Whether you’re a host or a guest, podcasting is always about your brand. Jeremy Slate, the Founder of Command Your Brand and host of Create Your Own Life, has been a constant presence in both sides of the mic. As a host, he has put out over 800 episodes, featuring guests of such caliber that will leave your jaw dropping. On the other hand, he also makes it a habit to appear in three to five podcasts as a guest. How does he do all of these, among other things that have made his show one of the world’s highest rated? In this insightful conversation with Tracy Hazzard, he spills his secrets in getting the best guests and the most listeners to his show. The biggest takeaway here is how he helps his guests prepare for an interview so that they can position themselves as visionary founders instead of someone who is just looking to increase leads. Listen in for his tips on podcasting as a whole, as well as his unique binge factor.
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How To Think Carefully About Branding Yourself As A Visionary Founder Or Lead Hungry Podcast Guest With Jeremy Slate Of Create Your Own Life Podcast
I have someone I already knew who came across my guesting form and I thought I’ve got to have him on the show. I’ve got to check this out. I have Jeremy Ryan Slate. His show is Create Your Own Life and his brand, his company is called Command Your Brand. They are publicists for visionary founders who are looking to build brands, not just being lead hungry. I love that methodology of thinking about the type of client you want. Jeremy has done a great job of building Command Your Brand. It’s a great company to follow. We have featured them on Feed Your Brand before. You can read an interview with Jeremy where he’s giving advice about getting publicity for your podcast. He’s been in and around the podcast industry for quite some time. You’re going to get a lot of inside tips and creative things that Jeremy is doing to create publicity for his show to get great guests, increase listeners, all those fun things that we talk about here on The Binge Factor all the time.
Jeremy Slate is the Founder of Create Your Own Life Podcast which studies the highest performers in the world. Jeremy has studied Literature at Oxford University and is a former champion powerlifter turned new media entrepreneur. He specializes in using podcasting and new media to create trust and opinion leader. In iTunes he was ranked number one in the business category and ranked number 78 in the top 100. He was named one of the 26 podcasts for entrepreneurs to listen to in 2017, 2018 by CIO magazine, I was in the same list. It was also in the top podcasts listened to by Inc. Magazine in 2019 and Millennial Influencer to Follow in 2018 by BuzzFeed. The Create Your Own Life podcast has been downloaded over 2.5 million times. He’s a contributing editor of the New Theory Magazine and Grit Daily. After a success in podcasting, Jeremy and his wife, Brielle, founded Command Your Brand Media to help leaders use the power of podcast to change the world.
Some of his famous interviews, and this is where it gets fun, General David Petraeus, former CIA Director, Danica Patrick, IndyCar NASCAR, AJ Hawk, Green Bay Packers, Grant Cardone, two times New York Times bestselling author and infamous entrepreneur, Kelly Starrett, First Five CrossFit Gym owner. Robert Greene, two times New York Times bestselling author, Tony Horton, Kevin Harrington, Walter O’Brien, Russell Brunson, Seth Godin, another one I would love to interview here, Neil Patel, Don Felder, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame from The Eagles, Brad Thor, New York Times bestselling author, James Altucher, investor and bestselling author. These are some of the great guests he’s had on his show. We’re going to learn a lot from Jeremy. I’m glad Jeremy Slate is on the show and we’re going to talk about creating your podcasting life.
Jeremy, I’m excited to catch up with an old friend. This is so much fun. We did one of our first 25 episodes on Feed Your Brand. I had you in it because we were referring clients to you. I’m excited to have you back.
I’m stoked to be here. I know Tom, we hung out a lot. It hasn’t been since 2018 that I saw him in person. It’s great to see you again.
It’s getting extended, the amount of time it’s been since we’ve seen real people. Human contact, we need it. You’ve had a baby. You’re busy. You have another one on the way. Congratulations. How exciting. The baby has got to be two now?
