How A Chance Intern Suggestion Sparked A 15-Year Podcast And A Thriving Community with Lorraine Ball

A 15-year podcast doesn’t happen by luck. It starts with a single nudge—in Lorraine Ball’s case, an intern suggesting, “You like to talk… you should have a podcast”—and evolves through experiments, misfires, and a relentless focus on what truly serves listeners. We trace that arc with Lorraine as she shares how an iPhone and Blog Talk Radio turned into a durable content engine that fuels speaking, community, and business growth.

We dive into the early lessons from live call-ins and why she pivoted to recorded conversations to protect pacing and quality. Lorraine breaks down the difference between authenticity and aimless chatter, showing how to be yourself while respecting the listener’s time. She explains how purpose anchors a show—whether the goal is booking talks, nurturing a local network, or driving leads—and how calls to action should change as your strategy does. We talk platform choices and why her community hub lives on LinkedIn, not in a Facebook group that drains energy.

You’ll hear a practical blueprint for repurposing: transcripts into blog posts, one-minute audiograms, AI-assisted summaries, thematic bundles, and timely re-releases that revive evergreen episodes. Lorraine shows how to turn interviews into articles, newsletters, and even a collaborative book that sparked cross-promotion and long-term relationships. We also look ahead: more video, but with stronger branding and less cookie-cutter styling; audio staying vital because multitasking is real life; and hosts who win by delivering clear value, consistent quality, and a strong point of view.

If you want your show to outlast trends, this conversation gives you the tools: define your audience, align each episode to a purpose, make your best ideas live twice, and always end with a meaningful next step. Subscribe, share with a fellow creator who needs focus, and leave a review with one takeaway you’ll implement this week. What will you repurpose first?

Connect with Lorraine:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorraineball/
Websites : lorraineball.com (Personal)
morethanafewwords.com (Company)

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Set Up
• 1:41 Lorraine’s Origin Story
• 3:13 Early Tools And Live Call‑In Lessons
• 6:40 Hosting Skills And The Case Against Live
• 9:42 Authenticity Without Rambling
• 12:55 Purpose, Strategy, And Business Goals
• 16:44 Community Building Beyond The Show
• 19:08 Repurposing Archives With AI
• 22:45 Evergreen Content And Re-Releases
• 26:00 Audience Focus And Niche Clarity
• 28:13 From Episodes To Books And Networks
• 31:24 The Business Of Guesting And Collabs
• 33:09 The Next Five Years: Video, Audio, Branding
• 36:05 Final Advice And Calls To Action
• 38:00 Credits And How To Connect

Transcript

Carl: 0:04

Welcome to Communication Connection Community, the Podcasters Podcast. This podcast takes a deep dive into modern-day communication strategies in the podcasting space. We chat with interesting people who make the podcasting and speaking spaces exciting and vibrant. We also dive into the podcasting community with news, updates, latest trends, and topics from this ever-evolving space. Strap in, it's going to be one amazing ride. Let's dive into today's episode. The first time I heard about podcasting was back in 2012. I was running a part-time business as a speaker trainer and I was still working in radio as well. And I had a colleague say, You should start a podcast. And I know I've told this story many, many times. At that time, I remember saying or asking the question, what's a podcast? It still took me quite a few years before I came to the podcasting space. I often think, though, that what would have happened if I came to the podcasting space sooner, say around 2008 or even 2010. Well, today we are talking to somebody who has been a podcaster since 2010, and it has been an amazing journey for her. We're going to do a dive into her experience in podcasting as well as what's changed for her, what's changed in podcasting, and where she thinks this industry is headed. Lorraine Ball is my guest today. After spending too many years in corporate America, Lorraine said goodbye to the bureaucracy, glass ceilings, and bad coffee. Yeah, a lot of bad coffee in those corporate environments, that's for sure. To follow her passion to help small business owners succeed. Today, this successful entrepreneur, author, and professional speaker, and podcast host enjoys sharing what she knows about marketing in presentations to groups around the country, in college classrooms, and in her weekly podcast, More Than a Few Words. She brings creative ideas, practical tips, and decades of real-world experience to every conversation. I am so thrilled we're speaking with her today. In her spare time, she loves to travel and take photos. She is a sought-after guest and of course a very seasoned podcast host, Lorraine. Welcome to the podcast.

