Speaker 0 00:00:05 Everybody welcome back to the audience podcast. I'm here with somebody that I've followed you online for quite a while. We've we've crossed the Twitter tweets every once in a while. And somebody I've been following about marketing SEO and a tweet he recently sent that really caught my attention. Brendan, Hufford welcome to the audience podcast. Thanks so much for having me, Matt, you do something called SEO for the rest of us. I want to talk about that because your tagline SEO is complicated. Yes. SEO is complicated. Podcasting also complicated. Lots of things are complicated and I want to dive into it, but give the folks listening your two minute elevator pitch, who are you and what do you do?
Speaker 1 00:00:48 So I went to college to be a teacher because we let 18 year olds decide what they want to do with their lives. For some reason, I don't know why we do that. We're like pick a, pick a vocation and invest a ton of money in college loans. Uh, and at 18 I thought being a teacher would be a good idea. It turns out looking back, it was a great idea. I did it for 10 years, built some small websites on the side, sold those websites. And then a friend of mine was like, Hey man, you don't, you don't have to go full time into building your own thing. You could just have a career in marketing. And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. So joined an agency a couple of years ago, grew the SEO team there joined us. Another agency grew the SEO team.
Speaker 1 00:01:26 There worked with a lot of great clients, but I was always really dissatisfied with the material, like bringing up junior team members and be like, Hey, read this, watch this, the YouTube videos had the personality of a wet blanket. And by nature of what we do, Matt, you can't really Google to learn how to do SEO. Right? Cause the results around SEO are so manipulated. I would argue one of the most manipulated search results. And it's impossible. You know, you Google learn SEO fast and you find a 10,000 word blog posts with 400 links in it. And it's like, it's the opposite. That's not helpful at all. So I was like, well, look, I'm a teacher. I know these things. I want to create my own stuff. So I created SEO for the rest of us. Anybody who's ever felt overwhelmed or that SEO isn't for them, that's through the community.
Speaker 0 00:02:13 Interestingly enough. And this is sort of a side note here, but I found that a lot of the SEO hours I know is that, is that the phrase SEO hours? Is that, is it just search experts? Like what is the phrase?
Speaker 1 00:02:23 We just kind of call ourselves. SEO's it's
Speaker 0 00:02:26 Weird. It's like a cereal. Um,
Speaker 1 00:02:28 Yeah, like what we do is SEO and we're SEO is it's like, if you called yourself a podcasts, yeah. That's not what that is. It's a weird thing.
Speaker 0 00:02:36 But some of the most interesting, and I don't know, it just stands out more in the SEO world that a lot of the folks that I know they never went to school, quote, unquote, formerly too, because probably one, they didn't teach it back in the day. Or maybe now there are courses around this or curriculum around this kind of market. But a lot of people I know, went to school for classical music, art, you know, you went for teaching and education. There's this background though, of what I've found is critical thinking. And creativity is what really lends to be a good SEO and one that I think, or SEO. One thing with the podcasting side is it also plays well into that space. A lot of the great podcasters, I know, same thing. It's art, it's creation. It's resilience to keep on doing it, right? Hey, this keyword doesn't rank anymore. Well, we've got to find a way, right? We've got to find a way to make this page, come back into those search results has nothing to do with computer science or audio engineering on the podcast side, it's a sort of resilience to keep learning and think out of the box. Is that a fair statement of, of your education and how you played well into this space? Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:03:39 Per I always described SEO is like the, a Venn diagram overlap between being super creative and creepy organized. And if you're one of those things, you can learn the other one. So you're not, you're not lost, but yeah, I mean, I've even taught, I taught courses on digital marketing for the university of Chicago. We taught SEO the way that I feel that it exists, but you're right. Like even now a lot of the stuff you get, unless you have an actual practitioner teaching it. Not because it changes a lot, but it's the same thing. If we were teaching how to create a podcast that builds an audience or becomes a business, right? If you have somebody just teaching that in a classroom and they've never actually done it, it becomes a little bit complicated. I think when it comes to business things and creative things like you have to have actually done it to a degree. So I've done that, but that's a lot of where it is. I think a lot of people just get hung up because it seems it can feel, you know, you can't hear it on the podcast. I'm waving my hands in the air, but like, it feels very overwhelming. There's so many levers to pull. What do I do first? What do I do next? People just need like us a roadmap. And unfortunately you don't get that in most blog posts.
