Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service on the episode today we have Todd Cochrane. Todd welcome, hey thanks for having me on the show. It is my pleasure. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a bit about yourself and what you do. Absolutely. My name is Todd Cochran uh podcast, content creator first and foremost been creating podcast for 18 years uh seems like an awfully long time, but I’m also run a podcast service company called Blueberry podcasting. It’s a full service podcasting host, provide everything a podcaster needs to get started to get online, you get the show going, provide growth tools, Really kind of all encompassing packages for both individuals and businesses.
But yeah that’s that’s kind of the essence the 411 of me and what I do, thank you for the introduction 18 years is quite impressive in this particular space. Um Do you remember why you first started, you know, it really goes back to a set of circumstances. Um I had was I was serving at the time in the U. S. Navy, I had suffered a pretty bad back injury earlier in 2004 which basically grounded me, I couldn’t fly anymore. So I was typically was flying a desk and basically looking to be productive was in a body cast and was spending time out in Waco texas and in texas in october it’s very very hot and I spent a lot of time in my hotel room just trying to stay cool because of the body cast and uh, I spent a lot of time on the internet now. I’d run a variety of online sites, done a whole bunch of things in the early days before even the internet was online with something called a bulletin board, I was a blogger and more importantly, I was a pretty much a failed blogger at the time.
And when I heard about this new medium called podcasting, I thought this is something that is right up my alley. I’d like to talk and tell stories. So, uh, here in the US ran across the store to uh, to a walmart and picked up a very inexpensive, I mean, very inexpensive microphone plugged it in. And uh, I recorded my first episode and you can imagine those first few episodes sounded pretty bad, but you know, really what it was was in, in the beginning, I really wanted one thing, I had one goal and I did have a goal from the very beginning of doing the show. I wanted to build authority authority in the tech space. I had a text site called Geek New Central. So I’d like to talk about the tech thing. So I was really trying to build authority in the tech space and um, that was the initial goal and that was really the genesis moment of getting it started. Of course, there’s a whole story about the chaos ensued and trying to keep the show online in the early days, would you say that you achieved your goal?
And if so, when did that happen? You know, the, I didn’t, I understand that I wanted to build authority, but I didn’t really know what that meant. Um at the time I was following all the major, there was still lots of print magazines, a lot of people that were in print, writing about different types of gear, and really the the idea was, was that I would be able to attend an event that is, at the time, was called the Consumer Electronics Show today. It’s called C E S. Just straight up, they don’t use the acronym anymore. And the goal was to get a press pass and be able to go and cover the event and, you know, just, you know, kind of nerd out and ultimately, in 2005 I was able to achieve that. But really before I achieved getting the credentials and then starting to, you know, build authority for the website was I really kind of found a new niche.
I found that podcasting was kind of the place where I really excel that in helping content creators get started, was one of the first to bring in monetization in the podcasting space. But I think ultimately it was my spouse who said, you know, this is costing us a lot of money because there was no flat rate hosting at the time. It was basically, you kind of have to figure own way and I would spend a lot of money. So she kind of put a finger on my chest and said, listen, you got two years to figure out how to make money with this thing. And that led to ultimately a path of Really finding a sponsor for the show and then building a business. So it was, you know, was kind of a series of things that happened. The tech show that I do today is still online, I still do two episodes a week, generally 1600-plus episodes. I still have the same sponsor that I got in 2005. So I guess I did achieve the goal of building authority, but at the same time the secondary goal of monetizing the show led to a whole bunch of other things.
So you just for clarity, you got that goal that you wanted in within a year, Is that right? Yeah, Within about probably within about 14 months and uh that was, you know, I was a small fish in a big pond going to that event because at the time it was very rare. you know, the big the sea nets and the Zd net and the big, those big tech names of the time, you know, they were the ones that were usually afforded the, the press passes. So to get a press pass to go to C. E. S and being really kind of almost a nobody and going to that show was uh was quite an achievement. And I was able to go there with a friend of mine and we covered the show and had a great time and learn new strategies. And we go to this day which led to relationships with companies, relationship with the sea. Ea, that runs si es today, we do like broadcast tower. So an integral part of that show every year.
