So, now that we're here, I've been appreciating this idea of just slowing down. So I just came back from a conference in New York and I love New York City. I'm a New Yorker at heart. It'll always be in my blood. But I realized this one time how crazy it is. I was taking a cab to the event, which was in Times Square Marriott, which is like the most crazy.
But just watching, everyone's just like, ants, just like, and everyone kind of just seemed stressed out at some level, whether the taxi driver, the delivery guy, construction guys carrying two by fours on the sidewalk trying not to bop people in the head, everyone's super vigilant Like walking, the parking attendant, the garage is opening, Like I was just watching everything like happen. I was just like man, just the city never, never stops, never sleeps.
And it's interesting like when I grew up in that environment too. I really love the energy, but I think as I get older I just there's something about like being at that level always. It's probably not good for your adrenals.
Yeah, your adrenals nervous system, everything. I'm the same way Like. I love soaking in that certain energy that New York City has, but it's you can't do it long term. Yeah, it's too much.
So for anyone who has another chance to see you or hear you on the first, have we chatted once or twice now on the show? I forgot.
I can't remember yeah.
It's been a while, so thank you for joining me again on podcast junkies.
Of course, Harry. It was really nice of you to ask.
It's an excuse for me to just catch up with my friends too. That's a secret too. That's basically, if you think about now, like the podcast is a platform for me to talk about people in the world. The podcasting, and sometimes these people do an interesting stuff with cool tools and stuff. But then eventually I just like I'm like, oh man, we haven't caught up, so let's find out what's going on and just record it for people to kiss. Any gold comes out of it. But it's just also just a nice way.
I see these appointments on my calendar and I smile. I'm like, oh, I get to catch up.
I felt the same way. I was like I haven't talked to Harry in a year.
So where's home now for just new listeners in context, I am still in Gainesville, Florida.
We're probably going to be here for another year. And then I will have kind of an empty nest at that point, and then my husband and I have decided that we're going to travel Europe for several months and then figure out kind of what's next, because all my businesses and endeavors have always been designed to be remote, so I was working remotely before it was cool.
We're in Europe.
We're probably going to make work sure, outside of London our home base because I have some cousins there who have said we could kind of use our house as a home base, and then I think we're just going to kind of spiral out from there and do a kind of a deep dive all over the UK, maybe Ireland and then I think potentially France for our first doubting. We'll see. I don't want to take again going that slowing down. I like to do things in a little bit less frenzied way when I'm traveling.
And you'll be out there for about you said, two, three months.
Yeah, I mean I can be out there as an American for about three months. My husband's Canadian, he could do longer. But they have to beat us Americans back with a stick.
And I certainly understand why and when's the last time you were out there.
Well, I actually had never been to Europe until a couple of months ago. We went to London it was my first time there and brought my kids, who are teenagers. And we had a blast, we had a really great time, but I just fell in love with it. So we're like, okay, we got to come back. Timing's perfect.
What did you like most about it?
It has a lot to do with the age and the depth of the history. America is such a young country in comparison and you'd just be walking on a floor and they'll be like this has been here for a thousand years and it's like there's nothing like that in terms of structures and that people were fighting wars and living and dying and had fully formed cultures well over a thousand years ago in the UK. So it's interesting to have that sense and it's just a gorgeous, green, beautiful country. It really is.
I can see why it has been fought over and why so many people have flocked to live there, between what you can grow there and the climate and it's not overly mountainous and like wow, this is a hell of an island.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think just the context of having stuff that's over 2000 years old, especially because that's our point of reference here in the States, and so I've been fascinated by that. And also if you go deeper and I still go on and get to Egypt, and then you start going back to me too, four or five, eight thousand, and then go back to Tepe, which was, in Turkey, 10,000, 12,000.
It just starts getting crazy because you're starting and you look at the quality of the construction of the stuff that's there, machu Picchu, and you just start asking a bunch of questions that will take you down a whole bunch of rabbit holes.
It's very true. I had a whole argument with myself staring at a stone Egyptian sarcophagus in the British Museum because I was so drawn to it and almost to the point where I could see and hear and feel the priests kind of like chanting and praying, as they're carving all these intricate spells and prayers into the stones sarcophagus and I'm having this argument with myself. I'm like really want to touch it. You're not supposed to touch it. Really want to touch it.
You're not supposed to touch it. But yeah, I got very transported by that, does that?
happen a lot when you're in the presence of stuff like that.
It depends on what it is, but yeah, it's something that's happened since I was a little kid. It's one of those things. Yeah, I'm pretty visual when I get kind of a read or a vibe off of something. It's fun, I enjoy it.
