Hey what's up everyone? Welcome back to the marketing Nomad show. It's your favourite marketer and podcast host. My name is Prit. Today I have a very special guest with us Lindsey McMahon. Lindsey, my man is the co host of all yours English. The All yours English podcast is downloaded 8 million times per month globally oh my god, my stomach just did a flip, reading that and has been ranked in the best of Apple podcasts categories in 2018 and 2019. As well as number one in US education language courses. Lindsey and her team have been featured in podcasts magazine, language, massive magazine, and Forbes. So today we're going to be talking mainly about how Lindsay started her podcasting journey. If you've been looking to start a podcast for your business, you're wondering how to go about it. Today's episode is all about that. Lindsey, how are we doing today?
Lindsay McMahon:Great Prit. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm excited to be here. This is great.
Prithvi Madhukar:Oh, I'm so excited to we've got so much to talk about. I mean, this is definitely a topic that I have not delved into in my podcast. And I would really love to hear how you started. Where is it going and helping all of my listeners with their podcast as well. So Lindsay, first off, tell me a little bit about yourself.
Lindsay McMahon:Okay, so Well, first of all, I am a podcaster. That's the most important thing to know now. So I am based in Denver, Colorado. I'm from the East Coast of the US originally, but I've travelled quite a bit in my life and having travelled and having learned languages, that is what really got me excited about helping adult English language learners and global professionals kind of speak better because as I travelled, I taught English in Japan in Tokyo for a year and a half. I backpacked through South America. And I noticed that the English education out there just isn't that good. At the same time, I saw the technology starting to come up. And I saw Oh, I could start a podcast. And so in 2013, I said, Hey, let's give this thing a try. Let's take a new angle on teaching English as a second language for adults. And so that's what we did.
Prithvi Madhukar:So when you say we can you tell us a little bit about your team as well?
Lindsay McMahon:For sure. So my original original hosting team, I started my show in Boston with another English teacher that I knew at the time. She was my first co host. So we started the show together. But after a year, she decided she wanted to move on and do other things. And that was fine. But I continued Ahlers English because I knew that there was something there that was special. It was really resonating with our audience, as we were getting emails, and the show was just kind of growing. And I said there's something here. I'm not going to walk away from this. And so after a couple of stressful months, I went ahead and hired a new team. I brought on my co host, Michelle Kaplan, who is the one that I mainly do the show with. And a few years later, we had Aubrey Carter, join the show, and you'll hear her voice on the show too. And Jessica Beck is also on our team. And with Jessica Beck we started a second podcast. That second podcast is called IELTS energy podcast and that trains our listeners for the IELTS exam. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the IELTS exam. It's really big internationally.
Prithvi Madhukar:Oh, yeah. I've had to take that I think three times now. Yes. Marks and all of them. But I had to apply for gratulations. Canada. Yes. Yes, that's exactly important. And then when for my master's degree as well. I needed the IELTS exam, of course,
Lindsay McMahon:perfect. Yeah, it is such a global exam. So that's why we were excited. You know, Jessica was an examiner for 14 years. So the point here for your audience is, you know, maybe the first tip is hire great people, you know, we never would have started IELTS energy. If I hadn't hired Jessica, she had that deep expertise. And we were able to start that show and launch our first online course.
Prithvi Madhukar:Oh, that's amazing. That's really awesome that you, you know, you started off with one podcast, and then you decided to venture out. And we will definitely dive deeper into, you know, for those of my listeners who already have a podcast, and maybe they're listening to you know, they're thinking, should they branch out? Is it time for them to do another podcast? We're gonna definitely talk about that at the end. But Lindsey, I wanted to ask you, you know, you talked a little bit about your podcasting journey, you know, the starting of it. How has it been going? And what are some of the tips that you have for beginners? Just starting with their podcast?
