The Secrets Behind 25 Million Views: Adam Torres Reveals All

Jaclyn Strominger welcomes Adam Torres to the Unstoppable Success podcast, where he shares his unexpected journey into podcasting. Adam, a top podcast host and author of "One Billion Podcasts," candidly discusses how he started with no intention of becoming a podcaster and how his initial attempts were anything but polished. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing opportunities that emerge from listening to others and how that can transform into a successful business. Adam also highlights the evolving landscape of podcasting, revealing that it’s a goldmine waiting to be tapped. This episode is packed with insights for anyone curious about starting their own podcast or looking to enhance their existing platform. A compelling journey into the world of podcasting unfolds as Adam Torres shares his unconventional path to becoming a top podcaster. Initially hesitant about the medium, Adam reveals how a simple need to promote a book led him to launch a podcast, despite his self-proclaimed status as the 'world's worst podcaster.' With charming candor, he recounts the early days of his show, characterized by unedited episodes and a casual recording style that defied conventional expectations. As he reflects on his growth, Adam emphasizes the importance of authenticity in podcasting, advocating for genuine conversations over polished productions. He highlights the evolution of his show and the remarkable trajectory of his career, which now includes hosting over 6,000 interviews, reaching audiences across the globe, and establishing a successful book publishing venture. This episode is not just a recount of Adam's achievements; it's a motivational narrative about embracing opportunities, learning from challenges, and the transformative power of storytelling in the digital age.

Takeaways:

1. Adam Torres started podcasting without a clear plan, showing that success can come from unexpected beginnings.
2. Podcasts can evolve from simple conversations into powerful tools for marketing and business growth.
3. The podcasting industry is poised for explosive growth, with dynamic advertising opportunities on the rise.
4. Intent is crucial; knowing your purpose for starting a podcast can guide your decisions and strategies effectively.
5. Creating a podcast can lead to unexpected opportunities, including speaking engagements and business partnerships.
6. Listening to audie

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Transcript

Recording Started

Introduction of Adam Torres

The Journey into Podcasting

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Unstoppable Success Podcast, where we spotlight visionary leaders who have mastered the art of growth, purpose, and powerful connections. I'm your host, Jacqueline Strauminger, connector, high performance coach, and creator of the Leap to Your Success Framework in Two Steps to Yes. Each week we dive into bold insights, real conversations, and powerful strategies to fuel your growth, deepen your relationships, and ignite transformational momentum. And why? Because you were meant to be unstoppable. Now let's leap into the podcast. Well, hello everybody, and welcome to another amazing episode of Unstoppable Success on this podcast. As you know, we hear from amazing leaders, influential people that are doing it out there and have unstoppable success. They're going to share, they share their tips, their tricks, their insights, and all the good things. I'm your host, Jackson Struminger, and today I get to welcome to the stage to the podcast, Adam Torres. And let me tell you a little bit about Adam. First of all, I'm super honored because he is a top 2% podcast host, global media executive, and he is the author of the number one best-silling book, One Billion Podcast, The Future of All Media. Adam has garnered over 25 million views as the Mission Matters podcast powerhouse host. And his series is heard in 180 countries. We're working our way there. He is hailed by audiences as the new Larry King. Adam is known for creating warm, engaging, and insightful conversations with some of the world's most influential figures, including world leaders, C-suite executives, celebrities, top athletes, and industry shaping innovators. All that great stuff. Welcome to Unstoppable Success, Adam.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Jacqueline, we're finally doing this. I'm so excited to be on your show. Unstoppable Success, let's go.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Yeah. So, Adam, okay, first of all, what made you get into podcasting?

SPEAKER_01 2:11

I I uh I will not say that it was a plan or that I knew that was happening. So just for everybody listening, you know how it's easy to look at what somebody's doing and to be like, oh, they had this plan, or maybe they were really smart and they were strategic and all these other nice things that we like to attribute to people. I was none of those. So I started out, I tell people all the time, and it's actually in my most recent book, uh One Billion Podcasts. I talk about it all the time. I'm like, I say in the book, I'm like, well, I was the world's worst podcaster when I started. I didn't even use my own my real name, literally. I was so deathly afraid that people would know that I even had a show. So true story, true story. So uh and so, like I tell people all the time, I'm like, like, don't think where somebody's at or what they're doing. Um, they were necessarily built for that, or that was the plan. So I did I had no inclination of getting into podcasting. The way it started was we had this book that we put out and we wanted to sell some more books, myself and the other co-founder here, Shirog. And one day he says, Adam, we need to start a podcast. I don't even know that I knew what a podcast was, by the way, Jack. I don't even think I knew what it was. And and I'm like, okay, well, I kind of knew maybe I heard, I don't know. And then I'm like, well, who's gonna do it? And uh he's like, Well, I can so our business relationship, you know, his side of the deal is that he he's busy working and and partnerships, bringing in deals, things like that. He's like, Well, if you want me to decrease some of my sales activity, then maybe I should host this show. And I'm like, no, no, no, it's fine. Like, just tell me what I gotta do. Keep working, Chirac. We need you doing what you do, um, bringing in those deals.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

I was gonna say, did you rock, paper, scissors at no?

