New Business Podcast Episode #10

Building a Popular Podcast and Online Media Biz, with Srini Rao Chris Ducker: Hey, everybody. It’s Chris Ducker here. And this is the New Business Podcast where insightful how-to business strategies collide with actionable tips and tactics. Look no further. You found the podcast that you need to tune in to catapult your business into the 21st century. Hey, podcast listeners. How are you doing? It’s Chris Ducker here. Welcome to episode #10 of the New Business Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in to my little slice of that podcasting pie that is out there. Wow! I mean always fantastic to have you with me. Thank you very much once again. Actually, a massive thank you to any of you who have put any kind of reviews or ratings live on iTunes recently as well. They do come in from all over the world. So I kind of have my VA pluck out individual reviews from all the different country. What’s that about? Why do iTunes do that? Why did they separate all of the reviews into different country stores? Why not just have one page and just have all of the reviews on that one page? It drives me mental having to go to the US, the UK, and all these different iTunes stores from all over the world. It drives me crazy. But that’s why I get my VA to do it quite frankly. But yeah, a lot of reviews coming in. Thank you very much. I want to read one out real quick from Caleb over at PocketChanged.com and he says, “Once again, Chris delivers. Every episode of the New Business Podcast is filled with a ton of actionable advice that you could go and implement into your biz and make a huge difference immediately. His interviews with guests are way more interesting than usual too as he dives deeper than the usual, what’s your background stories that you’re used to hearing. Definitely a must listen.” Caleb, thank you very much. Obviously, I know Caleb over at PocketChanged.com. He’s a good friend of mine. He’s smart so you can’t argue with a single word that he just said. Plain and simple. So yeah, if you have gone ahead and put a review up on iTunes, I do very much appreciate it. Thank you very much. It only takes 30 seconds but it means all the world to me. What else has been going on? Well, London, my London trip in May is coming up very, very quickly. I’m going to be doing two mastermind sessions when I’m there. And I am sort of tossing around the idea of maybe bringing the mic and doing a little bit of a sit

down session with everybody that’s there on both days. There are going to be ten of us in a conference room in a hotel in the Docklands in London. Two days back to back talking nothing but hardcore business stuff. If you’re going to be coming along to the event, thank you very much for signing up and parting with a little cash to make sure that it can happen. I do appreciate it. I look forward to hanging out with you in London. And if you’re not, maybe we can do something when we’re there in some way, shape, or form to give you a bit of taste of what it was all about. Lastly, I want to say a massive thank you for anybody that’s dropped in on my co-working space here in Cebu, Philippines recently. Location 63 is the name of the space. We opened up in mid January. I’ve had a lot of really cool visitors come in particularly those that sort of bouncing around in Southeast Asia right now. So for all the guys that have come in, Mark, Doug, Luke, Nick, Natalie, and the rest of the guys that have popped in, in the last sort of four to six weeks, I really appreciate you coming in and hanging out and it’s been great to chat business with you when you’re in town as well. So, what I want to talk about today a little bit with my guest is actually podcasting. I’ve been getting a lot of questions in regards to podcasts and how to utilize them to be able to grow your business online and build your brand and that sort of type of thing. And so, this is not a how-to podcast, OK? We’re going to get around to that in a very near future with a special guest under the name of Cliff Ravenscraft. But Cliff is very busy with a couple of things right now so we haven’t quite been able to nail down the date. But he is the absolute perfect person for how to get started podcasting and it will come soon. But my guest today actually has been running a very successful podcast for the last two or three years or so. And so, I wanted to get him on the show to show you exactly how he’s built his own audio media empire through his podcast so it’s now rolled over into downloadable guides, Kindle eBooks, and a whole lot more stuff as well. And this has all come from running a podcast where he also interviews guests as well. So he is now on the other side of the mic. I’m the one interviewing him and I know for a fact that you’re going to get a ton out of this conversation. So today’s guest on the New Business Podcast is not only someone that I can genuinely call a friend but also someone that is a true blue hardcore advocate of doing business in the new economy. In the last couple of years alone, he’s coughed out a very impressive slice of the Internet business world for himself.

He’s created and continues to produce one of the most well-respected and talked about interview format podcasts online as well as written a whole slither of eBooks and manifestos on the subjects of business life and pretty much everything in between. He’s a speaker, a podcaster, a blogger, and a surfer and I mean like a real surfer like with a board and wax and a wetsuit and everything. Not just someone that messes around on the internet all day long. So, without further ado, Srini Rao. Come on down, my man. How are you? Srinivas Rao: I’m great, Chris. And thanks for that introduction. It’s so great to be here and I always love chatting with you because I know we have – it’s always a lot of fun to talk to you. Chris Ducker: Well, thank you very much, sir. It’s very nice of you to say that, very nice of you to say. So it’s first thing in the morning. Am I stopping you first thing in the morning LA time, am I stopping you from the waves right now? Srinivas Rao: Actually, today no because we’re having this unusual cold spell that is going on in LA which I’m talking like for LA standards, we have to wear a jacket. Here is a kind of people that live in LA. If it’s raining, we’ll call our friends and be like, “I’m not coming out tonight?” Why? “Because it’s raining, dude. I’m not going out in that weather.” Like we’re weak when it comes to weather. We have no – like people look at us and they have no sympathy for us. I have a friend in Toronto. She’s like, “Stop bitching about the weather. It’s minus 20 here.” Chris Ducker: Yeah. Srinivas Rao: And for us, it’s like it’s 30 degrees outside which means the water is ice cold and fortunately, the waves are flat right now. There’s no waves but I just got back from a surf trip to Mexico this weekend. Chris Ducker: That must have been nice. I’ve never checked out Mexico. And I’ve always wanted to go. Srinivas Rao: If you can get past Tijuana, it’s not bad. Tijuana is a little dicey but beyond that, it is pretty cool. Chris Ducker: Cool. All right. Well look, we’re not here to talk about surfing. And I know it’s a subject that you could talk about literally forever. And actually for those of you out there, when myself and Srini both spoke at BlogWorld which is now known as New Media Expo back in LA, he was trying to put together some kind of a surf lesson morning one day there and I totally turned him down because I asked him full on, I said to him, “Well, what’s the weather going to be like in November in LA?” And he’s like, “Well, it’s going to be a little bit cold but it will be OK.”

