Finally, that was a really long countdown. Thank you, James for the pre conversation. Thank you for joining me today I'm talking with experts podcast. My name is Chris Condon. And we have James Malvani from matchmaker.fm podcast dot coat radio.co. But he's also launched to other internet companies. And he's got a huge background in tech, in podcasts, doing web design. It He's done a lot, and I'm really happy that he's, he's come on the podcast. I'm happy. I'm a happy customer of yours, matchmaker. So, so thank you for joining me. And please introduce yourself a little bit more, and then we can go from there.
All right. So yeah, thanks. Firstly, thanks for having me on, Chris. Pleasure to be here. It's been a while since I've done one of these live streams. So I'm really excited that we're actually live. So yeah, my name is James Mulvaney, I'm CEO of the company, as you just mentioned, which you can see on the screen. Matchmaker is a platform that connects podcasters and guests podcast.co. We are a full service podcasting agencies, we create podcasts for a lot of companies. And we also have a podcast hosting platform distribution platform as well. And radio.co is a suite of tools for broadcasters to help them run and manage radio stations. So very much got my, my, my teeth firmly into the audio, and streaming world. And that really sort of comes from when I was I was young, I wanted to go into radio as a DJ. And I was also interested in the internet and kind of building web technology and all that kind of stuff. So I kind of ended up fusing the two together. And hence I've been I've been around the block, as you mentioned a few times, like running various different internet companies or startups. So I've had some great successes, some not so great successes and some failures. And yeah, it's been it's been it's been an interesting sort of, like, 15 years, I've been doing this now.
Yeah, I remember listening to one an interview with way before when we were going to have our first one, but reschedules Yeah, and you, you mentioned that you haven't really had a job, you haven't worked for anybody else, you've only really worked for yourself. And that's how have you found that working for yourself and not for anybody else.
I think, in a sense, it's sort of it's given me a benefit I've had to over the last 10 years since I was like, when I launched I probably first five years was just me on my own, you know, I didn't have any, any, any colleagues and staff who were working with me. So I was just, you know, I was I was an entrepreneur. And really those first five years, like, I started a business just before I went to university, I then went off to university did a degree. So obviously, I was kind of doing all the new normal student things kind of going out and having fun and trying to balance that with with uni, and then also try to balance that was running a business or startup. So it was a lot of my plate back then. And, yeah, when I sort of started hiring, I kind of had to, like learn everything in reverse, because quite a lot of people will go out and work in industry for 510 years, and then they'll get bored of it and think, right, I'm gonna do this on my own go out there. I think that in itself kind of gives you a, there's some negatives to that, because obviously, once people get to like the late 20s or early 30s, and think I'm going to start a business, you've got a lot, what often have a lot more responsibilities, you might have, you know, mortgage payments to make, or you might have family, etcetera. So when you're that age, I was started out 1718 1920 21 That kind of age, you know, you've really got nothing to lose so, but everything's again, so it was kind of a it was really an interesting period of my life. No regrets there. I think it was certainly a lot to balance trying to, you know, be a student and actually complete my degree, which I managed to miraculously managed to drag myself through final year. But yeah, I kind of think as a result, when I started hiring because I've never had a job I sort of learned how to kind of manage, motivate team and deal with all everything that comes with having staff and a team working with you kind of that was all kind of very new to me at the beginning. So kind of, you know, sort of picked it up as a good thing. Now I kind of know what to do, you know, I'm very, very lucky to have a really, really talented team around me. And, you know, running three, three different brands simultaneously is quite a lot. Quite a lot of involvement in that both from sort of like a managerial perspective, but also development you know, its customer support all that stuff. So you've got to make sure that you've got adequate resources on each product to kind of keep everything moving forward. But yeah, really, really lucky to work with with a great bunch of people now.
So So from not having a team to now having a team of what is it like 30? People?
Yeah, that's about 3035 36. I think maybe the 37. Now, we're just literally we have the first few weeks we've got some are starting on Monday, we had some starting last Monday, we had someone starting the Monday before, and we've had someone today accepted an offer. So we've put it very much hiring at the moment. We've got a couple of other positions open. So yeah, we're up to sort of the mid 30s count now maybe maybe even pushing 40 Soon. Because, again, we've got most of those are based here at Manchester, in the UK. And we also have some freelance staff who, based remotely so they work out of the USA. Canada actually wants just join us in Australia too, which is pretty cool.
Do you like do you like hiring people internationally? Or would you prefer people to work in the office with us? What's the team dynamic like?