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Do you didn't hear what I just said? I just didn't have things like cash flow is the lesser oxygen. No, Shira, go get us some more oxygen tanks, okay? Keep this business alive. I'll talk behind the mic, whatever. And so then I he was the first interview. And I don't even know if you our first 300 episodes, Jacqueline, they weren't even edited. They were like you couldn't, I don't even know if we could call it a show. You could have called it tape recordings of Adam and his buddies and his business partner and his uh like people that he wanted to do business with, and we just uploaded them. That was literally it, not edited, nothing. Put them up, put them out there, and we built an audience. Absolutely unbelievable.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

Yeah, well, okay, so I have to say I tend not to edit ours because I like the authenticity of the conversation, and I think it's it's fun for and I want people to hear what's going on. Um but I'm curious about when you started, okay. So you know what was the ultimate like objective? You said you wanted to sell more books.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Yeah. So I was there for me, there was no objective. I didn't even know what it was. Like I really did. And Sharag just said, like, we need to do this so that we can market, so we can sell more books. We had a book publishing company. We at this point we'd done some uh so we we published books, and I published my biography, or excuse me, I published one of my books, and it was called Money Matters. We got some traction, and then we developed this model around that. You remember the old chicken soup for the soul? Like that old like anthology model, Jack Canfield, D.Peck Chopra, all the you know, the greats back then. Uh so I thought about it and and I created this model, and I was like, well, let's do an anthology series, but let's make it for entrepreneurs. And so we launched that, and and it, you know, it it we became a bestseller, and and just fast-forwarding that, we've published over 400 authors now, and we have a good book publishing division. And one of my my claim to fame is just one of my favorite books that we've published, no offense to anybody else, but I'm from Michigan, I'm from Detroit originally, and we published Barry Sanders' autobiography. So bye-bye, Barry. So that was just, I mean, dream come true, you know, growing up watching Barry play and then getting to publish his autobiography. I mean, absolutely dream come true. On my end, for a book publisher, I can't, I that was just amazing. Um, but I we wanted to sell more books, so we were thinking about the marketing side, and the good thing is Shirag came from a media background. I didn't, so I he'd already built a media company, I think multiple at that point. And myself, I was from the finance side of things, so I was I was in finance, I managed a little under 200 million dollars, and I had a 14-year career in finance before getting into media. So for me, I was just doing kind of what I was told. And now to me, it was again tape recording, the original name of the show could have been tape recordings with Adam, and that's it. Like, I don't like what they were. And you speaking of not editing, here's the funny part. So, for those new podcasters out there, I like what I like your positioning better, Jaclyn, where you want the authenticity. But this was what I would say when people would tell me, they'd be like, because back then the editing, like you had to edit just to make the sound quality better. Now, your zoom and everything else that we're recording on now, a good mic, zoom, like you get you like 80-90% there because it's it's such good quality. But back then that was not the case. So, so people would be like, I'd have friends and other people, they'd be like, Adam, you know, the uh the audio, I don't know, it sounds a little off, or it's a crackley, or this, that. And I'm like, really? Let me work with the editors, let's figure this out. Let me I'll I'll work on it. I'll work on it. Uh and and then the next week be the same thing. Adam, what's the like what's going on here? Like the edit. I said, okay, I'm I think we found the problem now. Next week, listen to it again. I just wanted downloads, Jacqueline. We weren't doing anything. And the funny thing is when some people would be like, Yeah, I think that episode was a little better. It sounded like they fixed what I'm like, really?

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Okay, listen to the next one just to make sure that they keep it consistent. Nobody editing those.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

Give me the download.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

I want the download.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

Right, we want the download, so like make sure people we want the listeners, we want all of that. So, so when you were talking about books, I was I was it's not just your own book publishing. So I want to go back. Like, how did you get into book publishing?

SPEAKER_01 8:16

If you went for I didn't want to do that either. So, all of these are like you'll notice a theme here of me not looking at things, and then people roping me into it. And if you're listening to this right now and you have something you want me to do, no.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

I have an idea for something I'm gonna talk about.

