1062: Boost Your Brand with Audio: Market Audio Content with Media Entrepreneur David Wolf

Robert Plank 0:04 All right, welcome back. We're on the marketer of the day podcast. And we're here with David Wolf from auto visa.com. That's a UDIVIT a.com. And now, David is a longtime music composer and producer. He's a media entrepreneur. But most importantly, the focus of today is He is the founder of odd Avita studios. Now, they do audiobooks. They do podcasts, they have a team and a state of the art remote recording process to bring your message to market fast. They work with you to build a strategy to record, edit your content, distributed widely, and launch your new audio book or podcast to market. So we're going to find out how that's done. Why did that son what might hold us up, but how we can blast through all those problems with the help of David and his team and his amazing company. So Dave would happen to be talking to you.

David Wolf 0:59 Oh, thanks, Robert. Great, great to be with you. Thanks for and thank you for the intro. That was lovely. Thank you.

Robert Plank 1:03 Yes, I'm here. That's my job right here to make you look good. So we insured you bringing in your own words, what am I what am I leaving out? Or what really needs focus and attention? Just what gets you fired up Energize? What should people notice about you?

David Wolf 1:16 Yeah, you know, the thing that's really interesting about this whole project, Robert, is, as you pointed out, I was a longtime creative guy. So I was the guy. Years ago, when I was 25 years old, I decided I wanted to transition from being a musician to being a composer of music. So basically, what we call today a content generator, right, but it was music. So I was eventually moved into the world, they used to call it maybe they still do jingles, where we were writing music for radio, TV and film commercials. I did a lot of work in children's programming. And over my career, gradually, by the time I turned 40, I have kind of exhausted their desire to express myself in the world that way, and pivoted and wanted to learn more about business. And so Flash forward to today, as we moved into creating this company went about six years ago. The unintended impact of everything we do when we duck so you can see we connect people's voice to the world. So not only the external clients that we're impacting, and really helping them do what they want to do on the planet to have their impact, but we're having an impact on our own employees in our team. And that's not something I saw coming as a person, you know, I thought, Well, I'm gonna start this company, we're going to make money, I'll leverage what I know about production from media, and do this project. But it was a wonderful unintended consequence of putting this team together. And now you know, starting to scale a business so. So I hope that answers your question. Maybe it's a slight tangent, but it maybe not the answer you expected, but who knows? But tainted

Robert Plank 2:45 sir. Okay. And that's sort of why we're here on the show to talk about the boring, mundane running the mill, ordinary marketing and messaging, and it comes alive. And it becomes exciting. I mean, I'm sure some of these, these children's TV shows that you wrote jingles for at first glance, oh, it's such a slog. But then you do the work, you have fun, and everything is temporary anyway, right. I mean, someday the world of blow up, the sun will blow up the universe will have the heat death. So it's all temporary. And the best we can hope for is in the years that we're here to take this ordinary day to day minutia, and really make it come alive and Make it magical. And I'm sure that you've seen this sort of thing happen, even even today, right with your team and your clients and their podcasts and their audiobooks.

David Wolf 3:30 A man it's all about process. You know, it's funny, I love that, that way, that framework you just laid out in audiobook production process, when we're selling this to authors or publishers on behalf of their authors, we have a wildly successful program where we remotely record authors reading their own audio, their own audiobooks, using remote, you know, software that's designed to do this high quality studio quality with a producer there with video. And, you know, you gotta it's a very interesting situation, the dynamics are you got an author who's, you know, their baby, they're the talent, so they're actually on mic reading. And it requires a certain level of emotional intelligence to be able to gently coach an author reading their own book, and it's a wide spectrum of capacity. Some authors are very good and fluid at reading, and others are not so fluid and good. So you have to coach them and tease the best and most connective performance out of them to serve their audience and grow their brand, right and get the book into people's ears and with his intimate one on one audio environment. So we talk about how we manage that. And we say that the process the moment of the doing the recording, the process of doing it, is as or more important than the final product, because out of that, something magical happens in terms of media training, in terms of reconnecting with your own material as the author grounding yourself in what you've already written and or reading it again, with someone there to help you do it. It's a very interesting process. So Again, it's all about the present moment. What what are we doing to make this moment exciting and electric? You know, and you know, from podcasting, when a podcast is starting out, they don't have a big audience. So we maybe you've called it to that I like to call it the audience of one, you know, it's there one person on a mic with them sharing a moment together, something good might happen, and we hope it does. So.