What's your earliest memory of an experience like that?
Oh geez, my earliest memory of that Damn Probably being at the Science Museum when I was a really little kid in elementary school or something, and I remember kind of touching or handling a rock or something like that in one of the sections on early man and things like that and just having this sense of smelling smoke and home fire and people's kind of voices but not English and stuff like that. But I think that's the earliest one that I can remember.
And is that? I know there's all these different ways of like. What is it? Were you sense things? Were you hear things? Were you see things? Were you smell things? Oh, sure I forgot what the names are. All that them are different For you. Was it something that you just heard, or you just like it felt?
Kind of being transported, kind of a you are there, experience right, like you're actually kind of in the scene or in the experience with whoever's there. So you know it's very brief, but I tend to get a sense of smell and hearing certainly, and can see some you know stuff, kind of going on. It's just a yeah, I've always found it.
I did a lot of, or certainly wanted to do a lot of more, you know, theater and things like that, when I was young and my parents always thought it was because I like the attention and don't get me wrong, I love attention but it always was the sense of wanting to go on a shared experience and a shared journey with the audience, because I could have this sense of the audience and myself as this single entity that was going on this journey through the story, and I think that's one of the I actually I know it's why I'm drawn to the work that I do now people's voices and audio and all this other stuff it's still that same sense of wanting to connect and be part of that, that shared experience.
When something like that happens to you, like early on, do you ignore it? Do you dig deeper? You know, and depending on where you are, family and timeframe, and you know, it's probably a topic that's pretty strange to folks who don't have an experience.
Well, I mean, I think it generally when you're, when I was a child, it just got chalked up to imagination, yeah, so it didn't really, and I've always been someone who also has a very vivid imagination, so I never really felt the need to differentiate between is this real or is it my imagination? It's more, that's freaking cool, I'm just going to enjoy it, so, and I still feel kind of the same way about it.
You know, when I I'm like I couldn't tell you what the priests were chanting over the sarcophagus, but it's more this oh God that you know. There's the experience. It's like it's a little bit of like, almost like a cellular memory or something like that. And you know, given how we are as human beings and DNA, and we know that energy gets stored in objects and things like that it's more like having a brain that's able to in some way shape or form, read the vibration of what's there.
I think that's all it is.
Is that a skill that you've cultivated?
To a certain extent. I mean, I'm a therapist by training and I've done a tremendous amount of work both on myself and as a professional over the years, as a coach, as a therapist, as a facilitator, speaker, and there's this, always this resonance of being with other people.
You know it's from the stage or it's one on one or whatever, but I always have had this and I have cultivated it, yes, through various means of looking to be more effective in those roles, you know, and even now, as you know, leading my company and things like that with my team, the more you can resonate with someone else and kind of put yourself in their shoes and see things from somebody else's point of view, that kind of perspective taking, you know, certainly that's a very human skill, that's.
You know, we got these beautiful mirror neurons that cause empathy and all kinds of stuff, so it's just another version of that.
And then, how did you, or when did you, start like incorporating it into the actual work you do and like working with clients?
Oh well, geez, I mean. I think that's why I was drawn to my original careers in therapy and things like that is because I was doing work on myself, I wanted to help other people, and but I grew up as an entrepreneur. So I've never been that good at working inside of hierarchy and bureaucracy. Anything that was going to smush a good idea that was going to make something better and I'm horrible at playing office politics and things like that I just no no. I am not.
I am not that guy no, thank God, it's fine.
No, no, no, no, hang in there, baby. No, no, none of that, I just. I mean, I tried for years in academia. I tried for years and years in academia and there was like all the different unions fighting with each other and I'm just like, can we just get some shit done? Please yeah, but yeah no, it's always that resonance with other people has always been at the forefront. Connection, connection, connection, connection, connection. It's always at the forefront.
So I'm trying to think where we first met. Probably podcast movement or no?
I've never been weird I've never been to podcast movement. I've never been to podcast movement no no, I got burned out on conferences when I was growing up through my parents' business and I'm really, really selective if I go to bigger events because they just bore the crap out of me more often than not so. I really got to have a reason to go, or I got to be speaking.
Yeah, and so it was. But no, I think you and I met it.
I think it was one of the first podcasts.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Yeah, because I was at the first one and I was, you know, doing all the interviews for the documentary that Chris Krimitzos and his team did. And that was super fun. I really that was a great experience. I did have like 40 people.
I have a cameo in that first one. It's funny because he wanted to capture me for a little bit of and I think they were thinking of doing like a sequel to that, which I don't think ever happened.
But I don't think it happened. They did talk about it, yeah.