The Journey into Book Publishing

The Journey into Book Publishing

SPEAKER_01 8:34

No, no, I want to start any more business. I don't want to just know, okay. So this is how they rope me into this one, Jacqueline. And that was astute. I didn't know you were gonna go there, but so another thing I didn't want to do, but you know, in retrospect, God has other plans for you. So uh you we make plans so God can laugh, right? That there goes the saying. Uh so he was laughing at this one, or she was laughing at this one, whoever. So I um so I put out my first book, which I didn't want to do that either. So my very first book, Money Matters. I I had just started my own firm. So I'd been working in finance for a long time. And then my mentor he says, Adam, you got to write a book. And I'm like, I don't want to write a book. Like, and at this point in time, I didn't know anything about branding, marketing, I didn't even know about the benefit of sharing your story. Complete novice. Remember, I was completely left side of the brain, and from the standpoint of I grew up in finance. I started at my first firm when I was 16. So all I thought about was like numbers and finance, and I had that type of person in my life that I spent the majority of my day with. And even conversations I had like through the course of business, they were always left side of the brain. Like that's just the way it was. So when he says this, I'm like, man, what do I don't get? Broke people write books. That's what I told him. And he started laughing. I'm like, why do I care about a five-dollar product? Like, this is stupid. I move millions of dollars, like broke people write books. Why am I gonna do that? And he's like, Yeah, but you hired me, and I'm telling you that this is what we need to do. And I'm like, okay, well, that I can respect. I do listen to my mentors. He'd accomplished some things that I didn't, you know, that I haven't at that time. And I'm like, okay, so I listen. So I go forward, I write the book, and we did and it again self-published. I call it my ugly duckling. I keep it by my desk so other people could see it. And this should be an inspiration. The design is so bad that I say anyone can do it. It's very go online. If you're watching the video, you see this is like it's got a little bit of like damage over here. That's in the design. Like it's not, it's not professional. But this is before we had a book publishing company, before we were in that business. I just did it to check a box. But the crazy thing was this even though I did it to check a box for my mentor, um, we started I started getting these inbound inquiries like on LinkedIn, completely cold, by the way. And I was I found myself on speaking tours as far away as China. And I'm like, what? What is this? These people are crazy. I thought it was scams at first. I'm like, what? You're gonna wait, you're gonna pay, but then I saw the companies they work for, companies like Moody's Analytics. I mean, huge companies. And I'm like, okay, well, I'll you know, I'll take that check. That's fine. And and then from there, I I thought these people were crazy. First off, I'm like, that's amazing, great, whatever. Um, and it was accomplishing what I wanted to do because what I did was I use it as my business card. So I gave out tons of these books, and people started continuing to do business with me. So what my mentor said would happen did happen. And then what I didn't expect was that some of the people that I was now doing business with on the financial side of things, and some of my referral partners, they were like, Man, Adam, I like what you did with your book. Can you help me do one? I'm like, I'm a freaking financial advisor. No, are you crazy? Like, what are you talking about? Go to a book publishing company. What are you talking about? Can I help you? It's ridiculous. So I'm like, Do you know who you're asking? Like, remember, go to the experts. I'm definitely not the expert, but for whatever reason, my story resonated, everything else. And I said, Well, um, if I am gonna do it, I just again being a finance guy, I looked at all the models out there and I knew that you know, writing a book is great. I highly encourage people, we publish a lot of books, but when you write them by yourself, it's kind of lonely. Like you're by yourself, you're by yourself promoting that book. So the original thought process around the anthology model, which for those of you that don't know what that is, that just means a group of individuals come together, everybody submits a chapter or a couple of chapters, you put it together, and then all of you promote the book. So it's more like a communal feel of a book. Um, I was like, oh, that would work. So then the initial group of authors, I lived in Beverly Hills. They were a bunch of different um business partners and referral partners, and just people I wanted to do business with in Beverly Hills. I put out the call, hey, who wants to be part of this? Uh, people signed up, and uh, we all we all threw in a couple thousand dollars so that we have money for marketing and to make it actually look a real book. And that's how I got into book publishing. In fact, my book, my my business partner, so Chirac, who I mentioned a couple times, that's how he originally I I showed I I pitched him on being in the book. I'm like, hey, I'm gonna do this book thing. People are asking me to do. Do you want to be part of it? He's like, man, I don't want to be part of it. I want to be part of the business. And that's how that that part of it started too. Was not a plan. Doing stuff people don't want me, they asked me to do, Jacqueline, that I don't want to do.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

But there's a theme here, and I think this is I I I kind of want to pull this out a little bit. I mean, it's it's not just being in the right place at the right time, but it's it's seeing an opportunity. But at the end of the day, what you have done is you've you've found a way to take something for people to ask you. It's serving. You're serving to people who have asked, and you've made that into a business. And it's and it's I mean, it started out from my from what I'm hearing from you, is from the heart. Oh, how can I help? Is that would you would you say that's a truth truth to that?