She turned two in October 2020. It’s weird that they start out as this little blob and now she speaks in full sentences and stuff, and she’s quite demanding. We’re like, “What do you say?” I don’t know where she got this. When you want her to say “please,” she goes “Peace.” I don’t know where the folding hands thing comes from, but she folds her hands under her chin and goes, “Peace.”
She can be irresistibly cute that she can get anything she wants. She has you wrapped around her fingers. This is a girl thing. Trust me, I have all girls. Your show Create Your Own Life did phenomenally well in 2020, 71% growth. That’s amazing. A lot of people who’ve had shows for a long time, and you’ve had yours since 2015, they don’t see that kind of growth. What did you do in 2020 that injected things into your business and into your podcast?
We’ve grown a lot in 2020 but for some reason, I’m not ranking in iTunes or Apple Podcasts like I used to.
The show is still growing.
I have my highest numbers ever. I’ve had my highest guest call ever, my highest number of subscribers ever, but for some reason I’m not ranked. It’s weird. One of the things has been I’ve tried to get more clarity about what we’re talking about on the show and get particular about that. Being in the process of writing a book has forced me to do that because I’ve looked at the tenets of what I talk about. One of them being adversity as a key thing. I’ve put down what are the key things I stand for that I’ve never done before. I had somebody challenged me for that. It’s changed a lot of how the interviews have been and it’s been more enjoyable interviews. It’s been better for the listener as well. I’ve gotten great feedback about that. I’ve got a lot of great reviews. That was one thing, I’m figuring out how I can show up better and make this more of a joint thing. As I started this same show in 2015 or 2014, it would be a lot harder if I started it now because there are 1.7 million now, it was the last number that I saw for podcasts out there. It’s a lot harder to get seen and heard and everything else. That was one thing, what do we stand for? What do we mean? What do we discuss here? I tried to hammer that down.
When we think about the podcasts that we binge on, the ones we listened to, the hosts we like, it’s because they have a particular viewpoint and they’re curating that. The fact that you started to be tighter about it seen growth in your show, that’s a good sign that you’re on track for doing something that people like and want more of.
It’s made me a lot pickier with the people that I’m having on the show because I want to make sure they fit with what we’re portraying for people.
I’m glad you said that because that’s the next thing I want to ask you about. Your job is to help place visionary founders on podcast, training them and getting them to be good guests. You’re also finding great shows for them to be on. Now you’re experiencing that from the other side with being pickier about it and not just accepting anyone. Are you seeing that’s helping you inform your clients better?
I would think so because I’ve always had the host viewpoint, which has helped us with how we’ve picked guests to shows and how we’ve connected with shows. It gives you a better perspective on show integrity and what that means, and why it’s important to a host to curate, and why you’re curating it. In the last several years, it’s given me a much better understanding of that. There are certain types of guests that are awesome. They’re great people and they’re doing cool things, but they don’t fit with what we’re trying to create here at Create Your Own Life. You have to figure out how to make all that work.
When it hasn’t fit but they’re a cool person, maybe I’ve done a LinkedIn live or I’ve done something else because I want to connect with them, but for my audience and what I do on the podcast, it hasn’t made a ton of sense. It’s changed a lot of that. It’s given me a better perspective on how to show real value to a host when we’re pitching a client when that person is valuable to them. You can look at a show and you can look at a client. The client may be awesome, the show may be awesome and be like, “They would not fit together. They don’t even talk the same speed.” It has given me a different perspective on that.
Create Your Own Life: Your show can be awesome and your guest can be awesome without necessarily being in fit with each other.
I was thinking about some of your great guests. You’ve had many great guests, but there has to be some where you felt like, “This fits my show so much better?” Who were some of those in 2020?