Lindsay McMahon:Yeah, well, we launched at a very different time. I have to acknowledge that right? This was 2013. So no one really knew what a podcast was. It was very nerdy, right. It was only something that we're doing and I guess we were the nerds too. So yeah, I think there was one PDF guide we found online on how to submit to Apple podcasts. It was very, very hard. If it was just very, not mainstream, and now you know that we've had cereals started in 2016, that we went mainstream, and now NPR, everyone's in the podcasting game. So it was a very different game. And there was, there was obviously much less competition at that time. So I want to acknowledge that it is harder to launch a podcast today. But I can teach your audience today some of the things that I did that would still work today that are timeless and absolutely point to making a podcast bulletproof and strong and able to surpass above the noise. Right. So you want me to go through a couple of those things, those tips right now? Yeah, absolutely. All right. So I think that one of the things we did was we decided early on to publish more episodes more often. Initially, we were planning on doing half an hour a week or two half an hour shows a week. Instead, at some point, we just said, Hey, why don't we do 415 minute shows a week. Now, this works really well for my audience, because they are listening, they just want a quick bite of English, right? It's entertainment, it's not a big lesson, you're gonna sit down and take notes, you're learning on the train, you want to be entertained and educated at the same time. So 15 minutes is perfect. So if you can find a way to make more episodes, but the same amount of work that you would have done, that's great. I, we work really hard. So I'm not going to recommend that cadence for everyone. But the more episodes the better, because then you're able to just snowball like the episodes, Snowball on top of each other. When you first launch your show, you should have more than just one episode in your queue. Right? Obviously, otherwise, why are people going to subscribe to your show, they need to see, I would say at least five to 10 episodes in there that they can get excited about consuming right away and see if they really want to subscribe. That would be those would be my first two tips.
Prithvi Madhukar:Oh, that's amazing. Because I definitely agree that when people when you're launching especially and then people come and see your podcast, and there's just one episode there, they're highly not going to, you know, follow you. But if you've got a couple episodes, yes, there's a higher chance. I like that tip, and also the timing. And I definitely do want to talk about that. Because there are some industries where they need 30 to 45 minutes. And then some industries, it's 15, or even five minutes, there are five minute podcasts out there. How can your audience know what time suits them? Like? What is the timing for them?
Lindsay McMahon:I would work backwards and start with your what is your message going to be? What's the content going to look like? And then based on that, you'll understand how much time you need, you know, with my 15 minute episodes doing an interview, it works. But it's I have to really keep the guest on target, you know, I have to structure it and ask every guest to come in with three tips on one topic. So there's no free conversation. We just don't We don't do that. I would like to do that I had a guest on last week I was like, I like this guy want to talk to you over an hour. But that's not the format of our show. And we have to stay in the format of our audience expects right? So I would start instead of worrying about the length that first start with your audience what they need, how you can break it up per episode, and then decide what what is your template going to look like, you know, we have a pretty repeatable template, especially for our episodes where it's me and my co host our team working together. You know, we do a little fun conversation at the beginning, we teach some vocabulary, we do a roleplay, we do a takeaway. So there is a repeatable template. And that fits really nicely into 15 to 18 minutes. But if your template fits into 30 minutes, because you need to go into more detail, maybe it's like the legal world, it's more technical, you should do 30 minutes so that that tip only applies if you're able to chunk it up. But people do have a shorter attention span. Just think about you know how people consume. However, I do think podcast listeners are a little unique in that sense. They're not like social media followers, where they're crazy going up and yeah, they're not. Once you've got them in there. They're they're in there, if you hook them, they'll hang out with you for a couple hours. So that's what your show turns out to be great. You know? Yeah,
Prithvi Madhukar:I think that's some solid advice. Working backwards is definitely one of the key things, especially when you're starting a podcast in the beginning, having a structure in place. I think that's the part that overwhelms people a lot because when they're starting a podcast, they have absolutely no idea. There's so many questions in their mind. And I think working backwards and having a structure before you start the podcast is really good advice. And we talked a little bit about hook just now I wanted to kind of capture that and go a little bit deeper into that. What do you mean when you say a hook and what are some of the tips that you can give my audience when it comes to recording their podcast?
Lindsay McMahon:Okay, so So the first question about a hook. This kind of lines up a little bit with the idea of a deeper vision or a why I guess for us it's kind of the same thing. This is so we early on, we decided that we were in the middle of an episode recording. And we're trying to articulate our message about learning English right for adults. Okay, what is this really about what is our true value? And one of us said the phrase connection, not perfection. And we looked at each other, we're like, oh, that's it. That's it. And in that moment, I said, this is the reason this show exists, right? This is going to touch everyone's heart. I believe in this because I felt disconnected learning languages or even just in life before. And I know every human being on the planet has had a moment of disconnection and a moment of connection. And we want connection. So we trademarked that phrase, so we've got a trademark on it. And we say it the way we use it as a hook kind of a hook. We put it in the intro of our episodes. So it's in it, we say we believe in connection, not perfection in every intro of every part of every episode, the beginning. And at the end, we say if you believe in connection, not perfection, you know, hit follow on the podcast now. So that's kind of creating like an in group thing. Do you believe in this too? We do. And it's totally genuine, there's nothing. There's nothing like scammy about it, right? It's real. Like, I totally feel that and we pull it into the content as well. Right? We try to every episode, we try to go a little deeper. Like if I teach you run up or run over, I don't want to just teach you those phrasal verbs I want to teach you when you use it in the real world, and actually how it brings you back to connecting with a person in front of you. Right? So that's kind of a hook. I mean, we could talk about other hooks, I guess. But that would be the most meaningful version of a hook that we use.