But I was at my folks place this past weekend and I noticed I had showed it to them because I had. I saw the DVD on like the dresser in the room that I was in. I was like, oh, I was like there's the DVD. And I was like, so thankfully I think he shot like a there's like there's like probably 30 seconds or a minute of like me and he got me in there for a cameo which I thought was pretty cool.
Yeah, I'm in the trailer which. I didn't know that was going to happen until after the fact, but I was like, oh, that's cool. All right, nice yeah.
And so talk a little bit about for folks that don't know about the work you do and you know, starting with the podcast and the stuff you do with books and kind of like how everything's evolved to present lots of stuff probably. But you can do it, it is a lot of stuff, it is a lot of stuff.
Well, I will say that everything thematically has always been around this notion of connection and around people being able to get their voice out into the world effectively, whether that was starting a business or having an effective business, leading their teams. You know all the work that I did as a business coaching consultant for years and then through audio and the work we do now producing nonfiction audio books and podcasts for businesses and companies and leaders.
So, thematically again, there's this thread that goes all the way through and always fascinates me that most of us can draw these threads back even into our childhoods and what we love and what we're drawn to, what we're connected to. So it really just all comes down to that connection and the medium we chose was audio because it is such a I mean, I'm preaching to the choir. Here we're on a show called podcast junkies for crying out loud.
You know it's so flexible and it's so accessible and that's what gave me goosebumps when I originally started Twin Flame Studios. The company I own today was wow. Audiobooks and podcasts are some of the lowest hanging fruit that people can use to start to change their lives and you literally get to be if you're in a podcast. If you're on an audiobook, you literally get to be a voice in someone's head.
Yeah such a cool, cool, cool privilege that is from a relationship perspective, from a neurological perspective, from a psychological perspective, it's just, you know, endlessly fascinating to me it's interesting that most people may not think about it that way or really sort of put two and two together, because, when I've said this a lot as well, there's three people in this conversation right now me, you and the listener singular.
Hi listener.
Thank you so much for taking the time and hope you're enjoying this conversation with Tina and I, and it is you're almost borrowing their time.
Yeah.
And you're making some sort of informal contract that we're going to spend X number of minutes or hours if it's Joe Rogan.
Oh lord.
Whatever it is, but you're going to spend that time and that list because you can't listen to two things at once. You can do something else you can wash dishes, walk the dog, exercise and listen to a podcast, but you can't listen to two people at the same time. I've tried, it's not.
No, your head will explode. No, you're not.
So it's really interesting to think about that listener as really committing, trusting, deciding that yes, I think for some reason someone showed me this podcast or referred it to me, or it's been a relationship I've been building over years and years and years, or it's an author that I like and so I definitely know what I'm going to get.
But it's really because once you've devoted that amount of time, you can't get it back, and we've all heard stuff or started shows that just be like okay, you give them like two minutes and you're like ah, like no, that's not for me.
And I think I've been more discerning.
I don't know about you, but like more discerning. When I hear new stuff and I'm like I quickly want to figure out is this going to be worth my time or not?
I do that all the time and I think once you're a podcast and you've been in audio for a while, you end up with a little bit almost of a disadvantage because you become a little too discerning sometimes. Like I'm really sensitive to the quality of people's voices and I often will discount a podcast out of hand because in the first 20 seconds if I don't like the sound to somebody's voice, which is totally unfair, it's completely unfair, but I'm like no, my ears, oh God.
Or if they have poor audio quality you know you really. I mean, there's no excuse at the stage of the game for shitty audio. I'm sorry. It doesn't have to be pristine. I don't have a great microphone on today at the space I'm in and stuff like that. My mic was not doing great, so yeah, it's okay, but you know we're not in a whisper booth or anything like that and that's okay. But I mean, for God's sake, use an external microphone, people.
Also the tools that are available nowadays. You know we've been testing new platforms, hindenburg the new versions got the noise reduction plugin built in now, which works wonders. I've used it a couple times and it's it cleans up stuff pretty easily. We use the script now for some video stuff. They've got the studio sound you know feature. You turn it on and it's like they just updated it and that.
Oh, they did a nice job with it.
Yeah, you said it like 75% and it cleans up a lot. So it's like this one button like noise reduction, noise.
That's so nice yeah.
A lot of the tools, even squad cast, which is the tool we're using today. They've got an option now to do regular audio or Dolby enhanced, and it'll do some built in noise reduction while we're having the conversation. So it does that. So I think lately I've been hearing like just better audio because the people are taking the time. Even if you just had earbuds, it's still goes, it's still better. Yes, still better than just talking into your laptop talking in your laptop in your big empty room.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, love your tone, love my podcast, podcast podcast.
