Welcome to Podcasting Tech, a podcast that equips busy entrepreneurs engaged in podcasting with proven and cost effective solutions for achieving a professional sound and appearance. I'm Matthew Passi, your host and a fifteen year veteran in the podcasting space. We'll help you cut through the noise and offer guidance on software and hardware that can elevate the quality of your show. Tune in weekly for insightful interviews with tech creators, behind the scenes studio tours, and
strategies for podcasting success. Head to podcastingtech.com to subscribe to this show on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, and join us on this exciting journey to unlock the full potential of your podcast. Gonna take you up to New England and chat with Stefan Lubinski. He is the creator at Audience Builders, and you can find more about him at stephanlubinski.com. Well, of course, I'll have a note, a link to all that in the show notes. He's a coach, consultant, and producer.
Stefan, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Good morning. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. Oh, it it's my pleasure. So you have an interesting background. You didn't really start in the the media role per se. How did you find yourself in podcasting? Yeah. It's funny because I did we we met through, through an online podcasters group, and and I listed that I was an accidental podcast
producer. So my background has been in sales pretty much my entire professional career ranging from restaurants to real estate, technology to television, all kinds of, of different industries, always in business development. One of those experiences was for a company that owned two television networks and we were the first social television network and Mark Burnett was an
investor. Now unfortunately, U2 TV didn't make it, as many startups that I've been involved with, although I don't think that it's my fault. But, yeah, it didn't make it, but at that time it was a hot television startup and I got an opportunity one day to actually take a producing role. We had lost somebody and the CEO was like, who I'd known for many years, and he knew I was a creative and he was like, guess what? You're now the producer of this
show. And I had no experience in it, and it was television, and it was an interview format. And it was, it was a pay to play format. It's called a buy on show. So the guests literally pay to be on television and to be interviewed as a media asset and a
kind of a PR ladder. So I did that, I loved it, I really enjoyed that, and then many years later as I started to wind down my sales leadership roles, I decided I wanted to do more, creative things that help, my clients kind of grow their business, and I landed on, using a show, whether that's a limited series in some cases, whether that's, quote, unquote, a podcast,
as a relationship acquisition vehicle for my clients. So early stage startups that are looking to be more visible and credible to have c suite relationships that they don't have, we used, a thought leadership platform as a means to establish those relationships. And so that became so successful for one of my clients that it literally turned into a brand. Rising Stars is now the most recognizable media brand in the Medicare
stars space. We're invited to speak at conferences. We now do live events, and next year, we'll look to get into I don't wanna call it credentialing, but, industry education. So all started from just a a strategy to help a client be more visible and has now turned into a brand with three legs to that stool of of live events, education, and and the show.
Very, very cool. Congratulations on all that. I I wanna go back to what you were talking about relationship building through thought leadership and and this idea of pay to perform or pay to play or pay to appear. You know, so many podcasters, they get in this and they immediately look at
downloads as their biggest metric. And I remember when I first started with clients and podcast production, one of my first clients was like, listen, if people listen to this, great, but having this podcast is gonna open a lot of doors for me and, you know, at first their target really was the guest, not so much the audience. Why is that a successful strategy for some? Because it's an instant payoff.
Because with with when you're doing content for business, whether you're a B2B, whether you're a Fortune 500, or whether you're a solopreneur, the payoff for content to business, unless you're selling like an e commerce product, but if you're a realtor, a lawyer, a consultant, a coach, the amount of time it's gonna take to go from content to new business is a long tail. You not only have to build up an audience, you have to have content
in front of them multiple times. Some people say seven to eight times, some people say 12 to 18 times before they really get a sense of familiarity, trust, and want to execute on a call to action.
So, if you use a podcast for your clients, if you're a producer or if if you're a podcaster thinking about how can you make money with your skills, being able to explain to whether they're a consultant, a coach, an executive in sales, all of those people wanna be connected with the movers and shakers in their space. So if you can create a well enough produced program and if you can ask smart enough questions, you will find that most of the time subject matter experts will say yes.
