The Virus-Resistant Audio Business | A Full-service Podcast Agency – With Launchpod Media

Brian: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I am here with the cohost substitute slash special guest, Dee Kei Waddell. Unfortunately, Chris Graham could make . Today. I'm sure a lot of you are aware that there's something out there called the Corona virus and because of that, the entire state of Ohio is locked down right now and Chris has a family to take care of.

So I'm by myself this week and I'm joined with my friend Dee Kei here.

There you go. It's like super hype, man. A Dee Kei. For those who are not familiar with, who do you just go by Dee Kei.

Dee Kei: [00:00:56] Yeah. I  just go by Dee Kei.

Brian: [00:00:57] Cool. I really didn't even realize your last name was Waddell until I saw the calendar invite and it had your last name

Dee Kei: [00:01:02] Yeah,

Brian: [00:01:03] I've just always known you as Dee Kei.

So for those who don't know, Dee Kei is the host of a podcast called mixing music, and he is the co founder of  launch pod media.

Dee Kei: [00:01:14] that's right.

Brian: [00:01:15] We're going to get into all that business side of things. Before we get into that, it's probably worth just chatting about what's going on in the world right now because I haven't really gotten a chance to talk about this.

We talked about it a little bit on the intro of the last episode, and it is incredible how much has changed in just a week period. The amount of cases that have blown up, how that affects our recording studios, the amount of countries that are locked down right now, all of the rumors that the U S as of Wednesday.

March 18th I gotta like put the days now because in a matter of days things change so quickly. As a matter of March 18th it is rumored that we will soon as Americans be under lockdown with some sort of quarantine coming, and that is really going to affect a lot of studios. It's already ruined a lot of tours.

A lot of musicians are out of work right now. A lot of touring musicians or anyone related to the live music industry. So sound guys, anyone. And so this is affecting a lot of people on an industry. And D, I know you are, you're involved in music industry. What have you done at least so far? Let's actually take about away from the business standpoint.

What have you done personally to kind of prepare for some of these things? Are you like the kind of person that's like, eh, it'll blow over or it's not that big a deal? Or it's like I'm the prepper who's like got 16 pallets of toilet paper getting shipped across the world on a boat from Cambodia. Cause that's the only country still available right now with toilet paper.

What are you doing right now?

Dee Kei: [00:02:29] Dude. To be honest, I am not deliberate in almost anything that I do and I don't plan. I'm just that guy. I like to be honest, like my business has not changed. Things are going normal. Luckily, most of my clients are online or they send me stuff anyway, just like you kind of with your mixing stuff. So it's, it hasn't really changed too much.

Brian: [00:02:48] That's fortunate.

Dee Kei: [00:02:48] Very fortunate.

Brian: [00:02:49] Yeah. For some of us, we are in the boat where like it's not a huge impact or business lease, not directly longterm. We'll have to see where that goes because if businesses are affected, then obviously launchpad media will be affected if the whole music industry is affected than us as recording engineers, even if we're remote, will be effected and on the podcast, I'm sure week to week if there's any emergency episodes we need to do.

I've heard some podcasts doing like emergency episodes. As fast as this stuff's moving. We'll try to keep people up today because I think a lot of people are worried right now and I'm hoping what we can cover today is something that's going to be a solution for some studios to move towards, at least temporarily, if not pivoting your business.

Totally. I think there's hope for some of us if we can just figure out a way to pivot our businesses. So real quick, D, you've been listening to this podcast for a while, right?

Okay. Yeah. Well I appreciate that. And you heard an episode of ours awhile back where we talked about, was it that five studio niches, right?

For a taking episode where we talked about,

so take us from there. You heard that episode and what did you hear from that episode that you liked.

Dee Kei: [00:03:49] So there was a niche that you talked about in one of those episodes in the past. They're like, okay, how about these ideas? Like these are some niches that you might be able to do. One of the things that you and Chris thought of were like a podcast studio or like a podcast business because a lot of people need recording.

A lot of businesses need some information about it, but nobody really does specifically that. And it was really, really awesome because it started getting my mind going, and then at that same time, right as I listened to that episode, one of my friends that I'd known for a while back, this guy, I didn't know it at the time.

But he had grown his podcast like crazy. He's got like 2 million subscribers to his Japanese learning podcasts. Like super brainiac. Yeah, like really cool, like really awesome dude. I had no idea this was going on. He doesn't like is not loud about it at all. And then he comes in, he's like, DK, I'm ready to start a business.

We need some audio help. I mean, you do content like we need you as like creative director and making sure all this stuff is going through. Eventually we're going to hire people and we're going to help businesses make podcasts. And I was like, w w uh, well, I mean, I, I listen to podcasts, I listen to, you know, six figure home studio, shout out, you know, and I was like, all right, dude, I think this is it.

I think this something is telling me this isn't it? So I went all in, we went all in and launchpad media is now making good money. We got seven, eight, Oh, actually, let me count that out. I think we got nine employees right now, including the three owners. And we're making good headway.

Brian: [00:05:14] Can you tell us about some of the customers that you're servicing, some of the podcasts you're servicing as an agency right now?

Dee Kei: [00:05:19] Yeah, absolutely. So some of the podcasts, I guess the one, the most notorious one that we have right now is the United nations

Brian: [00:05:26] I have heard of them.

Dee Kei: [00:05:28] Yeah. So it's kind of weird in the sense that like, I don't know if it's them specifically, but it's one of their shows that they're in charge of. So they pay a dude to do it and he pays us to do it.

It's called global dispatches and it's kinda like world news and it's obviously a lot about like the coronavirus going out now as well as like international news, like a lot of like, okay, what's going on with Africa? What's going on with these countries over here? And like a lot of news like that. It's really cool.

Another company that we do a lot of work for is blip billboards. I know that they have all like the digital billboards where you can buy for like seven seconds of ad space at a time.  customer with the K, which is like a CRM type software based out of New York city.

Brian: [00:06:06] I'm very familiar with that company just because it's in the SAS world, software as a service world, so like. Because their customer is a small business. I am their type of customer. So a lot of the content as far as education and content marketing is relevant to me as a business owner. So I'm definitely familiar with that company.

Dee Kei: [00:06:21] Yeah. And then another company called Harmon brothers, which is local to Utah. They're the ones that make dry bar comedy, and they tried to do the whole, uh. I forgot what it's called, like the angel vid angel, where it's like clean videos, but their big thing is that they have an advertising film agency, so they've actually done like Superbowl commercials and they did all like the purple mattress commercials and like the pooper E commercials.

Brian: [00:06:44] Squatty potty.

Dee Kei: [00:06:44] Scotty.

Brian: [00:06:45] Yeah, the pooping unicorn, the Squatty potty. They've had some amazing commercials and funny story about them. They have a URL, very similar to a URL that I own. I own a URL called from shit to gold.com and they have from poop to gold.com

Dee Kei: [00:07:00] that's right. Cause it's Utah.

Brian: [00:07:02] yeah, there we go. It's Utah and you got to have a clean mouth out there.

Dee Kei: [00:07:05] That's right. That's right. But yeah, they're really cool. And then I guess the last one that isn't as big as a company but is probably low key, the biggest and low key, the company that we've helped the most, which is a company called by boxer, they own like, I think one of the top three or five warehouses for Amazon, like one of the top 10 Amazon sellers and one of the top three warehouses in LA based out of Logan, Utah.

So that's really cool.

Brian: [00:07:28] Is that a podcast for Amazon, like FBA businesses, like business owners, people who sell stuff on Amazon? Is that what that podcast is for?

Dee Kei: [00:07:34] Yeah, so their podcast is called the smartest Amazon seller. It's basically the X, Y, Z of selling on Amazon.

Brian: [00:07:40] Okay, so you heard this podcast episode, by the way, it's episode 33 five studio niches, right? For the taking. We put that out June 26 2018 so it was a while back that you heard this episode. You had someone come to you that was interested in doing a podcast business together and you were just like, hell yeah, I just heard this.

It's top of mind. It makes total sense. I'm going to jump on this. And how long did it take you guys to kind of get this up and running from that moment on?

Dee Kei: [00:08:03] Oh, well, it was relatively fast, but I mean like being in the trenches all day, it feels so slow, you know?

From like the overall view, like we've only been around for, I think we just barely hit our year Mark and like our revenue is doing really, really well. But for like the first three to four months, it was just like kind of like committing to it, but not really committing to it.

And luckily we were able to start paying ourselves pretty quick. So that means everybody got committed pretty quick. But yeah, it's been a little bit of a journey. It's had its ups and downs and it keeps pivoting and it's kind of never been one thing and it keeps growing into another thing and it's been quite awesome to be honest.

Brian: [00:08:43] Yeah. Can you talk about how you guys at least got off the ground as far as the first few customers that you found? Was it prior relationships? Were you doing any sort of marketing efforts? Was there anything that you can put your finger on that helps you get those first few clients? Because, and just for those who are listening right now.

Don't expect to just go out and do whatever they did like immediately. But I do think anyone listening today can take what D has done here with his business partners and apply it to a niche or an area that they have some experience in or they have some relationships in or they have some knowhow and, and do really, really well, especially in these really uncertain times where bands may not be able to, Ford come into the studio.

Bands aren't recording right now. Labels aren't funding records like, I don't know how bad this is going to get or how long this is going to last, but I still think. This is extremely relevant to us. Who wants to survive during this potentially long winter that we're about to go through. So D again, what was the experience when it came to getting those first handful of clients?

