- So what are the pros and
cons of starting a podcast, a Youtube channel, or both this year? In this video, I interview
bestselling author and founder of Smart Passive Income, Pat
Flynn, and he shares some of his best tips and strategies
for growing your Youtube channel and podcast. The pros and cons of each
of them, and how to monetize these platforms, coming up. (lo-fi style beats) Hey, what's up Think Media? Sean Cannell here, bringing
you the best tips and tools for building your
influence with online video and I'm sitting here with Pat
Flynn, how's it going man? - It's going well, how are you? - Man, it's so good to be
hanging out with you again, we're hanging out at NAB
in Las Vegas, and today we're talking about
podcasting versus Youtube, the pros and cons of each of
them and really strategies for both. This is a big conversation
'cuz a lot of people are starting Youtube channels, maybe wanting to launch a podcast. A lot of people watching
might have one or the other, and they wanna start the other one, so there's monetization
strategies, how to launch, and a lot of things that go into this. But before we dive into the
topics, Pat, if people are just meeting you, what have you been up to and what are you doing online? - Yeah so I've been online for
about 10 years now, and I do have a Youtube channel, it's
been up for about nine years. I do have a podcast that's
been up for about, just about the same amount of time,
so I've been in both worlds for the longest time now. And it's really interesting
to see what's happening in both of those spaces,
where things are headed in the future, we're
gonna talk about that. So, and there's a lot of people
who wanna do both as well, which we wanna do both, but
you can't just do both and just dump the content in
there and call it a day. There's specific strategies
that you must know about or else you're going to
actually perhaps hurt your Youtube channel in certain
ways, or hurt your podcast. So, we'll talk about
those things for sure. - I love it, so let's start
with some pros and cons. And the reason I wanted to
talk about this with you is because you have deep
experience in both areas, especially Youtube now
as your Youtube channel's been growing. So, when you think about pros
and cons of just Youtube, kind of in comparison, what
is your perspective there? - So let's talk first about
just the mechanics of how one might put content on that platform. So Youtube, you know obviously
you have to shoot a video, and that's a lot more, there's
a lot more to think about versus just recording audio, right? You don't have to sort
of look nice on a radio, or on a podcast for example. But, on the other hand, once
you have your file ready to upload, you just upload
it directly to Youtube and you build your channel from there. Which is super easy once
you have that content. On a podcast, it's a little bit different. You need to set things up first
beforehand, before you can kind of have that publish
and go kind of situation. And what that means is you
actually need to host your media files on a separate
media hosting platform, and there's many out there
that you can choose from, and they're fairly cheap,
it's just another added step because you don't actually
upload individual files to iTunes or Apple Podcast
or Google or Spotify. What happens is you have to
create what's called a RSS feed so that you can submit that
RSS feed to those channels. And then what those channels
do is iTunes goes, oh, did Sean come out with a new episode today? Nope, okay, no worries. Oh, did Sean come out
with a new episode now? Oh he did, okay now I'm
gonna push it out to all the subscribers and then they get
notified if they've chosen to subscribe. After that, then every time
you publish new content, it just automatically
feeds out to everybody which is kind of nice. Another pro/con related to
Youtube is audience retention. You know, on Youtube, especially
now that I've been getting a little more serious about
it, I've learned that if you have people watching your videos for like, more than five minutes, you're actually doing really really good. And on a podcast, you can get
people listening up to half hour, one hour. I mean Joe Rogan's podcast,
people listen to two, three hours of content all in one sitting. And for a Youtuber that's gold, right? And so there's some
really interesting things you can do there related to better storytelling opportunities. You have the ability to
have more call to actions. You have the ability to just really build a deep relationship with a
person, I would say more so on the podcast, because
of the way that people are consuming a podcast. For example, you shouldn't
be watching a video while you're driving, like you just
shouldn't do that, right? But you can totally listen
to an hour long podcast on your commute or on a
flight or any of that stuff. So, there's just really interesting behavioral consumption qualities that are unique to podcasting that make it just very very powerful. The other thing about this
is, I mean you think about sheer numbers, I think, and you
can correct me if I'm wrong, there are over 500 million
active Youtube channels, does that sound about right? - Yep. Like, a lot. There's less than one
million podcasts right now. - Wow. - So there's good and bad to that, right? The good thing is wow,
there's less competition, so you can kind of get in
there, it's still very early in the season of podcasting
right now, which is fantastic. But at the same time, it's
like, well how many overall listeners could you have,
versus how many viewers can you have on a Youtube channel. And this is why I think a lot
of people are going for both, because on a podcast you
