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Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle, so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host, Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. Today I’m happy to have Budi Voogt on the show. Now Budi is the co-founder of Heroic Recordings, a record label group, an agency that represents a number of major electronic artists. He’s also the author of the Soundcloud Bible. And here’s just a quick aside before we begin.

You know, when I was young, I was somewhat discouraged by my parents to kind of pursue any career in the arts not that I was any good at the arts, but being a professional artists carries kind of a negative connotation about being poor in starting. Now I have a lot of listeners who are artists and some are even musicians. So I brought Budi on the show today to kind of teach us how to become a successful solo entrepreneur and kind of leverage our artistic talents as a business. So with that, welcome to the show Budi. How are you doing today man?

Budi: Doing very good. Thank you for having me Steve.

Steve: Yes so give us the quick background story. I actually know very little about the music industry. So how did you start Heroic Recordings, and basically can you explain what a record label is and what an agency does?

Budi: Sure, absolutely, so to give a quick random for the listeners. So basically Heroic is a record label group and agency. And what we do is very much focused on the electronic music. And we try it on the web. What we do is we have a number of record labels which serve for us as a platform to discover and kick start upcoming talents. So that might be we discover them on Soundcloud or elsewhere, or they were tipped off to us.

And then we release their records, we market them with a heavy emphasis on online, so blogs, YouTube channels, Soundcloud channels. And from there we pick out the artist with the most potential and from our agency division, we then represent them for management to really build careers. So to give you an illustration, one of the artists we brought from 2,000 followers to like 180,000 taking him from guitar teacher to fully—yeah, he is self sustaining as an artist right now touring the world.

Steve: That’s cool. So actually how did you actually get into this business in the first place? Are you an artist yourself?

Budi: I am not.

Steve: So how did you actually start Heroic?

Budi: Right, so I was in business administration. I do my bachelors in a university here in the Netherlands. And this was about four and a half years ago when I started. And I always had an entrepreneurial itch, but I didn’t know so much what I wanted to do yet. So I’d chosen this university direction because it was the closest approximation to doing business, right business administration. I was going to the local chamber of commerce following a number of workshops about entrepreneurships and trying to figure out how they worked.

At the time my best friend started producing music and they put a track on Soundcloud which at the time was at its infancy. And in one or two weeks time, it got 10 to 20 thousand plays which back in the day meant that they were like the top 1% people on the platform. It was surprisingly good how well the response was. And mind you this was without any following. This was super organic. It was sort of like the stars aligning.

So we came together and it was guys there’s some great opportunity here. They started an act. I started managing them. These were really the beginnings. It was a great way for us to start finding our way and also a great opportunity to start running a business, and from there it very much escalated.

Steve: That’s interesting. So you were the author of the Soundcloud Bible. So is that primarily how you promote your artists?

Budi: No, absolutely not. It is just a part of a spectrum of things that we do. You see, how the Soundcloud Bible comes in here is that to pick up where we left off. So when I started managing these guys, soon enough I discovered how much I loved doing that. So I started an agency with my partner, started signing more acts and then at one point we realized like, hey we are trying to open all these doors of all these established players, managers, publishers, really the established, you would say elite, but it’s rather just that the music business model was very much focused around these bigger companies that grew back when physical still was the driving product.

And we were trying to open these doors and we had artists with so much potential, but they didn’t have the track record to back that up. So that’s when it hit us like, hey our initial success came from Soundcloud. Why not fully dedicate ourselves to leveraging digital to create that leverage for ourselves to open the doors. At the time I bought up my partner from the agency at the time and together with my now partner Tim who is also half of the act [inaudible 0:06:34] we started Heroic, and we merged both the agency and the record label. And…

Steve: Okay, so you guys were like a one stop shop at this point so to speak.

Budi: Pretty much, yes.

Steve: So a couple of things I just want to get clear since I know very little about the music industry. So what is a record label first of all?

Budi: Right, so originally a record label where the name comes from is from the sticker that people would put on a vinyl record, because vinyl all look the same. It was wax and then you would put on the sticker and that would be the brand, so hence record label. Now that meant typically that the record label has the role of discovering the talent, and then both financing and facilitating the production of records and then that will be sent to a distributor and the distributor will distribute it at the stores.

And now we essentially do exactly the same, but then instead playing the physical level, we do this on a digital level. So we discover talents, we sign them, we curate it. We make sure the product and the artist is in the best shape possible. We might finance it. We might make sure that there’s correct branding visual, aesthetics, artwork etcetera, and then it goes to the distributor and then the distributor brings it to our stores which we call DSPs digital service providers.

These are your iTunes, Spotify etcetera. And from there the tracks are available for sale and this is only the beginning. The real work comes when you are doing marketing. That is pretty much what a record label does. So everything I just told you is the foundation where you really excel is your musical curation, your visual presentation and then especially your marketing.

Steve: So I’m just curious, and I’ve always been wondering about how this all work. So how do musical artists typically get paid? So is it by the play, do they make most of their money doing concerts and live things, live events? How does that work?

Budi: Right, very good question and one where the answer has sort of shifted over time. In say 15 years ago, 1998 the record industry was a $30 billion dollar yearly grossing industry where as now, 15 years later, it’s about $15 billion. So the industry is effectively halved. And the reason why that happened is because with the decline of physical, and with the rise of digital, you would got sort of a democratization of distribution and everyone is opting now for accessibility and comfort instead of ownership. People want to have access instead of wanting to own that CD or vinyl.

And what’s happened in the process is that all those, those larger [inaudible 0:09:26], think about $12 for a CD which effectively now is someone just rings a track on Spotify and that one play might make an artist 0.056 cents. Yeah, so the game is very much changed. So right now the majority of a touring artist his revenue might be events like performances. But, there are many artists still who are able to make a living off of royalties, and that means income from download sales, CD purchases.

Steve: Just curious, so people still buy CDs?

Budi: Some, yes. However I think this is very dependent on genre. For example we are very much focused on electronic music making our demographic very young, and thus physical consumption is nonexistent. But maybe if you are making country music, there is a larger portion of people that still do.

Steve: Yeah, I mean, I can’t remember the last time I actually purchased an album. These days, I just use Pandora, Spotify, and I’ll buy an occasional track here and there. So the artists are they—you mentioned it was somewhere like 0.001 cents per play like on Spotify. So that kind of implies that you have to really still hit it big in order to make a living doing this. Is that accurate?

Budi: Absolutely. I think there are many artists though who very successfully manage to create the sort of a synergy of revenue streams. So you would have some licensing for example you put a track behind advertisements or video replacement. You might have some breakable royalties via downloads and streaming. You might play a few shows and all that together might come to [inaudible 0:11:18] income.

Steve: Okay, I’ve always been curious about how copyrights and all the rights to music works. So when an artist produces something, they own that sound right, and so they have to get contacted if anyone wants to use their music in a video or something?

Budi: Yeah, music copyright is very, very complex. But if I were to summarize, there are two major copyrights for everyone’s understanding. So basically via international law, if you create something that is a unique idea whether that’s a song or actually an idea or a device or whatever and you can, you break down that idea, or you store it in such a way that it can be reproduced by someone else, then technically you have copyright on that thoughts.

Now, on music it means there are two different entities if you need to separate between. And number one is the song, the composition. And this is easiest to interpret as a sheet music for example. You know if you look at sheet music, there’s all these notes and the notes together make the arrangement that is the song.

Steve: You still there?

Budi: You are still with me Steve?

Steve: Yeah, I’m still with you, yeah.

Budi: Okay beautiful. So a good point to visualize that would be to think about sheet music. And then you have all these notes switched together form the arrangement of the song. And that is one copyright. That is the composition copyright on the song. That is owned by the songwriter. And then another copyright is the copyright on the actual recording of that song. So you might have person A write the song and you might person B perform the song. And then you might have person C record the performance of person B.

Steve: Okay, wow, so if I were to use just this is a random aside, if I were to use like a piece of music in one of my YouTube videos, it sounds like I have to contact several people.

Budi: Yeah, so basically different—absolutely. It’s going to be super confusing for people, but usually what that means is that if you were to use a track then technically you would have to reach out to the master owner. And the master owner would either be the record label or the person performing the song.

Steve: So I’m just curious Budi, so what—how did you get your first clients and why would they go to you as opposed to like a larger record label, like a Sony or [inaudible 0:13:47] or whatever?

Budi: Right, so our first clients very much came from our close environment. So basically my initial act were my best friends and from there they were doing a great job and other people saw I was doing a good job, and this allowed me to find other talent and they were seeing that I was making things happen for these other guys. So that was the initial growth.

And now very much what you see is a compounding effect. So the bigger the label gets, the more music submissions we get, the more easier it is to find artists. And on the agency side as well, like the artist I just named San Holo. We took him from 2,000 to 180,000 fans, right? He’s going to do three international towards the end of the year.

And I think what allowed us to for example work with him is that we recognized potential where other people didn’t, and then we executed so precisely that we actually managed to capitalize on the opportunity that was there whilst other people passed on it or didn’t know it was there.

Steve: So assuming that a large record label had noticed him, what would have been the advantage that your firm had over much larger player would have?

Budi: A larger player would never have signed him simply because the track record would not have been there, so they couldn’t have justified the investment.

Steve: I see. Okay, okay that makes sense. So let’s go into some of the details. You mentioned, is it Han Solo?

Budi: San Holo, it’s a word play.

Steve: Right. So let’s say for example that I was a musician. What would be some of my first steps on getting the word out there? So a client goes to you for help. What are some of the first things that you do to kind of promote the musician?

Budi: Right, okay, so whenever I talk about marketing for music, I always try to make it very clear that the foundation for correct marketing needs to be there. So if your music and your visuals are not up to par, then it’s a futile effort to be pushing the act in itself. So step one is always, you got to make sure the music is up to par and a guideline we use for that is you take the three best current acts in a similar sound as the actor trying to push, you compare their three best records to yours, and if your stuff doesn’t come 80% close, you go back to the drawing board and you improve, and you improve and you improve until you are there. So that’s step one.

Step two would be making sure that you have a very strong and coherent visual aesthetic, your look. And ideally you want to have a look that is an extension of your musical style and you want to make sure that you extend that across all your channels. So your Facebook, your Twitter, your website, everywhere. So that someone would see your track, or the art work cover and they would know what band you are, and they might see your Facebook and have the same effect on your art work.

Steve: So you mentioned a bunch of social media platforms on there. Is there a particular one that a lot of musicians look at or use?

Budi: Yeah, that would be Soundcloud.

Steve: Soundcloud, okay.

Budi: However I feel that there’s a selection that are essential to be on right now, like that an artist simply couldn’t do without. And that would be Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Soundcloud, Instagram, increasingly more so and more recently also Snapchat and Vine are becoming very popular. And now, at least the ones I mentioned are important to be on simply because there’s going to be fans there looking for you if you are building a name, and if you are not there, you are going to lose a lot of listeners or fans or subscribers.

Steve: Interesting. So in my experience, when you try to be good at a lot of different social media platforms, you end up not doing a good job with any. So if there’s any that you would focus on in the beginning, it sounds like you would focus on Soundcloud, or in terms of social media, what would you be focusing on?

Budi: Right, okay. So there’s something that we call the funnel theory. And that’s basically, if you are an artist, and this goes beyond music by the way. I’m sure you’ve of the super fan theory.

Steve: Yeah, once you explain that for the listeners.

Budi: Yeah, basically a super fan would be someone who is so committed to your brand whatever it is that you are doing that they would tell their friends about you, that they would go out of their way to support you, that they would be willing to give you their money. And super fans is what every brand and business are trying to create even if it’s clients. You want to do such a good job that that person then goes on and tell someone else how good of a job you did so that you get more business.

And now in music, I think that social media is very much a funnel. So most important for a musician might be the content [inaudible 0:18:50] ones. So YouTube and Soundcloud, because the people who go there, don’t go to see people’s status updates, but they go to consume media and then Soundcloud is most centric to music. So there’s highest value there, then followed by YouTube where people go to watch videos or to listen to music. And then from there you might have a play, and a play might convert into a follow on YouTube or Soundcloud, and then those people might click through to your Facebook, or your Twitter or your Instagram, and then they might follow you there.

But then of course a play does not per say constitute a follow and a follow does not per say constitute a super fan. So this is the funnel that I mean. So it’s very much about what can you do to build up a continuous long-term trusted relationship with someone who has the potential to be your fan. And by doing that over time, either on one social media platform or by engaging with them on a variety over time, you convert them slowly into super fans. And those…

Steve: What is your definition of a conversion? Are you gathering email addresses, are you getting subscribers? What is your definition?

Budi: All of them are conversions.

Steve: All of them.

