How Entrepreneurs Can Leverage Private Podcasts for Business Success With Lindsay Padilla
As the podcast industry continues to evolve, it gives both podcasters and entrepreneurs new opportunities to meet our people where they’re at. A perfect example? Private podcasting, a fairly new trend, is a unique way to serve your business, bolster your marketing efforts, and connect with your ideal clients in a way that is not on a screen.
In today’s episode, I’m chatting with Dr. Lindsay Padilla of Hello Audio, a private podcast hosting platform that makes it simple to embrace audio as its entirely own format.
We cover everything from private podcasting’s various use cases to how it offers creators so much more versatility than traditional means of podcast or video production. If you want to start a podcast or incorporate audio as a format into your business, this might just be the easiest way to do it!
Start converting your listeners into leads and clients for your business! Grab my FREE Guide to structuring your episodes for sales with our best tips and a guide for solo episodes. Download today to get started!
What’s in this episode…
[06:46] How Hello Audio came to be and the various use cases of private podcasts for entrepreneurs
[17:55] Private podcast production as a vehicle for faster asset creation and testing new ideas
[22:35] How you can create a private podcast by repurposing existing offers and content
[29:45] What makes Hello Audio the best platform to set up a private podcast
Are you ready to build your podcast strategy, simplify your marketing, and finally make your podcast work for you? Join the Strategic Podcast Academy, my signature group program that’ll support you with monthly training, resources, and an amazing community!
About lindsay padilla:
Dr. Lindsay Padilla is an ex-community college professor who accidentally started a business while on the tenure track. Now, as the CEO and co-founder of the Hello Audio software, which takes your content and creates private audio feeds to make learning on the go much easier for your people, Lindsay challenges online industry norms of unfinished courses and unconsumed content with her product.
All of her business ideas were born out of her tenure-track years teaching adults online at a community college, the ridiculous amount of learning she's done in all things education, and the years spent growing her course creation business online
Connect with lindsay:
Listen to Lindsay’s Private Podcast
LINKS:
Grab your free Guide to Episodes for Sales
Join the Strategic Podcast Academy!
The Transcript for Share, Strategize, & Shine:
ep 152: How Entrepreneurs Can Leverage Private Podcasts for Business Success With Lindsay Padilla
[00:00:51] Caroline Hull: Hi there and welcome to Share, Strategize and Shine. I'm your host, Caroline Hull, a podcast strategist and CEO of Wild Home Podcasting. I've built my entire career through podcasts by sharing my experience using strategic systems and shining a light on the power of podcasting. If you are looking to cultivate leads for your membership, group program, or consulting services, I'm here to help you create a holistic and integrative podcast strategy that will let your business thrive. Let's dive in. [00:01:23][31.8]
[00:01:23] Caroline Hull: Hello and welcome back to Share, Strategize and Shine. Today we're talking about something that I think is going to become more and more and more important, not only in the podcast world, but marketing as well. And that is private podcast. So a private podcast is a podcast that is not available to the public, right? Ergo, it's private. So how can you use a private podcast? And what are some of the best ways to get started if it's something that you're interested in? Today I am talking to Lindsay Padilla of Hello Audio. She is an ex community college professor who accidentally started a business while on the tenure track. Now she's a CEO and co-founder of Hello Audio Software, which takes your content and creates private audio feeds to make learning on the go so much easier for your people. And you're going to love her story about how they started Hello Audio and some of the things that they went through to create this amazing platform for private podcasts. So on this episode, we're going to do just that. We're going to talk about her story. We're also going to talk about private podcasts in general, why you should think about having them as a part of your business and your courses, memberships, offers, those kinds of things. And then how to get started. So if you've been thinking like me that you need to start some private podcast for some things in your business, this is a really great episode to get you on the right track. Let's dive in. Hi, Lindsay. Thank you so much for coming on the show. [00:03:00][96.5]
[00:03:01] Lindsay Padilla: I'm really excited to be here. I always love coming in, talking about private podcasts. [00:03:04][2.8]
[00:03:05] Caroline Hull: I mean, I'm super excited to dive into this with you because all my listeners know I'm always looking for the next thing I want to do with my podcast. And I've kind of dabbled in private podcasts over the years, but I got some ideas up my sleeves and so it just seemed like a good time to have the conversation, not only for my sake, but just for everyone else, because I think there's a lot of value to private podcasts, which we're going to dive into today. So before we do that, can you just introduce yourselves and tell everyone a little bit about who you are and what you do? [00:03:36][31.0]