Lorraine: 2:25

Thank you so much for having me, Carl. I am so excited to be here.

Carl: 2:29

I have torn up the script. We're off scripts. We're just running.

Lorraine: 2:48

Almost, it'll be 15 years. Technically, it's 15 years in November, but we did a little bit of an experiment and then repackaged it and January 2010. So yeah, we are coming up on the 15-year anniversary.

Carl: 3:04

Wow, happy podversary. If that can we coin that phrase if it hasn't been I love that.

Lorraine: 3:08

I love that. Give me a cake with a candle in it. It's my podversary.

Carl: 3:13

What was it that led you to podcasting back in 2010 when there were what four or six, maybe eight other podcasters out there? No, I just can't. I know there were more than that, but it was much smaller then. But what led you to the space to begin with?

Lorraine: 3:26

So one of the things when I was running an agency, I always had interns and I always encouraged them to come up with innovative marketing ideas that we could trial balloon on our business and then see if they made sense for clients. So my intern Neil walks into my office and he says, You know, Lorraine, you like to talk. Yeah, actually I do. And he said, You should have a podcast. To which I replied, What the is a podcast? And he said, you know, here's what it is, here's how it works. And I said, you know what? Set it up. He said, You know, you have your new iPhone because they were just coming out. You've got this iPhone, you can record using that. And the next thing you know, we had a podcast. I dove into it, it was fun. I really didn't really have a plan. I didn't have an idea of what it could be or how it could work. I just knew I had smart friends. And when they dropped by the office, I'd whip out that phone and we'd start talking. And it evolved over time.

Carl: 4:32

But it started way back when with somebody saying you should start a podcast. And you and I have a similar story. I had a colleague who said to me pretty much the same thing as I was diving into speaker training between radio gigs. He had shared to me. He said, You know, you got this part-time speaker training thing that you're doing. You should start a podcast. And I remember saying the same thing. What the bleep and bleep is a what? What is that thing? You're saying the pod the what? And even after explaining it, here I am thinking, why would I? I mean, I'm helping people get on physical stages. I've spent years in broadcasting. What is this like an online radio thing? And how is that going to help people on physical stages? I just did not comprehend it. Took me a few more years to wrap my head around it, but now I don't look back. It's been an amazing journey in the podcasting space. It's impacted my business, it's impacted my life, relationships, people I've met. It's just been absolutely phenomenal. How has it changed for you over the years, though? I mean, you've been in it since 2010. Even technology back then, you talk about the iPhone being one of the tools you were using. We didn't have access to the microphones and all of that gear like we have today. How has it evolved for you?

Lorraine: 5:45

Some of our early podcasts, and one of the things is that the early podcasts were audio only. It took me a long time to make that jump. Even when a lot of other people were making the jump to video, I really liked the audio format. But I did essentially, I used a tool called Blog Talk Radio, and it was essentially a call in. You dialed in. Well, in my mind, the podcast was like online radio. That's really how I framed it. And so we were very locked into this 30-minute format, and people would call in. And one of the things that we did that unfortunately, well, fortunately, unfortunately, it's kind of circled back around. We were very active on Twitter. So we would live tweet during the conversation. We were doing essentially Facebook Live before Facebook Live. We were live tweeting, we'd get the tweets. Um Allison, who ultimately became my co-host, worked for me, and she was really snarky on Twitter. So she would take what we were saying with a little bit of edge. And so we built this really nice audience. We were having a lot of fun, but the call-in piece was exhausting because it was very unpredictable. And I was not skilled as a host yet. So I didn't really know how to fill in the gaps when I had a guest who wasn't comfortable with the format. So yeah, that was the one of the early formats that we worked with.

Carl: 7:26

And I'm familiar with Blog Talk Radio. I have another colleague who used that format originally when she was getting into podcasting. That was basically her inception into it was through that platform. And I guess a lot of people did use that platform back in the day. And I like how you mentioned too that this is for a lot of people coming into podcasting back then, they didn't come with the, I mean, not to boast or anything, but but they didn't come with the experience that I come with of I know how to host, I've been on radio, I know how to roll with the punches and the phone's not ringing, well, or the tweets aren't coming in, whatever it is. I can, I can style shift, I can do something to keep the conversation flowing. That must have been very challenging to know, okay, what do I say? What do I do? How do I stall for time?