Budi: Yes. However, there are some we value more than others. For example for a musician 10,000 Facebook likes will never do for you what 10,000 Soundcloud fans will.

Steve: Okay.

Budi: Both in terms of — sorry go ahead.

Steve: No I was going to say let’s talk about Soundcloud a little bit, because I don’t have a complete understanding about how the platform works. I do know that I had considered hosting my podcast on Soundcloud at some point. But is it basically — you mentioned earlier when we were talking pre-interview that it’s like a YouTube. So is it mainly for musicians or is it for podcasters as well, because I know a lot of podcasts — a lot of my listeners actually have their own podcast as well.

Budi: It is absolutely for podcasters too.

Steve: Okay and so what are some good strategies involved in building a following on Soundcloud?

Budi: Right, so I think one thing that’s important for people to understand is how quickly Soundcloud is growing. So they reported about 2.5 billion monthly plays last year June I think. And then this year in May they recorded 5 billion monthly plays, so that’s a huge growth rate. And more and more so the consumption is going far beyond just music listeners, comedians are on there, podcast etcetera, so I would absolutely recommend.

Now when you are starting on a platform, there are a few basic things, so number one would be start realizing your profile, making sure it’s cool here and tweet the rest of your brand. But then when you do that the most important beginner tip would be to make sure that you make correct use of the tax.

So similar like a YouTube, Soundcloud has a chatting system which can be found if you land on the webpage, you can go to the explore tab, and there’s a drop down list of categories. And among those are a few for podcast, and now what you want to do when you upload a track or a podcast, is you want to make sure that you not only put in the actual title and maybe some related podcasts, but you also want to put in the specific name of digital category that you want to be indexed in. Because then when you get plays you will have a much higher probability of being indexed.

Steve: I see, categorized essentially is what you mean?

Budi: Yes, but then indexed in one of the charts.

Steve: Oh, okay got it okay. So Soundcloud — so how does discovery work on Soundcloud, it’s basically based on search results based on these charts, how does it work?

Budi: Right, so a lot of it is community driven. So many people have the Soundcloud accounts and whether they are content creators or just consumers or listeners. People go in Soundcloud, they follow accounts, and you will have a feed similar to a Facebook feed. And the feed will show in chronological order of the uploads and the reposts. A repost is basically a re-tweet, but then on Soundcloud, of all their other people they follow. So it’s very much like a digest.

Steve: Interesting, how does Soundcloud compare to like a Stitcher radio for example?

Budi: Right, so I’m not super up to date about Stitcher, but…

Steve: Or iTunes for that matter.

Budi: Right iTunes is a store, much more so than a community. And the only reason why podcasts thrive on iTunes is because iTunes is so well adopted right. Like everyone has their credit card hooked up to iTunes, and a lot of people have a Smartphone. So it’s very easy to want to be accessible there as a podcast.
But I think what iTunes lacks is the community aspect, so you might have people that review a podcast right, or a track that you will never get people commenting asking you maybe 27 minutes in this interview when you publicize it, like hey, I would love to know more about this specific copy, and for you then to be able to jump in there and send someone a link.

Steve: Interesting, okay, yeah clearly I need to explore this Soundcloud platform a lot more. So you would have your musicians start on Soundcloud and do some of the procedures that you just mentioned. What are some of the kind of the next steps to gain traction? So let’s say your content is good, your art work is good. What are some of the next steps?

Budi: Number one would be a schedule, very strict release schedule. I think if you are playing the online game, then there is a few things to keep in mind. Number one is that accountability is super important, because there are so much stuff coming out. You want to make sure that you are top of mind. And if you put out a track now, then it must be forgotten in four weeks if you don’t put out something again, simply because there are so much, so that is the first spot and the…

Steve: What frequency do you recommend?

Budi: One track between four to six weeks.

Steve: Oh, okay, that’s not that often, so 12 tracks a year?

Budi: Yes, however for example with San Holo we did 19 tracks on one year.

Steve: Okay.

Budi: So that is a lot and I know that many creatives have a very hard time keeping up with that pace.

Steve: Is there any techniques to just quickly accelerate the subscriber process on Soundcloud?

Budi: Well it’s the same as this traditional marketing that’s really a variety of things you can do. So number one means — would be making sure that you tie correctly. Number two would be finding a group of relevant artists or pace makers in your niche, and then connecting with them and committing to reposting each other’s work. So let’s say they are five people with 10,000 subscribers, then if everyone reposts each other’s uploads then you will have a collective reach of 50,000 subscribers.

Steve: And was that your strategy with—I have an [inaudible 00:26:06] is it San Holo?

Budi: Yeah, San Holo and butcher…

Steve: So was that your strategy, I mean you went from 20,000 to 180,000, what is it like a year you said?

Budi: Yeah.

Steve: Yeah, so that type of exponential growth would not be from just tagging your music properly, right?

Budi: No, these are 20 factors coming together.

Steve: Yeah, so let’s talk about some of these, the major ones that contributed to this growth yeah.

Budi: So this reposting that I was explaining is super important, so it would be finding the pace makers in your niche, building relationships with them, and getting them to repost your material when it comes out.

Steve: What is their incentive for reposting your material?

Budi: Having good content, however if you do this properly right, you actually create a proper incentive. So it might be that you repost their stuff as well as a sort of a given tag. It might also be that there are many promotional channels, so for example on Soundcloud there’s channels who do nothing else but plays music in specific genres. So you might reach out to those people and say, hey listen I would love it if you guys pre-post this track and then you could upload it as well. And then they have content for their channel when you get exposure.

Steve: Okay.

Budi: Now you can build upon that by also getting blogs to cover your release, and this is very-very essential. And blogs nowadays especially music blogs what they do is around 95% of them, they all embed Soundcloud players on their articles. So if you have for example new release come out, you might structure a bunch of reposts to happen within the first week of release. You might also structure a few blogs to write about it embedding the Soundcloud link. You might have then tagged it correctly, you might have done — made sure to also have reached out to some YouTube channels who promote music, I’m not sure if you are familiar with the concept.

Steve: No actually can you go over in more specifics on what you say when you reach out to the blogs or the YouTube channel owners.

Budi: Sure, okay, so this is very much the art of pitching right? Which is relevant not just in music, but just any business or craft or…

Steve: That’s correct absolutely.

Budi: Yeah, so we have a framework for this, and it comes down to the business basics they teach you. Number one is figure out who the people behind the entities are right? It might be this huge blog, but at the end of the day you are trying to reach out to the one person who write the article. Just like you if you are trying to get hired right, you might — yeah you are trying to find the one person who is in charge of HR or hiring.

Steve: Right.

Budi: And then you try and build a relationship based on mutual interest, based on mutual values, maybe something you can do for them. Maybe you can tape off a good artist; maybe you can make sure that your music is perfectly pre-selected. So our crafts — sorry I just got a face on call going straight through this. Let me restart this yeah.

Steve: Yeah, you just keep going I’ll just set it out.

Budi: Yeah, one second. Okay, I mean I’m not sure if it’s possible to mute that actually.

Steve: It’s okay, I’ll just cut it all out don’t worry about it, just keep going.

Budi: Okay, beautiful let me reiterate the answer. Okay, so blogs yes, so this comes back to the art of pitching. And this is very much the same skill that you are going to need in life and in business in general. And what we are trying to do first is we deconstruct who the relevant people are behind the entities. So you want to find the writer at the blog, you want to find the founder of that YouTube channel.

And then what you do is you are trying to connect with them on a personal level, so that might mean we might add them on Facebook and have a real conversation with them before asking for anything. Or it might mean that we send them an email and tape them some music. And then when it comes to the actual pitching, we make sure that it’s perfectly crafted. Like we would never pitch music to someone if we weren’t 100% sure that they’re actually are going to cover it.

Steve: Okay, by then you are 100% sure because you’ve already had a few conversations none business related prior.

Budi: Yes, we absolutely try and do that. And sometimes there are scenarios where that’s not the case, because you can’t potentially reach everyone. But then still when you pitch you want to make sure that they overly probably support your stuff. There’s no reason to pitch if you don’t think they’ll write about it. And you only get so many shots with these people. Typically your first impression is the only impression.

Steve: Okay, I mean this is a lot just like online marketing in general, right?

Budi: 100%.

Steve: Yeah, find the people who matter or who can help you and then reach out. Do you end up going to conferences? Are there music conferences and what not where you can actually meet a lot of these people live? Is that part of your a strategy as well?

Budi: Definitely. There’s actually a very big one coming up called Amsterdam dance event. This is where all the people in dance music come together from around the world. You are talking ten meetings a day for five weeks straight, for five days straight.

Steve: Okay. But you’ve mentioned Soundcloud, a bunch of other social media platforms. I was also just kind of curious; those are platforms that you do not own. At any point does your own personal branded website or own properties come into play here?

Budi: Absolutely. Internet marketing like you said. So at the bottom of the funnel, the things that we would value most would be visitors on an entity you control. So that would be our website. Also we are very big on the email marketing and building an email list.

Steve: Okay, and what are some of the incentives for someone to sign up for an email list that you guys employ?

Budi: It would be free tracks, it would exclusives. So free compilation, get a track before it comes out. Exclusive remix to email subscribers. It could be get notifications when we have a show. It could be– we recently did this with San Holo. We actually did a very unique video clip concept, where we worked together with a bunch of amazing directors and editors. What they did is that we made a clip where everything takes place just on San’s computer screen.

And then throughout the clip, we actually played some fan footage on his computer and that was inside the video. So to gather that footage, we reached out to the fans. It was like, “Guys please send over whatever photo or image material or video material you have of live shows.” And they send it in with bunches and a few of them were actually included in the video.

Steve: All of this actually that you are describing, it sounds a little pricy to get these videos professionally made, to get your sound recorded at a professional level. What I think of musicians and artist, I think that they tend to be very poor. Is it just a service that you provide as being the record label, or can any solo artist kind of afford to do these things?

Budi: Absolutely. I think if you exclude this video clip with a bunch of directors from this equation, then you can get a good visual aesthetic. You can set up your socials. You can build a website without knowing how to code. You can buy a microphone for 100 bucks and record yourself. You can distribute to all the stores using TuneCore. I mean the real variable here is effort.

Steve: Okay, no it just sounds like if I can kind of summarize your strategies, is put yourself out there on platforms where there is larger audiences and communities, gain a following, somehow lead them back to your site where you can actually get them on to your list, and you want to be establishing raving fans that will follow you wherever you go. Is that kind of an accurate summary?

Budi: That is a part of it. I think the missing variable here is the following. So this model that I’m explaining here is very much a model that we’ve used to go from no track record, no money, no followers, into actually making a living off music, both on the label side but also for our artist. And we do that indeed by building a following on social platforms, but then the crucial variable here is that we use that following to actually leverage deals.

So for example, San blew up on Soundcloud and at the time he was working as a guitar teacher. And we were bootstrapping everything. It was just us at the record label, working a lot of hours, and him making a lot of music and a friend of ours doing the visuals. And from there we turned that around into finding three, no four actually booking agents worldwide and going to a big record label and negotiating a good deal, which in turn gave us a budget to start producing bigger things.

So we very much took what we didn’t need any financing to do, and then we started leveraging those numbers and the social hype into more tangible and maybe in the business sense more and more financially funded situations.

Steve: So what was that deal with the major label? What was it for?

Budi: Yes, so this was not with a major label, but rather with a larger label. And with San and all of our artists actually, we are very hesitant on doing exclusive deals. So we typically work on a basis where we might do one or two releases or an EP with a specific label. And now we’ve had the opportunity of working with a number of very cool labels over this year. But more recently we’ve done a release on Spinnin which you may know.

Steve: Sorry, not familiar.

Budi: Right, they are the label who broke Martin Garrix who you might know.

Steve: So it sounds like once you have the following, everything kind of starts falling into place. What are some monetization models that artists have once they have a certain following? What would you say would be kind of like the minimum threshold?

Budi: Right, so I’m sure you are familiar with a thousand true fans. Yes. So I think that concept is very good. When you look at the follow a thousand fans will probably be not enough to have a thousand true fans, right?

Steve: That’s correct.

Budi: So you will probably need somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 collective fans on your socials like in aggregate before you can really make a living off music.

Steve: Okay, and then what are some of the—when you are smaller, what are some of the primarily monetization models.

Budi: Okay, so step one would be distribute your music. Go to an aggregator like TuneCore, you would pay about 10, 20 bucks a year to have a single on all the stores, iTunes, Spotify, etcetera. That would be the first step. Step number two might be to monetize your YouTube and Soundcloud accounts which you can do…

Steve: What is the revenue percentage for a platform like that, TuneCore?