And now all of a sudden my client has a relationship with that C suite target. And I wanna be really clear for those of you that are like, wait, so you're saying these guests are more the target than worrying about the content for the audience and the answer is yes. And not only that, what I would tell you is when I sit down with my clients I say, because I do a 10 episode year for a client, like that's a season, So I'll say, who are the 10 people in your industry that will move the
needle for you? Whether that's as a joint venture, a partner, a prospect, whatever it may be. And so they list out, these are the 10 people I'd like to have a relationship with or these are the 10 people I'd like to strengthen the relationship with. They know me, but we're, you know, we're not friends.
And so, yeah, we'll build the episodes around those targets and we'll we'll get a hold of them and say, hey, listen, we're doing an episode about and of course whatever it was about is tailored to what they do well. And, we know that you're crushing it in that space or that strategy or whatever, and we'd love to have you come on. And it's rare that guests say no. And when they do say no, it's typically scheduling. It's
not, no, I don't wanna be on your on your program. Well, so that that's interesting because I did run into lots of clients and lots of other podcasters who who had that route. Right? They wanted to land big name guests on their show as a way to network and grow their, their relationship and their community and and, you know, gain access to people who might not chat with them. But sometimes and and it's rare, but sometimes they were
often hit with the, well, how big is your show? What's your audience like? And and so what do you do in that situation? Yeah. So first of all, there's a few things. Number one, I think sometimes people there's a disconnect between when I say the people they're gonna move your, needle, they don't say, oh, yeah. If I knew Gary Vaynerchuk, that would move my needle. Right? So they're not telling me famous people or authors or, you know, somebody that
is commanding a million dollars from the stage. They're listing senior vice presidents, CMOs, and CEOs of the companies they do business with. In this case, these are large insurance companies. So look, getting to a senior executive at an insurance company, spend an hour with you, sure, it is a challenge, but again, we position our show as the leading thought leadership platform in
Medicare stars so people literally do wanna be on it. The answer to how do you deal with that, number one, don't be over aspirational, you need to ladder up. So you start with a guest that's just happy to be able to tell their story and to be able, so that you can give that back to them and package it up and
they can use that for their own benefit. And then you leverage the fact that you had a guest with credibility that, you know, hey we had so and so on from Patagonia and now we'd love to have you on mister CEO. So you do have to kind of earn your bones and level up and not start with too aspirational of a target. So yeah. And then
what do you do after that conversation? Right? So you you you the person agrees to come on, you talk to them, you ask good questions, you have a good conversation, you release the episode, But then how do you really convert that experience into a long lasting fruitful relationship for yourself? Are there things to do and avoid? I'm I'm not I don't coach listen. My clients are sophisticated, successful, either 7 figure earners or 6 figure earners,
so they know how to take a relationship and continue to nurture it. I they don't need my coaching for that. But what I would caution you is this. You do not use this strategy to bring on a guest and then immediately sell your services. So I'm gonna say that
again for the people in the back of the room. If you are thinking, oh, I love this idea, I'm a company, I sell this widget, I'm gonna bring on prospective customers of this widget under the guise of being a guest and telling me what great stuff they're doing and then I'm gonna turn around and whether it's at the end of the show, whether it's the next day, whether it's the next week, I'm like, oh, by the way, did you
check out my widget and my thingy and my whatever? That's not the way to go because then the sense is, oh, this wasn't really about either my expertise or establishing a relationship, this was really like, oh, you just wanted to like get an opportunity to sell me your thing. So what I would argue is the best way to use this is what I
call at the beginning, a relationship acquisition vehicle. It establishes a relationship, you nurture that relationship, deliver value to that relationship over time, and then you will typically find those people are asking to do business with you or referring business to you. So you don't need to, quote, unquote, sell or or convert, if that makes sense. No. And I I think it makes a ton of sense. And so all this is done under your
audience builders brand. Right? Yeah. I mean, I I haven't even trademarked that, but, yes, I, let me back this up. I have not marketed for any of my business. I have been fortunate enough that I don't need a lot of clients. I'm not looking to be a wealthy person. I think life gets more complicated when you're I see my clients who make a lot of money, and I don't want that in life. So I've been lucky enough that people have referred business to me, and and and so that's how I get my clients, I
don't really have to go out there and market per se. That said, I wanna move to a new phase for my business. I'm really interested in doing group coaching. I wanna reach out and have more people that aren't looking to spend what I charge clients and businesses to learn about how they can do less selling and help more people