Dee Kei: [00:09:31] Yeah. So I want to talk about that, but I think also relevant information before that is kind of what we do. I mean, I'm coming from a mixing background. I've owned a commercial studio for about four years now. I did tracking for three and a half years. Now I'm like just mixing. I kind of got tired of it.

Uh, you know how it goes.

Brian: [00:09:47] Same thing here, man.

Dee Kei: [00:09:48] But because we relayed on this, right? But the cool thing about this is during this time of crisis, this is the most perfect industry go into like entertainment. Right now. Everybody is staying home. That means entertainment is being consumed so much more, and usually, usually not.

Again, we never know during times of like economic, like turmoil, not turmoil, but like during the downs. Usually things like education go up because people start looking for a second job or MLMs, like a lot of like doTERRA, you know, kind of goes up because people are looking for a second job, right? One of the great things about podcasts is that it's specifically education and entertainment, so it's like really.

According to all the history and the research that we've done in the past, during times like this, it's kind of growing. And so we've taken advantage of it in a different way. And just to be clear, we don't record the podcast here. So even though I come from a recording background, we actually don't offer recording servers as part of our services.

It's a little bit more high end for these businesses where.  send them recording equipment. We send them about $1,200 worth of recording equipment. They pay us monthly for 12 month contracts. So we contract them in, so we guaranteed payment and with the out clause for the first 60 days, if we F up, you know, or if they don't find any benefit in it, and then they pay us monthly.

The idea is you're paying. For a team of nine people that are extreme specialists in making podcasts that are monetized bubble, that can help you run your business better and make your money for your business, for the price of one employee. So if you're going to hire an intern anyway, might as well hire us.

So it's a little bit higher price point, but at the same time, we found our first clients because not have a relationship that already existed per se, but if someone local, I think someone referred to us, and like with any sort of startup, it was, you got to kill it or it's going to kill you. We had to go above and beyond.

Like we stayed up so late, so long just to make sure we killed it for them. Actually, the first person that we did it for was by boxer that I mentioned earlier. Scott Needham. Shout out to him.

Brian: [00:11:45] There's so much to unpack there. I love

Dee Kei: [00:11:47] Sorry. Yeah.

Brian: [00:11:48] No, this is great. This is great. So again, I guess really it doesn't matter where you get those first handfuls of clients, what matters is what you do with those clients. And so this first client, let's go back to this again. You have a pretty interesting offer, and I don't know if you had the specific kind of offer, and when I say offer, by the way, I mean like what's your elevator pitch?

What is it you're selling? Like what's the hook that you're going to get people to come in and pay you. A decent amount of money to do whatever it is that you do. What's, what's the offer? And I don't know if you've had the offer at the very beginning or if you kind of found it as you're stumbling along figuring this out, but your offer was, and you said it really well in a pretty succinct way, we're a team of specialists that help businesses launch their podcast and maintain their podcast in a profitable way or with profit in mind, something like that.

Dee Kei: [00:12:29] Yeah. And actually even shorter because there's so much to unpack and there's so much . That we actually do in the backend. We usually just say we help businesses find potential customers through podcasts. That's it.

Brian: [00:12:41] And that's a great way to do it. So there's a really clear benefit to the service you offer. If you pay us money as launchpad media, if you pay us money, we will get you more leads and ultimately more clients or customers for your business. And the question now is, in my head. A can you fulfill what I need you to fulfill from a technical standpoint, which if you look at any other website at the launchpad media's website in their past work, that's an easy yes.

If you are brand new at this, there are things you can do to build a website and put some sort of portfolio and social proof out before you've actually done any real work. You can still do it in a legitimate way that builds trust. Then the second question is, is this podcast or the service that I'm paying for going to get me more money than I'm paying for it?

I think with you guys. It's very clear, especially with the clientele you're working with. It's a profitable venture for them. I'm just doing napkin math in the back of my head, and I'm probably way off here and I'm not going to ask you specific revenue numbers here, but it sounds like a customer's worth at least a couple grand, maybe a few grand or more per month, and that sounds like a ton, like how many people listening right now are getting.

Thousands of dollars from one customer every single month. Not many people listen to this podcast, maybe one or two. And that's probably any other podcast agency owners that are listening to us right now, or some other sort of recurring service.

Dee Kei: [00:13:57] But then also how many of those people that are making $1,000 from one customer also have like eight people? Nine people to pay.

Brian: [00:14:04] And that's the reality of it. Let's talk about this real quick. We're going to get into the hiring aspect in a second cause I do want to touch on that, but whether or not it's relevant to our audience, I was curious myself, I'm sure you can still do a lot of what we're going to talk about today as a single business owner without hiring out any employees.

But let's go back to this first person. You kind of talked through your process involved with what you did with clients, talk through specifically this first client you got and how much work went into making sure you crush it with this first client. Because I can relate to this. The first customer ever hired at my studio.

I got paid, I think it was $350 for like a six song EAP, and it came out to like $2 and 50 cents an hour or something really ridiculous. But it didn't really matter because that customer came back to me again and again and again and refer to me. Tons and tons of clients. So real quick, talk about the process of what you did for that first customer and what the results of that all that work were.

Dee Kei: [00:14:53] So with this first customer, it was still just the three owners. It was just the three of us, and I'm pretty sure it was a recommendation. Someone knew him. One of our friends knew him and they said, Hey, I heard this guy might be interested in a podcast. We know that he's got a business and. He likes to throw out content and.

You know, it was always looking for fun ways to monetize. He likes to talk a lot. That's kind of all we knew. We didn't know he was willing to spend any money on it. We've never really had a paying client. We had like test clients to see if our theories work to do a lot of like testing. But this guy, we went up with him, we met him at his house, we went to lunch with them.

It was a bunch of other stuff. I was still running my studio full time. Plus, you know how it goes. Everybody knows how it goes. What happened was one day Johnny, our CEO. He quit like, well, I don't know if he was threatened to be fired. Something stupid happened at a server job. Like he was working at a sushi restaurant as a server.

This guy, Johnny, I can't speak more highly of him. Crazy. He's the asshole of the company in a good way. You know everybody, every company needs that. Like he is the go getter. This guy like threw down his apron, quit that day and went up to Scott and be like, yo, you need to sign on today. Pretty like aggressively.

And then Scott, like our first client, he's like. You know what, I'm going to do it. I mean, I'm committing right now. So we made them commit. We got him a really good discount. I mean, as our first paying client and then all we did all day, the three of us, all we did is just killed it for this guy, like did above and beyond and like didn't even worry about the time it spent.

Didn't worry about how many hours it spent because the only thing that mattered wasn't how much we're making from it. It was if we kill it for this guy and prove it, that our theory works and we can make him money. Then it's going to bring us customers, which actually through his case studies, through his example, and through his recommendations and referrals, we've made much more money since then.

Brian: [00:16:38] Yeah. That's relevant for anybody. Anybody on their first handful of clients are. Honestly, one thing I've heard is you're only as good as the last thing you put out, and so this is still relevant. Even if you're an experienced person of 30 years, if you're putting out trash now, you're not going to. Very far, but for the first clients, do not worry about how much you're getting paid.

Just worry about crushing it. Okay, so this podcast specifically, what were you doing with this client? Were you writing show notes? Were you doing the intro and outro music? Were you doing the voiceover work for the intro? Like what? Like let's talk specifics. If you can even remember, I don't know how long ago this was of the actual deliverables you were giving this person in exchange for money.

It sounds like a drug deal, but it's not.

Dee Kei: [00:17:17] And it's kinda changed and refined over time. Now that I think about it, the offerings that we have in general haven't changed. They've just become a lot more specific. So the one thing that we don't do is the recording. So I call them and have like a little audio consultation, teach them how to do it or because he's local.

I went to his house and taught him how to use the microphone. We get, each of our clients are road cast or pro, so it's like, okay, this is really nice because you don't even need software. You just hit the button once with a micro SD card and it's good. We take care of all the equipment. We do a lot of preliminary research.

We figure out, we do a lot of like demographic research of who their target audience is based on who's going to be. Potentially buying from him. Right. So his audience, because, well let me say his main source of income is going to be selling software to help Amazon sellers, right? Cause he's a software developer himself.

So we made a podcast and he can talk extensively about selling on Amazon. So we're like, okay, let's do the research. What are your competitors? Competitive. Full down, a competitor analysis down. And then we run like ad testing. So we pay money for these ads that go to dead links, you know? And we see which one is clicked on more.

Brian: [00:18:22] So these are called smoke tests, and if you ever read the four hour work week, Tim Ferriss talked about these in his book where you're essentially just running split tests too, fake landing pages. Or to pages to products don't exist. You're not taking money, but what you're doing is just gauging interest in what people are clicking on and using that to make informed decisions.

So the four hour work week is named the four hour work week because of one of these smoke tests. That book title outperformed all the other tests that they did.

Dee Kei: [00:18:46] Yeah. Which is awesome. So we did a bunch of these tests and figured out down to statistically speaking, compared to your analytics, compared to the potential customers and listeners that you want in the future, how long are you, should your episodes be? How often should they be? How should you curate your information?

We actually don't. Right? The show is for them. We don't create the content for them. They have to come up with their content, but, uh, we curate like, okay, let's talk about the X, Y, Z, and not the ABCs, because if you didn't, ABCs is not going to do as well. Also, let's make your colors of the actual like, picture this color, and it should be this long.