I’ve had Jonathan Goldsmith on, that you may also know as the most interesting man in the world from the Dos Equis commercials. He has an incredible life story. Adversity and going through that is one of the most important things you can have because it’s like a transformation process. I have a goal to one day interview Tom Brady because he has one of the most interesting transformation processes in his career to become that person. He sat in college and they say, “Why would they sit Tom Brady?” He wasn’t Tom Brady yet. It’s the same thing that I’ve learned by talking to Jonathan. We had David Petraeus on, the former CIA Director. I’ve learned what those things are and adversity is a big one.
It’s like a Peter Parker moment. He wasn’t Spider-Man yet. Something had to happen for him to be that person. That’s changed a lot of the way I ask questions, the insight I get from them. It’s not like I’m a crazy preparer, but I do prepare quite a bit for my episodes. I find that the way I’m structuring a question, because I want to get the follow-up question. I’m structuring a question because I want to open it up so I can have the follow-up which is where the real information is. It’s changed a lot of how we’re talking about things and how it’s guiding those conversations.
That’s an interesting model of looking at your guests as creating this foundation, then creating to get to the heart of where you want to go, which takes them to a place they haven’t been yet, which gives you that uniqueness in your interviews. There is this little Peter Parker reference. This is one of Jeremy’s key factors. He’s got a little geeky edge going on and it serves him well when he does interviews. It’s disarming.
I interviewed Flint McGlaughlin who’s an OG in the marketing world. He’s been doing this a long time. The thing that we both have in common is we’re like super nerds about ancient history. We found a way to talk about marketing through the eyes of Roman emperors like, “Don’t even get me going.”
One of my favorite older interviews of yours, which is probably also in alignment with your show is when you interviewed James Altucher. I loved that interview. It was great. He said some things on your show that I hadn’t heard and I’ve heard him interviewed in many other places.
That was a different experience too because we did that with a live audience. We did that at Stand Up New York, which is a comedy club he owns. We had 50 people out in the audience. That in itself as an interviewer is a different experience because you have to figure out like, “It’s not just me and the person in front of me, now I’m interacting with a group.” That in itself is interesting.
You have an obligation to be a little funnier.
Yes, and I’m not a funny person. I don’t know.
It worked well though. It was one of your more interesting on the earlier side of them when we used to listen to your show a lot more because I had more time back then.
We brought James back because he wrote an article called New York City is Dead Forever. Here’s Why. We brought him on to do a discussion about some of the points in that article as well, which he got responses from Jerry Seinfeld. He had a lot of interesting stuff happened with it. James is a cool guy.
Let’s jump to our five things. I want to get to them because I want to talk some more about the guesting side of things. This covers our five things. As we always talk about, these are some of the five ways, the best practices that you have. Our first one is how do you get great guests? You’ve gotten some of these great guests. How did you get David Petraeus on the show? How did you go about doing that?
Some of them are active processes and some of them are like, “How the heck did I do that?” I’ve found there are a couple of different things about it. When I first started doing the guest reach out, it was just me. It got more successful when I made a fake email and pretend that it was somebody on my “team” that I didn’t have at that point in time doing the outreach for me. I hired a real team to do it for me, but in the first couple of years, that helped me because people perceive you to have a large organization like, “This is fine.” That got me through a lot of barriers and then you have some awesome conversations with people. That was important initially, having somebody be perceiving to do the outreach for me, and then eventually it became interns, and then eventually it became somebody on my team that’s paid to do it. Having somebody that’s not yourself do outreach helps you with getting guests. It’s also understanding PR world and how you connect with people, especially for big influencers.
Create Your Own Life: Podcasts are the frontend for whatever else you’re doing. It’s the thing that helps you to connect with the right people and create relevant PR.
There’s this hierarchy that I’d like to explain to people about how you get guests. You’re going to have the best chance of getting somebody if you can talk to them. Further outside of that, you get their assistant. You’re going to have an okay chance, not as good as if you can talk to them. The second outside of that is their PR person. Somebody that’s never going to do anything for you is either their manager because they don’t care, or their speaker booker. They’re going to tell you it costs $20,000 because they get paid to book speaking. I’ve learned a lot about who’s the right communication line to connect with. How you make it relevant to them is important as well.