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Um, I think that'd be giving me a little too much credit. What I would say more so, you're right. Everything that you said is right, other than maybe the intent. I was still and I and still am more left brain. So I was thinking of it more like I'm looking at a chart of a stock and I'm seeing a trend. And so when I see this trend, all I'm like in finance, what do I want to do when I when I was actively by by the way, for everybody listening, I haven't had licenses in many, many years and I don't manage money anymore. But um, what I was doing is you're listening for trends and you're listening for and watching for trends. So for me, and in the warm-up, we were talking about like, you know, eyes, and I said, Well, I don't see, I don't see the best, but I hear very well. That's probably what makes me a decent host. But uh listening, so what happens is there's reoccurring themes, and I feel like all of us have people that are asking us for things, but you don't everybody doesn't always see the common thread there. So all I was doing was right I listen. I'm like, it and I can't I can't help but see something after one person asked me, Hey, will you help me write a book? Then another person asked me, then another person, and I'm like, there's something here, like there's a need, and then and you if you look at the whole course of the business, I'll give you like just one other one, like fast forward a bit. Um, during COVID, we weren't uh, and and all of our products, by the way, we rarely have misses at this company, only from the standpoint of we only launch stuff when people like are continue to ask for it, like literally. So if somebody's not asking for it, we don't. So during COVID, everything shut down um in terms of conferences, and a big part of our revenue was you know, speaking, and I go out, speak, I do all these other things, and then um podcasting and all these other things that I get paid to do, which bring in revenue for the company, which you know pay salaries. But um, when everything closed down, there's no more conferences. People started asking, hey, will you help us launch a podcast show? And I at first I'm like, Well, I'm like, no, that's not what we really do. We don't bring on clients, we do it internally. Sure. We and then I'm looking at it and I'm like, well, our team does have some bench time. So then those people that wanted us to help launch it, I was just, you know, we're very transparent. Hey, we haven't done this for other people. We obviously have the capability and you understand that, but if you're willing to be the you know, the guinea pig in the beginning, we're probably better than most others because we've grown and done all the things that you want us to do, we've already done for ourselves. But some of those processes internally may be a little clunky in the beginning because they have to be built out, you know, to an enterprise level, whether it's the project management and all the other things, um, so different processes. But the initial clients were in, and now to date, we've launched over 250 shows. But 250 shows, and as and as a company, we've put out over 10,000 episodes. And then myself and myself, just for doing interviews myself, I'm approaching 7,000 interviews. So we are, you know, arguably one of the most experienced outfits, I would argue, in podcasting. I I'm not gonna say the biggest, but we're pretty we're pretty experienced, I would argue. But that was just listening. So I'm just uh it's just listening to the market. That's more so. I like to think the heart in there, that's that's a piece of it, but the first part is like listening and not overextending. Can we do it? Is this worth us figuring out? And if it is, and if we can, then we move forward.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

That's that's actually kind of really it's really great. So that's a huge number of podcasts that you have done personally. Is those individual episodes of your own, or are those also you being on guess, you guessing?

SPEAKER_01 17:24

No, actually, I I'll I'll answer that in two parts. Those are individually episodes of my own, and that also wasn't the plan in the beginning at first. When the demand started increasing to come on the show, in the beginning, we had to like for all the new podcasters out there in the beginning, we didn't have a website, we didn't have anything. We had to beg people. If you had a pulse, you were getting on the show, period. I don't know, like you is that put you know, the uh they got a pulse, they're breathing, put them on. I don't know how much longer, but whatever. Get them on. So that's the early days. But then the as the as the uh demand to come on the show kept increasing. So, for example, last year we had over 30,000 applications to come on the show. So as the demand kept increasing, I didn't want to tell people no. Like, I was I just I wanted, I felt like we were doing a great service. I didn't have all the business side of it completely figured out, but I was like, no, this is unique, this is something we're doing. And then going back to God and maybe how you have how he has plans for you that you don't know, I was already, even though I didn't know anything about hosting, because of my years in finance, I was already, I didn't, I didn't think about it, but all those years, I was in a very similar mode of training, it's the same type of conversations, and I was having those conversations up, you know, 10, 15, 17 hours a day already. So then to translate that to podcasting, where you know, I I do my record is 91 interviews in a week, and uh, and uh my average for in the beginning was over 70 interviews a week, a little over 70 a week was my average. And right now, I like to say I'm kind of like a part-timer because I only do 40 to 50 interviews a week right now, but I'll do a solid, you know, 1500 to 2,000 interviews this year. And so I was in those early days, I I the finance side of things was kind of wiring me for this. So I don't recommend anybody do what I just said, nor do I think that they need to do it. Going back to being the world's worst podcaster, the fact that I did sometimes people are like, Man, you got 7,000 or you're approaching 7,000 interviews. Whoa, that's like I'm like, yeah, and I'm still not a house, a household name. I gotta get better. There's a problem here.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