But it really was, we had to pay our dues in the beginning and proved to the organization that the content that we’re creating there was valuable for the vendors that were exhibiting. Well, as I’m sure you’re very well aware there is during in podcasting there’s a fair amount of people who perhaps give up or struggle with creating that content. Um have you ever perhaps had that feeling where you were taking it seriously? Um and if so, how frequent was that? Well, I really dug into this pretty heavy from the get go. I figured I was onto something largely because of the audience that migrated to the show immediately or I have not found success with blogging, I found success with creating content. I was have fun doing it. That was important because I matter of fact, even to this day, I told my audience when it’s no longer fun, I’m gonna quit. Um but it’s still fun and I still enjoy the content and honestly, I create the content more for me than the audience, even though the audience is the recipient of this content that I create, because it’s often me learning about new things and being able to stay abreast of what’s going on and then share my my thoughts.
So, you know, the crane content, the podcasting space is the number one reason content creators quit because it’s hard, it’s hard work and I feel oftentimes the reason that shows fail in this space is because number one, they didn’t establish the goal they were gonna have of that show. And number two, they were truly were not passionate about the topic that they cover. I think you have to have a burning passion for the content that you are covering and have a goal on what, what the show that you’re creating is going to achieve, whether it be lead generation, whether it be, again, like me wanting to build authority, maybe monetization isn’t, is the idea, maybe it’s self help or, you know, some folks use podcasting as a way of therapy. Um and I think a lot of podcasters do their podcast number one to talk to other people and learn new ideas and add that to their repertoire of knowledge.
Um again, it really depends on the goal and again my goal for at least that initial show was authority that monetization. Um but I think from a content creation standpoint, I was lucky and that I picked a I was in a content category that I love, but also at the same point, I do a lot of news coverage, so it’s just never ending supply of content, there’s always something to talk about. It’s not like I’m going to run out of things to say. Well, one of my questions, I feel like you may have answered it already, but one of my questions I wanted to ask you is why do you podcast now? Um and because you’ve got your tech podcast, is it just because it’s fun for you or is there additional reasons? Well, number one, I still have a sponsor, so that helps monetarily I get paid every month based upon the performance of that campaign. Um so that that helps, that’s a bit of a motivating factor and I think that’s uh you know, in the back of many, many content creators minds today.
Um also I enjoy doing the show, I love, I love the interaction with the audience. I do my show live as well as a regular uh standard podcast distribution. So for me that little bit of interactivity is, is fun. Uh the ability to create the content and share what I think is as important. I do a couple of other shows as well, primarily related to podcasting, but I truly believe it’s about giving back, I’ve been in this space a long time, you have a lot of knowledge to share. So I’m kind of in a unique position in that um the show itself is, you know, the two shows I do from podcasting and do during work hours, so I’m actually getting paid to do that, but the show that I do the text show is on my own, but ultimately, um really the it just has to be something you’re passionate about and want to do, because there is a lot of work that goes into creating content.
And I’m interested to know you mentioned plenty of benefits to podcasting, but I’m interested to know how it’s affected you personally, in the sense that what skills have you developed, that you didn’t expect to develop over that time frame? I’m definitely very comfortable and getting in front of a very large audience now. Um because I’ve also translate to in person speaking as well or not, It does. Yeah. And what it, and the reason was is I’ve always tried to visualize how big my audiences and visualize who is listening from a from a you know, if it’s a and I tell content creators this all the time, if your show’s getting 100 listeners or 1000 or 10,000, you just go to google and and ask for an image that shows 10,000 people and when you see that you have an idea that the value of the audience is listening to is much bigger than 10 thousands a number. But when you see a visualization of 10,000, and if you’re going to go and stand in front of 10,000 people to speak, you become better prepared.
So I’ve always held content creators always visualize how big your audience is because I think you’ll take it more seriously in the content that you’re creating no matter what size your show is, Um it’s it’s easy just to pull up the money can start talking, but if you knew that 10,000 people were going to listen to what you had to say or you’re presenting, you probably would come at it from a different angle. So from my standpoint, now, being able to get up in front of big audience and share about the space is really exciting to me, and it’s probably a big piece of what is one of the outcomes of this. Not only that it’s the friendships, lifelong friendships of people that I’ve never known that listen to the show, I go into a city, have a meet up, maybe 20 people show up. It’s people that I really don’t know, but they don’t know me and we become instant friends. So for me it’s not only the the sharing of the message, but it’s also the the audience, the interaction with the audience and the, you know, the new lifetime friends I’ve achieved.