And I said, “You know what? I don’t do cold water. I live in freaking Philippines, man. This is not going to happen.” So I will take you up on that surf lesson at some point though. Srinivas Rao: Well, for any of you coming to Mike Stelzner’s event in April, it is in San Diego so I’m going to be leading a panel there. And I told Mike, I said, “You think I’m going to come to a conference in San Diego and not figure out a way to surf every day? You’re out of your mind. I’m going to surf every morning.” Chris Ducker: There you go. Yeah, I’m sure as well. So let’s talk about, let’s talk about what you’ve been up to these last couple of years. And the reason why I wanted to have you on initially was to talk about podcasting and building a podcasting audience, everything about getting a show up and running, the whole thing. And we will get into that. But the Srini empire has been expanding quite rapidly in the last couple of years. You’ve gotten involved with everything from like I said, Amazon, Kindle, eBook publishing, you’ve brought on board sponsors for the show, you’ve – I mean you’ve interviewed some of the biggest names in regards to online business and blogging and things like that. So obviously, a lot of what you’re doing, you’re doing right. And this digital empire is something that has been forming slowly but surely. And I remember man, we sat and we had a coffee in LA before that conference even got going a couple of years back and you came across to me as someone who had a very clear vision in mind in terms of what he wanted to do and it’s definitely look like it has started to happen in the last couple of years since that meeting. So, here’s a stat that throw me out the door literally and I pulled this from you Facebook page the other day. I mean this literally – I think it was just yesterday I saw this actually. In the last quarter, and you can correct me if I’m wrong here, but in the last quarter of 2012, Blogcast FM had 1,250,000 downloads in the last three months of 2012. Am I right? Srinivas Rao: That is correct. Chris Ducker: OK. So that did literally blow me out of the door. We’ll talk about how you got there. But I mean, give us the Srini story for the last couple of years. Srinivas Rao: Sure. Chris Ducker: How the hell did this all happen? Because they just literally blown up in the last couple of years. Srinivas Rao: Well, it’s funny you say that. I think it really is. It’s been in the last couple of months more than in the last couple of years. But I’m glad you brought up the

couple of years part and I really love that you brought up that conversation that we had at BlogWorld in LA because I probably have referenced that conversation about a thousand times on the show. Chris Ducker: Yeah, I know what you’re going to say now. You’re right. I’ve done over this a thousand but it’s probably close to it. Srinivas Rao: Yeah. Chris Ducker: Yeah. Srinivas Rao: Whether you know it or not, I may not have mentioned you directly which I should give you more credit for it, but that conversation shaped a lot of how I started to view the world. But let’s take a few steps back as you probably hear me say a thousand times on my show. So as – I’ll tell you the short of version of Srini. I graduated from business school, couldn’t find a real job. So I knew the way to stand out in the job market. I knew I wanted to work in social media because I had been the social media intern for Intuit's Turbo Tax Group the summer before. And at the end of the summer, I didn’t get a job offer. And considering I don’t particularly enjoy paying taxes, I think working on them for a living would have been really boring. Anyways, what ended up happening is I got out of school in April 2009 which was the worst possible time to graduate. And I was watching people really kind of take advantage of this online world that I was like, “Wait a minute. How was a kid out of undergrad who has no job experience finding themselves inundated with job offers?” A girl named Jamie Varon started this campaign titled TwitterShouldHireMe.com. And it got so much national media attention that I was immediately thinking, “OK. I need to do something like this.” And bear in mind, I’ve been doubling with content creation. I had some ridiculous blogs that didn’t well. I had one about business school. I had a personal blog. I’d always been tinkering with things like Blogger and of course, I read a lot of blogs at my summer internship. And when I saw that campaign, I had this idea that OK, well, I could do something similar so I started one called 100ReasonsYouShouldHireMe.com which honestly was nothing more than my – the bullet points out of my resume and blog form. And I couldn’t even come up with a hundred reasons, which maybe that was a real problem that I couldn’t find the hundred reasons. Ten years of work experience at business school and I couldn’t come up with a hundred reasons why somebody should hire me. I was like, “Well now, I have a real problem. I don’t know how to do anything and I don’t have any skills despite all this experience.” Which honestly, I think a lot of people are going to find themselves in that situation.

Chris Ducker: Right. Srinivas Rao: People who are in school right now. And that’s what – you don’t want to get me started on an education grant because we could do a whole episode on that. Chris Ducker: But this is – yeah, exactly. And we’ve talked about it before. I know how passionate you are about it. And I think – and if I’m – right, this is the perfect segue. This is where the SkoolOfLife.com came about. Srinivas Rao: Yeah. Chris Ducker: All this sort of feelings of frustration and everything and this is the way that the real world works and that sort of thing. Srinivas Rao: Yeah. Well, it’s funny. And it’s funny you say that because at school – the funny thing is now, all the dots connect to make that message makes sense. When I started it, it wasn’t necessarily the case. I think as time has gone on, I’m becoming more and more passionate about this whole idea that education needs to be fixed and of course, the Skool of Life really kind of ties in well. But where the Skool of Life came from, I was watching this great movie actually called the School of Life with Ryan Reynolds and it was a few days before graduation. And I thought, “Well, this is a really inspiring movie. It was on demand.” And I thought, OK, cool. And I literally was just struck with this idea. I went to Sedona, Arizona right after I graduated. It was just like a spiritual place and I thought, “OK. I need to get away from here just to think.” Which I highly recommend people do it. Any sort of spiritual journey that you can take, I think is worth it even if it’s for a couple of days. So I went by myself. I just hopped in the car and took off. And I got there and the – I was sitting at this, what they call this vortex, this rock thinking about this and the strangest thing as I walk into this new age bookstore and it said, “You’re either going to be a religious or spiritual leader.” Which I thought was ridiculous because I’m not religious at all. But I was amused by the idea of being a writer or that kind of thing. So – and that’s literally in a sort of a flash, I thought, “OK. I’m going to start a blog called The Skool of Life. And so, I realized, The School of Life, spelled correctly was unavailable. So I bought S-K-O-O-L. I joined this blogging course called Blog Mastermind run by this guy named Yaro Starak who is still around, I think. Chris Ducker: Yeah, yeah, Yaro is still very much around. I don’t think he blogs anywhere near as much as he did but he’s definitely still around on the online business space for sure.

