The Trading Post

What Nobody Tells You About Starting a Podcast for Business

• Trader Stu • Season 3 • Episode 4

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The podcast downloads quadrupled after experimenting with posting twice weekly, proving that consistency is key to building an audience. Finding the right recording environment is crucial for maintaining authenticity and quality.

• Car recording provides surprisingly good acoustics with all the soft surfaces absorbing sound
• Holding off on podcast marketing during early experimental phase allows freedom to try different approaches
• The vision of a "mobile trading post" concept aligns with modernizing traditional trading practices
• Content creation takes substantial time investment with slow returns - video editing requires 15-60 minutes per finished minute
• 38-42 of the top 50 podcasts don't incorporate video components
• 23 minutes is the optimal podcast length according to Buzzsprout, aligning with average commute times
• AI helps with podcast planning and structure, but authentic human voices remain essential for connection

Whatever you do, be good or be good at it.


“Whistles In The West” was written, recorded, and produced by Durracell, exclusively for use with Trader Stu’s platform, always rocking the cowboy hat. The track is protected under U.S. Copyright rights to use have been granted specifically to Trader Stu for content and promotional use related to his brand and media presence.

contact:
 📧 durracellmusic@gmail.com
🌐 www.durracell.com

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The thoughts and views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the host and do not reflect the official policy or position of Metro Trading Association. Although the host is an employee of Metro Trading, this podcast is intended to educate entrepreneurs on the benefits of professional trading, regardless of their location. Additionally, the host reviews various pieces of camping gear due to the association of trade, barter, and prepping.

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Speaker 1:

Well, that didn't take long to not follow through on the two weekly recordings. So, as I don't know, last week I tried two in a row, on a Monday and a Thursday, or Tuesday and a Thursday, whatever like that, and I got to tell you it worked. Downloads, if you're uh kind of, I guess keeping track is. I quadrupled I believe it was the amount of listeners that uh tuned in and listened to the podcast. So it definitely works. So if you are trying to use uh your podcast to market a business, like kind of like I am, or talk about it, uh, two definitely is a good ramp up, easy number, not easy, not easy number, but a goal to achieve. I went from on average I'll just tell you I don't care, I think it was eight or nine on average downloads because I only have, I think, 10 or 12 uploaded as it is. So you know I'm not exactly pouring a lot into this right now and this episode is scheduled. If you go by, the Buzzsprout is 36 or 38, I believe they said is the expected within 90 days. It's a 90-day thing that Buzzsprout gives you. Of course I'm brand new. I don't care, I'm not advertising it. And, speaking of advertising, if people tell you to spend money into marketing the podcast and advertising it. I would hold off on that. And here's why Because I'm still trying new things and I don't want that many people to be in on. I guess I don't know if I'm the failures or the trials, but it seems like that once I get into the thousands of downloads which inevitably it will happen if I keep doing this, if I'm quadrupling or doubling every week or two, it doesn't take long. You know I'm at 40, then there'll be 80, then 120. You know you can give the numbers. So actually, no, it'll be 160 if you double that, right. No, it doesn't matter, I digress. Be 160 if you double that, right. No, it doesn't matter, I'm, I digress. But if you go into it right away and then push it and advertise it and all of that stuff, I think you'll be less, less apt to try new things.

Speaker 1:

Because it already happened to me the other day. I was talking to my wife and I was like wow, I'm gonna get almost 40 downloads on this. I guess it's time to stop. Wife, and I was like wow, I'm going to get almost 40 downloads on this. I guess it's time to stop experimenting. And this is who I am and what I do now. And she's like, yeah, no, I mean, think about I heard a podcast the other day.

Speaker 1:

Think about a room, say you got 500 downloads. And someone's like, oh cool, I made it, I got 500 listeners. Go to a hotel or a conference room and ask them what size room do I need for 500 people? And you could do that even for, like, a wedding venue. I think ours was 220 people or something like that, or was that our wedding right, and it wasn't really all that big of a hall and it was for spread out seating. You could easily put 500 people in there. If it was like a stage type thing with like rows of people, you can only put most of the people on the dance floor. As it was, whoever may have showed up for just the ceremony alone was like 100 and whatever 100 people. Let's just say half, I don't know, maybe more, I don't remember, but definitely you know it doesn't take that much of a room to pack in 500 people. So what I'm going at is that you can still experiment, but it also gets in your head, and by experimenting here's what I mean. I'm going back to trying recording in my car. And here's why, trying to record on my office even though it's like the perfect situation almost is that I still have to worry about getting in there a bit early because otherwise the phones start ringing.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I do work in a type of business where the phones that people call us all day right. We're brokers, so we broker deals, so if people want to do a trade or a barter, we're going to call it with somebody in another business. Or, like yesterday, I had someone call me and said do you have any garage door opener repairmen? Two of them, actually Two people. I don't know what's going on with the garage doors right now, but whatever. So you know they call. I mean you get dozens or hundreds of calls or whatever. I don't keep track, I don't really care, because it's to beat up between the four of us. Uh, and I'm even me, I'm a part-time salesman, part broker, part conscious evil, part marketing part. I mean I do all jack of all trades, right. So anyway, what I'm getting at is is that I could turn the phone down.

Speaker 1:

Your phones are ringing, and then I've also noticed that I can't be my animated usual self and I sound really dull and I don't like the way I sound on the podcast when I'm in the office. I sound maybe a bit better in the sauna when I try and do the sauna studio. But even that is literally a hole in the basement, you know, with no windows. I mean it's a sauna and it's kind of like dark and dingy and I tried brightening it up with of like dark and dingy and I tried brightening it up with ring lights and basically I don't like it. And even though it's a good for acoustics as I hung up like cold sleeping bags and pillows and things like that so it doesn't get echoey and reverb with all the wood that's in there I don't like it.

Speaker 1:

There's action going on upstairs. Right, got the. You've got. The kids are home, my wife is home. Maybe my son, who's two, can hear me or knows where I'm at. So he's trying to get down in the basement. If he figures out where I'm at, then you can hear him in the background and it's just not overall that being home and recording isn't a good idea for me.

Speaker 1:

And then I go in the office. I'm like, cool, I'll go in early at nine o'clock and that never happens. The only time that happens is when I drop off my stepson at school on the way to work. That gets them in the office around nine, 10, nine, 15. But then, inevitably, what I find myself doing is checking social media, cause I get LinkedIn, I get the alignables, I get all the other messages, emails, and then, of course, I'm on, I use Bing, whatever. So MSN has a page that pops up with all of the news stories and I get down those rabbit holes on the new volcano that's erupting, or the earthquake that just killed 10,000 people, or whatever right.

Speaker 1:

So now I'm down this rabbit hole and I try doing it in the morning as I wake up at oh, dark, dirty in the morning, and that doesn't happen because, again, I got to go down to the sauna studio. Or I try doing it in my garage. That's not going to happen, because then I'm like, oh, that needs to get put away, oh, that needs to happen, that's dirty, I need a shelf for that. And now I'm done a whole other thing with cleaning up my garage. So that didn't happen either. And so that didn't happen either. And also, in the dead of winter it's cold and I gotta boot up the propane heater and the other heater, and then you know, it's just so I'm back to the car, right, so I've, I'm back to experimenting with a garage band on my iphone.

Speaker 1:

Uh, because it has the radio voice setting which adds a little bit of reverb so it doesn't make it too clean. Now we'll see how that goes and then also editing it. So I gotta, maybe hopefully I can edit at work on camtasia, but not on my phone on a garage band, because it's just too little, it's too annoying, I don't like it. So now I'm hitting a hybrid that I don't know if I've done yet. Um, with the garage band slash, try to send it to my computer and edit in Camtasia and then unload it at Buzzsprout and then do it from there. I can do everything else in the back end on the computer, you know, with the Buzzsprout and the editing and the posting and the social media, and I pay for the Buzzsprout AI program, so it does all the thing for me. And then now I've already digressed how many minutes I'm already at eight minutes.

Speaker 1:

I was going to talk about all kinds of stuff today and I thought about it, and I wasn't talking about perplexity. My wife was like you need to tell everyone about how you use perplexity to network and follow up and all that stuff. But honestly, now I know why people will save things for another episode. You said the thing was so annoying and it is still annoying, don't get me wrong. But the fact of the matter is that I only pay for three hours of time on Buzzsprout and I got to divvy that time up between episodes, and so I can't keep going on about whatever, because you'll find out if you're going to do this and you're thinking about it when you pay for the Buzzsprout. You get three hours if you buy the program and then you can add additional hours onto it, for I think it's five or 10 bucks per hour, and I don't really want to do that because guess what I'm already paying enough, like 22 or 29 bucks a month for the buzzsprout. I pay for the co-host and I pay for the AI thing, right? So what I'm getting at is I've got to save time, I've got to do another episode next week, and so I want to talk about the AI thing.