So, who do you work with? Who do you like to work with? You know, and obviously when you're first getting started as any entrepreneur will do, like we work with anyone who wants to work with us cut our teeth and then later on we regret it, and then we have horror stories the people we work with that we probably shouldn't have worked with, and all that sort of stuff. But let's assume we've made it past that part, so now we can be more discerning.
You know, like who's ideal for you and who makes you like be happy in terms of like the projects you're working on lately.
Well, I'm fortunate. You know, In our company in Twin Flame Studios we have several different folks that we work with. So on the audiobook side of the company we work both with individual authors but we also work with publishers, so mostly hybrid publishers, and we love working with hybrid publishers because we're able to be this kind of I'm sorry, it's slick as hell the systems we have for working with publishers because we can be their entire audiobook division.
Oh nice and it's totally seamless. It's gorgeous. It adds like six figures onto their bottom line without adding more time. You know we figured this out. You know it's our bread and butter, it's what we love to do.
And just hybrid. Just to be clear, is a publisher who's producing audio and print.
No, and a hybrid publisher is a book publisher who a traditional publisher doesn't charge authors. They only make their money on royalties.
Okay.
So a traditional publishing, a hybrid publisher, will either do pay for play you pay up front and then you own all your rights and royalties and it's all set up for you or there's a combination of the two, depending on the setup. And because we are also, you know, guns for hire, so to speak, in audio land, the match up on the business model works really, really well to do that.
So we love working with these mid-sized kind of hybrid publishers, folks who have like 40 to 100, could be more a booksy year that they're publishing in nonfiction and their authors, though, are so fantastic. There's this range of experts, and so these are established experts on a range of different subjects, but they're mostly in service industries. They're in a point of their career which is so great that they're moving beyond.
Like you said, they're not in that beginning stage as much anymore. They are in this space of leadership, looking to move the needle on their industry, and sometimes we just get the most fabulous people like Michael Bungaistanier, who's published, I think, eight books now and he's sold good zillions of books on coaching, or someone like Merrill Hodge, who's on ESPN, or the owner of the Savannah Bananas, which is kind of the baseball version of the Harlem Globetrotters.
We get these super cool books and then this whole range of books on resilience, books on growth and self-help. And it's just my directors, because we specialize in author narration. We do both professionally and author, but my narrators have gotten several university degrees on different topics from directing these audiobooks.
Oh, that's interesting. So when you talk a little bit about the process, do you work with authors who have already published a book?
then Usually audiobooks come toward the end of the process. Then manuscript is already done. People ask me a lot well, can I do an audiobook version and then turn it into a book? No, that sucks. You don't want to do that because editing is your friend and the process of book creation is messy and interesting and it will change. So you can speak your book, but that's not the same as doing an audiobook, not even close.
And so we work with folks after their manuscript is done and work with them remotely. We fully direct them and we capture all of their audio. So they get this experience of being able to be in the comfort generally of their home or office. But we're making sure that their audio is super high quality definitely better than what I'm doing here today and they're also getting the benefit of somebody having their back.
They're being listened to very intensely because we're going through and reading their book along with them, catching their mistakes, catching where their energy is flagging, catching generally. This section of a book doesn't get put into the book, so you don't have to narrate this part or all the advice that kind of goes along with it. And then we get to advocate for them in terms of how they distribute, how they maximize their royalties, how they use their audiobook as an asset.
So it's a privilege to be a part of somebody's journey who's looking to make a difference in the world.
What percentage of the folks that you work with come from the publishers and what versus the people that just come to directly?
Well, we generally are a referral based business, so we have a lot of referral partners because I like people and I like to cultivate relationships and so 100% come from referrals in general. A few come from speaking gigs and things like that I do, but I don't do too many of those right now, aside from you and I hanging out kinds of stuff. But it is generally our referral network that is referring us business and that includes our dedicated partners.
And do you have authors that have self-published come to you, or is it typically?
through it oh yeah, okay. So our smaller partners who are non-pulishers ghost writers, book coaches, editors, cover designers, all of those folks and I have a monthly publishing gathering of my colleagues, and so I have, since I'm an Italian grandmother in training, and so one of my ways of expressing that is by having these monthly publishing tea parties.
I call them where we get together and talk about the industry and do a little master minding and it's but it's drop in its casual and but you know you generally get a dozen to 15 people talking about stuff and everybody kind of feels seen and heard, which is really important to me.
Most of the folks that are on that call published authors already.
They are all professionals in the publishing industry and most of them are also published authors.
Okay.
Yeah, so it's usually it's an and thing.
