Building Authority: Content Creation, Monetization, And AI Insights For Authors And Entrepreneurs

There are tons of ways to build and boost your author brand, especially with the help of the many digital tools available right now. Juliet Clark highlights three ways to do this with three experts: Leisa Reid for speaking gigs, Tom Hazzard for podcasting, and Fran Asaro for YouTube content. Together, they discuss how to capture the attention and interest of your target readers through these widely different yet equally impactful methods. Discover practical strategies for building your author platform through the right speaking methods, content repurposing, audience engagement, and more. They also share the different tools they use to make their content creation processes much easier, simpler, and faster.

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Building Authority: Content Creation, Monetization, And AI Insights For Authors And Entrepreneurs

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This episode’s panel is a mic drop moment, and we have some great content creators here to walk us through how authors can create great content. I’ll introduce Leisa. If you want to be a speaker, but are not sure what to talk about or where to find gigs and how to offer services from the stage, Leisa is your girl. She’s going to drop some links at the end if you need somebody to help you get booked. She’s there.

Fran Asaro is a YouTube mentor and strategist for mature creators. Of course, none of us is mature. We’re all children still. She helps entrepreneurs and first-time content creators thrive on YouTube. She’s going to be talking a little bit about YouTube. Tom Hazzard is a prolific podcast host and co-host of five different shows with hundreds of episodes and interviews. He is the CEO of Brandcasters, which is also known as Podetize. He and Tracy are married, and they switch, whoever is on deck.

Welcome, everybody. I’m happy to have you guys here. I want to start with a couple of easy questions for you guys. Building your author brand, all of you know you have to build that author platform. Let’s start with Leisa. Leisa, as a speaking coach, how would you start to do that? What are some brand strategies that work for people?

I would recommend that you start speaking before your book is complete, because you can start to build up your email list, build up your social media content, and build up your connections before you even launch your book. That way, you have a solid foundation when the book launches to help your bestseller campaign.

Tom, how about you? I started my podcast before books 6 and 7, and I saw a big difference in audience size from podcasting.

Yes, I agree. People often ask me, “What’s the best time to start a podcast?” It was three months ago, because, similar to what Leisa said, you have an opportunity. As long as you have something to say, and if you’re writing a book, I’m sure you do, and you’re an expert in something, you have wisdom to share, whether that’s your own messages to the world or interviewing other experts and sharing your perspective with them through them, you have an opportunity to build an audience and a list of people to market your book to far in advance of launching the book. It usually makes your book launch much more successful.

We’re going to shoot one out to Fran here because YouTube is a great place to monetize. Fran, how do you monetize your content over on YouTube? I know we’ve had these rules that are ever changing, but they’ve made it a lot easier, haven’t they?

Monetizing YouTube Beyond Partnerships

Yes, and I recommend to anybody, if you’re thinking you have to become a YouTube partner in order to make money, that’s not the truth anymore. Now, there are so many ways to monetize your channel. You could be starting memberships. You could have print-on-demand products. You could sell your courses, you could have lives where people pay you, like they do on TikTok, where they thank you and tip you.

I’m helping people become Amazon influencers so they have something to share on their YouTube channel and have their print-on-demand there as well. You no longer have to have a certain number of subscribers in order to have a print-on-demand store on YouTube. You could start now, and then when you do have enough subscribers, it transitions over when you’re ready. You could start it now, share with links, and when you do have enough subscribers, then you switch it over, then you’ll have a tab, and then you’ll have your products show up while you’re doing your videos. At this time, you could start with something that segues right over to one of their programs. Many other products.

Could you clarify what print-on-demand means on YouTube? Print on demand means something in publishing. I just want to make sure. Are they the same thing?

It’s merch. Putting out merchandise, anything from t-shirts and totes. Imagine that you say the same thing on all your podcasts, or you have your favorite saying, motivational or funny. Some people are a little risqué. They put their stuff out, and people will buy it. They want something that represents you. You could do that, plus your own sayings, and you put it out there on many different products and talk about it.

Wear your products, wear your hats, or whatever it is you need to do. I didn’t wear my t-shirt today, but I have a Senior Tuber t-shirt. There are so many different platforms for doing that, but I’d recommend that you use Amazon’s print-on-demand and you use Spreadshirt or something like that on YouTube so that you can segue over to their program once you have enough subscribers.

Leisa, talk a little bit about monetizing with speaking, too, because it’s not just about your book. You can sell programs and things like that from the stage as well.

One of the biggest challenges in the speaking world, especially for newer speakers, is thinking that they want to be paid keynote speakers, but it’s hard to do that if you don’t have any experience or maybe don’t have a proven method, proven model, or maybe your audience isn’t even in those types of audiences. It’s about figuring out what your offer is. Do you have services or products, and things like that? Who’s your audience? Who are your best clients? What rooms are they in?

There are associations, chambers, local groups, national, and international, all different kinds of virtual, I call it virtual geography. There’s virtual geography where you have access to all that. When you have the right message, you have your talk ready to rock. I help people get their talk ready to rock. When you have your right message tied to the right offer that’s going to bring in business for you and that you’re in love with and you’re comfortable with, and you’re speaking to the right people, all of a sudden, your ability to have what I call speaking sales potential rises quickly.

