Top tips from Niall Mackay.
1. .You need a smartphone
The most basic to start a podcast, you need a smartphone, basically. And I know people who would make a podcast using the smartphone, they sit down in a in the bedroom, put the phone between them and the guest and they start recording. And they’ve done three or 400 episodes like that. Are they good quality, maybe not the best. But they love making it similar to you. They love the interaction with the guests, they’ve interviewed 400 people, the most basic you need a microphone. So without as your smartphone, then I would never advise using your laptop microphone or computer microphone, those are terrible. And then, but I’m a doer, I just want to get things done. And then it’s all about just improving bit by bit by bit.
2. I would never use that microphone no in a million years.
I would never use that microphone no in a million years. But I started with a basic condenser Blue Yeti microphone sitting on a table between me and the guest. We put up cushions and DVS, comforters.
3. I always focus on the audio first
For me, I’m a big audio I love I mean, I love podcasts. That’s why I started making podcasts who I always focus on the audio first, the video is coming second, but I definitely can see the future is the future is definitely video I think. And because of the way YouTube works with the algorithm, you can get more traction, I think on YouTube than podcast, we were talking about those podcast numbers, they can be quite low. But so the main difference is though, even though you may only have 100 listeners on pod on listening to your podcasts or on Spotify, or Apple podcasts, but around about 80% of them are going to consume the whole podcast.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
podcast, listen, work, episode, podcasting, ai, listeners, microphone, hour, audio, day, started, edit, people, podcaster, long, week, guest, new zealand, conversation
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:00
Welcome to another episode of Better Business Better Life. I’m your host Debra Chantry-Taylor. I’m a certified EOS implementer and FBA accredited family business advisor, and a business owner myself with several business interests. I work with established business owners and their leadership teams to help them live their ideal entrepreneurial life using EOS EOS as the Entrepreneurial Operating System. The guests on my show Come on, and they authentically share the highs and lows of creating a successful business, and how they turn things around in their business using EOS tools and traction. Or as it is, in this case, they’re actually experts who specialize in working with established business owners.
Niall Mackay 00:52
That’s the difference with podcasting, you have this intimate relationship with the host, and it’s right in your ear. So this is partly why I was giving you that advice. And when I tell everyone don’t talk over each other, don’t do load laughing because your listener is generally probably going to have headphones on. And these days, everyone has pretty nice sound cancelling headphones or the air pods. And if you suddenly like shriek with laughter, or you’re all talking over each other, it’s just really confronting to that yield. So maybe in the future, we’ll get to the point where you record this episode, you feed it into some AI program, you press the button, and it literally does everything that you want for you. And then I don’t have a job, I don’t think it is going to happen. I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. I think AI is always going to be alongside for no anyway, maybe eventually it’s going to overtake us and overthrow us or become prisoners of AI. But for the moment, no. Anyway, everything I’ve seen is AI is going to make our lives better, faster, more efficient, but it’s still going to need that human element.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 01:54
So today’s guest is very unusual. I have to say he has built a school for underprivileged children in Vietnam. He is a teacher, a comedian and a podcaster. And he works with over 30 podcasts from all around the world. And I literally mean from all around the world. And he’s gonna share with you today how Podcasts can help you build your business through authority and leadership. So Niall Mackay, the podcast guy, teacher, comedian, podcaster, founder of 7 million bucks podcast. Welcome to the show. Neil.
Niall Mackay 02:23
Thank you very much. I’m very excited to be here.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:26
Yeah, I’m a little bit nervous. Because obviously the podcast guys, I will not do the podcast on my podcast. But just for the listeners. leet. Neil has actually been helping me with my own podcast. So I’m very excited to be talking about, you know, what Podcasts can do for you and how you can actually really add value to your business with it. Sunil, tell us a little about your story. I mean, teacher, comedian podcaster. You know, that is a little bit unusual, right?
Niall Mackay 02:51
Well, you know, I’m Scottish, right. So obviously, I like to talk, I’ll try and make it the condensed version. So we’re not here for for two hours. Basically, I’ve traveled the world lived in America, Australia, New Zealand, which I call home and I absolutely love New Zealand, moved to Vietnam for seven weeks. And that was seven years ago. And I’m still here. And through that time, I started doing stand up comedy, which was a dream come true. Just to do it. One time, well, was literally a dream come true. And then ended up doing it about over 300 times. I did it in New Zealand, when I went back there Scotland, Thailand, America, all over Vietnam, which was more than a dream come true. It was unbelievable and started putting on comedy shows who absolutely loved that. And during that time, I also worked with a school here at an English language school as a teacher, first of all, and then I moved into working with their charity department, which was my background. So in New Zealand, had worked for the lifelight Trust, which runs a Westpac Rescue Helicopter in Wellington and work for the Madigan Institute, which is cancer research and immunotherapy based in public Victoria University. So using my fundraising background, I started working with a profitable arm of the school and non profitable arm sorry of the school providing education to underprivileged children. And through that, that led to raising over $60,000 in a year to help build a school in the Mekong Delta. And that was just absolutely mind blowing. We got to see the school in the beginning when it had mold holes in the wall, the towers were all broken wooden desks, just absolutely horrible learning environment. And we got to oversee that project from knocking that building down to the creation of the new building. We got to go down on the very last day in the last couple of days and help paint it which was unbelievable, but I still feel like it was cheating because we didn’t do any of the hard work at all. But we got to go down and you know, do the photo up on the last day and paint the walls and obviously, unbelievable. There’s a plaque on the wall with my name on it and all the donors which is still one of the most amazing things to this day. And to give those kids that environment was just Yeah, absolutely incredible. But then from there To the pandemic hit in 2020. And unfortunately, I lost that job. Because the school had to make cutbacks, obviously. And I went back to teaching more and more to help the school. And by the time that contract came around for renew at the end of 2020, the couldn’t renew my contract. And at that point, then, I had already been running comedy shows and had already been doing my own podcast and helping some other people just wanted to other people with their podcast. And so my wife and I, it was one of those sliding doors moments where we said, right, I think now’s the time, your contracts not being renewed. Let’s start the business full time. And so we started the business full time. And as probably many listeners know, with the pandemic, it was two steps forward three steps back the whole time, and never really knew what I was doing, where I was going, what was going to happen from day to day, week to week. But finally, things are improved. And now over the last year and a half to two years, really focused on the podcast side of the business, and just, it’s just gone from strength to strength. As soon as I made the decision that I wanted to focus on one thing, which was podcast. It’s just been incredible the results. And even though today, to this day, it’s just every week is getting better right now. And it’s more and more exciting and more and more exciting every time every week. And then meeting people like yourself has just been incredible.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 06:17
It’s been really good being a podcast host as well, because of the amazing people you get to meet. But we obviously had the New Zealand connection. That’s how we kind of first got started, I think you saw one of your friends who was a guest on my podcast, is that right? That’s right.