Robert Plank 5:22 I love it. And it's good to have this awareness and to get people just knowing what's possible here. Because this whole idea here of you have an author, and they you know, they've looked into the options, right? They say, Okay, I've heard audiobooks are great. I heard a stat like a few hours ago, that audiobooks this year overtaking print books, which is crazy and amazing. And so some authors is okay, well, I written my baby, as we said, and they want to have the audiobook version, but they look at their options. They say, Well, I could pay this, like this. Some other talents who may read it for me, well, I don't like that, because it's not my voice. And they say, Well, I could go into a recording booth after pay this hourly rate. And I'm not even sure what I'm doing, that's not good, too. So they want to record it in their home, on their own schedule on their own convenience. So it's great to know that this option exists where they can kind of do it on their own terms on their own time, and have this person kind of dial in and coach them through. And so and that way, they can get the best of both worlds. And it seems like that's where that's where the magic of business happens and where the money's made, where we find that the missing gap, right, we say there's this extreme, there's that extreme people say, you know, I'm just I'm missing out on this audio book opportunity. Because I can't do either extreme. Here we are right in the middle fixing problems.

David Wolf 6:40 That's a very interesting positioning that you care the way you characterize it, I think we were one of the first companies that actually accepted the idea of having authors read their own. You know, the large publishers traditionally have not been open to this idea at all. They have studios, they've got talent, they want to make sure it's perfect, or you know, professionally performed, I want to make a distinction. This is mostly we're applying this approach to production with a nonfiction title. When you get into fiction where you've got dialogue, and you've got characterizations, and you've got dialects, and you've got a story, arc and emotional expression, it really does require the skill of an actor to pull that off and land for the listener in a way that it's the story is really translating for them with an author's vision. But for a nonfiction author, I always like to say, or I often say, if you're your Connect, if you're the voice of your brand, if you're the connectivity to market, then it makes so much sense for this to happen in your voice. I have had a lot of conversations with authors who have done a previous audiobook, not the way we do it. And they said yeah, you know, I did the book people my fan said, Yeah, it sounds like you're writing but who's that other person that was your imposter, you know, kind of a thing. So I think there's a lot of value even though it's not perfect. It's them being them authentically for their audience. And and particularly if they're a podcaster, or they're guesting on other people's podcasts, it helps connect with that voice brand that they are so

Robert Plank 8:06 yeah, the voice brand, like how you have the same colors on your book. And on your website. Everything just matches all across. And so you know, since it's annuity, yeah, continuity, and we're in the day and age where people are allowed to be curious and they can be voyeurs. And maybe they say, you know, I've thought about this audiobook thing, this remote recording thing looked into audio Vita, and maybe they're here, just snooping on you and me. So what do you think they're thinking now? Like, what's going through their head? What excuses objections are they making up? Say, Ah, I still can't do this. Like what do people say before they become an odd Aveda customer? And and see the light of day? That's

David Wolf 8:43 such a beautiful question. So you know, this price sensitivity in the market. That's the first thing that comes to mind. It is not inexpensive to do an audio book, the way we're describing with a producer. They're making sure that everything everything's the performance is in touch, retakes, outtakes, all the audio post production and mastering in order so that it's in compliance with the distribution ecosystem, very particular about audio, if you can't try this alone, if you don't know how to do audio editing, and you don't have experience as an audio engineer, it's very hard to get this right, and all kinds of specs and compliance issues that you have to deal with. So you're relying on us for that. So I say to them, well, you're paying for that too. But I'll say this, Robert, there are four ways we do this to sort of address the price sensitivity factor, and that is, we could record the whole book linearly, just like we described, typically, it's a series of 90 minute recording sessions. As many as it takes we price by the word. You know, pricing changes over time. As we speak. Today, we charge 10 cents a word for everything. I'm going to describe recording with a producer, editing, post production mastering around revisions, modify the cover to be a square uploaded to your account, and we're out. So that's a 10 cent a word. Today, we're in February of 2024, just in case you're listening in the tail. So that's the first way we do it. Then we have a program where we can clone the author's voice It only takes 90 minutes of recording time remotely. And then we go into full production. And that that lowers the cost hurdle for the author about 40%, that next about 40% of the cost off of the author's off of the cost, if they were to do it, the entire book, and sometimes, you know, you laugh AI, it does a better job of being you than you, you know, Bill only because it's more perfect than you might have done. But it does lack some of the sort of emotional content are characteristics that are hard to hard to identify, but we know they affect people's psychology as they're listening. This just the nature of AI, it's not doesn't vary the phrasing enough, the cadence is often repeating. And you know, there's things about AI, they're not that don't land like a human, let's say,