Prithvi Madhukar:Oh, that's beautiful, though connection, not perfection, because it really resonated with me, because even when I was learning languages, I think I was always hell bent on Oh, it needs to be perfect. I need perfect. I think there's just so much pressure when it comes to learning languages. And I love that you said it's all about, you know, connection. So I absolutely love that. So when it comes to a hook, what you're essentially saying is, make sure you have a deeper purpose to whatever your podcast is about. And I think that kind of rolls back into your structure. When you are structuring your podcast, there needs to be a deeper why for Yes,
Lindsay McMahon:100%. That's really well said. I mean, we can talk about more superficial versions of a hook. Right? We could talk about copywriting but to me, like, if you want to create a show that's going to last for years and it's going to succeed. You're like, oh, it better be deeper than just copywriting. Right? It better be deeper than a one liner or sexy phrase. No, it has to be something you because this is hard. This is hard, hard work.
Prithvi Madhukar:Yes. I think we really need to put it out. This is hard work, guys. It's really
Lindsay McMahon:hard work. I think it's harder than blogging. It's maybe I'm not sure a video video may be harder, like YouTube, YouTube, production might be harder. But podcasting is hurting hard in its own way.
Prithvi Madhukar:For sure. Definitely. And to keep that same energy level all throughout. You know, despite what's going on in your personal life, I think I think it's definitely very challenging as well. Yes, I want to put that out there, guys. It's very, very important. And now that we're talking about, you know, some of the tips when it goes into podcasting, like recording their podcasts, I think one of the first instincts that people have is Oh, buy every single equipment that's out there and, you know, spend 1000s of dollars I'm Yeah, I felt it too. I felt the pressure when I first started as well. What What are your thoughts on that?
Lindsay McMahon:Yeah, that's a good question. I think that's right. That is an instinct, and it's definitely something you want to fight against. I think that people find find a lot of ways to delay launching. You know, waiting on my delivery from Amazon, I got the most expensive microphone, I gotta save for my microphone. No, I still use the ATR 2100 I am thinking of up levelling to the shore, the show, I think it's called the shore microphone. But if I do that, I'm going to buy it for my whole team, and it's going to be an investment. Right, but I've been using for the last eight years, our whole team has been on the ATR 2100. It's less than $100 on Amazon. I mean, I've got a simple boom, arm, iced, it's a USB mic, so I don't use any mixers. You really can keep it very simple. We use Audacity still, to record our double Enders and then our editor edits them together. We keep it very simple. So that's what I would do focus on honing your ability to create good content, do good interviews. That's really what matters. However, that being said, you do need a minimum quality of audio and with the ATR you get it right. But you need that minimum, you I would not recommend obviously you're not recording on your phone. You're not using like these headphone mic. You need something good. Right? You need a good mic. I think so.
Prithvi Madhukar:Absolutely. I 100% agree with that. That you know, the first instinct will obviously be procrastination, and trying to make sure that you've got all all of your equipment ready. And I think we also talked a little bit about, you know, you said, preparing the structure of the podcast episode, I kind of want to dive a little bit deeper into scripting. Do you recommend scripting? Do you do not recommend scripting? What's your take on it?
Lindsay McMahon:So I would recommend not scripting, but out lining. So that's very different, right? So this also comes back to your audience and what they need. But I do feel like you can, you can hear when someone has literally written out every word, they're gonna say, it's like, why don't I just want you to send me the notes, and I'll read it faster. You know? Where's the element of spontaneity and surprise? Absolutely. So our audience, really, we know, they want natural English conversation, right? Because that's what they have not gotten in textbooks for years. And so we're giving it to them. So we we certainly spend time planning the episodes, I think Michelle spends 20 to 30 minutes planning every 15 minute episode, right? So there's planning, there's thought there's preparation. But when we sit down, we look at the outline, we read, we go down the outline, but there's, there's whitespace, we leave whitespace, in our outline, for jokes for stories for examples to tie in, Oh, that reminds me of this thing that happened in the news, right? We want to make it relevant, not just about English, you know, not just about the grammar book, like tie in some event and Supreme Court rulings or tie in the Twitter acquisition or tie in this tie in that make it about them and about what's happening now. So I think you should find a balance between prep, but spontaneity.
