How To Go From Corporate to Creator: With Expert Deirdre Tshien

And now your hosts , serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson .

Capshow is a software that helps experts who podcast create their AI-generated episode title , player description , show notes , social media captions , promo email , blog post , linkedin article and YouTube description in under 10 minutes , so that they can quickly amplify their message , grow their listeners and build their movements .

She's the creator of Content Honeytraps , author of Honeytrap Marketing and host of Grow , my Podcast Show . Very excited to have Deidre as part of the podcast , welcome .

I'm Asian If you're watching this on video , you might be able to see that I grew up in Australia Sydney , australia and my parents were actually first migrants there and with that there's a lot of pressure , you can probably tell with Asian parents .

They sacrificed a lot to make the move over and they do that for us , for their kids , to give us better education , better opportunities , and so I was taught to kind of follow a particular path which was going to lead me to becoming a doctor . That was the main thing . That didn't happen . I just hated science so I was like not going to happen .

But I did end up actually studying law and when I completed my degree I actually went into an investment bank so it's the biggest investment bank in Sydney in Australia , called McCrory Bank and I was there for a good amount of time .

But I knew very early on I had my quarter life crisis and I knew that corporate wasn't going to be the thing for me and at the time . But I had my quarter life crisis and I knew that corporate wasn't going to be the thing for me and at the time . But I had no idea what it was going to be .

So , like a lot of people , we just start to open our minds and figure out what are some things that we're interested in and at the same time , my then boyfriend , now husband he was actually studying medicine . He was hating it , but he loved baking . We just moved out together and he was like I love my desserts . So he was just it , but he loved baking .

We just moved out together and he was like I love my dessert . So he was just perfecting particular desserts that I just absolutely loved . And so one day , one night , we were just like why not ? You know , it's just crazy . Here we are in our mid-twenties and we're just going to be like , yeah , well , let's just see how it goes .

We had no idea what getting into hospitality was going to be like , but we did it and we opened a dessert bar in Sydney called the Chalkpot . We grew that to five locations and then also opened a burger restaurant , so we had two of those locations as well .

And then I'm going to try to fast forward because a bunch of things happened which led to us making the move over to the States actually . So we moved to New York . We were exploring this fashion technology business , which we ended up failing .

We were exploring this fashion technology business , which we ended up failing , and we're actually doing digital marketing for e-commerce brands , for brands and boutiques . When COVID hit , we actually transitioned that completely online .

So that's when we started our coaching program , which was for e-commerce businesses to help them with their digital marketing , and it was at that time that we started our first podcast . It was called the Growth Boss Podcast . We had no idea what we were doing .

We just had a mentor tell us you've got to start publishing , you've got to get your message and your expertise and your stories out there With just a random microphone that we got off Amazon and absolutely no idea what we're doing .

We just started it and it was one of those things where just the accomplishment of being able to press publish was really good for about a month and then very quickly realized it's like no one's hearing this thing . Our listener numbers weren't growing . It didn't seem like anything .

It was really working quote unquote to get our message out there , and what I realized was that , unfortunately , the act of publishing is not the beginning and ending of marketing . You have to actually market the content that you're creating . And so we went deep into nerding out on that and trying to figure all of that out .

And , honestly , we burnt ourselves and our team out doing all of that and I was like there's just got to be a better way of doing this . And that's how CapShow came about . It was really because we were like that we need to get our content out there . We know that we need to market it and we just need a way more efficient process of doing that .

I don't know if you know any statistics or not , or if , like , how many podcasts exist and like , how rapidly are they , you know , rising or becoming more popular compared to , like , radio or any other forms of medium ?

Actually , I'm really good friends with Alex Sanfilippo from Podmatch and he actually published so he does like a monthly active , established podcaster report and it's really , really interesting because you know , when you ask how many podcasts are there , there's something like close to 3 million podcasts in total , wow .

But how many of them are active as in , people are actually , you know , actively publishing episodes Only about close to 10% of those , so like 400,000 , are actually active and that's grown a little bit from one month to the other .