Lorraine: 8:10

Well, fortunately, while I had not done a lot of radio, um, this is not a voice for radio. This this high-pitched nasal New York is not necessarily what people like, oh, you would be great on NPR. No, no. So while I had done some interviews, but I was a trained speaker, and I was also a trained facilitator. I had done focus groups, I had done team building sessions. So I knew the art of engaging people. But even so, that you're right, that moment where you're like, you're nuts. I had someone on. We invited her on because she was supposed to be an SEO expert. This is 15 years ago. And I asked her what I consider to be a softball question. Because again, I was a marketer, so I kind of knew the answer. I still do this. I ask questions that I know the answer to, but I embody my audience, you know. Hey, tell me how you would define whatever. And I asked her the most softball question and she couldn't answer it. And I was like, oh my God. That was probably one of my worst experiences. And I think that was one of the ones that made me say, we're gonna record these. We are not gonna do these live anymore because I cannot deal with that.

Carl: 9:39

I quite often will, and that's a phenomenal story and a good testament to why do we record and not go live? Because you never know. I always refer back to the slap heard around the world at the Academy Awards a couple of years ago, where that's why we don't go live, because you never know what's going to happen. And even in the podcasting space, you just don't know, and you don't want to be caught where you ask a question like that. It would be like asking a musician, what's the difference between the bass clef and the treble clef? And they go, Well, I don't know. What are you talking about? What's a clef? You just all of a sudden the conversation stalls because you're like, Does this person know anything about music? So in that moment, you must have felt like your guest was not the expert that they claimed to be, or didn't have enough fodder to be able to fill the episode.

Lorraine: 10:27

Yes. And fortunately at that point, I think I know I did. I had a co-host, so it was the two of us and and this guest. And so we riffed. Again, it was a subject I actually knew something about. I'm sure there were a couple of sound bites from our guest, but you know, we'd ask her a question, she'd stumble around and how handled that when that came up in our business.

Carl: 10:54

Wow. And it's funny how things have, you know, you mentioned too how things have evolved. Back then it was audio only. My podcast, for the most part, is audio only. I'm a firm believer in even with the inception of video, without audio, there is no video. I mean, we're not living back in the 1920s where it's, you know, silent movies. We still need the audio piece, right? I have a colleague who says, uh, you know, it's also not mime. You know, you kind of need to have the audio component there. And it needs to be good. It needs to be engaging, it needs to be entertaining, it needs to have a good, clear focus. What else has changed for you over the years in the podcasting space? What are some of the things you've noticed as a host or even as a guest on other shows? Things that you've noticed along the way.

Lorraine: 11:40

I think there is an explosion of people who decide they want to get into the podcast space. And there is definitely a trend right now that personally I don't love. I love authenticity in podcast conversations. I love the dialogue that we're having now where it's definitely you, it's definitely me. We're not putting on these false. So I love authenticity, but I don't want to listen for a half an hour to what somebody did over the weekend when what I really came to the podcast for is a conversation they don't get to till it's 20 minutes in. And I love the fact that a good podcast host, I really feel like I know them. I have some people that I kind of stalk on social media because I love their shows and I think of them as my friends. They don't know me, but I think of them as my friends. But they are people that have found that balance in how they put their shows together. And then you slide over into the, you know, you're talking to each other. I'm glad you're having a good time, but this is not really a podcast. So I won't be sorry when all of those shows go away.

Carl: 12:52

It's one of those criticisms, too, that I've heard from other people. One of the tune out factors for podcasts is it's almost like this love fest between uh hosts, if there's two co-hosts, or a love fest between the host and the guest because they know each other, you know, intimately or they've been friends forever, and they just carry on the friend conversation and they forget that the person that they're talking to or the individuals they're talking to is the audience, and you're leaving them out. It's like standing on a stage in front of an audience and talking to the MC only, or having a conversation with just the person on the couch, not even you know, referencing the audience. So I'm glad you pointed that out. And yes, I won't be sad when those shows disappear. And I think what COVID did, and I'll take your opinion on this as well, your gut instinct. What I think COVID did was it birthed a bunch of podcasters because we were bored, we were locked up, we didn't have a lot to do, not locked up, locked down. Uh maybe we were locked up. So a number of people came into the space, again, not knowing what to do, doing it for fun. That's not what I was going to say. I was gonna say something else, but doing it just for the heck of it, and not really having a plan or a guide as to where they're going with it. And because of how podcasts have evolved since 2010 or even hey, since when I started 2019, you need a little more substance than just, hey, what'd you do on the weekend?

