrassed? Why am I nervous? Do I think, I don’t know what I’m talking about. Am I afraid of, they’re going to ask me something I don’t know.
Like go through the questions, like what exactly am I afraid of? Why the heck am I nervous? And if you can say like, no, that’s dumb, no, that’s not going to happen, no, that’s ridiculous, no, no, no. It almost like automatically calms you down. You realize your fears are irrelevant and valid, made up.
Right.
Right.
So, yeah. It’s different. It’s interesting.
Doug: I’ll give one, one tip as well, especially on the video side. You’ll be nervous, but you’ll be so lucky if people watch your video at all. So if they watch it and they’re like, Oh, they didn’t do a good job. You’re lucky. That someone found your video with the whatever hundreds or thousands of hours per minute that are published on YouTube.
So the sooner you get started, the sooner you get better. Cause I mean, the thing is like you had to get in some reps and then you were confident in, you know, the intro to the show or whatever you had thrown at you. You were like, yeah, I’ve done this a bunch and I’m, I’m good at it. How many shows have you recorded now?
Total.
Virginia: Oh, gosh. I mean, there’s in the new rendition of my show, there’s 50 plus episodes, but guesting, you know, speaking on stage, all of that stuff. I mean, I mean, hundreds. I don’t know.
Doug: That’s awesome.
Virginia: I don’t know.
Doug: Let’s um, let’s go back when you started your first show. What mistakes did you make when you launched it or what are common mistakes that beginners might make?
Virginia: Yeah. Okay. So when I launched my show originally, it was a personal finance brand for moms. I was going to help, you know, manage the whole daycare and diapers and finances thing. It was a complete DIY, like, it wasn’t necessarily that I had done a ton of research and I knew how to launch shows or anything like that, it was just, I’m going to figure this out, I want to create a podcast, and the real pressure was that FinCon was coming up, and I wanted to be able to show up to FinCon and legitimately feel like I belonged there as a creator.
That’s what it was. So I hurried up and published, I don’t know, three episodes or something so that I could go and say, Oh, yeah, I have a podcast. I have a podcast. I’m cool. So, so that was the big push. Mistakes I made back then were probably around, you know, like I said, there was no research. So there was no SEO relevant topics that I had chosen because they were a highly searched term.
It was just what was on my mind. What did I feel like moms needed to know at that point, as far as, you know, budgeting with young kids. Some of the common mistakes that I see now have to do with fears around being on camera and everyone’s so concerned about what you look like, what your office looks like, should I be in studio, or do I have the right microphone, or oh, but I don’t want to wear headphones because it’ll mess up my hair, and just all this aesthetic garbage that really has nothing to do with the level of of helpfulness your content can produce.
So, focusing, like reel them back in and focus on the content. Do your research on your topics. Create a well formatted episode that flows well, that makes sense, that answers people’s questions. Nobody gives a crap what you look like. Nobody cares that I have on makeup today or not. Like, they wouldn’t know the difference if they’ve never met me.
So, Pull back all of the stuff that has to do with aesthetics and refocus on the content.
Doug: Perfect. Okay, we’re getting towards the end and I’ll ask you where folks should, you know, follow up and check out your pod if they want to and other other stuff like that. A couple sort of more rapid fire questions.
Okay. So very selfish. So I have another podcast called Mile Hi Fi and for. A little while. We published one episode per week, but I like it so much. I was like, I’m going to do two per week. So we were doing two, but then that it ended up being a little too much. But recently, my partner left the show, so it’s actually easier for me to schedule shows.
So I’m thinking of adding like sort of an irregular bonus episode, maybe one or two extra ones per week, but are a little bit shorter. So typically the episode is about one hour or so, sometimes a little bit longer, but around one hour, but I’m thinking like 20 to 30 minutes for a bonus episode and. I’m curious your thoughts about it and you could give us examples of other people you know that do like one show every two weeks or two shows per week or that sort of publishing schedule.
What are your thoughts on this?
Virginia: Yeah, so let me ask you, would those bonus episodes just be you, like, teaching, talking about something, diving into a topic, or would you also be scheduling a guest for those? Because that would be more intense.
Doug: Usually a guest. So for the this mile high five podcast. There were always at least, you know, I had a partner, so there were always two people.
And when my partner Carl was out or when he left, I got guest hosts to pop in. So in the short term, I will have my producer, I heard him guest host on some other show that I. I know of, and I was like, Hey, we should record some, so he’s going to sit in with me some, but there won’t be any solo episodes.
Virginia: Okay. Okay. Very cool. Well, I will say for most people, the challenge with a co host situation or interview situation is to keep it short. So if you want these bonus episodes short, then. You’re going to have to have a real tight outline, watch your time, dive into the topic deep and quick. So that’s, that’s usually the challenge around short episodes.