[00:03:37] Lindsay Padilla: Sure. Yeah. And I'm loving the timing of this episode. We can we can make 2024 the year of private podcasts. Do it. Let's do it. Cool. So I always have, like, a long story and a short story. I'll give you maybe the medium perfect. [00:03:50][13.3]
[00:03:51] Caroline Hull: I love it. [00:03:51][0.5]
[00:03:52] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah. So I was a past college professor in a previous life. I taught community college, I taught sociology, and I left that when I accidentally started an online business. And that was its own journey. But I essentially fell into helping other online business owners teach because there was a lot of stuff about marketing and creating courses, but not a lot about actually teaching. And that was perfect in my wheelhouse. I taught online at my community college. A big portion of my sections were online, so that was perfect. I did that for a few years and in gosh, early 2019 I realized that there was this thing called private podcasting that was very, very new. And I was seeing it pop up in some Facebook groups where people are talking about memberships and delivering their members audio files and and husbands writing code to be able to do that. And I was like immediately when I saw the option of having a course be audio only or audio as a supplement to a video. I was like, I knew the teacher in me was like, That's what people need. Even though I had been telling people, put an MP3 file under every video to hit all the learners. And the reality was that was not how people use their phone, right, or like to consume audio. So it wasn't really until I had enrolled in my first course that was a great course. The teacher is more of like a lecturer type reader and she just had videos of her YouTube like talking to the camera and I had to log into some weird site to do it, and I was just like, I just like listening to her. She was inspirational and I'm like, Why is this not a podcast? And so once I kind of put those two things together, I had my husband Derek, who's head of product at Hello Audio, but he also is like a little techie but like not like an engineer or anything by trade. He was a physicist also committing college. [00:05:39][107.0]
[00:05:39] Caroline Hull: Oh my God. [00:05:39][0.2]
[00:05:40] Lindsay Padilla: And I had him look at it and I was like, Should we build this? And so he knew enough to kind of see what was out there. Took him three or four months. He's a researcher. And the second he came back and told me and is like, we have to build it, the other podcast companies that are coming out with private podcasting are never going to make it easy to put a course in a podcast. And that happened in August. And I made a Facebook post, told people I was like, Hey, do you wish your favorite courses were in a podcast and you could just binge it? And people were like, Yes, 400 comments later, $30,000 in lifetime licenses. That's how we launched Hello Audio. We took the year of 2020 to build it, you know, found a developer and yeah, launched and had subscriptions people paying us in November 2020. So coming up on our third year of of being in business. [00:06:29][49.2]
[00:06:30] Caroline Hull: Okay I have so much to say about this. First of all, this is amazing. I don't know why it feels like to me. So I've been podcasting for ten years now. It feels like to me like you've been around longer. [00:06:43][13.4]
[00:06:44] Lindsay Padilla: Oh, that's funny. Yeah, No. [00:06:46][1.5]
[00:06:46] Caroline Hull: But it's funny because I also remember when you launched Hello Audio because I was paying very close attention. So it's like, wait a minute, this is going to be really neat. So that's that's so funny that what a wild ride from being professors and a scientist, it sounds like, to this. So what made you I mean, you kind of said it when you were telling the story, but I'd love if you dig in a little bit deeper. What made you say private podcasts and Hello Audio like this is what we want to throw everything into. [00:07:12][25.9]
[00:07:13] Lindsay Padilla: That was a journey. I'm not going to say it was like the second I knew, but you know, if you've been in business long enough and especially for yourself, I think you have those moments where you're like, I'm on to something and you have that that gut feeling and, you know, making a post like that, being in business three or four years in my own like personal brand and my own consulting and stuff and the popularity of it, I just knew it was good. And what I didn't know clearly was how to build a software company. So I knew there was going to take some learning. And I'm not going to lie the beginning of that, gosh, the end of that year into 2020, we were actually debating. I had I had talked to a couple mentors. I had talked to people I trust. I talked to somebody pretty big and deep in podcasting, Harry Duran, who I think actually was a partner, part of like