Robert Plank 10:48 whether they call that the uncanny valley, right, that the AI

David Wolf 10:52 there may be I actually haven't heard that term, but it sounds good. There also are limitations right now with a distribution acceptance? Well, I'll say it this way, the acceptance by the distribution ecosystem, Amazon and audible. Do not accept all AI requires prior permission, which is code for, we can't guarantee we're gonna get you on. So the 52 other places you can be including Apple, they'll take it, but you do have limitations with which with Amazon and audible, which is you know, 70 80% of the market. So that is an obstacle to the second way of doing it. But it is a cost reducer. And so the third way that they can, we can address the objection of price sensitivity, is they could do an abridged version of their audio. So rather than doing the 50,000 word version, they'll cut it in half to 25,000 words, and that cuts their price roughly in half. Now, it's an affordable way to participate in the growing audiobook market without paying so much and being concerned about budget. So some ideas there, I would say that's the largest objection. The next one would be time. And you know, we can solve for that as well, in some cases. But beyond that, it's been a very successful program. Wonderful.

Robert Plank 12:10 And it's good to have choices, it's good to have options, nothing is ever perfect, right? And it's the joke is you get two out of three, right? You can have it, it can be cheap, or it can be good, or it can be fast. And so this way people can say okay, well, maybe I want to go the full way and have it fully my voice and go through the coaching or do the voice cloning, which gets us cheaper, but only gets us some places. So it's just it's good to be educated, and you make these sorts of decisions. And so we've talked about this whole idea of the audiobook production, it's great to have these new ways of doing it if someone previously thought that they were blocked. And then you also are big with podcasting. So what Sanibel if someone says, Okay, I've heard about podcasting or want a podcast, or maybe the past poskim podcasts failed. And now I know I need a better support team. Where do you come in? And how are you guys different with podcasting?

David Wolf 13:04 I think with podcasting, you know, there are a lot of them, you are one of them. There are a lot of entrepreneurs that have started podcast production companies, where we sit as we're I like to think we're kind of premium white glove, a little higher price point. You know, I come from broadcast media, as does most of my team. So we really value production and the quality of production, whether it's video intros and outros with motion graphics and making things really look broadcast wise to lower thirds, all of those things are important to us as a team. And But that said, we do encounter, you know, a spectrum of need throughout the people we talked to that want to work with us. And so we found over time that it's we found it best to do some level of customization in order to so that the client can select the things they they need us to do, and deselect the things if they don't feel they need us they want they desire or value or want to pay for. But we're not a click to buy operation where it's a gold, silver bronze kind of a solution. It's it's a it's an engaged conversation about strategy, about the flow of the show, about the positioning of their intro and outro, the music choice, if there is music, and an intro and outro and an outro. We typically again, we're very engaged. So we're showing up as a producer on the sessions. Some of our clients do decide that they don't want to pay us to be there on their sessions. So we might do a test session to make sure everything sounds and looks good. And then we'll let them do their own thing on Zoom or wherever. But most of our clients have us there with them. And we're involved in the scheduling matrix and making sure everything's coordinated. And like that. So the podcast, as you know, is it's evolving. It's an evolving market. When we started in this business, there was no video. There may be a little bit of YouTube here and there, but it wasn't like I have to have an almost everyone we're talking to now there's some video component, even if it's an audiogram, where we're taking parts of their audio series, and then we're creating a short video clip to put on social there's some A video component with the promotion if not the actual show itself. And I'm sure you have found the same as you're in the market as well.