Speaker 0 00:04:47 I want to dive into this tweet that you put out. If I'll give you a moment, if, if you don't mind just pulling it up and reading it for me because as a poor podcast host, I don't have it in front of me. If you have a second that just grabbed that tweet and just read it. But you have a podcast. I want to dive into the success of your podcast. One of the things you bring up, which I love is you hit directly in this upcoming read of this tweet about measuring analytics. So many folks that I talk to at Casos as Castle's customers, they come to me and they say, Hey, we've been using Casos for whatever, 30 days, 60 days, 14 days. Why isn't the analytics of my podcasts going up? Why aren't these downloads? You know, I don't want to see this graph moving up into the right. I like to shift that conversation to the why, but if we could get the read of your tweet and then we'll dive into how you measure analytics and success of a show.
Speaker 1 00:05:37 Yeah. It's funny. My introduction to Casos I actually was interviewed by Craig years and years ago for his nights and weekends podcast, which was really cool. It's the first time we ever connected the tweet that you're talking about. I was consuming a podcast. I think it's hard to make the thing. People say like, Oh, I make videos, but I don't consume any or I write books, but I don't, I don't understand
Speaker 0 00:05:58 That it drives me bonkers.
Speaker 1 00:06:01 Yep. And I don't, I don't believe you can. Right? Cause it, you lose your taste. It's hard to have the taste to make good things. Now look like there is that taste gap, right? Where you, your taste is better than what you can currently make. And you have to keep making the bridge that I firmly believe in this. But I do think that if you're not a consumer of the thing that you do, that can be problematic, right? If you do SEO and you don't actually read, that's a problem, you're making something for people to read. So I was listening to the daily stoic podcast. I don't listen to it regularly, but I checked it out because Ryan holiday is my favorite author. And he was interviewing rich roll from the rich roll podcast. And I had heard a flip interview of this, you know, the, of them talking over a year ago.
Speaker 1 00:06:43 And it was very profound and I'm like, well, if Ryan's going to interview rich, now I should have listened to this. And there was this throwaway little blip in the conversation towards the end. I put an image it's like an hour and four minutes into this conversation. There's only five minutes left. Most people probably didn't listen that far through, but they just talk about like podcast metrics and you know, how all these different things. And I was like, all right, I have a take on this. I want to share it. And what I tweeted was from a marketing perspective, marketers yearn for better podcast metrics, but consider this and stay with me. What if the reason that podcasting has thrived is because we can't see how other people are doing without comparison to steal our joy. We make more and that's very existential, but I think there's a thread of truth in there. That goes pretty deep. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:07:31 It's one thing it's like when you look at, I don't know if you're a marketer and w we'll talk about maybe the most, um, I was going to say controversial, but he's, but he's not, it's just like sort of the, so Gary Vaynerchuk, right? Sort of maybe somebody, a lot of people coming up in marketing in business, they look at him and say, okay, I'm going to rinse, repeat sort of what Gary does, but you don't know. I mean, you could look at the YouTube channel, right. And you could see the metrics, you just look at view count. You know, a lot of people look at that and they say, okay, how do I get that view count? How do I get that subscriber count? You don't really get that with a podcast. I mean, I'm sure I, maybe as an SEO there's tools that sort of gauge the metrics and give you this public information maybe, but you know, I'm a hundred percent there with you. Like number one, I think, yes. That's the undercurrent that keeps people going, because it's very hard to get discouraged by comparing yourself to the, to the competition, quote unquote, right. You can't just say, Hey, my channel doesn't have a million views. Like you do a podcast. Right. And maybe you're thinking it, but you know, but publicly and visually it doesn't bring you down, I guess, is, is one way of looking at it.