Budi: For TuneCore? In that case you are actually fulfilling your roles of distributor yourself as a record label would do. And iTunes for example is typically a dollar for a single. So then after covering your costs for having that single up on all the stores for a year, you would put almost 95 cents out of that dollar in your pocket.

Steve: That’s not bad.

Budi: No, no it’s not. So if you keep full control of everything, if you go fully in, then technically you can start making those small revenue streams.

Steve: Okay, I didn’t realize you get to keep 95% assuming you control everything.

Budi: Yeah, you can actually on TuneCore; you can keep 100% if you just pay a yearly fee, a flat fee to get the stuff up.

Steve: Sorry, I interrupted you. You can go on.

Budi: So one side of it is distribution, just selling your stuff on stores. Another aspect would be monetizing your YouTube and Soundcloud accounts. And [inaudible 0:38:56] not a lot of money here. We are talking about 2,000 plays to a dollar.

Steve: Oh wow. That’s really bad actually.

Budi: Yeah it is. But it’s another thing you can do with reasonably little effort, right?

Steve: Sure.

Budi: So you would go to a multichannel network, and we work very closely with a couple of guys in Canada who do amazing things called The District.

Steve: Sorry, not familiar. What is that?

Budi: It is a multichannel network.

Steve: Okay.

Budi: Basically they represent YouTube channels and Soundcloud channels. If you are an artist with a following, then you can reach out to them and make sure you start monetizing your accounts and your content.

Steve: Is it going to be the same approximate payout of 2,000 downloads for a dollar.

Budi: Yeah. So Soundcloud is a little bit worse, but for YouTube absolutely. And then there’s another revenue stream called Content ID which is basically monetizing other people using your music on their videos on YouTube.

Steve: I see, okay, that makes sense.

Budi: So there is another revenue stream, and then of course you have public performance, so signing up to the [inaudible 00:40:09] and their sound exchange if your track is going to get played then on the radio or on TV, then you get public performance royalties.

Steve: Okay, what are the logistics in doing these performances is there a larger upfront investment?

Budi: How do you mean these performances?

Steve: Well, let’s say I wanted to perform at a venue near my house; wouldn’t I have to reserve all that stuff, put a lot of upfront money down, sell tickets and that sort of thing?

Budi: Very much depends on your set up, so for example we work with electronic artists right, DJs. So for us it means playing a show that’s technically one of them bringing up USB stick to the club to play itself.

Steve: Okay, I guess in your case that would be the case, I was just thinking of like — think even more like a conference right? You have to kind of book the venues and all that stuff and then start selling tickets right?

Budi: Yes, so to give you some insights, so basically these are all — this whole process is fulfilled by people doing different roles in the music industry. So you have the people who control the venues, these are typically called either the venue owners or the promoters. And the promoters are the people who organize the events. They typically finance it, they typically make sure that there is art work made, they book the act, and then they sell the show and make a profit off tickets.

Steve: Okay.

Budi: Now the artist might be booked by a promoter, and then the artist might have a booking agent, and the booking agent might negotiate a reasonable fee for that artist to be paid by the promoter.

Steve: Okay, it sounds like there’s a lot of different players here in the process, that they are kind of like intermediaries artist might need to have right? You mentioned a booking agent, a record label, and so are all these things kind of required if you are just starting out?

Budi: Absolutely not, I think just like with anything that once you reach a certain point there will come a certain time where you need to involve other people if you want to scale. So you can 100% book shows yourself and play and make some money. But of course once you start creating a following for yourself, you might find a booking agent who is super enthusiastic about what you are doing. And then that booking agent even though he takes a commission might help you make more money than you would if you were fully independent still.

Steve: Okay, yeah, I mean this sounds a lot like running an online business to be honest with you. Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of parallels. Hey one last question for you then, I want to be respectful of your time, we’ve already been talking for 40 minutes. I was just curious how does Vevo work, like whenever I’m on YouTube and I’m kind of watching a video, I always see Vevo right?

Budi: Yeah, so from my understanding and I’m going out of my depth here, Vevo is the collective YouTube channel from the major labels. And now the major labels right now, there used to be more are Sony, Universal and Warner, and I think what they did is they paired together to create a big YouTube channel where they put all the prime artists, so that collectively they would have the bigger audience instead of separating that and compartmentalizing. So that’s why you see a Katy Perry uploaded track on Vevo instead of her own accounts, because that’s a major label pushing it on the biggest YouTube platform they have.

Steve: I see, okay, that makes sense. Hey Budi I want to be respectful of your time, and thanks a lot for coming on. If anyone wants to locate you or get a hold of you, or if there’s any musicians out there listening to this podcast, where can they get a hold of you?

Budi: Okay, so you can find on record label on heroicrecordings.com. And there you could find our different imprints and also the artists who you manage for. Now I write about my experiences on my blog which is budivoogt.com. And from there you could also click through to my book the Soundcloud Bible, and my new music marketing academy video course.

Steve: Awesome, well, hey Budi thanks a lot for coming to the show man, I learned a lot about the music industry. I had no idea how anything worked prior to talking to you.

Budi: Beautiful, thank you Steve, I appreciate your time and the opportunity.

Steve: All right, take care.

Hope you enjoyed that episode, I have actually often wondered why musicians are often poor, and I had no idea how the music industry worked until today. Thanks to the internet any musician has a chance to make it big without going with one of the large record labels and I love it.

For more information about this episode go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode 97, and if you enjoyed this episode, please go to iTunes and leave me a review. This is by far the best way to support the show and please tell your friends because the greatest compliment that you can give me is to write a referral to someone else, either in person or to share it on the web.

Now if you are interested in starting your own online business, be sure to sign up for my free six day mini course where I show you how my wife and I managed to make over 100K in profit in our first year of business. Go to mywifequitherjob.com, sign up right there on the front page, and I’ll send you the email course right away. Thanks for listening.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, where we’re giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.

Now if you enjoy this podcast please leave me a review on iTunes and if you want to learn how to start your own online business, be sure to sign up for my free six-day mini course, where I show you how my wife and I managed to make over 100k in profit in our first year of business. Go to www.mywifequitherjob.com sign up right there on the front page, and I’ll send you the free mini course right away via email, now onto the show.

Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle, so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have Joe Jo on the show. Now Joe and his partner Bart started Just Kidding Films on YouTube way back in 2007, and today they have over 1.55 million subscribers. And not only that in addition to Just Kidding Films, they also have three other channels Jk party, Jk gamer, Jk news. And the new channel I think is called [inaudible 00:01:46] and they all boast anywhere between 700k and 1.5 million subs each. And all told, I think all the channels have a combined over 4 million total subscribers, which is insane. Now if you follow my blog you know that when my online store was featured on the Today Show I actually had seven X the revenue that day.

And the Today Show only gets 1.74 million viewers per day, and so if you think about it this way, a lot of cable and network TV shows don’t even have this high of a viewership. So it’s pretty ridiculous that Joe has such a large audience, and in fact you can think about it this way, they are pretty much running a popular TV network which makes their channel ripe for hungry advertisers. So I’m super happy to have Joe on the show today, and quite frankly the guy cracks me up. One because he tells a lot of Asian jokes which just happens to resonate with me, and he is just a pretty funny guy in general. And with that welcome to the show Joe, how are you doing today man?

Joe: Pretty good, thanks for having me Steve.

Steve: So first of all I had a couple of questions I just want to get out of the way. You are Asian and I believe Chinese too, right?

Joe: Just a mix with everything we actually live that like a mystery for a lot of people because long time ago like this is back in 2007. What we noticed was in the Asian American community there’s just the whole lot of this old segregation. Like there’s this in group competition where communes are on one side, and Chinese are on one side, and it’s like dude we are all Asian American, we need to just identify as that, right? So we try to just put our skills forward and be known for that, and then we don’t want people to claim us as their group or what not, so we always just made it a fun game and said, hey make it a guessing game.

Steve: I was actually more curious how the heck are you not an engineer or doctor or a lawyer? That’s what I’m wondering.

Joe: Well, okay, so I guess I’m fortunate and I’m not fortunate. But the part about me not having a traditional common Asian upbringing is I guess it’s — the way that I was raised is pretty unorthodox. So my parents came in this country to basically pursue music, because back home people weren’t — they just weren’t respecting classical music like out here. And they knew that out here my dad could pursue his passions, and become basically like opera singer.

Steve: Interesting that’s like Asian blasphemy right there, starting going, yeah.

Joe: Exactly, yeah, and it’s — I mean it’s ironic like you got this Asian guy singing like [inaudible 00:04:33] or whatever you call them I don’t know, or trying to be like Pavarotti and shit. Yeah and so he is — so that was the original plan, and yeah I grew up in a house full of art like music. Yeah, they always were teaching piano, singing, my dad brought me along to all of his music lessons.

So the way I was raised was — their parents were like CEO business types. And for them they were like — they were emotionally neglected, and they grew up in this household that was cold and it was always about business and money and power. And the way they raised me was they were like I want you to love life, and to spread creativity, music, arts, and live life. So the way that I was raised was very-very different from most of my Asian friends.

Steve: Yeah, I’m going to have to actually contact the proper authorities and have your Asian [inaudible 00:05:41].

Joe: I feel like yeah, totally.

Steve: So give us the quick back story on how you and Bart started Jk Films, I assume Jk Films started before the other channels right?

Joe: Yeah Just Kidding Films was our first channel. And in like if you guys want to know more in depth you can go to Just Kidding Films, type that in on YouTube and we are coming out with this series called how we met. And basically on this it just — it tells you more in depth about my kind of background, and how I met Bart and so forth. But long story short me and Bart we met at our MMA gym. And in such a combative serious type of environment we would always be goofing around, and we would always get in trouble, and we would always be disciplined, but we just couldn’t stop messing around. And in like we found out that we went to the same college and the same high school, we just didn’t know each other.

And this is how many Asians live in [inaudible 00:06:43] park, it’s like there are so many there, we just didn’t know, like we were in the same neighborhood and all that stuff. And fast forward to 2007, that was around 2004, so YouTube comes around and we used to copy our friends and just copy people that were in our classes and just mimic all these different types of like voices, and how people walk, and we thought it was hilarious.

And one day we decided to just record some videos. And we used YouTube like it was like a video encounter, just some type of video sharing account, right? So we just needed to upload some files and then link it to our friends. And we would make these videos, show all of our friends, and all of a sudden those ten views turned into a 100, and we were like we don’t have a hundred friends.

There’s other people watching this stuff, and then there were comments, there’s people like make more, make more. And those hundred views turned into like a thousand. And we just kept making more and more videos, and at that time it was just two guys bored taking in between their study breaks in college just making random videos together.

And we had no clue about acting, film making, we would edit just everything and there’s times that we didn’t edit, edit at all. So after we found out that what we were doing was just [inaudible 00:08:21] one takes. Meaning like we would just turn on the camera and go off and create whole entire stories, and yeah it was — we didn’t know anything. Like we didn’t know what we were doing, we were just doing it purely out of fun, and there was a demand for it.

Steve: So you guys were in college when you started this or?

Joe: Yeah, we went to East LA community college, and he transferred off to UCLA and I transferred off to Kansas LA, but we still kept making videos.

Steve: Did you guys have day jobs after you graduated, or you guys just did this full time right away?

Joe: Well, mid way through YouTube started having a monetization program and we were invited to that. Back then they had to email you and invite you. And we made a couple of thousand dollars, but at that point we were like how viable is this, how long term is this, I’m not sure. So when we finished off college, this was I think 2008 or 2009, the economy just went to shit like it was horrible, like I think I submitted like 50 applications, and we were just college graduates with no job, no decent job.

And he went off to tutor kids, and then I went off and worked at a shipping company. So I was back into logistics, I did logistics before I was into college and I always in shipping. So I was sitting there thinking like man like if I just stuck with it I would have probably had a really good union job by now. And I would have been making double, and why did I go to college?

Steve: Okay interesting, so you actually considered not going to college?

Joe: Right — so here is another part of my story, so when I was in community college about two years into it, I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, which just blew my mind. I was like wait a minute you can — anyone can start a business like really, like anyone can do this stuff, I had no clue. So me and my buddies started an eBay business, and we started selling [inaudible 00:10:34] cars, after market car parts. And we just started selling; first we started selling stuffs from our homes like a yard sale to gather funding.

And then eventually we were making about a good eight grand a month, this was when I was about 21 or 22 yeah. And at that point I was like sure I’m just going to pursue business. So we did that and that’s when I also got into shipping too, because I wanted to learn about like shipping and all that, and I kind of had like a double income from there and logistics, but I was kind of stuck like okay, so is this life, you just make a bunch of money and then you die like.