Srinivas Rao: Yeah. And so, his work was actually very influential. My dad lent me 500 bucks. But where I got that idea was that after I failed with the 100 Reasons You Should Hire Me campaign, and I’m talking failed miserably. I got hate mail from people I didn’t even know. That part was what mind blows me. And then there were classmates of mine who I wasn’t even friends with who sent me mails telling me what a stupid idea it was. And this is something we should definitely talk about because you have to have the guts to put yourself out there like that. If you don’t, so many people sitting around waiting for the perfect idea, the one that everybody will approve of. And we can talk about all of my failures which there are so many that honestly, I thank God for them because I’ve learned from each one. But what – so that eventually led to the formation of Skool of Life because I needed a way to stand out in the job market. And I thought, if I want a social media job, I need to demonstrate a tangible skill and have a tangible asset that represents what I’m capable of. And that led to a day job working at an online travel company called Flightster where I was in charge of social media and I got to build a blog for a flight booking site that never actually got launched. But that led to a lot of other things. I ended up getting my first speaking gig. And in the process of launching the Skool of Life, I started this weekly series called Interviews With Up And Coming Bloggers. And that honestly was one of the lessons in Yaro’s Blog Mastermind programs that interviews are a great way to get traffic to your blog. So, I kind of just did it as one of the tactics because I was very diligent about following the lessons in the program for one reason. My dad paid for it and he would have kicked my ass if I didn’t follow it. Chris Ducker: Right. Srinivas Rao: He said – because I had a habit of starting things and not finishing them. And I realized, I was like, wait a minute. I was like, I had to take it seriously to prove to him that I was going to get results from it and this was going to lead to something. And it did. It led to the first day job. So I started Interviews With Up and Coming Bloggers. And after about 13 interviews, one of the guys I interviewed came back to me. He said, “Hey, your writing is shit.” And he said – I mean not in those exact words but he jokingly teases me like – because I make a lot of grammar errors. Anybody who’s on my newsletter knows that typos are something that I’m notorious for. And we can talk about that whole willingness to be imperfect thing. But he recognized something that I couldn’t even see. He said, “Look,” he said, “Your gold really is these interviews.” He said, “Because nobody is doing them this way.” And he said, “And you’re actually good at it.” Which I wasn’t at that point.

But he basically said, “Look,” he said, “You can get the biggest interviews.” And he had a lot of connections to some big names. And he said, “Nobody is doing interviews as frequently as you are.” And so, that was where the idea for Blogcast FM came. I literally, when he sent me that email, I looked at it and I thought, OK. I still have the email which to this day I look back at and sometimes I laugh. I posted it on a Google+ page once. But I have to give Sid Savara the credit for coming up with the idea for Blogcast FM. It wasn’t my idea. So, he got roped into it. So when he said, “Hey, you should start this.” I said, “Well, that’s great. When do you want to get started?” Because I didn’t have the technical know-how to build it. Chris Ducker: Right. Srinivas Rao: So I bought the domain Blogcast FM the next day and I think the naming of that really kind of worked out on our favor. I don’t even know where I came up with it. It just seemed like a good name. And then here we are, 3 years, 300 interviews later, more than 300 interviews. And it’s been a roller coaster ride and I’ll turn it back to you because I’m sure I could go on forever. But there are so many other parts of the story because that’s how the story starts. Chris Ducker: Right. And it is. And we’ve known each other. I think you and I came across each other initially when I was still blogging at VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com. I think you commented on a blog post. It was something like that. I can’t quite remember exactly how we came across each other. But I do remember that we met for the first time in 2010 at BlogWorld in Vegas and you were literally just sort of really starting to put your foot down and pull back on the throttle and all that sort of stuff. And here we are, two and a half, three years later and boom! You’re really rocking now. And so, OK, I’m going to use one of your term. Let’s switch gears here. Srinivas Rao: You know the way to do shots now, right? Chris Ducker: Yeah, I love it. I’ll do shots with you any day of the week. Don’t worry about that. And you know that. Srinivas Rao: Yeah, I have photographic evidence of that. Chris Ducker: Right, I’m sure you do. But let’s switch gears and let’s talk about our audience and some of the questions that I’ve been getting from them in relating – in relation rather to podcasting and starting a podcast for the first time and getting going with it and all the rest of it.

So, let’s say you’re considering starting a podcast for the first time staying away from the equipment side of things because there’s more than enough stuff out there about that already, what else do you need to get ready for a podcast in your mind? I mean as a show host and creator, what do you feel is required for you before you get going with your podcast? Srinivas Rao: That’s actually not the easiest question to answer because I think it’s going to be different for everybody depending on what they’re up to. And it’s funny because we’re seeing this sort of podcasting craze now as you and I know. What I would say is this there are two things you want to think about, right? Is that one is, what value are you going to provide and that value could be something as simple as being entertaining. I have a friend who is a huge fan of the TV show, The Walking Dead and he has very, very popular podcast because he provides a fun podcast. So it literally is just pure entertainment. I don’t think it’s business-based. The value is that it’s entertaining. And there’s plenty of podcasts that are like that. So I think one thing you do have to think about and even if you are doing a pure business podcast, the big difference between just writing and doing a show is that you have to be engaging, you have to be entertaining. Part of I think what has enabled me to do this is that you kind of have to view yourself as a combination of a teacher and an entertainer, right? You kind of look to the mainstream media and pull things from them because all of a sudden, the power of dynamic has shifted. You and I have a power that was only available to like a Casey Kasem 20 years ago. Chris Ducker: Right. Srinivas Rao: And for those of you guys who are too young to remember Casey Kasem, do a Google search because I know there might be some people who are born in the ‘90s who are like, “Who the hell is Casey Kasem?” But to me I think that really what it comes down to is what – answer the question, what value am I trying to create with this? And I’ll share a story about that. And I’ve shared this before but it was really honestly a big – it was one of the first sort of tipping points in our show. My initial idea was that I would interview the most famous people. They would share the interviews and every interview would go viral, which really, that neglected something big which was the people listening to the show. And at the end of the day, it’s all about the person listening. It’s not about the host. It’s not about the guest. It’s the person listening that matters the most because they’re the ones who are going to go out and spread the show. They’re the ones who are going to go out and tell other people.