Niall Mackay 06:30
Yeah. So cat being interviewed. I saw it come up on LinkedIn. And so I watched it I message cat hadn’t spoken to her in years. And I was like, Hey, I saw your interview. It’s amazing. I knew her and Johnny had started hire hire staff. And I knew he had gone from strength to strength. But it was amazing to hear her story. Yeah.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 06:45
And she certainly has done amazingly well in that business. Oh, yeah. They’re still growing and still growing very, very fast. But they’re, it’s great that you can share that journey to date as well. So podcasting is an interesting thing is that so if I’m really honest, I started my podcast, I think it’s two and a half years ago now just with the intent of kind of repositioning myself a little bit in the marketplace. And then I just got into it and find it really fun. And now we’re sort of I don’t know if episode 170 Something I think it is. But it wasn’t really very strategic in terms of why I decided to do it, it just kind of fell into it. I’ve also kept it going for quite a long time by most podcast standards. So why would you even want to consider doing a podcast? First of all?
Niall Mackay 07:27
Congratulations, because 175 episodes is incredible. So well done. Thank you. And it does take a lot of dedication and consistency to do that. And I think your story is really similar to mine. And similar to a lot of people, they start a podcast as a hobby or for some fun. And then the benefits we get out of it are just incredible. So for me, first of all, it I don’t, I’m not overstating this. It’s been life changing for me starting a podcast as a fun hobby. One day, where I was bored, and I always had loved podcasts. I was like, I’m gonna start a podcast. That decision has changed my life and taken it in directions I could never have imagined from doing like voiceover work, TV commercials, even starting stand up comedy, the confidence to do that probably came from doing the podcast. And then like you mentioned, the people you meet, the amount of friends that I have, the connections that I have from interviewing people around the world has just been amazing. So why should you start a podcast? That was the question, right?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 08:25
That’s right.
Niall Mackay 08:28
I think it’s different for everybody. Some people just do it for fun for as a hobby. And that’s completely fine. Some people want to talk about ghost stories. Some people want to talk about sports, some people want to just get together with a friends and, and have a chat. I mostly focus on people who want to do it to support their business, because I think that’s the direction that podcasts are heading. It’s a little bit cynical. It’s a little bit corporate, but I do think podcasts are another form of marketing. And in this day and age where ad spend or your return on adspend is getting more and more difficult. Facebook ads, Google ads, things like this TV, print all of these, it’s more more difficult to cut through the noise to be more personal. And I think especially since the pandemic business has changed, people want to hear more personal stories, they want to create a connection with a business. They don’t want just some faceless, corporate, or even like a small business. They want to know who those people are. Even if it’s the local cafe, they want to know who they are. They want to get to know them. And so I think podcasting is changing in that sense that you can use it to support your business, make it really personal, whether that’s big or small. I think the biggest misconception with podcasting is people get into it, and they think that they’re gonna get 1000s of listeners are gonna get sponsorship, they’re gonna become famous, when in reality that happens to less than 1% of people who start a podcast, but you can have 50 to 100 listeners and if they’re your listeners, if they’re in your niche, and they want to hear what you’re talking about. That is your target audience and that is amazing.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 09:59
Yeah, Some of the biggest kind of podcasts over here, and he’s obviously business ones go really well. But there’s actually a couple that are, you know, very, very niche. And they actually have quite a large following just because they are very niche. And it’s interesting, because I think you said, he don’t get 1000s of listeners. I mean, when I first started my podcast, I was like, you know, you got one or two listeners, and it did for a long, long time, it didn’t feel like it was growing at all. And even now, it’s not as if we have 1000s of people listening all the time. But it’s certainly grown steadily at the more and more we continue, but like you said, I’ve been I’ve literally had people come up to me when I’ve been in the airport in Melbourne kind of going, Oh, you’re Debra aren’t even it’s like, yeah, do I know you? Like, I’ve been listening to your podcast, okay. And they tend to sort of, you know, they, they will actually listen to a whole lot of them. And we’ll enjoy them and say they are they’re your, they’re your people. They’re your people who are tuning in every week to see what you have to say.