Yeah, so I wanted to do something and then Bart kind of convinced me hey, maybe you should just go back and finish school, it’s two more years. Because at that point I was around like disgruntled old people, like the work, and I wanted to go back and be around young people, I wanted to be around girls, I wanted to like be young again, so or feel my age basically. So yeah, I decided to go back to college, not for a job or anything like that, I just wanted to get out of that whole yeah — but yeah that’s basically what happened there.

Steve: So you decided to go all in on YouTube with JK Films. And can you talk a little about the early days, how did you — were there any things that you were doing in particular to grow this following, or was it just largely organic?

Joe: In the very beginning, I feel that a lot of it was super organic. We were just doing things and creating content that we wanted, but were slightly strategic about it. Like it was never a business, but it was more to fill a void in our community. So what we felt like was the 1990s and the super early 2000s, a lot of the content that Asian American entertainers were creating were more for the mainstream and not so much for our community. Because it made sense back then, they had to appeal to non Asians to make it. But for our generation what we were trying to do is be more like in living color, or create content and tell stories about our neighborhood, the way that we grew up.

And the representation that we saw of Asian in Hollywood and the mainstream perspective, I would look at them and I’m like I didn’t grow up with guys like this, I don’t — where do these Asians come from, like I have no clue how this image is in the mainstream, when the guys that I grew up with is a totally different reality. So that’s where we came from, it’s like we wanted to tell our story with a funny twist. And that’s why we have so many like culture jokes and things about like stuff that we get I guess.

Steve: Yeah, I love the culture jokes.

Joe: And that’s how it originally started, it was about like us just trying to fill a void and create content, and do funny stuff. And kind of like create a community here where we are like make something funny, yeah.

Steve: So would you say that most of your viewers are Asian then? So you kind of had like a target viewer in mind when you got started that you were going to go after the Asian community, and then you just started putting out content specifically targeting that community?

Joe: In the very beginning we were just doing things very impulsively. But yes, it just organically led to– I mean we were just telling our story and the funny things that we saw. But I guess a lot of it came — a lot of our first fun base was Asian, because they are the ones who understood it.

Steve: Right.

Joe: And then the next outside of that would be non Asians, who grew up around a lot of Asians, they understood it.

Steve: Okay got it, so today it sounds like your audience is pretty diverse, right? It’s not just Asians anymore?

Joe: Yeah, fast forward to seven years afterwards and now it’s — we have a pretty diverse — there’s like middle, Midwest, middle aged, farm country, white people, to all kinds, internationally, people from Macedonia.

Steve: Wow okay.

Joe: Yeah it’s, I’m surprised at top people that stop us and say like, hey I love your material, I’m just like really, you don’t seem like the demographic that would, but hey that’s awesome, we can connect.

Steve: You mentioned community, what are some of the things that you guys do to promote community, like do you have areas where like your funs can talk to each other or?

Joe: I guess in more so in a sense that we create like a world and a lifestyle that a lot of people can see how we lead by example. Then there’s– now there’s a facility where like for example [Bob or brigade] [ph] the gym that Bart owns, so and then that’s a community in itself where people can go there, lift, workout. They can also meet us and speak to us, and people who are never into fitness before, they– a lot of people get motivated to join and stuff like that. I guess there’s little pockets of things like that, there’s college events that we do and…

Steve: Okay.

Joe: Usually during the spring we do a whole lot of like visits to different universities and talk and do all that stuff.

Steve: There’s like a bunch of people always email me asking me you know I don’t have any money, but how can I kind of get started. One of the things I tend to suggest is hey why don’t you just get on YouTube and put yourself out there, right? What I was hoping to hear from you is if you can take us back to like giving advice to someone who’s just starting. I want you to squash this notion first of all, do you need any fancy equipment, or a nice camera just to get started?

Joe: Absolutely not.

Steve: Okay.

Joe: Now I get the same type of questions, they’re all hey what kind of cameras do you use, what kind of software do you use, this and that and I’m like okay stop right there, it’s always about content. If you can get good content up there, I mean of course it can’t be a world lead champ, I mean it can’t be horrible, but if it’s good enough, just get it out there, start working on your crap. A lot of people think I got invest like all this money first and get the right stuff, it’s totally no. Like a lot of people that think that way, it does not work out ever.

Steve: Give me the minimalist set up, and if you can kind of comment like if you ever start all over again what frequency you should put out content on. Should you choose a certain theme, the equipment that sort of, bare minimum?

Joe: Well it all depends on what type of channel they’re creating. Well obviously if they’re just going to do like blogs, all they need is a laptop, they can use the camera that’s inside the laptop, and one of the biggest channels on YouTube she’s like top, I don’t know three or top five Jenna Marvels.

Steve: Yeah Jenna Marvels yeah.

Joe: Yeah I went to a Q&A of hers and she was saying yeah like she’s got all these cameras and stuff, but it just sits and it collects dust, because she’s so used to just using her laptop and her webcam that is build in and iMovie, that’s her system. This is coming from a girl who makes millions.

Steve: Yeah I know crazy right?

Joe: Yeah so yeah it depends on the set up, you could do that. If you go toward like the short films route, yes you’re going to need some equipment but…

Steve: What about frequency, how often would you, how often do you need to post something. I mean obviously consistency is the key right, but what would you recommend in terms of frequency?

Joe: As much as possible. The way that YouTube has changed in the algorithms and the way– it’s all about volume now. Back in the day it was more about viral videos, and it was more about like if your channel has this like Mitch thing that’s going on with it, but I feel like within the different eras of YouTube right now we’re in the era of volume.

Steve: Okay.

Joe: What — like the best channel for us right now is Just Kidding News. We upload five videos a day for that one.

Steve: Holy crap! Okay wow, so do you guys do anything special when it comes to tagging your videos for search, or do most people just find you through just being a subscriber?

Joe: Yeah there’s definitely some benefits in that whole search engine optimization, like putting in the right tags, is that what you’re talking about the tags and stuff?

Steve: Yeah that’s what I’m talking about, yeah.

Joe: Yeah, and like I said it depends on the strategy of the channel. Some people, they really know how to work that system and their videos pop up regularly when people make searches. Of course thumb nails, if your thumb nail looks really good people are going to click that, your title. You know some people they study that click baby style, and then people just can’t resist but to click that, click it right in.

Steve: Yeah totally I fall for that all the time, pisses me off.

Joe: On YouTube actually if you log in there’s all this information that actually helps you out on that, because they want to help out the person and the creator, so they tell you how to make your thumb nails. They tell you there’s– it’s really cool how YouTube helped out the creator now, so they have their own course within it, within the well yeah.

Steve: What do you guys do, it doesn’t seem like you’re optimizing your video titles at least not to me at first glance not for your videos, at least on JK Films.

Joe: Right, we have different types of strategies for each channel.

Steve: Okay.

Joe: Just Kidding News is more the newsy kind of hey click the blues, and click the cool thumb nail, and then oh guess what the conversation is entertaining, I’m going to subscribe to this channel.

Steve: Okay.

Joe: Same with Astefills [ph], Astefills is basically you know it’s sexy whatever, it’s controversial. Click this same thing oh interesting conversation, I like these guys. Just Kidding Films has gone through so many types of changes and eras like we started from skits, now it’s more like a lifestyle channel.

Steve: I see, okay.

Joe: It’s a self sustaining eco system, so we rely upon our loyal following that’s been with us for seven years to understand already. That’s why the recent video of mine that says how we met/Joe right? Like the out– people from outside aren’t really going to care about me or my life, or anything.

Steve: Right.

Joe: It’s more for the people that have been watching for this for so many years, and so now it’s transitioned into being more of like once you’ve got X amount of subscribers, you can just be a self sustaining eco system.

Steve: I see so it sounds like JK Films is just kind of your own eco system and then you’re getting new subscribers, because I know as you cross promote all the different channels very well. And so would you say that like JK News is kind of like your outreach to getting new subscribers which you then funnel into the rest of the eco system?

Joe: Yeah that’s the strategy right now, you pretty much nailed it.

Steve: Okay.

Joe: We have our biggest channel Just Kidding News that’s bringing in all these people, and then when they say who are this people right, they start clicking up for Just Kidding Films that one’s lifestyle. That one is basically our taste, what do we eat, where do we hang out? Like how do we live, how do we think?

Steve: I see.

Joe: Just Kidding Party is the counter lottery and the friendship behind it all, so us playing games, but were gearing it more and more toward a game show, so it’s going to be more like a Japanese game show like…

Steve: Yes okay, so how do you bring people back to your videos and alert them of new content, do you rely on YouTube for that, or do you guys have an email list or anything special that you do?

Joe: We– I think we really heavily upon subscribers…

Steve: Okay.

Joe: The way YouTube is working right now is the reason why volume is good is, because when you sign into YouTube the first thing you see is like recommended videos and then right under that you’ll see the different lines of subscribed channels, right?

Steve: Right.

Joe: The more you watch videos of that channel, the more the system will think okay you really like this channel, I’m going to just bump it up to the top.

Steve: I see okay.

Joe: The more frequently we upload, the more they’re going to see all of our channels on the top, and routine, I feel like for humans like the more repetitive they do something, they just get really used to the groove of doing it. The more frequently you upload something and the more they watch your content, the more they’re going to just keep doing it and doing it and doing it.

Steve: I know that you guys have a website too, is that for kind of like an ancillary thing meaning you don’t really try to drive traffic directly to your website. It’s just there for informational purposes?

Joe: Right, I mean like three years ago we were planning on doing stuff like that and probably creating something of premium content, but the model is working so well right now, everything is living well on YouTube that just those in the brands alone, like the brand sponsorships alone it’s doing well. Starting something from scratch like a whole new website, it didn’t really make any sense.

Steve: Okay yeah I saw one of your most recent videos where you and Bart were talking about your success, and your brand new auto mobiles which were very nice by the way.

Joe: Thank you.

Steve: Let’s talk little bit about monetization. Let’s start with it from the beginning, so when did your channel start generating any amount of money, how long did it take and when did it start ramping up?

Joe: Wow, so I think in about 2008 or nine, wait eight. We were invited to the partner program, and I think the first check was like $1000 after six months.

Steve: Okay.

Joe: Back then we didn’t know what we were doing, and there wasn’t a huge user base either. Like if you had 100,000 views back then, that’s equivalent to having maybe a couple of millions now, you know.

Steve: Okay.

Joe: Yeah it’s a– it was a different ball game, but at that moment we didn’t think it was even something worth it, and I don’t know we were kind of pursuing school for a couple of years. It wasn’t until I’d say 2011 when we said we really, or 2010. 2010 is when we said let’s do this like hard core.

Steve: Meaning like five videos a day hardcore?

Joe: No, we still only had Just Kidding Films, but…

Steve: Okay.

Joe: The commitment was with our jobs on the side, we’re going to save up, we’re going to pay off our debts, and we’re going to commit to one video a week.

Steve: Okay, all right so that’s doable.

Joe: Yeah and to give you a clear idea of the type of hustle we had to do was I would basically leave to my work at six AM, comeback at about nine PM, work with Bart until midnight, repeat that on the weekday, and on the weekends we would just spend that time to film, and then the week prior would be the film would be done, and then it would be go– the video would go up the next week.

We would always be a week ahead, and we would continue this for about a year and half. All the money that was coming in, we just recycled it right back. And so it wasn’t until, I think 2012 or one year or two years where me and Bart paid ourselves. Every single thing that we got we started paying our staff and growing it and growing it and recycling it, and I think when we did pay ourselves it was only like 1000 bucks a month.

Steve: Interesting, and so it took five years it sounds like to get to that point right?

Joe: Yeah it did, and that’s just our method. We could have totally pocketed more earlier, but we had a plan to grow really big, and now we’re capable of doing what a lot of YouTubers aren’t. What happens is a lot of YouTubers do everything themselves and there’s a catch, they basically spread themselves thin, and if they don’t get a staff or team up or anything like that, I mean no one person could record, edit, create volumes of content, write the content, all that stuff, research, do the business and make appearances. It’s difficult like…

Steve: Yeah.

Joe: I have some friends that are just alone, and then they’re basically slaving away, and they’re cut at how much they can make. For us what we wanted to do was eventually get people who are specialized in what they do, and hire them and so all that money that came up we would just pay them, pay them.

Steve: I see, so you started hiring you stuff starting in 2010 it sounds like?

Steve: Right.

Steve: Or eleven?

Joe: In 2010, well the first person was Bart’s girlfriend who came along and helped us out. The second person was Kasey, he’s from like Dallas, so he would have pretty much done it for free, but he had expense because he’s a transplant.

Steve: Okay.

Joe: Yeah.

Steve: Okay, and then when did you guys I guess, how soon could you monetize your channel? So you said six months for $1000, and then once you started doing it for real was it on the order of like five figures in 2010 for the year? Like just revenue I know you had to pay a bunch of people?

