Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Njela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

We are currently looking for professionals or entrepreneurs who would be willing to discuss their communication challenges on this show.

All the details of booking a spot with me are found on the show notes.

And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review.

Now let's get communicating.

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So please get your free ticket for the Industry Icon Live event where Deirdre and many other industry icons will be sharing amazing tips, strategies, and tools in order for you to not only grow, but transform your life, your business, and your podcasting business.

Now, let's get communicating with Deirdre Tshien all the way from New York, but she's an Australian by origin.

She's joining us today as someone who would help us with so much when it comes to podcasting and repurposing your content.

She's the CEO and founder of Capsho, and she's here to talk about how you can literally make your life easier as an entrepreneur, as a content creator, and so much more.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show.

Hi, Deirdre.

Hello, Roberta.

Thank you so much for having me on.

I'm excited that you're here.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Oh, I think we are.

Just before you were like, you know what?

Let me record this.

We were actually having a conversation, and I was like, do you want the short version or the super long version?

Yeah, for sure.

So by way of background, as you mentioned, I'm Aussie, grew up in Australia, but I'm Asian by ethnicity.

And my parents actually moved to Australia as first migrants kind of during the big immigration influx that Australia had.

And, you know, with that comes, it feels like it comes a lot of like expectations, I would say.

You know, they moved to Australia because they wanted to give my brother and I, you know, better life, better opportunities, a better education, all of that.

And so I was always kind of raised to be like, you got to work hard, and it's got to be all about the effort that you put in.

And, you know, I was meant to become a doctor and all of that.

Or engineer or black sheep of the family.

Yeah, pretty much.

And I was, I'm going to say, like, I feel like I became a black sheep, even though I went in, I instead of going into medicine, I actually studied law, which people are like, really, that makes you the black sheep of the family.

You know how I know I was in South Korea for about a decade teaching English, so I know Korean parent expectations.

Yeah, exactly.

It's just, that's just what happens.

So yeah, so I say all that because it did, I kind of had this path that I was going to follow.

I did study law and even though I didn't enjoy it, so I was like, okay, I'm not going to go into that, but I knew that I was going to go into corporate in some way.

I ended up getting into studying my career in an investment bank in Australia.

It's called Macquarie Bank, which is the biggest investment bank in Australia.

I had this view in my mind that I was going to climb the corporate ladder and do all of that.

I had my quarter life crisis and realized that climbing the ladder was actually not something I wanted to do because I was actually really fortunate.

I was put on this project where I had pretty big visibility all the way up to the CEO.

And when I was in those rooms, I saw kind of who you had to become to make it, and I didn't really want to lose myself in that.

And so I was kind of...

How old were you when you started to interpret it?

Yeah, I was like early 20s.

That is amazing because a lot of us come to that realization much later in life.

And then in your 40s, you think, I'm not sure if I like my life.

In your 20s, you came to that realization.

Yeah, it was pretty...

Yeah, I don't know how that happened, but I saw people who were in their 40s.

As I said, there were pretty senior people in that room.

And I think it's because I got firsthand visibility to all the politicking that happens, all the backchanneling, all the things that I was just like...

Even at that age, I don't want to become this person who has to do all this.

And that's kind of what happened.

And so that kind of left me...

I didn't quit at that.

I was still like, you know, plotting along.

But in the back of my mind, I was like, we'll have to figure this out.

Like, what does that mean?

And at the same time, my then boyfriend, now husband, he, funny enough, he was studying medicine.

He's not Asian, but he was like, he was studying medicine.

And so he was very welcome into the family.

Yeah, I think his path is acceptable.

Yeah, I think he did it mostly because he wanted to, you know, be welcomed into the family.

But like, unfortunately, what that meant was that he was hating it.

Like he wasn't enjoying it.

He didn't like being in hospital, all of that.

And so we were both at this stage of our lives where we were like, oh my gosh, what's, what does this mean?

Like, what's next for us?

We had also just moved out together and he started, you know, cooking more and he started baking and he just loved the process.

And he would always be working to perfect.

I had this favorite dessert.

It's essentially a chocolate fondant, like a chocolate lava cake.

And he would, he would be working on this dessert to perfect it for us.

And just through that process, we were like, why don't we give, you know, opening up a dessert bar a shot?

You know, it wasn't really a big thing back in Sydney.

You know, and I love my desserts and I knew that people who, there were more and more people who wanted somewhere to go that wasn't a bar, you know, that like after a movie and things like that.

So we kind of decided to give it a shot and we opened up, it was called the Choc Pot.

We opened up a dessert bar and we actually grew that to five locations in total in Sydney.