From our research, we found out, okay, up to 22 minutes, this weird number up to 22 minutes. I don't know why it's specifically 22 no clue. Up to 22 minutes at least once a week, do this as your color and do this and this and this. And then we started the launch and then what we especially specialize in, especially special.

Brian: [00:19:37] I love it. Just keep that. That's like, that's like a signature DK right

Dee Kei: [00:19:40] Yeah. We have an 83% feature rate on Apple podcasts, which is insane. I think usually for each podcast episodes, it's less than 1% of podcasts ever get featured by Apple. 83% of our shows get featured because of this one secret tip right here. So if you're thinking about starting a podcast, and this is what you got to do, especially at the launch point.

Brian: [00:20:00] You heard it here first guys.

Dee Kei: [00:20:01] Apple podcast has to have an algorithm to make sure that you don't have fake reviews, right? They want authentic reviews to make sure their charts are authentic, but they have to figure out which shows have hype, which shows are actually like going to be good in the new section, so they have a three day leniency period.

For the first 72 hours. If you get a shit ton of reviews, it will most likely boost your show too. The new and noteworthy. Now, just the new section right of Apple podcast, which the reason why you want to get featured is because that is the section where people looking for new podcasts will go to first and see first.

So with my personal podcast, which is not a part of our systems, it's just my own personal experiment to see if I could do it by myself. I was able to stay on like the number one. You know, music thing, but the trick was here is that I didn't try to rank for music general, the more specific sub category that you have, the easier it is to get in.

So I went in under music conversations,

so I'm, I'm actually like, at one point I was in like the top 10 of the new music conversation podcasts for like weeks.

Brian: [00:21:10] nice.

Dee Kei: [00:21:11] Now it's kind of like, you know, average doubt, especially in the charts. That's not new out of everybody. Right. And I've always had the music as like a secondary category, like the general thing is music, but that ones hasn't been performing as well in the charge compared to music conversations.

Brian: [00:21:24] It seems like you're doing a lot of consulting when it comes to this, and I feel like that's a lot of the value you bring as an agency is not just, Hey, we edit podcasts, and by the way, if I Google podcast editing right now, I will find. Dozens and dozens of competitors out there. I will find people paying for ads all day long, and I see people charging.

200 bucks a month for a podcast for editing services. That is called a red ocean. What decay does in his company launchpad media does is they do so much more than that in every single thing that they add on as far as helping the customer creates a blue ocean. It creates pricing confusion. So they're not directly compared to all these just straight up editors out there.

So that's something to note, and I know we talked about it recently on a podcast where we talked about blue ocean versus red ocean. Unfortunately, I'll have Chris to kill time here, so I can't look it up in my list here. But you'll find it if he's, if he's, I'll look back far enough. DK. Do you have any tips as far as people getting a lot of reviews early on on the podcast when you launch it?

Cause that's, you said that's the huge thing. 72 hours, get as many reviews as possible. How does one do that?

Dee Kei: [00:22:25] Yeah, especially during the launch phase, it's really, really important. So the way that we do it is we call it a launch list. So each of our customers, as we're like activating them as we're onboarding them, we go through and we have them make a launch list of a hundred to 200 people minimum. That they can reach out in an email through social media, whatever it is, and send them a link where they can send them, like send a review.

It got to the point where even I did is like, dude, I'll Venmo you $2 if you leave a review. Of course nobody asks for the $2 cause it's only $2. But at the same time they noticed how serious I was. So I just, yeah. Messaged a bunch of people. All of our clients, I've personally actually helped a lot of our clients make these emails for their lists or do like a little social media campaign as the creative director or whatever it was to help them convert their already existing audience into the podcast.

Listeners leaving reviews.

Brian: [00:23:14] See like that's brilliant. Like I didn't think about a launch list when we launched the six figure on studio podcast. We had a pretty good strategy, which by the way, you're welcome to take if you want to take it. We've talked about it before on the podcast. I mentioned to here in a second, we had a specific strategy we followed, but that was not one of the things that we did.

We could have easily had a launch list as many friends Chris and I have, that would have been more than willing to leave the review. We could have individually reached out. And here's one huge reason why people don't leave reviews on podcasts. It's the bystander effect. If anyone's ever heard of this, if you're ever assaulted and you're surrounded by a lot of people, like someone's attacking you or mugging you or whatever, do not just generally cry for help from people specifically look at someone and ask them for help.

That greatly increases your chances of being actually helped by somebody. Otherwise, the bystander effect takes hold and that is where everyone will just assume someone else's calling nine one one. Everyone is always just assuming someone else is going to leave the review. Everyone else is always assuming someone is going to help you and in your situation you bypass that by not just generally asking your podcast listeners on a episode to leave a review and leave a five star rating, like you've heard a million times on a million podcasts.

You're going straight to an individual and specifically asking them to take an action, thus bypassing the bystander effect.

Dee Kei: [00:24:23] Yeah, absolutely.

Brian: [00:24:24] So the thing we did on our podcast is we ignore that cause we didn't even know about that. So that would have been amazing for us to know that at the very beginning. But what we did is we launched with three episodes, which by the way, how many episodes do you typically launch your podcasts with?

Dee Kei: [00:24:35] So I don't even think you're allowed to post it on to Apple unless you have three and then you're not even allowed to post it on Spotify unless you have five. So we bulk release at least three to five.

Brian: [00:24:43] Cool. So we had three, we did five, but we've kept two in the chamber just so we had a little buffer for the next weeks or so. So what we did was we put three out. We said, Hey, this is an experiment. Anyone listening to podcasts, especially if you've been through recently, you heard these first few episodes.

We said, Hey, we're just doing this as an experiment. If anyone likes this and we get enough reviews, we'll keep going. And that was our call to action on every single episode for the first three episodes, and that got us, I want to say like 75 reviews and the first week and for a new podcast in the music industry or music category, I'd want to try to stay on iTunes.

That was a lot of reviews for a brand new podcast.

Dee Kei: [00:25:19] Oh yeah.

Brian: [00:25:19] But I know we could have done better if we did the one on one strategy there. So

Dee Kei: [00:25:22] So the trick was 72 hours. So if you had like 50 of the reviews come in after the 72 hours, Apple wouldn't have counted it.

Brian: [00:25:31] interesting. Yeah, so that's a huge, and I wonder how often they're changing this algorithm, but for right now, that's UpToDate information that people can use to their advantage. So, okay, so that's one big benefit you guys bring. If you look at launch pod media, what's your website again? Launch pod dot.

What.

Dee Kei: [00:25:44] Launch pod.media.

Brian: [00:25:46] Okay, that's great. So if you look up launch pod.media, you'll see that one of their big selling points is that they help you get ranked as a podcast. They have a high success rate of getting ranked on a podcast or getting featured on a podcast, and that's huge for reasons that DK explained. When people come to a podcast, one of the first things are greeted two on at least Apple podcast is the new and noteworthy or just the new, if you're a brand new podcast.

And you were just launching, one of your biggest worries is this. This is going to be worth my time and effort, especially as a business owner, especially someone who is really calculating the return on the investment of what they're doing as a podcast or so. I feel like this is something that you guys probably do better than most people, so this is a huge selling point.

If I'm looking up launch, pardon, media versus some other random agency or podcast editor. I want the one that's going to have the best chance for success. So that's another way that you've done to differentiate yourself. Can you talk through more about your onboarding sequence or onboarding experience that you're doing with these customers now?

Because I feel like by now, can you talk about how many podcasts you're currently working with right now?

Dee Kei: [00:26:44] I don't have the exact number on hand. But we're really close to currently having about four , Ooh, 16 1615 podcasts that are ongoing right now, and about four, five, six that have been either one-time audits or they jumped out during the first two months, which we always allow.

Brian: [00:27:04] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about this real quick. You have by now 1516 podcasts. You have a pretty good process in place for when you get someone and you're onboarding them as a customer. Just for anyone who's not familiar with that kind of businessy term onboarding. That's just saying, Hey, you're a new customer.

Let's walk you through our process so we can have maximum results. Are you using any tools right now to aid in that onboarding process that you can talk about?

Dee Kei: [00:27:27] Yeah. So we're doing a lot of bootstrapping, like a lot of homegrown, you know, holistic, kind of patchwork there. But one of the main things that we're using is we're using Google drive, Google and Google sheets. Um, I've actually made a pretty complicated Google sheets for a content calendar. So like without ever having to send emails back and forth, they can approve of an episode title and an episode, and we can let them know that we've edited, they can let us know that they've recorded it.

We can see how far along they've got like, and to pass files back and forth. So it doesn't actually, at the current moment, we eventually want to have a little bit more of a nice internal system that we hire out to devs for. But right now it's just, to be honest, it's just Google, Google suite.

Brian: [00:28:07] just a spreadsheet basically.

Dee Kei: [00:28:08] It's a spreadsheet.

Um, and a lot of emails back and forth. It is really our specific business right now. It's a lot. It's very hand in hand, detailed, like we work very well with other project managers from a company, from their company. It's kind of complicated. What we do is very simple, but the details is kind of where it gets complicated.

But the point of the matter is, one thing that I want to shout out to anybody that's listening to right now, if you have ever thought. About making a music podcast. I know Brian and Chris have talked about this before. Let me reiterate this again. If you want to make a music podcast, there is no better time than now, and every day that you don't make it and you hold it off, you're losing potential listeners.