So it's changed a lot since COVID. Right now, today, there's, I'm in the office today. So I just tend to about two days a week in the office and three days from home, quite like that balance. You know, it used to be very much Monday to Friday, nine to five, and everyone would be the office. We had Flexi time. So but then at now we've very much moved to a hybrid model. So although most of the team is still here in Manchester, today, actually, there's only been like four of us in the office. So on a busy day, there might be like 10 or 12 of us, but certainly not as busy as it was before. But yeah, I think it's it's kind of given everyone a lot more flexibility. And I think it's taught businesses including ours that really don't necessarily need to hire people on your doorstep to get good results. We've we've adapted incredibly well as a company to go remote. And previous prior to COVID, I would very much the reason we started hiring overseas was primarily to for timezone differences. So especially when it comes to kind of customer service and customer support, when you're running an online business, just having a nine to five setup in the UK, because a lot of our clients are in the USA was brought proven to be a bit problematic. So we try and extend our opening hours if you like. And so that was that was the sort of primary focus. And that was pre pre lockdown. But since lockdown, we've we've realized for other roles as well, we don't necessarily need to have everyone you know, in the office. So, for example, our head of production is actually built based over in Belfast, and he manages all the production work that we do for clients. We have a developer who's based out in Bristol, who's originally from India, so he's actually back home. He's gone over to India for a couple of months to stay with, you know, go back to see his family. You know, again, it's not it's not proved to be an issue at all. We actually have someone else in Bristol, who's working again, within our sort of tech support customer service team. And yeah, it's great, because I think when you when you're not limited to the hiring unit by within a certain location, it does open up more possibilities. And I think you mentioned to me you just haven't got a new job. Right. So yeah, work. Yeah. company working for AppSumo. Yeah. Okay,
there you go. It is 24 24/7. Service. Customer service, isn't it? Yeah. It's great to work for a software based company. And that's kind of what space you're in. So from, for for any other staff that that when they're considering hiring guys, we're on this subject? What kind of advice could you give a startup CEO or founder when they're hiring?
Yeah, I think to be honest, the first this is this is a question I've been asked before. So the my answer to that is, look at what is if you're a solo printer, as it's now called, like, you know, you're you're on your own, you haven't got anyone working with you. Or maybe you've got a couple of freelance people or something and you're thinking about doing your first full time sort of proper hairos As I say, you know, like, we you're gonna have someone with on a salary, etc. Look at the thing that is taking up most of your time, that is not enabling you to grow the business. So that is the first position you should really hire for us, I think, as a co founder. Because really, this was what I did I, I hide the first hire I made was was a customer service role back in 2010. And back then I had, I don't know, maybe five or 600 customers, something like that. And I was like trying to juggle everything. You know, it was taken an insane amount of my time dealing with customer queries, you know, sales inquiries, technical support issues and stuff like that. That was basically most of my day taken up. But then as a result, I didn't have a didn't have have any ability to sort of focus on the bigger picture because I'm so kind of caught up. And by the time I, you know, you want to keep your customers happy. So by the time we've rushed through all the emails and dealt with all that stuff, you know, you then like, Okay, what, it's nearly five o'clock Wait, I don't have energy to focus on growing the company. So folks, that's that's the first I should make us join a you know, eliminate the thing that's, you know, taking up most of your time, but not allowing you to grow the business.
And that is your, almost a weakness, you want to focus on your, on the actual service that you provide, not the customer service, the glory,
I think it's really important to keep customers happy, and you want to provide a good level of customer service. But I think at that stage, it was kind of getting to a point where the customer service was suffering, because I wasn't, I was trying to do too much at once. And I was starting to not really give her a very good customer service in certain situations, because I was like, trying to juggle all this other stuff, too. So yeah, I think customer service is really, you know, it's very, very important part of any business. Because if you've got happy customers, you know, it ultimately will encourage word of mouth and, you know, good reviews and all that stuff, which is what you want to get to, because again, that helps further growth helps Fairview growth. But you know, if you're doing if you need to make sure you've got adequate resource, I think in that kind of departments, it's kind of encouraging to make sure that happens, basically.
Yeah. So on that note, we're talking about audience growth. And customers, what kind of I know you're, you're in the podcasting world and radio world, and I've see you, you're always doing YouTube videos as well. Yes, that is that an important part of marketing and using video and podcasting, because they are trending at the moment?