We didn’t grow because of our famous guests. Yeah, that helped a little bit. But I mean, every time we have a really big guest, I’ll tell you what happens. We get one person that kind of shows up and we get lots of people but one person will show up and become a fanatic. They become what Seth Godin would call, member of the tribe. Chris Ducker: Right. Srinivas Rao: And they’ve download every interview but they showed up because of the one interview. And so, it really again, comes down – as I said, it’s all about the audience. You have to think about who that person listening is and what experience do you want them to walk away with? What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to have known? I mean one thing that I pride myself on is providing very actionable things to the people who listen to our show. If you look at our iTunes reviews, it says, the three most commonly used words to describe Blogcast FM are actionable, insightful, and useful. Chris Ducker: Right. And I would tend to agree with that. I would tend to agree with that particularly the first one because as a blogger myself, I do listen to the show very regularly and I also very regularly either have my iPad next to me or a pen and paper next to me. God forbid I’m listening in the car and I’ve got to pull over and type something in on a bloody iPhone or something so I don’t forget it or something. But no, the fact of the matter is, is that it is actionable. And I think that the emphasis that you put on your audience and your listeners is quite admirable because I think there are a lot of people that do podcast for reasons other than that whether it would be financial gain or trying to make themselves a superstar or whatever the case maybe. And I think nine times out of ten, that’s wrong. I do believe it should be about the audience. And one of the things I love about producing this podcast is the emails and the tweets and everything else that comes out when every episode is published. And I can understand where you’re coming from on the big names side of things as well. And let’s talk about that quickly because you have had some big names. I’ve got a couple of questions I want to throw at you that were actually given to me via my community in relation to that. The first one was when you are in the process of making lists of people that you want to have on the show and you come across these big names, first and foremost, how do you invite them on the show? What’s the method that you use to get them attracted to the point of saying yes to coming on the show in the first place? Srinivas Rao: OK. So, this is actually a really, really easy, believe it or not. And it’s something that I think people overlook. Obviously, I’ve got a lot of social proof now that helps because I can throw a lot of names down and say, “OK. Well, this person, this

person, and this person has been on the show.” So what I would recommend to people, don’t just start with the big names. And I’ll tell you one reason why you don’t want to start with the big names. And so, as most of you know that I waited almost 300 interviews before I interviewed Seth Godin. And I’ll tell you why. Because I wanted my interview to be, with Seth, to be one of the best ones he’s ever done. And I’m really happy because a lot – I had set that as a goal which was fairly ambitious goal considering hundreds if not thousands of people have interviewed Seth Godin. And when I got comments from one or two people that said, “OK, I’ve listened to every interview that Seth has done. This is hands down one of the best ones.” That to me was the reason I waited. And the reason I say this is because it allows you to build your trust. And you don’t want to, for a lack of less prude word, blow your load on somebody big when you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re not skilled. Chris Ducker: Right, right. Srinivas Rao: So that’s something that I want people listening to keep in mind is don’t be in such a hurry to get the big names because if you get the small names, it will allow you to build your trust. And here’s the other thing is that relationships make such a huge difference. Some of the smaller names that or people who are smaller names. I mean Chris, you and I met when both of us were fairly unknown in the online world. And now, we’re great friends. Chris Ducker: Well, I’m still unknown. You’re the one with a million downloads in 90 days. Srinivas Rao: Well, I don’t think I’m as known as you think. Let’s actually – I want to reference this because this is another Seth Godin thing. He said, “Stand out is a really tricky phrase.” Because there are six and a half billion people on the planet and within a rounding they don’t know who you are, me, or they don’t even know who Seth Godin is.” My dad has no idea who Seth Godin is and his damn books are sitting on my desk at my house. Chris Ducker: Right, right. Srinivas Rao: So that’s something to think about. Anyways, the point being is that you don’t want to – you don’t want to have this really famous person and then do a terrible interview with them because let’s say, you want to bring them back later on, you’re going to kind of blow it. And of course again, this comes down to the people listening. But how do you get the big people? How you get anybody is by catering to self-interest, OK? And of the things I’ve learned is that the easiest time to get anybody to do a show or an interview is when they have something big coming up. And when people have

books coming out especially because nowadays, it’s no longer trying to get on Oprah because unless you’re like Dr. Phil or sadly, Snooki wrote a New York Times Bestseller, I don’t even watch the Jersey Shore, I just saw that in the bookstore. And unfortunately for mere mortals like you and I, our marketing channels to sell books are the blogger sphere and the social web. So when somebody has a book coming out, they’re always more likely to say yes to an interview. And when they have a product coming out, they’ll say yes or if they’re trying to grow something that they’ve just launched, they’ll say yes. So it really comes down to catering to their self-interest and what value are you providing to them. It’s not about what they can do for you. Chris Ducker: Right. And fundamentally, striking while the iron is hot basically. Srinivas Rao: Exactly. Chris Ducker: That’s what it’s about. So all right, so then how do you – and this was another question. This was a post from somebody just last week on our Facebook page and I’d love to know this one myself because you’ve done so many more interviews than I have, how do you prepare for the recordings themselves? I mean I have my own little click that I’d like to follow but I’m curious to know after doing so many particularly obviously, with some very big names as well. How do you prepare for the actual recordings of the call? Srinivas Rao: So, the simplicity of this might be disturbing to some of you and somewhat disappointing. Believe it or not, I don’t do a lot of research on the people I interview. And I’ll tell you why, because I’m a terrible listener. And here’s the thing. One of the big criticisms I got when I first started the show was that interrupted my guest and I didn’t listen, which every girl I’ve dated has told me that as well. Fortunately, that has changed a little bit. Chris Ducker: Right. And now, you don’t date girls. Srinivas Rao: Yeah. Now, they stop dating me, period. But here’s what I realized is one is that when you script things too much and this isn’t easy for everybody to do. I mean I’ve developed this over time. I do a little bit of research. At most, I’ll read somebody’s About page but beyond that, I mean part of what allows me to ask questions, I mean another thing you’ll probably hear people say about me is that I ask questions that most people wouldn’t even think of. But they are like, wow, that’s exactly what I wanted to know. And my questions are actually built – so literally, I know where I’m going to start. I know where I’m going to end and then what I do is I listen very closely and then I build every question that connects the beginning to the end based on the answers they gave

