Secrets to Building Profitable Podcasts from the Ground Up with Hector Santiesteban

Hector: [00:00:00] a lot of executives are waking up to go, well, hey, how do we start to do that? How do we put. Not only our face, but our expertise, our experience, and really you know, bring a face and humanize a lot of businesses such as in the B2B space that were otherwise pretty faceless for most of time,
Dustin: Hey, welcome back to the seven figure leap. I am super honored today to welcome Hector Santia Esteban, Hector is an amazing guy and he's really closely connected to the seven figure leap podcast because he's actually.
Dustin: The owner of the company that produces this show. So this is a bit of a full circle moment. He helped me launch the [00:01:00] show name the show, brand the show. And a lot of the things that you hear week to week are the result of his team and their talented work. So Hector, thanks so much for, for joining us on kind of like your show.
Dustin: You know, the other.
Hector: it's for sure not my show in the agreement, it is distinctly your show for legal purposes. You take all the liabilities and responsibilities for the things that but it's honored to be here. I really am honored. Asked me to be on the show because this is a bit of a full circle.
Dustin: Yeah, absolutely. So Hector and I actually, I don't know, I think we probably met on LinkedIn maybe initially, and then we had this common connection through front row dads which was an organization that has meant a lot to us. We're both dads and committed to putting that first in our lives.
Dustin: He was actually instrumental in helping me land a few key podcast guesting opportunities in the early days of this business. And this, our relationships continue to grow. And like I said, about 50 episodes ish ago, I said, you know, I'm finally after like six months of him saying, [00:02:00] you're ready to start yet.
Dustin: You're ready to start yet. I'm like, I'm finally ready to start. I finally had the clear vision and commitment to get this show up and running. We've been, been doing it on a weekly basis ever since. So I know a lot about Hector. But Hector, the audience doesn't know much about you. So as a starting point, maybe talk about today, what's Amplify Media.
Dustin: What are you guys about? And then we'll of course, go back down memory lane and talk a little bit more about why you do what you do,
Hector: Yeah. Well, the present day is, I have a podcast company and we do everything podcasting. So whatever you think that is, we do from the audio to the video to the graphics, to the social media, and then some. And I think the,
you know, we've been doing that for about six or seven years. Now we've been in the podcast game.
Hector: You know, I, I joked the other day on, on Instagram that I, we were doing podcasts before presidential candidates thought it was cool to be on podcast,
Dustin: right?
Hector: It's been, it's been a fun and obviously challenging ride, but I'm excited that we are, we're here and it doesn't seem like [00:03:00] podcasts are going anywhere for, you know, no shortage of reasons.
Dustin: Absolutely. Yeah. I also didn't mention Hector's in our seven period lead mastermind. So we hang out most weeks together. So Hector, take us back, man. I actually don't know a lot about your backstory. So I'm curious when you felt like you were becoming an entrepreneur, what drew you to that world and why podcasting specifically for you and, and what you do today, kind of like what's the Genesis behind this?
Hector: Yeah, so I graduated high school in 2009 and that's only relevant because we were right in like an economic recession and sort of thankfully I was forced to take up a sales job selling cut code knives like a lot of, you know, people who have now have large platforms that are doing some great things in the world.
Hector: And so it was doing that and until through college and such, and even out of college built a large organization, had a ton of success, won a bunch of awards. And when I found out that I was going to have my first child, I realized that spending 70, sometimes 80 hours a week at the office, six and a half days a week was just not [00:04:00] conducive to being the dad that I knew I wanted to be.
Hector: And you mentioned, you know, we're both fathers now, and I've got two kids. My son is six. And the other is five. And I'll mention this quick story that he won the, student of the month last week and they gave it away at the
assembly and the lady who was saying his name, they actually go and ask how to say the last names and she still butchered it, like none.
Hector: Like I've, I've heard some butchers, you know, I've seen some butcher jobs. This took the cake. And so perhaps it's where my, my entrepreneurial you know, rumbling sort of began and my disdain for authority sort of began when my English teachers couldn't pronounce my last name and they were telling me
to sound things out and, you know, they were struggling to do the same, but, but anyways, I digress.
Hector: So, yeah, I realized that When I was going to have my kid, I knew that doing what I was doing was not going to be sustainable. And so I started looking around, and that year, I read something like 50 [00:05:00] books in a year. It was like a trend that was going around on Facebook, you know, read a book a week.
Hector: And Well, I'm thankful for it. I didn't implement anything. I've talked about that quite a bit, but I've saw a variety of paths, one of them being the internet marketing space. And, you know, that was when I read Gary Vee's book. And I read one of the ones that really stood out to me was Mike Hyatt's book Platform.
Hector: And I saw that as an avenue because it didn't require a lot of capital. It didn't require a lot of startup. And so I basically dove into the internet marketing world doing everything I sort of could , to make money. I had a Facebook ads agency for real estate agents
Hector: we sold websites and did branding and we were doing, I mean, everything under the sun lead gen agency. And one of the things that didn't work out well was I had a Facebook group that had about 13, 000 people in it and a YouTube channel that was, I was selling courses in a. You might have remembered it, but it was like back in 2016 when [00:06:00] messenger bots first came on the scene, you know, many chat chat fuel and all these sorts of things, but it was also when Zuckerberg was getting thrown on, you know, in front of Congress and all of these restrictions were getting put onto his platform.
Hector: And so for me, I just didn't see it as a sustainable place where I was starting to look for an industry that was going to be around or wasn't going to be liable to such sort of things, because that. Really shook up our, sort of space and for some reason, whether it's intuition or divine intervention or something told me that, Hey, there's this podcast thing.
Hector: That's like kind of bubbling. And I had listened to podcasts. I had listened to Joe Rogan for years at that point. And, you know, I was one of the Earlier apple podcast adopters, but I had never started my own. I had always done a bunch of live stream that I'd mentioned. I had a YouTube channel, but for whatever reason, never put anything on an RSS feed, but I had someone reach out to me and say, Hey, we, you know, we have these, this hour long episode.
Hector: Can you take these little clips from [00:07:00] it? We have like some really good segments. Can you take these little bits from it and put them on Instagram? Cause there was actually right when Instagram allowed a minute long videos. And so we said, Sure, we could do all that. We know how to make videos. We know how to do, you know, we know how to post to social media because we had done that in the past.