buy by building audiences of prospects. So I came up with a brand called Audience Builders and in 2025 my goal is to launch Audience Builders Live in Q1 and that will be a free weekly live Zoom call for 6 figure service professionals who would like to leverage content to build an audience to grow their business to come in every week, ask whatever question they want. It's gonna be
an ask me anything format. And first come first serve, ask whatever question or what's keeping you stuck or what strategy is not working and I'll give you my best and that's it. Every week it'll be free for as many people that can log in and get their question in. And information on that will all be at
stephanlebinski.com? Yeah, absolutely. If you go to stephanlebinski.com or if you just, if you're ever interested in that, if you go there you can contact me or send me an email stephanstephanlebinski dot com and say, Hey,
have you started up Audience Builders? And by the way, if anybody's listening to this and wants to just book thirty minutes of my time, you can just go to my website and you can book thirty minutes of my time, no charge, and I'm happy to listen to what it is you're trying to get done and and give
you my 2¢. So before we move on to the questions I like to ask everybody, one thing you brought up in the very beginning that could be a sore spot for podcasters that I'd be curious to get your take on is you had you were working for this business that was doing right to pay to appear, you know, model. What are your thoughts on that in podcasting? Is that something you encourage, discourage, work with? I I love it. I love the model, because the client is getting what they want.
So let's understand what the client wanted in the television model. We had a television network with about 15,000,000 subscribers in cable and OTA over the air and what they wanted wasn't as much about getting in front of the audience with their content, that's part of it. What it really was about is having a professionally produced package that they can use over and over, that they can use on their social, that they can send to their list, that they can
cut up into pieces. And so that's really what they're getting. And so it's the same thing for you podcasters that are listening, you podcast producers that are listening, which is, you know, clients, if you're gonna do the model of I've got a pay per play interview podcast, what clients want are two things. One, yes. They would love to have some reach, and they would love that that reach has impact. That is the audience that
you have is the audience that they speak to. That's obvious. So the bigger size you have and the more engaged that audience is, not just downloads. If you can show that you've got an engaged community online, whether that's a Facebook group or Discord or whatever it may be, but you have an engaged community, not just anonymous downloads that you really can't even describe much about the demographics to the client. And the other is really a professional production and really smart questions.
That is, were they able to tell a story in a way that they have not been able to do before and they were able to articulate their value in such a more creative, smarter way that came off exactly as they wanted and they're not the one They're being asked, right? They're not the ones getting in front of a camera and going, Hi, we're Acme Corp and we're awesome because of these reasons. That's lean out, nobody, that's an advertisement, that's when we'd get up
and go to the bathroom and leave. You're being asked like, Hey, you guys invented the yada yada thing in my jiggy and that influenced the whole industry, that's amazing, tell us about that. And so now there's a story, there's credibility for the client, if you've got production value and it looks good and you've produced it well and you've edited it well, this is an asset for them that they can't create or if they could create it's gonna cost
them money. So that's why it's valuable. So if you have a big enough reach or if you produce such a glossy, beautiful piece of content with such great editing and on screen graphics and everything else, yeah, people might be willing, to pay for that. In my model with my clients, we're not doing that. We're not we're not asking the senior vice president of Aetna to pay to be on the Rising Stars show. Oh, no. And and I wasn't trying to accuse or
or imply that. I was just, it's just such a hot button topic. If you often bring up the idea of pay to blame podcasting, you'll get a deluge of comments from people, most of them against it, a few for,
and it's just such a hot button issue. Are the ones that aren't making probably aren't making money in podcasting, to be candid, and they're jealous of people that are making money in some way because here's the thing, if you are open about the model, if you're honest with clients, yeah, but that's the case with anything, doesn't matter what your business If you're dishonest then that's shitty. Oops. Maybe you bleeped that. I don't know what your podcast is like. So, but Well, like,
I've I've been approached I've been invited to be on a podcast. So someone reached out, hey. We love your insight blah blah blah. Please come on the podcast. Great. We'd love to do it. You know, fill up the thing blah blah blah. Then the next thing I do is I get an invoice. Says, alright. If you'd like to appear, it's blah blah blah. It's like, you asked me. Like, one, disclose that right up front, and two, make sure you're disclosing it to your
audience as well. That's bait and switch. And by the way, we didn't so in in the television model again so I don't do the buy on model for podcasting and I have no problem with it. If you're doing it out there great, good for you, that's awesome. By the way it just means you're delivering enough value that a client is willing to pay to be interviewed on your show.