I find that you want to lead with purpose, the purpose of why I’m doing this. It’s not just like, “You can be on my show and I can get bigger.” That’s not the point. It’s the purpose of what we’re doing for people here and how this would be a unique opportunity for them because we’ve had good numbers, but I’m not Jordan Harbinger or somebody like that. I don’t have those kinds of numbers. You want to portray to them how they can make an impact by adding to the purpose that you have. I’ve had a lot of success by that. Also, when you add to that pitch, the type of people you’ve had on the show, that credibility helps as well. I’m not going to say it doesn’t, it helps.
Having some of those good guests, you get more opportunities to get good guests. That’s awesome.
I’ve also realized that different types of influencers live in different places. With the celebrity types, a lot of times you’ve got to go through their team, but General Petraeus, he and I connected on LinkedIn. One day I saw somebody liked one of my LinkedIn posts and it was General David Petraeus. I’m like, “That’s a former CIA director. That’s interesting.” We start engaging and having conversation a little bit, and I finally asked him, “Do you want to do a podcast?” He’s like, “I’m busy now though.” That was October of 2019. He finally came on the show in September of 2020.
He wasn’t as busy.
Everybody wasn’t as busy. I found 2020 was a great year to get guests as well because they weren’t as busy. There was that part of it. Also, for athletes, I found that the best way to connect with athletes, weirdly enough, and there’s also age ranges on this. They have to be still playing or within five years of retirement to be able to use Instagram to reach out to. It may sound weird, but social media and Instagram especially is new enough that if somebody is in their 40s, they’re probably not on Instagram. Usually if they’re within five years of retirement, I’ve had a lot of luck getting athletes from Instagram surprisingly. They talk back to you, which is interesting.
They’re still managing their own after all that time too.
They have somebody managing it, but they also like to talk to people because they find it fun to communicate with fans. We’ve got Nick Swisher and AJ Hawk that way.
That’s was a great interview.
Thank you. I’m a huge Yankee fan.
My dad is too. When I go through and I pick the episodes to audit when someone’s going to come on my show, I’m like, “Who sounds cool and interesting? Nick Swisher. Let’s check that out,” just to annoy my Red Sox fan husband.
I’m a Nick Swisher super fan so that was a cool experience for me. I tried to tell people don’t fanboy. I did a little bit on that one, I’m not going to lie.
I fangirl at times too. I fangirled over an author and Tom thought it was the most hilarious thing ever.
A podcast needs to be in service of the people who are listening to it. Your show is nothing without them. Click To TweetI did that to Brad Thor. I’m a huge Brad Thor fan. He’s a writer. He’s got nineteen New York Times bestsellers. I’d fanboyed. I can’t complain.
It’s like, “I know everything about you and your books.” It’s a little creepy there.
“This is surprisingly weird. I know too much about you. How is it going?”
It does make for a good interview afterwards because they see that connection to you. It gets built quicker.
Those are the best interviews because you know how to structure a question better, you know enough about them that you know how they may respond so you’re going to ask the question differently. I’ve tried to explain it this way. I’m a big NASCAR fan. I had a Dale Earnhardt’s daughter on the show. I didn’t have to do a ton of preparation because I know crazy amounts of things about racing, which is weird. People wouldn’t expect that knowing me. You couldn’t prepare for that, having that much appreciation for something. You can’t prepare for that because you have years of it.
Also, the key part of it is that you know what you want to know. That’s the great part because you have a general basic knowledge of them. You still want to know about them. You go for that.
I know she hates the question of being asked like, “What is it like being a woman in racing?” It’s the question she hates the most. I’m like, “I’m not going to lead off by asking you what it’s like to be a woman in racing. This is what I’m going to lead off with.” She’s like, “I love you already.”
You made it work. I love that. The flip side of getting great guests is we’ve got to increase our listeners. How do you do that?
