Unlocking B2B Podcast Success: Neal Veglio's No-Fail Strategies

[00:00:00] Michelle J Raymond: G'Day everyone. It's Michelle J. Raymond, and welcome to the LinkedIn for B2B Growth Show. I am excited, thrilled a bit hesitant because I've got the Podmaster on my show this week. Neal, welcome. How are you?

[00:00:16] Neal Veglio: Thanks, Michelle. It must be the middle of the night for you right now. For me, it's first thing, and I've gone through my five o'clock in the morning routine.

I absolutely haven't, I haven't had an ice bath. I haven't taken a bullet coffee. I haven't gone for a run around the, uh, around the county like you're supposed to do as, someone on LinkedIn, right? I mean, you are the LinkedIn expert. You tell me? Is that what I should have done?

[00:00:36] Michelle J Raymond: Well, that's why you don't make a billion dollars before breakfast doing Podcasts, cause that's how things roll. I know, I've been watching it all. But for those who haven't come across you, who are you, what do you do and who do you help?

[00:00:48] Neal Veglio: I'm the Podmaster doesn't it say in my headline on LinkedIn. I mean, that's really such a, like, such an attention seeking thing and that's why you gotta do a LinkedIn. Honestly, let's be real about it. Um, I, I guess the way I would be described best would be a podcast consultant / Podcast turnkey solutions provider, essentially. Any part of the podcasting process really we get involved in, whether that's, developing the idea, coming up with the concept and then executing it through production, the marketing, the strategy, you name it, any part of the podcast process.

I kind of get involved in, stick my oar into really and say to people, well, you could do that, but I would suggest this based on years of experience of doing it. And it all comes from a background in, in broadcasting. Started out in the mid nineties on radio, local radio, uh, went national sort of early two thousands and you know, the rest is history really.

The more that podcasting grew and the more that radio kind of receded. I just sort of found myself with a passion for this and thought, well, do you know what? This is the future actually, and that's where I can make my living and, and that's where we are.

[00:02:07] Michelle J Raymond: So we crossed paths on LinkedIn and at first I was thinking, oh my God, who is this guy? He's so grumpy. You know, you've got so much attitude. And I was like thinking, Geez, calm down mate. Calm down. But then when I actually paid attention, I realised, and we're gonna talk about this a little bit later in the show, I realised just how passionate you are about making sure that people have successful podcasts, which I appreciate.

The thing is, I dove into podcasting around 18 months ago. I'm gonna be honest, this is why I did it. Michelle Griffin, my LinkedIn bestie, who's a personal branding strategist, she told me we should do a podcast, right? And I was like, I don't even listen to podcasts. They drive me crazy, I go to sleep. Why would I wanna do a podcast? She's like, no, no, no, it's good for credibility to build up your thought leadership. And I was like, Hmm, okay, whatever you say, and off I went.

Now my process at the time was literally work out how to do it. I go and research the hell out of it cause God forbid I actually reach out and ask for help from someone. Uh, and so I worked it out myself along the way and now, 18 months later, I'm now going, oh, you don't know what you don't know and I'm kind of coming back. One of the questions I didn't ask at the beginning of any experts or research was, Where do podcasts fit at the moment? Like I see that they're the future. I see that they've peaked. I see that every B2B business should have one. Like what's the real lay of the land out in podcast land? Where are we at?

[00:03:39] Neal Veglio: We're in this weird kind of space at the moment where podcasting doesn't really fully yet know what it is and people are gonna go, what's he talking about?

But look, it's on the verge of being a 40 billion dollar global industry, and that's not small. However, what it isn't is mainstream media at this stage. And there's a kind of weird, it's kinda like in a transitional period between, you know, big companies getting involved, understanding there's something in this, but not really able to get it working yet.

So it, it is still a very small industry. I know it feels weird saying that billions of dollars, but, comparatively, when you look at the media business, you know where you've got Rupert Murdoch alone probably accounts for, I don't know, hundreds of billions of dollars around the world. So really what's happening is it's kind of become a bit of a B2B tool, it hasn't really taken off as an entertainment tool as people would like it to.