I think the first ever YouTube video I uploaded was in 2008. And at the time, YouTube was quite a new platform. And really, at the time, it was, you know, it was a lot of people uploading videos of cats and that sort of stuff. So I was like, well, this, you know, maybe this could be a good tool for my business. In the first video I had, I didn't really know what to do. So I remember, my friend, Steve had a video software company slash production company. So he had a kind of big fancy, like a big camcorder. And one of his big Sony cameras, which was sort of like, huge now, you know, like, looks ridiculous. But this is what tells me. So I was like, Steve, can you can you make me a corporate video? And he was like, yeah, so he was like, just introduce yourself and talk about what the company does. So it's still on YouTube, actually, because it was my own my my own channel, was originally I had a business at that point called wave streaming, and we converted it to James Mulvaney. So that video is still there. And it's just literally me outside my office saying, Hi, I'm James. And these are our offices. And you know, this is what we do. It's a really like, completely bad quality. Sadly, you don't really compare it to the videos these days. But then I kind of realized, well, actually, maybe we're onto something. It's vert. Rather than just uploading generic stuff, I started kind of giving away tips and information, moving into thinking, right, okay, well, what does my audience want, so they, you know, my audience, radio stations and podcasters, they want to know about like, what microphone to buy, or, you know, how to do SEO to get more listeners, or, you know, just stuff like this. So kinda, I started then thinking about it more strategically. And then probably a couple of years later, I figured out well, rather than just having tips and stuff, let's have something called a call to action at the end, which was completely again, changed, changed, changed everything, because I was suddenly not only get views on my videos, but then people were actually opting in or going into a page and taking some kind of action. And then that makes it easy to turn them to customers, of course, because, you know, this stuff is sounds basic. Again, I think nowadays people will understand this stuff a lot more, but back then it was all kind of still quite new. And, you know, I was like, there wasn't a kind of hard and fast guide on how to, you know, create good content for marketing. A lot of people were still stuck on, like, let's write blog posts and things at this point. But you know, it still works to this day, you know, so I still produce videos for the market, both on my own channels, and we also have content for radio.co and podcast.co. We're starting to create more and more content. For matchmaker, interestingly, matchmaker, when we built radio.co podcast CO we focused to when we launched those brands, we had a lot of push on inbound marketing. So that's basically creating videos and creating written content to drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic to customers. With matchmaker we didn't we initially just had like a landing page. And you had to sign up to use the product and login. And we actually focus mainly on outbound so we just did a lot of outreach via email and LinkedIn and that sort of stuff to build the community initially and we're only really just starting to look at our inbound strategy. So we kind of did things in reverse with matchmaker which is quite interesting.
Can to go into a little bit more detail about what you were doing on LinkedIn to get those signups
very simple. It was, again, LinkedIn if they've changed their rules a little bit. So we, you could connect with up to 100, about 100 people a day. Now now crushed that down to about I think it's 100 100 a week or 120 a week. So we may add a couple of my colleagues we had, we used a tool called octopus CRM, which is nice little sort of browser extension. And basically, that that allows you to build like prospect lists on LinkedIn. So you can say, we were looking for matchmaker at saying, find podcasters or find people who wanted to sort of tell their stories. So it could have been things like founders, CEOs, or it could have been no public speakers, keynote speakers, that sort of stuff. We'd literally just reach out to them and say, Hey, we're building a community, would you like to join? It's free to come and sign up? And you know, we'd love to have you either on the podcaster side of things, or on the sort of guest side of things? And then of course, because quite a lot of people will have both. So they might have a podcast and also have their own profile, as I'm sure you probably do, I guess. Yeah. And yeah, that was it. It was just it was just a case of sending a nice message not just not being too salesy about it. Because again, I think the, what I find astonishing is the amount of LinkedIn messages I get, which are just super pushy, you know, it's just really kind of just like arrogant sales messages and saying, you know, well, we can help you grow your business by this much percent of blah, blah, blah, and your buzzer. Yeah. You know, so it was just about being kind of, you know, trying a few different variations of messages here and testing different different ways of approaching people, but just just being cool about it and being like, yeah, we think this could really work for you. And it's, it doesn't cost you anything. So it just, yeah, works a treat for us. So we will, that was our kind of initial strategy to kind of grow the community. And then once we were at a certain level, we thought, okay, let's open the platform out. So at that stage, we we made it so profiles could get indexed by Google, which obviously means that people can discover shows or discover guests on the search engine, which again, helps drive signups to our platform. But to begin with, because obviously, we were kind of launching from a very small community, we didn't want to have it sort of public, because we wanted people to sign up and with if they sort of, could login with if they could browse the directory or see people without signing up. You know, obviously, we were kind of conscious of them. To begin with, you have to face that problem with normals to join a site where there's no one on it. So that's quite a quite difficult challenge initially to get round. But that was that was our approach. And it worked pretty well. And we're up to now 40 Just about to hit 40,000 users, which is really cool.
Yeah, I've really liked the platform. And it was introduced to me by a fellow podcaster, who's his crushing get the feel better, I think I'm going to definitely refer him over to you. But he's kind of given is almost like an executive producer, giving me some tips on how to create a better podcast and how to get high quality guests. But he said use matchmaker, you will you won't find a low quality guest and they won't spam you with messages. And a lot of the times when I first started using match maker that I was reaching out and saying, Oh, you have this particular expertise that I'd like to talk to you about. But now I'm getting a lot of the other way, a lot of people requesting to be on the podcast. And I like that you can customize the bio with videos and you're adding loads of different you've even created this new thing where you can block people if you wanted, but I haven't he ever received a spammy message or anything. So that's I don't know.
