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 and I help businesses, start-up founders, working professionals and master students think business, talk business, launch their business and grow their business.

What's going on, Business Heroes? Welcome to episode 13 of the Business 360 Podcast. Lucky number 13. We are, again, going to do a two-part episode. So in part one, we'll be speaking to someone who identifies as a digital nomad. First we'll find out what is a digital nomad, and then we'll get ideas of a digital nomad's lifestyle.

Additionally, we'll talk about strategies around podcast marketing and content marketing, and ways to grow your audience. So stick around and let's get to it.

On today's podcast., We're welcoming Omar Mo. Omar is a content marketing strategist. He's the founder of Nomads Cast Podcast Marketing. And he's also the host of The Nomadic Executive podcast. Now, Omar identifies himself as a digital nomad, and I'm going to let Omar explain that in detail. But just high level, think about having the business you want and the life you want, and being able to do that from anywhere in the world.

Now, what I like about Omar's story is that he's traveled the world and he's learned from billionaires and Buddhist monks. He's taken those lessons into his business. He's also learned from mistakes that he has made in business and incorporated that, which now he wants to help others.

So whether you want to learn about podcasting or you want to learn about digital marketing, such as creating systems and funnels and automation, Omar is your guy. So with that, let's have a conversation with Omar. Omar welcome to the Business 360 Podcast. Where do we find you today?

Omar Mo: [00:02:13] Oh, I am in Houston, Texas. Aka now city of the blizzards.

Rushab Kamdar: [00:02:19] Exactly. Yeah. I hope you and your family and everyone is doing okay from everything that went on over there.

Omar Mo: [00:02:25] It's just, it feels like ages ago now, but thankfully it's over.

Rushab Kamdar: [00:02:28] Wow. Well, I'm glad to hear that you're okay and your family's okay. So I wanted some, I wanted the audience to get to know you a little bit. You, when you sent me a little bit about your bio, I found it very interesting. You said that you traveled the world and you were mentored by billionaires to Buddhist monks, maybe just, you know, in the next 60 seconds or 90 seconds just give us a little story behind that.

Omar Mo: [00:02:48] Sure. So I left or I left Houston back in 2016. Um, I just graduated college, but I already knew that I wanted to go travel for as long as I wanted to. The whole reason I got my degree was so I could go travel. Um, and even though the degree didn't work out the way that I thought it would, I ended up going to travel. So I left to Nicaragua first for about three to four months. And then from there I dipped out to Australia. Went there for a year, went all the way around. Uh, and then when I went to New Zealand for a solid year, and then I ended up in Indonesia for about three months. Southeast Asia for about three months. And then I came back to the US, so just about three years. Uh, along the way I met Buddhists that I learned from. I stayed, two of my friends that I met over there in New Zealand had just come from I think it was China, some part Shanghai, somewhere around there. Uh, and I stayed with them for a few weeks. Uh, we met in a hostel and they were the full-on monks with like no hair, all of that through going to some sort of travel mission trip or something. I forget what it was exactly. Learned a lot from them about stillness. Learned a lot from them about meditation. They got me on meditation. They got me on spirituality and I even tried something called, um, I forgot what it was now. Vipassana. I tried something called a Vipassana meditation, um, with those guys.

So that was interesting. Uh, I learned from a guy named Trevor Milton, who was a billionaire who now is a defunct billionaire, and maybe you've heard of him, maybe you haven't. But, uh, at that time he was going pretty high. And I learned from him, I learned a lot about just how he made his business so quickly and, and what it takes to scale his businesses and his past failures and things like that.

Um, and I learned from a lot of successful business owners going from networking events at these places. And, um, Yeah. I was really a student for those three years, not only a business, but a travel and, and of life. So it was an interesting time in my life.

Rushab Kamdar: [00:04:34] So, you know, I want to get right into it. Uh, you know, you have a podcast called The Nomadic Executive, so why don't you tell the audience what that specifically is and what that podcast is about?

Omar Mo: [00:04:45] It's funny. I think like the podcast is evolved over the past few months. Um, it started off just kind of like, I love travel and I loved  business and I wanted to intersect the both of them. And I, I found out about this term called digital nomad, maybe about two years ago. So I made it first at most to appeal to other digital nomads that wanted to listen to it.