Speaker 1:

And now I guess I kind of digress because literally on my way to work I pass a park. It's called Veterans Memorial Point. Oh, that's kind of cool. I forgot it was a veterans park. Anyway, veterans Memorial Point. I pass it. I don't work every day, no matter what route I take and I was going to do this in the parking lot, but then I was like I don't want to go in the parking lot because I'm going to see work and I'm just going to go ahead and inside there. So I'd rather kind of stare at the trees and the birds or the squirrels or whatever like that and record out my window Like I like doing that work. So I'm getting the best of both worlds and also I'm talking fast because I'm in my head now.

Speaker 1:

So the other idea was, with the podcast and blending it with my job, which is being sales and marketing rep for Metro Trading Association, is that I wanted to do an on-the-road podcast as well, and so this is really good practice for me to see if I can even do that and commit to something like that, because inevitably I want to. You know, maybe, hopefully, I don't know, maybe I don't, hopefully, I don't know maybe interview people and then have that in a uh, like an RV situation right, not a car, because that's kind of weird and awkward. I guess RV maybe could be awkward too, but you know, then I'm going down that rabbit hole. So the ideal situation, what I think, what I like to do, is to get that. It's called the patent RV and it's got everything you need in it, but it's made out of a Hummer, a Hummer frame H1. And I think that'd be perfect for this, because I'm the trading post.

Speaker 1:

Right, it's the trading post and it's going kind of back in day, so I'd make it the old, just like we did with Metro Trading Association, or Mike did, I should say. You took the old and blended it with the new. So you took the old ways of doing business and that's, of course, trading and barter and then you bring it up to date with now computers and now AI and emails, follow-ups and texting and keeping track of all the trades digitally, so no one gets burned in the end and everything's fair. So now I'm taking the old way of the trading post situation and updating it to maybe a mobile trading post and instead of trading goods and service within the vehicle, I'm using it for a podcast to trade information and exchange that out into the mystic. And go about it that way, I guess, because really that's what it's all about, right? Nowadays, information is power and that's money. And speaking of money.

Speaker 1:

Did you know that gold is up to 3,500 bucks an ounce right now? I think at this point in time it's 33, 33 or something like that. Right now, because it was yesterday's price, was the 3,500. I don't need the money, but I was like, oh, I'll go see how much my gold is worth. I was really surprised by just how much a few grams of gold adds up to. I think it was at $17.54. A guy offered me. I was like, cool, I'll think about it. And if you do that and now I'm digressing again go and get a couple of quotes. I went to a jeweler that I knew and I went to a pawn shop in a different city and they both gave me far less like I think, up to four hundred dollars difference, uh, less, uh, from the gold than I would have got at this other guy in hazel park. So I'm going back there.

Speaker 1:

But now, guess what? Because it's a market, I got the sirens. Oh, you know what. You see, trial and error. I forgot that there is a fire department right behind me and in Rochester, michigan, for some reason, there is just a ton of activity in fire departments. I don't know why. I used to live across the street from one the other one, and they were very busy. They came and went all the time. You always heard sirens. So anyway, back to the gold. So definitely, all I'm saying is get different quotes if you want it. You know, don't just go to one and then take the word for it. Get three or more.

Speaker 1:

So anyway, I digress again. What else? So, oh right, also, car Perfect situation. Really, everything in a car is usually pretty cushy, right. All the seats and the flooring and all that stuff, the carpet, everything's carpeted. The ceiling is carpeted and soft and squishy. So I like the acoustics in here, that's for sure. I don't have to adjust a thing. It's actually meant to absorb a sound, right. It's meant to absorb the road noise, so it's perfect.