Joe: Gross?

Steve: Yeah.

Joe: Oh man, that’s, that was so long ago.

Steve: I’m just wondering like when it started really taking off, and first of all actually let’s back up a little bit. How do you monetize a channel first of all, do you use AdSense or sponsorships, like how do you get money?

Joe: There’s several ways our company makes money. One is AdSense which is all the pop-ups that you see when you click on a video. That typically runs from a dollar to five maybe per 1000 views, yeah.

Steve: Okay right.

Joe: Another way is brand sponsorships. So a brand would approach us, let’s say I don’t know Nike, and they’ll say, hey, use this shoe. We’ll give you some product and a couple of hundred bucks; this is when our channel was really small. And things like that it’s relative to the size of your channel. I would say if a channel is about 50,000 to 100,000 subscribers, typically their brand deals are going to be anywhere from a couple hundred to a thousand.

Steve: Okay.

Joe: It also it depends on how many views their videos get, I mean there’s a market value to all of this stuff.

Steve: I see so is it based on views meaning like per thousand on a typical video. And I noticed, I have watched a bunch of your videos, when you guys have sponsors, are those the videos where you actually go to a different location and then film something?

Joe: It depends on which one you are talking about. So we did one with Sayon [ph]. And of course the more in depth and the more like in your face the advertisement and all that stuff, the more money we get. So with Sayon we got a car from them and we created the whole entire story and all that stuff, and those it’s like a dedicated video, a brand integration video, and a story just for Sayon.

But there’s also ones where — there’s a quick little call to action at the end of the video. Like hey, go follow this or go check out this website. There’s also ones where in the beginning they send us like a little ad, like for example you see in the movies they go this — or the TV show they go this episode was brought to you by so and so. And there’s a whole lot of those, but that’s a huge part of YouTube income.

Steve: So how do you get them, or do they just come to you after a while?

Joe: In the past we would seek them out, we would — you could email like the marketing department for each brand, there is a contact. We would go out sometimes, people would come to us and email us just have your like contact available on your channel and all that stuff. But most people what they do when they become like a good size as they join a network, so there’s several YouTube networks out there. There’s Maker who was just purchased by Disney, Collective, that’s one we are with. Machinima, Full Screen, there’s a bunch of — they are like universal or something like that, but they are more like agencies.

Steve: I see is, FameBit one of those two or?

Joe: Yeah, I think so, I feel like they are, but they are one of the newer guys.

Steve: Okay got it. So basically you start out and you join one of those and then basically they find deals for you and take a cut?

Joe: Yeah, it depends on what they specialize in, so some of them are one stop shops like they go in, they help develop your channel, they also get you brand integration, they might even help you find ways to film, collaborate whatever. Each network has a different style of how they cultivate people, or what they are involved in. But almost all of them do have relationship with brands and they bring you deals, and there’s like a percentage that they take from that yeah.

Steve: How big do you have to be to be accepted in one of these?

Joe: I feel like I have seen channels with anywhere from 50,000 to like millions subscriber wise. It also depends on if they are like believe in your channel and see that it’s viable and stuff like that as well. But I would recommend people to grow like several hundred thousand subs before they seek out any of these networks, because you’ll have more of a negotiating power. When you go in these contracts that people are going to sign up they could run from anywhere from a couple of years to five years or whatever. Yeah, and I mean it really depends on your strength, like we come in as a huge network so we got a lot of leeway, we can get a lot of things in our favor.

Steve: I see, so they are literally are like agents?

Joe: Yeah, some of them are traditional agencies. The Collective, they are traditional Hollywood agency and they got into the digital realm so.

Steve: I imagine you have a separate deal per channel then, right?

Joe: Oh we just have a one large — yeah, like we just add it all together.

Steve: I know you guys all have your own personal channels too that have over 300K subs, are those unrelated to JK, are those just personal?

Joe: So the way that it works is we pack it, we make deals, we package a huge army together, and then we do it. But then once then money comes in we deviate up. So technically it is by association, but it isn’t because they don’t profit from — JK does not profit from these other channels.

Steve: Okay, I think I understand, so actually walk me through getting your first let’s say hundred thousand subscribers. Is it just a matter of consistency, or are there some tricks that you can do to kind of accelerate that process?

Joe: There’s a lot of things that go in to building your subscriber base. Like I said it depends on your channel, for example there’s cooking channels out there. And of course the type of fan base you are looking for are people who like to cook. Or there’s channels out there like my personal one that’s life logs, and I’m going out there blogging. And the strategy will vary depending on the channel, because the food network is going to have a different strategy to cartoon network.

Steve: Sure.

Joe: And for us in the beginning it was about subscribers, but nowadays we don’t care about subscribers, all we care about is views. Because what we noticed was, okay subscribers look good to the outside world meaning marketing agencies, people that if you want to become an actor or something and you have a YouTube channel, they go everyone emphasizes that, oh, look this person has this many subscribers, but what they don’t know is you are getting paid from views not from subscribers.

Some of these kids they will go off to college and they’ll start watching YouTube or they might start working and they’ll start watching YouTube, but they might still subscribe. You have this huge numbers of subscribership, but maybe you didn’t grow with your fan base, or what not, and you are only getting 10,000 views of videos. So the real value here is the views and a lot of people don’t know that. So it’s good to play both games, but I would focus more on content and getting a consistent view versus a subscriber base.

Steve: So let me ask you this, so if you are focusing on views and you want to put out the content that people want to watch, do you guys have some sort o feedback mechanism in place so you know what to produce that the people actually want to watch?

Joe: I think the comments are a great thing about YouTube. I remember one day they were about to take it down, but what I love about the comments is a lot of the heavy leg work and creating content is created by a fan base. Like you just survey them in one of your videos like let’s say you have a cooking channel. And after you are done you can let the fans know hey what do you want to see me cook next? And leave it the comments below.

You could kind of take a quick glance and if not out of 10 people are saying I want you to make steak, then you can be for sure that the next video you do creating steak you are going to get a lot of views on it. And what you want to do is have this community of back and forth. See what they want — basically appeal to what they want from you. And this will keep growing and growing and growing eventually, so yeah.

Steve: So back to your first hundred thousand subscribers, so consistency, putting out good content on a regular basis. Let’s say you wanted to go into — let’s say you were someone who just wants to put out a blog, any particular advice that you would give them to just get started?

Joe: Yeah, first and foremost think about what’s important to you. Because a lot of people when they create blogs, they go oh, what’s popular? What’s the hot topic right now? What’s all the other bloggers doing? But I think that’s a wrong way to go by it. The thing you want to do is find your niche market. So if talking about snakes and lizards and reptiles is really important to you, pretty sure there’s going to be a million of other people out there that feel the same way.

And if you are being authentic and you can go on for hours, speaking about this particular subject, and people can sense that, and they are going to find that what you are speaking about is interesting, I want to listen to you. So that’s one thing, like figure out what your niche market is, or figure out what’s very important to you and what you want to talk about, versus what’s popular what’s the trend and all that stuff. And then that’s how you can cultivate an authentic fan base.

Steve: So basically niche down is what you are saying, to something very specific.

Joe: Mm-hm.

Steve: Okay. Yeah it’s very similar to like just websites and businesses in general. If you try to go too general you won’t please anybody.

Joe: Exactly.

Steve: Are you guys ever worried about having too many eggs in kind of like the YouTube basket, you know what I mean?

Joe: Well, we have a strategy for that too.

Steve: Yeah, let’s talk about it.

Joe: So you know the digital world is crazy. Like five years ago none of the stuff was really around. What I mean by that is YouTube wasn’t such a big thing. So we know how things can change pretty much within three months on YouTube. Like trans-change, everything changes. So we got to play– we got to in a reckless crazy up and down type of world, we got to try to make that– we got to find somehow stabilize this, because we got 18 mouths to feed. A lot of people are starting families. We can’t live like rock stars.

With this in mind, I picked up a lot of like business books and I surrounded myself around a lot of people that are smart and investing in things like that, and we are moving this YouTube money into other things. Basically we are diversifying into other businesses.

Steve: Yeah because I was going to say like what if all of a sudden one day people are just like using periscope and not looking at YouTube as much anymore. Let’s talk about some of these other businesses that you are kind of diversifying into. Are they online related, or are they just kind of offline businesses?

Joe: Half-half. So one is– we partnered up with our buddy David [inaudible 0:41:52]. He created a clothing company two years ago. It was like boutique street wear. He saw a lot of success into it, but his partners kind of lost the passion for it. For me and Bart we really like the brand, and we were like you know what, let’s help him revive it. We partnered up and we are going to be launching this pretty much fall of this year. It’s called Go for Broke.

Steve: So I would imagine that since your channel has a lot of clients, you could easily prop up like generally a whole bunch of sales for anything that you promote for the most part, right?

Joe: Yeah, that’s basically our strategy while we have a lot of eyes on us. I got this thinking like okay, if brands like Scion and Brisk, if they are willing to put a dollar on us and advertise through us, why are we not creating our own products and advertising within us. That’s where the concept came from. We basically– we are going to be partnering up with our friends in their business, their brick and motors, their retail shops, their restaurants, and once we get a piece, a percentage of that and we invest into it, then it’s in our best interest to promote it as well.

So it’s kind of like this win-win situation that we’re creating. We take care of the marketing, we drive the traffic, and then they stay specialized and they do what they do best, run a restaurant and all that stuff, and what we do is we can spread awareness of that property and also invest into it as well. So that’s basically the type of stuff that we are moving into.

Steve: Let me ask you this, you know a lot of brands, they obviously invest in you guys for advertising for a reason, can you kind of comment on what conversion rates that they expect, or is it kind of more like brand play.

Joe: Yeah it really depends on the initiative. So some brands they just want brand awareness. Like really big companies like Coca-Cola and stuff like that, they just want – they know they are going to get sales regardless. So they are not nickel and diming and seeing like, “Okay I want to make sure that at least one percent is coming over.” They are not like that. They just – they look at you, they go, “Okay, I want to promote here. So here’s I don’t know half a million.” They are insane.
Like the big guys is super simple, they just throw money at you, do what you got to do. That’s majority, majority of the time so not annual. A lot of the times, mom and pop and especially people who don’t understand digital realm, they have a lot of reluctance. And for them they are like, well, if I spend $5,000, I don’t know if I’m going to make it back, because how popular is this or whatever. It’s really like people are just afraid of what they don’t know.

Steve: Sure.

Joe: So some brands may want like a call to action. They’ll say, “Here can you, promote my store online at the end of the video.” And then they’ll pay for it. A lot of the times, there’s no guarantee. Majority of the time there’s no guarantee. We don’t put any type of like, “Okay, we are going to make sure that there’s 20 people that come to your store.” None, there’s none of that. It’s just people like they just– you guys negotiate a price, they see your channel, they see your content and that’s that.

Steve: Okay. So do you guys tend to weed out like the little guys now and just work with the big guys?

Joe: Yeah, because I really don’t like working with people that don’t see the value in us, because it becomes this whole thing where like I’m convincing them that don’t worry and they are like worrying and like. It’s really an insignificant amount of money to deal with the headache, and I’d rather just have somebody explaining to them and that they have confidence in the whole digital realm.

Steve: That’s makes sense, total sense.

Joe: But a lot of times now like people are more sophisticated in the way they market. They understand that this is way more effective than traditional advertisement. Yeah, we don’t really deal with it that much. Now there’s a lot more money going on to this whole digital realm of marketing and stuff too. Because these smaller companies are seeing how the big brands are putting their dollars into it, now they want to jump on board. So it’s a lot easier now than before.

Steve: I mean the way I see it, it’s just like television all over again except you have links that you can click on which makes it much better. That’s my opinion.

Joe: There’s way more specific statistics, way more.

Steve: So Joe, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but if you want to just take a quick moment and talk about like your various projects and channels and where people can get a hold of you, that would be great.

Joe: So I know I was real serious on all that, but I promise I’m not that serious. This is just some business stuff.

Steve: I’ll take as one video man. I’ll put it to the show notes and they’ll know your true self.

Joe: Yeah, I mean like Steve said, we own five channels. Just Kidding Films, Just Kidding Parties, Just Kidding News, Just Kidding Gamer, Ask The Feels, if you type any of those in, you’ll find any video on YouTube, and you can watch that. I also have a personal channel, The Uncochin—T-H-E-U-N-C-O-C-H-I-N.

Steve: You guys don’t need to write anything down. I’m making all the stuff up on show notes. Yeah and I’m going to use this interview as a black mail. This is the most serious I’ve ever seen you actually. This could like ruin your entire reputation like that.

Joe: Seriously, like the buddy is boring. He’s so serious, a lot and a lot of explaining. Yeah, when I get to this business mode, and I’m like I’m not explaining everything is so serious.