Niall Mackay 10:49
There is nothing better, I think, in this world as a podcaster than being recognized or somebody telling you that they’ve listened to your podcast, I find it so strange, because right now we’re doing this podcast, just me and you one on one across the world. And then we make it we put it out to the world, I do the same thing. I make a podcast either by myself or with a guest and we put it out to the world. And we kind of forget about it. And then somebody comes in tells you that they’ve listened to something that you’ve created, and you’ve put out to me, I still get a surprise on the up. Or we also you listen to me, me, you heard me talking. I’ve had people tell me that they fall asleep listening to my podcast. And I’m like, That’s the weirdest and the coolest thing in the world that somebody somewhere in the world has headphones on falling asleep listening to me talk. And I had it last week. So I run a quiz night here for fun. Every Tuesday night. Do we have between 30 to 50 people come up. And one of the podcasts I run is a tourism podcast called Vietnam is awesome. And I’m the host of it. And this woman was at the Quiznos they go, I’d never seen it before. It’s like, Oh, how did you hear about it? And she’s like, Oh, I heard your podcast. I was like, again, reaction. I’m like, wait, what? And she’s like, Yeah, I’m, we’re here with my family. We’re visiting Vietnam for a couple of weeks. And when I was back in Australia, I was looking at Vietnam podcasts. And I found us I was listening to it. And you mentioned the quiz night. And so here we are. And that connection is just mind blowing to me. Always will be mind blowing to me.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 12:17
And I think it is part of the reason why I do the podcast is to try and help people. And I hope people do want to listen, but you can’t force it. It is interesting, though. I mean, it’s not just for individuals, is it mean, you talked about large corporates, they still need to have a face. And so a podcast can work as well, for a larger company, by by how would they use a podcast? Do you think?
Niall Mackay 12:36
I think it all comes down to the niche. So whatever the company is, if you’re even a bakery, share recipes talk about baked goods. But if you’re a bank, if you’re Westpac or whatnot, you have a banking podcast, who the thing is, how do you solve people’s problems? That’s really for me, and when I’m coaching somebody, when I’m working with a podcast is what problem are you solving, which is, I think the same for all marketing, right? You want to present a problem, and then you’re gonna give a solution. So the podcast should be the same. But you’re giving that face you’re giving that personality, you’re creating that connection with the guests. So as I mentioned, you can just start one for fun, I work with podcasts that do paranormal and true crime. And they do it for fun, and they make a little bit of money on this side. And it’s more just their absolute passion. They’re not doing it to support any business or anything like that. And that’s completely fine as well, we definitely still need those podcasts, too. But if you’re a business, I think you should just be another channel that you have and what you need to realize, like exactly what you said, a podcast is a slow burner. I think the problem is a lot of people because a huge percentage of podcast, pod feed where they disappear within 10 episodes. And partly for that, it’s because people don’t realize how much work it is to create a podcast, which is why I’m saying congratulations on doing so many episodes, because it is a lot of work. I mean for one episode. Listening to this episode, right now, you don’t realize that this one episode has probably taken about eight to 10 hours of work to present it to you. People think they just make a podcast to get a microphone and talk and then put it out. And that’s how podcasting started. But it’s not where it’s at now. And so for businesses or for individuals, you do have to realize that it is going to be a slow burner, you may only get 12 listeners in the beginning you but then it’s going to grow slowly over time, and you’re going to build that leadership, you’re going to build that authority. And I’ve seen it with my own podcast in the beginning. It was I had no idea what the numbers meant. I looked at my numbers as they go. That’s pretty cool. And they were pretty steady and consistent. And then a couple years in, I found the stats and I realized those numbers actually put me in the top 10% of podcasts in the world. I was like, oh, okay, these are really good. These are great numbers. And so now that podcast is getting 10 times the listeners that I ever got when I started and it’s taken five years to get there. And so That’s really, it’s amazing that you’ve done it for consistently for so long, because it does take that type of dedication to start to build an audience and start to build that authority and that leadership in your niche.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 15:11
And it is very easy to look at the numbers and the beginning kind of want to give up. But I’ll tell you what, as I said, I get other benefits out of running this as in a meeting amazing people getting to have some amazing conversations. So I continue on for that basis. And now, I know I get people saying to me, I listened to that episode. And it really helped me my business. And that’s what it was started for. So I’ve got, I’ve got that. So I know I had a lot of help. To get my podcast, I’ve got a little podcast studio that I’m sitting in at the moment. And I had a lot of help to actually get that set up. In the beginning, it was pretty basic. We’ve got some pretty cheap microphones, we just put around the desk and we had some conversations, we then realized that the room itself was terrible from a sound perspective, it was bouncing around all over the place. And there’s a whole range of things that kind of happened. And now I’m very fortunate we actually have a really good studio that soundproof got great cameras got great microphones. But what do you really need to start a podcast.
Niall Mackay 16:05
And the most basic to start a podcast, you need a smartphone, basically. And I know people who would make a podcast using the smartphone, they sit down in a in the bedroom, put the phone between them and the guest and they start recording. And they’ve done three or 400 episodes like that. Are they good quality, maybe not the best. But they love making it similar to you. They love the interaction with the guests, they’ve interviewed 400 people, the most basic you need a microphone. So without as your smartphone, then I would never advise using your laptop microphone or computer microphone, those are terrible. And then, but I’m a doer, I just want to get things done. And then it’s all about just improving bit by bit by bit. So I will just start exactly like you started. I think the thing that puts off most people and businesses is they think that they do need that to do right away. They think they need to start like you have, like, you know, they think they need the best microphone, the best headphones, they need all the paneling behind them. They need the editor, they need this, they need that. Just get started. Get started with any microphone, even if it’s even if it’s your phone, I don’t recommend that. But even if it’s your phone, just get started. Go and get a Blue Yeti condenser microphone or some sort of condenser microphone and just aim to get better. That’s how I started. I started with a pretty tip. I would never use that microphone no in a million years. But I started with a basic condenser Blue Yeti microphone sitting on a table between me and the guest. We put up cushions and DVS, comforters, whatever you call them, what do you call them in New Zealand again?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 17:41
I don’t know I call them a duvet because I’m not from New Zealand, but I’m not sure. What do they call them? Do not there’s a dooner in Australia.