I think there’s probably a whole list of things and from, you know, it depends on what your show is about if you’re a business show, you know, maybe it ends up being that person that walks in, it’s gonna be a new mentor or maybe it’s the biggest deal you’ve ever been able to sign or you know, it really the the reasons and the value of doing content like this is pretty wide. Have you had any negative experiences with people that have known your content but not known you? Yeah. You know, I I’ve every show has its naysayers uh there was a gentleman by the name of SAl out New Jersey and uh he he had uh he loved just put me on blast via email, but I embrace people that had were critical of my work. And number one I always said, okay sal or someone else being critical of something I’ve said, probably another percentage of the audience is thinking the same thing.
So I always took that feedback seriously and I think any time that you put yourself out there publicly, you’re going to open yourself up for a little bit of criticism. Um I was just in Riyadh Saudi Arabia and I was doing some consulting at a, I went to an event where there was about podcasting and uh they had some consultation time and I was talking to a young lady who was getting ready to do a show that is about personal trauma and I told her, I said you know, you’re going to be putting your life out there, you’re gonna be talking about things that happened to you, you may want to do this under stage name. I said, the internet can be very cruel. And I said, I don’t know how this region is going to react to this type of content. So maybe a stage name would be good in the beginning and keep your city anonymous and your family anonymous and but share what you can within those constraints. So doing content depending on the type of content you have obviously opens you up to more criticism and more more feedback.
But I’ve been pretty lucky. I’ve had limited number of negative consequences from from doing the from doing the shows. Thank you for that. I tend to take notice if it’s actually someone trying to help you along, you know, constructive feedback. If someone calling your name, I don’t tend to take any notice of that, right? And, you know, when when they do sometimes it’s kind of fun because you share that with the audience and the audience, you know, does a pile on feedback. So, you know, it’s kinda you know, it’s you know, you just have to take, you have to decide what you want to share and what you don’t want to share. You mentioned the sponsor, and that’s as you said, something that people struggle with, what advice would you give someone now in terms of that topic. You know, I think you really have to think about again, what is the goal is the goal truly money. If the goal is truly money, then you have to be focused on putting out consistent, sustained, superior content, you have to be doing what I call the grind.
The grind is all those things to build a show, just like you would build a business social promotion, potentially some advertising, getting your name out there, appearing on other shows, just anything you can do and there’s a whole litany, there’s probably 25 things you can do as a content creator to help build your show. Um, but I know that it’s a struggle and one of the things that we implemented recently, something called Pragmatic Advertising, and it’s really what I and I didn’t come up with this term, it was came up by someone else tom Webster, it’s a term called bridge money. Bridge money being earned enough money in the early days of your show is you’re building it to at least have something to say, I earned some money for this show, It may only be, take your partner off to dinner money, but it could be car payment money. Um then you want to do is you wanna build that into, by continuing to build your show and build your audience, build that into life changing money.
Um, I think that most content creators that are new in the podcasting space do not understand how hard it is to build an audience if you’re not a celebrity. And if you don’t already have a pre established big audience and you’re starting new or maybe you’re known well in your community, but you’re not known beyond maybe let’s say 100 kilometers, 100 miles of your home, then you have to really work hard to build again, build your authority, build your brand. So always tell content creators when they’re starting, especially if they’re brand new, This is a marathon, it’s not a race. But if you expect just to put out content and that’s all you do. Always tell me. It’s not gonna be enough. It’s not gonna be enough unless you’re discovered and you have a unique talent to really bring a lot of listeners and some people do have that talent. They have a natural talent to attract people to their audiences. They build huge shows and don’t have to work too hard.
