The Entrepreneurs Radio Show 032 Jason Van Orden

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW

Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur‟s Radio Show Page 1 of 22

EPISODE #32: JASON VAN ORDEN

In this episode Travis interviews Jason Van Orden, a highly-successful entrepreneur and media

consultant. His show Internet Business Mastery and the website howtocreateapodcast.com is one of

the ways he helps people who wants to start their own podcast and start their own business as well as

aspiring businessmen trying to improve their products through the use of podcast.

Jason shares his business strategies and secrets for any aspiring entrepreneur that has the desire and

enthusiasm to build up their business using podcasts. Their conversation shares valuable information

for all entrepreneurs looking for internet marketing strategies to improve their businesses and utilize the

potential of podcasts in establishing a globally competitive brand in today‟s fast-paced and high-tech

economy.

Jason Van Orden

– Using Podcasting to Build Your Business

Travis: Hey it's Travis Lane Jenkins. Welcome to episode number 32 of Diamonds In Your Own

Backyard, The Entrepreneur's Radio Show - Conversations with successful business owners that grow

your business. Sandra, my co-host, is still in the centre of Daytona International Raceway for a few

weeks tending to something like 25 race teams. So Sandra, I know you're listening, we miss you; get

back to us as soon as possible.

Now for you, our listeners, I want to ask you to be sure you stay with us until the very end if you can,

because I have a couple of things that I want to share with you. Plus I want to tell you who I'm going to

connect you within the next episode. Also if you enjoy these free podcasts that we create for you, we'd

really appreciate it if you'd go to iTunes and post a comment, rate the show. This would help us to

reach, instruct, and inspire more great entrepreneurs just like yourself with the guest that come on the

show.

Now for some quick perspective on this show, for our new friends that just joined us. Even though we're

having conversations with some of the brightest entrepreneurs and brilliant thought leaders around, I

want you to think of this as a conversation between 4 friends; me, Sandra when she's here, you, and

the guest. Everyone that we're talking with has found success doing what they teach, and I want to help

you by sharing what they've discovered.

http://howtocreateapodcast.com/




Normally the only way to get this level of personal access to so many high level entrepreneurs beyond

having your own show is to join a high level mastermind, go to the seminars, go to the events and build

those relationships over several years. And now through this show, I'm super excited that we get to

share these great people with you to fast-forward your success.

Now our guest today is Jason Van Orden. Jason helps businesses launch a podcast to generate leads,

extend their brand, establish thought leadership and accomplish really any other goals they have.

Jason is also the author of promoting your podcast, he has spoken at CES, the National Association of

Podcasting, the Corporate Podcasting Summit, and New Media Expo.

So without further ado, welcome to the show Jason.

Jason: Hi Travis, thank you.

Travis: Thanks for coming on the show and thanks for taking out your time to spend with us today.

Before we get into talking about podcast and how you use it as a business strategy, would you mind

sharing some of the back story of how you got started and just what brought you to today?

Jason: Yeah, absolutely, I don't want to bore your listeners too much with lots of details but I think

there's a few key things that are interesting about what brought me to podcasting. The entrepreneurial

journeys just really fascinate me, I love seeing what it is that brings people to their search for different

level of purpose and fulfilment or freedom that they might be looking for and I had a very similar search

that started shortly after starting my one and only job as an engineer and it didn't take me long to

realize the cubicle was not for me and so I started a 2 year journey which was searching, searching,

searching, reading books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad was really big back then and kind of opened my

mind to other things. And I was trying real estate investing, I was trying to make it as a musician, I was

trying to see what I could do just to get out of that 9-5. I finally found some success in marketing, I

found out that I'm actually pretty decent in marketing, I learned that both through working with my real

estate investor friends, they needed help finding buyers and sellers and also my band pursuits led me

to learn how to market so people would actually show up to our concerts and buy our CD's and so I

found I really enjoyed helping other people learn these marketing skills because it empowered them to

get their voice out there.

Now that sounds like a succinct little story but then it's probably a process of 3, 4, 5 years of just diving

in and trying different things and I'm sure a lot of people listening to this can relate to that. Had I waited

around after reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad to find that one perfect idea to finally hit the gas pedal, it

never would've happened because of things I've ended up doing today, I never would have imagined

back in 2003 when I finally quit my job cold turkey and said, "I'm done with this, I'm going to go figure

http://amzn.to/VM9a4A




something out." It was only in the action that I finally discovered the important things about myself and

the opportunities came out of the woodwork.

And one of these opportunities was in 2005, I was on an email list just for a friend who has a business

about marketing and specifically for bands and musicians, and he happened to mention that word

podcasting in his email newsletter. And being the curious person I am I immediately typed it into Google

and Google didn't even know what podcasting was, it came back with „did you mean,‟ and I can't

remember what it suggested to me but it didn't know what I was talking about at the time.

There was a handful of blog posts out there, really geeky, early adopter type blog posts, people going,

"Oh yeah, that's cool, now with your RSS you can have enclosures and people can subscribe to get the

mp3 for the..." Yeah it was a very a sensible stuff, now fortunately having a musician's background,

audio background, engineering background, I understood this stuff, I have a technical side to me. But

very quickly I kind of projected forward and thought, "You know this is really significant, we are just

absolutely changing the way that we connect with people online, the way the people find information,

the way people consume information, and it just seemed very significant to me. Sure, it was only these

very geeky, techie guys that were trying out, it was like a ham radio thing or something, like the guys

who put up the big antennas in their background, it felt like, these kinds of guys that were starting little

podcasts, just talking about whatever. But I knew that it wasn't going to be long until businesses, and

then even just whoever wanting to have a voice online would be looking for information on how to do it.

And those blog posts that were out there were not going to be sufficient, they were going to cost

people's eyes to glaze over so I made that a choice right in that moment, I wanted to become the

world's foremost expert on how do you use podcasting to reach out to a specific target audience,

whether for personal goals or business goals, and then how do you leverage, build up influence in a

relationship and leverage that influence and relationship to change people's lives, make money, get

people to take action and get your message out there.