Speaker 1:

Now I get why so many people will do YouTube videos in their cars, because it's perfect, dude. What I don't understand is how they do it whilst driving. I'll admit I don't know. Two months or so ago I tried podcasting on the way to work. I was like this is perfect, because my drive is, I think, 35 minutes or 34 minutes. On the way into work, I figured perfect, I'll queue it up in the driveway, I'll chit-chat all the way to work, or maybe not even. Then I'll just hit stop and then call it good at a stoplight or whatever and then off we go. But what I found was the amount of editing that you have to do whilst driving and podcasting is just not worth it. Because I am going for a minimally edited podcast, like I don't like doing all the cuts, edits and stopping and you know, whatever You'll find out if you guys do or you are doing editing.

Speaker 1:

Editing takes so long and speaking of podcast or youtubing, the reason why I don't do video podcasts is the amount of editing that it takes to generate one minute videos. It's crazy, dude. It takes, you can figure, 15 minutes to an hour. Per minute of video that's released is what I found. I used to do a ton of editing for a company called snow x uh for their like, educational series and how to work on things and the amount of time.

Speaker 1:

Well, I did all of it right. I did the script writing, I did the maintenance of it, the video of it. Those are my hands whatever on rebuilding an engine or whatever it took, for example. And then all the lighting, the voiceover, the editing, the clipping, snipping, background music uploading, and then I had to get two approvals from everybody and then you upload it. Dude, it was weeks to do, I don't know a 10 minute, five minute video or whatever it was. It was crazy. So I knew I think I mean I'm glad I did that because that really showed me. You know, any amount of views I got is just not there.

Speaker 1:

So I listened to a podcast actually put out by buzzsprout they also do buzz uh podcasts as well and they showed, or uh explained a statistic the top 50 podcasts that are released. Yes, that includes joe rogan, uh, was it 42 or 38 of them don't do video and they're still in the top 50. Now I'm not saying I'll ever get to the top 50. That'd be neat. But also, by the way, top 50 doesn't mean you're a millionaire. It takes a lot, dude.

Speaker 1:

People don't realize that people are making these millions of dollars on podcasting and video. For one, joe rogan had a huge following. You know he was in pure factor, he was mma fighter, he was a comedian and he did everything else. So you know, yeah, he gets, and he was bought out by Spotify. So that factors into his podcast money per episode algorithm. So cool to strive for, but I think it's a lot like Beast, you know, like Jimmy and YouTube, it's been done. That was the guy it's done now and Joe Rogan was the podcast guy, I think, and you know.

Speaker 1:

So, not saying there's not still money in it, but don't go into it to make money, you'll burn out, lord knows. I did. I did because I tried YouTubing for side cum money, side cum if cum, right, and the motivation isn't strong enough to keep you every week doing an upload and editing and scripting and all that stuff. It's just not there because it's a slow burn. It'll take forever.

Speaker 1:

It takes a year or more to even probably generate a monetization, unless you've got a following and like on Instagram the girls. They were already models or strippers or God knows whatever, right, so they already had a following. Or OnlyFans, right. So you don't judge everything by someone's success because you don't see everything, all the background, uh, that it took to get there. The only thing they show you is cool, I'm making a million bucks per photo on instagram, but what you don't know is they already had a huge following, you know, or podcasting or youtubing or whatever. So, and I heard even OnlyFans. The same way, like I said, girls were dancers or whatever. So they are already had a huge following. They upload a video or whatever and boom, they've already got you know all their subscribers and fans and whatever.

Speaker 1:

So and then you got girls that try and do it and you find out they're making, you know, five bucks a week or whatever. That's real money. The real money is nothing to probably substandard level of living, like they can't move out because they're making 20 grand a month a year, you know, or whatever. That's the reality of it. You only see the top 0.01% that talk about it and made it so anyway. So this podcast is being uploaded to the season where I talk about what it. You know the background of the podcasting. So season three I've just modified them again Season three is where we talk about if you want to be a podcaster for marketing. This is all the background, all the. All the pain that no one talks about is what I I review and talk about because I don't really care. I don't care if everyone knows that.

Speaker 1:

You know I've been trying to, uh, be successful since god, high school. I moved to New York City to try and be an actor back when I was 18 and try making it in the industry. You know. But uh, I moved home and went in the back when I was 18 and try making it in the industry. But I moved home and went in the military because I couldn't drink the snake oil that they want you to drink out there. You guys don't realize how much people sell their souls to have five minutes of fame and make a million bucks and then you're just a wash up Again. All the the actors. You wouldn't believe how many people show up to, uh, like, if you're in the city, like chicago I mean in chicago maybe, because it's a dance situation kind of like broadway, they have that out there too.