Your lifetime earnings is going down every day. You don't make a podcast. I'm telling you right now, podcast itself aren't monetize bubble, but it is the best way. To help convert potential clients into paying customers because the amount of trust.

Brian: [00:29:05] So if you go back to episode one Oh two one that long ago, so October 20 seconds we put this out.  why you should start a podcast for your business before it is too late. We've been preaching this for awhile now, and this isn't an episode necessarily for that, but D makes a really good point. The longer you wait, the less potential you're going to have with this and think about this coronavirus or covert 19 well, first of all.

If you're gonna launch a podcast, launch it for your audience to be your potential customers, not your, your friends and peers. That's a huge thing. If you're trying to launch a business focus that's going to help your businesses income launch a podcast that entertains your customers. So in the example of your client who has the software for Amazon sellers.

His customer is Amazon sellers, so his podcast is for Amazon sellers. All of the content is related to Amazon sellers and entertains those people so that they listen and then they ultimately buy or pay for his software. If you're going to launch a podcast and make sure. It is four, your type of customer.

So if your customers are musicians, then make sure your content is related to musicians. Something's going to entertain them and educate them and hopefully motivate them. They're going to need some motivation in the coming months. So right now, if your customers are musicians, they are in a bind. They cannot tour, they cannot play live music.

They are really scrambling for things to do. It is an opportune time. If you were launching a podcast to get guests on your podcast. They're not touring. They just don't have a whole lot to do right now. They're probably have free time to come on your podcast if your guests are musicians right now. So just a little side note,

Dee Kei: [00:30:32] Yeah, and you know, it'd be a really great idea for a podcast right now, especially with what's happening if you release this right now, this would do, I think he'll do really well without doing any basic research here. Just off the top of my head.

Brian: [00:30:42] if this is good enough, I may launch this before this episode even airs, so let's see.

Dee Kei: [00:30:45] So if you have the skills, the knowhow to do live streaming. So for example, if you did a podcast for musicians on how to monetize your shows through live streaming, that's . Specifically about that, whether there's a segment of like a whole 10 episodes about it or whether that's all that your podcast is about.

I mean, obviously you can't just like, so for example, if you're a producer where most of your clients are for songwriters, but you don't have enough information to do like a songwriting podcast like you, you can only do what you know. But at the same time, if you'd know how to do live streaming. People are out there right now, like one of the most popular sub categories of podcasts is how to run social media better.

People are just looking, it's not just YouTube anymore. The thing is, if you do YouTube, it's gotta be just YouTube. With podcasts, you can be like washing your dishes while learning. So like something specific like that might do. Well, I mean, obviously you're going to have to flip it up or it's going to be a hard one, but at least it'd be evergreen content.

Right.

Brian: [00:31:39] That's true. I mean, right now, musicians are scrambling for things to do. They need a second source of income, or they need something to entertain themselves and kill the time. But if they're trying to make some money there, they're looking for solutions. And so if you can have an episode, or actually this is kind of a standalone topic, if anything is, is a good lead magnet as a pod class.

And that's a phrase that Chris and I have tossed around is a, and then something I'm working on right now is a new pod class and that is just a standalone piece of information that you could probably host on your file pass account pretty easily. Send them a file pass link to their pod class and they can leave comments and ask questions if they need clarification with our timestamp comments.

Shout out to file pass.com.

Dee Kei: [00:32:16] Shout out to  dot com.

Brian: [00:32:18] If you have a pod class hosted on file pass and put it behind their registration wall and make it all about how to live stream or how to monetize something. One of the thing though I wanna mention is, and this is, we're kind of going off topic from one night when I envisioned on this episode going, and we'll get back on topic in a second.

If you're gonna create a podcast and your listeners are musicians, you don't have to necessarily be the expert. You mentioned one thing about if you don't, if you only know a few things about songwriting. Then you can't have a ton of episodes in that will really, you're the one interviewing people. You can just ask questions and learn.

As an interviewer, one of the things I'm picking your brain on is like if I wanted to launch a business right now like this, how would I go about it? So that's kind of how I'm approaching this conversation with you is the things I would want to know if I were going to launch a podcast agency. And so if you are a producer, you can talk to pro songwriters and pick their brains on how they go about writing songs.

What is their structure, what is their process? And you're going to start learning things in. The more you learn, the deeper you can go in the future interviews.

Dee Kei: [00:33:10] And the great thing about podcasts, I don't mean to butt in here, but the great thing about podcasts is the amount of trust that each listener has. So. There's a crazy statistic. This is insane. This was taken in 2019 63% of podcast listeners purchased something recommended by one of their hosts every three months.

And just to name it from your podcast alone. Not only have I downloaded bounce Butler file pass, I did a CRM from awhile back. Unfortunately didn't work out. I'm not using anymore. I bought like, I think I paid like 250 bucks for better proposals. There's like another fifth thing that I bought because of something that you recommended, and that is huge power.

Now think about this, like if there's a bunch of online courses right now, let's say for example, how to write a song. How to do better songwriting. The fact that it's coming from you, the person that they trust, the listener is much more likely to purchase it even though there's a bunch of the same exact online courses.

Brian: [00:34:08] And so again, as producers and maybe you're doing remote mixing work or you're trying to move your business from in-person to online because of all this stuff going down right now. It is a very important time to build trust because there are so many mixing engineers in the world. There's so many mastering engineers in the world.

If you're trying to do a service that's saturated right now, a great way to stand out is the podcast. Let's shift this back on topic here. If I am someone listening right now and I'm trying to take a shift in my business towards podcasts, this whole thing as far as like editing and producing podcasts, this whole thing sounds interesting to me.

My advice as someone who is been looking into this sort of business for awhile now is I don't want to be the person who's just offering editing services, and that's where a lot of our audience just go straight to that. They know how to edit, they know how to record, they know how to mix, they know how to make it sound good until they go straight to that sort of service.

And what D has done here with his agency is they do everything and they do it at a high handholding level where they are really involved with every single client, but they're also getting paid to compensate for the amount of work for every single client that they're working with. And this is the difference between low cost, high volume, but very competitive work, which is the podcast editor versus what Dee is doing, which is hi value as far as monetary, a lot of handholding, so a lot of time involved with it, but there's also not a lot of competition for what you're doing in the grand scheme of things.

If I Google, actually, I don't know. I wouldn't know what to Google with you, honestly. You're probably not finding most of your clients through Google. I would imagine they're probably through referrals.

Dee Kei: [00:35:33] Oh, no. Ads like the thing is most of our, so we just barely passed. 2 million. I think we're at 2.1 million downloads across all of our clients right now. The thing is, we've spent very minimal on ad spend and focused almost all of our energy on just what to name your title, like what to name your show. We use this as an example all the time.

There's a podcast out there called dinosaur money. Brian, what do you think that that podcast is about?

Brian: [00:36:00] Uh, oil.

Dee Kei: [00:36:02] Right? Or maybe another guest shot in the dark.

Brian: [00:36:06] Dinosaur money I, it's some business podcasts about something. I have no idea to be honest.

Dee Kei: [00:36:11] So the crazy thing is dinosaur money is actually about a father who takes his son to garage sales and looks at toys and potentially resells them or keeps them. And that is a no offense to 'em, you know, dinosaur money, horrible name, because nobody's ever going to search that, right?

Brian: [00:36:28] The only thing I could think of fossil fuels, that's dinosaur money.

Dee Kei: [00:36:31] There you go. Or like old money and how do you know?

Like investing may be, maybe I know, but the thing is, the reason why I named my show mixing music one, I'm talking about mixing music. What are, people are going to type in the search bar mixing music, right? Audio mixing, which by the way, audio is also in my title because I have a double prong title. Right?

The secondary thing that I would look forward to. Is not just the title of the show, but the title of the episodes. Most of my time, like you can do two problems. You see that thing under the, if you have a Mac keyboard under the delete button, there's that long bar. If you hold down the shifting, you call it something, click baity and then you second prong.

Use keywords, SEO words like audio production, helpful mindsets, right? Whatever it is. A bunch of SEO stuff, nerdy stuff that honestly I'm not a part of. I only know the basics of that. Meant for the other guys, right? That stuff alone will help you really build a podcast and build it from the beginning.

Brian: [00:37:25] So does that help your agency as far as like, is there any visibility for your agency name? If they find the podcast on iTunes or whatever they're searching for, does your agency's name show up anywhere.

Dee Kei: [00:37:34] Yeah, so a part of our contract, actually, I don't know if it is part of our contract now, I'm second guessing myself, but usually we have, because we host the podcast as well, like we're the ones that upload them. Because of that, we usually have under the author name, RNA launchpad media, so they won't ever see our name unless they dig into it.

But it's okay because most of our clients come in, 90% of our clients are, we're like referrals because we do such a good job with each of our clients.

Brian: [00:37:57] Yeah, and I think that's one thing that I love the high dollar high touch. Business model is that every single customer is worth so much. Let's just say for math example, just to keep this easy, say your customers paying you $1,000 a month. Well, if they sign on for 12 months, then you're going to have a $12,000 value from that customer, and that's assuming they don't re up for another year after that.

Do you guys have, by the way, an onboarding fee of any sort? A lot of times when you launch a podcast or any sort of, I think as an agency, there's a lot of work that goes into up front, and so what they'll do is they'll have a, an onboarding fee of some sort. Do you do that.