Niall Mackay 17:48
Sure, yeah. It’s so confusing. And in America, they call them a comforter. But whatever country you’re from, wherever you’re listening from right now, one of those things that keeps you warm at night they put on your bed, we had them draped all around the room, we had cushions everywhere because my friend, he’s a he’s got a degree in music, and he’s a sound engineer and a producer. So he was given me lots of advice and still gives me advice to this day. So we started out as basic as that, and now just gradually improved getting more and more equipment, even now I’m still buying more equipment every month or so, it
Debra Chantry-Taylor 18:19
Becomes a bit addictive, doesn’t it? But it’s absolutely true. I think that the the podcast that you start with is probably not going to be where it ends up anyway. So just getting started is a great way. And then you can improve just like you do with any of your, your tasks or your marketing or whatever. It’s just gonna get out there, do it and then start to see how you can improve it. Um, it’s interesting. I mean, we are being videoed right now. I I personally, I I personally don’t watch videos, I do find it fascinating. But there is definitely a trend towards making things a little bit more visual as well as the audio, but it still needs to be the audio. That is the main thing, doesn’t it?
Niall Mackay 18:56
Yeah, I mean, definitely the trend is towards video without a doubt. And with podcasting to the point where I go back and forth with it because some people have a video channel on YouTube and they call it a podcast. I literally saw this come up today one of the podcast groups where this guy was asking for advice in a podcast group, but he had a YouTube channel so people are jumping in being like, well, you don’t really have a podcast, you have a YouTube channel. So there’s a big debate going on about that. But no doubt it’s going towards video because I’m similar to you. I don’t really consume much video content, but more and more people are and so I’ve heard about the great YouTube arms race where everybody’s upgrading their equipment and getting better cameras. And that’s where I’m at now I work with more and more clients who do video and even one of the ones I’ve just started working with they do video but they use the worst quality cameras and the worst quality recording and so I’ve kind of had to coach them and talk them through like if you are going to focus on video you’re gonna need to get 4k Like 4k is now the minimum standard not 1080 Not HD. It’s 4k minimum standard. So you’re gonna have to upgrade your camera, you’re gonna have to upgrade your recording software to use something like Riverside or Zen caster, they were using zoom, which gives you just absolutely terrible quality. So the trend is definitely towards video, but you’re completely right at the end of the day, you can have a 4k camera. And then if you have a terrible microphone and terrible audio, you’re gonna lose the listener almost immediately. So they go hand in hand. For me, I’m a big audio I love I mean, I love podcasts. That’s why I started making podcasts who I always focus on the audio first, the video is coming second, but I definitely can see the future is the future is definitely video I think. And because of the way YouTube works with the algorithm, you can get more traction, I think on YouTube than podcast, we were talking about those podcast numbers, they can be quite low. But so the main difference is though, even though you may only have 100 listeners on pod on listening to your podcasts or on Spotify, or Apple podcasts, but around about 80% of them are going to consume the whole podcast. So you’re getting like, you know, people who are dedicated people who want to know the content and are listening to it. Whereas on YouTube, see, if you have 1000 listeners, you will be doing really well if faulty if you get 40% engagement, so people consume 40% of that episode 60%, you’re doing amazing. And you start to think of your own YouTube habits. When I watch YouTube, I maybe start it skip ahead, I stop it, I don’t finish it, there’s very rarely that I will put on an hour long YouTube video and sit there and watch the full hour. Whereas a podcast, if I put on an hour long podcast, I’m gonna go to the gym for an hour, and I’m gonna listen to the whole thing, or I’m gonna drive somewhere, I might listen to half of it. And I’m gonna listen to the second half this huge stats about people start, if you start a podcast episode, people who stop it midway will finish it. And I know I think about my own habits as well. So just comparing the two mediums that and I think this is where people get confused when they want to do a video like this. So so different the viewing habits, that consumer habits that are so so different, that are not the same? And so are you creating a video channel? Is that what you want? Because you’ve got to do it completely different? Are you creating a podcast for audio, I try and blend the two of them. But I’m still my main focus is on the audio.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 22:15
I find it fascinating cuz you think about, you know, I’m sitting here looking at you every now and then we’re looking at me over in New Zealand, and the video is just gonna be the two of us kind of looking at each other. And I can’t imagine sitting there watching an hour of two people looking at each other. But um, certainly people do tend to do that. And I suppose maybe they see the expressions on the faces rather than what it is that attracts, or maybe they don’t, maybe they actually just put it on the background or they don’t really watch the video at all. But certainly, the number of people on Spotify watching the videos seems to be increasing and increasing, which is good. I want to get back to a point you made at the beginning in terms of the amount of time that it takes. So yes, recording it is the easy part right sitting here having a chat to you is wonderful, I love it. I could do this all day long. But of course, in order to get you here, that took some some time and effort in terms of finding the right people, screening them, making sure they’re going to add some value to your audience in terms of setting up the appointment times making sure everything is set up correctly, your end my end. And that’s just before you even start and then once you’ve recorded the bloody thing, it’s gonna go through the whole post production thing, which I’ve never done myself, I’ve always outsource that. But tell us a bit about the the effort that is required and why it’s easier to give it to somebody else.