Hector: We had a video agency that didn't work out. We had a social media agency that didn't work out. And so it was like, yeah, we can sort of put all these together for this podcast. podcast. And so I was like, this podcast thing is something like, you know, it's like that, that red car, you know, syndrome when things start showing up or I don't know, you know, the universe or, you know, Sort of trying to slap you in the face and say like, Hey, go this direction.
Hector: We sort of leaned into that and we started out as a part of the podcast marketing agency and doing a lot of the clips and the social media stuff. And we realized that if we wanted to actually grow the show, you know, at a certain point we needed to make the show better. So we were like, Hey, your sound kind of sucks.
Hector: can we take that over and can we improve that? So we started doing a little bit of the editing and then we started realizing that like, Hey, your, your like show doesn't really make any [00:08:00] sense. Can we help you sort of like reposition it and, , work on the formatting and the, you know, all the sort of things that attract the listener to you or get them to come back and stick around. And so over that time, we sort of kind of built a full service podcast company. You know, we looked up and, and along the way we've had to adjust and implement some of the, some new things you know, video being one of them. And more recently, you know, we've, we've had to re. Find a way to make a podcast profitable in spite of downloads, rankings, reviews, all of the traditional sort of vanity metrics, because, and we can get into the story if you'd like, but we have a, a mutual sort of network that we know that they had a very successful podcast, but they wanted to shut down the show because they didn't, it didn't align with their business.
Hector: . It didn't fit into their model. And so, they were going to shut down a show that was doing. 20, 30, 000 downloads a month was in the top 50, you know, podcasts in [00:09:00] the U S had dozens of thousands of dollars in ad revenue. So like all the traditional signs of, of success in the podcast world, but, but they just didn't have a way for it to fit into what their model was.
Hector: And so that happened in 2021 and over the last, Three years. I'm like, that can't make sense. So we've been trying to figure out how do we, how do we get a podcast profitable? Ideally within like the first, you know, 12 episodes, how can we make it profitable? And then over the longterm, how can we really make it something that drives this real business to real businesses, which I think is what a lot of people, Who start a podcast would love to do, but I, but I think there is a code that at least we began to, to sort of Frank or, or discover if you will,
Dustin: Yeah, I love that. So anyone listening to Hector's story, they're, they're going to hear like a lot of common elements of different parts of my own story and past guests. So the cut code thing kind of runs through a lot of front row dads and [00:10:00] some of the former guests on here. You talked about platform, the book by Michael Hyatt, how that was a big catalyst for you.
Dustin: I kind of missed , the Michael Hyatt train for a while. But I became close friends with a client of ours, a fellow mastermind member, John Meese. And anyone who remembers John Meese's interview on my show, he actually was the director of Platform University and worked for Michael Hyatt directly.
Dustin: And so it's kind of fun to kind of hear some of Hector's pieces of his story, you know, kind of show up in different individuals in parts of the story here at Seven Figure Leap. But, you know, ultimately, I think why you and I Resonate so well there's the idea that podcasting while fun and while art and community and all this stuff, like I, I don't discount any of that.
Dustin: I think it's awesome. First and foremost, if you're an entrepreneur, it should be a profit driver, right? I'm looking at your LinkedIn profile. It says producing profitable podcast. I have a summit coming up in Q1. It's called the pod profits summit, right? My my flagship program. The Hector was part of is called the podcast profits [00:11:00] accelerator.
Dustin: So you can hear some common things here, mostly profit. So it's podcasting with a purpose, right? It's the purpose of growing a business with it. And then again, that's not the discount true crime or art shows or movie reviews, there's lots of cool ways to use podcasting, but if you're a business owner, and
most likely if you're listening to this show, you're going to And you're thinking about starting a podcast or you have a podcast, it's not really hitting the mark, or you want to be a guest and leverage podcasting.
Dustin: And that way you're probably doing it with a business purpose, right? Which is growing revenue, growing profit. We'll, we'll talk at the end today, sort of. You know, Hector's framework or his special sauce for how to like actually launch a profitable podcast or maybe relaunch one that's not doing so well.
Dustin: So we'll save that and tease that a little bit at the end. But Hector for now, like, without getting into the details of like the how to, I guess I would ask a little bit more like why, so, you know, there's, Lots of producers who are happy to take your [00:12:00] monthly money to do whatever you want for art or, you know, whatever.
Dustin: Not to pick on art. I keep, I keep throwing it out, you know, sort of creativity and community and all that. But, you know, from the get go, when you and I were talking, it was really strategic and it was like, if you're going to do a show that's like, what's the strategy, you know, what are, what's your call to action?
Dustin: What's your, you know, what are you actually going to be driving people to, so it grows your business. So tell me in the origin story here, you mentioned this. You know, it doesn't need to be named a podcast that was like, we're just gonna throw the whole thing away because it doesn't fit our business model.
Dustin: And I know, you know, a little more about that story. And luckily, I didn't just go through to the wayside, I think, with some of your input, but like, why did you care about that? And like, why do you care so much about the profit side of the podcasting industry?
Hector: well, you and I both we, I don't think we came from the dregs of the digital marketing world. Although I think there is that sort of, there is that place, right? There is that sort of place where people could have come up through the underworld of the different digital marketing. And I was thankful.
Hector: [00:13:00] To get my sort of start around a bunch of authors who really had a great message to share, and they had some real impact, you know, to have on people. And a book was a great way to do that. It was a fantastic way to, to both convey that message and then also to effect. With an E, right? Like effect,
whatever change they're trying to make a book is a great way to do it at scale, right?
Hector: In the sense of they're not going to be on calls with all their readers or they're not going to be in, in, even in a, in a room on a stage with those people, but they can write a book and it can, it can do that at some degree. The challenges of the writing book is both costly, both time, energy mental anxiety.