It's as simple as that. But I will tell you, Matt, what you just said is so accurate and I've seen it in television as well where the prospecting is an associate producer, air quotes, associate producer reaches out and says, Hey, we've been following your stuff on
social or whatever and we'd love to have you on as a guest. You get all pumped up and you're on the and the next thing you know you get this separate communication that's like, just so you know, there is a cost in order for us to deliver your meetup package and your this and your that and that's
bait and switch. And what we did we were talking to PR agencies and we were saying, Look if you've got clients that need to ladder up the media ladder which means they need to kind of prime the pump, they need something that says, Hey look we were on America Up Close on Family Net TV, check it out, they've got something to send out to the other stations. So then when Good Morning Poughkeepsie sees it and says, oh, that's not
bad. They're not bad on air. Those were decent questions. You know what? Put that in my Rolodex. I might call for them. And so that was the purpose. That's why the clients paid for it, because and by the way, nobody else was calling them to do free TV. So this is paid media that you then hope, turns to earned media.
Yeah. No. I I love that explanation. Love the way you describe it. And, you know, my past life when I was a radio producer, often when we were looking for experts, you know, one advantage would be if you presented someone who, you know, had good opinions where I was topical to what we were talking about. But also if you said they've appeared on such and such, it's like, great. I know they won't freeze up. I know they won't give single word answers.
Right? Like, I know they'll be engaging for the audience and so yeah. I love the way you put that. The the paid paid for appearance can work, but, as as you said, be honest, be upfront, disclose it, don't bait and switch. That's terrible, and that's giving people who are doing this very well and very successfully and very honorably a terrible name. Yeah. Be be proud of your product. If your product is listen. We we first
of all, we buy eyeballs. That there's nothing wrong with that either. Let's be super clear. So if you have a and they do this in television, what do you think an ad for a show that you're not watching is that's paid advertising to say please put your eyeballs on this show? Okay? And so, if you're buying eyeballs, if you're buying traffic to put it on your content there's not in fact, let let me say this before we
go. Not only is there nothing wrong with it, it's the single biggest mistake podcasters and anybody that's a quote unquote showrunner is making. If you are not spending to put eyeballs on your content and then corral them off into a custom audience that you can nurture them because it is familiarity that leads to this sense of likability and trust. It is seeing
that person or hearing that person on a frequent basis. When you turn on your TV in the morning and you see that same weatherman, over time you get that sense of familiarity and trust. So, if you think that you launch a podcast and, like, people are gonna find it, like, you they go to Spotify and, like, type in a and then just see what comes up in school. Let's see. Oh, Adam's Apple, Mobile Energy. Oh, that looks
like an interesting name. Like that's just not how podcasts are discovered, right? And then putting your podcast in your email signature and your face great. So your friends and the very small group of people that know you, they already know you have a podcast. They're already not listening to it. You know what I mean? Or the three friends that are really nice are listening to
it. Shout out to Mark Serkin. So so, you know, so the the truth is if you really want to get listeners or viewers or grow an audience, you have to pay like everybody else. Organic reach is dead across all platforms, every single platform. There's no more okay. Except for TikTok Except for TikTok where you still can get a ton of vanity views, but what I'd argue is to what end? Even people that are like, oh, this got 300,000 views. Okay. How many people signed up for your
newsletter? How many people joined your your your group your Facebook group? Like, how how do you take them from an anonymous like that just gave you a dopamine hit, oh, you got 10,000 likes. How My bank currently does not take likes. When I go to Chase for a deposit, they do not I tried. I brought a shit I was like, I have 7,000 likes to deposit, and they were like, yeah. We don't give a shit about
that. So so you shouldn't give a shit about that either, and you shouldn't give a shit about 10,000 downloads unless that 10,000 downloads is what is allowing you to sell that sponsorship and you're monetizing it. Right? So, yeah. Love it. Steviele Bimste. Put put put people in fact, here's the other thing I will tell you, whether you do YouTube, which means do mid