Maybe beep up that marketing.

The Shift in Podcasting

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Yeah, it's funny that you say that because that's not our intent. We could. It's so interesting. Like, even my interview style, I right now I'm talking about myself to answer the second part of your question about guesting. I just started guesting last year. I've been in this business going on 10 years. I just started guesting, and the reason was it the idea wasn't to grow my brand or my face, the idea was to provide a platform for other people to tell their story. And the only reason I started guesting is um my heart kind of changed on that, and I was like, and people were spreading so much misinformation in the podcasting industry and and around podcasting. And as I started going on people's shows, the number one question that people would always say is like, Well, isn't podcasting like oversaturated? There's too many, there's this, there's that, whatever. And I'd be like, When somebody asks me that question, it means that, and no offense to the person, whether they're podcaster or otherwise, it just means they know nothing about the podcasting business, like zero. Because if you're asking that question, you don't know the numbers. I'm not saying they're not great hosts. There are arguably many of them are better hosts than me. I'm not talking about hosting skills, I'm talking about understanding the business of it. And that's why I wrote that book, One Billion Podcasts. That was the central theme, is to is to teach people the business of podcasting. And while right now is the greatest time to be starting a podcast, because there's only four million roughly of them, depending on where you get your data. It's over 150 million YouTube channels. Podcasting hasn't even begun. And people, and in the book, I go through why that is. I go through and I juxtapose and make a case. It's a case study between YouTube, why YouTube grew, why um podcasting did not grow at the same rate, and now why podcasting is set and primed to grow to those levels of YouTube and beyond.

SPEAKER_02 21:26

Well, that's so true. So it's so interesting because you know, a lot of people will ask about, you know, show outputs, whatever, you know, and all those things. And people will say, you know, God, there's so many podcasts. And I'm always, and I'm like, it's a great way to get content out there. And it's I'm surprised and I'm curious what you see. If somebody appears on your show, how often do you see them using the content?

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Well, first off, when they somebody says there's so many podcasts, that's an incorrect statement.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Right.