Dee Kei: [00:38:30] So we actually should, we've talked about it multiple times. We have not implemented it as of yet, but as of right now, no, we don't. It's the same for 12 months. Granted, the first two to three months were basically. Making no money. We're like breaking even. And then after that money starts to roll in through consistency.

But it, like you said, it's really easy to guess budgets and everything just because 12 month contracts.

Brian: [00:38:53] Yeah. So just kind of going back from the beginning of the story here, you got the first client through just a contact or referral that you had in your local . Area. So in Utah where you're from, they were interested enough to pursuing it, to give you a chance. You over-delivered by far. You put a ton of effort, you hustled your asses off, and you say you don't write the content, but you do help them kind of shape the content.

The amount of time the episode should be, what topics might be more relevant to ranking for, especially early on.

Dee Kei: [00:39:21] Yeah, and there's a lot of parts of it. Sorry, I don't mean to cut you off. There's actually a lot of parts of it that I don't do for my show, and it's kind of really hard to do. This is kind of where our value is, like transcription, so like getting transcripts of your entire episode, putting them on the backend, doing really good show notes, and not only just show notes, but adding actually like tiny.

Stamps as well as like a quote. There's actual things that Google will eat up to make their job easier so they can actually categorize your podcast at the top of their page, which is really nice. So we do all that stuff too. But for him specifically, we definitely, definitely, definitely take care of the backend.

And he was actually planning on just sinking money, like he wasn't actually planning on making any money from it. And then one day. Like, it was about six months in something like that. And he calls us and he's like, yo, I'm actually making a profit off of your show. Did you know that? And I were like, what?

Cause we don't part of our business, the one thing that we don't do is we set them up, but we don't make a sales funnel for them. We don't convert their audience, we just put them in front of an audience. Of course, we tell them how we give them tips and stuff in the first six months. He had been making so much money that the first six months all of a sudden was totally profitable.

Even though he went and trying not to make it profitable. He went to New York, shouted it out on his podcast peeps, and had a sponsor sponsor a dinner for all. A lot of podcasts like listeners in New York, which by the way, his podcast doesn't have a crazy ton of listeners. Which is insane. Right. And then as of right now, about nine, 10 months in the dude, I don't know how much specific that we can say, but he's made over 40 clients that are directly trackable from the podcast, which is conservative because there's probably a lot of people.

Brian: [00:40:55] And again, there's so many more. You can't like attribution, which are, or nerdy way of saying like tracking where a customer came from is notoriously difficult. So that's probably. All under like 20 30% higher than that actual number is the real number.

Dee Kei: [00:41:09] Yeah, so he's got 40 trackable. New clients for using his software, which for him is conservatively trackable over $22,000 a month from doing a free podcast that honestly has less listeners than your podcast right now.

Brian: [00:41:26] Yeah. Again, it's not necessarily, and this is why when we talked about this, yeah. I can't remember what episode we recently talked about. Launching podcast agency as a business model. This is one of the more recent episodes, and I'm blanking on where it ag exactly. It wasn't looking through our episode list right now and see if I can find it.

The bottom line is I pushed hard on the fact that your customer should be someone who's able to pay, able and willing to pay in business owners are able to will and willing to pay. If you can prove an ROI or return on investment on their time, effort, money, they're putting into this. If they're going to sink, let's just say an hour a week into recording stuff.

If they're going to sink a thousand $2,000 a month into paying somebody. To run the podcast and handle everything else for them. They better see an ROI on that. But when you have a client, so once by media has this client in the Amazon selling space, if their clients, customers are worth that much, it's not that hard to get an ROI.

If I'm doing my math right, that an average customer's paying them $500 a month. For that Amazon's offer stuff or whatever it is that they're selling, then all they would need is get five or six clients in order to break even on that. If they are getting 10 clients, they're doing pretty well. If they get 50 they're crushing it right now, and that's just in the first year.

So that's the sort of thing that if you can prove that much value as a, uh, an agency owner, or at least a podcast solo editing. I call it full service agency model. Not just editing, but full service agency model where all they do is show up and record and you handle literally everything else. If you can show that sort of ROI to your customers and clients, then it's a no brainer for them to sign on and keep signing on year after year after year.

Dee Kei: [00:42:57] And it's great cause if you're already doing audio, to be honest, for like the normal businessman, microphones, cables, how to record and recording software is just like way over their head and for them the ROI. Learn that is not worth it. So it's like they'd rather pay someone. So it's like a really good leeway into, especially if you had more knowledge on it, leeway into a more higher touch, like in depth business there.

Brian: [00:43:22] Yeah, it's a win all around because there is a technical barrier that a lot of people can't necessarily get past, but if they could, they could have a highly profitable podcast with just a few listeners like. You can have hundreds of listeners as a business owner and still make a large profit, and that's probably my guesses around that amount of listeners for this specific client of yours, their podcast, and maybe a thousand at.

Most people hear those numbers and they're like, Oh, that's nothing,

Dee Kei: [00:43:45] Well, you got to understand like as far as like monetization goes or like how much one like podcasts, listeners worth. Okay? We're not counting any listeners. We're not, you're not a statistic in our lives here, whatever. We're going to get over that. But the point is, statistically speaking, one podcast listener is worth about like 10 to 15 YouTube subscribers.

Brian: [00:44:05] Oh, easily man. Like my mailing list. I know all the stats and numbers. I try not to get too deep into that stuff because that's the distraction on what you should actually be doing as a business owner as far as serving your customers. But I know my numbers. I'm a business owner. I know my numbers and I can tell you unequivocably if that's the word, unequivocal.

I like to make up words here. I can tell you without a doubt that. An email subscriber is, does he mean push the needle compared to a podcast listener?

Dee Kei: [00:44:29] Oh yeah. Dad, even close.

Brian: [00:44:32] So actually I use the email list to push people into the podcast because podcasts, listeners are so much more active as far as like the amount of conversations they do in our community, they add more value.

They're just a better person for our community. And so that's where I try to put all my effort. And so if you can take these sort of knowledge bombs and drop them on business owners and explain them, actually tell me, explain this to me. You have a pitch deck that you use. To basically pitch your customers on starting a podcast.

Because everything I just said, this has to be explained to your potential customers. They have to see the value in launching a podcast or any service. They have to see the value in that in order for them to hire you for that service. So as a musician, it's not really hard to show them the value of getting a recording mixed because it sounds better.

And then if it sounds better, their fans will enjoy more than if their fans joy more. They'll come out and see them at a live show and ultimately buy merchandise and they'll make money off of that listener. In the podcast world. It's not necessarily a super well known medium, actually, I guess it is now, but it's not something that people are highly considering as a viable form of advertisement for their businesses and decay.

You guys do a lot to convince people. You show them all the statistic behind podcast. You have a whole pitch deck that's visual to look at and you show this to your potential clients so that they understand how big of an opportunity they're missing out on if they didn't hire you. Can you talk about that for a second?

Dee Kei: [00:45:49] Yeah. So I preach about this a lot, especially in a music standpoint. This is very relevant, but what is the one reason why they're not willing to hand us over the money? Even for music or for podcast? Right? It's because of trust.

Brian: [00:46:01] This is called an objection. So anytime someone's about to hand you money, there's objections that you have to get past and orphan, then hand you their money. An objection might be, Oh, the guy down the roads. Half the price, that's an objection and you have to overcome that in some way, shape, or form. Well, I do 10 times more work and we'll make you sound better, and I have better gear and I am a better person and you'll enjoy the experience more and X, Y, and Z.

Here's all the reasons. Now you've gotten over that objection, and then there's probably 10 more you need to get past. If you miss even one of those objections, you do not get the customer or the sale.

Dee Kei: [00:46:32] Yeah, absolutely. So the one big thing for both music and podcasts that you must get over is trust. To be honest, like Brian, you're a mixer as well. Like don't get me wrong, we have our individual sounds, but the biggest reason why people hire us is honestly the trust factor. Do you trust that I'm going to make it sound as best as I can?

Right. Mixes are so diverse and it can go in so many infinite directions that like no matter how good you are, if they have a friend that does it relatively close, but they just trust them, they're going to win. If you're a recording studio, one of the hardest ways to earn trust is through communication in the sense that if you have a contact us to figure out our hourly rates for the studio, that means they know from a fact that they have to do three to four different emails right?

Brian: [00:47:18] Just to clarify, he's talking about when someone goes to your website, they go to four, five, six recordings.com they fill out a form to get a rate from me. They know that there's going to be an exchange of emails before we really have any real communication about a project.

Dee Kei: [00:47:29] Yeah, and this isn't really as viable in the mixing world, but if you're a recording studio, if you have something like  where they can book it and pay for it, and they know the expectations, you can have a questionnaire that they can fill out right there that builds so much trust. That means they've already paid for it.

They can do it and they can do it. All at once. Right? So same thing with podcasts, like, and you've talked about this in an early way, early episode is talking about the importance of a portfolio. So as with our first thing with our first client, we had nor portfolio, that was the hardest bear to get over.

And now we definitely have a portfolio and we definitely have pitch decks. So going back into the pitch deck, the entire purpose is to build trust, to break down barriers of trust, because the more that they trust us, the more that they're willing to pay for our service, right? So we. Not only have a pitch deck that we have just for general, we do a lot of, in the podcasting world, we're asked to speak at a lot of podcasts, conventions around North America, and so we have not a pitch deck, but a little showcase of different ways that you could do it.