I’m on 3 to 5 podcasts a week as a guest. That’s something my team is always doing for me. It works in a couple of different ways. It helps us connect with new shows for our clients, which is awesome. It also helps us spread our message and my show’s message, which is great as well. That’s one big thing. If your family makes pasta, you’ve got to eat your own pasta. That’s one way of looking at it. We do a lot of content marketing for individual platforms. We do a lot of viral style videos on LinkedIn, which do well with long form written content. On LinkedIn, you have that See More button, but you have three lines before you get it.
You’ve got to write something interesting, shocking or attention-grabbing before that See More button, and then you get 1,300 characters to tell a story. We spend a lot of time creating for LinkedIn and we’re getting a few hundred likes and comments. I found that the video views on LinkedIn have been a lot harder to get. Several years ago, I could post a Goalcast video and get 100,000 views on it. Now, with the same level of engagement, we’re getting 4,000, 5,000 views, but it’s still good because it translates to people knowing about the podcast. We do a lot on LinkedIn. I can’t get into Instagram Stories. I try, it’s hard. I’ve tried to do artistic and interesting posts of pictures of our guests.
That’s been attention-grabbing. That’s been good. We’re also constantly building our email list. One thing we have on our site is called Get Emails. It’s as a piece of code that you can put on your site and they have a massive database of people that have subscribed to different email lists. This is white hat. What they do is they opt them into your email list. We’ve added a few thousand people to our list that didn’t subscribe for anything that had checked out our site and had checked out the show, and then we opt them into the list because you always got to build that email list. That’s been huge as well. Those are the few things that we’re concentrating on.
Looks like it’s had a good return for you. How do you produce like a professional? You’ve been producing the show for a long time. What’s the key to producing like a professional?
Doing a lot less work than I used to. We have a whole production team here that does all the editing, all the graphic design. I have somebody that has a massive spreadsheet of what I’m looking for in a guest and the names of guests I’m looking for. They’re following up with them and working on that for me. I can concentrate on the few things that I need for a great interview. When you’re trying to do all of that, it all suffers. It’s like, “I’ve got to edit here and it’s 11:00 at night. My wife is mad at me because I’m still up.” I found that getting those things off your plate allows you to be a better host and work on that.
I’ve also tried to work on my skills as an interviewer. I’ve developed my own process and how I prepare for an interview. If somebody was on a show that I like and respect, I’ll listen to that show because you’ll learn a few things about them, like how they communicate? Are their answers short or long? Are they long-winded where I’m going to need to know where I’m going to interrupt them? What do they like and don’t like? I find hearing how somebody speaks and how they answer questions is important to structuring your interview as an interviewer. When I came in the beginning, I used to come out with 40 questions for somebody, which is way too much. Now I come out with my four pre-written questions and everything else is just follow-ups. You have those few things that are going to help you structure a great conversation.
Create Your Own Life: When somebody has you for those 30-45 minutes, you have to show up as their expert, to service them and give them what they need.
Thank you for giving us tips not about how you edit, but how you become a good host because that’s critically important to increasing listeners at the end of the day.
The show’s got to be listenable. It’s got to be there to service the people that are checking you out because we’re nothing without those people listening to us.
How do you encourage engagement with that audience?
In the beginning it was a lot of the content I was creating, but now I find that it is people sharing my own episodes and engaging with them. I’m finding things like that. Especially on Twitter, I’m getting a lot of engagement with. Especially people in the sports world, I built a great relationship with a guy that writes for the Patriots. He’s checking out all my sports episodes. I’m not a Patriots fan, but I do have a huge appreciation for Tom Brady. I found the right people myself to engage with where we have meaningful conversations on social media and it brings the audience into that, which has been a cool and interesting experience rather than like, “Here’s the post, check it out.” It’s been more about, how can I create meaningful conversations, who can I create them with, and where can I create them?
Meaningful engagements with either people surrounding your guests or topics surrounding your guests. I love that idea because that’s an edge. It’s quite different.