can build that really deep relationship, you can be
with somebody on a walk, at the gym, on a plane,
in the car, whatever. But with Youtube, it's
like quick, informational, and you know, the search
engines and algorithms play your favorite too. - Yeah, I love that, and
that's a great point, because on Youtube, you're
probably not going to be getting 30 minute, hour long, kind of
consumption times with that deep storytelling and the
connection that you could have on a podcast, but you're
also getting some search advantages and you're getting
maybe, the chance to get to know people. So I'm curious, the Pat
Flynn strategy, and we could also get into the execution
of kind of doing everything. You're a little further
in your career than maybe someone who's trying to juggle
a lot of different stuff. But now that you are
executing on a podcast, there's the creation
challenges that come with it, maybe it's a little simple
if you just do audio and you don't have to
worry about the video. But you're also executing
on the video content. What are some thoughts
around actually creating the bandwidth to create
content when it comes to these different platforms
and how you juggle those things and the complexity of everything? - I think the most important
thing, no matter which platform you choose is you plan
your editorial calendar. Whether it's on Youtube or
on podcasting, I've suffered from being in that content hamster wheel where you publish something,
you're immediately like, oh gosh, what am I, what do
I have to film next time. I have a deadline and
you're struggling and then it kind of degrades the
quality of your content, because you're not
planning that far ahead. So, whichever platform you use,
you wanna make sure you plan your content ahead of
time, as much as possible. It's not always possible to
do that especially in some of the tech spaces where you
don't know what the next phone is gonna be, or what the
next big piece of equipment that's coming out. But as best as possible,
try to come up with stuff, so that you can batch
process your episodes too. And I do this with my videos,
I try to record three to four a day, when I go into the studio to film with my videographer, and
that's only once a week. And then on the podcast front,
I pick a day of the week to do all my recordings,
and that's Tuesday for me, which is nice, and I can
do three to four episodes of a podcast at the same time. So, if I come out weekly, I
essentially have a month's worth of content ready to go, with just one day of recording. On both sides, which is nice. - That's amazing, and right now for you, the content is different though. Youtube content is unique and
separate from the podcast, correct? - That is correct. You know a lot of people who
take the audio from a video, and then dump it into a podcast,
which is fine, and there's some things you need to
worry about with that. And then there's some people
who start with a podcast, and then they rip out the
audio and put it onto Youtube, and there's a lot of
things you have to worry with that as well. The main thing is, if you're
ripping audio from a video and putting it into a
podcast, which you can do, you need to be careful, because
if a listener's listening and you say things like, hey
look at this graph over here, or oh I love how that
kind of looks and feels, can you guys see this? If a person's just listening
to that, they feel left out. They're not gonna listen to
your show, because they know that you're not creating content for them and their behavioral sort of consumption, primary means of doing that. And then on the other way, if
you go from audio to video, that could be very smart,
however, if you just have a slide up and you play your audio over that? I mean all of you know,
if you just see a slide up and you just listen
and nothing's engaging, nothing's visual, you're gonna leave. And if that's you and your
channel, guess what happens? Your signaling to Youtube
that your channel's not worth sticking around for, and
then it kind of degrades your whole channel as, at
least that's what I've heard, and that's not good either. So what you could do, and
this is where you kind of have to be a little bit creative. You can take for examples,
bits and pieces of your audio, let's say you're interviewing somebody, which is really great, which is also another
benefit of podcasting. It's much easier to interview
somebody on a podcast versus like, being in the
same location and getting into this situation right here, so. What you could do is you can
take bits and pieces of your interviews, like the really
good, special moments that are about one particular topic. You can rip that out and
put that onto Youtube, and then instead of just
a slide or a picture of that person you're
interviewing, you can have bullet points show up, or B-roll,
or some other things. Some people are actually filming
their podcast interviews, so they're in the studio,
they have the camera on them, and they're filming sort
of face-to-face interviews, whether it's in person or on Skype, and that can work as well. A little bit harder to keep
people engaged for longer. Better than just a slide, but
unless you have a well-known brand already, people
don't know who you are, they're not going to
stick around for long. So adding things like B-roll,
text, other things like that can keep people engaged, plus
you can then take advantage of the algorithms and the search, like the keyword find ability
with your podcast by taking chunks out that are important
and relate to search terms. - I love that. Hey, before we get into the next stat, I just wanted to ask
you for a quick favor. And that is, can you like this video? That'd mean the world to