The Rising Influence of Dynamic Advertising in Podcasting

SPEAKER_01 21:56

So you have to start at that. If anybody says that, that means that they don't know. They're repeating information that's incorrect that they heard somewhere, but that they have no idea. Because when you look at, and I'll I'll give I'll give the reason just super brief on why there's four million versus the hundred and something million in YouTube. And I'll give it make it really quick, but I want because I want people to see why. If they have that thought in their mind that wow, there's so many that they're just completely, absolutely wrong, period. And that they have to, if they want to be in this business, it's a paradigm shift. So think about it this way when YouTube started, YouTube had and they created, I think it was 2007, 2008-ish, roughly in those years. They not not when they started, but when they created their partner program. Their partner program for everybody that's listening, all this means is that you upload a video, you can get paid. That's it. Simple as simple as a day. You don't have to sell advertising, you don't have to do anything else. YouTube already took care of that through their partner program through so it was a centralized program. So that means if you were a small, if you were if you were small um uh content creator, and this is the early days, everybody got paid for the most part. Like it didn't have all these complicated hours and all these other hurdles you had to jump through to monetize. It was like, hey, you're getting paid if we're getting paid. So it was a very, very fair, equitable system in the beginning. For podcasting, podcasting grew out of radio, so everything was decentralized. There was no central platform. So what this meant is if you were to launch a podcast in the early days, your chances of monetizing, if you weren't in from the radio business or if you didn't understand that type of business were basically zero. Why? Because who's gonna advertise on a small platform or who's gonna advertise when there's basically no downloads? You're just starting. The answer is nobody. So what happened for that is a lot of the early creators, maybe they they didn't they didn't stick with it. Like some of them did, some of them didn't, whatever, but they had like no chance of actually monetizing because there was no centralized area, and there also wasn't what dynamic the dynamic advertising concept didn't really apply to podcasting at all. And for everybody that just so you know what that means, just high level, not getting too complicated. All that dynamic advertising means is that uh once you you put it, you don't have to put the ads on on the on the channel yourself. The the platform does it automatically, and when the spend is done, just like you're watching TV, a new ad plays, so you don't have to redo everything for podcasting. This didn't exist. So what happens is it went, it was like out of it was born out of radio. So a host had to physically read the ad to get paid for the most part, or they had to insert it. But the key here was you couldn't monetize a back catalog. Why? Because the host already read the ad. You couldn't take the ad, you couldn't then take the episode down and re-record it, put it out there. So I tell you all this just to educate you slightly on the background. The book with the number onebillionpodcast.com completely free. It goes further into that concept and it also gives you the numbers, the timelines, why? But here's the big key, and here's the here's the light at the end of the tunnel. Dynamic advertising is prevalent now in podcasting. Those numbers are gonna continue to grow. So the same benefits that YouTube had in the beginning, podcasting now has. So that means even small creators can be rewarded, which means that that this industry is gonna get way more sticky. And the numbers just one number to stick out 80% of revenue now in the pot, depending on where you get your data from podcasting, it comes from dynamic advertising now, something that didn't even exist before. So when you think about the trends, now let's couple one more quick thing. Um, you now look at other countries like Africa, look at other countries that that are being brought online. And that I interviewed a um a CEO of this solar company maybe a month or so ago, and he was talking to me about how the World Bank, you know, this they have this like it's called 300 million, like initiative 300 million, something like that. And uh essentially their goal is to bring electricity to 300 million homes. And they've solved, so this company alone, and I'm sure others are involved in this initiative too, have solved the concept of bringing electricity to these homes. And in this particular company's case, they're doing it at less than a dollar a month. So now you got hundreds of millions of people that are also gonna be that much more plugged in. What are they gonna go to first when it comes to creating? The simplest thing ever, audio. So now you're gonna have when I talk about 1 billion podcasts, right now there's only 4 million. There's gonna be 10 million, there's gonna be 20 million, there's gonna be 50 million, there's gonna be a hundred million. So you can right now, 100% predict the trend and the future of this, which makes this the biggest media and business gold mine in in existence, period. You know the trend of what's gonna happen, and so even bad shows, no offense. Um, I'll say my show. If my show's bad, my show, whatever, it's gonna benefit from the trend alone. So I and I I say that just for a slight education because the part of like content, you're right, Jacqueline. Like it is content and it does it, it lets you get out there and get your brand and all this, but on a much, much higher that's that's like table stakes. That's like the beginning level of just what's a benefit now. But for those that take this seriously and stick with it long term, they're gonna create generational wealth from what they originally started as maybe a branding exercise or it was just fun.

SPEAKER_02 27:23

Right. Yeah. So it's but interesting about that from the standpoint of of being a host. I'm I'm always surprised when I see when I have a guest come on, and I love that they're coming on and they get to tell their story because that's and and we're finding what helps them be unstoppable and but I'm always surprised how they don't all then use that to promote themselves to reuse the content on their own channels. You know, it's it becomes one-sided. And I feel like it's I feel like the podcast and the guests, it's a it's a partnership in a way. So somebody comes on, and we're hoping that they're gonna share the content too.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