I'm just curious where do you see folks authors having the most success when it comes to? It's probably trends, like everything else, but what are you seeing now that's having like most of the impact or getting attention in terms of topics?
Topics. You know what? I don't really think it's topics specific. I mean, there's always some trends on topics and things like that. Like we saw a huge bump in audio book listenership in the self-help category like 34%. It's a massive bump. And during COVID yeah. Not surprising.
Yeah.
Right, but it has stayed. It has stayed almost that high that particular time. True crime in nonfiction always the number one category. I don't know why people can't get enough of murder. That puzzles me a lot it says something about us as human beings, but it's always up there and romance. So you know love and murder.
Okay.
Yeah, but romance, of course, is more of a fiction category. But yeah, there's always a place for people's topics. It has way more. The success of a book is less to do with the topic than if it's written well and if it's distributed well and if it's marketed well. That's always it. You've got to put in quality and you've got to put in the marketing.
Do you have a lot of first time authors? Come and see for advice.
Yeah, a lot of them are first time authors even though they're really well established in their fields. So it's always great to work with them and kind of hear how their experience has been throughout the book process. And you know, we have the privilege of being able to make it easy on them, or as easy as possible. They always learn a ton. My favorite are the folks who are like well, I'm a professional speaker and I also have a podcast and I have a thing I could just do this myself.
And then we talk with them and they're like well, it would be great to be directed and I don't know all the ins and outs. And then by the end of the book they're like oh my God, I'm so glad I did this with you. I learned a whole other skill set, and it's not just learning how to narrate, which is a whole skill set but, it is a different way of breathing, a different way of speaking a different way of communicating.
And they become more present, and we've had a lot of people say how much it's impacted everything from sales meetings to speaking gigs and or even communication with their spouses, which again yeah, I know, I know it's like yeah.
Do you have people who are looking to get started with their writing their first book? Come to you.
Not so much, because on the audio book side of things, usually people are after the fact. But yeah, occasionally we do start conversations about a first book during the podcasting process though. Okay, so can that podcasting content be used either for a book or for articles or for white papers and things like that? That's usually in that strategic repurposing conversation that happens around podcasting content.
Yeah, so I was going to segue to that overlap between podcasting and the books and maybe this is that entry point for there. But do you see that sort of that flow being people who have started a podcast they've been podcasting for several years created a ton of content and I just saw that podium. The service that Buzzsprout uses now has like a feature where you drop in your RSS feed and you need at least 20 episodes and they'll give you a first draft of a book. I don't know if you've seen this.
Say what that's genius.
Potiumpage. It's nuts, oh my God.
I don't know if it's beta.
But I was like, oh, I'm going to try that. So I'm curious, you know, obviously AI at some point is going to come into this conversation with what you were doing.
Oh, completely, it is a should.
What are you seeing for podcasters? Specifically because this is a podcast by podcasters and as they make their way into think about, like me, I have 300 episodes and podcast junkies have 100 episodes on my new show, vertical farming podcast. That's like there's a lot of things that I've said and interesting.
You know, obviously in the old days people would get a proof, but now it's like when you see some of the stuff that comes out and you just like, well, the robots are here and they're here to stay. So I'm just curious about you know, there's a lot there picking two's from there. Oh man, what kind of top of mind for you.
So, going from the book into the podcasting, we actually do have a feature called the book companion podcast where people can use it for their marketing, but my favorite is a style of podcasting that we're testing out on ourselves with my show, drink From the Well, which launched in May, and this is more about content development really strong content development and content marketing development than it is about multiple episodes of a podcast, so it's a monthly show but, the episodes are highly produced.
They're very well thought out.
Their SEO did the gills and this is a testing with Drink From the Well.
Yes, this is what we're testing with my own show.
Drink From the.
Well, which is a show for leaders, particularly leaders who are leading teams and in the conversation of how can it be more effective as a leader but, you know, also be awesome and feel awesome about it.
So a lot of things about creativity and psychology and multi-generational issues and the role of leisure in all kinds of fun topics, so, and we use different formats to kind of showcase some of the different formats you can use podcasting in and we're using all kinds of you know, more advanced, I would say, or more robust techniques than somebody who is generally starting on in a podcast would. So we can kind of say these are all the things you can kind of do with your show.
What are some examples of things that are moving the needle or that are working?
Well, I would actually say that one of the in terms of moving the needle in terms of downloads and things like that. To be quite honest, I have been really happy with focusing on some of some budget on paid advertising. Yeah, yeah. I mean to be able to guarantee downloads in my target demographic.
Yeah.
Oh, come on, I mean spend the money. Yeah, you know this podcast sponsored by Mopod.