Why that Chris? Yeah, is interesting, because it's like, it's one of these features that when we launched, we never really thought we'd have to add, but you know, it's just it's one of these things, you scale up any kind of community or it's almost like a little mini social network, isn't it? Where unfortunately, you do end up with situations where people are trying to use it for things they shouldn't and abuse it. And yeah, we've had we have had a few situations where people will, it's nothing like too treacherous. Like, you know, some stuff you see on Twitter's horrendous, you know, but it is just kind of like people like, you know, just trying to sell stuff or, or not really using it for its intended purpose, which is kind of like we want to try and keep it as a good, you know, valuable resource. So we don't want to go down the spam hole route. So we kind of thought, probably a good time if we can introduce these features now. Because we have noticed a few cases of it happening. You know, it will help sort of crush down that that issue before it becomes, you know, when we sort of hit 100,000 or we get to 500,000 users, that's when you'll definitely start having more and more of that happening. So yeah, but in terms of in terms of this, the features we're adding it's about not just the not obviously just we don't want to just focus too much on that we want to, we want to focus on building value for the users too. So one of the things that's coming out very, very soon is a community feature. So, currently, matchmake is very one on one, which is great, you know, you can contact someone, but we want to try and open the community up and make it more sort of a kind of a collaborative space. So without giving too much away, what's your space? I think, I think, in an email, but yeah, I'm hoping we're going to have that live pretty soon. I think before Christmas, it should be live, which should be very exciting.
I think that'd be great as well, especially for if you've had a great interview with somebody, then you can just create a group and refer people to one another. And, yes, I like that. That's cool. What, when I added a support ticket as well, just to query about something it was instant so and they said, Well, yeah, actually, you can do that already. The little little.or, the little i by the profiles, you can click on it, and you can see the full profile. I didn't work that out. And I had to go back to the homepage. And but when when I did the support ticket, they said no, you can do that. So that's really great. Feedback and customer service. Yeah, so
I've paused. So so when you when you mentioned people sign up to the the platform for any other software as a service company, would you recommend you start with a free free service first and then see what the customers want? And then because I know you have got the pro version? Yeah.
It's an interesting one. So like, traditionally, with radio CO, we've always had paid plans, we've never had a free plan. I really think it depends on the product and the market. And the I don't think there's any hard and fast answer for that. I think it just depends on what you're trying to create. And, you know, ultimately, if we didn't, for the first year, maybe, or less least the first six or eight months of matchmaker we did, we had literally zero way zero monetization built in, we didn't, I don't think we've really had a plan of how we were going to monetize it. Initially, we we kind of just wanted to kind of first of all, create a good, useful community and focus solely on that. We're in a lucky position because we already had a podcasting business. So that sort of supported matchmaker for the first sort of six, eight months. And, again, we we launched initially, like a very sort of simple MVP, we didn't have a team working on it. It was it was one of our developers who had not long been at the company, we saw sort of thoughts, let's give him the opportunity to work on this. So he, he was the sole developer working on the platform initially, and he kind of created the first version of it, we've got a few more developers who are working on features now. But at the beginning, that was that was how we did it, we sort of a bit before we actually launched the platform, we we've verified the market by creating a couple of landing pages on podcast co with some Google Forms on. So we hadn't spent nothing on that we but we knew that there was a demand for this solution before we launched it. So when we kind of launched it, we knew that monetization was okay to come later, it didn't really have to have a plan straight out the you know, when we first kind of went live, and I think it was September, October last year, when we we then turned on the Pro Plan. And another tip really before that, kind of taking a leaf out of AppSumo as book really is we we've done an AppSumo deal on podcast.co. Which, which was fine. But we thought let's try and sort of mimic that effect with matchmaker because we already had quite an engaged audience by that point. So previous to the Pro Plan, I think it was August last year we we did a lifetime deal just to our existing customers. So we have what we call found a plan. So we basically said that, yeah, you can become a founder of matchmaker, you pay a one on one time fee, it's going to help us out in terms of like, keeping the lights switched on, it's going to help us out in terms of developing the product and moving it forward. And you know, in return, you pay what a fixed amount and you get the pro access forever. And users responded really well to that we did limit it, we didn't want to have, you know, we wanted it to be sort of relatively exclusive. So I think we had maximum of either two or 300 profound plans available. And what we did is we had it as the first 50 People paid this much and then we put the price up for every you know, so this allows another thing to do. And that was really good because that was almost like raising kind of a small sort of seed round as a software company. Excuse me, but but allowing our users to fund that so it was almost it wasn't quite like a Kickstarter campaign but you It's, it was an idea that I had one day, I literally threw together a landing page, we didn't really even have an idea of what the Pro Plan was going to be at this point, we're just sort of said, Okay, well, it's coming soon, we're going to sort of ask people to start paying for the platform. So if you want to get in early, you know, you can get lifetime access. And it people responded really well. So that, you know, that's another thing that you could you could look at doing if you sort of start off free just to grow an audience. But then, of course, you've got to start paying the bills at some point, you know, or you've got to pay your pay your staffs wages. So it's like, it's all very well, like, if you build something on your own, and you've got to just do it as a side hustle, and you think, oh, it's gonna be free. That's great. But then you've got to think at some stage, well, how are we going to make some money from this? As much as it's nice to just have everything for free, but kind of doesn't always work? You know?