It's grown by maybe like about 3% , was you know , according to his last report , but it it from one month to the other it's grown by maybe like about 3% , was you know , according to his last report , but it's so it's growing , which is great .

But what I think the thing with podcasting and I don't want anyone to have any illusions about this it sounds awesome and it really is , and it's such a great way to create content , it's such a great way to network and meet new people , but it's a lot of work .

I mean I think you guys know this like it's a lot of work just to hit publish , and so it's not surprising that you know , out of three million podcasts that are on you know the Spotify's and the iTunes and stuff like ,

really only about just over 10 percent of those are actually actively getting updated .

I'd love to hear your guys' takes as well around like was there any point when you were like you really looked at each other and were like is this still working ?

Because I know I had that point and a lot of it is because and you know this is why CAPTURE came about is because , you know , when you don't get those endorphin hits almost of like seeing a listener number grow or like seeing that you're actually making progress , it's like kind of we're all human , we all need that forward momentum and knowing that we're

actually making some kind of impact . And when we don't get that kind of external validation , it gets really , really hard to keep ourselves motivated to do the thing , which is why , you know , capture came about . But I'd love to hear you know if there was any point that you were like is this going to be worth it ?

I think one of the things that's been helpful to us is establish a why , and making money at podcasting while important , I would say , is not our why . I love podcasts . As a consumer , I've always been jealous of people that can sit for two hours and read a book . I have to be moving .

But if I have headphones on , I can get great content , great information from other podcasts that I listen to , and this sounds dramatic to say , and it should be . I have had podcasts that have changed my life .

Ken and I get on here once a week and we're talking about business , and we've had I'm looking over at my wall , I'm looking at a thank you card I got from someone that listened to our podcast , quit their job , they fired the man , and we have a couple stories like that , and that's what keeps us going , because I know the gift that somebody receives when

they quit their job . The amount of quality like having ownership of your time , is such a gift , and so if we continue on and we can have a couple of people like that , that's what keeps us going . Is that so ? That would be my answer . But you're absolutely right in that statement about 90% of them failing .

It's not shocking for doing this for five years , because Ken and I , even five years in with a very established team and podcast , we still are asking ourselves like is this worth it ? And that's my answer .

You know we don't do that at all and so we'll we'll pop in maybe once a month and kind of see making sure everything is is going in the right direction . But we're not measuring our success based off of our downloads . And the other thing is we're kind of in a super niche .

We're in e-commerce and Amazon , which is kind of like it's not a massive audience , and so we measure it by also the value we get from the guests on the show , and so we're building connections with the guests that we have on the show and they're experts in their industry and so anytime we personally need help in our business , we have a whole portfolio of

experts that we can reach out to , because we built that connection right . They have us on their show , we have them on our show , and so it's kind of almost a sense of community and you're building relationships . So in business that is like number one , it's a key . So it's also kind of a hidden little gem there of a why .

So I would say that , like you know , being able to stay consistent is I'm on the marketing side of it is when people actually do see the impact .

So I'm the same as you , like I don't really look at my listener numbers because for me that's not the thing that drives me , but I know that for a lot of people that is the thing that drives them because they are a little bit more , I guess , like outcomes oriented in that way .

And so you know , even today I had someone message me saying cause I actually did a case study on Sandy Scalata . So she's a Capchovian , she's a user of Capcho and I did a case study

on her a few months ago where she went from oh gosh , I forgot the numbers now something like 1200 downloads a month to like 48,000 downloads a month in the space of four months , and then so I published this case study on my LinkedIn .

It's a few months after we actually spoke about that and she actually commented on it and said that she's actually now at 125,000 downloads a month . I think any of us , any of us who are human , would look at it and be like , when we're getting results like that , it's you know , there's just a part of you that's like why would I stop doing this thing ?

You know , and to your point , it's just like it literally is more people that you are impacting . And so , even though I don't I personally also don't really look at download numbers .