me. So I’m literally, drawing a map as I go. And sometimes, I’ll get a guest who’s background I don’t really know all that well. And so literally, I’ll have a piece of paper next to me and I’ll be drawing what I call a conversational map to connect to the next topic. And eventually, you have this almost mind-map looking thing. I call it travelling without a guidebook because what happens is that allows you to get off the beaten path and it allows you to have interesting conversations and get to places you might never otherwise get to if you came up with a list of scripted questions ahead of time. So that’s really honestly, how I prepare. I mean I might know something about that person but I don’t send people questions ahead of time even if they ask. I usually will just say, OK, this – I’ll give them a very generalistic questions and say, “OK. Well, this is kind of the basics of what I want to hit.” But I said, “You know what? You’ll see that in an hour, we’re going to cover a lot more than this.” Chris Ducker: Yeah. Srinivas Rao: And of course, a lot of people nowadays have listened to one of my interviews so they kind of have a feel for my style. I mean if you – like Chris, if you are on my show, you and I both know exactly how it’s going to go because we’re friends. And so, in terms of the preparation, here are a few things in terms of preparation that are worth noting. Even right now as we’re talking, I have nothing opened. I don’t have Twitter opened. I don’t have Facebook opened. No distractions. And that’s my personal preference because I know that it’s very easy to chase shining things and get distracted. And I’ve had one or two guests who did that to me during an interview and it really pissed me off. I think it’s disrespectful to the audience when you do that and I think it’s disrespectful to the show guest. So I literally have nothing opened like no Twitter, no Facebook because then it – and that’s one thing that really makes it possible to do what I’m talking about in terms of listening very, very closely so you can build your questions based on their answers. Chris Ducker: Yes. Sorry, I was just checking my Twitter. I’m sorry, man. You walked into. I had to – you opened the door, I had to walk through. But no, you’re right. And believe it or not, I’m not checking my Twitter. I am sitting here literally with our Skype box, the recorder, the little thing or whatever the hell they call it, interface or whatever and just literally a handful of bullet points that I wanted to talk to you about which have very vastly disappeared within the last 30 minutes we were chatting because I know that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Let’s talk about growth. Let’s talk about growth. So you started your podcast, you’re getting going, you’re getting some guests on, if that’s the type of show that you’re working on, and you’ve built up a little bit of a social presence. You got a decent

Facebook page, all these things are starting to come together. How do you take it up to the next level? What are a couple of things that really kind of stood out for you particularly let’s say, in the last 12 months? Srinivas Rao: OK. In the last 12 months … Chris Ducker: And what led up? I guess actually, probably a better question to ask would be what led up to that last final quarter of 2012 where you just went gangbusters? What were a couple of things that really stood out there? Srinivas Rao: So I think this makes a perfect time to tie things back to the conversation you and I had at New Media Expo or BlogWorld in LA. One of the things that fundamentally changed for me was when you gave me the best advice I’ve ever gotten in my life which was to stop reading books about blogging and marketing and to start reading advice on entrepreneurship because I already knew plenty about content creation and marketing. Honestly, I’m one of the people that didn’t know a damn thing about – despite getting an MBA, I didn’t know anything about how to run a business or how to view things with a lens of an entrepreneur. And the moment I started doing that, two things happened. One is that we stopped thinking of ourselves as a podcast. And I said, “OK. You know what? I’m going to build a media company.” And I stopped asking myself, what do the most successful bloggers do? And I started saying, what would NBC do or what Ted Turner do? Chris Ducker: Right. Srinivas Rao: Two very different questions led to different answers, right? Chris Ducker: Right. Srinivas Rao: So that fundamental shift was huge. And then almost immediately after, my business partner, Sid, departed. And David, I mean David had been sitting in the wings sort of quietly waiting. He had always been the natural successor because we did something together in the beginning. And there are two things that happened. One is that I took a four-day drive to Omaha, Nebraska with my sister where we’re listening to the Steve Jobs biography. Of course, some people think that Steve Jobs biography is licensed to be an asshole which it’s not. But it started making all these light bulbs go off my head. So I called David and I said, “You know what? I absolutely hate our site design. I can’t stand it. It makes me want to kill myself.” Because I was like, it doesn’t – somebody had said, “You have all these amazing guests and a site design does not – it doesn’t match up with the caliber of the content.”

Chris Ducker: Right. Srinivas Rao: So that’s something to think about for those of you who are listening. Chris Ducker: And I would tend to agree because obviously, I’ve been listening to the show for that long and before David – when we mentioned David for everybody out there, we’re talking about David Crandall who is now Srinivas’ business partner and just a creative graphic genius. I mean he came on board right at the right time for you and has really helped you sort of take a lot of different areas of the business to the next level, right? Srinivas Rao: He really transformed the brand perception. And I think that – so then what happened is immediately all of a sudden people even we invited to be guest on the show start taking us more seriously. And when people start taking you more seriously, there are two things that happen. One I think – and so, we jokingly talk about the fact that I thought people would tweet our interviews and every famous interview would make us more famous. But what has been happening all along that this was very intentional from the get go is that even though that sort of idea of OK, they’ll tweet every interview and it will go viral didn’t happen, with each interview, a network is being built. And that network keeps growing because more notes keep getting added to it. Every new conversation leads to a different group of people, right? And the way that I set up the platform gave me a very unique opportunity to just sort of cross boundaries and borders in the web in a way that most people never will. I mean you’ve seen the guests on our show. They’re probably as diverse as it gets for any show because we never limited ourselves to one type of person. I’ve had video game bloggers. I’ve had female entrepreneurs who are huge in the hand-made community. But probably one of my favorite guests of all time is my friend, Greg Hartle who walked out his door with ten dollars and a laptop literally, nothing else and rebuilt his life from that. Chris Ducker: Love it. Yeah, I remember that episode. Srinivas Rao: And so, I think what is happening – what really honestly is happening in the last 12 months is that we’re seeing the cumulative effect of all the work we did and the seeds we planted three years ago. And of course, add to that, the fact that my skills as an interviewer have dramatically changed as well. I mean I’ve refined my – you look at writers, right? You can kind of tell that a writer has really started to hit their stride because their voice changes. You can kind of sense it in everything that they’re doing. Chris Ducker: Right.