Yeah, that's really interesting. And it's great that you've looked at different, they're not necess, AppSumo aren't necessarily a competition, but they are a SaaS company as well, in
general, it was just, it's just the idea of just doing like a lifetime deal. You know, because people respond well to that. And they like the fact that they can pay once and they can get access to a piece of software forever. So so that was that. That's basically what we did with our sort of founder plan on matchmaker.
And how are you currently trying to grow matchmaker? What's the vision for the for the next few months?
So we, as I say, We're the main thing we're focusing on is the community aspect. That's kind of the big, the next big feature which we're releasing this year, we've added various different things such as we added a booking facility. You know, we've we've had, we've rolled out our mobile apps, which again, have been useful to, you know, help people grow. So people are more engaged in it, because they can kind of get notes notified into their pockets versus just emails, we've added recommendations, those sort of things. So yeah, we've, we've added a fair few things this year, as I say, next year is going to be the community focused on that. And again, we're going to have another challenge, because we want to try and grow that and create a really engaged community. Moving forward, I don't we there's various different ideas, which are floating around and how many want to talk about on here. But, you know, it's, you know, I don't want to give too much away. But yeah, there's, I think it's, I think it's quite exciting. There's certainly kind of quite a lot of opportunities that we've identified, which I think, you know, we'll sort of tap into, and sort of see what, what take what we know where the next year, where the next year takes us, I think it's gonna be exciting. And I think seeing this community Evolve is been really satisfying for me as an entrepreneur, like even, even last year, when we didn't have any monetization, you know, and it was just the amount of feedback I got, like, it was just hugely rewarding. For me, it was like people kind of contacting me and saying, you know, wow, I've signed up and I've already been booked on five podcasts or Yeah, you know, I've created a show, and I've been struggling for good finding a good guest. And I've just interviewed someone who had just been to space or, you know, whatever, something really interest, someone really interesting. Who's done X Y, Zed, and, you know, that, to me was like, wow, you know, I've created this and this is something that, you know, people are really getting value from, even though we weren't making any money from it. And that was very exciting to begin with. So, I think things are already going to get better.
Oh, yeah. I think when people look from the outside, and they go, okay, matchmakers a great platform, but then you just said, maybe like, nine months ago, you weren't, you didn't have any monetary or any revenue at all. Yeah, so. So for somebody that would probably like to create a startup in the future. And for other people that are listening now, what kind of advice would you give them? Would you recommend they start looking at into SAS companies? Or is that the future?
I don't know. Because we you know, traditionally I've always built SAS businesses, Matchmaker is I suppose it's still kind of software as a service, however, is more community focused. So it's a little bit different to the sorts of businesses I've traditionally run. We're also doing more and more production work. So we're kind of creating, there's an agency that lives within podcast or CO, which again, we are spitting out as a sort of separate brand next year, but currently podcast.co It's the hosting platform for podcasts, but also we have a as a an agency, a production arm that creates podcasts with brands and that sort of thing. So again, it's a different model to software as a service. I think if someone's if you're not if you're not, but then again like you hear lots of success stories in econ now like people start ecommerce stores selling all sorts of weird and wonderful like niche items and doing really well that's what that's a world that I have no no idea about, you know, I don't understand much about e commerce or you know how to source products from China and find the next kind of unicorn or whatever it is, you know, build these Shopify stores and have all these Instagram ads that kind of sell like crazy. You know, like I A friend of my brother, he had a company. And they did a campaign like selling customized socks, I think it was like the year before last Christmas. And I think they made like 900 grand, over a period of like a month, just selling the socks, for people gonna have their face printed on them or something. It was like the Pet Pet socks, I think that's a picture of their dogs printed on socks or something like that anyway, and I was like, Oh, my god, yeah, it's just an insane amount of money to, to make selling socks, isn't it? But yeah, I guess Pete everyone needs to wear socks, right. And people like to buy novelty gifts for Christmas. So they kind of you put the two together, and you've got this sort of magic formula. But yeah, that's so that's a world that I find fascinating, but I don't really have any knowledge about so but then I don't know, for some people who are going in thinking about starting a business, they might resonate more with, you know, physical products or actual things that you can sell, versus creating software. Because to create a software product, I think you've got to, you've got to have, it's quite involved. And certainly, in the early days, I learned to code to a basic level, I wasn't ever amazing, but I could kind of put together a web database driven site. And, you know, I could just about build a kind of like a web web product or web app. Which, which, because that's because I did that I understand how you build and create software solutions, whereas someone who hasn't had that experience, you know, it can be a bit of a minefield, right? And, and certainly now, more than ever, developers are in high demand. And, you know, it's development to build a really good quality web product now is quite complex and quite involved process. It's not just a case of like, you know, back then I could get away with just writing load, PHP, and just slinging some together in a couple of days. And I think you've got to, you've got to do better than that. Now, really, if you want to make a success of something. And also, you know, you've got to think about things like security concerns, and look at, basically just making sure that you're delivering something that's not going to go down like a cloud based solutions, and all that kind of thing. Where, you know, when I started out that none of that really existed, or, you know, you didn't really think about it, but certainly scale scaling radio.co, for example, was was a huge challenge. When we launched it, it was like, it was something that kind of really took a lot of work to kind of get it to where it's at. And but it's, you know, it's solid, but it did have to deal with an insane amount of traffic going through, go through it. And, you know, it was it was a real, because we grew that company grew quite quickly, it was kind of quite a challenge to begin with learning how to scale. So there's lots of things to consider when you're building software. But then as I say, if you could set up a Shopify store, or just find a product, that's novelty that people want to buy, to me, that sounds simple. So it's different things. People, I don't think there's a simple answer to like, what do the first thinking about starting a business, it's just, and then again, some people now like, it's very popular, a lot of people going into, like coaching and consulting and all that kind of stuff. Which certainly if you've, you know, if you've got a lot of experience doing that particular thing that can be that can be something to consider as well, because if you're going into consulting or coaching, it's, you don't really need anything but yourself and some knowledge about a particular thing. Which can be particularly valuable to some other people that again, it's just about identifying that audience. Yeah.