So we're really in a place with it now, where I think it's a Solopreneur's heaven. Honestly, because it's a way that, you know, you've got big businesses and you've got very small businesses and everything in between. And I think what people are starting to realise now is that I can compete with a massive business, with my tiny business, just by making a podcast and investing a little bit of time and effort into it, a little bit of money. And I think that is really the key to this, is podcasting it's growing. It's nowhere near yet where it's gonna be. So whenever I see that sort of, oh, it's saturated, there are too many podcasts, I'm just laughing inside because I'm looking at the actual data. And actually 37,000 active podcasts in the UK alone, you're thinking, saturated, how many blog posts are there?

[00:05:31] Michelle J Raymond: As an opportunity, let's think about it from B2B business perspective. Why should they consider having a podcast? What's the advantages for a business having a podcast?

[00:05:41] Neal Veglio: I think it's down to efficiency, really. I'm assuming that most people listening to this right now, judging by what I think your audience is, you're probably gonna have a mixed bag of big businesses with teams and smaller businesses where maybe, it's, solopreneurs with a little bit of, outsourcing going on.

Either way, not every team, not every marketing team has time to spend on the the content marketing side of it. They'll usually be taking care of the social channels, updating the website, they might have events they've gotta organise and go to that sort of stuff. The stuff that big bosses think are the needle movers, which we all know aren't necessarily. Because things have moved on, you know, times have changed.

People aren't really looking to go to events and pick up business cards so much anymore. I mean, there is still a great, you know, market for that. But what a lot of companies are starting to realise now is actually the old outbound thing. It's not really a thing anymore. Now it's all about the content marketing. So you get the inbound, but that takes time to produce.

And I think the problem is if you are paying somebody, I don't know, $25 an hour to sit down and write out a blog post, that maybe in 18 months will get traffic because you've got the ranking and the search engines and the stuff starting to surface. Initially, that $25 an hour, if it takes someone three hours to put together a really well thought out blog post, but only a hundred people sort of see it ever.

You kind of think, well, hang on a minute. Imagine if this had been a podcast where we'd had the episode that went out in the podcast apps. We might have had some clips that went out on YouTube and social media. Then we have the actual blog post anyway that you can then craft from the transcript or from your original script that you wrote for that podcast episode.

Then you've got the segmented bits, you know, the content pillar stuff that you can then repurpose as social media posts. It doesn't take long to figure out actually that $25 an hour probably could have been better spent covering off all these bases at once. And that's what I think podcasting does really well, is it gives you the opportunity.

Number one, the people coming up with the content, they're not bored because they're enjoying it, because they've got a microphone in front of 'em and they feel really showbiz and they get into it and they get their, their creative juices then get flowing and they start to get ideas of, oh, I, I can actually bring a guest in for this, or I can bring in some audio for this, you know, to make my point.

And so it becomes a much more enjoyable experience. And what happens, Michelle, when we enjoy something? We wanna do more of it. And so therefore your workload, your, your body of work, your content that you're producing, there's just much more of it because your team are really enthused about it.

And they're, believe it or not, they're starting to see results. Because unlike a blog post where you're looking at your Google Analytics and going, oh God, like 50 people this month, what a waste of time. You're looking at your podcast analytics, and I'm sure we'll touch on this in a minute on, on how you take these things with a pinch of salt anyway, but you're at least seeing some sort of needle moving there.

It's like, wow, uh, you know, 30 people in my ideal marketplace actually listen to this and oh, and they've listened again. Listen, so obviously I'm getting that audience now that's starting to stick with me and I'm, I'm thinking that everything's gelling.

[00:08:59] Michelle J Raymond: I admit when I first started, I was doing that. Am I talking to myself? Is this microphone on? And some of that's on me and I'll share about it. But what I found you could do with a podcast that you can't do with other content is build up that subscriber base. You know that they do come back week after week looking for more. And when you get that loyalty that has a value on it, and I don't know what value you place on it, but if I think about how much effort I have to go to, to find more people and on a weekly basis when I produce this show, it's just really incredible that you can start to over time, build that momentum up.

Now the thing that I did wrong, full confession here, I like to dive in head first, work out how things go, and then I go, oh, whoops, I probably should have done this. So here's what happens. I decided that I wanted to have conversations, an interview style with just people I like to talk to, and I would get them on as guests and we would have a discussion.

I called my podcast originally Good for Business Show, which was related back to my company name. I didn't have a target audience in mind. I didn't have really a format in mind besides the interviews. That's about as much thought that went into it. There was nothing else. There was like, what microphone, how much time should it run for?