roll and pre roll ads, and and and that mean meaning about your content. So, like, hey, I've got a video podcast and, but I'm not a YouTuber, that's fine, go on YouTube and buy ads and put your pre roll or mid roll on content that is similar to yours. If you speak to accountants and there's some YouTuber that does accounting videos that they're really into, you can put your ad about your accounting videos that they're really into, you can put your ad about your accounting podcast, your take on
accounting on that dude's YouTube channel, and guess what? If they click skip, you don't pay. And the and the other place I would think about that that most podcasters are not thinking about at all is Facebook. It it Everybody is still there. People are like, oh, it was It's full of shit. Everybody is still there. If you go there and you run Here's what you can't do on YouTube and these other places, you can't
retarget the way you can on Facebook. So if somebody watches five seconds of my video about building an audience, so, hey, are you a 6 figure service professional looking to build your audience to grow your business? They watch five seconds of that, I put them in a custom audience. And now I'm gonna make sure that they keep seeing my stuff until they take my call to action which is just show up to audiencebuilders.
Live every Wednesday at whatever time it is, two p. M. Eastern, whatever time I'm doing the thing and that's the call to action every single time. My point is you gotta take somebody from an anonymous download or an anonymous like or an anonymous anything and you have to convert them into a member, a user, somebody on your list, somebody getting your newsletter, somebody on your substack,
then you've got their name, and you can start establishing a relationship. And once you get to the relationship stage, you can start making money. Love it. He's a growth coach, consultant, producer. His name is Stefan Lubinski. You can learn more about him at stephanlubinski.com and keep an eye out for his audience builders program that is coming out soon depending on when you're listening to this episode. Before we let you go, a couple of questions we'd
like to ask everybody who appears on the show. One, in podcasting specifically, is there a place where you'd like to see improvement, whether that's from listening, production, discoverability, monetization, like, anything in particular where you're just like, god. I wish podcasting could do
this. Not that I wish podcasting per se could do something, but I would love to see one of the platforms, Riverside, as we're both fans of Riverside and use it, and the other player in the space is Descript, truly become one stop shop platforms where you can accomplish everything you're looking to accomplish, and and I mean everything. There's not the platform that is thought of guest booking, guest tracking, a guest portal for their files once it's done that they're immediately issued upon
registering in with you in the first place. Right? Then the recording, then the editing, then the publishing, then the social syndication, then the reformatting, and the, you know, I want this in audio, I want this in transcript, I want a blog version of this, and because of AI, this is right around the corner. And I've always told people stop producing and just audio, stop, stop, what are you doing? When you produce in video, you get all three formats
baked in. You get your video for and by the way, here's the other thing. It's not about what format you like in media. Well, I like audio. I'm in a podcast. Give you shit what you like. It's what your audience likes. And what they like is media consumption based on what they're doing. So when they're in their car, they can't play a scroll with their finger so
they listen. When they're in their whatever, they're watching, and when they feel like reading really quickly, they're reading, and what I would say to everybody listening is you know darn well you're a listener, you're a watcher, and you're a reader, you're all three. What is different is about where and when you're doing these things to make it the best experience for you. So why would you produce in one format? Well, I just blog. Well, you're insane. I just do audio. Also crazy. Do it in
video. I've got the blog. I've got the audio podcast. I've got the video. I'm now gonna deliver content in a way that however you wanna consume it, it's available to you. That's how you should be approaching it. So, yeah, I would love to see a platform that literally I log in and I handle my entire tech stack. The entire tech stack, including managing my including it's a CRM because it's gonna literally manage
my clients and the guests of my clients. Yeah. I think I think there's a lot of companies that are taking lots of pieces of it, grouping it together, and the Venn diagram of everything you need is getting there, but it's not no one is quite doing it where the entire circle overlaps with everything that you need to do. You have, you know, like, three quarters of it being handled by Riverside, another three quarters being handled by hosting companies, another three quarters being handled by