So that's what I've done since 2005 and one of the significant way that I've done that is through a show

called Internet Business Mastery, which is, my business partner and I expressing our affinity for people

in the same position we were a decade or so ago, stuck in a cubicle, hating our jobs, that soul-sucking,

Sunday night dread of "Oh my goodness, I do not want to go to my work tomorrow morning. I can't

believe the weekend's over already." Looking for something else, and that's what we talk about in that

show, is here's how to, there's another path, only you can decide your destiny, let's help you decide

what your passion or interest is that you can turn into a profitable venture online. And of course one of

the vehicles we teach for doing that is podcasting and media, like that. So in a nut shell there's kind of

the journey, and I think some of the key insights and moments that people might find interesting about

what's brought me to this point.




Travis: Right. Well one of the important things that I want to go back and unpack a little bit is taking

action, taking imperfect action. And so I like the fact that you mentioned that and I'll give you a personal

example.

I am a little bit of a perfectionist in, but, and that's got in my way a lot of times, and so I wanted to start a

podcast, I wanted to help teach and mentor business owners, because I found a lot of businesses

can't... that are struggling, really can't afford high level mentoring or coaching and so rather than waiting

until I had all the components, I just got on the phone and started creating podcasts you know through

bridge lines, and really that's not the most ideal and most professional way to do it, but it's a way of

taking action.

And it led me to the next step, and so the point that I really want to illustrate and then I want to let you

go a little deeper on that is there are so many other things that unfold as you take that imperfect action.

You just didn't know until you take some of those steps, and so that's the important part of moving

forward and so I'm impressed that you had that level of clarity working for somebody and realizing that

you just need to take imperfect action and start moving forward.

How long did you struggle before you really started, get some clarity on this and started getting some

traction?

Jason: Oh I'd say it was 2001-2000... So I graduated from college in 2000, immediately got what I

thought was my dream job. About 2001-2002, it was losing its lustre, I was not happy, It wasn't until

August of 2003 that I quit. I would say it was about a year before that that I had read Rich Dad, Poor

Dad, but at the same time I was studying to take the MCAT and go get my MBA, I was taking career

quizzes up at the university, I was trying to figure out what it was that I needed to do next. And although

Rich Dad, Poor Dad opened my eyes to hey, you don't have to go with the status quo, it's a mind-set

but it wasn't really heavy on here's what the next step is. And so all I could do is I just poured myself

into learning. The back of my car is... commute to work was just full of audio books and audio tapes. I

listened to more Robert Kiyosaki stuff, I discovered Dan Kennedy, started listening all to his stuff, I

started to get my hands on whatever I could just to start filling my head with the possibilities and I also

took a moment. So there was definitely a time of just searching and not necessarily knowing and being

frustrated with not knowing what the next step would be. But one thing I did do was I reflected on, well

what are the time that I have been happiest, and for me I loved my college experience even though I'll

never be an engineer again, I'm thrilled that I have that 5 years of going to school, the things that I

learned there, the people that I met, the things I learned about myself. And I kept thinking, "Man, I just

want to get back to how I felt in school. What is it about that that I liked so much?" And I decided it was

a few things, number 1 that I had control over my schedule. I chose what classes I took, when I chose if

I went to class or not. Sometimes, a lot of times I didn't because I didn't need to. I had continuous

opportunities to learn, which I loved doing, I'm a lifelong learner. And another thing I loved about being




in college was at the last year of my undergrad I was put in-charge of a class to teach. I was in a unique

position to be an engineer and a musician and they had this electronic music class and they needed

somebody with a foot on both camps to teach it and I loved it, I loved breaking down the concepts and

making them accessible to these people, watching the light bulb go off and have them go, "Wow, this is

so cool." It's just opening up new opportunities for me.

And so it was like, "Okay, how do I get those things back in my life?" In addition to the freedom, I mean

that was what I was going out most of all. Real estate investing, it was the only thing that really had

been the most exposed to, again because of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So I just dove into that. Now I've

learned a lot more about myself, I'm not a go and pound the pavement deal maker kind of guy.

Since then I've learned that I'm much better at speaking, at communications, at teaching, I describe my

unique ability as knowing how to clearly and easily share knowledge and resources that help other

people reach higher levels of freedom, fulfilment, and purpose.

I didn't have that clarity in 2003 though when I quit and it probably wasn't until 2006-2007 that those

things started sinking in but it was just one continuous process of acting out whatever the next bit of

knowledge was the next bit of self-discovery, the next opportunity that came up. So I spent 6 to 8

months as a real estate investor, made some money at it, but as soon as I discovered things like online

marketing, information marketing and had opportunities to teach people, and consult people, and have

seminars. And soon I knew that, that was the thing, "Oh that's it,” I'm doing my own seminar and I went

and booked a room. And I started an email campaign, I basically ripped off some might see Dan

Kennedy do and adapted all of those pieces of copy and just thought, great I'm going to try to fill this

room with 20 people at 200 bucks a piece and that's what I did. I just used my network and I did, I was

like, Okay, this is for me, information marketing. I get to teach, I get to learn new things, I get to help

others share knowledge and resources. This is totally cool. And then of course when podcasting came

along, I'm like, Well this is the perfect vehicle to do this with, to help others teach and share their

message, but then do that for myself so it's definitely a continuous process and that process is still on-

going today. But there was definitely a moment where I just knew, it‟s like, "Okay, I know what I want

enough and I have the skills enough." I think that day I had a particularly nice settlement coming from

my PayPal account because of a course I was selling online and I decided that's it, I'm ripping up my

resume, I'm never, that fear finally went away of having to go back in every other job again. I just knew

that I'd be able to figure it out one way or another. And that probably wasn't until like, 3 years or so after

I quit my job that that moment finally hit me.

Travis: Good stuff. When you're on, I think, Rich Dad, Poor Dad was more about making it clear that

you're in a rat race and that you should get out of it and change the rules of the game, right?