squad gas, possibly. Either way, I talked to some people that I know pretty well in the industry and they were like, Well, you don't have to build it from scratch. What if you partnered with somebody and shared with them how you see this use case like developing in this group of what's the word like niche that could use it in this way? Because the reason why we knew we had to build it initially or like it had to be created was podcast hosting companies are built for podcasters and not all creators are podcasters. I think all podcasters are creators, right? But they're not not all creators are podcasters, the other mediums that they choose to. So we we knew as creators that we would have different features and needs and way that it would be set up. So all that to be said, we actually worked with Glow FM who they were bought by Libsyn 2021. I think we were working with them. Amirah was amazing. She's a great CEO. I was meeting with her pretty regularly telling her about this use case and her company as a startup was in this mode of like trying to figure out exactly what route they wanted to take. And so, you know, those talks lasted a while and. I look back at that time. As somebody who had an imposter syndrome. Of thinking that who you know, who am I to create a software company? I know nothing about it. But so more of the story about how it transpired. We were pretty much going to work with GLOW. We didn't know what the relationship would be like. She had to talk to her board, so it was taking a long time. We had a lifetime license user reach out in early February of 2020 and say, when's this going to get built. I need it like because we were manually doing it for people, essentially creating feeds and then hiding the RSS from like to be able to be found. Yeah. And which was fine to do for people that helped us get this thing off the ground. But at the end we knew we had to do software or give them the place to do it right. And she's like, Well, I could help you build it. Long story short, we worked together for a couple of months, didn't work out with her, but either way she made me realize like, it was possible. And that's actually what made us step away from the talks with Glow FM and just like actually decide to build it. When someone came forward and said, I can help you develop that didn't turn out to be the best relationship. And she ended up taking the code and building her own product. But that's a whole other conversation we don't need to get into. The startup world is crazy either way. Like, I'm grateful for that experience because it just made me build it and realize that we were the people that had to build it like no one else was going to build it in that way. [00:10:30][197.1]
[00:10:31] Caroline Hull: What a lesson, I think to just on like taking risks and, you know, following the ideas that you have and seeing where they lead. And like I love how you were open to collaboration and that those collaborations actually led you to realizing what you needed to do in the end. So I think there's a lot of power in your story, just about, like you said, startups, that business in general and just what we all go through. [00:10:54][22.5]
[00:10:55] Lindsay Padilla: 100%. And I and I'll say this too, I had a lot more confidence being several years in. Oh yeah. Like to be able to say, you know what I mean? And I think when the world shut down and all that stuff, then I decided to shut down my personal brand and go all in. So to answer your question about like, when did you decide this was going to be the thing? I didn't really know. It took several months, but eventually we came to that decision. Yeah, that's. [00:11:18][22.9]
[00:11:18] Caroline Hull: Awesome. So for the listeners who are listening and you can jump in at any time if I'm describing this incorrectly, but what I love so much about Hello Audio, so it's a private podcast host, which is so great. I love the link sharing. I think this is my favorite thing about it because I can share a link and then they can pick how they want to listen to it first of all. But then you can also control who has access to the private podcast. So as you've been working in this area with private podcasts, what are some successful ways that you're seeing private podcasts being used by business owners? [00:11:53][34.9]
[00:11:54] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah, that's the coolest part about doing this. When I first launched it, that Facebook post that I mentioned, it was called Podcaster Course, like the original use case was turn your course into a podcast so people actually finish the content boom. And then when you start to think like a marketer and realize you just kind of open this whole kind of can of worms, if you will. And I remember I don't remember exactly how far after podcast your course was. It was probably the day we came up with that name. I bought the domain to podcast everything podcast. Your book podcast was your summit podcast and I still hang on to that even though we don't use it. But I remember the exact we had a couple of margaritas. We were at a local taco shop in downtown San Diego, and my husband and I were like buying all of them. I love that. And I think it's whether or not you use those kind