Niall Mackay 23:37
Well, I think you’ve covered amazingly there. I mean, that setup is I think people forget that even if you’re doing it as a hobby podcast, you’ve got to be messaging the person emailing them, texting them, whatever, you’re going to set up the time, very similar to what we just did, I would have a guest come you can have a chat for 15 minutes, maybe half an hour, then the podcast finishes, then you’re going to keep chatting for another 15 minutes, half an hour. So that’s two hours, gone right there. Then like all those systems that use the messaging takes time, like you said, you have amazing system set up where you get emails, and you get reminders, but those systems take time to set up as well. So you got to add that time as well. And then we get to the post production and the marketing as well. So like I would put a podcast and I would share it across all Facebook groups. I’d make little videos that share on social media, I would make Canva videos or Canva pictures, whatnot, I’d make artwork for every single episode, How To Get the picture from the guest and then the editing process as well. So that was the biggest thing in the beginning. I mean, I was staying up all night when I first started my podcast and it was because it was like you know a labor of love you loved it. It was exciting. You’re you’re sitting there was big Sunday night and you’re up till two in the morning and but that does get exhausting after a while. And so it took me a while to realize for every hour of audio, or audio, audio or video would be even longer every hour of audio, it’s going to take about two to three hours to edit. And I’m very conscious that when I’m editing and editing a podcast, so see it an hour long, as soon as you press pause on that edit to fix something, the clock is ticking on top of that, who also, you pause it for 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, five minutes. I mean, sometimes I will spend five minutes fixing the first 20 seconds of an episode to make it sound great. So now you’re less the episodes are never, you know, it’s an hour and five minutes. And you’re going to repeat that repeatedly. So that’s fine. But then you just start to realize that every time you press pause, the clock then starts ticking to add on to your editing time. So an hour easily becomes two to three, without doubt. So I kind of realized that myself, and then started working with some people to help their podcasts. And I’ll be honest, I can’t even remember how that first started. I think I put a job on Fiverr or something like that. Definitely everything comes down to my wife, I have to give her the most praise. She gives all the best ideas. She has a title within the company. She’s the CIO, which is the chief ideas officer. Because she comes up with the best ideas. Or if I have an idea, I run it by her and then she will normally make it better. And so I started working with people and that then I realized that was the biggest pain point was that people wanted to make a podcast like yourself, but they don’t want to edit it, partly because they realize it’s going to take them three or four hours to edit it. Until like I mentioned before, it takes about eight to 10 hours to make one episode. If you do it all yourself. That’s a whole working day. So if you’re making a podcast as a hobby, you’ve just taken a day off of your time.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 26:43
For one episode, let me just want that. So you’ve got a whole day’s worth of work for what it was why I’ve never done it. I’ve never done from beginning I’m all about outsourcing and getting help. And but also think, you know, I did come across some AI recently and it said, Look, we can take your video podcast, we can create snippets from it and all on a press of a button. I thought that was fantastic. And you know, haven’t got to worry about it. But it it did a terrible job. It really did like there’s there’s no substitute for a person actually listening into the podcast and picking out the absolute gold, and then putting it into either the beginning of the podcast to get the readers to listen a bit longer. Or to put it in the video snippets in AI can do a lot and I’m a big fan of AI. But I don’t think there’s anything better than actually having a person doing the editing, doing the snippets doing the that side of things.
Niall Mackay 27:32
I think it’s the big kind of thing with AI that everybody gets scared about or got scared of it. It’s crazy. Now the chat GBT has been out for over a year now there was a big fuss about it. I think II I definitely scary. And that’s for people that are way more intelligent than me that work in government and work in work in AI and they can figure out if it’s going to be the downfall of society or it’s not. Personally I don’t have all the information, I don’t think it will be the downfall of society. I think we’ve had this with every new technology that comes along that it’s scary, and it’s going to be the end. From what I can see. So far. AI is going to make our lives infinitely better, faster, more efficient. But it’s always going to need a human touch. So I use AI for everything I do. So far the editing that I do, you don’t even realize it’s AI. But for the editing I do, you can remove all the filler words. So it’s going to transcribe this episode that we’re doing right now it’s going to transcribe the episode that I edit. And then it’s going to detect what are all the filler words. So when you see um, you know, and it makes me more conscious. And this episode No, I’m like making trying to make sure that I don’t see I know, a second ago I just went you know, and I’m like, Ah, that’s a filler will Don’t say that. It’s helped me be a better speaker, I think because I know what not to say. But you can do that you can reduce the world gaps. You can do, you can pick out clips now, like you said, you can pick out like what are the best clips. So all of that is all AI based, which saves me so much time and saves every editor so much time because instead of you manually having to go through it and do that. But exactly like you said, it needs a human touch because the AI right now is not going to do it perfectly. So maybe in the future, we’ll get to the point where you record this episode, you feed it into some AI program, you press the button and it literally does everything that you want for you. And then I don’t have a job. So awesome if that happens, but I don’t think it is going to happen. I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. I think AI is always going to be alongside for now anyway, maybe eventually it’s going to overtake us and overthrow us or become prisoners of AI. But for the moment No. Anyway, everything I’ve seen is AI is going to make our lives better, faster, more efficient, but it’s still going to need that human element.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 29:43
I think the human element is a creative element, the human element is actually going to pick up what you think somebody might want to listen to. And don’t forget them and there’s more than just the actual editing and the sound is really is around. I suppose making sure that But the overall finished product is completely seamless, which needs Yes, you can get AI to help you, but it’s not going to take over all of that job. And I know you do a lot of work around actually helping people in his coaching with with the podcast and how they can actually talk. I’ve learned so much over the last couple of weeks, just in terms of the way we introduced the way that I tried really hard not to talk over people now, or, or laugh or giggle in the background or that like, there’s so much stuff that actually AI will not solve which we still need as humans. Okay, so we talked at the beginning about, you know, being able to use your podcast to build authority and leadership. Tell me a little bit about some of the businesses that you’ve worked with and some of the successes they’ve had. So I know you work with a whole range of different businesses from all around the world. So have you got a couple of examples of people who’ve really use their podcasts? Well, yeah,