And we also during that journey also opened a burger restaurant and we had two of those locations.

So that happened.

And then in the end of 2018, we found out that one of our store managers, and he was actually the store manager of our busiest store, we found out that for years he had been stealing from the store.

And it was hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It was in six figures.

So that means you never audited over the years?

What was going on?

Well, it was just never something that came to mind.

We never went into it thinking that an employee would steal from us, to be honest.

Just not even thinking or suspecting anything, but just the idea of, you know, when you do taxes at the end of the year, you declare that the store made this much revenue.

Yeah, so there was a way that he was gaming our point of sale system so that it was just not even tracked.

Yeah, it wasn't until we realized that it was happening that we figured out how he was gaming it, and we were able to figure out how much he was taking from the store.

But it wasn't a place that we, without going into the details of how point of sale systems and stuff work, but it wasn't even an area that we would have gone into unless this happened.

So it didn't come up in any audit, because it wasn't even something that was reportable, if that makes sense.

Right.

Wow.

Yeah, so that all happened.

And from that experience, I was definitely like, well, it was great, and we had a lot of fun, but to be honest, hospitality wasn't really something that I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life.

It seems to be a theme of my life, of just doing things and realizing that it's not the thing I want to be doing.

This is not me.

Yeah, exactly.

And at the same time, I was actually working, I was exploring this fashion technology business with another co-founder, a really good friend of mine, who I had actually met in corporate at Macquarie Bank.

Her name is Bona, and we were exploring this.

Yeah, this different, it was kind of a way to bring AI and styling and shops and things together.

Again, it was a pretty new concept in Australia.

Kind of, and that was, it was around about the time when Stitch Fix and those kind of services were really becoming known.

And so that was kind of the idea that we were exploring.

Now, the problem with Australia is that it's a great place to incubate something, but there's no big market there.

So we knew at some stage that we would have to move either to like North America or to Asia to really explore any of these ideas that we had.

And so when that happened at the end of 2018 in terms of like finding, you know, it was kind of like this coming together of all these different paths, you know, like that happened.

And I was in the same mind of like, well, hospitality isn't the thing that I want to be doing.

We're exploring this fashion technology idea and getting to the point with our mentors to be like, okay, we're going to have to make a decision as to the next step as to where we want to take this thing.

And so that was all happening.

And I was like, well, you know what, like, what better place to explore, you know, the coming together of fashion technology than New York City.

And so that's why we made the move.

And so I was like, let's just do it.

Like, what do we have to lose?

So we kind of like spent a good six months systemizing absolutely everything in the stores, because we actually still had them.

We were still managing them remotely when we made the move to New York.

And we made the move in mid 2019, which, you know, it was perfect timing because it was just before COVID.

But like it was coming.

It was coming.

Yeah.

And it was actually a really, really great time because we spent, you know, the like the rest of 2019 really hitting the ground like we were at.

Our hypothesis was that users would either be college students or young professionals, you know, on Wall Street.

So we literally went to like NYU campus, Columbia campus.

We went to Wall, like we knew some young professionals anyway, and they just like started introducing us to their colleagues, their friends, and we just like really went deep into testing this idea out.

And what we found was that while there was a problem, it just wasn't a big enough problem that people were willing to break the habits for right now.

So we essentially failed the idea at the end of 2019.

Okay, let's just recap.

When you did the when you founded the fashion technology AI, what did you think initially was the problem?

And now you say you realized that it wasn't big enough.

Yeah, so obviously, we thought like my, you know, we always the problems that we generally end up solving for our problems that we have ourselves.

So for me, I was like, I don't really enjoy shopping, which I know sounds strange as like a female, but I just, I find it, I find it really overwhelming.

Like, I just don't really enjoy the process of shopping.

Um, and so I was kind of trying to figure out like, how can I solve this issue of like, knowing my particular style and the things that I was shopping for, whether, you know, in my past life, that might have been a corporate thing or whether it was for events or whatever it was.

Um, how do I make this a really, really easy process for me, and then therefore for other, other women.

And so that was kind of the problem that was like based on someone's style, persona, personality, um, based on, you know, what it is that they are actually looking to dress for.

How can we help that shopping process?

But also, and then how do we help with the styling process as well?

So that was kind of like the problem that we were, we were looking to solve for.

And, you know, I think, you know, even you're a bit where you're like, I love shopping, I love doing my own styling, I love, you know, like, right?

Like, it's, for some people, it's a problem, but even for them, it's not really a huge problem because they have ways to get around it.

Like, they might have friends who they just lean on to help do that for them or with them.