Speaker 1 00:08:37 Yeah. I have the SEO for the rest of us podcast and I think it does really well. It does what I want it to do. It's something I'm fine. I've used to treat my podcasts as distribution. And I was more like YouTube. First video first. Then we took the audio, put it on the podcast. It's a bad experience. And I realized, like, I really looked at what I enjoyed doing what enjoy doing as podcasting, not specifically making video. So let's make the podcast, the main thing. I have a very strong belief that a good podcast makes everything else easier. And we can extrapolate on that a little bit, but by going kind of like podcasts first, I'm hitting numbers of downloads. I want, I'm seeing it growing. It's very nice up into the right, but recently another podcast or who has an SEO podcast posted his numbers. And he was like, just making an observation of something and I'm like, Oh cool. So those are 20 X. What mine are. That's great because I, I was afraid like, is this all I'm ever going to get? I'm so happy that I could get those numbers, but also very disillusioned of like, Oh my gosh, I'm putting so much time, effort, money, all these things into my podcast. And it's like, Whoa, that's crazy to see how far I still have to go.
Speaker 0 00:09:48 Yeah. And I'm looking at the landing page for your podcast right now. If you just go to SEO for the rest of us.org, click on podcasts and the top navigation you can get there. And I, I love your featured images, which I also want to talk about in a moment. I see that you have interviewed Roberto Blake, that I also follow on YouTube for a lot of my YouTube efforts. Not only at cast those, but on my personal channel. And I've looked at you, has, Roberto was very transparent in that space where sharing numbers, sharing, views, sharing the metrics, really going behind the scenes and seeing this stuff in his revenue reports. And I've seen, I've looked at what he's accomplished with YouTube and it's like 10 X, what I've done. But also it reinforces like I also haven't put in 10 X, 10 times the effort that Roberto has too.
Speaker 0 00:10:31 So I kind of look at it and I go, all right, I'm not in a bad spot. Like, you know, I feel like I'm doing okay, compared to a guy who's got probably half a million subscribers now. And I'm somewhere like the 13,000 Mark. And I'm just like, it's not bad. Like, you know, he's putting a lot of effort not to say that I'm like doing well by like skating by. But I look at the effort I put in, which is maybe a few days a month compared to every day that he puts in. I'm like, well, yeah, he deserves the, you know, he deserves it. Right? So it's like, it's kinda nice when people show that, that stuff off and encourages for sometimes. And I guess sometimes it can kind of drag you down if you let it. But you said that you're happy with where you're at. How, how did you gauge the success? So you don't just look at the numbers. What is successful for you? Is it selling a product, getting a course member, getting somebody to subscribe to the email list? Like how do you measure the success data wise
Speaker 1 00:11:21 For me, what I want is I want to build a business. So I go revenue first. All the other metrics are what I would call leading indicators. I do believe that more downloads leads to more subscribers, to more members in the SEO for the rest of us community is that's primarily what it is. I have some, we can call them high ticket items where I do your, I audit your site personally and put together a content strategy for you. And those are like very expensive. But then the community, the community is 10 to $47 a month. Like I wanted it to be accessible because the only other big SEO community out there is a hundred and dollars a month, which is great. If you're a professional, not great, if you're just starting out, trying to learn. So I was like, I want to go the opposite.
Speaker 1 00:12:00 And I think when it comes down to it, the things that I'm really happy about is a few things. Like number one, I have from a marketing perspective and awareness problem, right? Where the conversation is like, Hey, are there, where should I go to learn SEO? There's only really one answer. And I want to be in that conversation too, which means I need to put out a prolific amount of work so that it is impossible to not, I mean, you might not like me. You might not like the community or whatever else, however you will know about it. It won't be a lack of awareness. So that's a big piece of it for me. The other thing is just getting to, you know, so as I mentioned earlier, like podcasts do a lot of things. Everything's easier with a good podcast. So am I forming deeper relationships with people that I want to connect with?
Speaker 1 00:12:41 Yeah, absolutely. I've been able to connect with a lot of people. I mentioned earlier, before we started recording that I'm dealing with like some very personal stuff right now. And a couple people that I only know by interviewing them for my podcast. And then continuing to just be friends, have followed up with me on that sort of stuff. And they're like, Hey man, that's, you know, that's terrible. Like anything you need, let me know. That means a lot to me. So you can build your relationships, especially now where, where we don't have events where we don't have a lot of, you know, in-person capacity to do anything. And then I think like also just creating other content from it, right? Like with a good podcast, I have really incredible video content that I'm able to put out pretty much every day, across every social media channel and YouTube.