But for the majority of content creators, it’s just like Youtube, you think about Youtube creators and how many that make it into 10, 50 100,000 people that are um That are actually have made it to the monetization stage. Maybe they’ve already worked five years, putting out content to get to that stage and put out 100 videos or 200 whatever it has taken to build. And it’s the same with podcasting. You have to build, build an audience if you’re going to monetize. I’ve been very, very fortunate. Um I built an audience uh that was a very loyal following of of, of listeners and I was able to get the sponsorship with go Daddy and I have to meet my numbers every month. It’s not a free ride. I have to meet my base and if I get above that base I get a bonus. Um if I go under that for a couple of months, they let me know, we work hard to get that number back up.
But it’s truly a performance based sponsorship. And one thing that happens when you’re in this space and you’re doing a show long enough, what you’ll find, it doesn’t matter who you are at some point, you kind of get sick and tired of listening to some people. It just kind of happens. You’ve had enough. You’ve had your had your fill and you want to go listen to someone else for a while. So what I’ve seen at least with my show is that people listen for a couple of years and then they wander off and go listen to some other shows for a couple of years And then they come back. They said, Oh you’re still here and they’re back listening. But because people are constantly leaving over time, you have to continue to fill the well with more listeners coming in because after all, if that audience didn’t change at 1600 episodes, they’re not gonna be buying go daddy anymore because they’ve heard it 1600 times. So you really have to kind of continue to fill the well with new listeners and what I did, my strategy was was I used my website and a lot of google search traffic to drive conversions to the podcast and I fed the google beast new articles every week and I still do to continue to drive continued traffic to the website that a percentage of those folks, a small percentage will say, wow, there’s a, there’s a podcast associated with this website.
Let me check it out. And so for me, my acquisition strategy for new listeners has largely been the ability to get them to the website to say, hey, there’s a podcast here. It’s not the only way there’s no rules in podcasting, but it’s my way, it’s the way I’ve done things and I built a brand that is, I feel has value, has good google value, I protect that dearly. So I was about to ask because you mentioned the fact that just putting out content isn’t enough. I was about to ask what you would advise people to do who were starting now, but is that pretty much the, you know, being smart with the marketing. I think that you really have to focus on number one being, being original, Being yourself. You can’t be someone else. You have, people will smell someone that’s faking it very, very quickly. So this is why it’s important to be passionate about your content and bring out if you’re going to have guests, bring on great guests and maybe in the early days you won’t get that headliner guests, but use those initial 2030 40 interviews to kind of cut your teeth and build interviewing skills.
Uh you know, if you can pull out one gem from every person that you talk to and use that as a piece of value to your audience, that’s the key providing value in, in not wasting the listeners time. If if you provide some value, one or two real hardcore pieces of value, people will come back. If you don’t give them value, they won’t listen. They they’re there for a reason, you’re there to feed them because they’re interested in you. Number one, Number two, they’re interested type of content you’re creating. I really, truly think that’s a big part of success. Uh when rob Greenlee and I and rob works as a competitor, he works at lipson, he’s worked at multiple companies. So we’re both literally competing with each other companies, but we do a show together and his and his goal on that show is just to bring value, bring information, give tidbits, give a walk away and if you’re able to do that, then people will build your show into their lives and they will tune in every week that you create a podcast, they’ll be there loyally and listening and they will spread the word about your show.
And that’s the number one way content creators are found is by a listener saying, oh my goodness, did you hear that? I heard an interview today on a show, you need to go listen to show X, Y, Z, but at the same time, you as the content creator, are going to have to do those other things. Um I’ve often said um that when I was doing my book writing my book on podcasting, I wish I was an interview show because I could have got lots of more ideas for the book by doing an interview show. And I think that folks that do interview shows, they a book almost writes itself by the interviews that you do and the takeaways you get from that. So I think every podcaster there’s a book in them, but it also truly boils down to the simple things. I remember putting myself out there and I hit like 50 episodes or something like that. Was living in Hawaii and I reached out to the local news organizations say, Hey, I’m 50 episodes in, I’m celebrating 50 episodes.