We have a general pitch deck, long form and short form, but the biggest one of all is we make a little tiny pitch deck for each individual client by doing some preliminary research before we even step into their office. So this is, for example, right now we're pitching to a company, I don't want to say because we haven't

Down yet that is well known in the outdoor wears outdoor clothing and backpacks area, right? We went into their office saying, this is how much you're potentially going to make. This is how many clients that you have. This is your lack of competitors and this is how much we estimate that you're going to do based on the portfolio that we could show you right here and based on the statistics and the proprietary research that we have done before coming into your office.

So that way they're like, Oh shoot. Not only does this guy have a portfolio. But he's showing us analytically through statistics. This could make us money. Oh shoot. Like this guy is willing to trust us now your costs, I'm willing to pay more.

Brian: [00:49:21] Yup. And so this is huge when it comes to getting, like when we're talking handholding, high end, high dollar, high touch clients. This is what you have to do in order to do that now. So let's just say D didn't do any of this stuff. You just went in there and said, Hey, podcasts are huge right now. I'm going to show you pitch deck on the opportunities in podcasting industry as a general, and then I want you to pay me thousands of dollars per month.

If Dee did that, he would still get clients and he wouldn't get as many clients and the ones he got, he wouldn't be getting paid as much. But if you can go to a specific customer or potential client and say, Hey. This is the opportunity I see for you specifically. These are the things that I see on an analytical level because business owners are very analytical.

They want to see numbers. I want to see proof. They want to see the opportunity, and this is what I see in your industry. For you specifically. There's nothing general about this. Now that you see the specific opportunity involved here, you know what amount of money is at stake. Now that you see what I'm going to charge you, it is much less of a sticker shock.

As a matter of fact, it sounds like a downright bargain because I see an opportunity of just for one example that you said earlier, getting 40 50 $60,000 a month in my software business. I see that and I see that I'm going to be paying you, let's just say two or $3,000 a month. Now, it's not so big of a deal to me.

I know that in six to eight to 12 months, I could have add 20 X return on my investment. It's a no brainer. But if you just come and say, Hey, podcasting is up 20% over last year, now the average listener listens one hour per month, the average listener is worth 10 times the value of a email subscriber,

Dee Kei: [00:50:51] Yo, those numbers don't not matter at all.

Brian: [00:50:54] and now you're saying, okay, now that you know these general statistics, now pay me $3,000 a month to do your podcast.

They're going to laugh you out of there. It's not a

Dee Kei: [00:51:02] I'm already laughing.

Brian: [00:51:03] Yeah. At the same time, when you supplement those general statistics for the overall podcast industry and you supplement it with statistics and in general facts about what you see for their specific business, that is money

Dee Kei: [00:51:18] Yeah, absolutely. And the great thing is this concept that you've talked about many times, and I just love, I can't get over it to all your people listening right now, like I've made money because of your show. Everybody should be listening to your

Brian: [00:51:30] music to my ears,

Dee Kei: [00:51:31] Like, literally, I, I recommend your show to everybody because not only sure, yeah, you get some clients and you make some money, but the fact of the matter is you help people make money.

There's so much value and technically it's free. Right? But, sorry, off track it. Uh, but, uh, one of my favorite things about this is that during our pitch, it's never about, we're going to kill it for you. We're going to do a job. We show them that we will by making them the hero. Right.

Brian: [00:51:57] Well, this is a StoryBrand.

Dee Kei: [00:51:58] Exactly. You're going to make this much money.

This is a space that you have an opportune moment in time and a space within the digital world. You can take over. You're going to kill it. Let us help you kill it.

Brian: [00:52:10] You're positioning yourself as the guide in their journey as a business owner, and you're saying, Hey. You've never gone down this path in your business, this podcasting path, you may listen to podcasts. You may be a fan of podcasts, or you may have just on the side heard about podcasts, but your business is in a opportune moment to crush it in podcasts.

Here's what you as the hero could do in this new world. If you would just take. This path less traveled and our company can help guide you down this path and do everything possible. We're the porters when it comes to climbing Mount Everest. We're going to carry all your gear. We're going to carry your oxygen, we're going to guide you up this mountain.

That's really hard to do, but because you're the hero and we're the guides, you're going to make it to the top. That's generally the pitch, and clearly you're not using that exact metaphor because that's a terrible metaphor, but you get what I'm saying?

Dee Kei: [00:53:00] but for real though, like people love that. People eat that up and then we have a portfolio that just backs up like, yeah, we've done it before. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Trust us.

Brian: [00:53:10] Every single customer is just another case study for you to use for future customers, which just strengthens your position as a podcast agency and in a relatively small amount of time. You guys have built out some really good case studies and customers like that's an impressive amount of work to do in a year.

Now.

Dee Kei: [00:53:24] Oh yeah. And it's been really blessing. Again, I attribute it to the two other owners, Johnny and John. Yeah. They're both named John. Like the thing that you're talking about. Like for me, I was just a lonely little mix engineer, you know? Not even a producer, just engineer, and I couldn't have done this without them.

They couldn't have done it without me. And it's kind of like this perfect ecosystem where we're mutually helping each other. One of the Johns is the get it done person. The other one is the visionary. I'm the creative, right? So it's like this perfect collection. So if you want to do something like you're doing now, but you don't have the skills or the know how to offer it, then it might be a good up to link up and start a business sharing equity with someone else.

That does.

Brian: [00:54:03] Yup. So that's what I did with file pass. I don't have any technical ability. I don't have any desire to find some random development agency or developer overseas or have the funds to afford an American developer. I couldn't afford my cofounder if I were paying him straight up for his development time.

So we formed a partnership and we started file pass.com and this is a great way to start a business, but there are a lot of . It falls potentially in there with partnerships because some people call them sexist marriages. You are for the long haul involved in a relationship where a lot of money is exchanged and you are legally bound to these people and you don't have sexual relations to fall back on when times get tough.

So I've heard of co-founders actually going to marital counseling because. That helps the relationship so much. So there it's not like you can just go, Hey, everybody on six figure home studio, Facebook community, who wants to start a business with me? That's a nightmare.

Dee Kei: [00:54:56] No. Yeah. It's gotta be someone that you can trust and more importantly, like this is the biggest advice. If you're going to start a business with someone else, the biggest thing that you do before you make. Any money, hire a lawyer and get that owner's contract. Like how equity works. How are you going to fire people?

How it's going to get going? How are you going to gain or lose equity? All of that stuff. Worst case scenarios, get it all figured out before you make any money, and then it'll be a lot easier.

Brian: [00:55:22] Yes. So that's called a, I don't know how it is out there, but in, in Tennessee, we call it an operating agreement.

Dee Kei: [00:55:27] Yeah. Operating agreement. Yep.

Brian: [00:55:28] And so you can sit down with a lawyer, at least for us, it was like, I want to say two or $3,000 to come up with it. So it's, it's not an insignificant amount of money. It's a chunk of change, but you don't want to do a lot of work and build a business and then have a lot of money involved in then do that because now there's all these disputes come up.

Who owns what, who did what work, who deserves what, and is it just, it's kind of scary to wait that long and then do these sorts of things. But let's move past this technical stuff. Hiring.

Dee Kei: [00:55:54] Ah.

Brian: [00:55:55] Let's just say I'm the rare unicorn that possesses the get shit done. The visionary and the creative all in one unique, beautiful package.

I start my podcast agency by myself. Things are going well for the first, a couple of clients I get some traction. The podcasts do well, and now I'm like, shit, I just listened to episode 122 why it's time to finally hire someone, which you heard that episode. You actually hired someone, didn't you?

Dee Kei: [00:56:23] I actually just hired an assistant. I actually called them the night that I listened to that episode. I'm like, you're officially hired. Let's talk tomorrow.

Brian: [00:56:30] can we stop real quick and just say, the reason D is successful is because he actually takes action on what we talk about in the podcast. That was two episodes ago, and he's already got an assistant. That's amazing.

Dee Kei: [00:56:38] You say buffet, I eat all that shit. I eat it all up.

Brian: [00:56:41] you go. So, okay, so I'm the perfect storm as far as a business founder. I don't need no damn co founders or let's just say I found co-founders and now it's time to hire. Let's talk about the hiring process. Can you talk about some of your, what were your first hires and how you went about doing that?

Dee Kei: [00:56:53] Oh, dude. Okay. Well, luckily we are near a college town, and so we're right near a, in BYU, we're right near Brigham young university, which is the Mormon university, which you might think it's kind of funny and weird, but at the same time, it's the perfect place. Mormons don't do drugs, they don't really party as much.

They work really well. So it's like the perfect community where we can get some really cheap interns to kind of get start off for some low level work. And I mean, same with any college town, right? But more importantly, we have this perfect system that goes together perfectly with our personalities. I am, uh, such a people person.

Brian: [00:57:28] I 100% agree with that. I mean, we, we've got to hang out with you at a, at Nam this year and it's just so fun because you're such like, people can tell. It's like you're just a, you have people skills oozing out of your ass. That's how good of a people person you are.

Dee Kei: [00:57:41] Thank you. Thank you. But at the same time, where I lacked

Brian: [00:57:44] weirdest description ever.

Dee Kei: [00:57:47] oozing, Oh, say that again. Oozing out of my ass.

Brian: [00:57:49] Yeah. Yeah.

Dee Kei: [00:57:51] But, uh, um, the great thing about this is that where I lack in the get shit done is where the other owners take place, right? So we have a system right now where it's unintentional. To be honest, I just know people or have connections to people or like get like it, an influential local Instagrammer that has a really large local demographic of followers to.