Yes, exactly, Mopod OK.
Yes, they're fun guys to work with.
I'm so good to do that I really like them.
Yeah, the owner is a big karaoke guy and I love karaoke, so we were totally bonded around that. That's all. It's great. Yeah, his podcast is like number one music show in Canada. Podcast in Canada it's a karaoke podcast. I love that.
They've got the two offers the one that will get you just strict download numbers for the sake of stats, and then they've got the Apple podcast followers.
Exactly Both of them.
Which one of those two have you seen has better?
We're actually using their self-serve platform right now which is really nice, and they just expanded it to include some demographic options.
OK.
So you know, after we record this, you should go and call them and tell them the pay for this episode.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, but they're. It's nice to be able to do that. And I don't think it's like a hundred dollars.
Oh, OK, that's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's really nice. So, especially if you don't have a large audience and you want to build an audience and then you're getting feedback like we've gotten some ratings, we've gotten some reviews, but you know, we also have a social media following of about 300,000. Yeah we didn't build it at a time around the podcasts that we do. So if we had done that and had those kind of numbers, we would have more engagement when we do this audience. Now it's a little bit of an older audience.
They tend to be over 55. And so they're not listening as much as I would like, but we get a lot of really nice feedback on the quality of what we're doing and the types of topics that we're choosing. And then you know we're doing things like experimenting with LinkedIn Live and can you turn the LinkedIn Live into a podcast, and so it's always.
You know, we like to guinea pig on ourselves and what we're doing, but the search engine optimization is also moving the needle quite a lot in terms of organic traffic.
OK, and when people are thinking about a podcast and the content they're creating for the podcast, should they be thinking about a book at some point, or repurposing, or is it just too confusing and there's just two separate mediums?
I think it's a really good idea if you're strategic. So, first of all, I am a massive advocate for planning out your season and the topics that you're doing. And if you're going to be interviewing people, it needs to be intentional. It needs to have a couple of shows right now that are based on book content, from the sense of these are some of the themes and the chapters and what gets covered, and now we're going to cover it in a different way, but they can reference back to certain chapters.
They can reference back to their book in general, even though they have a guest on their show, and then content is cyclical. So if you start with a book and then you have a podcast off that book and then you end up with developing relationships through the podcast, that ends up in speaking gigs and then, out of the speaking gigs, you end up in a community and then you get another idea and then that's feeding back into your podcast and then eventually, you end up with an idea for another book.
Like all these, you can enter the cycle at any point. Right, it's very cyclical and I think I'm really curious about that tool that you mentioned.
Podium.
Podium, because that would be incredibly helpful. The hardest part about writing a book or even starting a podcast is having an outline, having a tight concept.
You know it would be interesting to see what it does in terms of at least it's that first pass, even that very, very, very, very rough, rough draft.
Yeah.
You know, I think it's where a lot of people get stuck and they don't even know where to start.
It's I think it's the biggest issue. It's the reason I don't actually have a book of my own. I've written chapters and other books and published that way, but I have like five different book ideas on the table and I'm like which one do I do? So that's what it comes down to.
So when I first got started with podcast junkies. This was back when Fiverr was around, and so I started in 2014. So basically, I took the first 25 episodes, the transcripts, and then I gave them to somebody. I think I paid 500 bucks and basically kind of like, wrote an outline and I called it around the podcast campfire. So it's published, it's an ebook, it's on Amazon and it should probably now, with there's Amazon services, that I'll actually take that and print a hard copy for you.
It's funny, I don't even have a hard copy of that book, but I should. I printed it. So it probably came out in 2015 or something like that. And I was like, every 25 episodes, I'm just going to do the same thing and like part one, part two, part. Obviously that never happened, I just got the first one done and I went to 300 episodes. But it's interesting because there are takeaways, there are like ah-has, and I think the hard part is just diluting them all.
And then, to your point, do I want to write a book about podcasting? Do I want to write a book about my entrepreneurial journey? Do I want to write a book about my spiritual journey? I?
know, they're all interesting.
And then it's just like you know, they said that college kids have the worst shoes, right. It's just like 100% true. So if you had to think about what eventually will be your first book, what would it be?
Well, the lowest hanging fruit right now it would be a book on developing your vocal leadership personality and because I developed an assessment tool it's not out yet using the 12 Jungian archetypes to talk about how each of these archetypes and the combinations of different archetypes can be basically a guidepost for leaders to start to be consistent in how they're bringing their voice out to the world and to own that space and then have the tools vocally and their inner tools to be able to get their voice out in the world more effectively.