But as it started, as I started going down the road, I realized that I liked the entrepreneurship side much more than just talking about foods that you can eat in different countries or travel and things like that. So I started pivoting and it became really niche to where creating service-based businesses online that you can make whenever you travel anywhere in the world. So the entire it's like a mixture of the digital nomad lifestyle, but specifically gearing more towards entrepreneurship based service-based businesses only.

Rushab Kamdar: [00:05:35] So for those that don't know what a digital nomad is, maybe you can explain that a little more detail.

Omar Mo: [00:05:41] Sure. So really it's just a fancy term. And everyone, honestly, these days is that digital nomad to some certain degree, but it's essentially a fancy term for a remote worker, but that travels as well. And then there's even a deeper, uh, it's like a subsect of it that are people that are locationally independent. And I'm sure this word has been thrown around quite often. Tim Ferriss coined it at at first. And essentially what that means is there's a non locationally, independent digital nomad who can travel to like, to places like Vietnam, Bali, Thailand, and live a really, really great life. But then there's a locationally, independent entrepreneur or aka digital nomad who can travel anywhere in the world, work on their business from their laptop and make good money.

Rushab Kamdar: [00:06:22] So I was going to ask you then what is the advantages and disadvantages for being a digital nomad? But, you know, I think maybe the question is who, who is the digital nomad life for? Like who's the ideal person that would enjoy that? Because you said it correctly, everyone is lack of better way a digital moment because of the pandemic, right? But, you know, for those that want to travel to the Balis of the world and this beautiful islands and work, you know, who is the ideal target person that, that the digital nomad lifestyle is for?

Omar Mo: [00:06:52] Right. I used to come from the context of it should be for everybody because I think there's so much growth when it comes to travel in this world. And the world is so open to us, maybe less open now because of the pandemic, but not for long. Um, that there's so much growth and so much opportunity and so much beauty in the world that comes with travel that I would, in my head it's like, why wouldn't anybody do it? But I realize it's a very value- based profession. Or if you could call it that more of a lifestyle. Uh, if your values are more towards security and stability and raising the family, uh, there's no judgment for me ever, but you probably won't endure the digital nomad lifestyle nearly as much as if someone that, yeah, valued adventure and spontaneity. And, um, the people who thrive under pressure situations like that did probably enjoy the digital nomad lifestyle a lot more. So that's what I've come to find over time. But I think I, and I personally strongly believe this, everyone has a glimmer of wanting adventure and spontaneity in their life, uh, to some certain degree, whether it's a small degree or a large degree, that's completely dependent on the person.

Rushab Kamdar: [00:08:02] Absolutely. I mean, I think of it also as those that do have family and kids, you know, now more and more people are taking vacations, but not taking the vacation days and having their laptop with them, able to jump on to their Zoom calls from wherever they are. And, um, you know, I think that that is a evolution of the the digital nomad life.

Omar Mo: [00:08:24] Yeah. And what I'm starting to see now, too, is a lot of digital nomad families being started. Like there was someone that is a friend of mine, actually, her name's Julia Church. And she has been a digital nomad for nearly 10 years, has gotten married on the road, has gotten pregnant on the road, has gotten, has that two kids on the road. And they're a family. Right now they're living in Bali. I think they're moving somewhere else in a few months, but they've been a digital nomad family for the past six years. Yeah.

Rushab Kamdar: [00:08:53] So, you know, you, your podcasts, The Nomadic Executive helps and talks to the digital nomad lifestyle, but you have another business that focuses a lot on, uh, content marketing. So, and you've said that content marketing funnels and podcasts are centerpiece of getting a message out. So maybe you can elaborate on exactly what is it that you do in that business and how podcasting is such a centerpiece for that content marketing funnels.