Jason: Absolutely, yeah. It was the awareness that that book gave me that was the most valuable and

I still say it's still it was a life-changing book for me ever though it didn't necessarily give me the map but

it totally pointed me towards some different destinations.

Travis: Yeah, kind of a paradigm shift in the way that you think about things because a lot of people

don't realize the non-self-employed don't realize that there's a different set of rules that you can play by

as a business owner and the majority of those rules are based on a rulebook that you write.

Jason: Yeah.

Travis: Could you ever go back?

Jason: No, no way. Absolutely not, I mean, I'm chronically unemployable is what I say now, I just...

Travis: Me too.

Jason: Yeah, it'll never happen.

Travis: Jason, isn't engineer and musician a conflict?

Jason: Well, it can be for sure, I mean, yeah you don't know many... Yeah, it's kind of a unique blend of

the right and the left brain.

Travis: Exactly.

Jason: Yeah, for sure. There is always something within me that really enjoyed the idea of being well-

paid. And I programmed from the age of 5, tinkered around with stuff on my Apple to see with basic or

whatever music I would say I was more passionate about but I was just trying to follow the program of

like, "Okay, well, let's get a good paying job that I can support a family on and I'll just try my best to mix

in something I love which is music and so that's what I did, it's not ultimately what I'm doing now but it

was one more step in the journey.

Travis: Right, Right. Well, you know, it's still kind of along the same trench of things because I'm

involved in music also...

Jason: Oh nice, yeah.

Travis: I have like full-blown sound stage in my house and we get together and sing, and I'd really like

to pursue that on a more serious level. But we're making a living using our voice and for me, I'm most

comfortable... I like writing, I love the depth that comes from writing but the spoken, having a natural

conversation that just evolves organically is really what gets my juices going the most, is that the same

for you?




Jason: Yeah, I mean I listen to a lot of audio, I know from my own information intake just because I can

do it on the go for one, it's very convenient for me. And then I do like that, I listen to a lot of podcasts, I

do like the connection that comes with listening to podcasts, you hear somebody's voice, you hear

somebody's personality. We're in the age of information overload for everybody and I think one of the

best things that we have as entrepreneurs to share is a unique vision, something that's based on us

and being us to a 110% because nobody else can be us. And intellectual property is even starting to

become more and more of a commodity so one of the best ways to stand-out is just to share you, your

story, your voice, and podcasting empowers that so I love it. And there's lots of ways to reach people

online. Some people prefer to read, some people prefer to listen, some people prefer to watch video,

and people try to say, "Oh, audio podcast are going to crush blogging." No, that never happened.

Video's going to crush audio podcast no that never happened.

You know, there‟s different modality for different people at different times and we have people that out

show become now a habit for them. People literally write us and say, "I always load up your show

before I go and get on an airplane, because I then I know that for the next 4 hours I'm going to learn a

lot of good stuff or take you to the gym with me every morning, or I walk my dog listening to you guys.

It's just us and... You said at the beginning of the show, think of it as a conversation amongst friends

and it really does have that feel to it which is incredibly powerful when it comes to relationship building

and influence which I think are two of the most important assets that any business or brand can have

these days.

Travis: Right, right. So let's segue into that, let's talk about how the average business owner. Do you

feel like podcasting is reserved for certain type of businesses, businesses that are more global or more

versatile, or can podcasting apply to main street type businesses? Take me down that path.

Jason: Yeah, I think podcasting can relate to just about any business. I think any business needs to be

in a practice of a good content marketing strategy, going back to that information overload. Attention is

now; we are in an attention economy. People's attention is one of the most valuable things that you

can get and advertising is dying a slow, and actually sometimes a fast death. A lot of big brands think,

okay well we're just going to increase the noise and make it louder to try to stand out and people just

have far too much choice now with digital devices in their pockets connected to broadband connections

constantly. They could find that anytime exactly the thing that they need, want the solution, the answer,

the entertainment, the connection with whatever people it fits their exact desire. So unless you show up

in the places that their looking with content and solutions and answers that are so highly relevant to

them, it's far too easy for them to not pay attention to you.

So I encourage businesses to go after that attention by using content marketing. That's what all the

search engines online are all based around the most authoritative and the most relevant content. That‟s

how Google works; Google has gotten really good at serving up the most authoritative and the most




relevant content for any given search. YouTube, one giant search engine for content, even twitter is

really just a big search engine for what's happening, if our connections have it, what people are

referring to each other, what people are talking about. So if you think about it, everything's a search

engine. YouTube by the way, number 2 search engine on the internet right now. How do you show up

in all the search engines? Well you create regular, authoritative, relevant, highly, just sought after

content that your target audience that you're going after can't live without.

Now that could be in the form of blogging, writing, you said you particularly like writing, it could be in the

form of podcasting, it could be in the form of, and a podcast really can be audio or video, so I'm not

here to say, "Oh you absolutely have to be doing audio podcasting." I think ideally you have a mixed so

that you show up everywhere and you give all those modalities to all the different possible people but

you are going to know the people you're trying to reach better than anything and at certain topics

they're going to be lend themselves more to video, certain topics might lend themselves more to written

word, and certain topics might lend themselves more to audio. If I'm teaching yoga I might want videos

that actually show and demonstrate it, whereas I know our audience really likes, they're busy people on

the go, they want to listen to us at the gym listening, walking their dog, all those kinds of things.

So I'd say it comes down to two things, what fits you and your personality and your style of content

creation best. Are you a writer, are you a talker, are you both, and then what fits your topic and your

audience the best, you just got to consider all those things together but at the bottom line you

absolutely have to have a content strategy to get attention online, and attention equals cash in this

economy.

Travis: Right, right. I think mine and your audience because we have a very similar audience. What

would prevent me from turning on my Skype camera and recording both of us right now, and then... So,

one piece of content can obviously be a video that we upload to YouTube and then the podcast that we

upload iTunes and then take the transcript and put it on our blog, now you've met all 3, right? And that's

3 different channels.