Well, they came out, brought a truck, put cameras in my house, my little studio was kind of dumb, but they did a 2030 minute interview, but I ended up being like two minutes on television and then those types of things end up adding more value. And ultimately, because I had went to a number of events and put myself in places and said, hey, can I come in and be interviewed. I ultimately become, I was on the BBC called this for BBC asian, they would call me at three o’clock in the morning and said, they say mr Cochran, we’d love to have you on in 15 minutes to talk about this, can you talk about that? And I always said Yes, because I knew if I didn’t know the topic completely, within 10 minutes of being on Google, I could give them the three minute sound bite they wanted and then go back to bed. So for years that phone would ring and I would jump up and I knew it would be the BBC, and every time I was on the BBC was able to say my name is Todd Cochran, I’ve got a podcast over central dot com, so what value that was, it was maybe just a little, but it was one of many, many, many, many, many things that I did to continue to grow the show and keep it relevant, Thank you for that, it’s a great story um you mentioned about the timeframe that’s required to grow an audience if in this hypothetical if there was someone who was looking to get a sponsor and they were starting now, and let’s say that they’re, they’re good, they’re not excellent, but they’re good at podcasting.
How long would you say, as an average it would take to grow an audience to that size. So, you know, this is a, this is an interesting question because, well, if you’re a neurosurgeon and you’re doing a podcast on neurosurgery and you have 1000 neurosurgeons listening to your show, you can get a sponsor pretty quickly because I saw that happen. I saw an individual get $20,000 per episode because he had 1000 neurosurgeons listening to a show where as my show when I first got to sponsor, we we didn’t really know the numbers, then I kind of thought it would be like 40,000 listeners, but it probably wasn’t, it was 10,000 probably was the more accurate number at the time when I got my sponsor, the sponsor relationship came to me because they heard about the show. Oftentimes you’ll find a sponsor from the listener in your audience. So maybe in the marketing or whatever, whatever field you’re in doing your show, you’ll have some of this is oh my goodness, I love the content here.
I want to be an underwriter or I want to be a sponsor. So sometimes the deals come from within the audience. I found my business partners from my business within my podcast. So those are folks that are already loyal. They love the content. They like to listen and they want to be associated with you. So, again, it is a variable question, but to build volume to truly build high dollar amounts, you do have to build a big audience or have a super niche audience that’s super valuable. Um or somewhere in between. And then again, always tell content creators when someone does come to you and wants to advertise on your show, please understand that they have a goal and you need to know what their goal is. Their goal awareness of their product is their goal. X number of leads, you need to know what that is up front. So that if they say, well I would be happy if your show delivered me three leads a month, that’s the goal, then, you know, really kind of how to better price that.
Because if you get done with the first month, they said, well we got 10 leads. Well obviously you’re under charging you charge a little more for that because you over delivered. But then again, if the goal was three and they got one, well maybe you need to lower the price a little bit of the advertisers going on the show to make sure they’re getting their value. My goal is to make them sign for a whole year. I want them to be there month after month after month, I want them to be happy. Um a lot of these deals that come to content creators now are kind of here today, gone tomorrow, they come in and advertise for two or three episodes on your show. You make a little money, but then you don’t hear from them for for six months. I don’t like those kinds of deals because it builds uncertainty into your business. I’d like to be able to get someone in and run for two or three months at a minimum in every episode so that you can tell the story about their business so that you can share what you like about it. And that’s another thing that’s important. If you agree to take someone as an advertiser, you better really truly love that product because you’re the talent, you’re the general motor general manager, you’re the sales person and you’re the person that has to put the content out from the people and maintain your reputation.
There’s been some deals that have come to me that just kind of got this taste in my mouth that was like, you know, it didn’t really taste real well, you had that had that feeling that this isn’t the fit, like maybe the hair stands up on the back of your neck and I walked away from deals like that because it was yucky and I knew the audience would say that, why, why are you presenting this to me? So I think it’s important to be able to stand behind a product and put your name behind it. The the situation with go Daddy was they were making a lot of mistakes in the early days of that sponsorship. Their their founder at the time was had done some insanely crazy things that today would have just destroyed the company and I would go to them and say, hey, you have to stop this, you know, this is not good for business. And I had to be critical of the sponsor on my show and let my audience know that hey, I’ve spoken to them, I don’t agree with what they’re doing. You know, they have agreed there’s going to be changed.