I know that that's important for some people , for people , so , but and then for people who , like me , don't really look at the download numbers , it's actually how good is it that you can record something you know , you can just like , even if it was on your phone ?

You just like , pick up your phone , you start recording something and literally you can have , like I would say , even a month's worth of content that you can create just off the back of that . And so for me , that's a really , really big plus , because I value my time .

I don't want to be having to create content for , you know , multiple different platforms at the same time and I'll talk a little bit more about this as well but for me it's just the load off like the pressure of having to create new content to get my message out there .

I can just do it kind of once in a way like hop on a podcast and talk about something and then I know I'm not trying to sell Capshow , but I'm just going to say Capshow or any other software that can help you kind of smartly repurpose that asset can really really help in you knowing that you're driving your business at the end of the day forward .

Like , let's just talk about money , right , we're trying to find a man here , right ? So the way that Josh talks about this is like how do you use content to actually make your first $50,000 so that you can find a man ? And the way that he talks about it is like I think we get , and I still do this . So I'm not like , I'm not like immune to this .

But sometimes we think that the thing that we want to talk about is the thing that surely our audience is going to care about , and a lot of times it's not right . Sometimes it is , which is great , but a lot of times it's not . And so his strategy is all about whoever you're going after .

And the whole $50,000 thing is like especially if you're brand new to entrepreneurship and you know you want to get into a particular space , let's say it's like coaching , marriages or something like you know who is your ideal client that will pay you $50,000? .

So we're looking for someone who is , like , most likely going to be kind of being a millionaire or earning pretty good money . Right , we all probably have a friend like that , or we probably have a friend of a friend , like we would know someone in a network who is in that position and that you can actually reach out to .

To be like , hey , I'm doing X Y Z , so I'm looking to consult with some people about their , looking to consult really successful executives on their marriages .

You see , there's a bit more specificity that might need to put there what's one thing that you might've struggled with or that you wish you knew more about , or whatever right , just a really simple take there's no pitching , because it's not a pitch , it's literally just I want to know They'll tell you , and then you just create that content , so you just record

that and then when you publish it , you send it back to them . To be like , hey , I actually recorded this and I thought that it would be helpful .

Now I'm not going to say it's like 100% hit rate off the first , second or even third one all the time , but it's such an effective way to start to get what it is that you can do and your expertise and your stories out there to the people that you actually want buying from you really quickly and really effectively .

And the great thing about that is that you're actually creating content that people are asking for and the people that it is that you want buying from you are asking for . And so , yeah , that's kind of like .

When I heard that strategy from Josh , I was like that is genius , because if we can just get into the mode of creating content in that way , like there's no way that you cannot have not only a successful podcast or show but a successful business because everything scales from there right , like because then and I can talk about how we scale out our channels and

things like that but it all starts from . You need to be talking about really relevant things for your audience .

While we're on the topic of money and podcasting , because I don't think this probably gets touched on as much as it should , to me there kind of seems to be two models . One is I have a podcast that supports another thing your example I have a podcast that supports executive coaching and marriages .

And then kind of the second model would be a standalone podcast that creates content and gets sponsors . If that goal is to make that first $50,000 , which model or approach would you say is the best ?

But when you have your own thing , that's like a hundred percent to you and when you have your own thing as well , you know we talk about the 50K . You know it's like how to get your first 50K . It's literally , literally . Your offer is going to be 50K .

Like that's right , like , and that's why you're talking to like I love , like this is you know , we're really opening minds up here Like , yeah , so I want people definitely be skeptical of this , but it is 100% doable and you just need to know , you just need to be talking to the right people . Like that's literally all it comes down to .

It's only not doable when you , if you believe that you're only worth talking to people who cannot afford that because of X , y , z reasons , a lot of that is imposter syndrome , a lot of that is you know , I don't have the experience or the whatever , but if you believe that you are worth 50K , you will 100% be able to consult one-on-one .

You start there , one-on-one consulting with someone to solve a specific problem for them that you know you can . So that's that strategy . Just to circle back around to your specific question , around like , yes , you want to .