Lorraine: 14:18

Yes, absolutely. And if you follow the statistics, there are I some ridiculous number of news, new podcasts that get started every month, every year. But then if you look at the number of podcasts that have less than 20 episodes, and so you get these people that are real excited and then don't really know why they're doing it. And so as something else comes along, they stop doing it. And again, there are a lot of reasons to get into podcasting. You know, you have a story to tell. Maybe you have a story that really only needs eight episodes. And cool, do an eight-episode podcast, great. If you're doing it for your business, and I was doing it for my business, you need to be a little bit more thoughtful. You need to be a little bit more prescriptive in the steps that you take to ensure that you create something people want to listen to when you're done.

Carl: 15:12

Yeah, yeah, 100% agree with that. And also, I think one of the things that I've experienced as I've worked with clients is goes back to Simon Sinek, what's your why? Or, you know, understand and know your why. But then beyond that, it's like, what's the purpose of the show? What's the end goal? And if you're using this podcast for business, how are you bringing people into your business? Because if you've structured your show to be conversational like this one, even if you're the greatest conversationalist on the planet, if you don't connect the dots at the end and you just say thank you very much, have a great day, people might listen to your show, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll tap into you for your professional services or products.

Lorraine: 15:54

Absolutely. And again, at different places, you know, we were talking about this off the line. As my business matured, as the podcast matured, and we started to figure out what we wanted to do with it. I had different uses for the podcast. When I was trying to book a lot of speaking gigs, I would send links to some of the episodes. There was a point where I was really trying to build a local community network. So all of my guests were people in the indie scene. They were people that were active in Indianapolis and they were in the arts and they were in marketing and they they were well known. And so it was very much the call to action was not really, hey, come work with me. The call to action was get involved in the community and oh, yeah, I'll be there.

Carl: 16:46

It's funny how you mentioned community because that's a huge focus right now. It's not just what happens during the show, it's everything that happens afterwards. It's the community, it's the meetups, it's the Facebook groups, it's the et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You were doing it when it probably wasn't even fashionable to do it.

Lorraine: 17:06

Yeah. You know, it's funny because there were a lot of different experiments we had along the way. And one of the things, you know, in full confession, we had a pretty decent audience and we were using Twitter really well. And we stopped seeing as strong a connection between the podcast and where our business was at that particular moment. So we kind of dialed back. And Twitter was kind of changing. And when I came back around and went, oh, I know what I want to do and started podcasting again, the whole world had started podcasting. And so now I had a much steeper climb to get over that hump to rebuild that audience in that community. And it is still a challenge. Um, I don't love the Facebook groups, they work for some people. I totally get it. It's not where I hang out. And so to me, that was exhausting. And I'm I'm really much more focused on LinkedIn. And that's, you know, hey, if you want to chat with me, come look for Lorraine Ball on LinkedIn. That's where you're gonna find me. And I am building conversations and community there. It's not a structured group yet. It may be at some point down the road, but that's really where I'm having conversations with other podcasters, with potential clients.

Carl: 18:29

But you understand the main point being you understand the importance, the relevance of community and what goes on, not just during the show, but after. It's those conversations through LinkedIn, through Messenger. It's the, as you said, you haven't necessarily started a community yet there, but you understand that if you do, hey, that's where your peeps are going to be hanging out and playing, and you'll be excited to welcome them in at the appropriate time and nurture them and such.

Lorraine: 18:56

Absolutely. And for me, because I am a content marketer, so every episode gets featured in my newsletter, it gets featured in my LinkedIn newsletter, which is a very different audience. It gets featured on my Medium page. Then I go back and I'm like, you know what? I just recorded an episode about creating great content. I've got four other episodes that touch on different pieces of this. I write an article and I link all four of them. I go back through my library and find blog posts that I wrote three years ago, five years ago, and I record them as a solo episode. Or I go back, and this is I love Chat GPT for this full confession. I'll upload a transcript of an episode from seven years ago. I actually use Microsoft Word, it has a great transcription function. I have the transcription. Transcript, then I go to Chat GPT and say, hey, turn this conversation into a blog post, into pull out some points, and all of a sudden, boom, 10 minutes, a little bit of AI. I still have to go back and tweak it and make it sound like me. But then I can link to all the original interviews. You know, I have um 1100 interviews, and there's a lot of content there that would be wasted if I wasn't continually going back to it and saying, hey, if you liked this conversation, listen to this one.