Don't even talk to me about show notes or anything like that. It just wasn't even part of my discussions. So in, I dive headfirst and then I realised that it's beyond the tech and then I fast forward and now I'm kind of going, oh, maybe I could have done this better, that better because I've got a second podcast, The LinkedIn Branding Show that's performing really well because we had a strategy, we had an audience, we had a brand, we have a community, and all of that comes together to form a podcast.

So anybody that's listening in here that's thinking about starting your podcast, cause I have had a lot of conversations about this with friends. What should we do before we even get started? Before we hit record? What are three key things that you think people should do?

[00:11:05] Neal Veglio: Oh, without doubt, you start with the end in mind. It's a bit of a cliche and you use a word, which I really like called reverse engineer and it's amazing actually how effective that can be. I think if you're gonna put it down to three things, I think the three fundamental things you need.

First of all, you definitely need a goal, in other words, what does this look like if it's successful? And it's all very well saying, oh, you know, I'm just gonna try it out. The amount of people I've spoken to that infuriate me when they say, I just wanna put out like a few episodes and see how it goes, and I'm just saying to them, don't talk to me anymore. Come back to me when you've changed your mind on that because I just can't help you.

[00:11:42] Michelle J Raymond: Talk to me and I'll tell you why. That's not a good idea. Trust me.

[00:11:46] Neal Veglio: It's It's just not gonna work for you because you are immediately, what you've done is you've cut out 99.9% of all of your future audience. No one's ever gonna stick with a podcast that is only a few episodes deep anyway. The amount of times you'll look at podcasts, you look at how many episodes has got first before even start listening to it, because psychologically your brain is telling you, well, they didn't stick it out, so why should I trust anything they have to say anyway? They clearly didn't have enough content, you know, so there is that element of it.

I think the goal, you need to know where you want this to go. So for example, is that, building a community? Is it building a sales funnel? Is it having an amount of money in your bank account off the back of it? Because, it might sound a bit, you know, snake oil, but it's valid. It's a valid reason.

If you want to make money from podcasting, forget the sponsorship and advertising route, it's not gonna happen for you. But you can think, in your own head, okay so in five years time, I want this podcast to have brought in say, I don't know, 10% of our revenue. That's a fairly valid goal. I would say that absolutely no problem at all. So you need that written down.

First of all, where do we want this podcast to go? And then you can measure that year it, are we doing it? Are we achieving that? We're not. Okay, so what do we need to do? What do we need to adjust to try and get us closer to that goal? Do we need to do a little bit of marketing in the podcast. Do we need to do a bit more outreach to the podcast? It could be any number of things that, that number, that actual written down number, that goal could tell you and help you steer you in the right direction.

Number two, you need to know exactly who your ideal listener is, because if you're talking to everybody, you're talking to nobody.

Anybody will tell you that. But it's true though. I mean, if you've got a podcast about, say for example, let's, let's do, I like analogies. Imagine you are in a car showroom, okay? This car showroom sells every kind of car, on the planet, right? And you're a customer and you are walking in, you wanna buy a new car?

And you're thinking, okay, so got Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, Honda, Ford. You are overwhelmed. You're just not gonna know where you want to go with this. And so what you'll probably find is there's a car showroom selling every car in the world. You probably sell no cars because people coming in and they're going, I don't know, I'll have to go and think about this.

 So first of all, you absolutely need to nail down, who your ideal listener is, where they're hanging out and what kind of content they would want to hear. Because if you are putting out the sort of content they're not interested in, regardless of where you are in the space and what great value you're bringing, if it's not the value for them that they want, then they're not gonna listen to it. It's as simple as that.

[00:14:25] Michelle J Raymond: So here's the prime example on that point. So go back 18 months. Everybody knows me for LinkedIn Company pages. Even if we expand that out and just say LinkedIn in general. So the show became a little broader. I didn't talk about any of that. I did not share any of my knowledge. I had guests on for all kinds of different things that would help a business.

So it would be like time management or money, values or all kinds of different stuff. Interesting conversations. Not interesting for any of my audience. Who was going, Michelle, we know you for Company Pages. We know you for LinkedIn. What are you doing having these conversations? Like, sure, they're fine, but are we on the right station? Is this the right channel? Like, and so this is what I've learned and this is where, so I'm two fails. I had no goal and I had no audience in mind. So two fails. What's the third one?