And that was actually the best thing ever that I ever learned about running advertising and podcasting is the company representing may not always do the things you want them to do, and you have to be willing to say, okay, and if it gets to the point of where it’s two reprehensible, you have to pull the plug. Um but the relationship I had with him was good and I always told my audience if you have a problem with the product, I want to know first because I’ve got the connection with the company to make sure you get it right, you get fixed. And every once in a while something would come through someone that had a bad experience and I would say go right to the vice president, I would say, here’s the problem my listeners having and what your customer support people did. You need to fix this. And then I was able to come back later and say, yep, they fixed it or they know they did it because of this and that built brand loyalty for my audience and me too. So again, I think it’s the really if you have a good relationship with the sponsor that goes a long, long ways, but sometimes in this space the way it is today, it’s not possible because there’s too many intermediaries in between you and the actual vendor.
So all you can do is really ask for the best terms and make sure you like the product and can actually say you like something um without, you know, kind of gritting your teeth at the same time. I think having a good relationship with the sponsor, you’re pretty exemplary at that, given the given your experience and how long you’ve had them for. I’m interested to know about how you’ve improved over time because I started off and your reference when you start off, it’s not the best, not, not your best work necessarily or the best quality, but I’ve tried to get better over time um and currently thinking about some sort of background because the the office isn’t the most kind of glamorous thing. You got some cool tech stuff going on for or the audio people. But my, my question is, can you sort of summarize the steps that you’ve gone through in terms of your improvement over your long podcasting history? So from the very beginning I had young Children at home at the time, three young Children And I knew every Monday and Thursday night I was going to be doing a show where I would start recording at eight p.m., which was after a long work day, a couple of hours of prep and I made an agreement with my spouse that she would, she would handle the kids, those two or three hours each of those show days, there’s a big commitment on her part and the goal for me really was to be prepared to be as prepared as I possibly could be, because I chose not to edit my shows.
If I would have had to edit my podcast, I would not be a content greater today that goes against the norm, everyone wants to have a show that’s edited now. But I think that if you can get your pacing down and be prepared a few ums and aahs are not going to kill anyone and I think that as long as you’re prepared to come on and do the content and keep your audience engaged and you work on that show after show after show, you’ll find much success even if you add it afterwards. But I really think it, it boils down to two preparation. I I talked to many content graders over the years when I know there was no preparation whatsoever and it just doesn’t go so well, it doesn’t, it’s not a smooth conversation, it’s it and there’s the transitions are bad and it’s awkward. So I think that as long as you’re prepared to do your content, um that’s really, really important.
Another thing I did is I invested early, I started off with that 14 95 El el cheapo Lab tech microphone, but within about five episodes I went and spent a little bit of money, not a lot to up the audio game. So what I really wanted to have come out of the end result was as high as quality as possible from an audio standpoint, create content, listeners will, or content uh your audience will forgive you for bad video if you decide to go that route, but they will not forgive you for bad audio. So having a good audio chain was always important to me uh from that standpoint, But I also found that even today, uh you know, more than 2000 episodes, across a couple of shows, plus maybe another 1000 interviews, I destroy the English language at every opportunity. And if you can laugh at yourself, my audience has learned to call them todd ISMs, it’s something the audience came up with.
Um it’s, you know, words that I could never pronounce correctly and it’s just the flavor of the shelf and it makes me cringe, but you know, it’s just keep on moving. So I think the really, the, the end result is, is mike time, if you spend enough time on the mic, you will get better, the more interviews you do, you will get better, the more research you do, you’ll get better, You know, I was astounded one time someone had done like 20 hours of research on me when I went on to do an interview, and they they knew a lot and they went and dug into something that I had talked about in a show a couple of years before and I was astounded that that person honed in on that particular topic and we dug in for 30 or 40 minutes on that because the content creator had done research and brought some value out that I had really never exposed before. So I think over time you just get better at finding those spots to pull those, you know, pull those gems out to make them again, giving that value back to the audience.