Spotify. Right? But no one has the entire single package of one. So I love that idea. I love that concept. Want them to be once it's left to go to its like, they're not a destination, so you still need to publish at the destination, whether that's Spotify or Google or Well, I just need Spotify with with Anchor being able to host and submit and, you know, be a listening platform
and, monetization. Right. All that. Like they, they do things other than just be the place where people listen to podcasts, but yes, there's, but yeah, I love this idea of just this all in one, every aspect from
start to finish. LOUIS, I did both. From the start of reaching out to a guest all the way through to I'm hitting send this to my YouTube channel to publish, and by the way again including like the spit out of the blog post, the infographic, like because again once you create one thirty or forty five minute piece of content guys, you have a a month. I only meet with my clients once a month, that's
my executive production package because they're too busy. But I can get a month's worth of content out of that one hour that they spend on air with their clients and and with their guests and remember when they walk away from that they're stoked because those were guests that they want a relationship with and now they're kinda chummy with them, so they're all feeling pretty good, and then I can give them a pile of content that their assistants can load up on
their LinkedIn and elsewhere for the rest of the month. Love it. I guess, I mean, this might be the same question, but is there any tech on your personal wish list, whether it's, you know, something you've wanted to buy and and haven't yet or something that hasn't been invented yet that you you wanna get your hands on, camera, mics, off, or something like that? You know what? Elgato is getting closer to
creating a teleprompter that I think makes sense. I still have in a box somewhere like one of the traditional glass teleprompters that I never set up because I am one of those idiots that's like, I'll just get it done in one take. I'll just I don't need a script. But there are times when I really, really would have loved to have had a script and then I wouldn't have done 728 takes.
And Elgato has one that is much more electronic and you have much more electronic and you have much more control over it, but I read some reviews that it wasn't quite there, so I guess I'll wait for a few more generations. It it it works well, but you have to be using all Elgato products. I tried to use it with, like, my BRIO, and there's still glare. You know, if you have,
like, a really fancy camera with a lens, yeah, that's okay too. But, right, it's it's very good, but, right, it's just just a falls just a hair short. Yep. That's about that's about it. One of these days, I probably would hire Luria Petrucci to, design a set for me other than what I've got here, which is, you know, it's clean, it's simple, and you can tell that, you know, I do something with with media. But, yeah, if I were to get fancy, I'd call Luria up at, Live Streaming Pros. Shout out,
Luria. And, in fact, quick side story, her name when she was in television was Callie Lewis. That was her on air television name, and she was a tech reporter, and she would cover CES and all that other stuff. And when I was, working for U2 Television, I signed Callie Lewis, and we put her on our on our network, and, and we ran, The Callie Lewis Show for for a while. So Shout out to the old days, Luria.
Love it. Alright. And the last question is, is there a podcast or two that you are listening to that, like, no matter what, when they drop new episodes, you're gonna stop and check those out, or you're not gonna let them go without checking out the latest episode? I mean, honestly, I don't have that about anything, and that's probably more to do with my ADHD. But, I would say that, I really like Tim
Ferriss. I I appreciate his long form podcasts, and I also I don't know if he's a pod I guess he's a podcaster, but is he a YouTuber? The diary of a CEO, podcast. So I guess, yeah, it's a podcast. I find that there's some really, really interesting, guests on there, so I guess those would be the two that I that I really do like. If you haven't seen diary of a CEO on on, YouTube, check it out. He has some pretty interesting, guests. Very cool. Stefan Lubinski, growth coach,
consultant, producer. You can learn more at stephanubinski.com. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Thanks for joining us today on Podcasting Tech. There are links to all the hardware and software that help power our guest content and podcasting tech available in the show notes and on our website at
podcastingtech.com. You can also subscribe to the show on your favorite platform, connect with us on social media, and even leave a rating and review while you're there. Thanks, and we'll see you next time on Podcasting Tech.