Hector: I mean, it is just, it is one of the most taxing. And, and expensive things to do. So, so it's all great and [00:14:00] well, But there's a lot of you know, sometimes there's even a lot of time. It can be a two, three year process. I've seen, you know, people who have that process has extended five, six years because of riots, whatever, all the sorts of things. So what I started to realize is that the same sort of thing could happen for, for, and through a podcast, but just so many of those barriers to entry were eliminated, especially how hard it was, just because there is a significantly less amount of people who can write well than can talk well, because I can't tell you how many times I tried to write a book, and I'm just like, like, I sometimes read my writing and like, Hector, like, what does this say? Like, the words are spelled correctly here, but this doesn't make any sense. Like, what are you, you know, and I would, I'm like, I spent an hour doing that. And so, there was this cost benefit sort of realization that I had that if you could take someone and make it, you know, Take that hour and and use that well, all [00:15:00] of a sudden, that person who can't write very well, it's likely that they can have a conversation, you know, they may, they may not be a great order.
Hector: They may not be a great speech person, they can have a good conversation or they could be a good interviewer. There's all these roles that someone could play on a podcast that sort of opens up that door. And what I found is that , usually if a book wants to become a bestseller, it's a three year plan.
Hector: You write it the first year, the second year, you edit the third year, you promote it. And by the end of the third year, everybody claps for you. And you're this amazing Amazon first bestseller. The same sort of thing can happen in a podcast on that timeline. The, the, it's just in reverse because when you start a podcast, everybody sees you, but there's, there's not a lot of.
Hector: Audience that's developed, but usually by the third year in the same way that that book has garnered a significant audience, if a podcast, it's just, it's done in public and so. I think that , you can get those returns much quicker because you don't need to have a large base or a large audience for you to get
connected with people in your industry, [00:16:00] or for you to get notoriety within your industry, or to even get clients directly from your show, you know, one of our mutual friends, is.
Hector: He recently told me I will shout out to Matt Drinkon. Go listen to the eternal optimist podcast
Dustin: you know, listen to my episode on there. I was on there. I don't know if you were on there too, Hector, but they can check it out as a
Hector: I have not been on you know, I'll have to talk to whoever produces that show and see if I can work something out. But when Matt came on, you know, Matt just had an idea and he, it was just an idea and you can really kind of get it
from the name of the show. You know, the eternal optimist and those of you guys who know Matt or listened to an episode of Matt.
Hector: He is the eternal optimist. He is the embodiment of that. And so it was a really aligned, great platform, but, but nobody knew who he was outside of his clients. He didn't have a base. And so, episode nine, though, he actually got introduced to , Mark, Victor Hanson. He was the coauthor of the chicken soul for the soup sort of series.
Hector: And hit it off with Mark [00:17:00] ended up signing Mark to a big deal there and I'm getting a book deal with Mark. Now Matt is a bestselling author of a book called by the same name, the eternal optimist, which is a great book, by the way. And, like all that to say Not that's not guaranteed to happen But those sorts of things whether it is getting recognition in your industry or generating direct revenue like that sort of stuff can happen when you when you do it the right way consistently enough, but but we try and accelerate that process obviously and I
Hector: think
Dustin: that. Yeah. I want to do an unpack more about you do right in this, in this process. But, you know, I think I think Matt's actually a great example. So. Podcasting is such like a loaded word. So, and then like profitable podcasting, it's a load on error. Cause at least you're like, well, it's for business.
Dustin: You know, a lot of what I talk about, a lot of my own experience has been as a guest. So basically I go and be interviewed on someone else's podcast. And from that I can get clients, relationships, you know, lead sales, all that
stuff. Obviously Hector's living. [00:18:00] Here helping people launch their own podcast and grow that podcast.
Dustin: And so I guess one thing I want to kind of say out loud, if it's not obvious, is these things definitely feed each other. Right. And so, as a very simple example, I was on Matt's podcast, the eternal optimist. We were just talking about, I don't know which episode I was, I think it was after episode nine before episode like 50.
Dustin: I mean, somewhere in the first, in the first. A hundred for sure. And we talked about my story and I started talking about how I was using podcast guesting to grow my business. And that wasn't the whole focus of the interview, but by the end of the interview, Matt's like, Dustin, tell me more about what you do.
Dustin: Right. And so he ended up joining my program. So actually Matt drink on is an alumni of the accelerator program. One of my favorite testimonials, because he is very straightforward, very direct very optimistic. And so he's always like looking, looking at like the upside. And so Matt was in my program within 90 days of my program generated over 50, 000 in new revenue from [00:19:00] podcast guesting.
Dustin: And then, of course, I love his testimony. It was like, I already know. And the next year I'm gonna make 500, 000 from the stuff I've learned from Dustin, you know? So, so he's a host who was using guesting to grow his own podcast to grow his own client base. And I think a lot of times people come to me and they're like, you know, I really bother starting my own podcast, you know, like, You just done guesting.
Dustin: I'm like, yeah, but you know, I falsely wore this badge of honor that you should just be a guest. And I kind of use that for my fire Creek brand. And that's how I started this company. And I believed it when I said it, but it not in no small part due to Hector and some of these experiences I had in meeting people who had shows.
Dustin: I totally saw that the other side of that coin of hosting was also super valuable, and it's not an either or it's a both. Right. And so that's a very long way of saying you should do guesting and hosting and guesting is one of the best ways to grow your own show. But also don't just like ignore hosting.
Dustin: I'm a huge advocate of starting with guessing so you can kind of get clear on your message, start building relationships before you commit to its
[00:20:00] own, your own show. But Hector, I want to ask you that because I think that that's really a pertinent question for our audience. So someone's new to podcasting, they don't have a show, they haven't really done much guessing, where should they start to start getting clear on how they could develop a profitable podcast?
Dustin: Do you think guessing is a good place to start?
Hector: I do think it is a great place to start because one of our mutual friends, Qasim Aslan who Who knows? Who knows what he's doing right now. He's like, he's like
Hector: solving like
Dustin: people I've
Hector: problems on Mars by now. I'm sure but one of the things that he sort of mentioned because he took over a show around at the same time And he noticed that When you go on other people's shows, you get, you, you do get a little bit of a pop each time, right?
Hector: that's sort of a great thing. So if you have something to sell, you already have a business to sell, you know, or products or services, you know, what I call like the, the podcast, you know, roadshow sort of thing, like is a great place to start. Both because you [00:21:00] will get leads.
Hector: You'll be able to tap into different audiences and different markets. Some of them will overlap, but some of them won't. You can get practice in your messaging and you'll get practice in, like, I think that There is a process to developing your voice and, it generally takes about 25 to 50 episodes I found for hosts to, for that process to happen organically, of course, I'm sure you can compress it and some are on the shorter, longer, but throughout that time, you're going to find, oh, there's certain stories that resonate.