Some people are really natural at, I’m really jealous that people sit down in day one and just have this good on my presence. I was not that guy? I really wasn’t. I I I struggled and it probably took a year to when I felt pretty confident in the flow and being able to sit down and and and put the show out in a decent quality. But again, I think it’s really uh finding your voice and spending that time behind the mic. Well, you referenced the story from that someone’s sort of picked up on and there’s one which I know that you’ve probably been asked about many times before, but I can’t help myself and it’s you never know who’s listening. So would you be willing to share this story? Yeah, absolutely. Um it was in the early days of when Apple. So I always knew that there was people listening to the show that never really send an email because something would be set in an event or something.
Oh, you listen to this show and you get you know the eyeball? Well, I had bought the very first Mac Mini as my first Mac product and I’m gonna be honest with you, that thing was a piece of crap. It it was J U N K in my personal opinion, and I really went off on my show talking about 15 minutes about how horrible this Mac Mini was an experience I had with it. I couldn’t believe how Apple users were so enthralled with apple products and as a pc guys, Windows hardcore. And I said if I just had 15 minutes to talk to Steve jobs, I said, I would tell him what I really thought about this Mac Betty? He said in passing jokingly, about two weeks later, my phone rang, is that that my house, luckily enough, was at the office and the secretary came on, she said, Todd, I’ve got steve on the line for you and said steve who got steve jobs on the phone from, she clicked me over in an instant Todd steve jobs, Tell me about your Mac Mini and you know, you do this, you know, you’re like, you know this, this, this man that’s bigger than life and it was uh we had a conversation about the Mac Mini, I was very brutally honest about him what I liked about it, what I was having trouble with and we had a good conversation.
There was a few other things that were talked about and when we got done he gave me 15 minutes exactly click off. He went in 15 minutes. But about a week later I got a call from the Alamo wanna Apple store in Oahu and said we have something here for you, we’d like you to come down and I kind of had a suspicion. I grabbed my friend Ryan Ozawa and I said you need to bring your camera, this is gonna be interesting. And we went to the apple store and steve had sent me a Macbook pro and complimentary of Apple. So you never truly know who is listening. Now. Our past president here in the United States. I got to talk to him one time too when he was doing the apprentice, there was a couple of guys that wanted to do an apprentice podcast and I told him the trump organization would never ever, ever prove copyright for them to do this podcast. And they said, well we’ll have them call you. And it was about a week later and I talked to donald trump for about literally three minutes.
I think I said two words during the whole conversation. Okay, great, awesome, fantastic. Looking forward to the paperwork. I think that’s about all I said because it was maybe a three minute, he wasn’t listening, but that staff told him that conversation, but again goes back to you, just never know who’s listening to a show. So you know, whoever your dream guest is or the dream person you want to interview maybe verbalize that in the show. You maybe they’re listening, you just don’t know. Or someone that knows them will say, hey, I know this, I know this podcaster that you know, is either a fan or whatever they want to talk to you or they’ve got an issue about your product. You might be surprised. It’s a fantastic story. I love it and thank you for telling it. Is there someone at the moment that you would like to verbalize in terms of you, you’d like to talk to, you know, in this, in the world I live in now. I am um one of those kind of guys is pretty outspoken.
I kind of just say things the way they are and people that listen to specifically the podcast show that I do with the new media show. Um they know who they are and I speak to them directly on a regular basis. Um sometimes they’re willing to talk, sometimes they’re not, but I’ve never been one to really hide my opinion per se. But if there was someone that was a dream guest to talk to, Oh, you know, I was lucky enough to talk to some great entrepreneurs. Uh GoPro in their early days. I was uh in one of a few journalists that was able to interview them when they were launching GoPro, um some of these folks that started with nothing, they really started, you know, a 10 by 10 booth at a trade show and has grown them into, you know, companies that are now well known on Wall Street or NASDAQ and they’ve been, you know, they made their fortunes. Those type of people are always interesting to go back and talk to about their journey and what happened and how they got, you know, discovered how their product, you know, was taken in, you know, people ran with it become mainstream.
