Rushab Kamdar: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Business 360 Podcast where we will take a 360 degree view of all things business in under 30 minutes. I'm Rushab Kamdar, an entrepreneur giving back. Although come to think of it, it's not like I took something. Let me think about this one.

What's going on, Business Heroes? Welcome to a bonus episode. It's a continuation from episode 10, where we spoke to Billy Thorpe, who is a podcaster and a podcast consultant. In episode 10, Billy spoke quite a bit about how to start a podcast and the benefits a podcast has for any business. There were some additional important information Billy had provided during our podcast interview and I felt it would be great to kind of make a mini episode about it.

What I like about the clips that we're going to play today speaks directly to traditional business owners who may not exactly know how to leverage podcasting to their benefit. Additionally, Billy gives a couple more tips on how to do hybrid podcasting, which essentially is audio and video. Because of the pandemic and because of everything going virtual, 99.9% of podcasts these days are through Zoom. And that means that there are video recordings of these podcast interviews. Billy's going to share his viewpoint on how we can leverage video and audio, or as I call hybrid podcasting to our advantage. Although I aim to keep my podcast under 30 minutes, there's a lot of great interviews that I have, and there's a lot of important information that the guests provide.

So time to time, I'm going to do more of these mini episodes because I want to make sure that the important information gets to all of you. For all my sports fans out there, just think of it as over time. Also some more exciting news, in the coming weeks, I want all of you to keep your eyes open as I'm going to be introducing what I call solo episodes.

That's essentially me talking about certain business topics, business scenarios, business strategies, and really just trying to give a different spin to the Business 360 Podcast. So be on the lookout for it. You'll definitely see and hear more information about it. And it's something I'm really excited about and hopefully all of you love it too.

So with that, let's get to the overtime of episode 10, Podcasting 101 with Billy Thorpe.

So if you are an entrepreneur, right, and you have a business. Whether it's a business that's online, consumer front facing, or it's a traditional business, like a restaurant or,  you're an accountant, a CPA, an insurance agent, a realtor, any of those types of businesses, how can they leverage podcasting to their benefit?

Billy Thorpe: [00:03:07] I'm thinking the realtor one, for instance, cause we just got a realtor in our studio space here and you know, we're working with them to really launch a show. And so this gets into a little bit of the monetization side of it. But if I'm a realtor and I start a, you know, my whole objective is I want to find buyers and sellers of homes or commercial property or whatever it is.

So if I start a podcast and really, and not just say, I'm going to start a podcast about real estate. Now that's one angle you could take but what we are talking about is hey let's start a podcast about the community that you live in that you're serving. And then you bring all these other, you know, cause you could bring in all these other business types or whatever to talk about their experience. You can bring in the average Joe to talk about their experience, coffee, shop owner, people at the coffee, you know, like whatever. Creating this community experience.

And so then what you can do from there is really, you know, you're talking about something else, so it's a little bit easier to share. Like if I'm listener and I'm like, oh man, I didn't know this about, you know, downtown Wilmington where I live. Like, I didn't know that about there. I'm going to send this over to three other people and say, hey, listen to the story. I didn't know this was, you know, the history or whatever it is.

And then what you can do from that point, as a real estate agent, cause I, I got my real estate license a couple of years ago and I know the grind and the . And your like, man, I'm just going to be in this for a minute. It's a long play as well is you can bring on sponsors really early. You can bring on those mortgage guys and those air condition, you know, companies that really service and appraisal companies and attorneys, and you can bring those guys on as sponsors for your show and pay for your either studio time, pay for your equipment, pay for your editing or whatever, pretty early on, because they want to partner with people who are serving their community as well.

So, there's probably a lot of different creative ways to do that. Insurance agents. It's all about people doing business with people. So the more you're out there, the more you're vulnerable, the more you put yourself out. Um, you know, put yourself out there and say, Hey, this is, this is who I am. This is how I can help you.  I think it gives better odds of doing business because people do business with people, not logos and brands and all that.

It's nice to have, but I've gotten way more business from having, you know, face to face conversations and having people refer me word of mouth than anything else. So that's kind of my take on, you know, on the traditional business, utilizing podcasts. In that dimension, they could be sponsors on local podcasts if they want to hunt those out and figure that out cause that's a great way to connect as well.

Rushab Kamdar: [00:05:37] How about for those that are doing what I'm doing and you're doing, which is having some form of video camera and podcasts, you know, hybrid. What's your advice on that? Yeah.

Billy Thorpe: [00:05:50] Yeah. Kinda the same thing, you know. There's a lot of ways to capture, you know, like right now, we're on Zoom. So it's mostly, it's free if you do under 40 minutes a month, right? There, or something like that, 40 minutes a conversation or 40 people or whatever their little thing is, but you can get a lot of these audio and video capturing services online. StreamYard. I think you can try Ecamm live free for like 15 days or something, or maybe they have a free plan. Just, I mean, the technology is so amazing. I remember 10, 15 years ago, I was working at a church full-time and we're like, we want to live stream on the internet. Well, we had to go like call some live streaming company. They had to special code something and put it up. One whole computer tower dedicated to live streaming. We couldn't do it. We can't check emails on it or anything. They're like, this is only live streaming. You can't do. And so we were like trying to, you know. It was a mess, man, but now it's like, dude, pick up your phone and you can go live right on, on Facebook or whatever. Record right on your phone. Like get a little tripod and put it.

You know, my only advice for video is put this thing at least,  you know, face high, like don't, you know, under the shot you'll look fat and nobody wants to see your nostril. So even if you're not fat, you look fat and just put it up like that, sit in front of a window with some lighting. There you go. That's how I started. Go look at some of my old videos on my YouTube channel and it's me recording on my iPhone and then just posting them. So there's a lot of different ways out there and technology is just amazing to, I mean, it's just so easy. I can't even, yeah. I'll keep talking all day about how it's just changed in the last five years. It's amazing.

Rushab Kamdar: [00:07:30] Thank you for joining us on the Business 360 Podcast. To learn more about our guests, go to ThinkBusiness360.com. In life, I follow two things that keep me grounded. Number one, if you only listen to someone's successes and not their failures, you've only heard half the story and number two, compete with yourself and help everyone else. You stay classy, Business Heroes.