I'll tell you what's interesting is it's it's changed. I've been doing this long enough. You're you're correct. Many people are still of that light. They think that uh that it's going to all just work out and do it on its own. On one sense, um, they are lucky about AI. So it is actually true now. So what'll happen is over time, the AI is just so good that when they put in their name or something else, what's gonna happen is like my interviews, especially some of the old ones, come up. If you if you Google somebody's name, our plat, my platform is bigger and bigger year over year, assuming I, you know, I live and it's a good, I'm healthy and I can keep recording at a clip of what I'm doing, like the domain authority and the authority of my interviews is only gonna grow year over year. So what'll happen is they're going their their status, and even an interview they did with me five years ago is gonna go up, whether they shared it or not. So that AI is working on their side, but on their for their own selves and their own understanding of it, it used to be way worse. It would be so interesting. So I'm gonna pull out a random number. This isn't completely accurate, but let's say that I did 10 interviews. If we go back, you know, as little as five years ago, um, I did 10 interviews, maybe one out of that 10 would go promote that interview. One out of 10, maybe, and that's because they weren't even logging into LinkedIn back then. And these are CEOs, by the way. These are like legit, you know, people that are that are vetted and that are brought on the show. These aren't like slackers by any means, but at that point, it was a matter of they didn't necessarily think they needed it, like they're still not educated on it, like ah, social media, I don't want to do that, or LinkedIn. Oh, that's I don't need to do that or whatever. They didn't really respect their digital um footprint. So that was a big part of it. And that's as early as I'd say five years ago, six years ago. Now I would argue, even as big as our platform is, we reach over a million a month, and even as big as the platform is, I'd say maybe six to seven, seven out of ten now promote, but there's still a solid three there that that they don't they just leave it out there and they're they're kind of like checking a box, even though they have amazing, amazing stories, not they're amazing guests, by the way. I'm not saying anything about that, but they don't, um, it's just not part of the they quite still don't understand. And some of these people have larger companies, and you would think that the they'd have their PR marketing team and everybody else do their thing because they understand what you know, they they work so hard to get them booked on the show in the first place, then to drop the ball afterwards is kind of interesting to me. But on the other side of things, for us as hosts, it doesn't, I mean, this is gonna sound bad, but it doesn't matter anymore. They're part of your catalog, and AI, if they become or if they're interesting enough for somebody to Google, and as your show grows and everybody's show grows, that's on it. Like that's gonna be the key there is the catalog, it's original content. AI is not making that up, but AI is cataloging. The cataloging is insane. The other day we did a search, and this was my team was looking for a um, they were looking for a series of interviews that I do for the Milk and Global conference. So it's called we call it our Milk and Global Conference uh series. And just for a quick note for those that don't know what the Milk and Global conference is, it's probably number one or number two conference in the world just for a ticket. So just to attend, it's 30,000, 35,000 a ticket per ticket. Like, no, it's it's not literally top one or two conferences in the world. It's no joke, and we've been covering it for years. So, um, and I've probably approaching I don't know, 200, 300 interviews for that conference. So I've been covering it for years. So my team was looking for some of the cat, and I said, I don't know, like Google it, put it in AI, whatever. And so they put in three words Adam Torres and Milken. And it came up with the in the catalog. It said, I've been the years that I've been doing the series, it said Adam Torres has been covering the insane. It came, gave some key interviews from the series, all these other things, and I'm like, wow, this is like for those that are out there doing the work, putting in the time and building a catalog, they're gonna be big winners because you can't fake that. That's not AI generated content. You can't go back in time and say, hey, AI, I've been covering this conference since 2003. Wink wink. No, you haven't. It's not the days of just like, you know, putting up a pretty website and like good branding and the fine. By the way, I'm not against branding or any of that. We have a branding agency, so I we do personal branding, so I'm not against any of that. But the day of just having a great website, some good headshots, and things that match correctly, um, so people can find you online. That's just like that's just the game. That's the the ticket like fee to playing this game in business now. Like that's the entrance fee. But it's now it's like, okay, you have that now. What? And like what is creating content?

SPEAKER_02 32:57

Right. So where do you where do you see I mean, I obviously there's growth, but where do you see the biggest growth happening now, like in the next five years with podcasts? Yeah, besides the monetization part.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

So uh for one, the the opportunity for hosts, like the opportunity for hosts is insane and the demand is insane. So when I look at other countries, especially because now with AI, it's so easy to try to to translate entire shows into other languages. Like, I'm blown away. So just to give some context, when I used to, when I first started in this, let's say that and we're a California company, so we started in Los Angeles, that's where I'm based. When I started, my interviews would be um would be primarily California, then it grew, then it became other states, then Texas, then all the way to New York and Miami. And now, now every day I I circle the globe at least once. My first interview might be Singapore, next one might be Abu Dhabi, next one might be London, next one might be California, next one might be Florida, and these are like business leaders from all around the world. So, what that what that leads me to believe is not only are the down is there an opportunity for hosts, but the demand is now so international to be on shows. And when you think about and where people are kind of a little miseducated, is they think that um that they they have to know other languages to do these shows. Uh, Singapore, they speak English, like all the all these interviews, I don't speak any uh Jacqueline, I don't speak any other language. So I'm circling the globe, you know, once or twice a day, not a year, not a week a day with my interview series. And so now when you look at how those listeners are gonna bubble and burgeon over time, the possibility for growth, especially just for a show, like obviously the huge, huge ones like your Joe Rogan's and all this, who just dominate, especially in the US market, like absolutely dominate. But there's a whole world out there right now. I'm seeding interviews and I've been guesting and doing more things in Africa. I'm like, man, I'd love to go viral over there. And all of a sudden, like, I I mean, there's just so much potential for downloads and for audience, just period. So I like to think the international side is it US is always gonna probably gonna be you know number one when it comes to this piece of it because we're started. That's like obviously the Hollywood, everything else. That's you know, we sell our content everywhere, but um, look at India, look at Africa, look at Asia, look at all the Asians, or look at the Middle East. I mean, look at all the places that speak English. I mean, there's so much opportunity worldwide.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