Steve: I know dude. I’m impressed. You did it for forty minutes. Crazy, all right man, Joe, I just want to thank you once again for coming on. I learned a lot and you are really inspiring to all those people and the best part of a YouTube is you don’t really need a lot of money to get started. Just put yourself out there and things are going to happen.

Joe: Yes please guys, start now. Just whatever it is, don’t put much mind into it. I feel like a lot of people tend to over analyze, and then they get paralyzed. Let’s just do it.

Steve: Awesome dude. All right man, take care.

Joe: Okay, you too.

Steve: Hope you enjoyed that episode. Whenever someone comes to me and says, “Hey Steve, I have no idea what business to start, and I don’t have any money either, what should I do?” I tell him to just put out content and good things will happen. And this is exactly what Joe and Bart did with Just Kidding Films and now they are doing seven figures online with YouTube videos.

For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode94. And if you enjoyed this episode, please go to iTunes and leave me a review. It is by far the best way to support the show and please tell your friends, because the greatest compliment that you can give me is to write a referral to someone else, either in person or to share it on the web.

Now if you are interested in starting your own online business, be sure to sign up for my free six day mini course where I show you how my wife and I managed to make over 100K in profit in our first year of business. Go to mywifequitherjob.com, sign up right there on the front page and I’ll send you the mini course immediately. Thanks for listening.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, where we’re giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.

Now if you enjoy this podcast please leave me a review on iTunes, and if you want to learn how to start your own online business, be sure to sign up for my free six-day mini course, where I show you how my wife and I managed to make over 100k in profit in our first year of business. Go to www.mywifequitherjob.com, sign up right on the front page, and I’ll send you the free mini course right away via email.

Now before we begin I want to give a quick shout out to my sponsor Bigcommerce. Now Bigcommerce is a fully hosted shopping cart platform that allows you to set up your own online store in minutes. And as most of you probably know, I teach a class on how to start a profitable online store, and Bigcommerce is actually one of the shopping carts that I highly recommend in my class. Now here’s what I like about Bigcommerce. Unlike other competing platforms, Bigcommerce does not nickel and dime you with every little shopping cart feature. And when you sign up, you’ll immediately have a fully featured and extremely powerful shopping cart at your disposal.

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I also want to thank HostGator for sponsoring the show. HostGator is an incredible webhost that I highly recommend. And in fact did you know that mywifequitherjob.com was hosted on HostGator in the very beginning? They offer 24/7 live support, via chat, phone and email, one click WordPress installs, an easy to use website builder, design services, marketing services, and the best part is that I’m offering a 30% discount for all podcast listeners. So please go to HostGator.com/mywifequit to redeem the discount. Once again that’s HostGator.com/mywifequit, now onto the show.

Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle, so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. Today I’m really happy to have Omar Zenhom on the show. Now Omar is someone who I met at a private mastermind meeting led by John Crochrane. And I’m really glad that I met Omar because the guy’s super cool and he’s great at what he does. The only thing I don’t like about him is that talking to him gives me a neck ache because he’s like 6’5” or something like that. Just talking to him—I’m not that tall. Anyway Omar runs a popular site, the $100MBA at 100mba.net where he teaches a class on how to start your own business. His class cost 100 bucks just like the title says. He also runs a top 25 business podcast called $100MBA, and most recently he launched a SaaS business called Webinar Ninja which leverages Google hangouts to run webinars seamlessly. Now there’s actually a lot to talk about today, so welcome to the show Omar. How are you doing today man?

Omar: I’m doing well. It’s great to be here Steve, and thanks for that awesome intro.

Steve: Yeah, no problem. So give us a quick background story, because I knew you kind of dropped out of a very prestigious business school. So I was just kind of curious what the back story behind that was.

Omar: Yeah I went to Wharton for a semester and it’s funny because a lot of people that go to Wharton go directly after their undergrad. But I have a long career in education so I went to school. I studied English as my major. I was an English teacher in the name, little manager for over twelve years. In that time I also got my masters in education. That was my career. That’s what I did. I taught high school and I taught at the university level. Then for the last six years of my career I was a head of department, like a chair of a department as well as a teacher trainer. This is—that was my life. That’s what I did and that was my job.

When I transitioned into becoming a full time entrepreneur, because while I was in education, I was in a lot of side hustling and starting businesses online, and seeing if I can make a buck on this thing. I did that for about ten years while I was in education. It was very new back then and there was not a lot going on, WordPress was still not out and a lot of stuff.

Steve: Just for context, what year was this?

Omar: I started around 2001, 2002.

Steve: Okay.

Omar: And then when I made that jump in 2012 to fulltime entrepreneurship, I had this kind of feeling like, okay I must start my own business in order for me to be taken seriously. I need to have an MBA. I told myself the story and I decided to apply to Wharton business school, I got accepted and I attended for a semester, but towards the end of my first semester my professor pulled me aside and asked me, “What are you doing here? You don’t fit the mold here, you are not trying to get a job at Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, and you’ve had a career and– at the time I already had a business online, I had businesses before. So I told him I’m getting my MBA because I want to be a great entrepreneur. And he told me that you don’t get an MBA to be a great entrepreneur, you get it to get a middle management job or something.

Steve: Ha! Interesting, the prof told you that.

Omar: Yeah. And he had ten year at the time, so he doesn’t really care, so he was kind of giving me his honest opinion, like “You don’t need to be here. You don’t need to be dropping $150,000. You can—business schools don’t have a monopoly on business education. You can learn things through books and experiences and you are already learning things through your own experiences.” And he just told me what I needed to hear. To be honest with you, I just—it was a self esteem thing, like I just felt like, “I need to get my MBA if I’m going to have my own business. How am I going to teach business or talk about business if I am somebody that doesn’t have MBA myself?” So he kind of gave me that internal confidence to give myself permission to just go full fledge, and use my time and resources on growing my business rather than trying to get my MBA.

Now it’s kind of like the genesis of the idea of $100MBA, where we wanted to offer an alternative business education. An alternative to I want to learn business skills, I want to learn how to start a business, but I don’t necessarily want to go back to school. I just want to be an entrepreneur. I want to learn about finance, sales, marketing, all that stuff, but I don’t really need a piece of paper or the permission to say that I know business.”

Plus our background in education, my partner in life and partner in business Nicole, both of us come from an education background. This is what I know, I know—this is like it’s like breathing to me teaching and learning and putting a curriculum together and lessons together. So we wanted to take that experience along with my business experience and create this alternative education.

Steve: And this is just like a random question that has popped to my head, what is your feeling on just like skipping undergrad all together and start a business?

Omar: I don’t think it’s for everybody, but I do think it’s an option somebody– people should consider. I think that– traditionally people say, “You should go to college,” and I’m the kind of person that always likes to question things, especially like these made up rules in our head like “why?” Sometimes these rules are valid. But it’s good to know why you are doing something. The answer could be like, “Yes I need to go to college because one two three.” That’s a valid answer, go ahead, go to college. But if you do things just because you are going through the motions, or because you are trying to fill the expectations of other people, you are really going down a path of your life that’s going to be really miserable, because you are really doing things for the wrong reasons.

You really want to do things not only for the right reasons, but things that will support the values that you have, and what you want out of life. So I do think you should consider going and also consider not going and see what you want to do. If you are trying to be an entrepreneur, there are things you can learn through traditional education. In the US for example, I’m leaning towards no because it’s quite expensive, but if you are in the UK or Australia, Nicole’s from Australia, my partner and they pretty much get a free ride. So it makes sense to get some sort of education socially if you are not going to go into debt.

Steve: Yeah, as an Asian parent, my kids are going to go to college, but my school actually had a really good entrepreneurship program. Anyway, let’s switch gears a little bit. I know you got a ton of projects on your plate right now. I mean, you’ve got your course; you’ve got your podcast which is daily by the way for all of these listeners. I only do once a week. I can’t even imagine doing daily, and you have this SaaS business. So first question, how do you kind of juggle all your time between all those different things?

Omar: Calendar. Yeah, I guess, let me just be clear, I don’t do this alone. My partner, Nicole and I we do most of it, and we do most of the management. But we realized very quickly that if we want to go where we want to go, we can’t do this alone, we have to grow our team, we have to have the right people in place to take care of things that do take a lot of time. But there are core things that I do that are part of my regular schedule, my weekly schedule, and I put compartments. So I have days where I record the podcasts, where I batch, I have days where I work on content. There’s days when I work with our development team for Webinar Ninja, our SaaS product. I have this stuff on the calendar. I make sure I stick to it. We try to make sure we have time for relaxation as well, but…

Steve: Let me rephrase that question a little bit actually. I mean, I’ve got multiple businesses as well, and I can’t help but feel like if I just focused on one of them, I could just make one of them much larger than the combined total of the other businesses. Do you feel any of that?

Omar: So I kind of don’t see them as two different businesses, because I feel like I’m serving the same audience. With $100MBA, they are learning how to build the business, how to start a business, and once they get to that point, they are going to want how to take it to the next level, how to get more sales, how to get more leads. I feel with Webinar Ninja we are able to serve them at that point with not only the server, but the training of how to run webinars properly.

Steve: Okay and let’s talk about one of your assets for a little bit here, I’m assuming that your podcast is probably your main legend I guess for all of your businesses. Is that pretty accurate?

Omar: Yeah.

Steve: And your podcast has really caught fire in the entrepreneurship community at least, and I always consistently notice it in like the top 25 or even the top 10 or the top 5 in the business category. So how did you— what was your strategy for creating a popular podcast?

Omar: It’s probably the most recurrent question I get asked.

Steve: Okay, that means you’ve got some good answers.

Omar: I’m going to start with simple a answer and then go into some details. The simple answer is it’s the same thing that anybody does with any kind of production. If I was a recording artist, and I was going to want to have a bestselling album of all time, or if I wanted to create the next Breaking Bad, or if I wanted to create the best feature film ever, people that set up to do things like that, they see things bigger than it actually is. I think a lot of people don’t know that before we start the $100MBA show we had our failed podcast. It didn’t do well. And we learned a lot of hard lessons, and one of the biggest lessons was we were just putting a podcast together for the sake of putting out a podcast. We really weren’t looking at it as a show, as a production.

If you look at the top players in podcasting like Marc Maron or Serial or Here is The Thing, all these huge names, they don’t just say, “Hey let’s [inaudible] [0:12:35] a podcast together over the weekend and put it out there and its content.” They see it as a production. They say—they really think about what do they– how are they going to serve this audience, how are they going to edit this perfectly so it sounds great? It’s a huge, huge production. They see it as just like they are producing a show because it is a show. You are producing a piece of chronicle entertainment. It could be educational, but at the end of the day, you are performing for the actual audience. And I just didn’t see that at the start. I just saw the, “Oh it’s just like a blog or something and I can grow.”

But there are so many big players in the podcasting world and the game is so—the bar has been raised so high now that you have to go in thinking bigger. You can’t think like I’m just going to put out a podcast and it’s just going to go bonkers for no reason. I’m very self critical with all our work. I do this because, like I said, I question things a lot. One of the things I questioned when I started $100MBA shows, why everything? You hear a lot of podcast that have the same thing, they have the same kind of intro, same feel, same format, same thing, and a lot of reasons why it happens is because people don’t question things. They just say, “Well that’s what other shows do, and that’s what pros do so, I’ll do it.” But if you look at some of the top podcast, their show is very much different. If I look at Marc Maron’s podcast, it’s a very, very different type of show. There’s no bumper, there’s some music. The guy has a monologue at the start and then he goes to the interview. It’s a different format from for example like John Dumas’s format.

If you just take a look at like StartUp, it’s a documentary style type of show. You look at Serial, it’s more of a journalistic type of show. The way they blend in interviews and snippets and they interview people. They just don’t say, you don’t hear Sarah kind of dictating every question. It’s seen as a narrative and they insert the sound bite when it’s appropriate. These things take a lot of thought and a lot of planning, and it takes some time. When I realized that I said, “Okay, if I want to compete with these shows, I need to do everything I can to do what they do. I don’t have a huge team, I don’t have a production studio, or stuff, but I can plan for a show like they do.

When we started on $100MBA show we decided to take two months off everything else in our business. We didn’t launch any products, we didn’t take any more clients. All we did is on $100MBA show before we launched. We bashed our episodes, we rerecorded the first 10 episodes like a dozen times, because we would you have some of our colleagues and friends listen to them, give us a critical feedback. You know we changed things up, we changed the way I sound and feel natural, and we just rethought everything. We questioned everything and I think the biggest thing is that we used our strengths, and like I said I’m from an educational background, and that’s what I know, that’s my strength. It doesn’t make sense for me to have an interview show, and that’s our podcast as an interview show and it just didn’t make sense.