You know, they have other, even on a day to day basis, they have shortcuts that they take to be like, okay, I kind of know what's in my wardrobe.

And this is just, you know, like, they outfit together.

Yeah, they just, you know, they have other ways.

And it's really hard to break someone's habit, unless it's like a really, really, like, painful, acute issue that they're dealing with.

And so that was what we were up against.

And rather than continuing to sink more time and money into it, because, you know, we didn't really have a huge runway.

I mean, we were completely bootstrapped.

We just decided to, like, call it quits and, you know, go on to the next one.

The reason I ask is a lot of the time you work with coaches, consultants, and they say, I don't know my potential client's pain points, or is this really a problem for them?

Or I know what the problem is, but I'm just not messaging it the way they say it to themselves.

Yes.

So in the online business space, especially, that's always been a huge pain point, again.

That's why I asked you to verify, because a lot of the time you think, oh, if I have this problem, it doesn't mean everybody else has it.

Yeah.

It is a trap that, and I, you know, to be honest, I fell into that trap time and time again, even as someone who has, you know, done the entrepreneurship thing, you know, many times over.

But it's not surprising.

Like, yeah, I can, it's a trap that we all fall into.

I'm going to be honest.

And yeah, there's actually another, like even with the initial initial, and I can come to that as well, because I'm going to come back around, actually, if that's the case, to this theme, because it, yeah, I fell in, as I said, I fell into that trap again.

But so fast forward anyway, I like we failed that.

The good thing is that at the same time that we were talking to potential end customers, we were also talking to some brands and boutiques that was going to be on like the other side of our platform.

And, you know, every time we spoke to them, and we really delved into what problem they were facing, or that they had, it was all about acquisition.

Time and again, it was like, I just, we just need more people we need to acquire.

And so we actually went back to them when we decided to fail the technology idea.

We went back to them and were just like, hey, why don't we help you with acquisition?

And so we ended up falling into somewhat like an agency business, helping these brands and boutiques with their digital marketing.

And then that's when COVID hit, COVID hit.

And it kind of, you know, for everyone, put a bit of a spanner in the works.

And for us, it actually made us like think about how we make the transition into becoming more of an online business.

And that is when we went into coaching ourselves.

So we went into coaching e-commerce, other e-commerce brands, with their digital marketing.

So essentially transitioning our agency business into a coaching one.

And that was when I started, we started our first podcast.

And it was kind of through that process, it was through a few things.

It was through that process of figuring out how it was that we had to market a podcast, because unfortunately creating content is not content marketing, because we have to actually market our content.

And I figured that out.

And so that was happening.

And on the other hand as well, because I was coaching e-commerce business owners, a lot of times they go into e-commerce because they have a, A, they love the product obviously that they're creating, but also B, a lot of times, they don't actually want to be the face of their business.

They want to hide behind their product.

And the more that I got talking to them, I was like, well, you kind of can't, because especially when you're just starting, the only differentiator that you have in the market versus an Amazon or like anyone else out there is you.

Like you are literally the only thing that differentiates you from any other brand out there.

And so I was like, you have to bring your stories to life.

And so when they were like, okay, I get it.

But how?

I just don't know how.

That was actually how the first iteration of CAPShow came about.

And the first iteration of CAPShow was very, very rudimentary.

Like it did not have any AI or anything.

It was very rules-based.

But what it did was it would take people through how to tell their story.

So it would actually prompt them.

We actually had an early user describe it as a combination of like mad libs and like journaling.

It was kind of like we would prompt them through how, you know, them telling their stories.

And then our software just through some rules would actually convert that into a bank of social media captions and emails.

And so that was the first iteration of CAPShow.

And when we were working on it and we were like doing some beta testing and, you know, getting some people on it and stuff, I got carried away as a lot of us entrepreneurs do.

And I fell into the trap again.

The trap that I fell into was like, well, this is going to be, this is amazing.

It's going to literally help every entrepreneur.

I can't wait for all entrepreneurs to get their hands on this.

So this was back.

This was like late 2021 that, you know, this was happening.

And so then we started to market it.

And I was like, why is this not getting any traction?

You know, because in my mind, I was like, if you're an entrepreneur and, you know, you want to, you made me struggle with telling your stories on social media, you know, capture is for you.

And, but it was really struggling to get cut through, you know, back to what you were saying about people being like, well, it's just my messaging.

It's just something that was literally what was going through.

I was like, it's just, it's our messaging.

It must be our messaging.

There's something off here.

And so I spoke to our coach and I was like, yeah, this is just going to be a really quick five-minute thing.

Can you just help us with our messaging here?