If everything as far as like recording setup and workflow, I mean you’ve been doing this a long time, I feel like you have those pieces. Down pat other than those, I wouldn’t worry about anything. I would create what you want to create. And the biggest challenge, okay, sorry, my dog is like snoring. The biggest challenge is going to be keeping those as tight as you want.
Doug: Okay. And that makes me feel good. Those are exactly the things that I identified. So when I talked to producer Chris, I was like, Hey maybe we could do. 24 minute episodes, and we will set a timer for eight minutes, and we’re going to cover three topics, and like, that’s the structure, and like, we move on whether we’re done or not, so.
Yeah.
Virginia: And that could be fun, because even if like, the audience heard your timer, if you set it up that way and say, hey, this is the structure, this is what’s happening, it could be like this fun, like, race to get it in within that eight minutes. It could be kind of cool.
Doug: Yeah, well next point is around a highly edited show, which is like, you know surgically put together Versus like low editing and to that point I actually prefer to listen and produce shows that have like a more natural feel imperfect and like your dog snoring It’s going to stay in the episode, you know, so talk about the yeah, so pros and cons of highly produced versus a very raw.
Virginia: Yeah. Okay. So one of our specialties is to edit an episode very intensely, but still make it natural. So that may mean leaving in an um here and there. It may mean reducing breaths, not silencing them, which that’s a biggie for me. I do not like to not be able to hear that this person breathes. Like, do they breathe?
Like, are they real?
Like, we need to hear a breath every once in a while. But you can do both, right? Like, you could have a completely unepisode. Unedited episode, you could have a highly edited episode that still sounds natural. And then you can have the recording that was an hour and a half and now it’s 20 minutes and was, like you said, surgically put together that’s just tight.
And when I hear those. It’s like you could tell like they didn’t naturally flow from this conversation or this topic into the next one It’s like chop chop chop, right? Like you can just really feel that it’s rushed They’re trying to get in as much as they can within that 20 minutes. It’s all depends on The brand the vision the creator What do you want for your brand?
What do you want people to feel when they hear your episode? I don’t think there’s a wrong Um, but again, it’s like we talked about with your timed episodes. If it’s set up from the beginning, Hey, this is what we’re doing. This is what you can expect on the show. Fine. I might listen to your highly edited 20 minute topic to topic to topic to topic episode.
If I know that’s what I’m getting into and if that makes it more valuable and where I’m able to get what I need out of that. you know, in that short timeframe rather than listening to a long conversation. So there’s not a wrong answer, but it does depend on your preference.
Doug: And for me, when I started my show in 2019, I wanted it to be sustainable because I was producing two shows per week up until I think a couple years ago and never missed a week.
But I wanted to make sure I didn’t, I didn’t get overwhelmed with the production schedule. And one thing that you can do is just. You know, expectations for all listeners and myself is like raw episodes, unless there’s some catastrophic mistake, probably not going to edit it. We’re just going to push through and like you misspoke, but that’s okay.
That’s what people do sometimes. Yeah. And I think, I mean, some people will like that, and some people won’t. And you can’t make everyone happy, so you may as well, like, make it sustainable. And it’s great. So, whatever works for you, I think, is the way to go.
Virginia: And I think you mentioned earlier, Descript. I mean, it’s so easy to see.
You know, if you lost your train of thought or something like that, there’s a gap in the, the waveform or the video where you’re just like, hang on, let me think of what I was going to say, and it’s so easy to just zoom into that spot. Make whatever cut you can to clear out the dead space and then I forgot what I think it’s like studio sound or something Hit studio sound on both voices make sure it looks and sounds good and and publish and that’s like the very minimal level of Editing especially for you know, someone’s DIYing their show or something like that I think you should do some level of editing like that.
That doesn’t mean that you had to re listen to every sentence and chop out every um, and I’m not the most well spoken person. I know that. That’s why I’m a good editor because I sound terrible and I fix the crap out of my show. So it’s just there are lots of opportunities for you to tweak. Your show to what you want it to be
Doug: a little quick behind the scenes The only mistake we’re gonna edit out is my mistake.
I like blanked out in the beginning of the episode somehow So we will take that out because it was like 30 seconds. I was deer in headlights. All right Okay, Virginia. This has been awesome We’d love to have you back on the show to talk more kind of on the business side because I’m super interested In that part of it, like going from a solo entrepreneur to like hiring people and like, you have to make sure everybody has stuff to do and you have to watch expenses.
It gets so much more complicated, but a couple quick things. So where should people find you and who’s like sort of the ideal client that you’re looking for?
Virginia: Yeah. Thank you, Doug. I appreciate this. So you can find me on podcastabundance. com. The YouTube and podcast is named Reaching Abundance because I think we’re always striving for something here and there’s always something more that we could be exploring or doing.
And ideal clients for the podcast production company are financial. Professionals that have established businesses. Usually they’re independent and people that are interested in connecting with potential clients through content,
Doug: we will link up. So people can get to that really easily and thanks again.
And hopefully we’ll catch up soon.
Virginia: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.