Jason: Right. Yeah, we did that all the time, we purpose our content, definitely I don't want people

going, "Oh my gosh, I got to be content marketer now too, I've got so many things to do around my

business." Absolutely that's true, one of the things you have to do to run your business is market. We

just all have to do it, and I think one of the most effective is content marketing but you have to be

strategic about it, just like you said, like there's ways to re-purpose the content and... It's not like I'm

creating an absolutely separate piece of content for YouTube and absolutely separate piece of content

to go since you like iTunes and podcasting stuff, and separate content for blog. They cross-over all the

time because one, repetition is not a bad thing for your audience, and two, some people are going to

prefer one modality over the other, and then three you're just showing up everywhere and increasing




the touch points at which people can find you and allowing people to connect with you in the way that

fits, that they choose to. I think that's what the internet is really all about these days.

Travis: Alright, let them choose the modality. So do uniquify any of those, I know that's a new word.

But do you uniquify any of those so would you go in and condense, say the transcript down to a more

succinct blog post or how would you go about that?

Jason: Yeah, I think you do, while you can re-purpose content, you need to make sure that the content

is formatted and created in such a way that's appropriate for the medium. I will say that a few years

back we would make up audio podcast and then we just slap a static slide on it and put it on YouTube

and honestly I don't think that was the best use of that syndication. While they probably got some

traction, really what would be better is to, I guess one way you could do is you could start with a video

and whether that's you talking into a camera or whether that's like a slide on your screen and you're

recording it with a screen recording software like Camtasia or Screen Flow on the Mac, and then you

could strip the audio out of that and that audio could be a podcast. It goes into a, you know, iTunes or

let's say you start with the audio like we're doing here and maybe there was a key 3 or 4 minutes,

something I said that you wanted to underline, and you create a couple of slides, a PowerPoint thing,

and then just kind of use that to go, "Hey, I want to sum this up or add to this and create..." I mean

videos online, they should be short, 3 to 5 minutes is, people, you know, video have a shorter attention

span with that.

And then you could have that transcribed but then often what we'll do is we'll have that transcription

maybe handed to an article writer that for $10, they take a piece of what we taught and make a nice

500-700 word article out of it and kind of goes right down on our behalf rather than just being a pure

transcript.

So as much as you can, I think it is ideal to re-purpose yet modify to be appropriate to the medium but

there's nothing wrong to it, just posting straight up transcripts on your site and there'll people that do

that as well.

Travis: Yeah, I was going to say what would prevent you from just posting the transcript and... What

would be the negative impact of that in your team?

Jason: I don't know that there's any negative impact, just that you might get more traction by actually

formatting it as an article. I think transcripts are going to be, your current audience is going to

appreciate transcripts because sometimes they'll be too busy and they'll just want to scan through the

transcripts or refer back to them. Whereas for finding new audience, I haven't seen transcripts get a lot

of traction and say Google. That would be one reason to post that text, is that Google does an index

audio and video, it doesn't know what the content of what you said in an audio/video is, however, I think




you're going to get better traction in showing up in Google by actually turning a transcript using that

content and turning it into a well formatted blog post with headings and things like that versus just pure

transcripts.

So transcripts would be for returning current audience type people tool and the good will with them

whereas I think by re-purposing it to more of an article would be for getting found within search engines

better.

Travis: It makes sense. So let's do like a real world example, we're talking about some of these higher

level strategies and tactics. Let's take a real business and draw a good picture of how podcasting would

propel them. Let's take a main street business, could you do something like that, are you comfortable

with that?

Jason: Yeah, sure, absolutely. The question for starting a podcast or any content marketing strategy is

the same one that any business has to be asking themselves right now, in fact it's kind of 2 or 3

questions. I think, I mean there's a wonderful book called Zag that talks about how to build a successful

brand these days, and he talks about how it's really important to identify your, the tribe or the audience

that you're going after, even more than it is to have like the most clever product or to have the most

unique technology or the most efficient factory. It's about knowing what audience it is that you're trying

to reach and being very specific about that because if you're trying to reach everyone, you're really just

shooting yourself in the foot.

And so let's take a main street business, let's say I'm in Portland where there is a ton of yoga studios.

So one easy way for a yoga studio would have to stand out would be to regularly blog or create audios

or videos to, as a podcast and as a blog and in YouTube to both get found by new people as well as to

continually engage the customers that they're already bringing in. And what they wanted to know is like.

"Okay, well who specifically comes to our yoga studio?" There's one that I used to live right near in

what's called the Pearl District of Portland and this is some of the most expensive real estate in all of

Oregon State because it's kind of the new and upcoming with all the galleries and new condo high rises

and so you're going to have a little bit more of a upscale clientele. It's the one that celebrities go to if

they're in town. It's also where you're going to get people who are just in town, busy downtown, or

probably going to go and drop-by this one.

And so I think, hopefully they know that that's specifically their audience and so they can gear that, and

what they want to know is, Okay, what specifically are the pains or the passionate desires of that

audience that they're looking for. Why is it that that crowd does yoga, is that an identity thing? Yeah,

probably, partially. Is it a rehabilitation thing, it's probably a de-stress because these are very busy

people living in an upscale part of, and word living downtown, so I'm sure it's a de-stress, take a break

thing.




So you define that audience, define what their pains are and then you just start creating content that

regularly speaks to and empathizes with those pains and by doing that, by talking about that content in

the beginnings of their yoga, on their website, they're staying on top of the mind of these crowds of

people. These crowd of people, they might only be able to come into their studio so many times but if

there is a YouTube channel that they can subscribe to or if there is a podcast and it might just be, you

know, "Hey, we just released a video that gives you a 5-minute yoga, takea break in your office and do

a quick yoga bunch of stretches. So maybe that's one of the things, they want to de-stress and they

know they sit at a computer all day long and they want to stay healthy and so, boom, they've created a

5-minute video that they can put into a podcast feed and iTunes and get found in YouTube. And you

know what, they might even get found by people outside of Portland, Oregon which is fine and great,

because you know what they can start doing for those people and start doing online video courses, I've

actually seen yoga studios do this.