[00:15:17] Neal Veglio: You need to know your own character, okay? You get personal branding experts all over LinkedIn who can be quite annoying, but fundamentally they've got something right and that is, unless you establish your voice right from the beginning, you are never gonna get an audience because people are gonna see through that voice. If you are starting a podcast cause you think it's a great idea, and then you sit down and you are producing a podcast that you think is what you should sound like, then you are never gonna actually reach the audience that want that content.

You are only gonna reach an audience that you think should be listening to you. They're gonna listen to you, and they're not gonna like it because you're not being you. So I think first and foremost, you have to sit down, you have to pick a lane and stick in it. Whether you are disruptive, stay disruptive.

Don't then have a CEO come on your podcast and you're suddenly sucking up to them. Because your audience will know you for being disruptive. So you'll be willing to ask the difficult questions. You'll be willing to treat them as someone that should be accountable. Conversely, if you are someone that's seen this really nice. Don't then start going on being Howard Stern, because that's just not gonna gel with your audience.

[00:16:31] Michelle J Raymond: So I can't be you and you can't be me. Is that what you're saying?

[00:16:35] Neal Veglio: Absolutely. 100% . What are you trying to say? No, but it's true though. My, my podcast that I do, I am a little bit salty. I'll be honest about it because in my head I know that the sort of people that know me, for my stuff that I've done in the past and know me from social media, certainly LinkedIn, they know I'm the kind of person that's gonna call it out. If I see something that's a bit shady, I'm gonna call it out and I don't care if I upset the people I'm calling out.

That's kind of the point. You know, and, and it's really weird that none of them ever respond to what I'm saying about them. Funny that, but the point is, if I'm suddenly gonna go on and, and, and be really like super nice and open. Oh, you got a Blue Yeti? Oh yeah. That's a well done. At least you've started.

People are gonna go. Has he been on the drugs today? What is happening?

[00:17:29] Michelle J Raymond: I would get you drug tested if you started endorsing Blue Yetis. So for those listeners who have not come across Neal's content, that is the number one button that you can press is a blue Yeti. So, but behind that there is some sense.

So you actually raised a valid point. So whether on social media, I've found it, especially maybe on Instagram when I'm scrolling through there, not so much LinkedIn, I don't see it. Beware the podcast Charlatan. So you just mentioned it. There are people that promise so much. Like if I pay them this much, I'm gonna have a show that's, I don't know, I'm gonna take over the world before breakfast, like we were saying before.

How do I know who knows their stuff? How do I know what's absolute rubbish? And I'm giving you two minutes. You're on a time limit for this one, because I know you could dedicate a whole show to this. So two minutes, I'm gonna start the clock now, how do I tell who's who in the zoo and what's a red flag that I should run the other way from?

[00:18:23] Neal Veglio: Right immediately, I'm gonna help you out straight away by getting rid of 90% of these people. If they connect with you on LinkedIn and they have a headline that says, Professional iTunes Podcast Promoter, block immediately without any hesitation. Don't even think twice about it. That's done. They're gone.

I could go into why? I'll just really quickly sum it up. They're using click farms. So they'll promise you the world, they'll deliver absolutely nothing other than bot listens. Pointless. Waste of your time. Waste of everybody's time. The other thing is what I would say, if you've got someone that is promising you anything to do with chart rankings, avoid them.

Again, it's the same sort of idea. Their idea is that they're gonna hack the algorithm, so they're gonna get your podcast into a ranking position. Yeah, great. The problem with this is you are not then gonna have your ideal listeners. You're gonna have some listeners because what they've done, again, like the iTunes professional promoters, all they're doing is literally sourcing you listeners. Now, these are not gonna be your ideal listeners whatsoever.

What you need to look for, if you're gonna be working with somebody that can help you with growth, first of all, you need to understand what their method they're using is. They will be able to give you a legitimate answer. I can certainly tell you it's content marketing, it's content layering, it's pillar content.

It's also, you know, a, a certain aspect of it is making sure that all the content is optimised everywhere so that, you know, on the podcast apps themselves, but also online, there's a lot of SEO. People don't realise that actually podcasts and blog posts have a lot in common. They may be using different algorithms, but they're still using SEO, it's just a different type of SEO and you need to understand how that SEO works.