of domains. It's more like, Oh, this has a ton of use cases. Yeah. And to be fair, we came up with, you know, five or six and those are those are still probably our top, but our users have come up with even more, you know, unique ways of using it than I even had considered prior things like podcasting or newsletter, you know, podcasting with your private client, your coaching calls, what else? Yeah. So I mean, I could go down a long list, but for the most part we like to at Hello Audio talk about the two main features are like I guess features. Is that the right word? The two use cases in a business and one is marketing. So the front end, how are you going to attract people and the other is is in-house write fulfillment, whether that's courses or one on one work or, you know, internal team stuff. And so we kind of put them in those two camps. And then when you think about it like that, then you can say, okay, cool, how can you use private podcast and marketing essentially as far as we are concerned and what we've seen, almost any type of launch event or type of marketing event could be turned into audio because there's usually some delivery method, whether it's writing or video. Right? And so you just look at it as another format. And I think that's what we didn't truly know what we were doing when we came up with this, where we're like, Oh, we're welcoming people back to audio as a medium. It's not it's not just podcasting, it's right. Yeah, podcasting is the app and the place that people already go to, but it's really just audio as a medium. Yeah, and I like to tell the story too, of my grandmother when, you know, she knew I left teaching, she knew that I was doing this weird thing online but and she never truly understand what that was. She's like, I don't know how you left a professional gig like that, but cool. Like you did it. You, Lindsay. And then I build the software company, and I was explaining it to her and she doesn't get podcast. She she's a little older, knew that they were popular. Lots of her friends listened to stuff, knew where it was on her phone, but personally didn't know how to subscribe or anything. And I was like, Yeah, so we do podcast. So she's like, okay, I think I get podcasts and then she has some other questions. And I was like, Well, you know, we take people's courses that are video courses and we put them in a podcast app so they can listen. And she's like, Oh, you know, that's how I became a realtor, was books on tape. And I was like, Exactly. Now I'm like, It's has been around forever, right? It's just podcasting. And these players, you know, that we have on our phones, that's the medium that people are getting or the way that people are getting the episodes or the or the audio. And so we're just basically converting the podcast app into a form of an inbox. We like to say that it's an inbox where you could find all your content and what's cool. And, you know, the more we talk to more of our users, you are kind of all in on audio. I mean, building their entire business is in audio, like that's how they deliver. They're like, my people know and they only have to go to one place and that's where I am. And the whole feed is filled up with her course content, her free content, her masterclasses, her webinars, and she takes over a feed. And I was like, Yep. And, and the thing that is great about it that again, we didn't really get is like it's not about finding different logins or like, you don't have to log in, you don't have to like go to these different places. It's literally in one place. Yeah. So essentially to go from podcasts as a course or turning your course in a podcast to the whole gamut of basically any content that you deliver probably could also be in an audio format for folks who would prefer to listen in that way. [00:16:17][262.4]
[00:16:17] Caroline Hull: I love that so much. You know, I hadn't even thought about that possibility of when you do convert so much into audio and how that makes so much sense because then your people would be trained like that's how I receive the content and that it's right there in one place. I will say I've, I've been like listening to a lot of private podcasts lately, just checking them out, how they look, y'know, what they're putting into them. And it's been really interesting for me to test this all out because I'm, I'm a podcaster, I've done podcasts for years, but I really love consuming content that way as well. And. And, you know, I sign up for courses and they're video and I'm like, they're usually playing in the background over my screen. I'm usually not watching it, you know? And I think the ones that I've really loved lately is I got a lead magnet that led into a membership. And it was really neat because she dripped out the episodes. So it wasn't like you got all the episodes. It was like you subscribed. And every day I would check to see if there was a new episode. I loved that. And then I've been seeing a lot of audio summit, which I am very, very interested in loving that because I just really am not a huge fan of video summits, like as a participant and as somebody who wants to be in summits. I'm like, No, thank you. But that audio, yes, please. Like I can do that. So those are kind of some two ways that I've I've seen recently, newer kind of creative ways. And so I love that you mentioned that because now my brain is just like spinning of how can I live in people's podcast apps as all. [00:17:50][92.9]