Carl: 20:36

And that's a good springboard into, well, it's not a springboard. We're dove right in with both feet, but but into repurposing the content. I mean, you have 14 years, almost 15 years of content that it's so valuable. And if you've put the effort into record that content and make it live, why would you only make it a one-time thing? Unless that's all you wanted it for. But as I said, most people who are podcasting, and you've cited this, if you're podcasting for business, you're going to be bringing up this topic more than once. Why not leverage it as a blog? Why not leverage it as a post on LinkedIn? Why not leverage it as whatever it needs to be leveraged as you're doing it? But are you fighting that that's maybe one of the stumbling blocks podcasters have as it's one and done and that's it? And we never visit it again.

Lorraine: 21:24

I think a lot of podcasters, when I mention what I'm doing, they're like, Really? I never thought of that. And you know, I listen to, uh, and I'll give you my favorite, I listen to um pop culture happy hour on NPR. It's it's where I find out about movies and TV shows. But invariably, when they went from once a week to every day, there was a huge burden to have lots more content. So what do they do? The episode I was listening to today, hey, Netflix just dropped season two of this show. We're going to re-release our conversation about season one. We think you'll enjoy it. And a number of my podcasts do this. They go on vacation and they tell you, we're going back into our archives. I'm like, what the heck? Why not? If all of these really big shows can do it, why shouldn't I do that?

Carl: 22:22

Yeah, it's it's brilliant. And I think everyone should be doing it. Even if your podcast is hobby-based or passion project-based. I mean, there's unless it is time sensitive and most of that content isn't, unless it's time sensitive, there are many ways you can repurchase it. When we're just scratching the surface on different ways you can repurpose it.

Lorraine: 22:44

You may have, you know, and then this is social media as well. You may have a thousand fans, two thousand fans, whatever it is, and you put a post up. If you look at your engagement rate on that post, you'll be like, oh, 95 people saw that. Oh, 10 of them clicked through to listen to the episode. That means you got 900 people that never saw it, and 990 that haven't heard it yet. Why wouldn't you promote it again? Um, one of the things that I do is I take my longer episodes. Okay, for me, a long episode is 10 minutes. So, you know, you have to understand my format. But I take the 10-minute episode and I create these little one-minute sound buttons. And I share them once a month after the release of the original episode. Because 30 days later, there's a whole bunch of people that never saw the first one. It is different content, it's not even the same. But there's a whole bunch of people that are interested and getting it out there, relinking to the original episode. Here's where you can find the full conversation. Why not?

Carl: 24:02

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think for some people, it it's either forest for the trees or there's overwhelm. They're not sure how do I take all of this content? Because if they're doing a show every week and they're pumping out a new episode every week, heck with daily. Let's just talk about weekly. That means you're constantly cycling through content. Which so for some people it's an organizational thing. For other people, it's a they're on to the next thing, not realizing that they've got that catalog of content. And I coming from the radio world, it was very, very immediate. Everything we did was immediate, almost like Twitter, right? So a tweet lives, I don't even know now what it is, it's 10 minutes and it's done or something like that. So same with radio. The only times that didn't happen was was when it was a continuing story and it would last longer. But I spent a lot of time doing morning radio where you'd have information, it's in, it's out. I call it garbage in, garbage out, because as the host, you need to be on to the next thing. So you can't hold this that in your brain too long. You have to be on to the next thing. But this is different. This is the opportunity to repurpose that content, to highlight it regularly. And I like how you mentioned social media, there are algorithms, folks. And you're right. Sometimes it's only a smidgen of your audience that's seeing that post. So you better be posting it again.