Prithvi Madhukar:I love that. I love that advice. Because I think when it comes to podcast episodes, like you said, it's all about connection, you do want people to connect. And if you are maintaining a strict structure or strict script, I guess I would say, I think it does lose that one on one personal connection with your audience. And as you said, people can make out that you're reading off a script. I think one, if I were to kind of give an example to all of you listening out there, we did come up with a few questions beforehand. And that was I guess, outlining the entire thing. But everything else is completely, you know, flowing. And we're just Yeah, fun while recording. And it still makes for a great podcast. So I totally, I think it you know, it's about outlining, as you said, versus scripting and we talked a little bit about how there are so many podcasts out there right now, how can my listeners be a differentiator? How minder differentiator? I guess I would say?
Lindsay McMahon:That's a great question. I would challenge this, this, this idea of there are a lot of podcasts, I think I've heard crazy numbers, right. But the fact is, a lot of these podcasts, they've they've pod faded, they have not they they dropped off and the aggregator apps, the big apps, they don't clean them out. Like they don't get rid of those shows, they leave them in there. So it looks like you're competing against a lot more than maybe you actually are. But it is still of course a crowded space. Not as crowded as YouTube or blogging. I still think there's a lot of opportunity there. So what do you do? It comes back to what I mentioned before having a deeper reason that you're teaching and bringing that out making that sorry, teaching podcasting and making that very clear to your audience. So they can see themselves in you. Like they kind of volunteer themselves. They raise their hand, they say, Yeah, this is from me, because she said this, this and this, I felt that before. So I know this is for me. So it comes down to studying your audience beforehand. So understanding your industry, first of all, like you know, starting a podcast in an industry that you're brand new at would be hard, because you need to have some, some subtle nuances of understanding, like I had taught English, my co host, and I had both taught English abroad for years and in the US, and we knew the mistakes that teachers were making. We knew what students hated what wasn't working. And we brought that in. And then the second part is serving your audience. Once you have an audience. Now let's go and figure out who these people are that are attracted to you. What's their, you know, what's their demographics? psychographics? Where do they live? What other shows do they consume? So it's a little bit of both. It's like, you are putting something out there as kind of a hypothesis. I think this is what this person is going to want. Do that does that person find you? And then you survey and you find out?
Prithvi Madhukar:I absolutely loved it, especially when you said subtle nuances of understanding. I personally that caught my attention because as business owners who are looking to become podcasters, you will actually understand your audience. There's a part of you that does understand the nuances as you said, and it's all about tapping into that and figuring out how you can use those nuances and make yourself a differentiator amongst millions. Okay, maybe not millions, but a couple of podcasts in your niche.
Lindsay McMahon:You Uh, and I always say to add to that, yeah, and I would just add to that print real quick, the more niche you can get, the better especially because it is getting more competitive. Of course, you can show your expertise, you can shine more, right? Instead of like broad business podcast, what is your specialty in business? Right? Is it like, tax deductions for hire for technology company? I don't know. You know what I mean, something there as as specific as you can get? I would recommend that because it'll be easier down the road, if you want to get sponsorships, too. If there's, you know, those companies may have no other podcast to go to that it is that narrow. So you want to kind of try to get a bit more narrow nowadays.
Prithvi Madhukar:Absolutely. But I think that there's definitely a bit of fear. I mean, as a marketer, niching is one of the first things that I teach my business owners, but I do want to tap into that with you, Lindsay. So I do agree. I mean, I've definitely listened to my clients when they say if we niche down too much, are we foregoing the audience that may be you know, listen, when we are broader niche, what are your thoughts on that?