And 45 minutes later, he's totally breaking us down because he's like, it is not a messaging problem.

It's actually an audience problem.

Because we were doing that thing again, as entrepreneurs, where we get really excited about the thing that, and we believe so much in what we're doing, that it's like, we want to be able to help everyone with this.

And he's like, everyone is not an audience.

And I was like, okay, well, entrepreneurs.

He's like, entrepreneurs is not an audience.

They don't feel each and every one of everyone feels like you're not talking to them specifically.

Exactly, exactly.

And so we really, and so his challenge to us was like, really think about who makes the most sense for you to be serving in terms of like, you know, because you might have listened to that story and you might have been like, well, you were coaching e-commerce people.

Wouldn't it just make sense to keep focusing on e-commerce people?

The problem was that there was a little bit of a barrier because we had to convince them first that they had to tell the stories.

And then it was like, and then it was like, hey, use Captio.

So when we were talking to our coach, he was like, well, you definitely don't want to be doing any convincing because that's a lot of time and effort and a lot of lag.

So who already knows the power of storytelling that you can just like immediately slot yourself into, you know, into their process?

And the more that we thought about it, I was like, well, actually like entrepreneurs who podcast, because I'm an entrepreneur who podcast, and actually the podcast itself is such a rich basis of content that that's really, you know, instead of even having to prompt people through telling a story, it's like there are already stories there.

And so the more I thought about that, the more that it just made complete sense.

And that was really where the next iteration, like the iteration of Capture, that is actually what we kind of see now came about, which is helping entrepreneurs who create audio or video long-form content.

So whether that's a podcast, whether that's a YouTube video or live, helping them use that content so they just upload that into Capture.

And our AI actually does then repurpose it into a whole host of written content marketing.

So that's social media captions across all the different platforms.

It's emails, it's blog posts, it's LinkedIn articles, it identifies sound bites, it identifies quotes.

It is literally almost all the piece of content you need apart from the video part of it, at your fingertips.

And that's essentially what we ended up creating, and that's where we are now.

Just one quick question.

When you say, except for the video, you mean the shorts, the 30-second shorts?

Yeah, so we identify the sound bites, so we can identify, here's the timestamp and the actual 30-second clip, but we actually don't clip yet.

Create the clip yet.

So that's how Capshaw was founded.

Yeah, Capshawians.

Capshawians are basically like our users, and how I really identify, or how I describe Capshawians, is that they are intelligently lazy.

And hence why our mascot is the sloth, is because we're all about how we best be intelligently lazy.

What does intelligently lazy mean exactly?

Yeah, it's kind of like, okay, so laziness is like such a, it's so counterintuitive, to everything that I grew up believing, which is so bizarre.

But what I found was that the more that I prioritized laziness, and I put that in inverted commas, because I know laziness can seem like this, you know, you're literally doing nothing, but sometimes that is what you do.

Like literally you're doing nothing.

For me, like when I get into these modes of like actually doing nothing, it's crazy because my business actually grows.

That's when the ideas pop up as well.

Well, that's the thing because yeah, ideas pop up, you actually focus, you force yourself to focus on the right things, on the things that need to be focused on.

Because otherwise, when I wasn't, like I used to work literally seven days a week, I would be working.

And because I had this need to feel productive, I was like, I need to be productive because otherwise, my business isn't going to grow, and we're not going to be making any money.

And all these narratives would be going through my head.

And when I kind of got burnt out, as we know, that's always how the story goes.

And I forced myself to take time, like literally, and I would be like, I would think back to some of the best moments when I was a child.

And it was literally when I could wake up on the weekend and do nothing.

It was like, it's like such a forgotten memory to me now, because I've forgotten what it feels like to do that, to think like that, where I would just spend literally all day, I'm still in my pajamas, I'm in bed.

I literally have not gone out of bed, except to maybe go to the bathroom and eat something.

And I would just be in bed reading because I love reading.

And that's all I would do.

And when I kind of like now, you know, kind of forced myself to do that, it meant that I had to be way better with my time.

And I was like, okay, well, I can't do all the things that I used to do, as in I hustle, which means that I'm like, okay, I need to prioritize.

I need to prioritize my time on really the most important things.

So it forced me to focus.

And it actually did open my mind to your point.

It opened my mind up to other things, like other possibilities.

It meant that when I went for a walk, I was actually engaging with the world around me, you know, just observing things.

And just with those observations came like totally left field ideas that I could work back into the business.

It was crazy.

And so the more that I, you know, did prioritize laziness in a way, like the more that my business grew.