[00:17:50] Lindsay Padilla: Audio take over the things I like to say as logic over the. Yeah. Mm hmm. [00:17:54][4.1]
[00:17:55] Caroline Hull: So do you think, you know, with with podcasts, public podcasts and shows, there's a real emphasis on like production and how we're recording, how we're, we're editing all of that. Do you find that that still applies to private podcasts or is there a little bit more leeway, do you think? [00:18:11][16.6]
[00:18:12] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah, I think that's a really good question and fair. There's a couple of ways I can come at this. The first is a lot of people are telling us that, you know, some people who have been scared about a public podcast because of that feeling and pressure of productivity or like productivity for weekly, right. You know, type of a show inconsistency, but also that production level that they start with a private podcast and then spins off to something public. And this might be somebody who's a little more, you know, scared of it. But I think to your question about production levels, yeah, I mean, you know, the more saturated I guess podcast market is you do hear about shows that are, you know, super amazing and overproduced or whatever, I guess not over. I think there's a lot of pressure to go video right now with in the public podcasting space. And so yeah I think when you go private it, you know the content is really important. I think it's really important in both avenues. I think public podcast, obviously it's really important too, but with private, someone's kind of raising their hand, right? And I think with private podcasts they tend to be very focused topics. So this is also what a lot of people love about private podcasts is it's like, Oh, I'll sign up for this lead magnet because it solves this problem for the creator. You know, a short 3 to 5 episode that gets that, you know, yeah. Listener from A to B is a really valuable piece of content. And so when it comes to like, should that be well produced, I like to think about it from the creators perspective. Podcasts are so much easier to get out than video, anything video. And I would argue even anything, even a PDF is hard to get out because you have to like make it look a certain way where a private podcast is like you and a mic and that's it. And what's cool about that is that asset creation is so much faster. And so we like to say that the ROI for getting something out there as a creator and into the hands of your people audio is unbeatable because of that. And so when you think about it from that perspective, getting it out there is really the most important thing. Yeah, and then audio ends up being easier to edit and update and change. And so you want to update an intro, you want to add music. Now you have 100 people that have raised their hand and said, I like this. So now you as a creator can start to invest some time into it. Could you make them a little bit tighter? Could you? Yeah, add an intro, an outro, a little whatever they call those transition noises in podcasting, you know, could you make it like a little more, add some more flair, update the cover, whatever. I think then now you have a proven asset. It's almost like you can send out the beta really quickly. Maybe your mic isn't as good, but now, you know, people have raised their hand and said, I like this. Now you have evidence that it's a piece of content that you should, you know, really that's working for you, I should say. So I think for the most part, like the quick answer. It doesn't matter as much, I think, because the content is really important and people are raising their hands to get it. I have. [00:21:09][176.8]
[00:21:09] Caroline Hull: That. Yeah, I really love that because I do think even, you know, coming at it from a as a podcast manager and strategists, when I did my private podcast before, I think what I didn't like about them was I was trying to make them too perfect and I was trying to I was like writing show notes for them and like getting just like, like totally producing them like I would in normal episodes. I love this idea of it actually allows for a little bit more. Play with your audio and your episodes and how you want to present that contrasting. Yeah, I love that so much because, you know, with the live stuff, it's hard. It's hard to test too much because once it's out there, it's generally out there. I mean, you can replace a file, but still it's not the same. So I do love that concept of, you know, it doesn't have to be perfect. It's more about getting the content to the people. So I know for me, I'm sitting here telling myself, as you were talking, like, I need to just jot down the ideas and get them rolling. Like, Why haven't I done this yet? I'm a Podcaster show podcast, but that's a whole other episode. [00:22:08][58.8]
[00:22:10] Lindsay Padilla: Oh my gosh. [00:22:10][0.5]