By far , when we talk about monetization strategies in podcasting the people who see , who aspire to be like the next Joe Rogan , that's always the thing like the next Joe Rogan or the next I don't know like celebrity podcast . Unfortunately , they're not going to succeed .

That's probably also why the fail rates are so high is because you know you have this vision and it's just not reality , unfortunately , because you're not a celebrity like you don't have the following that you following that a lot of

celebrities have , which means that you have to go really niche , talk specifically to one person and just sell them the thing that you know they're going to buy .

We're creating content , we've hopped on a call and we're just recording .

And the reason why I call this passive you might've noticed from even my story that I was telling before is that a lot of times we create this content , we put it out there and it might not be a podcast , it could even be a social media post or something , and we're like great , I've hit publish , I'm good , it's all done .

Yay , that's my daily thing done , done , like yay , you know , that's my daily thing done . And the problem is that when we are passive about it , nothing actually happens . I mean , you might have , like , you know , people talk a lot about viral things , but there's actually still a strategy that goes behind that .

It's not just like let's just put things out there and hope that it'll do something right , because hope , as we know , is not a strategy . That tier is actually really important , because if you're not creating , then you're actually not able to get your message out there .

So we still want to do that , we still want to be passively creating content , doing that organic marketing . But then we get into the second tier , which is when we actually start to activate it , and so this is what I call active organic marketing .

Active organic marketing I've kind of bucketed it into like three main categories and then within them there's like a few categories . So the three main ones is it's going to be the social media , right , and then there's a way to activate social media .

There's YouTube and there's a way to activate YouTube , and then there's SEO and again there's a way to activate SEO , right . So there's kind of like three components to activating the content that you're creating and so . But the thing is that I would never say , unless you have like a huge team and a huge budget , then yeah , maybe you can do all three things .

For a lot of us we don't . So I always just focus on one , and a lot of times because I've spoken to a lot of entrepreneurs and people who entrepreneurs , who podcast specifically a lot of times it's most likely going to be the social media bucket that they start in .

But even within social media , we know that there's like multiple channels , right , there's like Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram and TikTok , and just it's never ending .

And my advice is only like backs , which is really , really hard , because even when I was trying to do this and when I was told to do this , I was like every fiber in my being was rebelling against only picking two .

But the whole reason that , like me and my team burnt out when we were trying to grow our first podcast , was because we were trying all the things , like we were literally on like pretty much every platform and it's impossible .

And it's impossible not because of a time like bandwidth , but it's also impossible because when you see how social media works and it's actually requires some of your time to be on there and to be social . Unfortunately , like I am a massive introvert , I don't really like . I'm like I'm not the most social , like social person .

I'm like , oh my gosh , I'm going to have to like do the social thing . Yes , you're going to have to do the social thing . So that's why I always say only , if you're going to be on social media , only pick two . So for me , it's Facebook and LinkedIn . I've got an account on Instagram .

We used to post a lot on Instagram , but I have not posted in months , months and months and months on Instagram , for example . So know where your audience are that want to consume the type of content that you're creating , which is a different thing , right ? Because , let's be honest , it's 2024 , our audience is everywhere .

So it's not really a matter of because my audience , who are entrepreneurs , who podcast , are also on Instagram , but they're on Instagram to promote their own thing , right ? They're not on Instagram to consume the information that I am providing Facebook and LinkedIn . They're on there consuming the type of information I'm providing .

So I just want to make that clear as well . In terms of you know when you're choosing the platforms to be on , there's a ton of detail . I can go into that . Are there any specific questions that come to mind around the tier two , or should I round out tier three and tier four and then come back ?

likely be on different platforms . You know , like the executive moms might be more on a LinkedIn and the stay-at-home moms might be on a TikTok or an Instagram . So I don't know whether it's like I can blanket say these types of shows .

It really really will come down to like you knowing your audience and where they show up again to consume the types of information that you're providing . And there's also an element of like , what platform do you actually enjoy being on ? Like I could not think of anything worse than opening my TikTok app .