But at the same time, we want to be like intelligently lazy, because it's easy to be lazy without the systems and the support and everything else that you need to build into your business to actually reap the benefits of the laziness.

And have the outcomes you're looking for, yeah.

Exactly, exactly.

And so that's where the intelligently lazy brand comes from.

First time we heard the term and I like it.

Especially because when you talk about productivity, a lot of us fall into that trap of, oh, if my calendar looks full and I have to-do lists for the next 24 hours, I'm going to feel productive.

Yes.

It's just, you know what's funny?

It is another form of procrastination.

What?

Yeah.

That's what I figured out.

I figured out that being productive in that way, definitely for me, and I think for a lot of us, high achievers especially, is just another form of procrastination.

Of not actually getting through to the thing that you know you need to do.

And it's actually going to get results, but it's hard because generally, those things are the hardest things for us to actually do.

So this just feeds your ego, but it's not moving the middle in the direction of where you want it to go.

Wow.

Now, back to the messaging.

You wrote a book.

It's Honey Marketing Class.

Honey Trap Marketing.

Honey Trap Marketing.

Yes.

Please tell us about that.

Yeah.

Well, it basically distills.

So I am an absolute marketing nerd.

You can probably tell, I mean, we're building a whole software, everyone's content marketing.

And yeah, basically, Honey Trap Marketing goes into my, I call it the traffic pyramid.

It's my framework distilling my experiences, but also the experiences of a lot of entrepreneurs around me and how it is that we market online.

The traffic pyramid, there's four tiers to it really quickly.

It starts with passive organic marketing, goes into active organic marketing.

Passive organic marketing really is just like the process of content creation.

And in creating content, it still has to be good content because only good content is going to get cut through.

But a lot of times we create this content, we put it out there, we publish it, and then we sit back and we think that it's going to then, in quotations, do its thing.

And then we get really surprised because it's like, well, nothing's happening, right?

This goes back to the story when I first started my podcast, and I was like, oh my gosh, what?

I have to actually market my content?

I have to actually, you know, that's when we go into the second tier.

And this has been my experience too, which is we think because it's so good, and I know people need this.

Why are the people who are dancing half naked having five million views and I have 10 views?

I should have, you know what I mean?

Oh my gosh.

All the time.

All the time.

And that's kind of why I'm really intentional about the second tier of the trap period because that's active organic marketing, which is like, hey, we've created this content.

We've been putting a lot of work into it.

Let's actually have this content working for us.

Let's actually have it be found.

That would be a good thing.

Let's actually reach the audience we wanted to.

And that's where the active organic marketing comes into it.

So that's, you know, and it really depends on what the platforms that, you know, people want to be on.

For me, I'm very intentional right now.

I'm on two social media platforms, so that's Facebook and LinkedIn.

They each have their own different strategies as to how to actually make it work for us.

I am imminently in the next few, I say imminently, but it's really going to be in the next two to three months.

I'm going to be focusing on YouTube as another platform, but there's a full strategy behind it, so I want to be really intentional and leveraging SEO, so doing blog posts.

So those for me is how I activate my content, is really leveraging all of the tactics and tools around SEO, all the things that YouTube has to offer, and then also how I can actually work LinkedIn and Facebook.

You know, do the things that they want us to do in a way so that it actually gets in front of people.

So that's the second tier of the traffic period, is to active the active organic marketing.

The third tier is leveraging other people's audiences.

So, you know, podcasts, you know, getting guesting on other people's podcasts, you know, holding virtual summits.

There's a whole range, a whole host of ways that you can actually leverage other people's audiences, and I loved doing that.

And then the fourth tier, the tip of the pyramid, is paid ads.

That's really when you really...

And I would say, quite honestly, you could just hang out in the bottom three tiers and just focus on organic marketing without having to go into paid ads.

That's my challenge for Capshow.

Definitely over the next, you know, 12 to 18 months is we are just going to grow organically.

That's all we're going to focus on, and then look to scale with paid ads.

Right.

Now, let's go back to the social media and the marketing when it comes to that.

One of the challenges we have, okay, actually two elephants in the room I picked up, SEO.

What?

And then the second one, which we'll come back to later, is when you see, you know, LinkedIn and Facebook, this big word called algorithm.

You know how sometimes they will approach and say, the algorithm has changed.

Let me help you with your SEO show.

There's only SEO algorithm.

Elsa, so what do I do as a podcaster for my show notes, for my social media promos, to meet those or to literally play into the SEO and algorithm changes space?

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

I'll try to break this down really.

Like, SEO is one of those things that sounds, it feels so overwhelming because it's like sounds so technical.

But I try to break it down really simply.