Hector: Oh, there's certain themes, there's certain things that come up and being a guest on a show is a great place to sort of. Taste and find those things. And then at a certain point, right, there is a and a finite amount of shows and the more that you go through, you know, the bigger, the ones, the bigger the audience is, the harder they are to get to.
Hector: So, so naturally there is sort of this point of where it might make sense to actually start a show as well. [00:22:00] Otherwise you start to double dip,
you know, within a certain industry. Okay. And, and I think that most industries, especially in the business and the B2B space , there's plenty of room for media, you know, like people always go like, should I, there's so many podcasts out there and you can look at the statistics and you can see like, Oh, there's a lot of them and starting, we can get into whatever and how many are active and, but even beyond that, like, would you tell somebody like, Oh no, don't write a book because there's already a book.
Hector: There's so many books out there. Don't write any more books or like, don't start a new TV series because there's already so many TV series or Like when you view it through that lens, it's like we're on Netflix and then we can't find anything to watch. So like, don't, don't like miss me with that.
Hector: There's too many out there,
Dustin: You're even as silly as like, Oh, don't bother having a LinkedIn profile. There's already like a billion LinkedIn profiles, right. Or don't, don't have a website. You know, you don't need an email address. Everyone's got an email address. Like I'm getting more and more ridiculous, but to your point, like, yeah, there, there, there's definitely room for, for you in that mix.
Dustin: But so I [00:23:00] appreciate you kind of sharing some of the tactical reasons why, like.
Hector: more of the, why the, why the behind it is because I think that what I've seen recently, you know, the last. , since COVID, but really since things have have like, you know, 20, 22, 23, even a lot of executives started to realize that if they wanted to separate themselves and continue to separate themselves in the marketplace, they, it's not that they had to start a podcast, but there was very few, if any other tools.
Hector: That would do that in a way that was time and cost efficient and effective for, for them. Because what I saw a lot of what, What it seemed was happening is a lot of executives realize that these other people who understood the media game, understood the content and the social media game, they were amassing these larger followings.
Hector: , they were having all of these opportunities and they had one tenth of the experience that these other executives have. So they're standing around going, Hey. I've been doing this for [00:24:00] decades, you just came into the space and because they understand media and content and audiences and stuff like that, they have all these outsized opportunities.
Hector: And so the, I don't wanna say the smart, but, but a lot of executives are waking up to go, well, hey, how do we start to do that? How do we put. Not only our face, but our expertise, our experience, and really you know, bring a face and humanize a lot of businesses such as in the B2B space that were otherwise pretty faceless for most of time,
Dustin: Yeah, that's a great point. And so basic point is a lot of what Hector and I talk about, because this is like us as individuals is entrepreneurs. Right. And so we own our own business. We're typically the founder or the face of the business. So podcasting is a kind of natural extension of that because you're.
Dustin: A lot of what we do is based on teaching, right? Or strategizing and relationship building. But when you think of an [00:25:00] executive or maybe someone who purposely built sort of a faceless brand, and I would throw our fire Creek snacks brand into this Mexico and e commerce brand, which actually my business partner was really the origin story of it.
Dustin: And I'm the one that went out and told the stories on the podcast. So why do that? Well, yeah, it's. Adding a story and a personality and a human connection to an otherwise non, not non human brand, but you know, a brand that doesn't have that story and that connection. And I think post COVID that became even more important.
Dustin: And I think now in the AI age. It's even more important, in my opinion. So I'd like to touch on that a little bit, Hector, with you as a thought leader in this space. I know you guys use AI tools to enhance your process, make things more efficient. You're not like saying, don't use AI,
Dustin: but the thing I was going to ask you about is sort of like podcasting in an AI age. Like where do you see these things connecting or separating in a healthy way?
Hector: yeah, I would, I can go on for a, for a, for days. I do want to touch on one interesting thing that we saw, especially like [00:26:00] in this faceless sort of you know, in the B2B space is we have one particular client in a very boring niche. And it's like one of the most boring niches and industries that you could think of.
Hector: And their sales cycle used to be about like a two year sales cycle because they were, you know, these were, you know, Seven figure contracts there. They're going into large, you know, fortune 500, you know, operations and, and doing, you know, large scale things in these sort of organizations. And
so the sales cycle was a really, you know, there was a lot of trust that had to be built and a lot of things that had to happen.
Hector: And what was interesting is that once we started the show, they had people calling them in within a couple of weeks, they were signing these sorts of contracts because The prospects or the their clients who were calling them had already listened to the show. They already binged the show. So they got all of the questions answered and all the trust that usually would take years and X amount of conversations to develop happened over the road trip or, you know, their commute to the, you know, to work.
Hector: [00:27:00] And so they were like, we don't know what's happening here. And we're like, well, we know exactly what's happening. And so that sort of thing becomes possible. And to your point with AI, you know, when you have, Yeah. The, the actual executive and you're able to get their information and their knowledge out into, you know, in this instance, it's a podcast, that sort of source material with AI is.
Hector: Invaluable, You know, one of our, our big partners that we work with, she is a, an amazing ghost writer. She's a, you know, she is the, she's the LinkedIn sort of presence for a lot of these executives. And she does an amazing job. But prior to, to starting the podcast, she used to have to just like make stuff up or she would have to like sit in on meetings and like, Pull info or do research, or she would like sometimes literally just be making stuff up that she thinks this person thinks, well, now with the podcast, she can take all that.
Hector: And she [00:28:00] has all of the source material that is straight from their brain. And she's able to sort of work and massage with it with AI. But now she doesn't have to make anything up. Everything is out there. And it's actually built in with the expertise and the experience of these people who have 20, 30, 40, Four years in this particular niche.
Hector: And so the amount of content that they're able to put out on LinkedIn and all these different places has so much more depth because it's, it's rooted in some real knowledge and experience as opposed to what, you know, so many other people were doing when they were trying to go viral on LinkedIn, which is just like, you know, having some, you know, hypey copywriter come in and write, you know, great hooks and stuff like that that got people to engage in and comment.