me, hit that like button and let's just jump right back into it. So it's 2019, if you're Pat
Flynn and you're coaching someone who wants to
build their influence, start making money online
or building their brand or their business, and
they're kind of trying to weigh their options. Over two billion active users on Youtube right now, it's the second
largest search engine in the world, massive
opportunity on Youtube. But, large crowds and it
can be harder to create video content, especially
when you're just starting. Less people on podcast but
maybe harder to get discovered. If you were to coach me, I'm
like, I wanna break through, I know I wanna get my message
out, I'm entertaining both, what advice would you have for me? - What I would start to
ask you, well what platform would you be most interested in? Because I want you to enjoy the process. If I force you to do video
and you're not, you don't want to do video, it's gonna be really tough to get some good engaging content. Obviously, the best way, if
you've known Sean for a while, the best way to just do
anything is to start, right? So pick one and go, but start
with the one that you feel you're most comfortable with, and then you can start branching out. What I would do is pick one,
master your work flow there, productivity, efficiency,
maybe even start hiring a team to start helping you with
those bits and pieces so that you can get time back and then start focusing on other parts. I mean, for now, right now in
my journey, it's really nice because I only have to worry
about creating the content and building the relationships
and talking to people. I don't have to worry
about all the editing and all the uploading, that's
all handled by my team. And eventually you want
to get to that point, which is really nice. But if I were you or you,
I would really focus on, okay, what platform do you
wanna commit to for a period of time until you feel like
you've got the workflow down and then you can start
to take that content and put it on the other platform. I will say there's a third option here, and our good friend, Chalene
Johnson's very good at this. She goes live, so she's
engaging with her audience live. She takes a chunk of her live
and puts that onto a podcast and you can also put
that on video obviously, 'cuz it's live video. A little bit harder to do,
especially if you're not comfortable going live,
and again the best way to get comfortable is just to go live and start practicing that. But it's really nice 'cuz you
can kind of repurpose that live content very well
across all different mediums, even like little micro pieces
of content that you can put on social media to promote
all those different platforms. The other thing about that
is, when you are going live, you wanna make sure that whether it's for Youtube or podcasting,
you don't wanna interact with your audience on a recorded video, or a recorded audio file. You wanna separate that out,
so this is what Chalene does. She goes on live, she
has a great audience, and she interacts with them
about a particular topic. And she'll go back and forth with them, gets a lot of energy, I think
that's good for her too, 'cuz then when it's time
for her to go, okay guys, for the next however many
minutes, it's just gonna be me teaching you this stuff,
or talking to somebody about this stuff. Stay there, it's kind of like
behind-the-scenes for them, so they get a kind of little, you know, BTS stuff which is really cool. And then, she goes into however long to deliver that content, and at the end, she goes back
to the audience and asks, do you guys have any questions,
let's keep engaging on this. They feel like they got like
a behind-the-scenes preview of a podcast or a video
that's coming out later, and of course, she takes that
audio, puts it into a podcast, takes that video, puts it
into all the different places, and everybody's happy. - Yeah, I love that. So kind of thinking
strategically and another thing you could do is if you wanted to do both, you could start with
maybe an interview show, if you can get in-person
at an event like this. And a lot of people will
come to an event like this, they'll sit down with
their mic, their two mics, their Zoom H4n Recorder or whatever, and they'll start a podcast. But you could just throw a GoPro down and get that video angle
and a lot of people are sometimes thinking,
our friend James Wedmore is now starting to film his podcast, so he also has the Youtube content. So there's a lot of different
ways to think about this potentially from a top level
strategy and if you make a plan, then you ultimately
can then execute it and potentially be on
both platforms, yeah? - Yeah, oh absolutely and then the other cool part about
this is no matter which one you're on, you wanna start thinking about how to build your
business and monetization. And so each one has it's own benefits. A lot of advertisers and sponsors
are excited about podcasts because of that retention that people have with their listeners
versus Youtube, right? So it's really exciting, if
you have brand deals already on your Youtube channel,
you can kind of extend that, you can ask for more
because of the podcast that you might have and
just show them the numbers. The numbers are ridiculous
in terms of how long people are listening for, which is cool. But I would encourage you
to consider other ways to build your business
outside of sponsorships and advertising, especially
on the podcast too, because you know people
are listening to you for however long, I
mean you're essentially coaching them for free. And of course, if they want
that personalized coaching, you could start a consultation
company or an agency or coaching program or
something like that, or if you have online courses,