Pay 25 bucks to advertise that we're offering. Here's the, here's how much we're paying, here's the job description, you know, DME, if you'd like. That's how we did it the first few times. I did a little bit of the interview first, and then it got passed onto the guy that actually makes the decisions. And the cool thing is almost all of our initial hires have actually stayed to this day and have actually proven to be more valuable than we initially wanted them to be.

Brian: [00:58:33] You hired him at a low level position and they kind of worked their way up to higher positions. So what were the specific positions. Hiring for at the beginning, and then what did that transition to for those people.

Dee Kei: [00:58:40] So the very, very first positions we were looking to hire for, I believe it was, Hmm. I believe it was an outreach specialist. Which looks great on a resume for college students. It's basically marketing. It's basically posting on Reddit about podcasts and doing a lot of like social media native outreach to talk about the show, but also finding guests, white gloving guests onto the show based on if they shared it, would it increase the viewership of the show.

Brian: [00:59:07] Is that basically a guest pipeline where your job is to research people that would be good guests for the podcasts and then reach out to them, follow up with them, get them scheduled, get a pre-interview done, like are they doing all of that sort of stuff?

Dee Kei: [00:59:20] Yup. And that's only just one part of the job. The other part is a big one, which is talking, trying to naturally find potential listeners conversions, right. Without ads. Just doing it naturally through Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever. Right? Lurking, we call it, of course. Yeah.

Brian: [00:59:34] Yeah, so they're part of message boards that contain the listeners for those podcasts. And. When opportunities present themselves, they're putting a link to that podcast or mention that podcast name in conversations, kind of like a little spy that's spying on communities and saying, Hey, I'm going to insert this link here, or name this podcast here.

Let's go leave this right here, and then that's going to get us 10 15 listeners here, 20 listeners there. I have here a hundred there and then it adds up over time.

Dee Kei: [00:59:58] Yeah, absolutely. And each of those listeners are worth like so much, like because they chose to be there, it was already solving one of their problems. It's kinda like, the great thing with running ads on a podcast is you're already giving away a free resource. Like they don't even realize, like if you were in a like a Reddit community and they're like, Oh, I'm looking for a podcast where you can like learn about business.

Then if you type in six figure home studio, that's going to be way better conversions for a specific thing. Then like an ad or like, Oh, this might be interesting, and then listen to a couple of episodes later and then all of a sudden they're super into it, or they might not be.

Brian: [01:00:31] Yup. That's one of the most valuable parts of our podcast is all the episodes are there. Every episode we do is another thing that people can listen to in order to get value to help their businesses, and they can binge through it all. So people are listening right now to this episode. . Episode 124 of the podcast.

People are probably listening to this a year after the coronavirus has ended, or they just binge through 123 episodes and they finally caught up and they're just now listening to this episode. The week it came out. There's people all across the board, so I'm sitting here interviewing you and people are listening to our podcast right this second hundreds of people, right?

The second are probably listening, and over the next week or so, we'll have thousands of people listen to this. That's the value of a podcast, and just to show people some math, and this is good if you're bring this sort of numbers too. Don't worry these specific numbers, but it's good to have numbers like this to bring to potential customers.

If you're trying to get customers or clients for your podcast agency, what you told me a second ago, that Amazon selling person, if they have just for good round numbers, this is just ballpark numbers, a thousand people that listen to the podcast regularly, that's a thousand podcast listeners in a year long period.

It's earning now up to about $20,000 a month. If you could extrapolate that out. I think it was actually higher than that, but just say $20,000 a month from software subscriptions. You put that times 12 as $240,000 for a thousand listeners, that's $240 per listener.

Dee Kei: [01:01:48] Yeah.

Brian: [01:01:49] To hire some intern to just lurk message boards and post about the podcast when it's relevant to get one person on the podcast worth 240 bucks.

That's worth it. That is definitely worth it. So I understand that. So let's talk about those interns again. We're going back to the hiring process. You said they added more value than expected and they worked themselves up the business. What are they doing now? Why did that role transition into something else.

Dee Kei: [01:02:10] After a few months, that person actually is now the head of marketing, and we have two other outreach specialists after that guy, before he got . Loaded though. Then we hired audio editors for that time. I was editing all the audio.

Brian: [01:02:24] Yup. It's time consuming.

Dee Kei: [01:02:25] Yeah. I was editing all the audio at that time and all of a sudden my time was no longer well spent on just doing audio editing.

Brian: [01:02:33] Yeah. Do you know the metrics behind how long it takes to edit an episode to your standards?

Dee Kei: [01:02:37] Yeah, so for our standards, because we try to be a premium company, we've also made a lot of mistakes. And also to be fair because we have businesses that are paying us a higher price point and that have a lot more on the line than like a local podcast coach, for example. We can actually genuinely ruin the reputation of a multimillion dollar company, like very easily.

So because of that and the mistakes that we've made, we make sure to go through pretty well. My expectation is if it's an hour long episode, it should not take you more than two to two and a half hours to edit it, like double the time. But at the same time, I expect them every single one of our editors to listen to the show from beginning to end all the way as they're editing it.

So they can't just skip over to the claps.

Brian: [01:03:21] Let's talk about this real quick claps. You mentioned claps. Do you have your customers clap when they screw things up?

Dee Kei: [01:03:26] Yeah, we asked them to, but we still have our audio editors listen to all the way through.

Brian: [01:03:29] Do you pay, and this goes back to our episode that we talked about hiring. Do you pay the editors per hour or per episode edited.

Dee Kei: [01:03:36] So we pay them per hour. We did struggle a lot with how much we were going to pay them and how we were going to pay them. Eventually it was going to be permitted of edited episode, but honestly, it just got to the point where the best thing to do, the easiest thing to do, and it may not be the most cost effective or the best for motivation, but the thing that made sense for them and that made sense for us was to go hourly.

Brian: [01:03:55] And I can see the reason for that. If you're trying to do high end services and you charge per episode, people are going to try to cut corners so they're spending less time on each episode. If you're paying per hour. The struggle is, and we talked about it on episode one 22 the struggle is. They milk that shit and they'll sit there for five hours and edit the same episode, and then they are collecting five hours worth of work.

So there's no motivation to finish faster. So there's definitely a balance there that has to be done, and I'm sure that there is no perfect solution to that.

Dee Kei: [01:04:23] Yeah, there's not, and that's why we have KPIs as well. So like this is your minimum performance goals. Like if you do not this, these key performance indicators, like if you do not hit this many episodes or do this much, then like we need to have a sit down, talk about your job.

Brian: [01:04:39] So are they editing in the studio or on location somewhere or do they do it remotely.

Dee Kei: [01:04:43] So at first they were coming into the studio and then we found out that the computers and the software kept failing. And it's like, okay, we'll just have you do it from home. Which actually has ended up being better. And right now because the coronavirus, all of our employees work from home, which because of our business model, luckily it works out.

Brian: [01:04:59] Yeah, and I think anyone listening right now, the main concern is likely, Hey, they probably see the opportunity in this sort of business model as a whole, from a pure monetary standpoint, depending on how your brain works, you may be fulfilled by this kind of work, and maybe it's just a pure mind.

Everyone's different. I personally love like any sort of business challenge, so I would still probably be fulfilled from this kind of work, but there's not a lot of creativity involved, at least not on the editing side, which is why you personally don't do the editing anymore.

Dee Kei: [01:05:25] And for me, like I'm such like a go getter where like the worst. Hardest jobs that I've ever had in my entire life is being like a frickin customer service. No, it was rentals person at guitar center. I was in charge of rentals at a local guitar center. You know what I was getting paid to do? I was getting paid like nine, 10 bucks an hour to not do anything, to wait for customers to come to me.

If they came once every two days, like it sucked. Like waiting, like not doing shit is the hardest. Thing for me. So like listening to podcasts and especially cause I have extreme like super bad ADHD. In one sentence I'll like just like zone out. So it's really hard.

Brian: [01:06:05] That's why I don't edit our episodes either. And when I do listen back to edits, I listen to every episode for just finalizing things and make sure. There's not major sections I want to cut out or things rearranged.

Dee Kei: [01:06:13] I listened to my episodes because I'm a narcissist. I'm just kidding.

Brian: [01:06:16] When I listened back though. No, I understand. I listened back at like three times speed because I have such add that if I don't listen to any audio fast, especially myself, then it's gotta be the fastest thing possible.

So again, our listeners are listening because of the coronavirus or because this business model, either way. The fact that it's done remotely is a huge appeal right now because if you are a recording studio, especially large facilities, and you were relying on people to come into your studio, while that might not even be legal in certain countries right now, because of the quarantine involved in not allowing a certain amount of any groups of, there's some areas that are 10 or more.

For some it's a hundred or more. For some it's. You can't even leave your house unless it's for groceries or for medical reasons or for approved work-related things. So I don't think a studio would necessarily be an approved work-related thing. And also the fact that the music industry is so devastated right now that if you start a podcast agency, you may not want to have music industry related customers.

Some businesses, a lot of the businesses that you work for are not necessarily directly affected by the coronavirus right now or by the. Probable recession to follow this, so you're in a good position to have diversification. You have many clients, all who are relatively well shielded. I don't know about the Amazon seller.

I don't know enough about that world, but that would be one that I would be concerned about, but with exception of that, most of these are well shielded from the coronavirus in recession, and so that means your business is pretty well shielded as well. Our listeners are looking for options right now. And so, you know, this is hopefully encouraging for people and some ideas for people of things they can pursue.