Yeah, no, it's actually it's actually quite fascinating when I look and see what countries that that my show is in right now. It's like I look at it and it's and I'm like, oh my god, somebody from Israel listened to it, and somebody from it's like the coolest thing. It's like and like every time it's like it's you know, the the page rank keeps going where it says, you know, now it's 24, now it's 28, and it's like increasing by the number of countries that you're in. I find that absolutely fascinating. So, Adam, if you could give somebody one tip about podcasting, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 36:03

I would say figure out what your intent is for starting a show and just be honest with yourself. Like that's the first thing your intent. And in the book, so I I talk about this, but if you're gonna be a hobbyist, that's fine. Be a hobbyist. If you're gonna be a professional, that's fine. But whatever it is that you're gonna be, like, you got to understand your intent first. And then and then after you have your intent, then you have to kind of start to learn the business. The first thing I want people to do, read my book. It's gonna save you a lot of time. It's free. You get it at onebillion podcast.com. Um, start with that. It'll there's also a free audio version of it, and you know, you're gonna listen to it. It's I think it's like two hours is the audio version run of it. Um, but that's gonna save you nine years. That's nine years of knowledge and a two-hour listen. And there's no fluff. It's gonna educate you on how to not quit your show. That's the number one thing, how to not quit it, how to design the systems around it, the business opportunity of it. And by the time you're done with that, you're gonna know what you want to do. It's written for two different audiences. It's written for those that already have a podcast, but they want to grow it, they want to monetize it, and they want to um understand the business of it, number one. And then it's also written for the novice and the person that's always been kind of like podcast curious, but they kind of don't know if they're like if it's the right thing for them and if it's worth their time, but they're just super curious about it. Like those two audiences. Um, my aim and my goal is that for those experienced podcasters that reads it, that read it or listen to it, that they have a paradigm shift and they're like, oh my gosh, like I had this goal mine under me this whole time, and I had no freaking idea. This podcast is part of the rest of my life, and I'm gonna design a systems around making that possible. And for the novice, it's like, okay, now I know what I'm getting myself into. Yeah, I want to do it this way or I want to do it that way. And there's no right or wrong way, it's just understanding the game and the business and what you're doing before you put in that little bit of groundwork, you're gonna save yourself a lot of heartache and a lot of potential um failure if you quit. Because that's the only way to fail, is to quit.

SPEAKER_02 38:14

Is to quit, right? Um, Adam, I can talk you to you about this forever because I I love this whole topic, but I want listeners to get more of you. And so, where can I find you? I will put in the show notes the link to the One Billion podcast. Guys, get the book. Uh you know, I'm going to get it right now. Um but get the book. But how else can people connect with you and and find about more of what you're doing?

SPEAKER_01 38:37

Or can super simple. Ask Adam Torres on Instagram, easiest way. There's a link there as well if you care to look at you want to listen to the show, you want the free books, this book. We have other books that are completely free. I like to say we give away more free content than any company of our size on the planet. Don't believe me, check out that link and you will see. Um, but ask Adam Torres on Instagram. That's the simplest way. And if you have a show concept or something else you want to pitch, um, send me a DM. All good.

SPEAKER_02 39:05

So, listeners, I want you to understand something. Unstoppable success, if you don't have a podcast, start one and get Adam's book because it will truly help you with that unstoppable success. And do me the favor, listeners, besides connecting with Adam, share this podcast with people that you know, leaders, business owners, and other professionals that you will that you know will get something out of this show because I know they will. I'm Jacqueline Schuminger, your host. Adam, thank you for being an amazing guest. This is Unstoppable Success. And keep on listening and keep leaping to your greatest success. Thank you so much for joining me on the Unstoppable Success podcast, where we don't just talk about growth, we leap toward it. If something today lit a fire within you, sparked a new idea, or gave you the extra push forward, please don't keep it to yourself. Share this episode and podcast with a friend, colleague, or fellow high achiever. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review, and most importantly, connect with me, Jacqueline Strominger, at leaptoyoursuccess.com for coaching, community, and your next bold move. Keep leading with intention, keep building your network with purpose, and most of all, keep leaping because you were meant to be unstoppable.