Like I have not I don't even know if that's on my phone . Still , I just couldn't , like I could not do it and so I just it just doesn't make sense for me to be on TikTok

, you know , even if my audience were on there consuming that type of information . So I think that there's also that's also probably the other overlay is like what's the one that you actually enjoy being on as ?

So , for example , a lot of us just starting podcasting most likely not all the time most likely just going to leverage our hosts website capabilities you know like .

So , whether you're on like Buzzsprout or Libsyn or Captivate or Blueberry or Allotube , whatever , most of them have the capability to stand up your own podcast website , which is great , great to get started on there .

Now , from an SEO perspective it's not the best , but it's good just to get into the practice of actually publishing your podcast content in some form and getting it out there . The next step is I'm actually good friends with the founder of Podpage and so he's got this in-between service where it's automated but it has more a beefed up .

It's a beefed up version of , from an SEO perspective , of getting your podcast out there in terms of episodes . So do I need to step back and just talk about what I mean when I say podcast , episode , website or webpage ?

So I'll talk about that from a podcast perspective first , which is when we record a podcast and we hit , publish on it , the episode itself is released onto podcast players like Spotify , like iTunes , maybe even on YouTube if you've decided to be on that channel , and there's also an opportunity for us to have its own dedicated website , so I could send people to

grandmapodcastshowcom , for example , and that's a website dedicated to the actual podcast , and then each page of that is each episode .

Now , where a lot of people start and sometimes stop is that they'll just rely on the description that they put into their hosting platform and that's all that gets put into the website , right , you can probably imagine , not great for SEO , not even great for , like , people wanting to learn more about it , if I'm going to be honest , because and that's kind of

like to me the crux of SEO because we can get really caught up in the technical aspects of it .

We can talk about schema and we can talk about like keywords and things like that , but at the end of the day , the way that the search engines work is kind of actually similar-ish to social media platforms by way of the more that you can keep someone on their platform ie , let's say it's Google the more that you can keep someone on Google , the more that

they're going to reward you . Now , the only way that you can keep someone on a Google or really anywhere is to make it really readable , is to make it enjoyable , is to make it maybe even fun for people to read and see .

Right , most podcast descriptions aren't really fun , or you know they're not really the most , so you know the way that we look at it a viewer is like . When we create an episode website or even a blog page , we always think about a few things . One is how do we break up blocks of text rich media , so images and call out boxes with quotes ?

You know , obviously , headings , the things that make people want to stay on the page and keep reading , right , things like content , honey traps , which is , how do we create curiosity to have people want to keep going down and keep reading , so things like that we want to be providing .

You know , infographics , things that sum up you know what was said in that episode in a really easy to follow way , because a great thing is that when you have images like that as well . Those rank really well on search engines like Google .

Things like embedding great videos yeah , there's a ton of really easy things that you can just do , without even worrying about the technical side of SEO , immediately help how you get ranked on . Google or any search engine . So does that kind of answer your question ? I know it went a little bit deep .

That's a really great signal to Google that you're providing something valuable and you're keeping them on Google for longer , so that's also a really great SEO hack . Awesome , yeah , cool . So that's tier two . I know that we went . Yeah , it was all good . Tier three . Yeah , tier three is leveraging other people's audiences .

So guesting on other podcasts is a really great way to do that . But I love doing virtual summits , so I've done pretty much one every year for like the last gosh four years . Maybe Great way to leverage other people's audiences .

Build up your list and you can use that list to then send them back either to your offer or even to your podcast to like up those listener numbers . Yeah , getting on people's I guess I think we met through Podmatch , I believe . So Podmatch is a great platform to just very quickly find other podcasts to get on and talk about .

You know what it is that you do and your show yeah , there's just a ton of things that you can do around leveraging other people's audiences .

That where you're helping to create an ecosystem and a network where it's not only you like getting something out of it ie that you get to , you know , be on someone else's podcast , but that you also give by so they'll promote you Awesome , you know how do you also be a really good citizen of that ecosystem and help promote them in the ways that you can as

well ?