Speaker 1:

But uh, if you go to broadway, if you go to any you know, show, um, what do you call it? Rehearse, not rehearsal. I forgot see. See, I dumped all that stuff. Where you go to try for a photo or try for a video Rehearsal. I already said, it doesn't matter, I'm stuck on it. Who cares For a movie? So, yeah, what else is there? Oh, also, try and get in the habit of sticking at 23 minutes per podcast upload, because if you don't, you can't get monetized. That's the cutoff.

Speaker 1:

For some reason they figured out. Well, actually, it makes sense, because that's the reason why these electric cars, if you don't include, like full electric, like tesla or you know whatever else, but if you go to a volt or the, the cadillac, uh, elr, that's the car I want actually. Uh, it's just, which is funny, it's 13 years old now, or I think more probably 15 years old, but they calculated those to be, I think, 40 or 45 miles. Uh, I'm just electric only with before the engine kicks in, because the average commute to work, uh, they calculated, I think, was 18 miles or 22 miles or something like that. So, round trip, there you go, 40 miles and your engine never kicks on. You can ride it fully electric, allegedly, of course, maybe when it's brand new and it's not below zero outside, like it is in Michigan, and the batteries actually work, you can get away with that.

Speaker 1:

But anyway, 23 minutes, I think, think, is why buzzsprout wants you to upload, because that's the average commute to work anyway. So what else is there? Uh, wrap it up and wrap it up here as I'm closing out on my 23 minutes. Actually, it's funny how fast that goes by once you get going into it. Uh, oh, and, by the way, uh, not that it matters or not, because you know you probably dropped off by this point, but this is the first time I think I've done a podcast with no script in front of me Because I'm in the car. I'm not prepared for it, so I was just like I'm going to tell everyone about how. You know, I already told you everything that I told you, so I wanted to go through it all and I didn't need a freaking script or bullet points or have AI make me a podcast.

Speaker 1:

Nine times out of 10, when I say that because I think I have a total of 13 uploads now. So nine times out of 10, so almost all my episodes I've used AI to help me generate. So I'll say, hey, I want to talk about this and that. Make it into a I think whatever 20-minute podcast you know. So then it gives you all the bullet points that you can just follow along with Huge time saver, because I know I've been there, I've been through before AI and now past AI, and you can either use it to benefit you or you know it's going to kill you, it will, it'll wash you up and end your career, or you can grab a hold of it and just go for the ride, because if you don't, you're going to get left behind.

Speaker 1:

And I'm not saying use episodes with AI voice. Podcasting is not for that. I know that I am so burned out with the YouTube videos that are AI voice and video because a lot of times like, say, right now, the war is a big thing, right, the World War III that we're in, believe it or not, whatever. But they're using like aircraft. They'll talk about like, oh yeah, the B-2 bomber. And then they show a video of an F-16. You're like dude, that's not even close to the same airframe, that's a bomber and that's a fighter for one. That one's stealth, that one's not. And then you see the comments and you're like, hopefully someone else noticed this and I live for the comments in YouTube. That's like half my entertainment. And, yeah, they're not getting away with it and they look stupid.

Speaker 1:

So the one cool thing that maybe I would get behind and I haven't really even come across this yet in podcasting where perhaps one day they can use an AI voice to do an interview with you. So you're going to interview I don't know, like in a Thomas Jefferson voice or something like that. Maybe that's just stupid, but you could maybe get away with something like that. Maybe that's just stupid, but you could maybe get away with something like that. And now, maybe you meet nice, I don't know. Maybe I'll try it one day, but, uh, I don't really plan on ever using the ai voice generator, because that just deceives the whole purpose anyway.

Speaker 1:

Uh, that's it for now. That's good enough for me. I need to go to work and get stuff done, so, uh, cool. I'm glad this worked out and hopefully it sounds okay. I'll find out in a minute when I get to the office and start editing, but as for now, uh, see you next week, or how you can hear me. Next week. I guess I won't see you, but you get the idea. Uh, so, whatever you do, be good or be good at it. Bye.