Niall Mackay 30:55
For sure. One of them was one of my first customers. So they’re a pharmaceutical marketing company. They basically help sell drugs, which, even for me, you think Big Pharma. And you think, well, that’s bad. But working with them, you realize that we need these drugs, it’s drugs we all use every day, you know, whether it’s for psoriasis, or eczema, they actually work in New Zealand as well, which was really exciting. So I got to talk to a lot of patients in New Zealand, because I ended up doing some marketing for them as a just a kind of side gig as well as make the podcast. So these are drugs that are needed by people to make the lives better. The one that project that we did was on XM, and I had no idea how debilitating eczema could be for some people that they literally can’t leave the house, they can’t work. And so what they do is they figure out, again, all the pain points for the people, why are the doctors not prescribing them? Why is the government not supporting the doctors prescribing them the whole, holistic, and I hate that wall, but the whole kind of holistic aspect of it. And then they will provide advice to the drug company on how to get these drugs into the market. And it sounds bad, it sounds bad if you see how to sell more drugs, but how to get these drugs that patients need into the market. And so they approached me, they said, Look, we want to do a podcast, because we have a client list of about 500 people of high value clients, but we do a really bad job of communicating with them. We teach them that they need to communicate with their customers in a certain way. And we don’t communicate with them the same way. So we want to provide something of high value to them for free. That’s going to showcase our leadership, our authority, I don’t know how we’re not going to have any kind of sales pitch on it, we just want to provide value. And so that’s what we did, we created like a three season three to five episode season, based around one of the topics that they cover. And it just give them something to send out to their mailing list. And again, talking about time event that took them a lot of time we I made the podcast for them. But then they had to send it out the center individually to every customer. And that took them a long time as well. They didn’t do a mass mailing list. But I mean, I’ve gotten feedback from them. We’ve made several more seasons since that first season. But that first season right away, they immediately got a high value customer from that who was actually based in New Zealand. And I’m not seeing any names, obviously. But it was a high value customer that contacted them and said, Oh, hey, we absolutely love this. We hadn’t heard from you guys in ages, it’s so good to hear from you. Let’s have a chat. And they signed a contract pretty soon. I have no idea of the figures. But I imagine in the pharmaceutical world, the figures are pretty massive. And all this came from spending not much money at all to create a short podcast series. I also just quickly work with another podcaster here in Vietnam up in Hanoi. It’s about creating content for the local market. So they work with businesses who want to break into the Vietnam market. And because they understand the Vietnamese market, they will then advise them how to create tiktoks or Facebook posts or YouTube’s that the local market will respond to because obviously totally different to what people in America and New Zealand or the UK would respond to. And similar thing. They started putting out a podcast, I helped them. I have a podcast course as well. So he did my course. And then he was on my podcast as a guest. And then he was like, hey, I really need help with this. Can you edit it? So I’ve been doing that for over a year now. Similar thing he almost immediately started getting emails from clients in Singapore and around Southeast Asia saying, hey, we want to break into Vietnam. You guys know how to do it. Let’s have a chat. So I 100% know that it can support your business in a very big way. And the ROI would probably be huge.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 34:33
Yeah, it’s true. It does take time it does take effort, but in terms of the return it can be huge. What are the three biggest mistakes people make when it comes to our podcast?
Niall Mackay 34:43
Microphones not using them properly, not using the right one. Having bad audio having the guest have bad audio? I just like my ears are so attuned now to audio. So when I when I hear that, that would be number one.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 34:57
I’m still getting my pop filters because I know Know that you pick up on the peas in the ss when I’m using these might be their great microphones. But it is hard because you need to have them close, don’t you to actually get the best sound quality but at the same time it can pick up those hard sounds, can’t they?
Niall Mackay 35:12
I’m laughing is so funny. You mentioned that. I’m working with a new client just last week, and he sent me the audio and immediately I messaged him, I said, you don’t have a pop filter, do you? And he’s like, No, I need to get one. For anyone who doesn’t know what we’re talking about a pop filter takes away the breath from the P and the b sound and the esses and so your microphones pretty good, though. So it’s not too bad. But it was similar. I did hear one of your episodes. And I messaged you the same thing that I said you don’t have a pop filter, do you? Because I could hear that. And anyway, so yeah, good microphones is definitely number one. Number two, you’re giving up too quickly. Expecting amazing results immediately, which can happen as the example I just gave there with a pharmaceutical company. But how it is the long game, you have to plug away at it. Don’t worry too much about the numbers. And I think I maybe mentioned this to you or talk to lots of people about this. Some two people might think they have 50 downloads, and they think that’s terrible. But what I tried to tell people is imagine being in a room with 50 people every week, that is there to hear what you have to say like these aren’t just passerby, eyes, these are people in your niche. They’ve seen that your podcast is about us, they want to know more about us. And so they come in that room and they sit down and they listen to 80% of what you have to say. That is absolutely incredible. So don’t stress too much about the numbers. And first of all, you just have fun enjoy it. It’s like you mentioned as well, it’s a really fun process. It’s just I mean, I love getting in front of a microphone. Now I have no background in podcasting. I have no background in radio, or TV or presenting or anything like that. But it’s really enjoyable.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 36:45
I completely agree in it. Yeah, it is a bit addictive. What about so episode legs is one of the things that I think about. So you can always tell if I’m enjoying a podcast myself, because if I’m enjoying it, the episodes tend to kind of stretch out from originally, I always have to be 20 minutes maximum signalization on the car on the way to work. And then it got to 30 moments around 30 or 40. If I’m really enjoying it, it might get for 15 minutes. Is there a magic number? So I mean, I’ve seen some podcasts that go for two hours. And that feels like a huge amount of time for me. But is there a magic number? Should you be consistent?