Medicine. It's kind of a scary time out there right now, man.

Dee Kei: [01:07:49] It is. It is, but I think it's also the opportune moment. It depends on how you look at it as well. For a lot of stuff, like for recording studios where artists have to come in, it really does hurt. But I see like, I mean, I think you see this too is like that as a businessman, like, and I think listeners will see this as well, when, when there is a local venue that says, you know, unfortunately we're not able to do this.

What I would do, one of my favorite quotes that we use here in the office all the time, if you got to eat shit, don't nibble right from Ben Horwitz. Hard thing about hard things. So. So if I like this idea, it's like if I was a local venue that was struggling because nobody's allowed to come to there anymore, I would go out of my way to figure out as fast as I can, how to start streaming on Twitch and getting campaigns of people, of local artists and all the fans that love your venue to start donating on Twitch and just like going all out and maybe doing like somehow figuring that out.

Right? If you figured that out. Now you're scalable by location. You're scalable by time cause you can record it before you can have them do it at their own place. You don't even have to be there when they record the little life thing. There's so much opportunity. One of the things that we're doing now because of this opportune moment as we're starting a number of YouTube channels, like before our model wasn't based off of our own content.

We're not like a Gimlet or an iHeartRadio. We don't make our content and we don't own our customers' content. But the fact of the matter is because the entertainment is going up so much right now because people are home. And education is growing. We want to, we started our own podcast, different podcasts, entertainment, podcasts, and YouTube channels that are strictly meant for like monetizing them because we own them and all we want to do is see them grow.

There's no better time to do with it now, and that's why we're pushing so hard with that.

Brian: [01:09:23] Well, I love the quote you just gave, but there's another quote that I've heard a lot recently in, in these times, especially with the stock market, doing what it's doing, and that's a quote from Warren buffet, and I'm going to butcher it. But the spirit will be there. And that is be fearful when others are being greedy and be greedy when others are being fearful.

And that's just saying when the stock market's booming and everyone's saying this is the perfect time to invest. And everyone's giving their stock tips on all the things that are going to be hot. That's the time to be fearful and be wary of listening to everyone. And when everyone's saying it's the end of the world, the stock market is going to hit zero.

Everyone's going to go out of business. That's the time to be investing because everyone else is fearful and there are obvious times when that doesn't fully make sense, but I think the spirit of it is this. In recessions and in times like this where everyone's fearful and just trying to scrape by and pulling their money out and not investing in growth and not investing in Spansion and just retracting constantly.

This is the time as a business owner to start expanding and thinking about how to set yourself up so that when we are on the other side of this, we will come out on top, and that's one of the reasons I'm buying Berkshire Hathaway stock right now. By the way, I don't, I'm not using the stock market.

Dee Kei: [01:10:29] We're buying Delta in Emirates

Brian: [01:10:31] Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know if I didn't read it, but I know by Delta, and this is not stock tips, by the way, we are not securities experts. I don't know what the legalities of this shit are. These are not.

But because I know that Berkshire will come out on the other side of this weather giant, $128 billion pile of cash, better off than when they came into this, they will be snatching up companies left and right here soon.

I have faith in that and I feel like we can take a little bit of Warren Buffett's methodology here, which is when others are being fearful, we're doing things to set ourselves up, to be prepared for the inevitable upside when it starts to come. Because when things started to clear up from this. Which they inevitably will.

This is not as bad as the 1918 I think it was a Spanish flu crisis where millions of people died. I believe. I don't know all the numbers of that, but I've just heard a lot of comparison to that. It's not as bad as that. The stock market's still made it through that and it was not even as matured then as it is now, businesses will recover.

People will go out of business, that's for sure, but if you work hard too, B, I don't want to use the word greed, even though that quote is the word greedy. If you will work hard now to be thoughtful and intentional. About setting yourself up, spotting opportunities and not just trying to hide and cry. If you will use this time diligently, you can set yourself up to do really well and you can even get through this time in thrive, if not at least maintain where you're at.

If you're smart about this, and that's not going to work for everyone. Everyone listening is different, has different skill sets, but I still think that what we talked about today is going to be relevant to people. They can take that and roll with it. I know DK, if you are listening to this episode and it wasn't you sitting here, you would probably take a million things away from this episode and go apply it to your businesses right now because that's the type of person you are and I encourage everyone else listening to be that way.

D, any last thoughts before we wrap this thing up? Man,

Dee Kei: [01:12:09] I have one thing. Also misquote this horribly, but. C S Lewis has a sermon that you can find online, something wartime where the idea of this sermon is that there's never an opportune moment to do anything. And most people listen to this and know this. It's always war time. It's always, you've got to always swim upstream when you started your studio.

Because you listen to this podcast, was there ever an opportune moment? Probably not. Like if you were going to have a baby, is there ever an opportune moment to have a baby? No. Never. Was there ever an opportunity moment for you to get married? Right. There's never an opportune moment. Anything. So that's the thing.

It's always wartime, so it's best to be optimistic and best to look out for where the opportunities there. That's all you got to say.

Brian: [01:12:59] All green lights on your journey to something. There will be a red light stopping you along the way. Always. You'll never have full green lights, so don't look for what you can't do because of all these reasons. Start. Look at the opportunities right now that you can take advantage of because I mean, people are doing two things right now.

There's two approaches. One is they're contracting and hiding and one is they're expanding and looking for the opportunities that others overlooking right now. And I feel like our audience is going to take that second one because they are smart and capable and willing to put in the work.

Dee Kei: [01:13:27] I just want to say one last thing. I cannot be more grateful for your show as a six figure home studio, podcast listener as a six figure sexy or homey or whatever we've decided upon. I know that like really though. You don't even feel bad. Like I don't even feel bad that you're making money because you've made me so much money.

Like you have made me a better businessman. And your podcast has given me so much true value without holding anything back that like, I want you to succeed. And this show has been so good. And everybody listening, like I know they always say Chris and Brian always say like, this is a buffet of information, but I would take their stuff more seriously.

And a lot of you probably already have because this is real, real good premium shit.

Brian: [01:14:09] Thank you, man. So where can people find out more about what you've got going on if they want to research further into your stuff.

Dee Kei: [01:14:15] If they want to just reach out. You can always find my Instagram. D. E. K. E. I mixes at DK mixes.

Brian: [01:14:21] That'll be in our show notes@thesixfigurehomestudio.com slash one 24 that's slash one two four his Instagram hand will be there. We'll also have links to launch pod media, and if you're on your podcast app, go search mixing music.

Dee Kei: [01:14:32] Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much, Brian. Appreciate it.

Brian: [01:14:40] So that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. There you have it, an option for you if you are currently scrambling and you're not sure what to do with your studio, the full service podcast agency is a very viable option for some people. I know I talked to one of my students yesterday in a profitable producer course group coaching call, and he said he has a commercial recording studio.

Bands are coming in to actually record physically at the studio, and he had all of his upcoming sessions over the next two months cancel on him. That is a terrifying place to be, and I'm sure he's not the only one that's like that right now. So my goal coming up here is to try to do a series of interviews on virus proof.

Business models, ah, that we can either pivot to or add on to whatever we're doing now in order to supplement this through these tough times. And one more thing I want to talk about, and that is this quote that I found in an email this morning, and then I posted in the six figure home pseudo community.

And it's something like this. There is a big difference between profiting from a crisis and profiting during a crisis. Do not be ashamed to sell. And this goes perfectly along with the philosophy that Chris and I have been preaching since episode one of this podcast, and that is the backbone of business is adding value.

You will not get paid unless you're adding value to someone's life or some businesses life. And as bad as the entire world is hurting right now, both from a health standpoint and a financial standpoint, as a result of that. We need all of the value that we can get. And so if you have opportunities where you can volunteer for something, volunteer for something, if you have opportunities where you can expand your business into an area where you're adding value to other businesses or other individuals, or you're able to help an industry that is failing right now, then do it.

But whatever you do, do not just sit around and read the news all day or watch the news all day, or listen to the news all day and stress about what's going to happen. And complain about all the stuff that's going on right now because that doesn't help anybody. That is not valuable to anybody. That's not adding value to the world.

If anything, you not utilizing your talents right now is removing value from the world. So do not put your talents to waste in moments like this. Next week's episode. I have an interview planned. We have not done it yet. I don't know if the schedule is going to work out or not, but this is somebody who, as an online recording studio with over 30 audio engineers working for him.

One of the most unique business models I've ever seen. It's almost exactly like DKS podcast agency, except instead of editing podcasts, they're doing remote work, like recording, mixing, mastering, editing, and I believe it's the same situation where he's the agency owner. He's not actually doing the work himself.

He's just overseeing everything and doing all the marketing, all the hiring. And if you want to talk about our viral resistant business model, at least. An online recording studio sounds pretty damn good to me, so I'm going to try to get him on the podcast if that falls through and we have a completely different interview, my bad, but I've been talking to this guy and all I've got to do is finalize the, the, the schedule on that.

So that's the goal for next week's episode. Until next time, thank you so much for listening and happy hustling.

Dee Kei: [01:17:49] Hello? Welcome to the six figure home studio podcast today with me is my lovely purple shirted hosts Brian Hood. Nudge gray shirted

Brian: [01:17:58] those are lies.

Dee Kei: [01:18:02] dude, does that a good sound check for you?