[00:22:12] Caroline Hull: Are your podcast episode set up to help you sell your membership group programs and consulting services. And I'm not talking about selling it in a sleazy way. I'm talking about creating episodes that are engaging. Create connection between you and your listeners and highlight your expertise to start creating episodes for sales. Get my free guide by heading to WildHomePodcasting.com/sales. [00:22:33][21.1]
[00:22:35] Caroline Hull: So if someone is listening to this and they're they're saying, Oh my gosh, I need this, this is exactly the next step for me. What do you suggest as far as starting? I know, like we just talked about the audio and just sitting down and recording, but what are some first steps for creating a private podcast, whether it's a lead magnet or it's like a supplement for something else, a membership, a course, what would you say would be the place to start? [00:23:03][27.5]
[00:23:04] Lindsay Padilla: I am big on starting without You already have like that is especially in business. Yeah. You know, I talked about we kind of talked about testing out kind of a new idea or something like that. It does take a lot longer as a content creator to build something from scratch, you know, even if it is you want to riff, you still have to outline it. You still have to like think about your ideal audience and you know, the purpose of it in your business. So if you have something that's already working, we just launched a public podcast ourselves called Launch Your Private Podcast. Yeah, we are interviewing users and sprinkling one. We're probably going to do a couple other styles of episodes a little bit later, but for now we're interviewing users and how, you know, some of their most successful private podcasts are going, getting some behind the scenes on that creation. And you know, the reality is using something that already exists is going to be the fastest way for you to get something out there. But also you have something proven. So you know, your audience likes that topic. And we just had somebody on who is like a nutritionist and kind of a habit coach, and she basically repurposed one of her popular masterclasses all about meal planning. And it was all about how you can on every Sunday meal prep in 20 minutes. And even me and Norah were both like, Can we sign up for this? Yeah, this is perfect because we know how great audio is. Like if it was a PDF or if it was a video, I wouldn't do it right. So we signed up immediately. But B, she was talking about how yes, it is her most popular lead magnet ever because of both those things, the fact that it's audio and like and she goes, I literally repurposed it. I did divide it up. There was points in the workshop that I had done live that broke it up, but she goes, I didn't even rerecord it yet. And so she's like, I could make it better. I did record an intro episode and said, This is taken from a live masterclass that I did. And she goes, Yeah, I'm sitting here looking at this on my to do list, but people are consuming it. It's her highest converting thing. It leads to people in her coaching and her one on one coaching and she's like, Why change something that I don't have to change yet? Yeah, that kind of even answers the question you asked prior. So my advice is always to start with something you already have. If that works for you. Right. So most of the time, another way to look at this, too, that was obviously a lead magnet. Another way to look at this is like as a business owner, I think recognizing that wowing and blowing the socks off our customers is a really important part of our business, right? Because when you impress people that have already given you money, they're out there singing your praises. So by adding just adding a private podcast version of a of course, or some sort of offer that you have, while you might not see more money because you did that, the idea that you're giving that to them and your people are going to love that. And so even starting with something like that where it's not a new offer or a new asset, you're literally just supplementing material that is already in the hands of some of your customers is huge. And then you can go back from that and start putting it on the sales page or breaking it out as a bonus or charging as an upsell or something like that. But I still think though, if your ultimate goal as a business owner, I guess as a creator is to help your people in some way, you know, holding that back from them just doesn't feel right when, you know, it's such a great way to consume content yourself. So, yeah, that's like typically how I would suggest to start is start with something that you already have. [00:26:26][202.5]
[00:26:27] Caroline Hull: So let's say like a personal question really. So like I have a membership and I do masterclasses every month in that membership. Would you suggest like just taking that masterclass video, converting it to audio and just posting it as is like. [00:26:41][13.9]
[00:26:42] Lindsay Padilla: Oh, 100%. [00:26:42][0.5]
[00:26:43] Caroline Hull: Okay. [00:26:43][0.0]