Niall Mackay 37:16
What’s the number one podcast in the world? Do you know?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 37:19
I actually don’t know Joe Rogan, I suppose is it Joe Rogan? Yeah. And
Niall Mackay 37:23
How many hours? Is his?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 37:24
It’s a couple of hours, isn’t it? About three hours? I
Niall Mackay 37:28
think? So to answer your question, and then I want to give you some more context it as long as it needs to be. There’s no set rule. Some of my podcasts I’ve done, I’m similar to you have had a good talk and it’s stretched out to two hours, what I will generally do and I have in the past, I’ll break that down into two episodes. So I’ll say part one and part two. And there’s normally a little bit of a natural break in there. But it’s so interesting that you asked that question because I meant to send you this, I just read this literally this week. And I’ve bookmarked it, so I’m gonna send it to you. But this is what it said that blew me away. Consider these questions. I’m going to have a conversation today with someone and I was wondering, wondering whether I should chat with him for 17 minutes or 22 minutes? Which one’s better? I’m thinking of making a feature film. I was thinking 97 minutes, but it may be 102 minutes, which do you think is better? I’m thinking of cutting the grass? Should I cut it for 30 minutes or just the limit? So you get these questions are ridiculous, right? So yeah, I’ll send you this article made me laugh so much. Yep.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 38:29
So what you’re saying is it should feel natural, it should feel like you’re still getting value from it. As long as you’re getting value from it, then you can continue on. And if you don’t think there’s value there, then probably time to cut it off. Right? Exactly.
Niall Mackay 38:39
And that’s also why you do editing or you should do editing because your editor will be able to cut out any parts that are dipped down or any low. I was working with a podcaster in New Zealand who said that the first episode that he did with somebody was like two hours long, but they cut it down to 45 minutes, like the recorded for two hours, we cut it down to 45 minutes I work with a client. Right now they’re generally send me an audio that’s about two and a half hours long. And we’ll cut that down to an hour and a half. So but yeah, the answer is, and I learned that very quickly, it’s just as long as it needs to be I’ve done episodes that are half an hour, I’ve done episodes that are two hours, I think you should have an idea of what you want to do. And I think you do have that and I have that you know how long you want it to be. But having a strict number I think is quite difficult. And as I mentioned as well, you look at podcast as habits, the average commute is about half an hour. But people generally pick that if it’s an hour long, they’re going to pick it back up on the way home so you get an hour. My gym session is normally an hour so if I listened to a half hour episode, I’m gonna listen to two of them. If it’s an hour, I get to listen to the full thing. I think it’s all about thinking about how people consume the content. It is
Debra Chantry-Taylor 39:51
It’s really interesting. So since having met you a few weeks ago, obviously you give me some tips and some pointers and I used to think that all but if it gets edited it won’t feel like a natural conversation and I want it to be a natural conversation. And then of course, you edited my first episode, which will be probably one or two episodes before this one on the actual podcast, it was like, now I see the value in it, because it’s still Saturday exactly like a conversation. And but there was a different level to it. And it was more engaging, it felt more punchy, it just had a completely different field. So I am converted to the merits of having somebody actually edit it and edit it properly. It doesn’t mean it takes away from that conversation style, right?
Niall Mackay 40:32
No, it’s the magic of editing, like it gives me the biggest buzz of putting something together. And then you listen to it. And you have, as a listener, have no idea what has gone into it. Because the biggest compliment and offense I’ve ever had was, recently the podcast, I talked about that they sent me a two and a half hour audio and I edited it down. They had a like a listener write in and say, Hey, our podcast just like us, we don’t edit at all. Excellent. And thankfully, the host was like, thanks very much. But we actually do edit a lot. Like if you held this podcast, unedited, it would be really bad. So at first I took offense, I was like, What do you mean, this podcast isn’t edited, this podcast takes about five hours, probably longer to create the final product. But then I was so complimented as that’s pretty cool that they have no idea, the effort and the work that goes in to the minut detail to make this podcast. So that was pretty cool. And I think that is what I get the biggest buzz out of is taking that audio and making it into something that the listener has zero clue what has gone into my speech,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 41:39
I look back now a little bit in shame because I think there’s been a couple of times where I’ve recorded from home and the dogs are started barking and I’ve just got oh, you know, ignore the dogs. It’s like, Yeah, I suppose if you will, because I’m, I’m doing it as a conversation with the person who’s online with me. So I can set them to forget about the dogs and they will, but you’re forgetting that people listen to, as you said, in the car, at the gym, and they’re listening intently to a great conversation, all of a sudden, they’ve got this massive barking in the middle.