Steve: Right.

Omar: Nichole is a New York Film Academy graduate, and a lot of her training had to do with editing and she loved the production side, so she dedicated herself to be the producer of the show and editing the show, and a lot of the ratings and reviews that we get on iTunes has a lot to do with the production quality of the show, and that’s all Nicole.

Steve: Okay.

Omar: You know so and people, the podcast is just like music you get goose bumps, it feels good. I don’t know what it is, but that’s cool, I like it. You know you just can’t put your finger on it, and that’s production quality. You know we focused on that with teachers, I decided let’s do a lesson based podcast. Let’s do a short form 10 minutes, it’s just straight to the meat, and it’s just a lesson on a particular aspect of business. And it just kind of broke the mold of what you’re typically expecting in a business podcast.

Steve: A couple of questions here, first like what went into your decision to go everyday as opposed to a lesser frequency?

Omar: Because the short form we knew that it was going to be about 10 minutes, and we felt like if we could give somebody 10 minutes, everybody can spare 10 minutes, and 10 minutes a day we thought would be something that would be useful. Somebody can listen to this in their commute; they’re walking their dog or doing the dishes, whatever it is they can fit it in. It’s kind of like a little bit of motivation, it’s a little bit of insight, it’s something for them, and the lessons are concise, but they’re are meaty. It gives them something to do today like just get this thing done, and then let’s move on tomorrow. They just want to have like building blocks. Originally we worked five days a week, and then after 30 episodes we got a lot of demand, and we got a lot of questions in, so we decided to dedicate Saturday and Sunday episodes to questions.

Steve: Yeah and not only that it seems like you know all the content it’s just you talking for the most part right? And to consistently put stuff out like that, do you kind of derive your content based on your experiences, or is it some it out of a book, like how do you gather consistent content that you can go every day?

Omar: I think it’s one, just experiences I’ve had in my past. I you know when we laid out $100MBA I still do this because it’s a grown curriculum. I create a long form curriculum. So we have like a production schedule on a sheet where every episode’s title is listed in bullet points of what that episode is all about. And each episode builds upon each other, so the first 100 episodes is much lower level than you know episodes in the 300 zone, so…

Steve: Okay, so it’s meant to be consumed in order?

Omar: Yes.

Steve: Okay.

Omar: I mean you can take them one off depending on where you are in your business. You know if you’ve just never even thought about starting a business in your life before you start in episode one.

Steve: Okay.

Omar: Through experiences and through growing as an entrepreneur, I am always jotting down notes and jotting down things in the sheet as I find my own challenges growing as an entrepreneur. I know that other people would experience the same thing, or if I went through something this week, maybe it’s a lesson I want to break down, or maybe an aspect of it. Yeah, so we’re building upon previous lessons, and there is a method to what we’re doing, and our whole goal is that if you can listen to these shows on a daily basis, you can see yourself grow as an entrepreneur as we’re growing.

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Steve: You mentioned a production quality and just content as one of your assets, but I consider a podcast just like blogging right? Even if you have the best content in the world, if no one can find it then that’s no not good either. I was just curious in the very beginning whether there were some special things that you did to just get the podcast out there in front of as many people as possible?

Omar: One of the best ways to get an advantage on people is to do things people are not willing to do. One of the things I did was, I– you know before the launch you know we planned it about two months ago, I would reach out to different blogs that I thought had audiences that would be interested in $100MBA show to guest blog for them. Traditionally people you know they email for example Darren Rowse, and they say, hey Darren I would love to guest blog on your site on ProBlogger or digital photography school. This is who I am, this is my website, let me know, right? Like to me that’s just, you’re asking for a no, that’s a no right there.

Because why would Darren give you a chance, not that Darren is not a nice guy, he’s a lovely guy, he’s great, right? But you know this is his baby, his life work, why would he trust you with it, right? So what I did is I would email Darren, and I actually emailed Darren for digital photography school and I said, hey Darren I love your site. I actually read a lot of your posts when it deals with the business of photography, and I noticed that there’s no articles dealing with this. I researched this topic, this is what I do. I looked at all your comments when it comes to this, and your subscribers are really looking for this. I wrote out a 2500 word blog post with pictures and images and everything, it’s attached to this email. I would love to guest post if this is something that interests you let me know.

All he’s got to do is open it up and read the email and read the post and say, this is killer, I want it on my thing, and then when he replies to me I say to him, you know and he says hey we would love to publish. I said great I only have one copy of it. I want you to publish it on August 11 which was our launch day for the $100MBA show. And I did this with about eight other blogs, and they all launched on the same day, and I did the same thing with guest appearances under the podcast for 10 podcasts. On the day of the launch we were technically on 18 different sites you know, and the reason why I mentioned you know you do things that people are not willing to do that takes a lot of work, a lot of time to write eight different blog posts that long, that detailed, to do all the research, to do it knowing that you may not be accepted, and I didn’t get accepted to a lot of you know a lot of publications, and I had to just keep that…

Steve: What did you do with those posts?

Omar: I reworded them, and I published them on our own site, so I didn’t you know throw them in the garbage or anything like that. The same thing with podcast, I looked at all the top podcast I wanted to be on. A lot of them said no, a lot of them ignored my email, but some said yes. You know [inaudible 0:22:59] they were okay with it to publish it on that day, and we were good to go. That took a lot of time besides the fact of producing an actual podcast you know.

Steve: Okay.

Omar: Yeah, that was kind of one of the things that when I did that helped us launch properly and get some exposure.

Steve: When you first launched then did you immediately like hit the number one spot because of all this stuff, like did you have an email list at the time?

Omar: Our first couple of weeks in new note worthy, we weren’t number one, we were like four, five, maybe words like two in careers or like subcategory. But the last five weeks of new note worthy, we were number one every single week, which I didn’t see personally before you know being number one in new note worthy for five consecutive weeks. We launched the same time that StartUp did, we launched the same time Tim Ferriss did, so we had some heavy hitters with us, so it wasn’t easy to gain that spot, but we were fortunate enough to have some success at the start.

Steve: Did you kind of have any of your own audience at the time, did you have like a big email list at the time when you launched, or did you kind of entirely rely on the people that you’d contacted?

Omar: No, I didn’t have a huge audience at the time, and I know this is going to sound lame, but I really believe the reason why we did so well is because it’s a good show. I really believe that it’s different, people have never had of a show like this before, it’s just– it’s kind of hard not to like. We purposely kind of constructed a show in that way, and obviously the efforts to launch and get exposure, and take advantage of the new note worthy helped us a lot, but if you don’t have an exceptional show, any kind of exposure really is not going to help.

I mean there’s shows I could tell you right now on iTunes they have celebrities on them, that have a huge audience, and they have less ratings than you know a show that has a very low audience. You know they have like 10 ratings or something and they’re not doing very well. You can– because the show is not great, you know the show is not exceptional, the audio quality is not great. Whatever it is, the point is that you have to have a good show at the end of the day.

Steve: So speaking of ratings, did you do anything to generate ratings to encourage them?

Omar: Well we have an ongoing thing going on $100MBA show. Nothing in particular at the launch, but every week we have a way of free ride to the $100MBA training and community, so we give away a life time membership to the $100MBA. It’s just our way to thank people who give us a rating and review on iTunes, so we just randomly go through a random picker and choose a rating and review, and we give it away.

That encourages people to like participate. A lot of people like they want to give a review, but they are kind of on the fence, oh I might win something so I might as well do that. It’s also a away to kind of give back, and also just show people that hey we appreciate the fact that you took the time to figure out how to give us an iTunes ratings and review and things like that, so that’s one thing that we did.

Steve: Okay. One thing I also noticed there’s one point where you had like this super large icon in iTunes, and I was just curious it’s just like a completely different graphic. How did you get to the top of the podcast in iTunes? Does that make sense; do you know what I am talking about?

Omar: You mean the home banner?

Steve: The home banner yes.

Omar: Well, in December of 2014 this last December we won best of iTunes, and when we did that you know we got an email from Apple telling us you know congratulations you won best of iTunes along with shows like Serial and Hardcore History and StartUp. We were like thank you very much and one of the packs of winning best of iTunes is that they kind of keep a look out on your show, and if they see something special, or something good you can reach out to them and say you know like I am doing something if you want to consider it. You kind of, they’ve kind of like certified you as like this is a legit show that we think is adding value to the podcasting world. You know they might surprise you and put up a banner, and they want to showcase the shows they believe are good.

Steve: Did you have to apply to this best of iTunes thing, or was it just completely out of the blue.

Omar: No you don’t apply; it’s an editorial team that selects the best shows of the year.

Steve: I see, and did you have a lot of…?

Omar: It’s like going on Oscars on podcasting or something.

Steve: Yeah did you have to, did you have a lot of listeners at the time, is it based on listeners, downloads or is it…?

Omar: It’s based on a few factors, it’s based on one, obviously your downloads, your subscriptions, the amount of ratings and review you have. They read every single review like to make sure that these are actual legit people that are you know not your mum. They look at your actual website, the way that you’ve show cased your business and your brand you know, and if they want to be associated with that type of business. If it’s you know it doesn’t look scamy, but they also look at you know if you look at the shows I do, and they also look at how has this podcast contributed to podcasting in general. Have they added something to the genre, have they added something to their market and have they done something for podcasting, like for example Serial has gotten people to listen to podcasts you know.

Steve: Yeah.

Omar: You know they recognize their success and obviously their download numbers are off the charts. You know but Marc Maron for example he’s got the president of the United States so like he gets recognized a lot for that, so they kind of reward people for doing something different. For us in our case it was bringing something new to the business genre, doing lessons and doing something that’s a little bit different that they’ve never seen before so…

Steve: Yeah sounds like one of the key takeaways here, it’s like, it’s just like blogging right? Blogging is getting a lot more saturated, and so is podcasting, and you just really got to stand up in some way or form, instead of just putting together some sort of me too podcast, right?

Omar: That is a good way to put it, yeah.

Steve: Let’s talk a little bit about monetization, so you do take sponsors for your podcast, is that correct?

Omar: Yeah.

Steve: And it’s a 10 minute show right, and so how long are these sponsors, and how many do you take per episode?

Omar: So typically a podcast is about 30 or 40 minutes. There’s two pre roles and two mid roles and sometimes a post role. Given that our show is only 10 to 15 minutes long, we only have a 30 seconds pre role and 60 seconds mid role. It’s only like two ads, and they are pretty short.

Steve: And how do you solicit these sponsors, or do they come to you?

Omar: They, I never actually started the podcast thinking about sponsors, or thinking that happen, but we got contacted, our first sponsor was 99 designs. They just contacted us, they saw the success of the show on iTunes, and they just said hey we’d like to take a look at your numbers, and you know possibly sponsor your show. We only take on sponsors that are congruent with our audience, so I don’t do ads for dog food or things like that, because– even though I’ve been approached, but you know…

Steve: Have you really for dog?

Omar: Lots of different things you know that really have nothing to do with our market, or what we’re trying to do. We try to you know if I am going to put an ad in there or I am going to put a sponsor read, I want to do something that one I believe and I adore, so I have used. The sponsors are usually pretty helpful with that, and allowing you to use your product and things like that. So yeah, it’s kind of — it’s a little bit rigorous process, but we are very selective about it, because we do only have those limited spots. Yeah, so that’s kind of the story with sponsors.
Steve: Do you use any market places or anything like that to solicit sponsors?

Omar: Yes, so we Midroll for many of our sponsors, Midroll are kind of our agent that helps us secure sponsors, they have good relationship with sponsors, yeah.

Steve: And what is the going rate for sponsorships?

Omar: It depends, if you are running your own sponsorship they give you whatever you want. I mean I have a blog post that you can link to if you want, and it has a PDF that people can download. It’s actually our sponsorship guide that we give our sponsors if they are interested in our prices, and what you can do. You want to obviously showcase what you can offer your sponsor as well as give them a pay structure. If you go with somebody like Midroll that’s something that you negotiate with them, and you are actually not allowed to disclose because you are under contract.

But when it comes to regular sponsorship, I mean the going rate if you go for yourself for a pre-role which is about 30 seconds, it’s about 18 [inaudible] [00:31:16] which is $18 per a thousand downloads. And for a Midroll it’s around I believe $25 per [inaudible] [00:31:24] so yeah, depending on how many mid roles and pre-roles you have. And usually sponsors will only kind of take a look at you; it’s worth their time if you are making a minimum of 5,000 or 6,000 an episode. Because it’s just — for them they want to be able to use your marketing dollars in an effective way.

Steve: No that totally makes sense. Let’s talk about some of the other things in your podcast, and it sounds like you use your podcast to do a lot of legend [ph] to your actual website and your email list, right?