So it's really, it's about what have they done? Have they got any case studies in the past? You'll see three case studies on my website, podknowspodcasting.co.uk. That's the only kind of selling I'm gonna do, Michelle, cause I don't do that.

[00:20:23] Michelle J Raymond: I wouldn't have you on the show if I didn't expect people who are listening that are thinking to go oh, maybe if Michelle trusts him, I should reach out. Yes, you should. I will put that in the show notes because you know, back in the beginning I didn't even worry about those, but I get the importance of them for probably these decisions.

[00:20:40] Neal Veglio: Oh, so important. Yes, absolutely. I'll be honest about this, show notes are only important on one condition that you have a website. Simple as that. No show notes on the planet are ever gonna rank on Google from the podcast landing page. It won't never happen. It's just very likely it won't happen. You might get an Apple podcast link will show up in Google search results, but your show notes won't.

So all that effort you're putting into the show notes, unless you are doing it on your own website, then a huge amount of that is really gonna be in-app only and probably about 12% of people on podcast apps look at the show notes. They already know if they want the show because they've seen the artwork, which is why the artwork is so important as well.

 Sorry I've probably gone over the two minutes, but really what I would say to you is, is do a bit of due diligence, see what their experience is, see if they've got any case studies, and ask them their methods. If they say, oh, we use websites to promote pod, no. That doesn't work it. Sorry, no.

[00:21:41] Michelle J Raymond: I think I get approached daily three or four times by people who wanna promote my podcast, help me get it seen in so many places. And I politely decline and politely block of course, because I just know it's no different to an engagement pod on LinkedIn, which we won't open that can of worms. But if you try and circumvent the system, you just end up in a place with the wrong audience and you get nowhere, you get no results.

And I've been through this journey with my podcast almost talking to the wrong people, no goals. Okay, let's stop. Let's go back. Let's have a look. Where am I trying to get to? How am I trying to help my ideal clients get to somewhere?

So if we talk about it, are there key elements for a great podcast? Do great podcasts have anything in common? Or is it, look, it's just luck of the draw? Or is it, there's a science behind it?

[00:22:33] Neal Veglio: It depends who you believe on the luck of the draw thing, cause I've seen podcasts that have just really luckily just landed. So there, there might be an element of that. I do think even with, I'll give you an example actually. One of my peers, a chap called, Tanner Campbell, he was doing a similar job to me in the States, in Denver and he has literally pivoted away from being a podcast consultant because his podcast, he started as a hobby, Practical Stoicism, number one in the chart for philosophy straight away, off the bat. And he wasn't using Black Hat. He was literally organically just the show landed.

You could say, well, it was completely luck because he started this podcast and people started listening to it. But here's the thing, he's a very good podcaster.

His content is great. He's slick, he's well produced. He knows the tricks because he's done it. He's like me. He knows, right? You've gotta get the seven second grabby intro. You've got to make it sound good. It doesn't matter whether you've got a budget of $10 or $10,000, you need to make it sound like it's a $10,000 budget.

Because there's no excuse for, we don't have any money. We can't afford all the, the, the nice shiny toys. You can make a podcast that's made for $10 sound like a podcast that's made for $10,000 if you just put the time and effort into making it sound like that. And I think that was probably a big part of it, was that the stuff he was making, he'd found his audience that he knew who he was talking to.

But I would say that yeah, it's a little tiny bit of luck, I guess, but really and truly what you want when you are making any kind of podcast content you need to have in your head, right, how can I make my ideal listener know, as quickly as possible, this is the podcast for them. And so it is, it's about having that really grabby seven second intro that seven seconds at the start of your latest episode is the most important seven seconds of your podcast's history at any point.

Just let's go through that again. The first seven seconds of your most recent podcast episode is the most important seven seconds of your podcast's history. I'm not saying that every single podcast listener you ever have are going to only listen to your most recent episode. Some will join you on episode one. Some will find you randomly on Google. But fundamentally, that is the one, that Apple Podcasts places underneath your show's title in the app. You need that one to be the best that it can possibly be, okay?