In that , cross-promotion is really helpful and there's not a lot of things like that where the competitiveness is drawn out of the equation and it's a rising ship For sure .

If you're talking about a podcast , if you're talking about a business , then depending on where you are in your business goals , then you might want to definitely leverage this . But it's really about scaling with paid ads . Now , I know that there are ways that you can do that for the podcasting space . I've tried some and they mixed I'd say mixed results .

So that's why I wouldn't say go into this . I would focus on the bottom three tiers . If you're trying to grow a podcast , if you're trying to grow a business , again , I would like , when I was trying to first grow my coaching business , like I went , the coach I was working with at the time .

Her whole strategy was about like just run paid ads to you know a particular funnel , and so I did that and it was probably some of the worst advice that I've ever followed , because it was literally I was just paying Facebook ridiculous amounts of money to not really have anything meaningful or anything . That was what . How do I say ? Like that had longevity .

That's why I've really gone fully into like organic marketing , because I really really believe that spending the time in organic marketing will actually yield way better results .

But in saying that , that's why I say it's scale with paid ads , because if you're at a certain revenue number and you can take that risk and you and again I'm going to talk about Josh Tapp again because he's just a genius at this he has a system whereby you know , once you have your first 50k , how do you almost go pay yourself 50% and then the other 50%

put it back into an engine , perhaps like ads or an agency or something that you know will get you 4x the ROI on that , and so it does work , depending on where you are financially . It's just not something that I would recommend for people who are just getting started , because it can be a bit of a landmine .

They upload that into Capture and Capture converts that into a first draft of written content , being a title and description . Social media posts , emails so we do promotional and engagement email , linkedin , article , youtube description and blog posts as well , and it does smart identification for soundbites , for clips and things like that .

It doesn't do the clipping yet , but it just identifies some really good moments and it also pulls out quotes . So it's kind of like AI powered content marketing box content box that you can kind of like dip into and take out what it is that you need in order to get your message out there .

It's called Industry Icon Live and basically at that event it literally goes through how do you make your first 50K , how do you scale your media channels and then how do you monetize at scale off the back of that literally three-part system that we go through over a couple hours a day for five days ? So I'd love to offer that it's completely free .

Even the VIP upgrade is completely free , which is ridiculous . That is at industryiconlivecom .

And there was one that stood out for me . It was called oh gosh . It was like how I made a million dollars with a $19 product and a toilet seat and I was like , oh man , I have to go right , like how good is that ?

And the more that I thought about that , the more that I was like man , that curiosity that gets created is so strong , like that's the thing that actually gets us moving . It's actually the thing that gets us to go to that particular stage to watch the thing or to click on the link or to attend an event or listen to a podcast .

And so I really started delving deep into what are the different I call them mental models of creating this curiosity , and so we developed eight of them , which we packaged up as content hunting traps .

So , in short , content hunting traps is a way to create curiosity so that you can have your audience doing like , you can compel them to do what it is that you want them to do . And those eight mental models is kind of like an example . The one , the example that I shared about the title is what we call like the paradox .

Right , you're kind of like juxtaposing something like this really , really great result that your audience wants with this like unbelievable fact . So it's an example of one mental model and when I tried that , I actually tried it on a podcast episode .

I interviewed an amazing lady , angela Taylor , and she her whole story was about how she makes five figures a month working only 40 hours a month , like not a week , but a month . She works 40 hours a month and she makes like five figures . And so I made that my paradox , following that mental model , and that episode like got this massive spike in downloads .

I had people like Alison J Prince and stuff DMing me . I like to be like I cannot wait to listen to this episode and so , yeah , that's when we were like , oh okay , this content honey trap thing is really like we're onto something around creating frameworks around it , so that's what it is Now .

So every guest we bring on the show , we run them through the ringer and it's called the Fire Round . It's a series of rapid fire questions . Are you ready ?

lately .