it's a great way to give people sort of a preview
of what it's going to be like to work with you,
versus a video which is a lot more engaging, a lot faster and there's a lot of
distractions, you know. You can go to this related video or go to this suggested video or exit. You can't do that with a podcast. The cool thing with the
podcast that I recommend if you start one is to
shoot for that magic moment, and this is what I learned
from Youtube that I put into the podcasting space, the hook. Get that hook down, because
that's what gives you that magic moment. The magic moment in Youtube
is okay, a person puts their hand away from the mouse and they're like, engaged and they're
ready to listen to you. With a podcast it's they put
that phone in their pocket and then they're
listening to you for good. So yeah, either one, focus
definitely on the hook. - I love it. Now on that topic of
monetization, you mentioned some different things that
you wanna be thinking about, kind of having a business model around it, maybe creating a product or coaching. But when you think about
monetizing these two platforms and you are monetizing in
so many different ways, especially as the founder
of Smart Passive Income. Different income streams,
which kind of maybe a menu of the opportunities for monetizing both a podcast and a Youtube channel? - Yeah, so on Youtube
you got Adsense, right? You don't have that on podcast. Advertising, brand deals, sponsorships, you can do that on both. Selling your own products,
your own courses, those kinds of things
work really well on both. And you should be, I see it
happening more on podcasts actually than on Youtube,
which I think there is a lot of opportunity for all
you Youtubers out there. There's also Patreon. Patreon you might know
about, which is sort of like a PBS paid for by viewers
like you type of thing. Podcasts are using that. There's a guy named Tom Morrow
who runs a tech podcast, he's making I think
like six to 8k a month, just from fans who love his show. Because they're getting that deep with him in that relationship. Affiliate marketing,
huge opportunities there. I have courses on affiliate
marketing because I feel like it's the most under utilized
form of monetization out there. You have opportunities to
be the person to connect that person to things they're
already buying and they just need a little bit of convincing
form somebody they trust. So, you can be that person
on both those platforms. And I think, once you start
to end up being on both, that's great, because you
can talk about a product in one way and show it off
on, for example in person with your hands on a Youtube video. And then you can tell
stories about that product and how it changed your
life or you can interview the founder of that product
on your show, which they're gonna be more likely than not
to say yes, because you're giving them a platform
to talk about the story. I interviewed this guy,
his name is Nathan Berry from ConvertKit, which is
an email service provider. Not a very super sexy product,
it's email service, right? But I interviewed him not
about email, I interviewed him about how he bootstrapped
this company, how he killed all of his other businesses
to focus on this full-time, how he almost gave up on it
and all the advice that he got, and as a result of that, 45 minutes later, people are clicking on that
affliate link to ConvertKit after that episode, because
they trust Nathan now. And that's the hard thing
about affiliate marketing, it's not your product, so
you have to work a little bit harder to get people to
trust your recommendation and if you have a platform
to either show them how easy it is to use or
how much this thing works, proof, or an interview with the founder, then it's gonna be a win. - Yeah, I love that. So, so many different ways to monetize. Now, let's just talk about
growth and you've successfully grown multiple podcasts and
you have a Youtube channel with over 100,000 subscribers now. You definitely started years
ago, wasn't a main focus for a while, but as you got
back into it, you triggered growth again, so you know
strategies on both sides. Let's just do a couple
power strategies for each, starting with how to grow a podcast. - So, how to grow a podcast. Number one, just stay
consistent with your show, very similar to Youtube,
you wanna make sure you stay consistent
because you wanna build that raving fanbase who's
gonna expect your show when it comes out. My show comes out on a
Wednesday, on Thursday if I don't come out, my tribe lets me know. They get angry. So you wanna build for that, right? Consistency, number one. But number two, guest podcasting. There's huge opportunities here for sure, there's a lot of podcasts that
have other raving audiences that love and cherish that host. If you can get endorsed by
that host on their show, it's huge. And one quick other tip that
you can do on top of that, is, let's say for example, you
get interviewed on a really popular person's show, and it's great. Well, let's add fuel to the fire. Let's pay that person, like
if you, instead of paying for cold ads like on Facebook,
pay that person to boost a post to their followers. That way more of their
followers are listening. Everybody says yes to that,
because you're essentially giving them more money to
share their stuff and break through the algorithms on Facebook. But guess what? You're showing more people
that episode where that person endorsed you, right? So it's kind of a cool,
sort of second level trick that you could use to grow
your podcast that way. Also interviewing up and comers. A lot of people on podcasts feel like, oh I have to interview
the top level people. But no, those people are A.