Hector: And so anyways. AI sort of enables all of that and in a really large way when you, when you're able to have those sorts of conversations. Yeah, and
Dustin: It's a great point. I think so. And source material is a great way to put it to you. Right? So, I think at this point, we've all used AI and going chat, GPT, whatever. You know, you [00:29:00] can create your own avatar. That's cool. One of the best ways to create a really powerful avatar or have a ghost writer or have, you know, any sort of human to repurpose.
Dustin: You need, you still need really good source material if you want to sound like you, right? And if you want it to be a true representation of you and actually use your words, phrases, images. Stories, teaching moments. In my opinion, there's no better way to do that than podcasting, right? Whether it's a guest or as a host as a guest, one of the advantages is you could go do that maybe a little more quickly in the sense that you can get on multiple interviews and kind of hammer this out, like we talked about as far as developing your message as a host, the huge benefit is you can.
Dustin: Also get guest input. And one of my favorite things to do on my own show, which I didn't anticipate when we started this you know, 11 months ago is solo episodes. And so I'll get this story or this example or this idea, you know, I've been doing this a while. So, I mean, not, I think I do a pretty good, reasonably good job of this basically able to hit record and then just riff, right.
Dustin: And just be like, [00:30:00] Hey, you know, like this came up today. I want to tell you why I think this is important. Here's three takeaways. Here's an example from a client. And then, you know, I hit end and it's not only a great 10, 15, 20 minute episode, man, that's like the source material for LinkedIn posts and YouTube and YouTube shorts and, you know, whatever social media I might want to use it on.
Dustin: And in my case, I actually take that content plus a ton of other content that we've. Got for clients from our accelerator program, and we now have Dustin AI inside of our community, right? And so just this idea of source material that that AI tool has been trained on all of my stuff. And so it's in a continually gets trained on new stuff is I have new ideas and I have podcasting is like the outlet because what would happen in the past is like.
Dustin: I'd have these thoughts and they would just sort of go into a Google Doc somewhere, but now I can like literally like, Hey, I got like 25 minutes. I'm hitting record on my, platform here. And this will eventually be a podcast episode and it like gives me a platform to create new source material.
Dustin: And I think that that's a, that was [00:31:00] an unexpected, but really powerful thing I've gotten out of podcasting this year that I didn't anticipate as a, as a thought leader.
Hector: you can do it at, at scale. I mean, when we started doing this, we were paying our show notes writer, we were
Dustin: Which is funny now, right,
Hector: thousands of dollars. She was making more money than me as the executive producer. She was, but it was worth it. And I was not going to spend the time to do whatever she does because it would, that would take me, I mean, it would be impossible to put out what she was putting out because she would go through, she would create titles, she would, you know, make a good description, she would make all the chapters and like all the stuff that today seems super easy, like, oh, you just throw them in the chat GPT way to do that by hand.
Hector: And so, so the, the writing part was, was often the, it was like the, that last mile sort of analogy, right? Where, you know, it's, it's getting it to that part is actually easy. It's the last mile that becomes [00:32:00] the most costly. And, and we were seeing that in the same way. And now we can not only do that, but
we can also do the social media.
Hector: We can offer that for our clients and we can actually, like you said, get it to sound like. Okay. Them because we have all of the transcripts and we have all of the source materials. So, you know, if someone uses certain words or they're a little rougher around the edges, or they like to, you know, use a little more profanity than others, like that's embedded into the writing.
Hector: And, and so it looks, it looks more natural and, and it's not that it's impossible for someone to go, Oh, that's AI written, but So often you see that on scrolling through LinkedIn or scrolling through Facebook, where you go like, well, this is obviously an AI post and with sort of these processes that becomes much, you know, much less of it.
Dustin: Well, and that's a good segue. I wanna kind of take this next portion of our conversation really just to talk about what Amplify does. So to say [00:33:00] podcast production is true, but is also, you know, shallow compared to all the stuff that you actually do. You kinda start alluding to social media. I mentioned YouTube opportunity, and then we'll.
Dustin: How people can actually successfully want to show using your framework. And of course, we'll talk about how people can get, get ahold of Hector and work with Amplify. So, yeah, I mean, for now, Hector, give us a rundown. So I don't know if you got this in a package or you got to kind of multiple tiers, but what does Amplify do for thought leaders, executives, entrepreneurs who are like, I really, I know podcasting is something that could really serve me.
Dustin: Like, what are all the different ways you're using Podcasting to grow a profitable enterprise for them.
Hector: Let me frame it. I'll, I'll answer that by saying this. One of the things early on that we sort of our mission and hopefully, you know, you would be a barometer on whether or not we succeeded in this sort of mission. But, our, our mission early on was to be the easy button for podcasting. [00:34:00] We we saw that there were so many, although I said there were not as many barrier entry, there's not a lot of barriers to entry.
Hector: There isn't in the sense that anybody can go and set up an account and literally within 15 minutes of right now, if they knew where to click and where to go, they could have a podcast up on Spotify. Now, it's not going to be necessarily mean that it's any good, but there is no, you know, there is a low barrier to entry.
Hector: What we did realize, though, is that there were so many different Bye Parts of it. So it required audio editing and it required video editing and it required, you know, show note writing and required uploading to the place that gets it to Apple and Spotify and then getting into you to like, there's all these different parts of it, you know, creating graphics.
Hector: And if you want to sort of start to it. Do it at the right way, or you want to sort of grow in any sort of capacity. There are these, this is extra sort of things that, you know, you do in sorts of communicating with the guests and creating, you know, media for them and all these sorts of things that we try and do to enable [00:35:00] that.
Hector: And so that is essentially what we do. So that way our hosts, all of our clients, essentially what they do is they hop in, they record. You know, they have a great time and then, you know, having a great conversation and and then we take care of the rest, you know, once they hit the stop record button, you know, we sort of, we sort of take over.
Hector: Some of them are, so, so in any case, that's sort of what, what we do and we try to, uh, provide,
Dustin: and to brag on you guys, I mean, I you know, I will say I had, I'll say you've exceeded my expectations and that's to say, I already knew you. I had, I had high expectations, but Hector and amplify have exceeded those. And I can be very specific. Like what I wanted was, Hey, if I'm going to commit to this, I'll find the interview ease, like when I'm doing guests, I'll do that if I'm gonna do a solo show, like, Obviously I'm going to be the recorder.