And the core of how to have SEO work for you is just like, it's just to have empathy for your audience.

I'm going to put it like that.

And what does that mean?

What does having empathy for your audience means?

It means, so you mentioned show notes, and I'm assuming you mean show notes on like a website, like, you know, almost, it's almost blog post style.

Is that what you mean?

Let's say you've released an episode and you want to post it, you're on LinkedIn or Facebook.

So you're going to post it on LinkedIn or Facebook audience so that they know that they now need to go to Apple and Spotify and listen to it.

This is your latest episode.

So you write notes and say, you know, I just had an amazing conversation with John Lee Dumas and go and listen.

So that's the social media side.

All right.

So I'll come back to that.

Why don't we just really quickly talk about the SEO side of it.

So my process around this is I have a podcast episode.

Capture actually, when I upload my episode, creates a title and description.

The description is also commonly known as show notes as well.

So it has things like here's a summary, here's a bio, here's chapter summaries.

It goes into a ton of things that is important for show notes.

Now show notes is the reason this this two ways that show notes are used.

One is to put into your hosting platform.

So whether that's like Buzzsprout or Podbean or Captivate, whatever hosting platform you use, that's where show notes can live.

Show notes can also live on a like a something that's like a blog post, like a website.

So we use pod page for that.

It creates a podcast website.

And so creating a podcast website is actually really important because that's where you can actually put some SEO juice into it.

What I mean by that is that's how you actually get your podcast found when someone's searching for the topic that you're creating content for.

And so basically, what I do on the SEO side is why I say have empathy for your audience is because a lot of times we, you know, you might hear words like keyword stuffing and things like that, you know, as the SEO tactic.

And I always say, when you step back and you go, how do we get people to discover our podcast throughout the podcast website, it's all about having empathy because in the same way that you want something to be really readable by a human, that's actually what the search engines want as well.

So when you think about Google, like they want your stuff to be readable.

And not only that, but the more that you can keep someone on your page or even clicking through to other pages because you're still keeping them on their platform, essentially, the better.

And so when you can put links that are linking to other resources that are valuable and still make sense in the topic and theme that you've spoken about, the more that you can actually add images, and we call it rich media, but images and video content and stuff on that page as well.

Infographics, distill the...

And by the way, Capture helps with all of this as well.

It actually helps you pull out the content to create your infographics for in Canva.

But infographics, putting things like that is what is going to help you on the SEO side.

So I always go back to, okay, how do I make this really easy and readable and enjoyable for someone to look and read this page?

That's what I always focus on, on the SEO perspective.

So that's on the SEO side.

Does that kind of help there?

Yes, as you said, empathy for your listener or reader, meaning if they search your topic, then when they find the blog post, it's fun, it's enjoyable to read.

Exactly.

Now on the social media side, I actually leverage, so I'm never going to proclaim to be the expert in all things because I'm just not.

So I am very privileged to work with someone who I see as a social media expert.

Her name is Katie Brinkley, and she actually has a strategy that's called the full post social media strategy.

So it's only full post, and once you get into it, it actually gets to be quite simple.

So you start with the awareness post, it goes into an elaboration post, a community post, and then your action post.

So let's say in your example when you were like, we just recorded a podcast, and we want people to listen to it.

I actually just follow that strategy.

And what that looks like is the awareness post is different, is going to look different based on the platform.

So I don't ever, Facebook and LinkedIn are my two platforms.

I actually don't post the same post on both, because each platform favors different things.

So for example, on Facebook, what does well on Facebook for an awareness post is, there's one sentence statements on a colored background.

That actually does really well on Facebook.

And so I'll do one of those, and it might be an unpopular opinion or something that's, it's like to cast the net out.

And so the more that you can almost be a little bit controversial or something, then the more engagement it actually gets.

That's to get the awareness.

That works pretty well on Facebook.

LinkedIn, what works well is poll.

So similar, I can use the same theme on both, but different types of content.

And then the elaboration post is really then going a little bit deeper into that theme.

So that's where I give value.

That's where I actually share a tip or a piece of information that, you know, if it was John Lee Dumas like that, he shared on the podcast.

And then the next post is Community, which could be me talking about how I met John, John Lee Dumas.

I'm actually really good friends with his wife, Kate.

Like, you know, like, you know, it could be something about that.

But the community is really about bringing a little bit more of you into like, like you as a person into the narrative.

Engaging with those who are participating in the post.

Exactly, exactly.

And then it just naturally leads into the action post to be like, hey, I've been talking about this theme this whole week.

If you actually just want to like listen to our conversation about it, here it is.

And that's, so it's like a build up.

Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, you spoke about algorithm.

The reason why this is this strategy works is because that build up is actually playing to the algorithm because as you know, the more that people engage with your posts, the more that they actually see your posts.

And the reason why a lot of those call to action posts don't work is because we don't do that.

We don't actually get that engagement and have the algorithms on those platforms working for us first.

We just put it out there.

We just be like, listen to this podcast episode and no one engages with it.

No one does anything with it, which means that more and more your, you know, your favor, I guess, in terms of the algorithm, just keeps dropping.

And so to the point where they just don't surface your content to anyone.

And so that's why.

So when people scroll, your stuff doesn't pop up at the top.

Because this hasn't had engagement before.

So yeah, so that's, you know, that's just, yeah, that's just to give you a bit of an insight into, you know, I know you mentioned SEO and social media.

Like, that's kind of what we do on those things.

And Capture actually, yeah.

And Capture helps with actually creating that content for you.

Again, intelligently lazy.

It literally does everything for you.

And then one last thing, Deirdre, before I let you go.

So how do you find the entrepreneurs, the consultants, the coaches who have podcasts that you help?

Well, again, I go through the traffic pyramid.

That's literally how it's traffic, right?

So I create content that speaks specifically to them.

So what are some of the things that they might be struggling with?

What are some of the things that they want to uplevel in?

Who are the types of people that they want to hear from?

So I always start with what's the content that's going to be valuable for that specific person?

And then I go where they are.

You know, the reason why I focus on LinkedIn and Facebook is because someone asked me, like, why aren't I on Instagram?

Like, when I grew my hospitality business, so like the choc pot, Instagram was literally pretty much the only platform that we were on.

And that's because food lovers are on Instagram.

Exactly.

They want that food porn, right?

They're on Instagram for that.

My audience, like, they are on Instagram, because let's be honest, it's like, it's 2024, everyone is everywhere.

But what are they on Instagram to do?

They're on Instagram to talk about their own thing.

They're not on Instagram to consume my information to help them.

Like, they're on there to promote themselves, which is totally fine.

Like, that works for them.

But they are on LinkedIn and Facebook to consume the type of information that I'm putting out.

And so that's why I focus on those platforms.

And so that's where I look to activate as well with SEO, getting discovered through SEO and through YouTube.

And then I go into the third tier, leveraging other people's audiences.

I speak to and I partner with people who have an audience that would make total sense for them to also be my audience, right?

Like other entrepreneurs who create content.

And so to answer your question, it's literally just going through the traffic pyramid.

I always come back to that.

That's how I get in front of and reach my audience day in and day out.

Any last tips or some of your YouTube videos?

And you really do share strategies on what to do about this on your podcast.

Any last tips for us podcasters or entrepreneurs who have podcasts to say, these are the things you can share on your YouTube video to add value.

And the fact that, because usually I post, like I'm going to post this interview when this episode is published, right?

But in between those tidbits for five minutes, two minutes, ten minutes.

Yeah, so in between, like, it really depends on the strategy that you want to follow.

You know, for me, I actually don't do a lot of short videos yet.

Now, as I said, we're about to embark on the YouTube, you know, like really getting into it.

And the reason why I say it is because, like, we again, being intelligently lazy, I made a very conscious decision to be like Facebook and LinkedIn.

That's all effects from a social media perspective, not even YouTube.

Like we do, we do sometimes publish videos.

I think you've seen some of them.

But I say we're not really doing it because we haven't been doing it with intention.

And I'm all about intention.

It's kind of like, yep, if I'm going to commit to a platform, like, I want to make sure that we're doing it well in the way that it's that the platform wants us to be on there, you know.

And so to be honest, I actually don't do a lot of those short form videos yet because we had to just build muscle memory.

We had to get really good on the platforms that we are on right now.

And so to be honest, that, you know, you asked for advice, like, that is my one piece of advice is we all need to focus.

It's really, really hard.

It's so hard to do.

And I know this, like, firsthand, I know this.

I have entrepreneurship, ADHD, like every other entrepreneur out there.

But it was again, coming back to being intelligently lazy, right?

Like, it wasn't until I forced myself to be lazy, which meant I had to force myself to focus on the things that was going to move the dial for me, which meant I had to be really, really intentional about like, OK, as a team, we do not have the bandwidth to be on more than two right now.

Because we're learning, right?

Like, we're looking, we need to learn how the platform wants us to be on there.

We need to learn how to get that engagement up.

We need to learn what types of call to actions work on there.

We need to learn the like, there's a lot to learn when you're on a particular platform.

And so we just need to learn.