Those are the people you can nerd out with because they’re into this as you are. You can have some incredible conversations around the guests about what they said, around some of the things that they said. Also, the video clips we’re creating, when I first started doing this, I would create a 30 to 60-second teaser, which goes at the beginning of every episode. It’s also the video clip we create to promote the episode. I was doing those myself. What I eventually did is I created a Dropbox, put 50 of them in there and said to my editor, “I would choose something like this. Pick something that’s like one of those.” He’s gotten good at knowing what I would pick and what I would use.
Those teasers are great for getting awesome engagement. I replayed an episode, which we rarely do, but when you’ve got 800, it’s something you can do once in a while. I replayed our episode with former Green Bay Packer, AJ Hawk. The clip that he pulled was about him saying durability as an NFL player is a skill because AJ in eleven years only missed two games, which is incredible. It’s relevant because the Panthers’ Christian McCaffrey only played three games after being the NFL’s best player in 2020 because he has this legendary workout mentality. He finally said, “I can’t do that anymore.” He’s finding things that are relevant to what’s happening out there in the world to make my episodes more relevant.
Monetizing the show, this is a big question. How have you been monetizing the show?
I have a different viewpoint of this than a lot of people, I don’t know if you’re going to like this, but I find that a lot of people think that podcasts and YouTube channels, they’re going to make the magical internet money. There are a few people that are going to do everything off of advertising.
It’s less than 1%.
I find that people don’t like hearing that because they think there’s a thing where they create a show, and they get advertising. It is what it is. I look at the podcasts as the frontend for whatever else you’re doing. It’s the thing that helps you to connect with the right people. It’s the thing that helps you to create relevant PR. It’s the thing that helps you to get attention so that your business does better, gets more attention, gets media features. Depending on what type of guests you have, because some of the guests that I mentioned don’t sell a product or service, if they have a high-ticket item as well, you can do some campaign with them that’s an affiliate campaign where you could do well if they’re selling a high-ticket item. That’s how I look at monetizing. It works better if you’re niched, but if you’re niched and were having guests that have high-ticket items, and you can get a percentage of that, that’s great. I look at it as something to create attention for everything else you’re doing and create more credibility for everything else you’re doing.
You’re all about brand building.
It’s what it is. Podcasting is brand building.
Create Your Own Life: Your personal story gives you permission to teach, which is your message, then your call to action is where you want them to go.
We were talking about this before that your focus, your client base is a lot more of these visionary founders who are not lead hungry. Those are the ones that you’re like, “I need more people to buy my book.”
They have a problem that I can’t fix.
I need a mass amount of people to enroll in my course. The goal of these visionary founders is to build their brand, both their personal brand and the corporate brand, assuming that they might have both. What is it that you tell them? How do you prepare them to be a great guest to do that?
We also have a methodology that we look at in every interview. We call it story message and call to action. Your personal story gives you permission to teach, which is your message, then your call to action is where you want them to go. The thing I tell them because we did have this happen one time a bunch of years ago. We had a guy that had a written story message call to action in front of him. He started reading it and I’m like, “Please don’t do that.” We try to explain to people, and we’ve gotten good with this in the last several years, that there are different lenses people see you through. We want to figure out, based on the show they were telling you about or having you listen to episodes of, this is the way you need to tell your story so that it helps the people in front of you.
When you show up to help and service the people in front of you, it’s incredible for the people that are showing up. I know for myself I’ve had guests where I haven’t published the episode because whenever I ask them a question, they’re sending me to some free offer or YouTube episode. When somebody has you for that 30, 45 minutes, you have to show up as their expert to service them and give them what they need. I find that people have this scarcity thing. If I give them everything here, they’re never going to buy my service. What happens is you create a high level of trust where they know you’re competent. They know you know what you’re doing. They say, “That looks hard.” They would rather hire you to do it.