So yeah, basically, the result guide from the assessment tool ended up being like 30 pages long and we kind of had to sit back and go. We both basically wrote part of a book, so maybe we should flesh this out into an entire book. So I'm actually in conversation with a couple of my colleagues about that right now to see how feasible it is.
I am going to test out that podium thing with my podcast because I have a sudden see, because if it gets me I want to know If it gets me to that first draft and I get it published and obviously I'll reach out to you for the audio version.
I think you should. I'm actually working with ChatGbt right now to turn some articles into a white paper.
Okay, I could actually make an audio book out of that first one. That would be interesting just to kind of go through that process.
Oh, you totally could. Yeah, absolutely, and unlike most people, you probably could figure out how to do it on your own.
What's the best example of someone who's effectively used the podcast to promote a book?
Elizabeth Gilbert Back when she released her book Big Magic, which is one of my favorite books of all time.
Yeah.
She did two seasons of a podcast called Magic Lessons and they changed the format in the second season and I didn't quite like it as much but I got why they did it. But there was a companion podcast to the book and it brought a lot of conversation and you know she was already very popular at the time.
Yeah, yeah.
And the owner I never remember everybody's names the owner of Magnolia that big design company. They're on HGTV and everything.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't remember her name now but she also Chip and Joanna Gaines. Yes, joanna Gaines.
So she did a book companion podcast recently. Okay, I think it was just maybe half a dozen episodes to help people walk through the book. Brinay Brown, also for Atlas of the Heart, devoted a number of episodes to basically a book club through her podcast.
Okay, okay.
Yeah, so I always thought that those were really good examples of some different ways to use it. Those are, of course, people who are, you know, fairly well established. But I say, you know, look to people who are doing it well and see how far you can emulate, you know, for your own authenticity.
It should be something that it's probably evergreen, that people can always come back to, and that the goal obviously is to get people excited enough to not feel like you gave them the whole book, but that you're either teasing out content or just showing your expertise and then making them want to go deeper by getting the book.
Yeah, or getting real world, real life examples.
Yeah.
You know, like you know, elizabeth Gilbert actually got people to do examples and then provided coaching. Her and another expert actually coached these people.
On the podcast.
On the podcast which was really great and that's challenging to pull off live coaching.
Yeah. But I know they did pre-interviews and you know, cut things together and all of that.
It's a lot more than meets the eye, as you know. So, and as are probably a lot of our listeners know, there's a lot more that goes into production. But between you and me and the wall, I actually just pitched a podcast idea to a company up in Canada, totally off the beaten path from what we usually do.
Yeah.
And we're experimenting with some improv radio drama here locally. So there's, you know, the creative expression that's possible is endless.
Yeah, especially, have you heard any of the immersive podcasts with like the soundscapes or like stuff is like you hear it in different parts of your head?
I had a couple of people recommend both to me, so I got them queued up. I haven't listened to them yet and, along with some improv podcasts, apparently I missed a podcast I don't know how this happened that has 300 episodes and every episode is an improvised musical. I'm sorry.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
That's like my dream podcast.
Yeah.
Just sit there bingeing. Audio music is basically an audio musical.
Yeah, audio musical, but it's completely improvised, improved. Wow, that's cool yeah.
I've heard book talk is a thing now on TikTok.
Book talk is a thing. On TikTok I have not delved into that tremendously, but yeah it's. I do have a TikTok account and I have enjoyed playing around on TikTok, but I haven't gone down that rabbit hole.
I have, like I posted one thing, I think for Park Yeshonkes and I just kind of close it again. I'm just like I feel old when I'm in there and I'm just like I don't know if I want to learn. I don't know if you saw threads just came out today which is the Instagram Twitter equivalent. Yeah, I just jumped on and there's a bunch of like friendly face or front not faces, but friendly names from Instagram and that they're talking because it's some more.
It's like a Twitter vehicle, so it's like a Twitter.
Oh my brain.
Yeah, so it's just like when the shiny new object, everyone's in there, everyone's all the buzz and excited. So it'll be interesting to see what happens.
Of course that'll be interesting. But yeah, we're doing more with short video now and things like that too, and kind of micro learning, those kinds of pieces. Just you know, so people can consume things at their own pace.
What are you listening to? It's so funny because we talk about color shoes, having the college kids having the worst shoes, and I found my listening time has drastically decreased because partly because of the work we're doing, just because of other stuff that I'm into. But is there anything that stays in your queue that you're listening to regularly?
I've actually been paper reading.
Paper oh school, Just straight up paper reading lately.