So not only does it allow you to attract an audience, you might not already be giddying and then sell to

that audience in new, unique ways. It allows you to keep engaged with and keep the attention. Again

going back to that hugely valuable asset of attention of the people that you're already attracting. It

allows you to build up a more personal relationship with them, rather than just being the studio that they

go to because you happen to be the closest and they pay you your $10 per session or whatever.

You're also now somebody that they watch in their office when they need to stretch and de-stress a

little bit. And maybe you find out, "Hey these people really like to do meditation. Okay, so part of our

podcast is going to be guided meditation." And so now you start becoming part of their routine, part of

their daily lives, maybe you have a couple of your yoga teachers that are especially personable,

connecting with them in a more casual way. Getting to know the people, bringing on a human element

to your business as well. And we all know the email list is super important and I'd say, you're just super

charging that by having a content marketing strategy like this that connects with them on a more

personal level that meets their pains and their needs and then of course, just as going to bring them

back to your business, bring them back to your business.

So there's kind of a more global view of how I would, even for a local mom and pop shop would use

content marketing to pull people in.

Travis: Right. So, and then of course what it does is it increases your position as an authority and it

deepens a relationship between you and the consumer of that information. So that definitely makes

sense. And now that topic is something that people choose to do. It's almost exercise type mind-set,

and so I can see that definitely working with the podcast. Let me see if I can throw you a curve and see

if it still works, I don't know.

Jason: Okay.




Travis: So let's say, let's take, I want a home improvement company. So our clients are higher level

people that are typically 40 years and older and they're more interested in quality rather than just a

cheap price. They want accountability and they want somebody they can trust. So would you create a

podcast about home improvements, where would you go with that?

Jason: Absolutely, and it might not be the kind of thing where it's like you're putting out an episode

every single week but, I mean, I was kind of in a situation like this recently where I needed to hire a

contractor here in Portland that's specifically understood lead abatement which is a big issue and you

got all these beautiful older houses but they've been around since 1906 or whatever. I immediately had

all these questions come to mind. So that home improvement business, well they should be asking is

like, "Okay, when somebody is looking to add on to their house." I mean okay maybe their baby

boomer's looking to about to retire and they're thinking, "Yeah, you know what, might be really nice to

finally turn this house into the thing that we always wanted to have. You know, let's treat ourselves...

We've lived in this house 20 years; let's build that primo ultimate master bedroom and master bath that

we've always wanted. Well you know, there's a lot of questions that come up, about how to hire a

contractor and what are the licensing‟s maybe, I need to make sure, you're putting a lot of trust in

somebody, what are the considerations I need to make as far as, maybe I'm overwhelmed by picking

colours or style designs or I want to design something I like but that's still going to increase the value of

my home.

So that home improvement person should just sit down and go well, "What are the top 5 questions we

always hear when our phone rings and somebody's thinking about hiring us for a bid. And instead of

just being one of these bid commodities, imagine if somebody goes online and their searching for home

improvement Portland, Oregon or their searching for home improvement Austin, Texas, or home

contractor, whatever kind of contractor in your city.

On the first page of Google, there are 10 options that come up and their ID-ing bunch of these local

listings. But now imagine that they click through one of these sites, and there's a 2-minute video

immediately from this contractor going, "Hey, welcome to this site. You might be looking at doing some

improvements on your home. We specialize in doing this, and this, and this, and I imagine right now like

you're asking questions like this, and this, and this, and I totally get it because you know what5 years

ago, whatever, I was adding on to my house to..." So you're kind of like, "Hey, I'm just like you", kind of

a spilll going into your message as well. And so it's just like a matter of 3 minutes with a video like that,

you have them connecting with you. You show them that you understand, that they are in the right

place, for somebody who is looking to work exactly with their demographic, that you understand the

questions that are on their mind and that you have the answers, and so maybe say, "Hey, I want you to

just subscribe you to our email list here to the right, or I want you to subscribe to our podcast series

where we are going to help you answer the top 10 questions that always get asked or the top 10 things




you need to decide before you touch a single nail on your house and we're going to guide you through

those process that process in considerations that you need to do. And so you create a 10-audio series

or a 10-video series that answer those top 5, like the top 5 questions they always ask and the top 5

questions that they should ask but they don't know that they should ask because they just don't know

what they don't know. And now all of a sudden you've served them in a way that I don't think I've ever

seen any contractor at least in Portland, Oregon do and who are they going to pick. Now there's some

people who are still going to go with the lowest bidder because that's what they do, but I know there's

going to be a lot of people who are like, "Well, I trust this guy. I've seen his face; I've heard his voice

before he even came to my house. Before we wasted anybody's time and he's already answering

questions and he clearly understands where I'm coming from so I'm taking this guy's bid.

Travis: Excellent job on handling the curve ball I threw you there, that was kind of a rhetorical question.

We had wrote years ago a 14-page consumer guide that just blows people away, and they have a holy

cow moment when they read it. And what it does is the value buyers raise their hands and the price

buyers say thank you and go away.

Jason: Right.

Travis: Now that sounds bold but we were never going to sell the price buyers anyways because our

service... I don't want to operate in, I don't work in that business on a regular basis, but everyone is

alleviated from... When you go out to visit with a client that you don't align with anyways, you're really

not offering a value to either side. Right?

Jason: Right.

Travis: And so the consumer guide is really just a written way of doing exactly what you said, it takes

them through that process of explaining to them what it is, what questions they should be asking. And it

really educates them on how to hire our competition, which I'm okay with also. But a lot of the questions

in there, most people don't realize that a poor contractor can put something together in a way that it's

not obvious to you, the homeowner that it's done poorly. And it sets there for 8 years, leaking, and then

you have black mold. And now I've seen this. You have black mold that's impacted your daughter's

bedroom and she has breathing problems, she'll never be the same. And this half contrived job that

they had done 8 years ago is going to now cost them $40,000 in mold abatement. And when people

realize that mistakes like that, and I don't want to get too far-filled on the example, but when you

educate people on the impacts of these different types of decisions, it builds an affinity for them and so

you're just taking it in at a different direction and use them, the auditory form of podcast to a condition

of know I can trust you, right?