Speaker 1 00:13:24 I have audio content. I can turn that into blog content, all these different things, but at the end of the day, yeah, it's growing the community, which I like, but I also think that the kind of people who join a community are the kind of people who listen to a full podcast and don't just subscribe. Meaning like they subscribe in their favorite podcast platform, but genuinely subscribed to my beliefs, my worldview, what I'm trying to do and how I'm talking about things. Those are the kinds of people who will become really good fits for a member community
Speaker 0 00:13:54 Episodes that I've recently published here on audience. It's I think it's also on the YouTube channel as well is building a thriving podcast. I paraphrasing my own title because I can't, I can't remember it, but building a thriving podcast with only 200 listeners, if I didn't title it, that I probably showed up. But it was just from a quote that I heard from world renowned marketer, Seth Goden, where he talked about an example, I believe it was on the Tim Ferriss show where he said, look, if you're a, an AC like an HVAC, a heat and AC repair person, you literally only need 200 customers to be successful in that business. Cause literally you can't do physically or logistically that many more unless you're just massive corporation. But the idea is you don't need that 20,000 downloads or 20 X downloads you saw from your SEO competitor because you can make it successful with only 200 dedicated people.
Speaker 0 00:14:45 We've heard about a thousand true fans. Now there's a new one, a hundred true fans, right. And it's just really just 10. X-ing the value of that person and finding the, you know, the most, the most valuable people of that 1000, uh, you could do the very much the same with podcasting. And I've experienced both in the WordPress world, in my local market where I do too. Or I do a podcast in my local market and very, very small opportunity of listeners in the region that I live in or the area that I live in. But it's supremely valuable because no one else is doing it in this space. So podcast success, isn't just always about those downloads. Is there something you do measure aside from the community? Like, do you push something in every episode that you do measure, like again, that newsletter or that sign up aside from making the awesome connections that you do with the podcast?
Speaker 1 00:15:32 I wanted to make it fun. So I have segments in there where I talk about, like, if you only listen to one other podcast this week, go listen to this, this episode on this person's podcast. And some of those are big shows. Some of them are, it's just something I listened to as a consumer that I was like, I love this. I want to share it with my audience, what a better place to share it. Then while they have their podcast app, technically open share to them while they're listening to a podcast versus putting it in a newsletter or whatever else, the thing I'm, I'm moved to mostly is joining the community. I think it's $10. It's super nominal. The next thing that's going to happen that I thought about independently, ran it by a few people. And they're like, Oh yeah, two other people already do that.
Speaker 1 00:16:09 Which was good. But just having the guests also teach something. So if I have somebody on my podcast, we'll do an interview and that's exciting to dive into things, but I want them to also share very tactically, something that I can then pull out, make it just special for inside the community and people can join from there. I think it's a great bridge to join the community from listening to the podcast. Right? So that'll be the big thing that I look at going forward. And I still look at the downloads. I still want to see them moving. I want to see them growing. I look at those a, I use the Libsyn because that's what I've always used and I don't want to change. And it makes me nervous, uh, because change is hard. But the only reason I, like I said, I still use that is because it's what I've always done. Not to swear on the show bread.
Speaker 2 00:16:49 No, it just, as I'm talking, I'm like, Oh, it's just fine.
Speaker 0 00:16:53 The magic of editing. No, I'm just kidding. We'll even leave it in. But you know, maybe we can convince you to switch to cast. Those is totally free to transfer over and very easy. See,
Speaker 1 00:17:01 See, look at that. I just touch it. I just set it up. Didn't I, but my point is, what I look at is first day downloads. I don't know how many of those are subscribers, but I just want to see the day a podcast comes out. Is it more or less? Is it holding steady? Like what's going on? And I think that gives me some sort of idea of like, Hey, this is interesting or whatever else to people in, in, in how a lot of times, like I'm also leaning on the guest to help grow the show. Right? That's a growth tactic. So I look at that too. And then I also look at, I like to look at when I do solo shows like how those do comparatively, right? I don't have a guest or anybody else sharing it. So the other thing I check is I do a lot of video distribution from the podcast and I have short links at the end of each video. I look at how many people are actually cause you, you can't click them. So I look at how many people actually take the time to go type that into their web browser and then go to that link. That's a good indication of how powerful what we talked about in the clip was to drive people to the show
Speaker 0 00:17:59 Point. Did you start investing in, um, just browsing through the YouTube channel? And I see about a year ish ago, you introduced the new thumbnails. I want to talk about like that space in between of like not selling out and making these ridiculous, looking YouTube thumbnails, but also knowing how well they work. It's like, I always say to myself, I will never be that guy with the screaming face on pointing at a logo. I see everyone doing it on their thumbnails. Uh, but then I look at their YouTube count and I'm like, man, they're doing good. So maybe I do have to sell myself out to the YouTube thumbnail gods. You have some great looking thumbnails without selling yourself and making yourself look foolish. When did you make that transfer? Like how important is that to you? I know it's very, it's in the weeds, it's inside baseball, but I feel it really works to give the love to the, to the cover art of a podcast or a YouTube thumbnail.