Dustin: I'm the speaker and the producer of the content. That's great. But I literally want to go in and hit a button that says record and a button that says stop, and I want to be done with that. [00:36:00] And that's exactly what I do. So we get on here, you know, there's a, some automations that go out. So. Just give people an idea of my process.
Dustin: Someone's like, Hey, I want to be on your show. Or most of the time I'm inviting people on the show. I send them a link. They go sign up for a time. They get some very basic, Hey, give us your headshot. Give us, you know, some basic information about your business. They get automated reminders. They show up in this little box that Hector and I show up in right now.
Dustin: Hit record. We talked for 30, 45 minutes. I hit stop, then I'm done. And then what happens outside of that is. It shows up on Apple, it shows up on Spotify. And when I say it shows up, like, I don't tell them what title to use, the show summary, the timestamps art. So every show, every episode has got my guests and the title all built in an image.
Dustin: Then it gets published on YouTube as a full interview and then they make shorts out of it. So the best. Golden nuggets get pulled out as YouTube shorts. So I have a whole like seven figure leap YouTube channel that I didn't create. Like, I don't know, maybe I'm [00:37:00] maybe they did too much for me and maybe this is not normal, but they actually created the channel and they published to it.
Dustin: That's been awesome. And then they send. Me and the guests, this basically this notion playbook that is a bunch of numerous versions of the images in different sizes, various shorts, quotes a linkedin post, like different things that we can use. And then they actually send the guests when it goes live.
Dustin: They say, Hey, guests. I don't know if Hector will send it to himself, but hey, Hector, you're a great guest with Dustin. Here's a, here's a link for ways
you can share this, and it actually pre writes an email they can send out. And it's got all these assets, right? So it makes it really easy for the guest not only to promote the show, which I like, but it gives them assets, so they actually get a tangible benefit out of being on the show.
Dustin: Like, they've got some nice looking Videos and, and images and things to use on their own social media. And like a little, I don't do anything, I show up and hit the button. And so I call this a white glove service. and I feel like that's what it is, but it's not just the podcast that goes out, it's all these other assets.
Dustin: Right. And I get [00:38:00] compliments all the time from guests that are like, wow, like you've really got to dial it in process. Like, you know, I can see why you're the quote unquote podcasting expert. Right. I'm like, Cool. I don't do any of it, but that's great. and, and I get reviews from them and stuff like it incentivizes them to, it builds a lot of goodwill and, and makes them feel like they're part of the show.
Dustin: They're part of our community. They're invested in what I'm doing. And so they want to leave me a review. They want to like refer other people over to me. They do actually post it on LinkedIn and things like that. Whereas a lot of times you hear from hosts that their guests don't share it. Their guests aren't involved.
Dustin: We give them so much value that it's like this law of reciprocity takes over. I feel like, and they're like, yeah, like I, this has been a great experience and I want to share it with people. So anyway, kudos to you, Hector. Cause that, that's been my experience for almost a year now. It's been awesome.
Hector: well, I appreciate you saying that. I receive all of that. I don't know if you got a chance to meet John Ruland, and I wish that I could say he was a better friend than he was in his time, but he's a mutual [00:39:00] friend of a lot of our mutual friends, he recently passed, it was a tragic passing, but he wrote a book called Giftology.
Hector: And that book was really instrumental early on in my life in a lot of different ways, mostly because I realized that I sucked at giving gifts and like, that was not my love language, but I
Hector: saw it, but you know, it's the concept baffled me, and I also realized that That's in a way that by providing this sort of package to them, it is, it is a gift.
Hector: And by doing it and treating it that way, it opens up that door for the relationship to go so much deeper. I mean, like you said it kind of, creates that reciprocity and we've seen that open so many doors for our clients and for our
hosts because , the guest really feels treated in a way that, they most of the time don't get treated.
Dustin: Yeah. And as, as a guest on quite close to a hundred times you know, they're typically going to send you a link and it'd be like, Hey, your show's live. Great. You know? And then we, as a [00:40:00] guest, I, as a guest, my company. Tries to go above and beyond on that front, just to leave them a review, share it on LinkedIn, do what we can to help them.
Dustin: I don't think, I mean, sometimes I'll get a Google drive folder. That's like, we've made some shorts and like, that's cool. And we'll, we'll use those as content. As a guest, but I feel like what we're doing as a host makes it so much easier. And, it definitely has a feeling of going above and beyond and service to the guests.
Dustin: And that's part of my brand as part of what I do. And I think that's probably why I was so aligned with working with amplify for my own pilot. If I'm going to do a podcast, I already mentioned it needs to be a push button solution and I want it to be special, right? I want it. I want the guests to think this is awesome.
Dustin: And I want you know, we, we have a whole, a pretty high standard of a seven figure leap. We run a high ticket program. We, you know, we're working with pretty high octane, ambitious people. And it's important for me for the podcast that I host also be a representation of that brand. So, anyway, that's just my endorsement, I guess, for Hector and Amplify.
Dustin: And if anyone enjoys this podcast and some of the editing, some of the names, [00:41:00] you know, I don't take any credit for that. So these guys are working on it behind the scenes. So Hector, with our, you know, remaining maybe 10 minutes here, I would love to kind of hand the mic to you. You're a wealth of information.
Dustin: We, we started the show talking about this idea of profitable, profitable, profitable, right? And I think like you said, Many people can go hire someone or they can do it themselves. They can go quote unquote, start a podcast, but much different story to start a successful, profitable podcast. And I know you have a three P framework for doing that well.
Dustin: So I'd love to just hand it over to you and let you close any loops that I've left open, but then. Let's have your teaching moment and give some actionable advice for people that are like, I think I do want to do this, but I'm not really sure like how to get started to, to do it successfully.
Hector: Yeah, we, I think we love our piece around here.
Dustin: You have my five P's. He's got three P's.
Hector: the, this is a great framework, whether you are starting a show or even if you're going to go on the guesting route, because it's really what we [00:42:00] try and do when we're, when we're starting a show, or even when we're taking over a show, we like to go back and make sure that these three things are really, you know, dialed in and in alignment.
Hector: And so your platform, is just a really fancy way of saying like, who is your listeners? , who do you want to listen? I think that is, that's so important and so critical and oftentimes one of the most challenging decisions for hosts to make.