I’ll even do a quick math example. If you have a $1,000 product or service, let’s say, and you speak 24 times a year, which is a healthy, nutrition diet for speakers. Very easy, especially virtual, just pop right on, and you even got one sale or one client from each of those talks, you’ve added another revenue stream to your business of $24,000. This isn’t a guarantee. I’m saying this as an example.

You can start plugging your own numbers in, and then you can start thinking, “What if my product was $2,000?” All of a sudden, you spoke the same amount of time, but you’ve doubled your revenue, and we’re not even talking about repeat sales. We’re just talking about that one sale. I’m saying you can expand it so quickly without having to do a whole bunch more work. If you’re not adding that into your business model and you think, “I’d enjoy that, that’d be fun,” then I think it’s worth it, and you can monetize it right away. You don’t have to have a huge stage. You don’t have to have a ton of experience. You just need to have the right talk, the right audience with the right offer, and you can make money on day one.

That is so amazing. I was sitting here thinking, every time I’ve gone speaking, I do make much more money, a lot more money when I sell something versus a keynote. A lot of times, you’re getting paid to do it, so they won’t allow you to sell from the stage. Yes, very easy to do. Tom, what about monetizing podcasts? I think it’s hard until you get an audience, isn’t it?

Build Audience with Podcasting

Certainly, you have to have an audience to speak to, but that can happen quite quickly. The great thing is you’ve got to start building that audience at some point. That’s why the sooner you launch that podcast and start building that audience, the better. Similar to speaking at in-person events, your podcast episodes are yours. It’s your content. You can have audio ads, promotions, calls to action for your book, for your speaking events coming up, for anything else you do in business, whatever your lead magnets are. You can advertise those, have those as little separate audio ads within your episodes that can be changed at any time.

Let’s say you’re going to be speaking at an event next month. Put a couple of audio promotions and all your episodes, raising awareness of that. The day the episode happens, push a button, and all those ads come out of your episodes without anybody having to re-edit anything. That’s done with the software that distributes the podcasts. All of a sudden, they’re updated with whatever the next thing is that you want to be promoting.

Yes, you do have to build an audience, but you also, for every episode you publish, have an awful lot of content to promote on social media. If you have a newsletter or any other way that you’re reaching people, you’re serving them, providing them value through the podcast, and then as you’re providing them that value, you raise awareness of the things that you have to offer them.

That’s what I do most of the time. I run ads on our own products and services, so that makes a lot of sense. On the scale of idea to bestseller, do you guys use your content platforms to build validation for your upcoming books, products, and services? I feel like the purpose of content is not only that repurpose and attract people, but also to get out there and validate your idea. Have you guys done that in any way? Fran, do you want to start with us? We’ll start with you.

I don’t have a book, but for my clients, I’m helping them create engagement. Right now, this is the time when subscriber amounts do not matter. Engagement matters. I teach them how to keep their people on your channel, and then they have fans once they do that. What is it that your people are asking for? You provide that, and you keep it. That’s one of my new products that I’m coming out with, how to keep one topic so that people can binge-watch on your channel instead of searching for a topic, and then they go to several channels. The thing is to create engagements and create fans.

If someone had a book, would it be a maybe a good idea for them to read excerpts of their book on there? I know you and I discussed it, and it was much harder than I thought it was going to be. Would you suggest that if you were an author?

Multipurpose Videos for Better Engagement

I still think that’s great, but then I think that you get out there, live and answer people’s questions or you see what people are asking in the comments, and then you address those comments and you create more than one video about that topic so that they have a few things to watch. There are so many ways to multipurpose one video. That’s the whole thing. I’m trying to get people to multiuse their videos, maybe make a couple to go with the same topic.

Yes, I think if they start out with reading a chapter and then they talk about that a little further, about breaking it down to the minutia, and then they start asking questions and make several videos on that one chapter, they can make that work and have people stay on. Watch time hours are very important with YouTube. If you keep them on instead of them going somewhere else to find the content and the answers, it’s better for you.

Yeah, I would think that. Tom, what about you and Tracy? That was what happened with your WTFFF?! Podcast. You guys got it out there and then found that your audience was bigger than you thought it would be. Was that the path you guys were on?

Podcasts: Audience Growth & Book Development

It was. Yeah, that was more than a decade ago. As we were learning about podcasting for the first time, we grew a very large audience within six months of 100,000 regular listeners, and were written up in Forbes as one of the fastest-growing podcasts. I want to make sure that I address this same question because there’s a good point here. When you have a podcast, yes, you have to build an audience, but you have a means to raise awareness of your podcast.

There are advertising mechanisms that are very inexpensive to grow your audience and grow your listeners, not just for your show, but for your book. Most importantly, though, the book. We have many podcasters who use their podcast as a test ground for their books. You can have episodes that are based on topics you might make a chapter of your book out of, and you publish a series of episodes, and you learn which topics resonate with the listeners and might be some of the better subjects to create a chapter in your book around.