Srinivas Rao: So – but I will tell you this. Some of the things that David brought on with him is he started really forcing me to evaluate the caliber of guest in a very different way. He said, “You know what?” He said, “It’s time to be very selective about who you bring on the show.” Which I have become much more selective. I mean the one criteria I always have had is what can you teach our audience which that has meant guest that you might have never heard of. And my favorite example of this is somebody – one of the subscribers of our newsletter was a woman named Melissa Caceres who is this just PR and mainstream media genius, OK? And so, I emailed her and I said, “Hey, I just saw your website. I just wanted to say thanks for signing for the newsletter.” Of course, because she is a PR genius, she knew how to pitch me to be on the show. And I am telling you, we could have sold her interview as a product because it was that good. Chris Ducker: Right, right. Srinivas Rao: And that’s another lesson in interviewing people that you might not think are famous. She provided an insane amount of value to our audience. So it came down to those of things. Of course, there are – tactically, there are a couple of things that I did. One is that I shifted all my focus to the email list more than social which I know that you and I have talked about this extensively and a lot of people have been hammering this one home. Chris Ducker: Right. Srinivas Rao: The other thing I did was I went back to every single person who have emailed me that I never responded to which was a jackass thing to do. And now, I’m very diligent about it. But I ask everybody who had been guests or people who I felt that I had chemistry with if they would be willing to leave us with an iTunes review. And now, I think there is something like 200 iTunes reviews. And let’s face it, iTunes is the Bermuda Triangle of data and information. But I know that that has helped because again, that gives you social proof. So when we put our media kit together and we send it to a potential advertiser or a potential sponsor, we could say, “Look, these are what people are saying. This is how many reviews are on iTunes.” And of course, if you see 200 5-star ratings, you’re much more likely to be curious about a podcast in a world of – again, it’s not social but I think it’s like Amazon book reviews, right? If you see that the book has two reviews versus 70, you’re going to think the one with 70 is not going to need as much convincing to buy. Chris Ducker: Right, exactly. And that move that you made where you went back to everybody and you asked them to leave that review – I mean you must have known

obviously, it was going to be a certain amount of people that were just like, “Oh, this guy is a dick. I mean he didn’t reply to my email four months ago or whatever. Forget him sort of thing.” But the fact that you went back and did that also probably woke up a lot of those people as well and convinced them to at least check the place, check the podcast out one more time. Srinivas Rao: Well, you know what’s funny, is a lot of them had been listening the entire times. So fortunately for me, I didn’t piss most of them off. Chris Ducker: OK. Srinivas Rao: Here is the other thing that you got to think about is that … Chris Ducker: So hang on. Let me just get this right. I called you a dick on my podcast. Srinivas Rao: I was amazed by how cool all of them were about it because honestly, it was a dick move. Like there’s no question that it was kind of – it wasn’t cool to do that and I don’t recommend anybody to force things that way. But fortunately, they were so happy with the value of the show I’ve been providing them that they didn’t care. Chris Ducker: Right. Srinivas Rao: And this is one thing but it is interesting about podcast, there are a lot of people who you will never hear from but they’ve been listening. I’ve had people contact me two years later. He said, “Oh, I’ve been listening since two years ago to your show.” And I’m like, “Wait a minute. Really?” You reached – now, our audience is worldwide. I mean it’s mind-blowing. And the other thing is we don’t see iTunes reviews from other countries. I just realized that the other day. Chris Ducker: No, you don’t. No, you don’t. And if for instance, if my iTunes account is a Philippines account because I’m living in the Philippines, I can review and write that but it has nothing, it has no effect at all on the US listings or vice – I mean why they won’t just put them all together, I don’t get it. Maybe they will do at some point in the future. But that just for me, I can’t see the benefit at all in keeping those separate in any way, shape, or form. But I wanted to tell a funny story because it popped into my mind as we’re chatting here. And you talked about where people will send you an email or a tweet, “Oh, I’ve been listening for a year and a half and all this sort of stuff. I’ve downloaded 60 episodes in this stuff.” I had something happened to me which just knocked me on my ass about, I don’t know, maybe four or five months ago. And this was before I started the New Business Podcast, OK? Because we’ve only been going for a couple of months here. So, I’m in Starbucks here in Cebu, in the Philippines and it’s one of those Starbucks

where there’s like a ground floor level where you walk in and then you go a little flight of steps that goes up to like an overlooking balcony kind of area where they have a lot of stations for laptops and all the rest of it in there. So, I’m downstairs and I’ve got a pretty deep voice, a pretty loud voice and I’m ordering and then the guys in there know me, “Hi, Chris. How are you doing?” The usual, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah so I’m chatting away with everything. This guy comes down and this is a white guy. So foreigners over here, we stick out a little bit regardless of where you’re from in the world or what color of your skin is, if you’re not Filipino, you’re going to stand out. It is what it is. So, I’m standing there and this guy comes up to me with an Australian accent and he says to me, “Is your name Chris Ducker?” And I’m like, “Oh my God! They found me. What’s going on here?” And I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, it is.” And he goes, “Mate, I’ve been listening to your podcasts for the last two years and I think you are fantastic.” And I was like, this is insane. I’m in Cebu. It’s not like I’m standing in some place in the middle of a conference with podcast listeners or something. The guy just happened to be here on vacation and he heard me. He was like, “I know your voice anywhere, mate.” And it blew me away. I was so happy. I bought the guy coffee and sat down and spoke to him for half an hour. It just blew me away. Srinivas Rao: Let me comment on this because you mentioned something that I think is very special about podcasting, right? You mentioned that the guy recognized your voice. Chris Ducker: Yeah. Srinivas Rao: And that – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a comment similar to that. My friends, Clay Hebert, he was telling me, he said, “Dude, you may not know this but you walk around with me in New York every single day.” Chris Ducker: Right, right. Srinivas Rao: Or a friend was like, “You’re my daily commute to work.” And it’s really – because I think that when somebody hears your voice because 95% of communication is done verbally, it creates a very different bond than them just reading your words. And that is something that is very different about podcasting. Chris Ducker: Yeah, it is. Srinivas Rao: You just – especially because they hear you on a daily basis. When you got this body of work, people – literally, you become their daily commute. I mean I always tell people like, “Wow! I’m like lame version of Howard Stern.” Chris Ducker: Yeah, without anywhere near as many hot women around you, all the money obviously.