Omar: Yeah, I mean you can hold legend, I mean for me my whole purpose of the podcast is I want to build trust with my audience. I want to be able to win their hearts and make them understand that I have their best interest in mind. And when they do visit our website I try to get them on board to something free, I don’t even — even though my products are only $100 at the $100MBA. But rather consume things for free and get away and tell 10 other people about the $100MBA, then for me to try to milk a dollar out of everybody.

Steve: Let me just rephrase that question, and so in terms of your actual website like do you do anything special that generate traffic there, is it mainly podcast people finding it there, is it SEO?

Omar: We’ve published a new blog article once a week for the last two years. So I mean — I mean I guess when it comes to SEO that’s — the only SEO I do is write as much valuable content.

Steve: Yeah, you don’t do any paid advertising it all, is that correct?

Omar: No, I don’t do any advertising, most of our SEO just comes from our articles and hopefully people enjoy them, they share them. I just try to focus on getting as much valuable content as possible. We have a lot of free stuff on our site as well, like we have free courses, we have free guides, free info-graphics they can download. I want it to be a place where people could just feel like this person wants to support me; these people are good to me. And when they are ready to buy, they are not going to shop around, they are going to be like okay, I’m going to go to the $100MBA, because these people have nurtured me for so long, the lowest price that kicks in.

Steve: What I was kind of getting at was you have a 10 minute podcast, and by taking on a couple of sponsors it’s kind of diverting their attention to these other services, right? I was just wondering if you had considered not taking any sponsors and just being in full control over your own message and steering people over to your site or your brand. Does that make sense, do you see where I’m getting at?

Omar: Yeah, and by the way we rarely ever — I don’t think I have ever promoted the $100MBA program, or anything like that, they go buy $100MBA on our show ever. But we get a lot of conversion off the podcast. The first email they get; we ask them how did you hear about us? And I would probably say 75% to 80% of our new members come from the podcast. If you are good like you are going to be found out, like everybody who listens to the Serial went to the Serial website so they could see what Adnan Syed looks like. Everybody like if you are good enough you see good superb ad, they are going to check out the site. You are going to go check out Squarespace if you saw the dude and all of that stuff, in last Squarespace ad.

So I don’t really believe in like you have to directly market to people, if people want what you are selling, if they like what you do, they are going to find you out. The other thing is that we do have sponsors that show up because it cost money to run this show. Like it’s a production, we have a lot of — we have employees that we pay, we have other things that go about. And as well as in order for us to create this free content constantly on the site, we also have to pay for that as well.

So yeah, and I try to keep the sponsorship as congruent as possible. I cannot have that and decide to promote my own products, but I personally think that if I was a listener I would rather listen to a variety of different things that can help me out, rather than the same thing. Okay, Omar because I don’t sell many things like, so it’s like every — and it’s daily so like every day they are going to be hearing about the same products.

Steve: So that’s kind of like a segue, how does Webinar Ninja in your SaaS business kind of fit into all of these, because to me at least it seems a little bit — a lot different than what you have with $100MBA.

Omar: Well, my whole goal and everything that we do is to serve our audience which is new business builders, online business builders, people that are — have gotten started. And that’s really what the $100MBA really focuses on. But there’s a point where people get to the point where they are like okay, I have started a business, I’m making money now and I have made my first dollar, but I need to take it to the next level. And I want to be able to serve those people because those people are our people; they get to that level once they’ve kind of gone through our program, and they’ve listened to the show for a bit. And that’s where Webinar Ninja comes in, webinar ninja is a solution, it’s a platform, it’s a software, but it’s also training on how to run effective webinars.

And I’m — I really believe in webinars, because for me it’s the ultimate like teaching tool online, and that’s my background teaching, and I think that it’s a great way to educate people, it’s a great way to convey value and build trust with people. And I wanted to be a part of that, especially the fact that webinars in general and the internet marketing world kind of have a bad name. And they have like kind of scamy connotation, where you feel like you are being sold too constantly, and all that stuff.

And we wanted to clean up that webinar world with Webinar Ninja and that’s something that we’ve been trying to do, and have been doing with our members, with Webinar Ninja. So that’s kind of how it fit in, it’s kind of the next level of serving our audience in that way and I’m really…

Steve: Oh sorry, go on.

Omar: No it’s just I’m really enjoying the process of not challenging myself with a software business, because a software is just completely different than a course based business.

Steve: Yeah, totally. So when people are asking for Webinar Ninja, and the reason why I ask this is because there’s a lot of established players in this market. Like GoToMeeting, AnyMeeting, and actually a whole bunch of others. So I was just kind of wondering what your motivation was for developing it.

Omar: So it’s for that exact reason, we were not really happy with what was available. We were running webinars at the $100MBA community. We were doing webinars for our community, and I was using some of those solutions that are out there. And they were just not cutting it; they just were not serving my needs. And I created something that was very hatch patched in PHV; it was WordPress plug-in at the time. And it was just meant to run our webinars, and I got the help of a coder to clean it up for me because my PHV sales were not as good as I want them. It was just kind of like a one off freelance kind of thing, and we started using it for our webinars. And then a lot of our attendees started asking, hey what are you using for your webinar?

And I said, “Oh this is just something that we put together ourselves in house.” And they are like, “Well, I would like to buy it.” Like can you sell us this to me, and we just never thought about actually selling the software. So we started considering it, we did the beta test where we had about 150 users, and it was a WordPress plug-in at the time. And then it sold out in two days, and we just kind of closed the doors because we didn’t have the customer support team in place to serve more customers.

And then we had another circle and it was a WorPress plug-in where we got another 100 members. And we started learning from them, finding out what they want, fixing the problem. Then we realized that if we want to take it to where we want take it, we really can’t do it as a WordPress plug-in, because as WordPress plug-ins really don’t have as many facilities, that you are restricted by the host, you are restricted by other plug-ins. It’s still on WordPress, it’s not like a SaaS product, or a web based program.

At that time we decided to transition into a web based program and we went into development for about five months. And when we released Webinar Ninja on April 30th and we opened the doors, and again we sold out in like 24 hours. So we knew that there was a demand in the market, and we knew that we were filling a huge need. A lot of people coming from all the other users saying they weren’t happy with it, and they were very happy to come to us, so…

Steve: Can we talk a little bit about some of the features that you have that some of — maybe like GoToMeeting does not for example.

Omar: Well, first of all GoToMeeting is $500 a month. So if you don’t have $500 [inaudible 00:39:46].

Steve: I don’t think it’s that much if you just want to have 100 people, I think it’s like $100 a month, right?

Omar: That’s true, but I mean if you are selling products, if you are doing webinars that like in order for you to really — like and this is something that you learn in the training in the Webinar Ninja is that in order for you to really capitalize on sales and be able to capitalize on something like facebook ads, you are going to want more than 100 people on your webinar. You are going to want hundreds, 300, 400, 500, somebody like — somebody that we interviewed on the podcast, the Webinar Ninja podcast, John Dumas he gets like 600 to 700 on his podcast, on his — I’m sorry on his webinars. And he is able to make 30, 40 sales on a thousand dollar product. So that’s kind of what you want to look at to make it worth your while on Facebook ads. If you are not going to do Facebook ads you still want a number of people.

So other than that, there’s a whole bunch of things like for example GoToMeeting doesn’t record your webinars, it doesn’t do evergreen webinars where you want to have like recorded webinars. There’s a whole — the functionality of it, people have to install the software on the computer, it’s not web based, their channel is clunky, it doesn’t work on Mac as efficiently as it should. And to be at their defense it’s a good product, but it’s not meant for the small business owner, it’s meant for enterprise. And it’s for people that want to save $10,000 and not go to Japan for that business meeting. That’s really what it was meant for.

And Citrix is a great company and things like that, but we decided to offer things that are more catered to our audience, which is small business owners that one on one create a thriving audience through great content, because you can run a webinar just like you’ll do for a podcast or a blog, and just teach and do open Q&A, and build your email list because people have to register for it. Or you can give demos and you can give workshops and then sell your products or your services afterwards. You can also use it for masterminds; you can do it a paid program that you want to do live.
One of our users Michael Port, he runs his royal public speaking live program, which is an online program, it’s all webinar based, they use Webinar Ninja for that, and that’s one way you can do it as well. So there’s other uses other than just like a teleconference. So we took those needs and decided to create something that’s a little bit original. One other things that really differentiate us is we wanted to make sure that your registration pages, all your pages on your webinar like your thank you page, or actual webinar page, or replay pages, looked like your brand that have your brand or your college logos, and it’s on a template.

A lot of people that use template based opt-in pages or [inaudible 00:42:26] pages it just looks like a page that everybody sees on the internet. So we actually call the live editor, which completely allows you to change every single color, every single fun, every single text media, and allows you to customize all your branding, your logos, everything on your page, and very easily and intuitively so you don’t spend hours on creating your webinars.

Steve: And this is hosted on your site then right? This is hosted…

Omar: It’s hosted on our server.

Steve: Okay.

Omar: Yeah, and everybody gets kind of a unique URL, so you can have like Steve.webinarninja.com. So you have a branded kind of URL when you promote your webinars. As well as making it super easier that’s kind of our goal to make it easy to create an effective webinar. And we include everything when it comes to email notifications; in fact we include marketing as well. So not only can you send reminders, but if you want to send an email, a campaign to people that did attend or people that did not attend, or people that attended your webinar, you can send them a separate email completely and filter people out. And you don’t really actually need, an email marketing service if you didn’t want to, if you didn’t want to use MailChimp or Infusionsoft or something like that.

Steve: Interesting, so you handle those as well, all the — okay.

Omar: As well as we do some really innovative stuff with our chats, because we are educators and we want to make sure that things are very interactive. So our chat has a very clean interface, people can hop on their mic or their camera if they like, you can do that for 10 people by simply just requesting the stage, we call it share the stage. And as an admin you can grant them access.

We also do things like you can block somebody if they are causing problems, so a lot of people they don’t know what to do with a webinar where people are just hating, and you don’t know how to kick them off. So we have a way that it can allow do that if you have to do that unfortunately if that does happen, where you have somebody who is just being a nuisance.

Steve: So the background of all of these is Google hangouts, is that right?

Omar: The video portion of it is all Google hangouts, correct.

Steve: Okay, cool, Omar you know we’ve been chatting for a while and I wish we had some more time to go into a lot greater depth in some of these things, but unfortunately our time is up. So if anyone out there is interested in starting a podcast or using Webinar Ninja, where can they find you, what if they just want to learn how to become again MBA for only 100 bucks where can they find you?

Omar: Sure, anything $100MBA related you can go 100mba.net, there is the podcast information, there are free courses, free guides, things like that. If you want to learn more about Webinar Ninja, you can go to webinarninja.co. We also have a free course there called ‘plan and launch your first webinar,’ it’s a seven day course. So if you want to take a dive in that you can go check that out.

Steve: Awesome Omar, well, thanks a lot for taking the time to come on the show.

Omar: Well, thanks, Steve I appreciate it.

Steve: Yeah, happy to have you.

Hope you enjoyed that episode. What I like about Omar is that his success can be directly attributed to his execution, his planning, and his overall thought process. And by taking the time to carefully construct a podcast that was clearly differentiated from the rest he managed to create an award winning show. For more information about this episode go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode88, and if you enjoyed this episode, please go to iTunes and leave me a review. It’s by far the best way to support the show and please tell your friends because the greatest compliment that you can give me is to write a referral to someone else, either in person or to share it on the web.

Now if you are interested in starting your own online business, be sure to sign up for my free six day mini course where I show you how my wife and I managed to make over 100K in profit in our first year of business. Go to mywifequitherjob.com, sign up right there on the front page, and I’ll send you the email course immediately.

Once again I also want to thank HostGator for sponsoring this episode. HostGator is one of the best web hosts out there that I recommend if you want to start a blog. And in fact I hosted mywifequitherjob.com on there in the very beginning and loved it. You can get 24/7 live support via chat, phone, and email. You can install WordPress in just a single click, there’s an easy to use website builder, design services and the best part is that I’m offering a 30% discount for all podcast listeners. So please go to HostGator.com/mywifequit to redeem the discount, and once again that’s HostGator.com/mywifequit.

I also want to thank Bigcommerce for sponsoring this episode. Bigcommerce is one of the best shopping carts that I recommend if you want to start your own online store without having to worry about anything technical. So everything from design, to sourcing, to payment processing, is all built in, so all you got to do is populate it with the products that you want to sell, and you can literally start your store in matter of hours. So simply go to Bigcommerce.com/mywifequitherjob, sign up and you’ll instantly receive one month free. Once again the URL is Bigcommerce.com/mywifequitherjob, thanks for listening.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, where we’re giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.