Lindsay McMahon:So yeah, I mean, yeah, you you will forego some people. But the fact is, the people that will want to consume your stuff, and eventually your products will be willing to pay more. Everyone pays more for a specialist than a generalist. I just had my hair cut, and I paid a lot for my curly hair specialist. Okay. You can charge a lot more than someone who just cuts everyone's hair can charge right? Because he has gone to school studied in New York, how to cut curly hair. That's all he does. He only has curly hair, people in Islam, okay, you can charge more, you'll have less competition, your sponsors will pay you higher CPMs. So as long as you choose a field that is obviously growing, that is on the upward trajectory, a sub niche or a niche, I think it's I think it's a good choice. You know, what we did was we launched all ears English broadly first, and then a year and a half in we launched IELTS energy. And it wasn't so much that I was like, I have to find a niche in ESL. ESL is already a niche kind of, I don't even think of it as a niche. It's a huge market. I wasn't saying I have to find a niche. It's just I was interviewing co host. And I met Jessica and she was so great. I was like, I have to hire this person. And she knows IELTS. So we're going into IELTS. And so that's when we launched IELTS energy. Right? And so I think you could start broad and then you could examine the market, you could survey your audience, and you could say, what do you really want inside this mark? You could do that approach to if you're so concerned, but I would just be aware that if you go too broad, you're competing with so many other shows?
Prithvi Madhukar:Yes, I think it becomes harder to differentiate yourself, as you brought, make your niche broader. So that's definitely i i 100% agree with that advice. I think the more niche, you do go, I think you get to be the industry leader of that niche. And it helps you with your sponsorships. And speaking about sponsorships. I think we're coming to an interesting part of the podcast, which is, I think what many people would like to know is monetizing your podcast? How do people can first off, can you monetize your podcasts? I think the answer to that is yes. But how do you go about it? Where do you start? And what does even monetizing your podcast mean? Because monetizing on YouTube is very different from monetizing podcasts. So let's talk a little bit about that.
Lindsay McMahon:Sure, yeah. So we have monetized in a bunch of ways over the years, we started by just selling our transcripts, and having our show transcribed and selling them and an organised nice edited book of PDF transcripts. And we still sell those actually, I mean, you know, there's, you take a product, someone could essentially they could probably get that for free if they plugged it in to some automatic transcription. But the difference is, we're curating it, we're organising it, we're editing it. And then we're delivering it by email every Monday morning to their inbox. These are busy people, right? They don't have time to go to an editor put it in, let me get the Trent. No, they want to spend money to get a better thing, right. And we're doing it for them. So that would be the first thing to think about is basic principle of business. How can you take something that could be a headache for someone and make it easy and beautiful and simple and clear? Okay, and you can charge for that? 100%
Prithvi Madhukar:beautiful advice.
Lindsay McMahon:And then we moved into taking on sponsors and our first year, we had some really great sponsors, long term sponsors that worked with us for a number of years. And they were you know, we helped them start their companies and get their companies going. They were more forward thinking companies that were like, brand new, and they you know, that was really early to sponsor a podcast right. 2014 15 Wow, they were taking a risk, but they knew we had a big audience even then, and they were excited and now they're huge. They're big companies. At least one of them is And so that's one thing you can do is take on sponsors, we could talk more about programmatic ads and host read ads if you want to. But you know, as your new your listeners are starting their podcasts, obviously, you need to get to a certain number of downloads, you know, depending. However, if you are niche down this is why the niching idea, I have heard this, I have not confirmed this personally. But I have heard that if you are a niche podcast and you have a smaller audience, it's easier to get sponsors earlier. Like if you have 5000 downloads and you're you know, you have the the only podcast on a highly profitable niche that no one else is competing with you, you could probably start to monetize at 5000 downloads rather than 10 or 20 that everyone else is waiting for. Right. And so, monetization through sponsorships courses, online courses, I always recommend that really great way to make money with high margins because you don't need to redo the course every day. You don't need to go order materials, you have no pipeline or streamline. It's just, it's there you make it once you update it every six months. It's great. So courses, transcripts, sponsors, we built an app, you could you know, app development is good too. Is there any direction you want me to go in here, print or Yeah.
Prithvi Madhukar:Writing it down as you're talking actually, these are great stuff. And I guess from a marketing standpoint, it makes sense that when you are niched, it's easier for you to get sponsorships at a lower download because your audience, they're going to convert higher and obviously that counts for your sponsorship company. So I guess from a marketing, it makes sense. And makes sense. It does make sense and like it kind of like tabulates. And you can, it makes it wraps it up really well. And I was I liked the idea that you set courses, because couple of my listeners are, you know, digital entrepreneurs, they have their own courses. And I think when you start your own podcast, and you've understood what differentiates you, you understand your deeper why you understand the nuances of your audience, I think you can always drive them for your courses. I think that's a really good reason why someone would want to start a podcast, I think did we cover that I think we should definitely cover versus one, you know, why should someone even start a podcast, I would really like to dig into that.