Srinivas Rao: Yeah, exactly. Chris Ducker: You got a better hairstyle, I’ll give you that. Srinivas Rao: That’s about – I think that maybe the only thing I have on at this point. Chris Ducker: Let’s switch gears again. Srinivas Rao: All right. Chris Ducker: I want to talk about this a little bit. We’re coming to the end of our time together but I definitely want to get this in because this is a part of that empire, it’s part of that media empire we’re talking about. And I almost feel like and my God, I’ve been saying this so much recently with my guests that I feel like we could like talk for hours about all this stuff and I’m definitely going to have you come back again at some point in the future. But I want to talk about the things that you’ve done with print. Srinivas Rao: OK. Chris Ducker: Because you’re known fundamentally as a podcast host but you have spread those wings recently. You’ve done some eBooks and manifestos, some free downloads, and all that sort of type of stuff. Let’s talk about Kindle. Srinivas Rao: OK. Chris Ducker: And what that’s done for you. I know you’ve got the book there from – what was it? Blog to Book Deal, which is a kind of collection of lots of different stuff from all the authors that you’ve interviewed on the Blogcast FM but a lot of other stuff as well. What do you think of the Kindle platform in general and what difference has it made for you and your brands to have a book that is a relatively well-received book on the platform? Srinivas Rao: So I think if somebody is going into the Kindle platform with the idea that Kindle is going to make them rich, we should stop them right now before they think that. So let’s dispel that myth. Kindle does not make you rich. Books don’t make you rich. I think we all know that. All you have to do is talk to a published author and they’ll tell you that. Chris Ducker: Right. Srinivas Rao: But what they do give you is credibility and an ability to reach another audience. So, we’ve made some mistakes in launching our Kindle book. And I learned this from chatting with Guy Kawasaki. We assumed that our existing audience were our buyers. And what we should have done is given them the book for free in exchange for reviews and then let them raise – basically, leverage the existing platform

to raise the rankings of the book and then let it get sales organically. Chris Ducker: Right. Srinivas Rao: Now, that being said, has the book led to other things? Yes! People have contacted me because of that book. James Altucher who is a huge well-known writer and blogger found the book and thanks to him because he contacted me about the book. I got him as a guest on my show and I’ve been trying to get him as a guest and I couldn’t get him before because he gets so much email. But he contacted me. So yes, that book has definitely opened up doors. What I think about Kindle is that there is an opportunity there. I think that you have to take your craft seriously. I think if you’re thinking that it’s just about slapping a PDF together and throwing it up there, you’re going to fail. We have some criticisms about even our Blog to Book Deal book which we put a shitload of work into. It’s funny because I have some actual disagreements with some of the pundits who say, “OK. You got to treat it exactly like you’re publishing a book.” My friend, Colin Wright, does a particularly brilliant job at marketing on Kindle. He’s another guy you guys should all check out because he doesn’t go through the launch process. He hates it everything about launches and that’s why he likes Kindle so much because he can avoid all the marketing. And what he found was that it wasn’t one book that makes you. And this is what we really have found to be true. It’s the portfolio of that. So really, to take advantage of Kindle, you have to have a portfolio of books. Now, this is where it gets interesting for me is that I think the definition of what we consider a book is changing very quickly. Because before, your idea of a book was a hundred plus pages, print, on the shelf at the Barnes and Noble. And now, there are people who are writing books that are maybe 60 pages, maybe 25,000 words. A great example of this is and a guy that I just interviewed last night, a guy named Kamal Ravikant wrote this book called Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It, well-known adviser, investor, and venture capitalist. His brother is the founder of AngelList, right? And that book was self-published. It has 260 reviews on Amazon. It’s the top self-published self-help book. I think it does better than some actual like traditional published self-help book. And it’s about 60,000 words. You can read the whole thing. It’s 60 pages. So what that means is that all of us have accessibility to create work like this that we’ve never before. But that’s not an excuse to put garbage out in the world. So it’s again, all the things that a publisher with other resources that you might get from a publisher, are accessible to you like never before. Chris Ducker: Right. And I mean, there is – Kindle in general, and I have a book on