But but then it comes the issue of how do you scale, a coaching business? If it's just yourself? Yeah. And then having maybe a software and some systems in place, then you can scale your efforts and your outputs? Yeah. So yeah,
I guess I guess scaling coaching is a case of just charging more, you know, getting, becoming really in demand. I think that's probably what it boils down to. But you're right, sir. This there are I suppose there are good examples of coaching businesses that a suppose a franchise like there are kind of a few different things, there's like one called Action coach, which I must admit, I'm not a huge fan of but I've had some years ago, I had some dealings with someone who was under the action coach brand, but basically, they they have a franchise model where they have lots of lots of people who work within that, you know, within the sort of the wider arm of you know, love it or hate it. It's obviously very big and successful company. Pretty sure there's probably others as well, you know, but it's not again, it's not something I know a huge deal about.
So you would you recommend someone I get, you know, find a problem, common problem, or not necessarily
just about finding a market demand, you know, for a product and trying to it's either about solving a problem or just finding that there's a demand there and being able to pitch a good a good product to people and packaging in a way that's appealing and yeah, okay. Again, I don't think there's I've had some businesses have worked over the years and I've had other businesses that haven't worked out. You know, that's what happens doesn't work. reopener you know, somebody should take risks, they don't pay off some of these risks, take risks, and they do pay off. And sometimes you take risks, and it's sort of, you know, they're just in the middle somewhere. So So I, you know, I think it's like, you wish I wish you could predict every single time you launch a business, that it's going to be a huge success. But I don't think that's always, it's not always as easy as that. I think someone has a little bit of luck involved, too. You know? Yes.
Yeah, you've got to, you've created, you create your own look,
to a certain extent, yeah, then I think, you know, you, you set yourself up. So when if luck comes your way, or you're primed to take advantage of it. So like, when I, the first, the first time, when I when I was pretty young, I was like, 23, I managed to get a deal with AOL, which was like the point there was a turning point in my business where I was like, went from me earning a living to suddenly I had a business and started, you know, making quite a few hires and things started making profit, basically, and doing doing well out of it. And that was just a sort of like a, you know, a tournament positive. Yeah, turning point in my career, which I couldn't preempt. It just came along one day, but I was already I was in the right industry. So when that that came my way I was, I was very, I was there to sort of make sure I kind of could take advantage of it and did did really well out of it. So, but then again, as fast as that deal came also, like two years later vanished. So then I had to sort of think, right, okay, what's next? So it's kind of like, it's one of these things. You can't always sort of, you can't always see where things are going. But then, you know, as well, it did teach me that there was more opportunities, and perhaps I first thought in that particular market, so there we go.
So what kind of mindset Do you know, future entrepreneurs need?
I think it's a good question, isn't it? I, personally, I reckon you need to be very sort of determined. And you need to be prepared to take a few knocks along the way. You need to be prepared to work very hard, especially to start off with, you know, put in the hours. I remember, like, when I started out, sometimes I was working till like 11 o'clock at night kind of stuff. I remember, we sat there on Christmas Eve in front of my computer writing code back in the late 2000s. You know, when I was when my you know, everyone else was out getting pissed or whatever. So I was like, you know, you got to take some sacrifices, sometimes when you especially when you're starting, you know, and but yeah, I think sort of determination and drive, I think, incredibly important, because I think is, you know, there's too many people who will think I've got a brilliant, brilliant idea, I'm gonna start this, I'm going to do do really well. And then they just don't see it through. It's like, they'll sort of make a half assed attempt at kind of creating something or building a website. And you know, and then it's just like, the sort of things don't always happen overnight. You know, you've got to sometimes work at it and be persistent. So I think that's it. Persistence is key. Really?
Yeah. Great. I know, we've talked a little bit about tech and startups, but not that much about podcasting. And I know, we don't have too much time today. So do you like this podcast?