Omar Mo: [00:09:19] Sure. So really, if you were to even break out the word podcasting, if you were to, aside from that word, if we were to just look at what podcasting is, essentially, it's a piece of content that's one incredibly easy to make because it's interview native. So it's not just you making the content it's so off, based off a conversation with somebody else. So two people are making the content. Number two, it's both in video and audio format, which can then be transcribed into written word. So really it's the most concentrated form of content out there. That's the easiest to make that takes the least amount of time, which can then bleed into every aspect of your business when it comes to the content marketing side, right? It can be used as a webinar. It can, uh, you can cut up the pieces into  social media content for like the seven relevant social media platforms, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, um, Uh, Tiktok, YouTube, um, one more LinkedIn, uh, right? So those seven. So you can bring the content out into there. You can build relationships and network with somebody while you're having the conversation with someone .You can, um, I have this whole like, amazing graphic that we'll probably have to send you that actually one of my clients made for me that has like 18 different arrows in 18 different directions with what a podcast can do.

So I'll send that to you later. But, uh, those are just some off the top of my head that would probably fit to any business model, anyone out there, and they could use the traffic for any direction. And as a marketer myself, coming actually from the digital marketing space back six years ago, I realized how useful and how valuable having  such concentrated form of content, pillar content as Gary Vee likes to call it that goes in so many different directions, you know. And as long as you're staying cutting edge with whatever platforms are working at this time and what platforms are going to be working next week and what platforms aren't working anymore as of last week.  You can curate the content and make it native for those platforms from your pillar content, which is the podcast. Yeah. So, so what we do as a business, and I apologize for I've mentioned, that is what we essentially do is we do three separate things, right? We book people on podcast tours, so we, we get people on other podcasts and then we can leverage that content and create it for them. We launched new podcasts for businesses and then have that as a content generation slash lead generation source for their business. And then we also take existing podcasters and we cut up their content for them. And these are usually busy entrepreneurs that need some extension of their team or just people that need more content marketing done on the side. And they've done a lot of podcasting already, but haven't really focused on their other social media platforms.

Rushab Kamdar: [00:11:53] Taking it a step further into content creation. So podcast does your digital marketing agency definitely uses podcasting as a centerpiece. Are there any other anciliary services that you also offer for these customers? Um, outside of just the using podcasts as a center piece.

Omar Mo: [00:12:10] So podcasting isn't the only pillar content out there. Uh, but it is the most versatile pillar content out there. Video podcast, specifically, not audio only. Uh, other ones that we've also worked with are YouTube. So that is another video slash audio format content that we cut up and use it as pieces of content for other pieces. Uh, but that's always shorter. So you'll find YouTube videos around 10 to 15 minutes. And if they're long form content like 45 minutes, they probably have a podcast. So that's just less pillar content for us to cut up, which means less meaningful moments from that content get cut up. Uh, but we, we do work with YouTubers as well, and we have also worked with bloggers, but that's always the hardest because it's just written content. It's not an audio and video and we need a voice or some video behind it. But what we, what we do do sometimes is take that trend like a blog post or something, and cut it up into more LinkedIn pieces of content and tweets as well. So written into written.

Rushab Kamdar: [00:13:04] How can business owners, who have a podcast, market their podcasts out there, get more listeners, get more audience and viewers for that?

Omar Mo: [00:13:13] For their podcast. So podcast is a, now here's the thing, I think people get too caught up in download numbers. Uh, when they're not targeted, right? You have to realize that every download is incredibly targeted for your podcasts. Anyone that's listening to your podcasts and showing up over and over again, really love what you have to say.

They're sitting there for 30 to 45 minutes, you're in their ear and they love it. Okay. So the conversion rates that you'll see with these people is upwards to like 50 to 60% versus like Instagram, where it may be two to 3%, you know? Uh, so keep that in mind. So that's why it's very important to be important, uh, to see what kind of sponsors you bring on or what affiliate products you're selling or any services that you're selling, make sure it's very catered to that audience. Now, really to grow that audience in the first place, you gotta be where they are.

There are really the two biggest ways and then there's a third way. And all of them take some elbow grease to get started, right? So the first way is really just paid advertising, right? Uh, paid advertising works no matter what business you're doing in podcasting. If you look at it as a business, it's the same way. YouTube ads, Facebook ads, running traffic conversion campaigns instead of or traffic campaigns instead of conversion campaigns for, uh, driving traffic back to your website with the podcast episode on there and then running lookalike audiences to retarget people that are specifically in that niche that are similar to the people that are already listening to your podcast. And that can be done on any one of the paid advertising platforms. Uh, that's the strategy that we use.