We have some podcasters who are podcasting regularly and have been doing it for years. A weekly show, usually every other week if they can’t do that many, but they’ll take 10 to 12 of their podcast episodes, the best ones from the previous year, the ones that were the most popular, and then use those as chapters and put out a new book every year. They’ve spoken their way to it. Those podcasts are transcribed and edited differently to be a book rather than a podcast episode, or a book chapter rather than a podcast episode. Your question about whether you can use it as a proving ground, 100%, you can.

Tracy and I ran a pod to publishing program a couple of years ago, and it was, take your best ten episodes that are related and put that together. Don’t you have a podcaster who does that every year? I think of one who writes a book every year from his podcast.

Yeah. His name is John Livesay, and he has a podcast called The Successful Pitch. He’s a sales expert and is also a paid speaker. He uses his podcast to get more authority and credibility, and it helps him get booked as a paid speaker, going around the world speaking. Yes, he does use the podcast and generates a new book every year. He had Tracy write the foreword for one of them a few years back. Other podcasters who have a book and use the podcast to promote the book have a landing page that features the podcast and the book on their website. There are many ways that you can use podcasting as an author to raise awareness, build a list, and sell more books and whatever else you have to sell as well.

Leisa, I would imagine in real time, you’re going to find out very quickly if people like your ideas.

You find out pretty quickly. Yeah, I think it’s important. I always say all roads lead to Rome when you’re an entrepreneur. Everything that you do, whether it’s a podcast, a book, a topic, a speech, a blog article, you want to have that lead to Rome as much as possible, so that people have different ways to get into your orbit, or your YouTube channel, for example. What’s the line, the thread that goes through everything that can help people get to know you? Some people like to read, some people like to listen, some people like to watch, some people want to be in person, some people want virtual.

Repurpose Your Brilliance

There are all different ways that people are going to want to get to know you, learn from you, and see if your style matches. Are you a fit? Is it helpful? Is it helping them move the needle? I like to repurpose whenever I can. I love the topic of repurposing because you’re only one person. When I wrote my book, AI wasn’t an option to do so. All the writing, all my blogs, that’s me. I wrote those.

Your knowledge is so important. You might as well capture it. You don’t want to be what I call a brilliance hoarder. If you have brilliance that you’ve got, you want to get that out there, whether it’s in a book, in a podcast, in a talk, on your YouTube channel, or on social media. Let people know that brilliance that they can get more of it when they work with you, or when they take your program or service, or buy your products. That’s important. It helps your credibility, too.

We will get to repurposing in a moment, but I want to go first to authenticity versus the algorithm. For all of us who are experts in something, there are a lot of experts who do exactly the same thing we do, but it’s our authenticity that inspires people to hire us. Can I get along with this person? Are they a good fit? If I’m an action person, am I getting an action person? If I’m a little slower taking things, can I get someone who will work a little slower? Can you talk to that a little bit, Fran? How do you see that in the video world?

It’s definitely predominant. It used to be that the showier you were and the more editing you did, was more popular. Now it’s more about having unedited content with you just being you. They say leave your camera on all day and then edit out what you don’t want. People want to know you before they will do business with you. It’s the old saying, but now it’s for real. They want to know what you do during the day. They want to know who you buy from and if they could buy your products because they care about you. That’s how you get true fans, by being as authentic as possible.

Here’s the thing. If you don’t put your videos up until they’re completely optimized, then YouTube is going to get the best part of your video within the first 24 to 48 hours, they’re going to see that people are engaged by having a topic that people are looking for and that you’re being authentic, and they’re going to promote your video. You want to make sure you put your videos out there right after. You don’t make them public, and then work on it. Make them public after you’re done optimizing, then let it go out, and then let YouTube promote you. That’s how the algorithms are going now.

I love that too. Somebody brought up Jeff Walker. I know a lot of you have been in the business for a while. Remember back the Jeff Walker launch strategy where you spent all this money on these very scripted professional videos, and it went by the wayside eventually, because number one, too much money. Number two, when you’re sitting there scripted, you’re stiff. It doesn’t matter. It’s very hard to read. Tom, what about you with the authenticity and the algorithms on, let’s say, iTunes or the podcast distribution channels?

Podcasting: Diverse Apps, Authentic Choices

It’s a little different in podcasting in that there is not one app that everybody will use to access podcasts. There are two dozen good ones and probably another couple of dozen hardly known ones. People will listen to podcasts where they want to on the app that they want to use. Now, there are some algorithms on Apple and Spotify that feature in their categories show that are more popular. Certainly, there are algorithms that play into that. Those positions can also be bought.

The best thing about podcasting is that people are choosing to opt in to listen to you. It is the authenticity that you bring to it. Your expertise, your knowledge, your message to the world, your unique perspective on your area of expertise, and how you deliver your message. Yes, authenticity, the more real you are with them, the better. Now we do recommend that podcasts be professionally edited.

That doesn’t mean it’s like an editorial editing like you would edit a book. It’s not putting it out so raw that everything, every um and uh and awkward pause is there too in an audio format. That doesn’t play as well. The other thing I want to share is that about three-quarters of new podcasters are launching their show as video these days. That didn’t used to be the case. Ten years ago, it was probably 20% of podcasters who also put it out as video.