Hector: Cause they're like, I want everyone to listen. And it's like, okay, well, great, but like, name a song that a 60 year old, you know, boomer and a 25 year old Gen Z or listen to that's the same, like name, name, try and name. Oh, I don't, you know, there's, there's very few things that practically appeal to everybody.
Hector: So, so. Trying to do that from the onset is just a, it's a losing battle and going back to what you, we had sort of said [00:43:00] before there's not too many podcasts, but there's too many generic podcasts. So if you want to start a generic podcast, Business show. And you want to be competing with the, you know, the Amy Porterfields or Neil Patel's the Russell Brunson, if you want to go in and jump into that general business world. Okay, you're in there playing in the NBA, you know, right, right from the get, whereas if you go, Hey, I want to go and I want to dominate this rec league, you know, of an industry
Dustin: We'll go dunk on some fifth graders.
Hector: Yeah, exactly. You take a little chunk out of it and say, okay, you know, I'm a, a business coach for X who's going through X. Right? And so one of one of the parts of the perspective, which is sort of the next P is like, okay, what, it. What are you saying to those people? What are you, what are you, what is your unique perspective?
Hector: And one of my mentors, Jeff Hoffman, he wrote the book called scale. He always talks about in terms of [00:44:00] positioning that he looks at positioning like parking spots. And it's not trying to be the best in the parking lot. If you have a parking spot, great, you got a parking spot.
Hector: Go, go sit, go park in the parking spot. You're not going to sit there and argue and be all upset because someone's parked in that spot right next to the restaurant when there's a spot over there, that's like, okay, maybe it's not. Right next to it. But for now, go park there and, and, and utilize that spot as opposed to, you know, the, the alternatives.
Hector: And so really thinking about that, what is the unique perspective? And what I tell our clients and our hosts who are worried about that is that no one can replicate your experience. No one can replicate your skill set. And then also you've got a unique personality that nobody can replicate. So when you combine those three things and triangulate those three things, it's impossible for anybody to copy that.
Hector: I mean, they can try and copy it, but it's not going to be authentic. And so when you, when you lean [00:45:00] into those three things, what are my experiences? What skills do I have? Sort of what's my, am I fun? Am I nerdy? Am I, am I bombastic? You know, what are those authentic personality traits that I can bring to this?
Hector: And and you know, for me, I recently got my, I've gotten a little off the woo woo deep end and I've, you know, got into astrology and I, I got my R's read and she's like, you look. You look like you're in a place where you just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And I was like, well, yeah, you don't say, right. You know, I don't know if she read me or whatever it is, but it was like that there is a there's a, a uniqueness in ourselves that we can sort of lean into and that's what people come back.
Hector: For, I mean, the information and the content they can usually get in a variety of places. If they're coming back week after week, it's because they like hanging out with you. , and people can sort of sniff that fakeness over a 45 minute interview, you know, people can start to, you know, their, their BS detector goes off.
Hector: So once you've got , your [00:46:00] platform, who you're talking to, you've got your perspective, sort of, you know, what you're saying to them or how you're saying it, the third P, which we find also a lot of people don't have is
their product. What, what are they selling? , what is the thing that they're selling?
Hector: You know, I likened it. I don't, I don't really drink a whole lot if at all. But the funny example I like to give is it's like inviting people to a party and not having any beer. You know, it's like everybody's there. They're looking at you and they're like, well, what's what's next? What do we do? And if you gather people and you provide even a lot of value, but you don't have anything downstream for them to go to, even if it's just hopping on your email list or downloading some sort of lead magnet or something in the interim While you are developing your product, they are going to go seek that value somewhere else because although you can go deep on a podcast, there is only so much depth that you can have through a podcast or a medium.
Hector: And so once people go, Oh, I've got the trust, I've got that. Now they want to join the mastermind. They want to join the course. They want to buy the book. They [00:47:00] want to experience the next level of value. And if you don't have that, Then they're going to go find somewhere else.
Hector: They're going to, at some point, there is a time period or whatever, you know, the better you are, the longer they'll stick around. But having that third P in place will actually allow that flow to sort of turn into a flywheel like, you know, Ryan Dice says where it's, you know, they come in and then they can, you know, Then they're going to go back and listen to the podcast again, and then they might, you know, buy another product and you can sort of spin that flywheel over and over again because you have some way to, you know, get a return on
Dustin: And I love that. Of course I love the third P it's my fifth, my fifth P and the five pieces of profit yours is product. And as the third P I think that those are really important differentiator for. Most of the people listening to this you could
do the first two P's, the platform and the perspective and theoretically have a profitable show.
Dustin: If you can build a huge following, get sponsorships, you know, sell ads, all this stuff that maybe some of the more household names, you know, maybe you can go [00:48:00] get a 20 million contract with Spotify, you know, those sorts of things. But for the 99. 999 percent of us who are not going to do that the way to actually make a profitable show is ultimately to sell your own products and services to your audience.
Dustin: Right? Or to your guests. Then there's other strategies here. But the idea is this is a platform that Fuels your business, and they're not two separate things. They're very much part of the same flywheel to, you know, one of my favorite things to talk about. Of course, Hector's is flywheels too. I think that's a really important distinction.
Dustin: So
Dustin: perspective?
Hector: that point, I've seen so many people have like, they have the first two P's, but they either the third P isn't in alignment or, or somehow it's not there. And it's like, they're running two, two train tracks next to each other and they're parallel. And there, there's no crossover as opposed to them sort of, I like to think of it as instead of having train tracks, can you have like a waterfall, right?
Hector: You know, where they, one sort of falls into the other and thus by putting more energy into one. You're adding into the other as opposed to when what i've seen so much happened on those separate [00:49:00] train tracks By putting in the energy into the into the podcast it that energy dissipates and there's there's no return on it And so they get burnt out.
Dustin: you know, to pat myself on the back a little bit. I feel like that's one of the things we've done well from the inception of this show, you know, we're 50 episodes in and we, you know, I think we've got a pretty good idea, a really good idea of our platform and our perspective. I think I'm pretty consistent in the types of guests we have and how, you know, a big emphasis on why people do what they do and the mission behind what they do.