And if you've got the time and inclination to go back on your previous episodes and remix them so that the seven seconds at the beginning is really grabby. I'm not gonna put you off doing that. I think it's a great idea. Obviously it's not realistic for some people that might have 200 episodes, but it's one to think about your biggest episodes that you know are the best and could get you the best audiences is worth thinking about going back and improving the hooks on those episodes, but once you get past those seven seconds, where are you?

Well, what you're into is a world where you've gotta get to the point essentially. You've got to get the listener to the value. The Gary Vaynerchuk word. You've gotta get them there as quickly as you possibly can. And that means no rambly intro. No selling your stuff. No oh, let me tell you about my community. None of that. Save it. Nobody cares at this point. You've not won anybody over. At this point, all people want from you is knowledge. They want to know what's in your noggin right there. How they can get it in their noggin, put it to good use and take action with it.

Once they've done that, they will then go, wow, this person knows what they're doing. I actually might wanna sign up for their stuff, so where can I go? And so if they get to the end of the episode, once they got through all the knowledge, are they gonna sign up on your first episode? No, probably not. But what you've done is you've established the relationship, you've helped them, you've changed their life in some way.

So therefore you've gained their trust and they want to be on your ride. So that's how you can then long-term, build that relationship with them and over the course of your future episodes, start to turn them into a buying customer.

[00:27:03] Michelle J Raymond: It's been interesting for me, as I said, to have a journey, and when you don't have a goal, don't have a target, don't have an audience, it makes it very difficult to catch attention like this, for your ideal clients because there is none. They're a figment of not even my imagination. What I've learned with both of my podcasts that I do, anything that's saying how to step by step or something along those lines, just outperform so much of the other content because I think people that like to learn by listening are coming to podcasts so that they don't have to read long wordy blogs.

They don't have to watch videos, they don't have to scroll a feed. They can consume it while they're doing other things, and I think that's the brilliance of podcasting is that often people are multitasking, listening to it while they're doing something else, and so being able to reach them at a time that's convenient for them without all the noise and distractions of other people's posts.

That for me, has been. I guess the thing that's changed in my mind is keeping who is it that's out there? Who do I wanna help? No different to what I do on LinkedIn, but for whatever reason, I got so focused on tech. I got so focused on trying to figure it out for myself, cause that's just like my thing and I forgot to focus on my audience.

I forgot to do exactly what I do on LinkedIn, always deliver value for my audience. Be clear who I'm talking to and you know, it was a lesson. And so I hope that people that are listening to this particular episode can see just how important it is before you grab a microphone. Like just the work is done upfront.

So let's talk about LinkedIn specifically. So my audience are all about B2B growth and it's such a big part of LinkedIn that's coming in this year. We've been down the B2C path and that's the holy grail. But now B2B is having its moment in the sun.

How can LinkedIn play a part in podcasting? Like where does it fit in? How can we use the two together? Any strategies that you can share would be amazing.

[00:29:01] Neal Veglio: I think you will be most successful with LinkedIn, if you use it as almost a networking meeting. I mean, let's face it, that's probably not anything that's gonna make people go, Ooh, because we know that's what it is.

But I think what we forget sometimes LinkedIn is a networking tool. It's slowly transitioning to a creator tool. It thinks it's kind of like a bit of a snooty TikTok, I think sometimes. I mean you'll know better than than I do on this Michelle, but I get the feeling sometimes that LinkedIn doesn't know what LinkedIn is at the moment fully. It's got an idea.

[00:29:43] Michelle J Raymond: I feel to me, the direction of LinkedIn is communities. Communities and creators that's where they're headed.

So I think if I was listening to you before, like you have such a structure around repurposing the content from the podcast and that's something where people always go, Michelle, like, you've got so much content on LinkedIn. How do you do it all? And I go, it's easy. I record the video and then from the video, it's a podcast also. So it's off to YouTube. It's articles, it's used in my newsletter, I can chop little pieces, audiograms, you name it.

And so that one investment of this, half an hour or so, all of a sudden keeps my content. I've just got it coming out of everywhere, and so that's how I like to use it. But again, it was pointless before when it wasn't actually helping my ideal client that I was chasing on LinkedIn. Absolutely a waste of putting content out into the ether except for, I'm gonna say my point was in the beginning, I wanted to almost have some friends that if I invited them on my podcast, they would help go and refer me, talk about me in other places.