Jason: Well, absolutely, and if you, let's put it this way. Research shows us that people when they

make big decisions like that, what car to buy, who to hire, where to go on vacation. There's 3 kinds of

people we trust most of all, number 1, we trust people we see as authority, you know, authority figures

or leaders in a particular topic. The primo example would be somebody like Oprah, but that be even

goes down to a local authority or celebrity, whatever. Number 2 we trust people that we see as friends,

okay, because obviously they must have our best interest in mind, and so we're more likely to trust

what they say. Number 3 we trust people that are just like us because if they have similar values, wants

similar things, then we're more likely by following their advice to stay in line with the kind person that we

are and the kinds of things that we value in life. Well, what I find by creating regular content, particularly

where the voice through audio, and or video in your face, is you immediately position yourself as all 3 of

those things. People all the time tell us, "I feel like you're my friend, I feel like I could trust you, I could

sit down and have a drink with you. I feel like you're just like me, you understand me because we're

constantly speaking exactly with those pains that they have and empathizing with them", and just by the

merit that we have a show. I mean our society programmed, oh if you're on T.V., if you have a book, if

you're on a radio show, you're now an authority; you know what you're talking about. And so by using

this strategy, you are immediately, in a matter of days if not minutes, positioning yourself as all 3 of

those things. So, who will they more likely to listen to, you, or the 20 other commodity contractors that

are out there for them to price shop.

Travis: Exactly. I feel like there's 3, or I've come to find that there's 3 type of buyers, really in any type

of any field that I've been exposed to. So there's the value buyer which is the top rank, and then there is

the price buyer, which a lot of times they're forced just due to their budget that they really can't spend

anything else. And then there is the in-between, the people that are on the fence, and when you give

them a compelling reason through education, typically you can sway the majority of the people on the

fence to move towards the upper tier. And in any time you can do that through automation because for

years we had not figured that out, and we spent millions, literally millions of dollars running quotes that

we would never come remotely close to closing because we'd never had this automation in front of

them that eliminated the people that was never going to buy. Now you never can't completely eliminate

them but having automation do the majority of that for you is a, really lowers the overhead operating

cost on your business.

Jason: Totally agree, absolutely.

Travis: So what is it take to get going? Is it really tough to get going in a podcast? I know this answer

but I'd like for our listeners here to know what it takes to get started, how hard is it?

Jason: Well it can be as simple as like you said, when you guys started you just dove in and you use

telephone lines and that certainly a viable way to go, though I do think that now the podcasting's been

around for a good 8 years and more and more people are coming in, and it's kind of going through, I




think a bit of a resurgence right now. The production levels that people expect are getting higher, now

the good news is it does not need to be hard to get a really good production quality for your recording,

and the tools are inexpensive or even often free.

So let's talk about audio first, to record, to produce an episode you basically, here's what I do, I outline

it as a bullet point or you could script it if you're the kind of person that, first, reading is going to come

easier to you and then you need to record it through software and have a microphone. Well, I would

recommend that people just pick up a USB microphone because it's really easy to plug-in to your

computer, just like your printer plugs-in to your computer and start working right out of the box. And a

really good brand of USB microphones is Blue, B-L-U-E, just like the color, and they have a microphone

called the Yeti that sounds quite nice and it's inexpensive and you can record. What I'm talking on right

here into your system, I've upgraded census, it's more of a $600-level system that I'm talking into but

most of my students use these USB mics and produce wonderful sounding shows and they are just

fine. If you're on a MAC you might already have Garage Band or something like that to record in and

you can even go to the Apple store and they'll show you how to use it or there's software called

Audacity, A-U-D-A-C-I-T-Y, that's free, works on Mac or PC and it's a recording audio, audio recording

software. Lots of tutorials online including my side if you search for how to podcast and the number

result there in Google is my How to podcast tutorial and I've got tutorials on how to use Audacity there.

So you can record right into there and capture your voice if you want, you add music to it or edit it a

little bit. You can always hire somebody if you've got more funds than time, more money than time.

You can get audio editor through a site like Elance, E-L-A-N-C-E.com. Just hand your audio, that's

what we do, we just hand out, we sit down, we record, we hand it over to somebody else, they clean it

up a bit, add in the music, and things like that, and then bam, they save it off as an mp3 and it's ready

to go.

Travis: It's that easy?

Jason: It's that easy. You need hosting? So I recommend Libsyn, L-I-B-S-Y-N, for about $5-10 a

month. This is hosting specifically for audio or video podcast content and it's important that you have

specific coding/hosting for that temp, good statistics and do not use the same hosting you would have

like your site on because it can cause a variety of problems, I won't go into that right now but very

inexpensive for the media hosting through Libsyn, and then...

Travis: Just don't do it, right?

Jason: Right.

Travis: Use Libsyn for that, don't post it to your website. A lot of people think that they have unlimited

bandwidth and there's a lot of problems that come with that.




Jason: Absolutely. And then you need, very simply a podcast is just a blog post with a player and a link

that goes to this mp3 file, and if you're using something like Wordpress.com which companies as big as

the New York Times even use it on parts of their website. Then a lot of that's just takencared of for you,

word press is a free software that you can use to install a blog and so we make an episode, somebody

edits it, it gets saved off as an mp3 file, gets put on Libsyn and then we have a blog post. We just kind

of summarize, "Here's what's on the show, here are the bullet points of what we're going to talk about,

here's a streaming audio player, here's a link where you can download it directly if you want, and then

we submit that feed to iTunes. You only need to do that once now, iTunes automatically updates every

time we release a new episode, iTunes sees that, enlists it in their podcast directory, so that's free to

submit to iTunes and you're immediately positioned up there. We've been one of the top marketing

shows since we started in 2005 and we're up there with big business radio brands, MPR and

Bloomberg, and stuff like that, SuzieOrman show. So that looks really good for our brand to be up

there, showing up right next to all those big expert brands inside of iTunes.