Most of the reason people are doing video is because video is the currency on social media. You’ve got all these little clips that you can share that do get attention on social media, but you want to be driving people back to your own website. Here’s the authenticity. It makes your listeners not only want to subscribe to your show to keep hearing more, but they also want to get more from you.

You’re in their ears every week because they subscribe, keep getting your next one. When you’re in their ears, they learn to like you and trust you, and they are much more likely to convert to a customer when you offer them something that’s in alignment with why they’re listening to you in the first place. You have a lot of power. Often, when Tracy goes to a speaking event, she’ll have people come up to her at the end. If you’re a new podcaster, it’s off-putting how casual they are with you, how informal, because they think they know you. They’ve been listening to you for months and months.

You’ve never met this person, but they know you, and you realize these aren’t stalkers. They’re raving fans, and they’re interested in what you have to share with them. That’s why I’m trying to explain that they’re much more likely to convert to any offer you make them, at least to trade their name and email to learn more and join your list, and also to buy directly. There are some similarities with YouTube to some things Fran was saying, but there are also some significant differences in a very good way.

I will say I’m an avid podcast listener when I’m sitting here during the day, and I don’t have an appointment. I do buy merch off some of them. It does happen. I’ll buy cups or something that they’re pushing, a supplement that I probably don’t need. It’s an impulse buy, but it’s not an impulse buy in the sense that you see it. It’s that I’ve heard these guys say it over and over and over, and now it’s time to buy something. Leisa, what about you?

Unleashing Your Unique Voice

I’ll go from the speaking route, obviously. When it comes to authenticity, one of the dangerous questions I hear a newer speaker ask is, “What do people want to hear? What’s going on in the marketplace?” I’m like, “We’re starting at the wrong point,” because when you’re speaking, I think it’s like, “What’s in your soul that needs to come out that would be helpful for people that would be the solution?”

Let’s say you’re a life coach and you went through a certain certification, and thousands of other people did the same certification. What makes you different? What’s your perspective that’s different? What are the people that you’re helping and supporting? What do they want to hear, and what are they benefiting from? That’s, to me, the authenticity versus talking about the same old boring thing that everybody else talks about.

I’m like, “No, we’ve got to find your inner unicorn. What’s that magical thing that you have inside of you?” That is what is going to attract the people, the very ideal people that are picking up what you’re throwing down and want to go on a journey with you, versus the plain old vanilla. Nothing wrong with vanilla ice cream, but like plain old vanilla. That’s probably not what they’re looking for. They’re looking for someone who sees them, gets them. That authenticity then can come through on the stage, whether it’s virtual or in person.

The other thing that never gets old is this. You’ve heard this before, but people want to be what? They want to be seen, heard, and understood. That has not gone out of style. Humans are humans, and they want to be seen, heard, and understood. They want to know, like, “This person can help me. They’re real.”

I had somebody email me and ask me if I was real. We’d met on Zoom, and he said, “Are you real or is this AI?” I’m like, “I’m a real girl,” like Pinocchio. I’m real. Some people are getting a little red flaggy about like, “Is this legit? Is this person going to look at my stuff and understand me?” I think that’s important. When it comes to algorithms, it’s part of our world as well. We can’t ignore that we’ve got this amazing technology at our fingertips. For me, I’m not an algorithm expert by any means. I know Tom and Fran are probably way more advanced in that.

What I can say, and this is the unsexy side of entrepreneurialism, is that consistency is your best friend all day long. I have people come to me because I constantly post on all my channels. We’ve got a system set up where it’s all there. It’s consistently putting out content that I feel excited about, that I want to promote, that I think it’s going to be helpful for people.

Just like Juliet, you’re like, one day, that vitamin is calling my name. I’ve got to get it today. It’s that same thing. I’ve had people that I’ve known for years. I had a gentleman whom I ran into, I’ve known him for 22 years, and he said, “I think I need what you have.” He’s been watching behind the scenes. That’s what I would have to say about it.

It is a human algorithm, too, because we follow along with that. Speaking of AI, AI is here. It’s so funny you said that because there are so many things that we can do with AI now, including repurposing our stuff, which we can morph with AI, and repurposing. I’ll let Tom take this one first because I used Tom’s product, and I repurposed the heck out of what we do with that content.

Podcast Production Simplified

That’s so very true. I want to thank Leisa for talking about consistency because it is key. I’m sure Fran will agree. Consistency and constancy are key. The wonderful thing about a podcast is you can record your episode even using a tool like Zoom, although there are other ways, there’s not only one way to do it, and I’m not saying Zoom is the best, although I use it for my podcast.

You can do one thing. Record either a solo episode, a solo cast, bringing your message to the world on a specific niche topic in your area of expertise, or interview other people or have a discussion with someone else about a topic. It doesn’t have to be an interview. Do a combination of those things as well. By doing that one recording, what we do in podcasting for our done-for-you customers, and you can also do DIY if you have the time to do all this stuff.

From one recording, it goes and becomes a polished video put out on YouTube, a podcast put out to all the listening apps. You have half a dozen little video clips to share on social. You have other unique graphics, quote graphics, things you said, things the guests said, things you said about the guests that make them look good, and that incentivize them to share it on social.