Speaker 1 00:18:51 So I, I leaned in a couple of things have happened. There's been an evolution, right? My YouTube channel is initially me documenting, leaving, teaching, joining this first agency and just whatever I was making. Like if I was DIY saying my background for my video, I made a video about that. And then I started a project called a hundred days of SEO where for a hundred weekdays. So 20 weeks total, I was going to make a video, a podcast and a blog post every day. And everybody told me I was crazy. And looking back, I certainly was. Cause there was more to it than just making those things. Right. There's all the distribution around it. There's all the other pieces. So that was a hot mess. We got about two thirds of the way through it. And I was like, all right, time to time to move on.
Speaker 1 00:19:31 Like we didn't complete the a hundred days. It's okay. We got a lot of great stuff out, uh, with the thumbnails, you know, it was interesting for a while. I tried a lot of different stuff. I haven't found like a formula that works. And I agree. Like I think that there's styles in what I like to do is study people's thumbnails. I'll go to their channel, I'll look at their videos and then I'll see what works. You know, like for example, a big tip that I picked up is because we, English speakers read left to right, put the text on the left, then it's just like general CRO stuff. Can I have somebody pointing to it? Are they looking at it a lot of times, this is the guest. And now I've moved to, because my video, the same video as I share on social media are also the ones that go to YouTube. They're all very short and it's been interesting to see how they do cause I've leaned into how short they are by putting it in the title.
Speaker 0 00:20:20 If you go to youtube.com/brandon Hufford, uh, or just search for Brendan hovered on YouTube, you'll find it. And I really love the fact that you have all of these little clips. I mean, 55 seconds, 53 seconds, a minute, 18 a minute too. And generally, you know, it's, for me, my formula is always been 10 minutes, you know, like almost every, every episode and you've been finding success with this.
Speaker 1 00:20:44 It was just untenable because like, I just success is like, can I keep doing this? Right? And that's a big thing for me. Like I've had so many setbacks and looking backwards. My unfair advantage is that I don't quit and I don't give up. And I don't wallow very long. I think that's a thing I've developed, but also the way I'm wired. So it's a wonderful kind of like for lack of a better word, like a synergy there that pulls it together. So like even when I started my first, uh, I had a Brazilian jujitsu company. I ordered my first, I was a teacher at the time I saved up $2,000, my own money, ordered a bunch from a factory. And as soon as I got them in the colors bled everywhere and I was just out two grand and it was like, well, like my wife asked me not that long ago.
Speaker 1 00:21:29 She's like, why didn't you just like give up and like go do something else. And I was like, I don't, I don't know that wasn't even a consideration. So the biggest thing for me when I was making, you know, there's one interview on my channel with bill King, who was doing SEO at drift. And now he's at a company called phrase another cool SEO tool, but I took my interview with him and I edited it myself. I broke out every single clip into its own video, unique intros, unique outros, thumbnails, et cetera, et cetera. I even did the interview with YouTube in mind. Like I looked up YouTube searches autocompletes et cetera, pulled those and use those as my questions. Cause I knew I wanted the organic pickup in YouTube and I was even doing that. It's like, it took so long. Like when I look at the first one that I put out, it took like over two months to get 10 videos out. And I was just like, I can't keep doing that. So the system I have now is maybe not optimal. I would love to have videos that are all seven to 10 minutes, but this is what we have. So just keep kind of going forward for the listener.