Getting asked all the time and B. Less likely to share that show. But if you find somebody
who's maybe on the new and noteworthy list on iTunes
and is kind of up and coming and wants to kind of be
involved, is really energetic and is just coming up, I mean, help them, they're gonna help you,
you guys can grow together. And that's a great way to
grow for podcasts as well. It's less about search,
and more about just the relationships and getting
promoted and helped by others. - I love it. Okay, and then you've been
growing a Youtube channel, what has been working
for you and what are some of the things you've been learning? - Well, on a similar route
collaborations are key there as well, but a little bit harder
to figure out and schedule. So the big growth tip
for me is really get into your analytics using tools
like vidIQ or TubeBuddy to understand sort of
what keywords that people are searching for and basically
just finding the top videos that are about those keywords
and making your video better. Just shoot for better
watchtime, so work on your hook so they're gonna stick
around, keep them engaged by pattern interrupting and
all that kind of stuff. Keep them involved so they'll
watch that video longer. And eventually Google and
Youtube are going to start ranking your video higher than the others, and this is how I've had videos
like, How to Start A Podcast be number one podcasting
video on Youtube now. I think, and it just recently popped too. The other thing about Youtube
is you gotta be pretty patient with things. If you do it right, and your
research up front, you're gonna start seeing things
ramp up over time and so, I think that video just
crossed 400,000 views, which is amazing. So it's exciting also to
see just that many people interested in podcasting,
coming onto Youtube to learn. So, go for search terms,
make better content, and obviously your
thumbnails can be huge too. - And it's powerful that
you mention consistency of course on both platforms
because anything you have to stay consistent and it
builds momentum over time. Like just like you said on
Youtube, when you do those best practices, eventually it
begins to snowball and videos start suggesting each other. Which reminds me of a
strategy that you did too that I really loved and I don't
know how strategic this was but you also jumped on a
trending conversation and even offered your point of view
to a Gary Vaynerchuk video one time and then that video blew up. Was that intentional,
what was your thinking? He had some opinions of
about passive income. You're the Smart Passive
Income guy, so it was actually a very related to your
kind of a niche thing. It got some buzz, what happened there? - Well, my channel, Smart
Passive Income, and Gary Vee came out with a video
called Passive Income is BS, so of course I just felt
like, this wasn't a strategy for growth or getting views. It was like, this is about
my world, so I gotta come up and step up and share my thoughts on this. There was no play on like
getting views and of course after I published that, just the
fact that I'm creating a video about that in response to Gary,
is gonna generate curiosity and people wanna know what I'm gonna say. So, I think that combined with
a great thumbnail of like, me going like this while watching
the video in like a little thumbnail, like I think it
all worked in combination to really start ramping up
and I think in a couple days it had seen like 65, 70k views. And I think the big strategy
there, is A. Talk about stuff that people wanna know about
and that's relevant to you and your audience and B. Don't be afraid. I think that was the other
thing about this that I was a little reluctant to do,
because I'm not a guy who's trying to start or pick
fights or anything like that, but this was something that
was really important to me and so I wanted to share
it and I think that's why it really picked up, because
I actually just said, you know what, this is
important, I might get some flak for this, but let's do it. - I love that you did that,
and that actually challenges me to think, okay what conversations
should I join online that I do and very passionate
about but I might hesitate, because I'd say oh what
are people gonna think, so think about that. What could be maybe a
polarizing point of view or your unique point of view,
that you could put out on some trending conversations, that could really be a growth strategy that works for you. Now, question of the day,
I would also love to hear, are you focusing on Youtube
or podcast these days? And are you thinking about
launching one or the other or doing both, tell us in
the comments section below. But Pat, thank you so much
for all the value you've been adding and you've got a lot
of cool projects going on, including Smart Passive Income, but where can people find you and what are you up to right now? So if you're watching this on
Youtube, probably best place is just Pat Flynn on Youtube, my channel. But Smartpassiveincome.com is
my main hub where I have all things going on, you've
probably saw a video of me a while back talking about the
SwitchPod which is going off and that's a lot of fun, so
I just like to try new things and share the process along the way. And that's what I know you do
too, so I'm just super stoked to be here and thank you for
allowing me to serve your audience. - 100 percent, so go check
out everything Pat's doing, he adds massive value,
he's one of the best dudes in the industry, and definitely
check out some other videos in our Youtube Tip series that
we'll link up on the playlist and we'll put a link to that
playlist in the description below and we'll see you in the next video. (upbeat music)