Lorraine: 25:28

You know, I have episodes and I am often disappointed when I launch a new episode and I'm like, oh, is that all? When I look at the listener data, and I'm like, oh, that one didn't do really well. Okay. And then about a year later, I reshare it and I reshare it with another piece of related content, and all of a sudden it blows up, and I'm like, oh, that was good. It just my timing was wrong, you know. And I try to give all of my episodes a second life because they deserve it. They're good conversations, they're fun, and I know that my audience is busy. You know, I'm very clear on who my audience is, and that's the other thing. Can I go off on that tangent for a minute? Oh, yeah, sure. Go ahead, please do.

Carl: 26:13

Yep.

Lorraine: 26:13

You ain't talking to everybody. I don't care who you are. Everyone is not your customer, everyone is not in your audience. When you try to talk to everyone, you end up being very bland and very generic. And nobody really feels like you're talking to them. When you dial in, when you identify who your audience is and what they need to hear, kind of like podcast solutions made simple. You have a very, a very specific niche. You're not looking for the person that's been podcasting for 25 years, and you're not looking for the person who's like, oh, I would never do that. You're looking for the people who are like, this is something that intrigues me. And so you can invite guests and you can talk about things that are going to be really, really relevant for that customer.

Carl: 27:07

Yeah, yeah. Really good example there. The other thing, too, is we we haven't even touched on this yet. And I know you have a living example of this as far as repurposing your content. And I've had a couple of guests talk about this because they they actually lived in the in the publishing world, but you can take that content from a podcast, and that can be fodder for a book, and you don't realize the impact that can have. And you've actually done that.

Lorraine: 27:34

So I invited, I don't remember how many people I actually originally invited, but I had 18 people who had been guests on my show. And I invited them to write a chapter in a book. And it's a little book, it's a little book on marketing, it's not huge, but some of them were authors and were like, yeah, that's great. And others were like, you know, Lorraine, I'm not really a writer. I said, here's what I'll do: I'll send you the transcript. Use that as a jumping off point. So I got all these articles and I bundled it up in a book and I put it on Amazon and I sold some copies. And, you know, okay, I'm not going to get the next Pulitzer, I don't care. But the other thing that that book did is I created one graphic that has all 18 people on it. Then I created graphics for people that were in the same sections, and then I created individual graphics. I shared the main graphic, I tagged all of the people, I sent an email and introduced everybody to each other and told them to follow each other. And again, the people I invited to be in the book were people that had demonstrated that they knew how to play on social media or they didn't get the invitation to the table. And so we got great interaction on social media, but they started talking to each other and inviting each other onto podcasts and sharing content. And so that book built this really nice community. And I still interact, and the book is coming up on its two-year anniversary, and I still engage and interact, and I still hop on LinkedIn and see them talking to each other. And whether it's real-world networking or online networking, one of the best things that you can do is introduce two people that are going to work together in some fashion where they are going to see the value in the collaboration because every time they get back together, you know what? They're going to think of you.

Carl: 29:40

Absolutely. And of course, a lot of these conversations don't happen or wouldn't have happened if you didn't have the podcast. I've had relationships stem from either being a guest on somebody else's show or them coming on my show. I've had clients come into my world having been on my podcast or being a guest on theirs. So you just never know the power of the networking, the relationships that you're building. Are they going to happen right away? No. Will they happen with every person? You'd be an idiot if you'd think they did. Of course they're not going to, but they will happen.

Lorraine: 30:15

They absolutely will. I had a friend of mine. Um, we were in a marketing group together, and she was in a fairly small community, and she published a local community newsletter as a service and got into podcasting and would interview people. So if you were advertising in her publication, you were interviewed on her show. And it became this really nice um reciprocal relationship. She could also just then afford to just go out and do an interview on a local nonprofit and not worry about whether or not they were subscribing to her publication because she was being funded by these others. And it that was really valuable. And I also ran through a period where I had a lot of coaches and consultants that were my clients that were never going to have their own podcast, but I could invite them to be a guest on my show, get the audio content, and then use it in the marketing tools we were creating for them.

Carl: 31:22

It's amazing what you can do with the podcast. There's been a huge evolution. We've talked about that a little bit. Crystal ball, you've been around 14 years, going on 15 years. Where's podcasting heading in the next, let's say, five years?