So I don’t think there’s anything anyone specific right now, but I’m always, you know, following companies that I followed for years and in the, fortunate I get to talk to a lot of them still uh GoPro being one of those, they still get to talk to them quite a bit in a, in an intimate way, you know, it’s almost as a, not necessarily as a friend, but as they appreciate what I did, I appreciate what they did. Um that’s kind of one example, but I think that’s maybe what you’ll find in podcasting is you’re going to develop a lot of great relationships that will open doors. Um the reason I went out to Riyadh to speak to this new opening market of content creators was you wouldn’t think that Saudi Arabia would be opening up to allow podcast creators, it’s a changing world there. And I met someone at a trade show and said, hey, we’re, you know, we’re thinking about having an event, had a conversation. It was very interesting to me. So you just never know when a conversation is going to lead to an opportunity, um, when they say, I I know this person there, maybe they’re going to be a good fit for a business partner or an idea or maybe I’m gonna bring them on a board of directories or an advisory team.
So I think really the opportunity, so you can have in podcasting from doing your content and being original and true, I think really opens up a lot of doors. Well, you’ve been a great guest today. I’ve loved having the conversation and congratulations on your, I don’t know, being an expert in your field, I suppose is there anything I should have asked you about today? Well, I think if, you know, if one of your listeners is thinking about doing a podcast, here’s the main thing. There’s no rules. You know, there’s, there’s 100 different ways to start a show, do a show, there’s really no rules, you do it your way. But the only thing I really am kind of a proponent of is I believe that just like a business, if you’re gonna have a brick and mortar, you know, we sometimes choose to rent the property that we’re in and we know the constraints of that rental agreement. We know that the landlord’s gonna come back in so many years and it’s going to try to raise the rent, that type of thing.
But in podcasting, I truly believe content creator should on their brand, I believe they should have their own dot com. I believe they should have their own website to go associated with their podcast. I don’t believe you build a castle on rented property and if you’re trying to build a podcast and be a castle, be something big, it needs to be built on something that you own something that you can call home, I call my personal site Moonbase Alpha. It’s kind of a stupid nerdy thing, but it’s truly where my audience knows that the show and the content originates. I don’t care where they listen, I don’t care what device, what service it really doesn’t matter as long as they can find the content. But the main thing they’re going to know is is that if they need to find Todd, they need to get in contact with me and they forgot anything else about the show, my twitter account or all the other stuff that we reach out on social they know to come back to the website and they can find a way there to connect with me. So I guess that’s my advice anyway, and it’s probably goes true in business too, is you need to have a place that you own, you can control and control the message and um I think that’s the most important thing is again, building your brain on your own dot com.
Yeah, there are plenty of examples of people who have built massive followings which are there one day and gone the next, so 100% in agreement, it’s just, you know, because you never know when the google or youtube algorithm or whatever it may be is going to, you know, stuff you down and you’re not found anymore, it’s pretty sad, but as long as you have your own brand, you can recover from that and and the people that you’re connected with now, they won’t lose you and that and that chaos that may, that may, you know, may happen. Well, I I told you beforehand, there’s one question I always like to ask everyone and that is Todd, what does success mean to you? Success means to me is, at this point in my career is helping other content creators be successful in creating content and helping them grow their shows and giving them advice to do so, uh that really is what success looks like to me. I I’ve built a company that is self sustaining, its successful, we’re obviously trying to grow that, but our primary focus is helping content creators to publish, analyze and give them injectable information to grow their show, give them the tools that they need to be able to do that.
Um not everyone gets an opportunity to do a one on one with me, but I try to talk to a lot of content creators, but again, my team’s goal and my goal is to help other content creators have success and based on that criteria, are you a successful individuals? I feel I am. But you know, it’s been a wild ride. You know, it’s been a wild ride. I’m happy with where we’re at. Everyone always wants to be a, you know, bigger podcaster wants to have a bigger company that’s always, you know, in the back of your head. But you can do what you can do and hopefully surround yourself with enough people to that are, you know, that are smarter than you to make things move forward quicker. Well, if people want to connect with you or perhaps visit your castle, where do they go? Yeah. If they want to reach out on the podcasting site, it’s taught at blubrry.com. That’s blueberries without the ees because we couldn’t afford the ees over $2 million. So it’s blubrry.com. Uh My personal website is getting the central dot com.
I have a podcast that we do every week called The New media Show and get a PhD in podcasting. If you listen to the show long enough, I’m all over social just search for my name Todd, Cochran confined with me, connect with wherever you’re hanging out currently online, but I appreciate you having me on the show. You’ve been a great guest. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.