Number two, there is growing your social media following on some platform where you think your target audience is. So for example, I have a bunch of nomads and a lot of agency owners in my target audience. So my target audiences would probably be reside mostly on LinkedIn and Instagram. But I use other social media platforms to get traffic as well, to get some listens and downloads and drive that traffic back. It's a filtering process driving between like TikTok  and YouTube, and these other places back to my main social media platforms, right? Uh, so that's the second way growing the social media following.

 And then the third way. Is these like left field creative ways of using elbow grease if you have neither the budget nor the social media following. They're almost, you could call them growth hacking tactics to really grow your podcasts.

And I'll give you some, some over here just so that your audience can use, uh, we use this thing called a speak pipe. Speak pipe episode. We do this quarterly with all of our clients as well as my own podcasts. And what that essentially is, you can use it in a multi variety of ways, but there's this website called SpeakPipe that's allows you to record little clips from people. It can be up to like five minutes long. And what we do is essentially we created theme for that episode. Then we reached out to like five or six people that run groups, whether it's on LinkedIn or Facebook and reached out to them and say, hey, like you're an industry leader in this specific niche, we would love to have your voice on our podcast to give you a platform to speak and you could really help inspire these entrepreneurs, blah, blah, blah, and get like five or six people. Get their answer to a specific question. Put that question as a title of your podcast episode, then record over that essentially, and kind of do like a hosting thing where it's like you hosting and then you're just cutting and pasting those clips of them speaking in there.

So then it becomes an episode where you're talking and there's like five or six thought leaders in there and you push that onto your podcast episode. You send it out to the people that you had on the episode and they promote it through their groups. That's generally what happens because they want to be seen as thought leaders. And they're already in that position with that Facebook group or LinkedIn group. And that way you get an influx of listeners for that episode. And a lot of them tend to stay. So that's one strategy that we use and I'll give one more right off the bat that I actually heard myself quite recently that I'd like to share.

And that is. Focusing less on Apple podcasts and Spotify, which are the two biggest ones. And really, really focusing on distributing yourself on these obscure podcasting platforms. Things like there are like six different platforms in India. There's like four in Japan. There's like all these different platforms that you can submit your RSS feed. And even if you're decently big enough. And what I mean by decently big enough is like, even if you have like 15 reviews on your podcast, which is like really nothing, in retrospect, you can go at cold email these guys and work out some sort of deal with them where you can get some ad space in return. You give, they'll, you'll give them a shout out in your podcast. And essentially what happened is that since you're on their platforms, you're getting some sort of shout out from these guys. You're going to drive pure, only podcast listener traffic straight to your podcast which will up those download numbers as well? So those are two elbow grease methods that we use quite often. The second one being quite recently.

Rushab Kamdar: [00:17:47] So I use Buzzsprout and Buzzsprout, and I know there's, there's many of them out there, right? There's Buzzsprout, there's Anchor, there's Libsyn. Now with, with Buzzsprout, it distributes to a lot of podcasts, um, platforms or a lot of listening platforms out there, such as Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google play, but then there's like Stitcher and iHeartRadio, and some other ones that I can't remember the names of. The ones that you're mentioning, are they part of these platforms or are they so obscure that, you know, we would have to do some Google searches to find them?

Omar Mo: [00:18:18] So you'd have to do some Google searches to find them. Um, and there are lists out there that have them. Uh, there's a friend of mine, Mark Savant, who has actually curated a list together so that I can maybe send that to you guys later. Um, join his Facebook group. He has a Facebook group called After Hours Entrepreneur. That's where you can find it as well. Um, but that, those are obscure. So be sure to like get on every single one on their on Buzzsprout. I know there's like 15 or 20 because I'm on Buzzsprout  myself. But also aside from that, you will find these other podcasts distribution networks that you can go out and you have an RSS feed in Buzzsprout that you can just copy and paste.

And what you're essentially doing is just submitting your RSS feed to these guys. Sometimes on their website, they have a place where you can submit the RSS feed straight away after you make an account. Sometimes you have to email them to actually get on there. So it depends on what the platform is, but there's a host, a number of them. I'm talking like over 50 or 60 in the world.

Rushab Kamdar: [00:19:17] Hey, Business Heroes, join us next week for part two, where we continue our conversation with Omar Mo. Thank you for listening.

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. Stay classy, Business Heroes.