Speaker 0 00:22:33 We're jumping all around here and I'm kind of doing it intentionally one, just because there's so much stuff I want to pull out of our guests brain today. But one of the things is, look, when you're doing a podcast, it's not just record the podcast, upload the podcast and it's over. That's not how we're going to, going to get to grow the podcast. And even if you're just saying, look, I just want download counts. It's all I care about. There's a lot of people out there who maybe might be doing something that's a trendy newsy review kind of thing. And that's the category they're in. So they have to pound the pavement and maybe even do a daily podcast because that's just what they have to cover. It's just, that's what they have to do. But there's so much supplemental and supportive content that you have to create in order to get the inertia of this thing moving forward.
Speaker 0 00:23:15 And this YouTube channel that Brendan's putting together, especially with the eclipse, we're talking one podcast episode being broken down to, you know, I'm looking at this one right here, probably 10 clips for this one segment that I'm looking at here. Uh, you know, Roberto's got maybe another 10, right? It looks almost like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, or maybe eight for Roberto. I mean, we're taking a podcast episode, whatever it is, 30 minutes, 45 minutes an hour, we're breaking it out into not only the audio we have the whole video episode and your case, breaking it out into 10 video clips. You're probably doing an email. You're probably doing summary and a blog post. There's so much other supportive content to raise the awareness, which you indicated before is something that you need to work on or at least something that you're aiming for.
Speaker 0 00:24:00 You need to raise the awareness. It's not going to be, just look, Apple and Spotify. Aren't helping you. Right. They're not going to promote the show for you. So let's just, you know, Amy, you know, all these places. Yes. Okay. So you've done that once, but really it's really just one time, as long as you're hooked up, then you're in, but Apple's not helping you. Spotify is not helping you. There's a land rush to podcasting right now. And they're all going for these high-end high-profile celebrity creators and us working class podcasters down at the bottom. We have to find these ways to do ourselves and our content justice. No question there, soapbox moment. Broad brush of the industry.
Speaker 1 00:24:37 Same spot, right. I just saw Spotify was like, Oh, the British Royals are doing a podcast on Spotify. We're going to tell everybody. And it was like, that's great. That thing we'll probably do a billion downloads in the first month. Mine will not, but it does.
Speaker 0 00:24:52 Mine will not,
Speaker 1 00:24:53 Will not. And you know, I always come back to a Tim Ferriss has one of the biggest business podcasts. And it was because he had a, he had an audience to begin with, but it could have been terrible. And I keep coming back to his premise, which is at the very least I will get better at speaking. At the very least I will get better at storytelling and having conversations. And that personal development was enough of a reason for him to do it. I think it is for anybody,
Speaker 0 00:25:20 Major business wins for you from a relationship that you've built through the podcast. One or two of those you could pull out to share with the audiences because that relationship and business building is hugely undervalued and something that people will eventually stumble on and they go, Oh wow. This is really the gold
Speaker 1 00:25:38 Here. I'll be honest with you, man. I'm T I'm a terrible example of this. Cause I ended up buying all my guests products. Like if they sell something like you sold me, you're selling me on Casos and I'm gonna spend the rest of the
Speaker 0 00:25:48 Day being like, I need to migrate over. But you know,
Speaker 1 00:25:50 I had a J a console on my show and he just launched a course. And I tried to be the first one to buy it. Like it was like 500 bucks, but it's just, so I firmly believe in that. Like, I don't always need the things that I buy, but that is a very important vote that I'm passionate about. If I have the means and the money to support you, to pay you for your vocation, I would like to do that. Right. And if I get something out of it, that's that's bonus on top. But with that said, so I'm a bad example. Cause I buy everybody else's stuff. I don't know that I've had huge business wins myself other than, you know, what's been a really big motivator to not quit has been people reaching out or being flattered. Like I've asked people to come on my podcast and they're like, really?
Speaker 1 00:26:32 You want to have me on your podcast? And I'm like, I'm so regular. What do you mean? Do I like you're flattered? Like I can't please. I felt like it was the other way around. And that's been important. I think when it comes down to it, it's a lot of intangibles for me. It's Bulletproof to my career, working in content. NASCIO, I've gotten to work with a great agency and great clients. And now I'm at a really cool company because tangentially, the relationships that I've made have made me a person of some level of renown where people are like, yeah, you're great. Like we'd love to have you write for our website. We'd love to have you do this, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that's really important that I don't have to fear that if this won't happen, but if the company I worked for folded today, I know that I could go hang my open for business, sign out in front.