Kindle, The Definitive Guide to Outsourcing to the Philippines, which has been very well-received and has got a good amount of reviews and ratings and stuff like that. But I mean, I don’t think that it’s done a whole lot to increase my platform or my brand. But what it has done is enabled me to create a resource with people that in a very niched-down niche such as people that are looking to outsource to the Philippines specifically, it really is a go-to source. And what I really wanted to try and do there was to try and create something that was of extremely high value because I noticed that within that realm on that type of subject, there is so much crap up on Amazon Kindle platform that I thought, “Well, you know what? I am going to do this but I’ve got to make it really, really good. I’ve got to make it very specific and I’ve got to solve specific problems.” And I do that. And you go to Amazon.com now and you type in the word outsourcing, it pops up straight at the top of the list. Srinivas Rao: Yeah. Chris Ducker: So, that has really helped for sure. I absolutely love, love, love, love, love the idea of giving that away for free. I did it. It worked for sure. And I’m full on saying right now live on this show, if I get to the point of doing another Amazon Kindle book. I can tell you something right now, for every single listener of the New Business Podcast, you’ll get a free copy because I think that’s a phenomenal marketing ploy right there. And you’re absolutely right then. Before we know what’s happening, it’s listed on everybody’s pages where it said, the customers also bought, you might like to view this, all this sort of type of stuff. And I think that’s huge. That’s a massive take-away right there. So, how many books have you actually got on Kindle now? Srinivas Rao: Let’s see, a lot of our books have been based on repurpose content. We’ve taken our interviews and we found – the challenge with that was that it was expensive to do that because the transcription – when you add up the cost of transcription, the cost of editing, the cost of cleaning it up, the cover design. We looked at designing a system and a process and we thought, “OK, we’re not big enough and we don’t bring enough revenue to work this way.” So honestly, I just didn’t see – it wasn’t as valuable as we thought it would be. I mean Blog to Book Deal was a really good move because we knew so many people are interested in that even people who weren’t necessarily Blogcast FM listeners. So we knew from a title perspective that we have a lot going for us there. Now, I think in total, we have three. And I’m working on a new one that is called The Small Army Strategy but it’s going to be based on content that I’ve already written but it’s not going to be interview-based. In fact, what I’m going to do is I’m going to – I

bought the domain SmallArmyStrategy.com and I’m going to give the whole thing away to my email list for free. And so, I’m using it to build my email list because I’m not expecting my existing audience to buy it. And then in the free PDF or whatever, I’ll mention, this is available on Amazon as well. You can leave your review there if you’ve enjoyed it. And so, there will be a link to Amazon because I’m more interested in building my email list than I am in selling a 99-cent book. Chris Ducker: Right. Srinivas Rao: Because here’s the thing, right? If I build the email list and somebody buys a $100 product versus a 99-cent book, that’s way more valuable. Chris Ducker: I agree. Srinivas Rao: So giving away the book for free is honestly – like I think my friend, Marcus Sheridan had a really good point. He said, “You know what? I’m not interested in selling a $10 eBook. I’d rather sign a $10,000 client.” Chris Ducker: Right, right. No. It all depends on your personal goals and stuff like that. But I mean, I agree with you. I think sometimes you got to look at the bigger picture and get away – pride steps in a lot where you said, “You slaved hours over this.” And all this sort of stuff. For me personally, I think that at the end of the day, you’ve got to try and keep your eyes a little bit more wide open and your focus being more on the long-term plan for your business rather than anything else. And so yeah, I agree with you in every way. So look, we’ve really kind of run down to the end of our time here. And I want to thank you very much for all of the fantastic knowledge you’ve imparted on us. For everyone, there will be links to everything that we’ve discussed, we’ve gone over a lot, over on the show notes, ChrisDucker.com/episode10, transcription download and all the rest of it over there. A couple of things I do want to do though is first and foremost, I want to thank Srinivas publicly for hooking me up with the lady who became my book agent, my literary agent. Her name is Kristina Holmes and she has been fantastic in working with me on my book proposal, going through everything that we worked on. And I’m very happy to say that I did have several offers from a number of different publishers in the United States for my book. I signed and sealed that deal with one of those publishers right at the end of 2012. And if it hadn’t been for Srinivas and making that initial introduction, it might not have gotten to where it already has and here I am literally in the course of writing this thing now. So Srinivas, thank you again. I know we’ve spoken on Skype anyway since then but thank you very much for making that intro and for having the, I guess, the brilliance

inside of you to understand how fantastic of an author I really am going to be. No, but very seriously, thank you for making the intro, man. I really appreciate it. Srinivas Rao: My pleasure. Chris Ducker: So, last question. What’s your number one tip to doing business in today’s economy? Srinivas Rao: Well, I think it’s very fitting that you finished with what you were saying about me making that intro because to me, the thing that has been fundamental to how I’ve built my platform has been to build relationships with people. And to give so much that you don’t think about what you’re going to – I mean Chris, I don’t have my book deal. And Kristina is my friend and I had her on my show. And I don’t think I’m anywhere near my book deal but that hasn’t stopped me from literally introducing as many people to her as I could every time I came across somebody that was a friend of mine or I thought was awesome. And I said, “OK. You know what? This person should be a published author.” I always introduce her. And what do I get out of it? I jokingly said, “Chris, you better put my name in the acknowledgments.” But in all honesty, I’m not trying to get anything out of it. I don’t need to get anything out of it because I thought about what James Altucher said to me, he said, “You just give and give and give.” And here’s the thing, is that if you are giving with the intention of getting something back then it’s going to come across as insincere. Like it really honestly – for some reason, I’m becoming less and less interested in writing a book. Don’t ask me why. It’s probably because all the authors that I’ve been interviewing are trying to convince me not to do a published book. But what I realized is that you just keep giving. And what you get back will be immeasurable. And the thing is you can’t sit around waiting or counting or keeping score. You just have to give. Connect people to each other. Introduce people to each other. And here’s the thing. When somebody is spending what is absolutely the most valuable currency in the online world with you which is their attention, the thing that you can do to be successful is to give all of yours to them and to treat them like the most important people in the people because they are. Chris Ducker: Boom! Love it. Value-bomb dropped right here by my main man, Srinivas Rao from Blogcast FM. Srinivas, thanks very much one more time man for coming by and spending a little time with us. I very much appreciate it. Srinivas Rao: It’s absolutely my pleasure. It’s fun to be on the other side of the mic for

a change. Chris Ducker: Yeah, right. All right. So everybody else out there, thank you very much for tuning in. Once again, all of the notes, links, everything over at ChrisDucker.com/episode10. And we will be back again a couple of weeks from now with episode 11 of the New Business Podcast. Until then, stay sexy, work hard, and I will no doubt tweet, email, like, or just rub you up the wrong way online at some point in the near future. Until then, take good care. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye for now. If you want to catapult the growth of your business in today’s economy, you need to join my free 7-Day New Business Bootcamp for actionable tips on blogging, online video, outsourcing, podcasting, social media, and much, much more. Just visit ChrisDucker.com for more details and instant access. I’ll see you on the inside.

Show Notes (Including Resources) Available at: http://www.chrisducker.com/episode10