Lindsay McMahon:I still think that podcasting is the most intimate way that you could connect with a potential audience, right? Because if you think about it, when you have someone in your ears, that's incredibly intimate, right? That's because they're just listening to you. And maybe they're walking their dog or washing the dishes, that's good. They can be they can move around, when I watch a video, I can't really move around and sort of awkward across the street or get hit by a car or watch it you know, it's not, it's not the most practical thing. But with a podcast, I can go anywhere. And I can feel very, very, very connected to my hosts, I can understand details about their lives, you know, stories they tell. So I still think it's more intimate than video. More powerful than blogging. Social media, I think can be we do it too, right. We have all the channels, of course, and we like it. We have fun with it. But I don't know it can just be a little fast paced, you know, people are just scrolling and scrolling. I think it's the original like form of conversation and connection, podcasting, using the RSS feed, which can go to so many apps in the world, you're not limited to like a YouTube, which is just Yeah, YouTube is huge. But YouTube is one place, you can put your video, podcasting, you can put your podcast episode in 100 different places. So those are a couple of reasons that you should start a podcast.
Prithvi Madhukar:I think those are all fantastic reasons. And I for 1am sold, even though I do have my own. But if I were listening to this about a year ago, I'm pretty sure I was like, oh, yeah, let's do it like, absolutely go forward with this. Because it's so true. I think that podcast one, as you said, it's intimate. It's something that I haven't personally thought about until you just mentioned it. And I said, Yeah, that's absolutely true. I felt so connected with some of the podcasts that I listen to I understand them through their voice modulation, how they speak and how you know how I imagined them to be, I guess that's part of the Charm podcast. So I really like that. I do like that and whether it whereas with video, I can't really focus on my tasks. You know, it's either that or this and I think I really liked that you said it's very important that really spoke to me because I had not thought about that before. And of course various reasons. The RSS feed Oh, wow, that is just brilliant. Because one you're not depending on one particular platform. There's many that you know, you can reach out to and there's a wider spread. You never know where you're going to get your audience. And I think I do want to talk about one thing and that is what are some of the Common mistakes that you see podcasters making at this point,
Lindsay McMahon:common mistakes. So I would say I, you know, I when I listen to podcasts sometimes as a consumer of podcasts I hear people being sometimes being a little bit self indulgent in the conversation between themselves as hosts, right? Like, oh, talking about, it comes back to the old, like, what do you have for breakfast like, if it doesn't relate to your audience in one way or another? Don't Don't, don't say it, like, don't go off for such a long time in a way that's not going to help them always come back to your listeners, everything comes back to them. So yeah, I'll go off and talk about the Twitter acquisition by Elon Musk. But it has to tie back to something I'm teaching or a point that I'm making. And I think they really appreciate that as adults because they're busy, right, you need to respect you need to earn them back every single time they come back with a new episode, earn them back. So not taking your listeners for granted, respecting them and staying on track with your episode. That's why having a container of time that's kind of on the shorter side is is good, right? If I said this could be an hour and a half, or could be however long I want. I could get a little lazy. I think constraints help us to perform better have better quality.
Prithvi Madhukar:Absolutely. So yeah, absolutely. And I think I have one last question for you before we wrap this up. And that is, you know, there are so many social media platforms out there there are you know, there's YouTube, there's why we talked about why they should choose podcasts, but how would they know if podcast is the right channel for their business? What are some of the signs that they probably should hop on a podcast? Or they should choose podcasts on their channel?
Lindsay McMahon:Yeah, I mean, I would. So once you start your show you maybe you could do a little research on who are podcast listeners. And I could tell you that Edison Research does a lot of research on this. They have actual PDFs you can download every year at the podcasting movement, Podcast Movement conference, they present the research on who is the listener? Who is the who are the types of listeners of all of podcasting in general, like who's listening to podcasts, what countries, what ages, how many are they they've got all that research. So you could go look at that research and see if your show lines up with that demographic. But generally, they tend to be well educated people, higher earners compared to like a YouTube that may be changing, because things are kind of blending. The other thing that's important to say is YouTube, and podcasting is starting to blend a little bit. So YouTube is now I want to say it's like the third or fourth place people find podcast, it is a search engine. And they are getting in the game for podcasting. So if we had this interview in a year from now, we could be talking about potentially, you know, you know, because we do put our podcast on YouTube, we record four episodes a week, and two out of four of them are on video, and two out of four of them go on our YouTube channel. And same with YouTube, you can look at the demographics and see who's attract being attracted to your show. look broadly and then survey your audience and see where do you want to consume? Ask them your ideal customer? Where do you want to consume? What do you do? Does that make sense?