Guess what? When they do that, they’re sharing your show because that graphic will have your show identity on it. You can do one thing. Also, by the way, you get a blog post created out of that from the episode, and it goes on your website. We call it multicasting your content. Do one thing and it goes everywhere.

There’s AI involved in that, and as much as you want it to be, it doesn’t have to have AI involved in that. I want to take this opportunity to say what’s coming very soon. My partner Tracy has done it. We’re doing one for Juliet right now. When you have content like this, and it could be a series of videos you already have, if you have a podcast already, those episodes are the ideal content, it could be a series of blogs you have, and it can be a combination of all the above as well. That information can feed your own AI chatbot that goes on your website so that when you’re not available, people can go and ask questions of you. It’s you. It looks like you, and if you ask questions, it uses your content to create the responses, and there are constraints put on it.

It’s only using your content. It’s not going to give answers based on other people’s content or other information on the internet. We’re talking about your own resources to answer your question. I’ll put a link in here to Tracy’s website where we have hers that’s being tested before we put it on our main website, so you can check it out. Not only can you type in answers button but you can also speak your question.

Podcasting: Fueling Personal AI Growth

You can type questions, speak them, and you can either read the results or you can push a button, and Tracy will speak the answer to you. Tracy’s voice has been cloned from all of her podcast episodes. You can serve your community 24 hours a day. Ours is related to podcasting. The information you get back when you ask a question is wildly accurate.

This is the new frontier for any entrepreneur who has content that can be used to feed AI. I’m not talking about feeding the general knowledge of the AI universe to other people. I’m talking selfishly for each of you to benefit yourselves, to help serve your community. I’m creating a sales AI chatbot built from all of my sales calls for the last 6 or 7 years.

Anyway, podcast content is ideal for feeding your own AI. Sure, there’s AI that goes into a lot of aspects of production, and that is emerging and coming and getting more popular. Directly to your benefit, you have a huge opportunity to use the content you generate, but you’ve got to be willing to record the content and do it on a regular basis because that new content keeps feeding it. I’m sorry that’s a long answer, but it’s a great question, and it’s a new thing that’s very exciting.

It is very exciting. We’re using it for courses. We’re using it for everything. Fran, before I get to you on this, I want to mention, too, that we take the podcast that Tom’s company produces for us. We get that blog, we get the video, we get the audio. We repurpose that into magazine articles, shorts. I can’t even tell you how much we repurpose, not because I’m lazy, but because I want to have a lot of content out there for people to see, because that truly is our trust builder. When people see what we’re doing, that’s when they start coming and hiring us.

It is because they see that we’re action people. We’re no-nonsense. We have a slightly different knowledge base than a lot of the other publishers. Think about all the ways that you can republish it. We’ll take an article from a blog and make and submit it to a magazine and get into other magazines for our own magazines. There’s a lot you can do with that. Fran, as a YouTuber, you’re probably doing shorts all day long, aren’t you?

Not shorts all day long, but yes, that’s one of the things. Before I go any further, I have to let you know that I spent more than eleven minutes on Tracy’s AI chatbot. I spent eleven minutes going back and forth conversing, and it was fabulous. I never felt like I wasn’t getting appropriate answers. It was beautiful. I would recommend that everybody go and have a conversation. It was wonderful.

AI is coming into my world for many different reasons, and one of them is if I want to mass produce. It’s a wonderful thing if you use programs that will help you mass produce, but I’m also here to help my audience, my clients, who are dropping by the wayside. YouTube changes a lot, and people can’t keep up with it and so they end up stopping their production because they don’t know what to do with it anymore.

One of the things is, I have a membership where people can join, and we stay on top of what’s new. I was noticing that people will say, “I can’t make a video every day.” I taught them how to batch record, but it’s not enough. Now, very similar to what you’re talking about multi-purposing, if you ever think about when you were a kid, maybe even now, your mother would make a chicken and then she would take the chicken and make chicken soup and then chicken salad, and she would make chicken pot pie and she would make all these different things.

She knew how to stretch a chicken, and that’s what this is all about. It’s stretching whatever you do have. What I’m helping people do is create capsules of their products, of their videos, so that things like blogs, but not just blogs. You were saying that you used it for your merchandise, you use it for every different thing. I’m helping people build a capsule that will keep people engaged in that one capsule for a while. Not only that, but you could actually create that capsule that could be seasonal. You could put it on a shelf and bring it back down during a different holiday or a different time of the year when it’s more pertinent.

That’s one of the things that I’m doing. I’m also bringing in AI for digital twins. I work with seniors, so not everybody likes AI. I do both. Whether you just want the capsules or if you want the AI, this is what happens. If I haven’t dyed my hair, I don’t make a video, or I might, but I don’t love it, or I don’t feel like putting on makeup, or I don’t like the way I look, or I have no time.

With the digital twin, you get to create a bunch of them before you are ready. You could put out your scripts and the digital twin, and you can make a video in minutes, and you can make several. Some people are putting out ten videos a day on this information alone. I’m sending something to a client about this. I sent him my digital twin video, talking to him about his digital twin, and I never had to get on the video, and didn’t make any mistakes.