Lorraine: 31:36

I think you're going to continue to see a move to video. I think that there are a lot of people that are doing just video only episodes. There is a weariness right now, though, with the shorts. Um, there was an explosion a year ago when AI came out. You know, oh my God, it can cut up the episodes, but everybody's episodes look the same. Have you noticed? Like you see them and they all look the same. I think you're going to see a lot of refinement. I think you're going to see smarter marketers taking those video clips and putting them in more branded formats. Um, I know I've started to do that. I started framing them and putting my branding back where it needs to be and getting rid of the silly fonts that really aren't on brand for me. So I think there'll be a refinement, but I also think there will continue to be a place for audio. Because the unique thing about podcasts is the ability to consume it while you're doing something else. While you're in the car, while you're at the gym, whatever it is, I think you're going to see more podcast celebrities. You know, you have some, but I think you're going to see an emergence of more people who, this is my medium, this is where I am, and this is my community. Hopefully, they will use their communities for good.

Carl: 33:06

Wow. Amazing insights. I want to just double back on a couple of things you said there. Number one is the reels and shorts. I couldn't agree more. It's one of my criticisms, one of my belliaches. One of the reasons why we we actually, when we create content for clients, if they need the video version, we'll do a promo reel just because the actual reel itself, the way they're created, you're right. They all look the same. All the cookie cutter, all the same style of fonts, and it overlays their faces, or the cameras entailed it the wrong way, or bad lighting. And again, there seems to be a weariness, as you said, to them. I also want to piggyback on the piece you said about audio, because I know I said it earlier, without audio, there is no video, but I think there's power in that portability. And I agree that video isn't going away, but that portability of audio, I think is going to continue to expand. And if not expand, it's going to continue to be relevant. As relevant, if not even more relevant, than it is and has been up to this point.

Lorraine: 34:13

You know, when we were all trapped at home with COVID, sitting down and turning on YouTube for an hour and flipping through podcasts on YouTube, that was fine. We're not living, hopefully, we're not still living like that. You know, so we're getting out in the world more and we're doing things and being able to take the podcast with you. And this puts, I think, more pressure on podcast hosts to create good content with good audio, with understanding the pacing and helping their guests keep the conversation going and keep it relevant. I think there will continue to be a market for that.

Carl: 34:56

Lorraine, oh my goodness, this has been an amazing conversation. I could talk to you forever, which is a pretty long time for the next 15 years about podcasting, but we won't do that because I don't think I have that much digital tape in my, I only have a couple of terabytes to record it all. But before I uh I turn you loose, I am going to ask a couple of things though. Uh, you have uh a call to action for people. How can people connect with you? What's the best way for them to get into your world?

Lorraine: 35:26

So more thanafewewords.com. There is all of my archives. If you want to work with me, more thanafewords.com slash office hours. And I'm adding a lot of my digital training onto that site as well. So yeah. And if you're on LinkedIn, say hey.

Carl: 35:45

Don't hesitate to do that. We will make sure all of those links are posted in the show notes after for you to connect with Lorraine, Lorraine Ball. It has been a treat. It's been talking to you. Before I turn you loose, though, I'm going to give you the final thought.

Lorraine: 36:00

So this is something that has actually been on my desk for 35 years. Literally, when I say it's on my desk. And basically, it's you can't build a reputation on what you're going to do. Stop talking about it and start doing it.

Carl: 36:19

I love it. I love it. Lorraine, that's a great place to leave it. Lorraine Ball, thank you so much for being my guest today.

Lorraine: 36:25

Thank you for having me. This was fun.

Carl: 36:27

And hey, thank you for being a part of the show today. So glad you could join us. Believe it or not, I can't work this magic by myself. So thanks to my amazing team, our audio engineer Dom Carillo, our sonic branding genius Kenton Dobrowolski, and the person who works the arms. All of our arms actually, our project manager and my trusty assistant, Julovell Tiongco, known to us here simply as July. If you like what you heard today, let us know. You can leave us a comment or review, or even send us a voice note. And if you really liked it, we hope you'll share it with your friends and your colleagues. If you don't like what you heard today, well, please feel free to share it with your enemies. And if you know of someone who would make a great guest on the show, let us know about it. You can get in touch with us by going to our show notes where all of our connection points are there, including the links to our website, LinkedIn, and Facebook as well. And if you're ready to be a guest on podcasts, or even start your own show, let's have a conversation. We'll show you the simplest way to get into the podcasting space and rock it. Because, after all, we're Podcast Solutions Made Simple. Catch again next time.