Travis: Well that's incredible, excellent job. Do you mind sharing, what's your listener-ship, what have

you built it up to, if you share that information?

Jason: Well, we try to keep some of those things close to the vest; I'll flat out, even though we are the

top internet marketing show since 2005.

We have quite a few; I mean it's bigger than our email list even that listens to our show. However, we

definitely don't have one of the most popular shows in iTunes, there's some really big brands. You've

got Adam Corolla, and then MPR, and the Moth, and How Stuff Works, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge,

audiences. But what I can say, this is one of the reasons why I don't want to share the numbers is you

don't actually need that big in numbers to have it profit your business. What I can say is we have one of

the most profitable podcast since inside of iTunes. I know how much money we make directly from

leads that come to our podcast and it's far more than most of the shows that I know, the advertising and

stuff that they make their money with.

So that's, even if you can get a few thousand people listening to your podcast, it's going to impact your

business.

Travis: Yeah, good point, good point. I think the summary of what you're saying there, because there's

a lot of information to digest with as far as producing or creating a podcast. I think the gist of everything

is it really isn't that steep of a learning curve in my opinion, and I think you could get up and start

podcasting inside of 2 days, and then...

Jason: Sure, yeah.




Travis: And then if you really want to take it to the next level, I just recently added all of this metro

board and recording equipment and everything else, it takes a little longer to set the equipment up and

become comfortable with it. But just like anything, taking that imperfect action and moving forward gives

you clarity and skill set and all those other things that we talked about in the business that are essential

to success in your business especially these days.

Jason: Right, yep.

Travis: So listen, we are getting close on time, I sent you 3 questions, I don't know if you had time to

prepare for but it's something that I like to ask of all of our guests because it's just another way of

adding more dimension and value to everybody that's listening. So are you ready for that?

Jason: Absolutely, let's do it.

Travis: Alright, we'll call that the lightning round. Okay so what book or program made an impact on

you related to business that you'd recommend and why.

Jason: Alright, well this is going to be a little bit of a non-traditional book, when we started our show,

Internet Business Mastery, we made a deliberate decision to talk a lot about mind-set. We do talk about

tools and strategies and how to's but we're constantly talking about, we talked about the mind-set shift

of like Rich Dad, Poor Dad and how key that was. And that's because that that's one of the most key

things I give you going by and enter a business program, an entrepreneurial program, or how to start a

small business program. And they give you all the steps, A to Z but they never talk about the mind-set,

how to get out of your own way, how to change how you think about money, how do you change how

you think about risk and important things like that then your progress is going to be severely hindered.

And there's a book that has been one of the best tools that I have found for tapping into your current

beliefs, where those beliefs come from, how you can reprogram those beliefs and understand what they

mean to you and then fill them in with healthier, more productive, effective beliefs because it's all taking

place in our subconscious mind, and that's a book called the 6 Pillars of Self-Esteem, and let me go

ahead. So this is a buy, a guy by the name of Nathaniel Brandon, that word self-esteem has been used

a lot over many, many years and I think it gets misused a lot as well but very simply, self-esteem

consists of 2 things, number 1 the belief that you deserve to be happy and number 2, the belief that you

have within you the ability to bring about that happiness and I think ultimately in life that's all what we're

going for. And if you're an entrepreneur you're going for more freedom, more fulfilment, maybe a sense

of purpose and that's all taps in to your sense of happiness, but if you don't believe that you deserve

more happiness than say X level, or you don't believe that you have the abilities to reach that new

happiness or to face that uncertainty. Again, you'll be greatly hindered and the progress that you have

and so that's why, even our... Somebody signs up for a $6,000 coaching program, immediately we're

sending them a copy 6 Pillars of Self-Esteem, and very quickly we're hearing back from them, "Thank

http://amzn.to/WFveuS




you, that's exactly the book that I needed right now." Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Brandon

gives you a wonderful framework for getting out of your own way.

Travis: Ooh, I love it. Do you know if that‟s on the audio?

Jason: Yes, there is an audio version of it.

Travis: I'm excited. I love to consume books by audio for the obvious reasons that we're podcasters.

You can drive, you can walk, you can run, you can do everything, so I'm definitely going to put that on

my list to consume. I'll give you my feedback, I'm excited about that, I love books.

Jason: Very cool.

Travis: So thanks for that. What is one of your favourite tools or pieces of technology that you've

recently discovered, if any, that you would recommend other business owners and why?

Jason: Well I wouldn't say this is recently discovered but it's kind of recently rediscovered and definitely

on the top of my mind and something that I think is key for any business that has any kind of web

presence. The way that I think you build a business to higher levels of income and into a more valuable

asset and build true wealth through your business is by incrementally figuring out how to get more

people through your funnel, and I'm sure most people listening to this know what I mean by sales and a

sales funnel at each step. Some people proceed to that next step. Turning people into clicks all the way

down to sales, it‟s okay, they show up to your site, well do the opt-in for your email list. Okay, we'll now

do the, read the emails that you send them, do they open those emails, do they click on the links when

they hit a landing page, are they buying, are they setting up that phone consultation if that's part of your

sales funnel, and hopefully you're tracking at every single step, what's happening and seeing is there a

weak point here. Because a 3% sales page conversion, you find that one incremental change that now

turns it into a 4% conversion. You might have just increased your income by 33%.

Travis: Right.

And so one of the tools that we were using for this, mostly lately for split testing and a very

sophisticated way but a very easy way that tells us instantly when we've got a winner of a new idea. We

tweak a headline, or we tweak a color, or we tweak an offer, whatever, is Visual Website Optimizer.