Dustin: Very practical takeaways at the end, like we're, we're experiencing with Hector right now, I think we really dialed that in, but I think the part that. I feel like we do well in this show that I see a lot of people missing to highlight this third P, which I think is the most unique about what Hector both just taught and what his company does.
Dustin: If you really want to grow a business with this, you've got to find ways to Make these things integral, right? And so one thing you'll notice I do is not every guest, but a lot of my guests are clients, you know, Hector's a client. I'm also his client in this case. , [00:50:00] But I'm not bringing them on to be like, tell everyone why Dustin's awesome, tell them about the program, you know, but it'll naturally come up as part of the conversation and you get to hear like, Oh, these are real people that Dustin's worked with.
Dustin: And that's really interesting. I'll have episodes that are more like building in public and talking about what we're doing in the business and why and things we screwed up and the things we're excited about. And I guess people the human side of what's going on in the business. And I'll bring on people that would be the most disconnected from product, right?
Dustin: Like I'll bring in a Ryan dice as an example who's really more of a mentor to me and. Even in that conversation, I'm saying, Hey, Ryan, like in my business, we've got this accelerator program and here's what it looks like and here's how it runs man, if you were in my shoes, what would you be looking at to scale this?
Dustin: And so it's, I don't know if I've ever really pitched anything on any of these episodes, but if you listen to any of these, you pretty much know what Dustin does, you know, what seven figure leaps about it's kind of constantly part of the conversation without necessarily being overt.
Dustin: Now we do some dynamic ad insertions. In the middle of this episode, maybe at the, [00:51:00] at the beginning, Hey, if you're wanting, you know, get our podcast, guessing scorecard, or you want to come to this next workshop, we do do a bit of self advertising. But the vast majority of the results I think we get directly from this podcast are from these more.
Dustin: It's just to Hector's point, they're waterfalls, right? They're all part of one system there. I'm not, this podcast is part of my business in other words, right? And it's not a whole separate thing. And I think it's really important for
people who are going to commit to a podcast. It's really important to know what your business is about and who you serve and what your product is so that when you design the podcast, it feeds that and.
Dustin: Vice versa, right? The podcast feeds the business, the business feeds the podcast. So then I summarize, I guess, Hector, kind of like the essence of what you're going for
Hector: Yeah, and I think that's why we've had a good, you know, working and personal relationship Well,
Dustin: awesome, man. Well, so people are convinced they have to be at this point. Like they should have a podcast. It should probably be with amplify media. But if someone doesn't have one [00:52:00] or maybe they have one, it's kind of like a false start. They, they didn't have the three P's dialed in.
Dustin: How should they get ahold of you to directify that and actually get a good podcast going?
Hector: I would say like, you know, if you've decided that you have a podcast I would say first go stumble through it. I think some of the, some of our, our best people that we've worked with are the ones who, who sort of try it out and some of them make it back to us. Most of them do, , but at least you have a sense of
the process and the scope of it, I would also say that if you are capable of project managing or comfortable with, You know, working with remote, you know, talent, or you have a good, talented VA, I would say that most, talented VAs could produce a podcast, like could, is capable of doing everything that that we do. And, and if they, if you would like our systems and you want all of our SOPs and you reach out and say, Hey, I'm Dustin's, you know, I heard on the show and I would love, you know, my, my VA, you know, podcast.
Hector: To [00:53:00] train my VA or whatever, I'll give you all of our SOPs and all of our playbooks. And you can give it to your VAs because they are totally capable of that. And I would say, do that first because, but there are also some people who go, I don't have time for that.
Hector: I don't have, I'm not going to project manage.
Hector: My team is already at capacity. We just need someone who knows what they're doing. I can do it. I would say, if you're in that boat. Great. We're a great option for that because we plug right into, we don't like to be anyone's first employee, but if there's already a team , we plug really well into those sorts of organizations because we can sort of pick the ball up and go score it.
Hector: You know, because a lot of times the ball's just sitting there on the field and there's so many other balls to put in the hoop. , so in any case, if you're in that place amplify media.com, it's spelled a little differently 'cause I, I started it back in the day when it was fun to, you know, misspell things.
Hector: But it's A-M-P-L-A-F-Y media dot com. We'll also make sure that that link is in the show notes and then you can find me on [00:54:00] LinkedIn and Instagram at Hector podcast.
Dustin: Awesome. Yeah, I didn't really, that's great. Hector. I guess it's dash podcast on LinkedIn. I just realized that I was going to use it as an opportunity and I'll do it. Anyway, Hector, Santee Esteban, I know it's actually much smoother to say than that, but yeah, he's, he's the one and only on LinkedIn, him and I are like neck and neck where we're both like really close to
Dustin: 10, 000
Hector: not the one and only actually, there's another, there's another doctor, Hector Santiago Esteban, and I, I beat him on LinkedIn because, because I put in more effort there, but on Google Google thinks doctors are more important than digital marketers. So I've got some work to do there.
Dustin: right. Well, Hector dash dash podcast then on, on LinkedIn. But yeah, go give them a follow a lot of great content there. But most importantly if what I described to you, I mean, Hector's there a boutique agency, right? They're not.
They're not a spray and pray sort of agency. So I think what he said, there's very generous.
Dustin: So like, Hey, if you want to kind of do this yourself on your team, like as a friend of the show and, and, and a friend of [00:55:00] Dustin's like reach out to Hector, that's amazing that he offers that. But if you find yourself in the camp, like I was, like I described, like, I think I could do this. I know I've got, you know, a message and I got a business to feed with the podcast.
Dustin: But I'm not gonna actually do any of this work. I really just want to show up and be able to do the thing I love to do, which is talk to people and teach. And then I want to hit the end button and have someone else take care of all the work and make it an exceptional experience for my clients, for my listeners and for the guests.
Dustin: That's what Hector does. So go to amplify media, which is A. M. P. E. L a F Y media. com. Check out the services and things that they can offer. They're definitely hit a Hector on LinkedIn. Give us both the follow. So we can get over 10, 000 here as we head towards the end of the year. Any closing thoughts or anything else we should, we should be doing Hector.
Hector: No, I, I said a lot. So people are, I'll let people up.
Dustin: Well, I appreciate it. Appreciate you brother. And I'll see you in the mastermind. Thanks again for the awesome content. This is a great episode. [00:56:00] [00:57:00]