And choosing the right guests has been my hardest lesson as a podcast host. I have crashed and burned. It took me six months of fails. And not bad guests, but just again, I didn't have a goal, didn't have an audience, so nothing to do with the guests themselves. Next six months, I got a little bit smarter, but then I went the other way. I thought, oh, you're really popular on LinkedIn, you'll make a good guest for instance. Now fail again. Someone that's good at written content on LinkedIn or popular on LinkedIn does not necessarily make a good podcast guest.

So I've been through that journey and now we're up to season number four. So I think I'm at about, I don't know, 60 episodes or something like that. So we've had roughly a year, and now I'm like, ah, if you put thought into this again, before you get to the microphone, who would've thought, Neal, this podcasting thing might have some legs. You might be onto something.

[00:31:50] Neal Veglio: I mean, it is, it is. I'll be honest with you, so let me just say something really interesting actually. God, that sounded really arrogant. Let me pick on something you said that was really interesting. The whole thing about just using it to get my friends on. Now, that's actually quite a valid use for a podcast if and only if that's your goal and you've set the podcast up with that mission in mind. Because what you can then do with a podcast say for example, you want to just build your own knowledge, okay? What a great way to do it. You're gonna get access to people that you would never know, like, oh, can I bend your ear about something or can I just, chew your brain and all those sorts of messages that we get. Can I pick your brain?

Suddenly you've gone from a, can I pick your brain conversation, which is what you want, to can I have you on my podcast, cause I'd like to talk to you more about this. Then all of a sudden you've facilitated that that is a much less toxic relationship. It's transactional. You get them on the podcast and you get to learn and they get to feel like they've been on a podcast, so they're important. That podcast episode doesn't have to go anywhere.

Although it's worth doing it because number one, it's good practice anyway. Number two, hey, you might find audience that actually wants that kind of content. I'm not saying that I know every single kind of podcast that's gonna be popular out there, and let's face it, that's what Diary of a CEO is.

Diary of a CEO is essentially Steven Bartlet started out with this idea that he was gonna keep a diary and talk about his innermost pain and thoughts around being a CEO of Social Chain. Suddenly Social Chain's disappeared. He's sold out. He's still got the podcast. Oh, what can I do with it? I just have a chat with me mates.

And that's literally what that podcast is. Look how popular. Not as popular as he makes out it is. But look how popular public perception that podcast has become. So that first and foremost, I wanna make that quite clear that we call that the Trojan Horse Effect. It's a way of you Trojan horsing yourself into someone's world and basically becoming their friend.

[00:33:48] Michelle J Raymond: You are my real friend. Just so you know. You walked into that.

[00:33:54] Neal Veglio: Never doubted it. Never doubted it. But I think back to the original question of, what can you use it for? I think you'll know this better than I do the audio side of things that's growing. So are obviously looking at doing something with that on LinkedIn.

So that's worth bearing in mind. But for me, I think before you even get into the sort of like the nuances of LinkedIn and all the new tech and all the new bits and pieces, the new features they're testing, all that sort of stuff. You have to treat LinkedIn as it's meant to be, which is first and foremost a business networking tool. This isn't Facebook crowd, you know, you have a bit of fun, show your personality, but use it to help people, your ideal audience, your ideal customers.

If you've got somebody that's posting on LinkedIn about, oh, I'm thinking about changing accountants, okay. Boring topic for text, but imagine that you had somebody on your podcast who was an absolutely brilliant accountant, was giving away all the free advice that, you'd normally have to pay someone 150 pounds an hour for, and you know this is gonna change their life.

That is a great opportunity for you to then say, look, I don't wanna spam in your comments, but I have a podcast episode that speaks literally to this. Would it be okay for me to either post the link in your comments now, or would you rather edit it via DM? That way what you are doing is you don't care about a hundreds of people seeing the link and clicking on it and getting your numbers up.

What you care about is that specific person that has asked for help gets the help. What are they then gonna. They're going to listen to that podcast. They're gonna take value from it. They're gonna become your fan, and suddenly you are a trusted source and they're gonna share your expertise and your podcast with people that they know and trust. Simple.