Prithvi Madhukar:Yes, absolutely. It also, as you said, it depends on kind of content that your audience consumes some people they prefer video. And if you think that your audience prefers audio than podcasts is absolutely the place that you should be. So yes, it depends heavily on your audience. I think that's the number one thing that you need to focus on. And did you say Edison Research? I just wanted to have Okay, yeah, the link
Lindsay McMahon:is one. Yeah, put the link in the description. Absolutely. They every year, they come out with a new study. And everyone's always really excited to see who's consuming podcasts. And what else are they consuming? Who are the rising social media channels, right? So you'll eventually as you build out a bigger company, you're going to use all of these channels, right? But that would be another mistake. Can I throw this in one last thing, I do see that people try to spread themselves too thin immediately. So my recommendation if you're brand new, starting a brand new company, find your channel that you love the most first like we love podcasting, it's our passion. And it's our biggest marketing channel. And later, we started our YouTube channel because we knew we shouldn't had to, and we did. And then our Instagram and Tiktok and LinkedIn like, right, so we built out from there. But if I loved video, I would have started with video and I would have gone crazy with YouTube and then maybe started a podcast later. Right. So yeah,
Prithvi Madhukar:100% I agree with that. Because I think that was a mistake that I made when I first started. I think I was on all the platforms because I thought it was just necessary. And then I had to figure out okay, what do I like doing? And I think figuring out what your strengths are and working to that. If you're really good with speaking then definitely hop on the podcast. That's definitely really want to work to your strengths, guys, that's that's all I say when it comes to marketing for yourself personal branding. I really think that it's all about working to your strengths. And I think Lindsey definitely covered that. And Lindsay to wrap this episode up what is one actionable step that you can give my audience to implement right after they're finished this podcast episode?
Lindsay McMahon:All right, I would say go and map out your first episode, you know, and then record it, just do it. Even if you don't publish that episode. That is fine. Right, record that episode and see how it feels. To record a podcast episode. Does this feel right? I think there's a level of intelligence we have about what we do well, and what we enjoy when we're doing the thing. So get on the microphone, if you do better with a co host, get a co host hire a co host. Just you know, take them on as a contractor or something in the beginning, right, keep it simple. I personally need that back and forth chemistry, have a conversation. I don't do this alone, because I would be bored. But not everyone is like that. If you like being on that mic on your own, just pay attention to how you feel when you're doing your craft. Alright, so that's so take action is my advice.
Prithvi Madhukar:I absolutely love that advice. Take Action guys and Lindsey. I definitely have listeners from 147 cities across the world if they want to reach out to you for help. Where can they find you?
Lindsay McMahon:Well, that's amazing. You have a huge listener base, a really global group that's plastic print. Thank you. Well, the first thing I would say was go and find all ears English podcast if you type in the all ears English podcast, you will see it our branding is very yellow, there's yellow everywhere. So just hit follow on that show all ears English, with Lindsay And Michelle and then if they want help, you know if they want to reach out to me if I'm doing some informal mentoring for people starting a podcast. You can reach out to me at Lindsey at all ears. english.com That's li n d s ay at all ears english.com And I'd be happy to offer any advice I can.
Prithvi Madhukar:Oh, that's amazing. Well, thank you so much, Lindsay. I'm gonna definitely put all of these links in the description box below. If you guys are listening and you want to reach out to Lindsay definitely do say hi to her. And, you know, tell her one thing that you liked about this podcast episode as well. Lindsay, thank you so much for being on our show. I learned so much from you. And I know that my audience have learned as well. Thank you.
Lindsay McMahon:Wonderful. Thank you so much. This has been really fun. Thank you for having me on the show and good luck with your podcast. I'm so I'm excited about what you're doing here. This is great.
Prithvi Madhukar:Thank you. Well for those of you who are listening all the way up until here. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you guys are staying safe, staying healthy, and I will catch you guys in my next episode. Bye bye