Embracing AI for Video Creation

I didn’t have to worry about editing. I didn’t have to worry about a lot of things. It was done in minutes, and it looks great. It’s a little bit of a learning curve. I talk to people about it. Know your audience. If they’re receptive to avatars, a lot of people don’t like AI, but it’s what’s going on. You might want to learn to overcome a little bit of it. If it helps you make videos for the rest of your life, and you only have to create a few avatars in the meantime, and you’re ready to do it on the fly, it might be worth it. That’s what I’m doing.

It will involve shorts, like you said, but it’ll also involve long-form videos. If you have a course, it’s great, but what if you just have a lot? I have a lot in me. I have all these to-dos and these Q&As, and I want to be able to teach what I know and leave it there so I don’t have to keep teaching it, create all these different playlists where people can go and get my content for free, so I can go do other things that I want to do. If you’re interested in that, it does give you an opportunity to make money from doing that kind of work as well.

Leisa, what about you repurposing?

In terms of repurposing, I had already mentioned it a little bit, but I’ll back up. When you create your talk, you can repurpose that into podcast episodes, into blogs, into networking conversations, into a 1-minute, 5-minute, or 10-minute version, like all the different versions of what you might be asked to speak on, wherever you are.

What we do is you can chunk it down. For example, if you have a half-hour talk, you might have three main points. Each of those points might be 6 or 7 minutes. That could be a smaller talk, or you could reverse engineer your talk and create questions out of it so that when you’re on a podcast, they’re asking you about the thing that you talk about. Now, to be clear, when you’re on the podcast, you’re not just sitting there talking nonstop, giving a presentation. You’re creating it in a conversational way.

Mastering Your Elevator Pitch

What’s nice, especially if you’re a little nervous speaking, once you have your talk created, you can be a guest on podcasts that have audiences that would be interested in your content, and you get used to saying the information in different ways in a conversation. I’m not a script person. I don’t recommend re-memorizing your talk. I recommend you embody your talk where it’s like, “It’s in my body now. Okay, cool. The house could catch on fire, and I could still give my talk. The electricity could go out, but I could still do it. I could be at a barbecue and casually mention something, and it comes up normally in authentic conversation.” My goal is that everybody can take what they have.

I call it the grocery store test. If somebody was standing next to you at the grocery store and you get to chat, and maybe it’s a long line, and they ask you about what you do, and they’re like, “I want to know more about that. Can you tell me?” I want you to be able to instantly give them the highlights of what it is that you do, what you speak about. In terms of repurposing, also, you can also take whatever your products or services are and put that into a book. You can high-level it. I have a framework, so it’s like seven steps. I have an online curriculum. It’s seven modules. Guess what? In my book, it cover all seven of those things, and that’s what I used to create the book.

It’s obviously not as detailed as what they would get on the online course, but I didn’t have to come up with seven new things or all these different things. If you’re sitting on a framework and you don’t have a book yet, then this is your opportunity knocking to go put that in. It’s a lot easier when you’re like, “I’ve already done a lot of stuff. I don’t have to start from scratch. I’m not starting from ground zero.” You already know that stuff. I’m a huge fan of repurposing even before AI was in the plan. I know we’ve talked a little bit about AI as well. I’ll have a session online with them called Get Your Talk Ready to Rock.

Soul Search: Beyond AI Assistance

They’ll send me eight pages of content. I’m like, “Is this your ChatGPT talk? That’s not what we’re going to be doing.” I’ll say like, “We’ll put that in the parking lot.” What I’m interested in is like, what’s in your soul? Can ChatGPT tell us what’s in your soul? If not, we’re going to dig in there. We’re going to dig in there, and maybe one day, it’ll be able to tell us what’s in your soul.

I want to get the essence of the person, then we can use ChatGPT to put the little toppings on top and the frosting on the cake, or if we’re struggling, how can we rephrase this title? That’s what I would use ChatGPT for, versus starting from there to create a talk. Guess we’re going back to that authenticity thing. It sounds perfect, but you’re like, “Something is off a little bit,” and you want to get your stuff first and then help you accentuate it.

Integrating AI in Podcast Services

Yes. As a matter of fact, I wrote the Author Success Handbook from a course that I did as well on there. I want to go through the tools with you guys because I want to get to the Q&A before we go. For me, my tools that I use are Castmagic. You can set up your own pipeline. I believe it’s Castmagic.io. You can take a video and ask it for titles and the timestamp marks. It writes my email for the episode. It writes my social media posts. You can program a pipeline, and it’s very easy to do what you want.

Opus, I use for the clips. Something about Opus, every time that I’m a podcast guest, the first thing I ask my host is, “May I use the video from this and repurpose it into shorts?” I never had someone say no. Now I’m creating more promo, and I get asked to speak all the time because people love that when you’re out promoting their stuff. GoHighLevel has some great new bots and things in there that are AI-driven. It’ll write copy, it’ll fix your funnel. I use that a lot as well. Fran, what about you? What are your top two tools?