And what do we want to talk about podcasting? I mean, this is the thing. I think it's like, podcasting is another thing. You know, people always asking me, oh, is it too late to start a podcast? Or Is now a good time? Well, I think I think podcasting is a fantastic storytelling media, I think it's never been easier to create one because there's so many tools and features and services like podcasts, or matchmaker, but also like just the hardware available, excuse me to correct good audio. You know, when I sort of 10 years ago, you had to spend quite a lot of money, you don't really now you can go out and buy good quality USB microphone and, you know, set something up at home for a relatively little expense. That sounds good. Yeah. And so that's, that's fantastic. I think that's opening the opportunity up. And I think people are more aware of the medium as a whole because of I think that's partly been driven by the amount of celebrities that are now involved. So you know, like, when fate you had a famous comedian or sports stars, like get involved in podcasting, it kind of just makes more people a wider selection of the general population aware as to what podcasting is and the benefits it could bring. And they might start listening to, you know, whatever famous football or or comedian that they like, but then they might say, oh, there's all these other podcasts that maybe aren't by people who are very well known, that are also really interesting and good. Listen. So that's been part of the sort of growth that I think, as helps kind of cement a really good audience, widespread audience for the medium. thing, you know, interviewing people is always fascinating, isn't it? You know, you mentioned is this podcast Good? Well, I guess the listeners need to be the judge of that. But yeah, if you're curating a good selection of people to talk to have got interesting thing to say, I think it's kind of it makes making content pretty easy. And uh, you know, again it, it's weird because I've been both the host and guest on lots of podcasts, various different ones when obviously, we produce a number of podcasts on behalf of other clients as well. And people always asked me, you know, is it is it easy easier being a guest or a host? I'm not sure if I have a clear answer, because I kind of enjoy both, actually. But I think sometimes when you're a guest, you know, they ask questions, and you just naturally have the answers. But then sometimes as a host, you have to think a bit harder about what you're going to ask. So
beforehand, because you can't really come up with a question where you can come up with a question, but you, you want to stay in as engaged as possible during your answer.
But then again, if different people ever say so like some people were just literally asked guests the same set of questions each time. I don't think that's necessarily the best approach. I think it should be more of a conversation than an interview. That's always what people say, you know?
Yeah, I think this my skill has evolved over time just for, for doing it. It was stick to some basic questions. But yeah, but everybody's got so many different stories and different things to share and different experiences. And it's not one size fits all. So it's interesting to talk to you about tech and startups and podcasts and to talk somebody else about PR and startups from that perspective. And certainly more Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting. So, from a podcast center, put, what are you doing? Or? I know you're using video, and but how do you engage the audience? And what kind of tips would you recommend? I do to, you know, connect with my listeners, because it's hard to find that information?
Yeah, I think, not of podcasters. Try, like, you've got to try and figure out who your listeners are. And I think the easiest way of doing that is building a newsletter, getting people to subscribe, so send them to your website and send it to a website that's easy to read a new podcast, if it's like, some really long domain, blah, blah, blah, slash blah, blah, blah, it can be confusing for people. So try and just get like a nice, short, snappy domain that you can read out and read out several times, throughout the episode, just send people to a simple page where they can kind of get some incentive for signing up. So it might be they get access to a bonus feature, or bonus episode, or, you know, the back catalogue or whatever it might be. And start kind of learning about who your audience are and get them. You know, another thing a lot of podcasters do is just just get an email that people can sort of engage with the show. Right in, you know, again, like it's come it becomes become a bit of a cliche with podcasts asking for five star reviews all the time. Well, yeah. But actually, that's not really, it's not really getting engaged is it's just kind of asking, it's just nagging people, you know, no, it wants to be nagged. So just give people a reason to get in touch. I kind of think it would be good, and Spotify are starting to do this. But it's very much tied into their ecosystem with Spotify and anchor and everything where they, if your podcast hosted or anchor and you're publishing a podcast, Spotify, you can now run polls and asked me anything things. But it's just like that, again, it's just kind of Spotify, trying to own the whole market, which I think is a great shame. I think the good thing about podcasting is it's not limited to uncom, one sort of company, you know, like YouTube have got the Monopoly with the video market. Really? There's a few others out there, but YouTube basically, isn't it. So it's kind of, I think it's a shame if it's gonna go that way. With podcasts. I think it's good that it's like sort of evenly spread out. But yeah, so I think you've got to try to think of ways around that the fact that you can't say comment on this episode, because it just doesn't exist. Yeah. So yeah, get them to sign up to our mailing list, get them to send you an email, get into chat. You're on social media. That so that's all I could say. Really. There's no magic formula to it. Yeah. I wish.