There is a monthly fee for that but it's very reasonable considering the money will make you by helping

you figure out those incremental profitable changes in your web presence and your sales funnel. And

that's something that we're very much focused on right now going into 2013 as our conversions, so I've

been using that tool quite a bit lately and I recommend that.

Travis: Very cool, does that have a heat map on it?

http://amzn.to/WFveuS

http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/




Jason: I believe they do some heat map stuff as well but another one we use is Crazy Egg for the heat

mapping.

Travis: Cool. What famous quote would best summarize your belief or your attitude in business?

Jason: It's tough to come and narrow down to one but here‟s a quote that I'm very fond of lately and it's

actually a quote by Bill Cosby, of all people. And he says, "I don't know the key to success, but I do

know that the key to failure is trying to please everyone." And so that just goes back to that knowing

very specifically who is your audience, specifically and if you're in a weight loss business, okay that's a

huge marketplace, and if you're trying to reach anybody and everybody to try and to lose some weight,

you are already losing the battle.

But if you decide, "Hey, I want to help women between the ages of 20 and 40 who've just had a baby

and want to lose that baby weight in the next 3, 4, 6 months. Well now you're going to get some serious

traction, and so I think that's one of the biggest mistakes we make as entrepreneurs is we don't focus

and we try to reach far too many people. When we have that one little dissenting voice that comes in

we listen to it far too much and we don't have that clarity of who we are, what value we are creating and

who we're creating it for. And so by Bill Cosby's recommendation or by his wisdom of life there, that is

the key to failure if you're doing that.

Travis: Excellent. How do people connect with you, what's the links and of course I'm going to put them

on the website also so what links do you want to share on the show?

Jason: Well, it'll just be to check out our show, internetbusinessmastery.com, I think any kind of

entrepreneur, whether you consider yourself an internet entrepreneur or somebody trying to escape the

9-5 or you already have a successful business making sales, you're going to find information on our

show that's going to benefit you. Again, I say, we share knowledge, and resources, and inspiration to

help people, specifically entrepreneurs on this show to reach higher levels of freedom, fulfilment, and

purpose in their business and if that speaks to you, come check out internetbusinessmastery.com and

give our show a listen.

Travis: Cool and then also what we'll do is we'll get some of your other links as far as Twitter and other

things if you share those and post them on the website and that way they can connect there as well.

Jason: Sounds good.

Travis: Excellent, excellent show. I think for a lot of people this is going to be like drinking from a fire

hose because we talked about a lot of things, right?

Jason: Yeah, well you get me going on these topics and I just love giving it all out.

http://www.crazyegg.com/

http://internetbusinessmastery.com/




Travis: I love it when there's an exchange that happens when 2 people are engaged in co-creation and

there's just an energy there that you can feel and so that takes the conversation to a faster pace. I

know that it's like consuming from a fire hose and maybe you need to go back and listen to this a

couple of times, but I tell you the information is just absolute golden here. You're a genius, you're

brilliant. I appreciate your kindness. Can you hang out with us for a minute longer?

Jason: Sure.

End of Interview

Travis: Okay, I want to remind you to go to DIYOB.com, that's short for Diamonds in Your Own

Backyard, instead of having to type all that out, just type in DIYOB.com, enter your name and we'll send

you the 2013 Business Owner's Guide, from frustration to $70 million. It's a behind the scene look at

what you need to know to grow your business to incredible levels of success. No matter what level, you

don't need to want to build it to that level and it really doesn't even matter where your business is today,

there's a lot of things that people are not addressing and they're not telling you about growing your

business. So it's a very candid discussion and observation of the things I found in building the business

to that level.

So when you opt in, you become a member of the Authentic Entrepreneur Nation, which is basically a

network of people, tools, and resources that you can refer to, that you can trust to grow your business.

This is basically mine and Sandra's private rolodex that we use and recommend. And then of course

you'll have access to it as soon as it goes live. In fact I'll send you an email on that.

Today I want to close the show with a quote by Calvin Coolidge, and the quote reads, "Nothing in the

world can take place of persistence, talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful me with

talent, genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb, education will not. The world is full of

educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan press on has

solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." I hope that we're playing a part in

helping you to remain persistent. That's a powerful quote, now obviously the last part is from me that I

hope we're playing a part in helping you remain persistent. I wanted to read you that quote because it's

so powerful.

In the next episode, I'm going to introduce you to Rich Brooks where we'll talk about how he uses the 3

Channels to help entrepreneurs like you and I take it to that next level. Rich is not only brilliant. He‟s a

great guy as well. You will definitely want to tune in for that.

http://diyob.com/




This is Travis Lane Jenkins, signing off for now. To your success, may you continue to inspire those

around you to go after their dreams too. Talk to you in the next episode.




How We Can Help You

We know that finding someone that you can trust online today is hard and that so many “so called

gurus” are self-‐appointed and have never really even done what they teach you to do. That‟s exactly

why we created the Double Your Profits Business Accelerator. This is an exclusive offer for our fans at

a fraction of its normal cost.

Here's what to expect. We'll Schedule a 'One on One' private session, where we'll take the time to dive

deep into your business and tell you what is missing, so that you can have your best year ever!

We'll do this by performing a S.W.O.T. Analysis. This tells us your Strengths, Weaknesses,

Opportunities and Threats within your business.

This will be an eye opener for YOU, for several reasons, however some of the most common reasons

are.

As the 'Business Owner' it‟s difficult to see the big picture of your own business because you‟re in the

middle of a daily management.

And you are too emotionally involved to completely impartial.

This is a common problem for EVERY business owner. It doesn‟t matter if you are a one-man army, or

an army of 150, the problem is still the same.

Travis Lane Jenkins

Business Mentor-Turn Around Specialist

Radio Host of The Entrepreneurs Radio Show

“Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs That Grow Your Business"

http://www.rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com/biz-accelerator

http://theentrepreneursradioshow.com/

Date post:	08-May-2015
Category:	Small Business & Entrepreneurship
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The Entrepreneurs Radio Show 032 Jason Van Orden

Small Business & Entrepreneurship