Niall Mackay 42:04
I mean, I won’t lie, it absolutely kills me. And you’re not the only person I get all the time. Just last week, one of my clients sent me the audio and I messaged him, and I was like, what is the beeping in the background the whole time. And he’s like, oh, sorry, there’s a construction site right outside my hit my house. But uh, you know, I thought it would sound like a natural conversation, we’ll just keep all that stuff in. For me, when I listen to it, I cringe and get not annoyed. I’m just thinking Haha, it’s because I think I maybe do understand those listening habits because we are listening. There also something really different about listening with headphones on. Because most people aren’t listening. Like I’ve done it, I put a podcast on the speakers. And I can’t do it because I can’t pay attention to it. I can’t do the dishes and listen to a podcast on the speakers. But I can put my headphones on and do the dishes because you want that’s the difference. With podcasting, you have this intimate relationship with the host and with the podcast. And it’s right in your ear. So this is partly why I was giving you that advice on where to tell everyone don’t talk over each other don’t do load laughing because your listener is generally probably going to have headphones on these days. Everyone has pretty nice sound cancelling headphones or the air pods from Apple, which are really good sound. And if you suddenly like shriek with laughter or you’re talking over each other, it should really confronting to get yields, I think.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 43:19
But it’s so challenging, because when you’re in person with somebody, and that isn’t something you obviously told me, and I’m now really really conscious of it, but I’m always laughing at people laughing with people because I’m not laughing at them. But yeah, laughing with them and and giving them all those verbal cues. Oh, yeah. And of course, I hadn’t considered what that sounds like, because I’ve actually listened to my own podcast ever. So I’ve never actually considered what it sounds like for somebody who Yeah, who’s got those headphones or right in their ears? And is, you know, hearing every single thing like me shrieking with laughter every few moments or Oh, yeah, hey, look, I there’s so many more things I want to ask. And I think we ought to do a part two at some point, because I think this is a really good. The whole point of this was talking about how we can get the most value from a podcast to build your business without authority and leadership. There’s obviously a lot more technical stuff that people need to know as well. First of all, the one thing that you kind of taught me too, was be really, really clear about what the podcast is actually about what you want to achieve with it. And then also a title. It’s important, because you imagine, although many, many podcasts don’t go beyond 10 episodes, there’s still hundreds of 1000s of podcasts out there. And so when somebody is actually kind of scanning through and looking for something, you should get a really good sense of what they are looking at what they’re looking for, and your podcast should appeal to them based on what they’re actually looking for. And from my personal experience, yes, it is certainly worthwhile getting an editor it’s certainly worthwhile. Not just somebody’s going to tidy up the noise, but somebody is actually going to genuinely listen to the episode and think about how they can present it in the best possible light for the listeners. I’m really hoping that listens on here. I now think because they will notice the change in my podcast the last few weeks that you know, when you start to think about that, hopefully, the experience overall is just a whole lot better, which means you’re going to get people actually staying and listening.
Niall Mackay 45:10
I think that’s the ultimate goal, right? So we’re talking about increasing the quality or doing all these little things that I’m given advice on is basically to create a better product. So I never make any promises that you’re going to get 1000 listeners, or you’re going to get a million subscribers, anything like that, I focus on the quality product and producing that, ultimately, the hope. And the reason for doing that is that more people are going to listen, you’re going to have your listeners are going to enjoy it more, they’re going to share it more people are going to tune in. Because that’s what people expect. These days. You know, people are watching The Diary of a CEO by Stephen Bartlett. They’re watching Joe Rogan, these guys have massive budgets, they spend a lot on microphones on soundproofing, the rooms, on editors on equipment. Basically, I’m trying to emulate those guys on a 1% of the budget. And I think we can do that I think we can get close, I think we can make it better. I think there’s no reason these days that what you were talking about as well, so many people are like, Oh, we just want to have a conversation and make it more natural. There’s a million podcasts that all have a conversation and make it natural. One of the best things I read one time was if you want to just hear a natural conversation between two people speaking, just go down to the local pub, and overhear two people talking. That’s really what you’re seeing. My biggest pet peeve is when somebody tells me they want to create a podcast about anything and everything. And literally, you can go to Spotify or Apple podcast, type in anything and everything. And you will find 1000 podcasts all called anything and everything or everything in anything. And so some people think that, too by doing that. People want to listen to them. And it’s fine. No, we’ve all got egos, I’ve got a massive ego, we all think that everybody wants to listen to us. But the sad reality is the dawn, and even lots of celebrity started podcasts that died because they were so dull and boring, because people thought, Oh, it’s a celebrity, they want to listen to their podcast, if the podcast doesn’t have a niche or a purpose, it will die. And people will not listen to it. Again,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 47:10
Another thing I’ve learned from you is also being really clear upfront about what this episode is going to actually offer as value as well. Because, yes, you do. I mean, I have got a very specific niche around businesses, growing businesses, you know, improving their life through growing businesses through us. But even so it’s important to, to make sure that that you’ve grabbed their attention upfront because nobody, we’re all time poor, right? We’re not going to sit there and listen for an hour to see if or not, I’ll get some value out of this podcast.
Niall Mackay 47:39
And hopefully, we’ve provided some value.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 47:41
I’m sure that we have a show that we have, hey, look, we’re gonna pop your website in the links to the podcast. And obviously you’ve got your course there you’ve got, I believe you do some, what do we call it? Like you can help people by doing like a review of their podcast and giving us advice about how they can improve it. Certainly, I’ve been doing that with you. And it’s been a huge help to me. So if you’re even if you’re thinking about doing a podcast, we’ve got a podcast, you can improve it. There’s anything you want to do around podcasting, honestly, Neil is definitely the guy to talk to. By the way, his name has got a really unusual spelling and so it took me quite a long time to work out how it’s actually said. So spelt, NIA ll Mackay So Neil Mackay. Thank you so much really enjoyed it. Now
Niall Mackay 48:22
This has been an absolute pleasure. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 48:25
Thank you
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Debra Chantry-Taylor
Certified EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner
#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach
Certified EOS Implementer New Zealand
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Certified EOS Implementer NZ