[00:35:48] Michelle J Raymond: I've got most value outta my podcast, when I'm proactively sharing it with people. For instance, I only do LinkedIn Company Pages Organic. AJ Wilcox, he does LinkedIn Ads and so I will go, Hey, I had him as a guest. This is what I know. Listen to him talk about it so you can make an informed decision. I'll make the intro, but have a listen to this first.

Having good quality guests definitely reflects on me. I get to bathe in their glory and vice versa. I know we could keep talking about this all day, but I like to give people one actionable tip that they can take away. So if a B2B business out there is considering a podcast, what is the tip that you think could add most value so that they can, potentially get it up and running?

[00:36:35] Neal Veglio: Slow down. That would be the first tip. It's the most exciting thing in the world. And you're like, I really wanna do a podcast. It's one of the most common conversations I have with people.

People are surprised when I say this, cause obviously it's keeping money out of my bank account for longer. But my whole thing is you've got 45 days from day of conception through to publication. That's really what you need, okay? So this is a pro tip in itself, actually.

Don't go out there thinking, right well, episode one that's gonna launch on the day I've recorded it, and I'm gonna start my podcast then, because you need a 45 day lead in. Why number one, you need to make sure that your content has cleared the apps, first and foremost because Apple Podcasts branches out into hundreds of different little apps that you've probably never heard of.

They take the feed from Apple Podcasts, so like with a website that you need to propagate with a new domain. It's the same with this. So you want your trailer going out at least 30 days before your first episode is scheduled for release. Have a day for release. Have a day for scheduling. Reason being, number one, you want people to start to find it in the apps.

You wanna start promoting that and getting the followers up because you want an absolutely, ready to go audience. It will help you in terms of your lift, your reach in the search first and foremost, but also gives you a chance to PR it. If you've got a set day that you know your podcast is launching, don't listen to these gurus that will say You need six episodes on launch date. That's absolute bobbins.

My take on this is actually one episode to launch with is absolutely fine. If you've got three episodes ready to go in the bag, brilliant cause you can start then promoting those ahead of time. That's the more sensible way of doing it. You won't get any benefit at all from having three episodes on launch day, other than people might listen to more of your episodes.

But we know that the algorithms don't actually care about how many listeners to how many episodes, as much as they care about, did the people listen to the entire episode and did they follow the podcast off the back of it? That is literally it.

So that's first and foremost, a pro tip for you. Slow down, think about who your ideal listener is and start to build that community for them straight away. So that means get yourself a LinkedIn community page, a Showcase Page or Company Page if that's valid.

If your podcast is going to be a business, great. Get your Company Page set up, ready to go. Start building that community. Start reaching out to people. Start dropping hints. Start letting people know what you're doing. It's like the whole breaking down the fourth wall thing. Start sharing your artwork concepts.

Start talking about the things that you've learned from doing your podcast because like with a LinkedIn post where somebody puts a selfie on and they're showing their office, it's the same idea. People feel like they're getting to know you, and so therefore, if they get a little bit of a peer behind the curtain of what your podcast is gonna look like, great. They're gonna feel like they're connected to it.

I think that's really and truly the pro tip I would give you to take away, sit down with your teams or with yourself or whoever, and actually plan out, write it down a little plan. I'm not talking about a business plan. I'm talking about literally getting on paper when this is gonna start? At least a month and a half from now. Who is gonna listen to it and how are we going to attract them? Not only that, but like I said before, What's my tone of voice gonna be? Who am I going to be showing up for these people?

And I think as long as you do that, you are gonna be at least 50% of the way.

[00:40:05] Michelle J Raymond: I couldn't agree with any of this more. You have shared all that and then some, during this podcast today, and I'm not surprised, and I have been sitting here on one hand, I've been going, oh my God, I made all the rookie errors.

On the other hand, I go, wow, I've come a long way. So there's both sides. And I still have a long way that I can go and grow and evolve and I think that's okay for people to do as well. You will get better, you know these perfectionists that sit there on the sidelines, dreaming of doing a podcast.

We want you off the sidelines just as much. Reach out to Neal, he will be the person that I trust the most to set you up for success. You can see examples of his podcast that he's already producing for other people, so he's got the runs on the board.

But for me it's stop just sitting with an idea in your head and get out there. And yes, I made mistakes and yes, I will get better, but I didn't get better because I left all these things in my head. So that would be my tip.

But Neal, thank you for everything that you've shared today. I appreciate you. Cheers.