That’s how we’re telling people to show up. You’re creating the know, like and trust factor for the people that need to know, like and trust you, which is building incredible brand equity. Also the positioning because a lot of times, hosts on different shows are influencers in their own right. Being seen with them and having a conversation with them helps your positioning or how you’re positioned. For those people that didn’t know what positioning is, that’s the space you occupy in someone’s mind. They think of you with something or against something. That helps you to create that, which is what somebody that’s thinking about brand is doing.
The next part I want to ask you about is that you ran a book Kickstarter and it ended in December 2020. How did it go? Why did you decide to do that to launch a book?
It was interesting because I learned a few different things about it. Number one, with the offers we created, I learned that we probably should’ve worked differently with the type of offers we created. It wasn’t quite what people were looking for, but also one of the more interesting things is our lowest offer was the book pre-order. We set the record for the company we were working with a number of book pre-orders that were just a single book, which is cool because it shows the level of support you have. I could have thought the offers a bit. We did well. We did almost 300 books pre-ordered and we did $6,100. We didn’t hit the $10,000 goal but it was cool. As you and I were talking about, it was a weird time of year. We had Christmas, election, Thanksgiving, so it was a tough time of year.
There’s a pandemic.
I take a lot of solace in a lot of ways that we did that well during all those different things. I’m excited about that. The cool thing about it is when you do a book launch as a Kickstarter, because we are working with a publisher, but through a Kickstarter type format, the platform is called Publishizer. What it allows you to do is when you do it that way, you’re coming to the publishing relationship with money invested in it. It allows you to own all the rights, which as a creator, especially a podcast, is important.
People don’t know that. My good friend, Juliet, who has the podcast Promote, Profit, Publish, says this all the time, “Many people come not realizing that they gave away their rights in their contract.” They don’t understand that. You have to come with money to escape that or you have to come with a giant audience already.
I’ve had conversations with publishers for years because I’ve had this idea. I was like, “Is it time yet?” Everyone’s like, “We own the rights to everything you’re creating.” I’m like, “You would own my podcasts and stuff? How does that even work? I’ve created this for years and you had nothing to do with it.” It’s important to me to own a lot of stuff because I do a lot of speaking. There are some speakers, I’ve heard some horror stories where they’ve lost the ability to give their keynote they’ve given for years because they signed it away in their contract. It was important to own the rights to everything but get all the distribution. Working with Lifestyle Entrepreneurs Press and working through the Publishizer platform, it’s this interesting way to do it. Also, what is cool is all your pre-orders count as day-one sales. That’s going to help you with momentum for trying to hit a bestseller list as well. There’s a lot of strategy behind it and I’m excited.
It is such a problem for everyone. Having these things go hand-in-hand, you’re solving multiple problems at once. It’s a unique solution. I’m glad you brought that to our attention here because there are many that start their podcast with the hope of getting those presales at some point.
Podcasting is brand building. Click To TweetI had to hustle for them too, which surprised me. It was a weird time of year, but we got it done.
Binge listeners, you’ve got 800 shows. You’ve got to realize by now you have some binge listeners who’ve listened to all your episodes or at least the majority of them. Did that ever occur to you? Do you think about them when you’re recording?
The weird thing to me is when I’ve had people start coming up to me in different places like when I’ve gone to podcasting events and I’ve gone to different stuff, and they tell me about some way something affected them. I had somebody that I looked up to growing up and he had emailed me. I didn’t even realize he was on my podcast. He was like, “I was going through divorce. I was having all these problems. I was having this, that, and the other thing happening.” He was something that I perceived as successful. He was like, “I want to thank you. Your podcast got me through them.”
That ability to help people where they’re at and a lot of the feedback that I’ve gotten from listeners has helped me to ask better questions that are going to help them as well. That’s something that sometimes as a host, you have to get better at. It’s taking on the viewpoint of someone that’s listening to you and asking those questions from that viewpoint. Sometimes we try to ask things that we’re interested in. As a host, there has to be something interesting for you, but the whole thing shouldn’t be driven by that. You have to work on asking questions from the viewpoint of people listening to you. I don’t know if there’s anybody that’s listened to 800 episodes of me other than my mom, I don’t know.