[00:26:44] Lindsay Padilla: I mean, you also own a podcast for. I know, I know. Could you do a couple edits? You could, but I didn't know. I mean, exactly right. Like, should you spend the resources when most people are willing to overlook that? Maybe you could do an intro or an outro or something like that or at the beginning of that feed. So I would suggest a feed specifically for the master classes so somebody knows that they could go there and listen to it. But yeah, at the beginning you would just say, these are the live recordings, right? Or I guess it could even be in the description. Yeah, live recordings from the membership. And as of right now, we aren't editing them. We do our coaching calls in a feed, we do a coaching call monthly and yeah, a lot of users love it when I forget to upload something, I'm getting messages about it. Yeah, and you know, we do a quick summary of timestamps, so nothing even that big of a lift for us as a team to be able to just give people the chance because man, I'm going to tell you, man, most people are not going to watch a video replay of something if they can't attend. It's just hard. It's harder to sit down and get the time to do it. [00:27:45][61.7]
[00:27:46] Caroline Hull: It really is. I mean, I was yeah, I was talking about that earlier with somebody and I was saying how, you know, the only time I really get to do anything that's not my business is when I'm in the car, right? Like when I'm driving. And so that's when I listen to podcasts, like I listen to a podcast this morning on my way home from dropping make it off at school. But that's that's when I listen to things. And so it makes so much sense. I'm thinking about, you know, my ideal clients and how they live their lives and what they're doing. And I'm like, Yeah, it makes total sense to have all of that in a podcast as opposed to just video and also to I think, you know, we were talking about usability, I was actually talking about usability this morning and, and the apps and how much easier is it to go to your app and listen to that workshop than it is to go to the place where the workshop is hosted? Find the link, where's the email with the link? Go to the thing, click. Log it. Yeah. So it just I can see how it just makes so much sense that if you are offering some kind of course or a membership or anything, it just, it makes a lot of sense. I'm kind of having it like, why haven't I done this yet? [00:28:50][64.4]
[00:28:50] Lindsay Padilla: Moment I know, right? To most people I'm not going to like. But when we interview people, we've done, you know, testimonials. We have like a Success Stories podcast. So again, another great use for coach or consultant or business owner like a just we have what, 45 episodes of just users and how that's so smart. And look in Bridget that's our lead magnet. Yeah. Anyways, one of the almost without fail they always are like this is way easier than I thought it was going to be. Why didn't I do this sooner? And I think to like, again, as a business owner who has lots of subscriptions to lots of products and who's released a lot of digital content, you know, a lot of that stuff can get very complicated. I think if there's so many steps to releasing a digital product, you guys releasing a podcast, it's I also I like to say it's the way we've created the UI and everything, but it really is just like, it's simple, it's just audio that gets dropped right behind you. You go and it goes. [00:29:45][54.5]
[00:29:45] Caroline Hull: Well and Hello Audio has made that so simple because we I have tried to do private podcasts through other things, none of which I will name here. But I've tried a lot of things to do, private podcasts or to do it on my own and manage it. And I will say that nothing is as easy as Hello Audio to set up a private podcast. And you know. [00:30:04][19.3]
[00:30:05] Lindsay Padilla: I appreciate it. [00:30:05][0.2]
[00:30:06] Caroline Hull: Well, and I, you know, I am of the believer like if something is hard. You're not going to do it. And so there is a tool that will make something just a little bit easier for you. We talk a lot about this in my membership. We talk a lot about the tools we're using because the minute podcasting, I feel like because you do have to sit down and record and the minute podcasting gets hard is the minute people stop doing it. So anything we can simplify and make easy I think is really, really important. And I think that's what you've done with private podcasts because, I mean, there's just like I said, I've tried to host it myself and manage like people signing up. I've tried other platforms, but I just I think the way that yours is set up is just so user friendly. And it's like I said it and forget it kind of thing. So which is important. [00:30:50][44.3]