Right now, I’ve been using HeyGen for the avatar. It’s wonderful because it not only has hundreds of avatars that are already made for you, but you can create one. You could talk into text and tell them what you want them to create, and then you could also create one of your own, just for you. You could give 300 different versions of yourself as your own avatar. They call it a digital twin.

I went on there for regular generic avatars, and I wasn’t expecting to find that I could have myself out there. That’s what changed my world. I want everybody to know. Go look at it, and see if it’s right for you. I’m sure there are many other products out there, but I went to ChatGPT, found out everything that was available. I knew what I was looking for, and it was the perfect fit for me. It’s like $29 a month or $200 a year, but it was worth it.

Tom, what about you?

We’re using AI in many different ways, and we use some of the same tools. Opus, for instance, for clips, but we’re also building AI into our podcast hosting platform to make it easier for podcasters to do things right there, for uploading their audio recording or video recording, and then generating all this stuff from it right there. We use Gemini, the Google AI product. We find it to be much better for many things.

In terms of the AI chatbots, initially, we’re using a company called Delphi, but we’re also creating our own version because there’s has some limitations, but still using Tracy’s and you check it out. I’m going to share a link to hers. A link to a couple of other things here for everybody. We’re huge into AI. We’ve been using AI since 2018 for a lot of aspects of the podcast service we provide. Now, we’re incorporating into our platform. I saw a question here talking about the avatars and bots are fun, but I think people want to connect in a more personal way. Certainly, they do. We talked about the authenticity, and I believe in the authenticity of podcasting and recording your own recordings.

We’re not fans of using AI to generate your podcast audio because that is possible, but it’s a lot less authentic. The AI chatbot, check out Tracy’s and ask questions about podcasting because that’s the silo of information there, that it’s meant to serve people with that particular one. The idea is that when you’re not available, somebody can’t get their schedule and your schedule doesn’t match up to have a meeting for a week or two. They can get some immediate answers now, and that can make them more interested to meet with you and have a one-on-one conversation. Right next to that chatbot, you can have a booking calendar link right there if that’s what you want to do.

In our business, we’re serving hundreds and hundreds of podcasters every day, and we can’t personally be there to answer all those questions. People can book a call for certain things, but it can take time for that to happen. It’s not an either/or. It’s about how we multipurpose our content and ourselves to be able to serve more people and achieve more. That’s where chatbots are going to be instrumental for those who have enough content to feed them, which is the big if. It all comes back for you to generate. I would argue that speaking your way to it is very easy.

Leisa, how about you? What tools are you using?

Automating Tasks with Zapier

I will go a different direction since we’ve been talking about AI, and obviously, we all have assumptions about what AI is, and there are so many tools. I think one of the unsung heroes is automating those tasks behind the scenes. Zapier, for example, and I don’t have an affiliation with Zapier, but you can get X amount of Zaps for free. Let’s say you are always sending an email, or you’re doing data entry, or you need something in an Excel form. It’s those behind-the-scenes admin tasks that you can set up. It automatically does that. We use that on our Facebook group, which, if you have Facebook or any social media and you’re not capturing the information from that platform, you are what’s called a renter.

If you want to own it, then that means you need to get that information off of that platform and into your own, like we use MailerLite or MailChimp or GoHighLevel, whatever your system is where you’re emailing people. Zapier can help you do that. There are different things. You could have bots that help you with those things, but that’s my favorite thing. The more little menial tasks I can take off my plate, the better, because I think I am not put on this Earth to be on my computer all day. That’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to inspire, speak, facilitate, train, coach, and mentor. Those are the things I’m here to do, not the little menial tasks. If you can start to notice what tasks you are doing, can you shortcut that?

You can Google it, like, “I’m always entering this into that. What’s a way?” Zapier will probably come up as one of your things. For my videos, there are all different kinds. I use Video Tap. I’m not affiliated with them either, so it doesn’t matter to me what you use, but you can do a video. You can either do a minute video, and it’ll do the transcription for you, and it’ll format it for the different LinkedIn or Facebook. It doesn’t work with Instagram.

You have to know which ones you are going to use and why, and how they make your life easier. That way, you can repurpose your video quickly. That’s one of the things that I use. I’m going to put a couple of things up. Not those links, but I’ll put in a couple of different links depending on what you find useful. There are some tips to get more speaking gigs now if you want. This is all free. If you want to visit our international speaker network, there’s a free ticket to that, or if you want to have a conversation with me, there’s a link for that. Pick and choose. You can have all three, whatever you want. Whatever floats your boat.

Along those lines of streamlining, we have an episode coming up with Steven and Suzy Kirch from Profit Minds AI. They have an amazing program that takes your input from what your job title is and what you do every day, and it gives you a 64-point list of what you should be doing every month in your business. When you click on the task, it’ll tell you how to do the task to streamline it, step by step.

It’s pretty amazing stuff because when he showed me, he took six hours out of my month. That’s almost a whole day out of my month of tasks that we do around here. Be sure and read that episode because there are a lot of interesting things they’re doing. I was hoping we maybe have time for 1 or 2 questions, if you guys have one. “What do you use to schedule posts?” I use GoHighLevel. What do you use, Fran?