Your mom listens to my podcast.
She loves it. My mom had a stroke several years ago. I’m one of the big ways that she experiences the world. She’s always excited to check out my show. If she’s over the house, I’ll hear myself talking. I’m like, “That’s weird.”
On The Binge Factor, we like to analyze your binge factor and let you know what we see as compared to other shows out there. Create Your Own Life is an interesting show because you cover many different topics. You’ve had guests who have all these backgrounds. There isn’t that niche going for you.
That’s always why I’ve struggled with, “Do I keep that name even?” I’ve always felt it’s not niched enough but continuing on, I want to add that.
That’s a good question that everyone should be asking. You’ve had it long enough that you should keep it at this point. That’s my advice to you. You should keep it because it’s working for you. You have that generalist view of what’s going on, you have that generalist of all the guests that are out there, what you have going for you is genuine, infectious, geeky enthusiasm, and an ability to ask those great follow-up questions. That is what your key is. That’s what makes me go, “He’s not going to miss the story. He’s not going to miss the good question. He’s going to follow up.” Even if I’ve heard this guest or it’s someone I’m a fan of. I want to listen to it on your show because you will ask the good question. You won’t come with the prepared questions that the PR firm gave you.
Jeopardy! is my favorite show and I always win in the privacy of my own home. That’s something, as a podcast host, that services you because I’m not an expert on a lot of things but I’m familiar with enough things that I can have great conversations.
Most people don’t go for that follow-up question. They’re all in their head. Probably also because you’ve done this for 800 shows. You’re a whole lot better at it. It’s not all in your head anymore. You’re practicing that active listening.
I try to. I always have a notepad next to me when I’m doing it so I can get rid of that thought. Sometimes somebody will say something like, “I think I block.” If you don’t write it down, you stop listening to them.
Create Your Own Life: You have to work on asking questions from the viewpoint of people listening to you.
This is mine from our conversations too.
You have to because to not drop the thought, you stop listening. It hurts the conversation.
I drop it and then we move on. What’s next for Create Your Own Life, for Command Your Brand?
2020 for Command Your Brand was about growth. We grew the team substantially, not as much as you did, so well done there. We grew the team substantially in 2020. 2021 is about scale. We’ve done well. We’ve done high six figures for the last several years, but our goal is to have a seven-figure business in 2021. It’s about a different level of impact. That’s one of the reasons I have the book coming out in the fall. I have this message that I’ve had in me for years. I’ve done it through the podcast and I’ve honed it through the podcast, but it’s taking more of that thought leader status and more of that thought leader idea because that is how you make a bigger impact. In the world of branding, that also helps command your brand vicariously.
We wish you well, Jeremy. Create Your Own Life is everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can find Jeremy Ryan Slate and his beautiful wife, and you can find them at Command Your Brand. We’ll connect you all up with Jeremy. You can find out all more about his book. You can find more about his show and everything that he’s working on and doing. Go to TheBingeFactor.com and get some more from Jeremy. Jeremy, thank you for joining us. I appreciate you on the show and I appreciate your contributions to the podcasting world.
Thank you for having me.
Don’t miss Tracy Hazzard’s Authority Magazine article about Jeremy Slate too!
Important Links:
- Create Your Own Life
- Command Your Brand
- Feed Your Brand – Jeremy Ryan Slate episode
- iTunes – Create Your Own Life
- Jonathan Goldsmith – Create Your Own Life episode
- David Petraeus – Create Your Own Life episode
- Flint McGlaughlin – Create Your Own Life episode
- James Altucher – Create Your Own Life episode
- New York City is Dead Forever. Here’s Why – article
- Publishizer
- Lifestyle Entrepreneurs Press
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