Speaker 1 00:27:22 And I would be okay, my, I have four kids, my wife, like we would be fine. That to me is the biggest win. Is that peace of mind? I think on top of that. Yeah. A lot of business relationships that I've been able to friendships that I've built through podcasting, whether like I've gotten to be really good friends with Pat Flynn. I don't want to like name drop people. It sounds so. That's so lame. But like these are people that I've like actually become friends with. And I think I know this sounds weird. Like it's very woo. But like when you focus on just being friends, the backlinks happen, the opportunities happen, Hey, I'm doing this. We want you to work on this together. Oh, Hey, I referred this other person to you. Maybe I'm just like, I don't know if it's humility or someone's sort of imposter syndrome, but I don't think any of the success that I've had has come from me other than maybe just refusing to quit.
Speaker 1 00:28:14 All of it's come through just friendships and relationships. And I would say the deepest of those have come through podcasting. It also gives me a chance, honestly, and this is I think a big business win for me and my like manifesto or I want to put my flag in the ground is it gives me a chance. We, even with my small audience to, to put other people on people who are maybe very early in their marketing career, they have a hundred Twitter followers, but it's like, Hey, I think you're great. Like, I would love to have you on my podcast and you're not going to help me grow my listenership or anything. That's not why we're doing this. I get to send the elevator back down and support somebody else. And that means a lot to me because a lot of people have done that for me.
Speaker 0 00:28:51 Hey, before we get to that last, uh, last question, uh, shout out to Jay Kenzo. I was in his, I don't know if he calls it, he doesn't call it a mastermind, but it was a cohort it's sort of an accelerator for podcasters. A fantastic. He did just release that course. And it's a fantastic course. I'll make sure that we link it up in the show notes. It's priced at 500 bucks, but it hit, I mean, his content is material for like the 1% of podcasters. Like if like the 99% is like setting up and getting comfortable and learning how to do the mechanics of it. And yeah, like being a good speaker, taking notes, et cetera, et cetera. But he takes that like next step, the hardest parts, it makes it really good. It's 500 bucks, but you know what? So it was a road. Podcaster is also 500 bucks and a lot of people go, Oh yeah, like this road podcast is going to make my show so much better. No, it's not right. Take that 500 bucks. We're about to spend in Christmas for that road podcaster and throw it at Jay's because it will just elevate your game so much more.
Speaker 1 00:29:44 Yeah. I, if I can chime in also, I I'm really doubling down on podcasts. And when I look at what I want to do in the future, a podcast is at the core of it. When I look at the things I'm passionate about outside of marketing, outside of SEO, I see the podcast as being the main piece of if that's a business or a project or whatever. So investing in the skillset of how to create a show with a premise that is truly because let's be honest, like nobody needs another like B2B marketer, interviews, other B2B marketers, podcasts, like we've all done it. Like that's why this new season of SEO for the rest of us, I'm as much as possible talking to people. That's why Jay is the first guest. I want to learn about SEO by talking to nobody that works in SEO and let's see what we can pull in.
Speaker 1 00:30:26 And that was the biggest thing is he and I spent a lot of time talking about like, how do you get somebody when they read your content in the case of SEO or listen, or watch YouTube and in podcasts, how do you get them to be like, Oh my gosh, I'm home. This is the place that I want to be. And I want to tell all my friends, cause I want them to be here with me. That's different in most blogs. Let's be honest. I haven't read a blog in a long time. That made me feel that way. And if I can teach that to people doing SEO, I think we all get elevated. The internet gets better. So that's a big thing is, is how do you create a premise? Not just, I'm going to interview people.