I’m not using anything to multipurpose. The one I used for years is now defunct, so I’m looking for a new one.

Tom, what do you guys use?

We use MeetEdgar, but there are lots of good ones if, for some reason, you don’t like MeetEdgar. There’s Buffer and similar things like that. I think they all do pretty much the same thing. It’s more of a personal preference, and depending on how much you’re doing with it, how many social platforms you’re posting on, whether you have assistance, and whether people are sharing. If you Google social sharing tools, there are lots of them out there.

There are a ton of them out there. I like GoHighLevel. We do GoHighLevel trainings for authors once a month with Rebecca Bertoldi because it’s an all-in-one. My email is there, my websites are there, and my landing page. It’s nice to have it in one spot. Leisa, what do you use?

App Sumo: Lifetime Software Deals

We use SocialBu, and that’s a low-cost one. It’s a scheduler. It works with everything. Pretty easy peasy, lemon squeezy. The other thing I’ll say, I’m going to go out on left field here. If you’ve ever heard a Groupon, there’s a Groupon for all these things, and it’s called AppSumo. If you’re like, “I need a video editor thing,” whatever tool you are looking for that would be helpful, go to AppSumo, subscribe, and you’ll get the latest things.

You can search in there and say like, “Do they have any deals right now?” Here’s one of my favorite things is when you get the lifetime thing, you’re like, “I pay $89 for life, and that’s it. I have it forever.” Those are my favorite things, so that you don’t end up being what I call subscription form and subscribing to all these things. That can help. You can pick and choose. There are so many different companies out there. Some are smaller companies. They’re not going to come up on the Google search. They don’t have the marketing dollars yet, but they have a product that’s good. That’s my recommendation.

Farewell Message

That’s a great recommendation. Castmagic is one of those that you can get on a subscription form. I went over to AppSumo, and it’s $168 a year, and I’m guaranteed that price for life. With everything it does, it paid for itself easily within 2 to 3 months with all the repurposing it did for me. Thank you, guys. I’m happy to have you guys here. Check out all of our events. We have monthly events on the first Friday of every month. If you’re interested in the GoHighLevel trainings and you want an invite to those, shoot me an email at Juliet@SuperbrandPublishing.com. We’ll get you in the system and send out invites to those events, too. Thanks, everybody.

Important Links

• Leisa Reid
• Fran Asaro
• Tom Hazzard
• WTFFF?!
• The Author Success Handbook
• Castmagic
• Opus
• GoHighLevel
• HeyGen
• Zapier
• Video Tap
• SocialBu
• AppSumo
• Delphi
• Schedule a time to meet with Tom Hazzard
• Fran Asaro Email
• Juliet Clark Email

• 🔑 Get “5 Top Tips to Get Speaking Gigs Now”
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About Tom Hazzard

Tom Hazzard is a prolific podcaster host/co-host of five different shows with hundreds of episodes and interviews. As the CTO of Brandcasters, Inc. (Podetize.com), he makes it a practice for all of the executive team (himself included) to start a new podcast every year. That way the leadership of the organization intimately understands what it is like to podcast today and helps inform the value and development of products and services.

In 2018, he started Feed Your Brand ranked as #22 on CIO’s list of Top Entrepreneur Podcasts (just one behind podcast industry veteran, Pat Flynn). Before that he started Product Launch Hazzards with his partner and co-host Tracy Hazzard to serve Amazon Sellers and Product Inventors. Right now in 2021, they are in the creation process of two new shows, The Next Little Thing and Behind the Next Little Thing to help podcasters explore show monetization through product sales and affiliations.

The story of Tom’s first podcast, WTFFF?! 3D Printing is the genesis of his podcasting production business and patent pending software-as-a-service, Podetize.com. With over 600 episodes and a recent collaborative sponsorship with Hewlett Packard (HP), the proof of the long-term residual value of a podcast remains in much more than the number of Apple podcast subscribers. Value is in on-line and industry authority and influence growth, episode after episode. He can trace each and every press article, interview, and speaking engagement from someone who heard him on a podcast or met him during an interview for one of his podcasts.

About Leisa Reid

Do you want to be a speaker, but aren’t sure what to talk about, where to go to find gigs, or how to offer your services from stage? As the Founder of Get Speaking Gigs Now, Leisa trains professionals who want to use public speaking to grow their business. Clients who work closely with her build their speaking skills and confidence through the Speaker’s Training Academy. They get their “Talks Ready to Rock,” and learn how to STAY booked as speakers through easy to implement strategies. As a speaker herself, Leisa has successfully booked and delivered over 600 speaking engagements. She is the CEO of the International Speaker Network, a community of heart centered speakers who value collaboration, relationships, results and fun. In her book, Get Speaking Gigs Now, she shares her 7 Step System to Getting Booked, Staying Booked & Attracting Your Ideal Clients Through Speaking.

To learn more visit: https://GetSpeakingGigsNow.com

About Fran Asaro

Fran Asaro is a YouTube Mentor and Strategist for Mature creators – Helping Entrepreneurs and first-time content creators Thrive on YouTube

Contact Fran if you would like to learn how she serves her fellow Senior Tubers.

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