[00:30:50] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah, I I'll say this, it's interesting because we launched, you know, in 2020, I think Transistor had just released private podcasts two months after I made that original post in 2019. So they're out in 2020. And I remember, you know, they were what we looked at as we were building. We love you know, we love how they've made podcasting very simple. But the reality is, again, like I said, it's built for podcasters, right? And so the whole interface is very different because there's not, you know, your Joe Rogan or whatever. I hate putting him as my example. You're like, Whatever a creator that creates amazing content and you're not dropping 50 great, you know, five minute videos in a season because like, that's not how they were caught. Right. Yeah. And so we really, truly built it for us. And I think as you know, as we were building and in the grind, you know, Kajabi comes out with private podcast, we're like, Oh no. And my gut was like, Oh, the big guys, right? Because we were told like, you know, why not? Can't somebody else just build that, right? And we always kept going back to like, Well, we built it really for us, right? And even Kajabi and any other course platform, you know, they're not a private podcast hosting company. So guess what? You know, they don't accept all M.P. three files or all types of files, so you can't upload a voice memo there. Did you guys know that? Right? The way they set up a lot of their stuff and it's, you know, because they're a course platform and all in one course platform, which arguably makes it even worse because they keep just adding and adding stuff and they can't really get to the nitty gritty of what people need and all of those things that they do. And so while I was scared when they launched, you know, it also a part of me was like, well, it's going to make private podcasting more popular because people will, like, know it exists and then they'll be in Kajabi and try to use it. And here they are converting MP4s into MP3s so they can put it up. And then it's just like, Oh, I'm willing to pay, you know, because they have, they do that for me and, and there you go. And so yeah, I think by us making that our bread and butter really truly makes for a better user experience because we think about the features that people like me want. And that's why, again, we had to build it. [00:33:01][130.7]
[00:33:01] Caroline Hull: I love that so much. This has been such an amazing conversation. Like, first of all, I just love that we got kind of a behind the scenes peek of Hello audio, but I appreciate you sharing your insight on Private podcast and I would love for you just to share any links where people can connect with you and where they can sign up to start their private podcast. [00:33:20][18.8]
[00:33:21] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah, so just go to HelloAudio.fm. That's the best place to get started and sign up. We have a Facebook group. If you're kind of like want to dive in or see how people are using it or want to ask some questions, I think that's our best place for users to crowdsource information. You know, we just had a post of someone's like, What is your onboarding sequence like? Oh yeah, How do you tell your customers about it or like that kind of stuff? What's the landing page? How are you talking about it? You call it a private podcast. I mean, there's lots of stuff that comes up, but this is this is a new way to use podcast. So I think, you know, even even your listeners or potential listeners or customers might not exactly know. So crowd sourcing information is great. That is in our Facebook community if you search Hello Audio community and Facebook I believe if you got a helloaudio.community with the .community as the whatever that's called the URL that should take you directly to the Facebook group. And then we're pretty active on Instagram and TikTok and. Yeah. If you want our Success Stories podcast, that's a great example of signing up for a lead magnet and seeing what it's like upon delivery and getting access. And it's a great kind of way so you can see what it's like from a listeners perspective. And so that Success Stories podcast should probably just be on our it's on HelloAudio.fm, sort of like a landing page, a resource, but I'll provide the direct link as well that we can put below. [00:34:42][81.2]
[00:34:43] Caroline Hull: Yeah, we'll put all of those links in the show notes. And Linsey, thank you so much for coming on the show. This is so great. [00:34:48][5.3]
[00:34:49] Lindsay Padilla: Of course, excited and really glad that you brought me on. [00:34:52][2.9]
[00:34:53] Caroline Hull: Thank you so much, Lindsay, again for coming on this show. That was such a great intro to private podcast and it served as a really good reminder to me that it's something that we can do easily and we can start right away. And I'm definitely going to be applying that and doing that in my own business as well. We will of course have all the links in the show notes, but if you ever have any questions about starting a private podcast, be sure to hit me up on Instagram @WildHomePodcasting and I'm sure we will be chatting about this in the membership as well, the Strategic Podcast Academy. So be sure to join in on that conversation at StrategicPodcastAcademy.com. And yeah, let's go forth and create some amazing pieces of audio that not only serve our business and our marketing, but also really help our clients to be able to connect with us in a way that is not on a screen. And I am all for that. Have a great week and I'll be back soon with a new episode. [00:35:53][60.7]
[00:35:53] Caroline Hull: Thank you for listening to Share, Strategize and Shine. To give your own podcast some shine, download my Free Podcast Guide to creating episodes for sales. By heading to the link in the show notes, be sure to leave a review and connect with me on Instagram for more podcast strategy insights. Until next time.