Yeah, I cycle through different mediums over time. I find that I get a little saturated with one thing and then come back to another Just to talk about a lot about cycles, right? So I'm actually in a big fiction phase right now and catching up on some authors that I haven't read in a while, but I do have some books I have queued up for some summer travel. Actually, my favorite audiobook recently that I listened to is very, very short John Cleese from Monty Python.
I did not know this years ago wrote a very short book on creativity and it is precious and the audiobook is an hour long. It's a very small book, but it was so lovely to have John Cleese, who I adore talk about creativity in my ear for an hour. I've listened to it twice. I bought the hardcover of it.
It's like this little precious book and I'm just like I love things like that because they give you this nice little message that you can keep coming back to, and there's something simple about it that makes it easy to consider, easy to consume, and I think a lot of us are looking for a little bit more of that, rather than things that are huge and long and complex.
Is it so anyway?
No, it's called creativity.
Oh, creativity Okay. Yeah, all right, We'll look for it. Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes as well. I think I do agree that I'm into the science fiction. One of the authors I mentioned to you this is Robin Maxwell. She's wrote a five-part series called the Gods of Atlantis, which is based on Plato's accounting how he was orally transmitted like the story of Atlantis. It's a book called Crimean. Oh neat, yeah, yeah.
So there's actual like Plato writings about something that he found or that was that was narrated to him, and so she's taken that concept and built like a whole like science fiction. Historical science fiction, I guess, is what she's called it.
I love that yeah.
It's fascinating to see how people like can take just a kernel of an idea and just turn it into just like this epic saga, which is wild.
I think that's brilliant. Yeah, I just. John Scalzi, who's one of my favorite science fiction writers, just released a short story on Amazon and it's free right now on Kindle, and they did it so that you can listen to the audio book and read the.
Kindle version for free and I think he's coming out with a larger book on it, but it's told from the point of view of an AI spaceship basically, and it's interesting because it evolves over time to make its own decisions, and it's a short story, but it was brilliantly done. He's one of my favorite authors of all time.
It's crazy to think how advanced Space Odyssey 2000 was.
I know how old.
How old 2000. Like that was like 70s, or maybe it wasn't 70s, or maybe I don't even know.
I think it was the late 70s. Yeah, 70s, it might have been 80. Yeah, early 80s.
Crazy that movie still holds up. It's wild.
I haven't watched that in decades.
Yeah, it's good because it's just the pace of it is so slow and just like it's fun to watch. Okay, we're closing in on the hour mark and as I always knew what would happen when we just get together and chat, and so it's been nice to kind of just catch up and see what's happening in your world.
And I think sometimes when you're at a podcast conference, you're like, oh, we're going to, let's have a chat, and it's like five or 10 minutes in the hallway and you're like, okay, we'll see each other later and then that never happens.
It never happens, yeah, and it's too loud to talk at the party, yeah.
Yeah, and it never ends up being so. This is much more relaxed, much more kick our heels back and just kind of sit back and see what's happening in your world. So I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. So I'd be remiss if I didn't ask my closing two questions. Okay, what's something you've changed your mind about recently?
Oh, I have changed my mind recently that I have to hire a whole bunch of people internally to grow the business to the next level. And we're actually doing it through collaboration. It's been a lot of fun.
Say a little bit more about that. Is it collaborating with freelancers or is this partnerships?
No, collaborating with other companies, so working with other companies the same way those publishers work with us.
Yeah, very cool. And what's the most misunderstood thing about you?
Oh, generally the most misunderstood thing about me is that I'm I get a lot that people call me like Miss Tina and they think that I'm like very not prim and proper but kind of like I'm an authority and I'm powerful and all of that, but not necessarily all that relatable and I'm like I am a dork. I am a massive freaking dork, like a hundred percent of the time, like I have a filthy mind, I have a filthy mouth. You throw me a karaoke microphone and it'll.
Let's go put on a show and let's go like trips through the woods looking for fairies and then let's go eat pasta. I mean seriously yeah.
So it's a lot more to Tina Dietz than meets the eye, is what you're saying.
I am many layers. I'm like Shrek. You know, ogres are like onions.
Well, I hope that's enough to get people curious about the world of Tina and then dig into anywhere else to connect with you. So where's the best place for folks to want to learn more about you and learn more about Twin Flames Studios?
Well, you can definitely go to the website twinflamesstudioscom and find out all about the company and all that. And we also have company pages on all the platforms but Twitter, because I hate it, yeah, and I'll have to try threads, oh my God. But if you Google my name, tina Dietz I do show up as the first answer on Google.
Oh, that's not bad. Yeah, talk about SEO. All right, my friend, thank you so much for jumping on here and we have to reschedule this couple of times. It was great to catch up.
Oh, thanks Harry, I appreciate it.