Yeah. Do you think a lot of podcasters that are starting out, overcomplicate the whole process of building an audience and
I'm not sure they over complicate it. I think there's there's two, there's like there's too many people who don't go very far because they sort of think the audience is going to happen overnight. Or they don't really have a strategy of how to build an audience. So they just kind of think about like the first two episodes and then they don't think about what they're going to be recording in episode three. And the best thing to do is try and manage it in season. So like, you know, you said this is Season Two for you. You sometimes you need a break to sort of set take a step back and think right, okay, should I change anything? What did what worked, what didn't work? You know, am I happy with the format? Could it be improved, and just try and make each season better than the last but then also, like, you know, just to avoid burnout because I think I mentioned either just before the quarter at start this I did a live stream, called Working Lunch last year. You know, I did that in two seasons, but they each season was quite long, it felt like three months or something I was doing each one for. And it was every single Wednesday went live. And it just like after the sort of the year was up, I was like, I don't know if I want to do this. But you know, because you have to it was every single week. So you kind of like, if you're recording them in advance, if you do them in batches, it kind of makes the process a bit more manageable, I think. Yeah, I
agree there. That's, that's why I did that a lot in a short period of time. So I had a lot for a long period of time. And I did take a month break, maybe I should have taken longer, but it's because it's new to me. The skill was the skill needs to be learned through practice. So I can't do do a lot in a short period of time, and then do none for the next years. It's it's, it's got to be a balance, and you don't want to burn yourself out. You want to get great guests or find great guests.
Yeah, I completely agree. I think you know, you're totally right in saying that, you know, it's good to take a break, and you don't want to burn yourself out. And also practice makes perfect. You can't be the perfect interview or the perfect guest from the outset. You know, sometimes you just have to work at these things. And it's just like anything in life, isn't it? You know, I think some again, some people are more, it comes more naturally to some people than others. But I think anyone could have a go at it. That's the great thing about it, you know?
Yeah, really inexpensive. And if you use matchmaker to find great guests, like myself, and Jay, you know, I'm looking for if anybody wants to interview me, I've only been on one podcast. So if you want to interview me, then you can email me at talking with experts. pod@gmail.com. And that's the best way to get ahold of me. But I might as well use your advice. So is that is there anything that maybe you wanted to share today that I haven't asked you that would be helpful for somebody in the tech space startup space? Or in the podcasting world?
I don't know, I think we've covered a lot, haven't we? No, I mean, I just thanks very much for having me on I, if if if if people are interested in getting involved in podcasts, sometimes being a guest is a if you've got, especially if you've got knowledge, if you you know, want to talk about what you do as a profession, or you want to talk about something you're really passionate about could be that you like model trains, or it could be that you like golf or whatever, you know, you can, you know, there'll be a podcast few outlets to go and talk about your experiences with whatever, whatever you want to talk about. So it doesn't have to just necessarily be your business and work focused. But yeah, that could be someone has a great way of getting involved without having to actually fully commit to starting your own show. So don't sign up to matchmaker, just talk about what you're passionate about on there. Make sure you complete your profile, don't just put like, Hi, I'm James and you know, blah, blah, blah, try and give people a bit of to go off because again, that's one of those things I see. When I see people sign up for matchmaker, there's like two sentences there. So you know, you know, try and give people a bit to go off or give them some idea as to the sorts of things you could go and talk or talk about, you know, it's free to join. And it's really kind of exciting to exciting, I think, you know, sometimes it's intimidating for people to begin with, they're scared of kind of go behind the microphone or on camera. But really, it's just like having a conversation like you would with someone you know, if you get chatting in a conference, or coffee shop or wherever, you know, it's just that's all it is. It's just just a conversation. So there's no need to be scared about.
And I think as well before this before we actually press live, I was super freaking out because, you know, we well, you're, you're James and you've got a few startups and a few companies. So there's that intimidating, but you know that it's okay to feel like nervous and nervousness is actually a good thing. Yeah, use
your your toes, doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, you know, sometimes I've done so many interviews. Now, I don't tend to get too nervous there. But there are some times occasion that you know, sometimes you don't you have a day where you just feel a little bit like anxious about it or, you know, suddenly there's a lot of pressure on you. Certainly, you know, the more you do it, the better and more comfortable you become in doing in podcasting or interviewing whatever side of the fence you're sitting on, you know, but yeah, it's good. I think for me, I find it really fun. As I say, like, I've had people when I did my live stream last year, some people will really put off with the fact it's like, they were like, yeah, if it was recorded, I'd be fine, but I don't want to do it because it's live and it's like Okay, fair enough. But yeah, you know, just for me that keeps me on my toes because it's quite exciting the fact you can't really mess up
well, you can you can be extremely massive.
But not split you're not supposed to mess it up.
Well, I hope we haven't messed it up today. And
is that what I think we've done all right.
Yeah, so is there like a huge lesson you want me Paul to leave with with this episode.
Today really? Lesson is, yeah, go if you want to, well, I'll tell you what, I'll just leave with this. If you want to connect with me or if you want to go and check anything out that I'm doing. If you go to James m.com/connect You'll find all the links on there. So, you know, that's where people can find out more information. There's one lesson I guess, just go go out there and do what you do.
Yeah, that's great. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you, James. Thanks for your time. It was it was great to have you on and I'll speak to you again very soon.