Speaker 0 00:31:01 One last thing. I want to wrap this up with resilience and showing up every day and keep doing it. And it's a little bit of sort of the entrepreneurial spirit or the creator spirit, the artist's spirit. Like I feel like with podcasting, I've been podcasting for eight years. It took me seven years to finally admit, you know what, I guess I'm an artist. Like I show up, there's a blank canvas. I start painting or drawing whatever your favorite artistry is. And then you hate it and you rip it up and you keep going, but that also can lead to burnout. You don't feel like you're going in any right direction while I still continue to do that. And just keep on going. I really have been sitting back and putting hard stops to, to reevaluate my work so that I just don't get lost in the, in the chaos. And it's just constant chaos because that can really happen where it's just like, I'm going to keep pounding. I'm gonna keep doing this. But how do you, where do you put stop gaps in for you? How do you stop and analyze and reassess? Like, is this really working for me? Or maybe just tweaking things just a little bit to put it in a different direction.
Speaker 1 00:32:06 Yeah. I think the big thing was I've been on this journey maybe for the past. And I can explain here more in a second, I've been on this journey for the past, maybe couple months of trying to figure out what I want. I've in the past, been so concerned about running away from something. I didn't want that. This is like every, a scary movie trope. I'm like looking at the monster chasing me. And I don't look where I'm going and like trip over a stick in the woods. There's like they all, they all fall, they run into the wall or something. And I felt like that was like my career and my business. I was running away from, I was running away from something. And I was like, all right, when I make these next moves, I'm going to move with such intention. And that intention requires a very significant level of self-awareness.
Speaker 1 00:32:50 So this has looked like a lot of very specific and I can give you like the journal specific names of journals that I've used and practices. And I'm not like a morning routine person where I do like some specific thing, but there's just like, I need to read. And I need to spend time thinking about who I am and what I want and what I like and what gives me energy. Like I'm going to be fired up the rest of the day after talking to you. I love this. And I don't get that same energy from like hitting publish on a YouTube video. I don't get the same energy from designing a thumbnail. I don't always get the same energy from writing. And to be honest with you, writing is most of what I do right now. So that's what I like. And that's where I feel best.
Speaker 1 00:33:29 Why don't I do more of that and lean into it a little more and see where it is. So it's been a process of, uh, there's a great thing. You can put it in the show notes called the, I think it's, we're not really strangers to have this really cool acts. Self-reflection and I look like you can see, I have, uh, this problem where I buy, you can hear it on the, in the podcast. I buy all the journals, all the journals and I do them for a little bit. And then they've never really been helpful. There's always been some reason that I've stopped doing them, but you can't like put stops and checks in. If you don't actually know what you want, you don't actually know why this is very woo again, but why am I doing this? What do I actually want? It's taken away time from my kids, for my family.
Speaker 1 00:34:10 Why am I doing this? And I think when I got a better handle on that, what I'm good at what I like doing what gives me energy. That was a good enough stop for me. You know? It was again, like you said, also a question of like, how is this serving me? Is this the best use of my time? Or is it just unsustainable? I really try to aim for what is sustainable. I don't personally have a problem putting out a lot of work. If you have a problem, putting out a lot of work, maybe sustainability is not the thing that you need to focus on. You need to just make more. So I think it's a different piece of advice for everybody, but that's kind of how I think about it.
Speaker 0 00:34:43 His name is Brandon Hufford. You can find
[email protected]. Go there, click on podcasts, listen to his podcast, subscribe to his podcast, leave him a review on his podcast. He's also got a great free SEO challenge that you can click on and engage with Brendan. Where else can folks find you to say, thanks.
Speaker 1 00:35:01 Yeah, I'm on, uh, every, you know, if you, if you're, if you're a LinkedIn person, whatever dumpster fire you prefer, right? Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter, I'm on all of them. I'm way too active on all of them. You can find me on social. I would just honestly, like I would love it if somebody is listening to this and they're like, Hey, that sounds interesting. I keep hearing people in my life say I should do. That's what most of our introductions, Hey, you should really do SEO. All right, what do I do next? Like if that's where you're at, hop over, check out the SEO for the rest of us podcast. If you like that vibe, you'll love being in the community.
Speaker 0 00:35:33 So the audience podcast, don't forget to leave us a five star review on iTunes, cast those.com/subscribe. Join the mailing list. Join the private podcasts that we have going on. Spoiler alert. We're going to be selling Brendan on private podcasting, right when we stop recording. All right, everybody. Thanks for listening to the show and we'll see you.
Speaker 3 00:35:50 Excellent.