And now, but we're at the point where we built that muscle memory, which means that can kind of like happen because you built the muscle memory, right?

Like, it just can happen.

And now we're ready to then put the next thing on.

The next thing on for us is YouTube.

And so that's what we're going to do.

And then we're going to go.

That's going to be like 20% of the time is going to be all about continuing to build that muscle memory in the things that we already know, you know, LinkedIn and Facebook.

80% of our time is going to be, okay, we need to build new muscle memory, which takes a lot of effort and a lot of time.

But that's the intention that we're going to this with.

So focus is the name of the game.

It's the only way you're going to be able to win.

Yes, focused and it sounds like monitoring and evaluating what works, what doesn't, what do we change, what do we improve on and things like that.

Thank you so much for sharing that strategy.

One last thing you feel like you wanted to share with our listeners today that I never asked you yet.

Oh, my gosh.

That's a very, very open question.

I mean, I feel like I've shared a lot.

I always have more to share, so I could keep talking for another hour, to be honest.

You know, a question I get asked a lot is like, what is something that I wish I had known or had, you know, if I could go back in time and tell myself something like.

And so maybe I'll end on that, which is like the thing that I always reflect on and wish that I had done better on you, I guess, before is like, it's okay to take up space.

And this is coming from someone who, like, grew up as an introvert.

I was never the one to raise my hand in class.

I was never the one to offer my opinion in, you know, in meetings and corporate and things like that, because I always thought that, well, surely, I, if it was a good idea, if it was a good thought, like someone else will say it.

And I don't know, it was just really, you know, that was just what was then.

I'm not having a surprise face because it sounds new.

No, we've all been through that.

Yeah, of course.

Exactly.

And, you know, I think for me, like, I, that's why I always go back to, it's okay to take up space.

I wish I had told my, I wish I had known that and was okay with that, you know, in my younger days.

And no matter how old we are, even now, I need to keep telling myself that it's okay to take up space.

And so that's probably one thing that I would leave people with, which is just take up space.

Take up space, words of wisdom from Deirdre Tshien, the founder and CEO of Capsho, a community of Capshovians, the software that helps you with your podcasting, everything, literally.

And she helps coaches and entrepreneurs who have podcasts.

Thank you so much for sharing so much value and strategies that help us today.

We really appreciate you taking the time to be here.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me on.

My absolute pleasure.

Before you go, how would you like anybody who's listening to find you?

If you want to check out Kepsho, then definitely go to freegift.kepscho.com.

That's freegift.capsho.com because we have an extended free trial on there plus some amazing bonuses.

I go a little bit deeper into some of the strategies that I mentioned around social media and things like that.

So there's a bunch of training in there as well that you can access.

We love freegift.

Thank you.

freegift.capsho.com.

And capsho is C-A-P-S-H-O.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

And one last thing too, for anyone who is looking to be the absolute icon in the industry, as in the go-to person in the industry, which means that what I spoke about, like creating content, growing your audience, and actually monetizing it, I'm actually partnering with a couple of really great friends, smartest guys in what they do, on a free event.

So can I share that as well?

Thank you.

Yeah, for sure.

It's just at www.industryiconlive.com.

Industry Icon Live, it's a free five-day event.

I'd love for you guys to be there.

And, you know, I for one, I'm going to learn so much.

And I cannot wait to also give and have everyone else learn just as much, if not more.

Thank you so much.

industryiconlive.com.

When is the event?

So that's going to be happening on the 19th.

So February 19th.

So in a couple of weeks' time.

Yep.

Which means let me publish this before that so that everybody can log in before.

Yeah, that would be awesome.

February 19th.

industryiconlive.com.

Yes.

We love to learn and because we are all trying to find our way from the online space.

So the more that we share, the better for sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you so much for that.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me on.

My absolute pleasure.

As Deirdre mentions in this episode, join the Industryiconlive event happening next week, starting on the 19th of February to the 23rd of February, midday Eastern time, midday Eastern time.

Do not miss out.

Get your ticket.

It's a free event.

So please get your free ticket for the Industryiconlive event where Deirdre and many other industry icons will be sharing amazing tips, strategies, and tools in order for you to not only grow, but transform your life, your business, and your podcasting business.

Thank you for joining the Speaking and Communicating Podcast once again.

If you are willing to be on the show to discuss your communication challenges and see how we can help, please book a slot on my Calendly and the details are on the show notes.

We are so glad that you've joined us.

We have more special guests who will be sharing more leadership tips and strategies on this show in this month of February.

In addition to our first couple interview, who will be discussing the role that communication has played in their marriage.

So stay tuned for more episodes to come.