Robert Plank 15:06 Oh, yeah. And he continues to evolve, right? Because, and I and as much as the pandemic was bad, I'm so grateful for the pandemic for getting the video aspect figured out. Because before that, it was slow, it was choppy, it would break up and now video is expected. And as you said, with the audio, Graham's ms turned into the reels. And then now it's turning into with Chad GPT, you transcribe it, and you morph it into blog posts and other sorts of material, and it just continues to add more moving parts, which is okay. I mean, it's not okay, if it just you're doing it alone. But if there is someone like you and a team of people that are dialed into all these things, then you can really stand out from your competition, who is not dialed into all these channels, right? Maybe they're just posting it, and that's it. But if you were the one that's hosting every day, on all these social platforms, and getting all this keyword ranking and making all these things happen, then that's a great way to stand out. And so how do we make sure that the podcasts and the audiobooks actually get traffic and get attention and make a difference? Like it's easy enough in like, you know, with with authors with audiobooks, etc, to just create the content? And then don't mark it? So what do you either do? Or what do you recommend, as far as after the content is created, getting it out there getting it marketed?

David Wolf 16:33 Well, you're pointing to something that's a very, very huge need in the market right now. It's not core to our business, we will produce the assets we you and I talked about in a moment ago, the little video clips, the snippets of posts that you can put in here, a blog article, because we've got help with AI. And we can produce those things. And we can add those things to our clients arsenal, and then hand it off to them for their internal team or for them to then roll into their social accounts, using whatever platform they use. And, and so we provide the production, but we don't actually do marketing, that and more and more. And I think you're probably finding too that in all reality, there's there's maybe a de emphasis over time on the production value, and more emphasis on how do I grow? How do I grow? How do I grow? So consequently, one of the things I'm doing is I'm launching a new company that will be a holding company that does production, but also has companies within it, that are by design, marketing, or social media, or lead generation types of facilities so that we can help our clients solve those problems. One of the things that we determined over time is that while a lot of our clients ask us how we can help them with marketing, we learned fairly quickly that it was best for us to stay in the production lane. That's the thing we really know. It's what we have systems for and workflow for, and we're good at it. And as soon as we start to go, this team starts to move into things we're not so good at. It doesn't always go so well. So we tested it and found that it's better that we just do production and not help with that problem. But I have absolutely identified it. And to your question, this is more direct, that was sort of my entrepreneurial answer to the clients, I say, you have to promote you telegraph did a minute ago, it's what we all know, you have to be on as many channels as you can where your audience is, and doing it consistently with a cadence in order to get momentum. And it ain't easy. You have to spend as much on that as you did on the book, maybe more, maybe more. You know, in the case of an audiobook, or any really, when you're marketing an audiobook, you're marketing all the versions. And when you're marketing a pod. It's funny with podcasting, too, and I know we're short on time. With podcasting, it's interesting, because at a certain point, it's sort of a spectrum of podcasts and why you do it. At one end the b2b is I want to get more leads more clients, close more deals, grow my business, using podcasts, as an as a marketing a subset of my marketing program, my platform online, then there's the pure entertainment podcasts, which we hear about which with celebrities or their narratives, or you know, it's true crime. And that's a world we're actually participating in the world, we have a division that does Original Series stuff. It's a hard game, man. But I'll tell you that that's where the podcast is the product, it's and in that world, you really have to promote or sell it to a network, you know, so that they can then spend the money necessary to drive that traffic and get it to ignite, you know, in the market. So none of this is easy. It's

Robert Plank 19:32 not easy. And that's okay, though. That's just life is a cruel world. And it's not supposed to be it doesn't have to be and you think of how many talented musicians are out there. Right. And I mean, like, it takes a certain kind of mind for you to be a musician, right? And like there's like a mathematical side and a hard working side and an entrepreneurial side, and there's so much talent out there. But there's also a lot of starving artists. Not everyone can make it big and then sometimes people kind of it becomes a hobby, or they become a music teacher or they become a wedding DJ, but you've accomplished something amazing here, you've taken your skills and talents and said, Hey, how do we apply it to these clients and how and help them out and really breathe the magic in the entertainment into what they haven't grow and in your past lives, grow the children's shows, and now grow the audiobooks and grow the podcast and make these things happen. And so if someone says, okay, you've convinced me, I want to release, check this out, I know that I need this remote recording. So that way I do my audiobook, right? I do my podcast, right? What's the next step here? How does someone find out about auto visa? And once they land on the site, what should they be doing?

David Wolf 20:50 Thank you so much for asking, it all starts with a with a discovery call. That's typically how we work, you can find us on LinkedIn. A lot of VITA is the the handle, you can go to our website directly, which is triple w.or devita.com. There it is, it's like a car, Adi, meet us two Latin words, the sound of life. Nice. And you can go there, there's a Contact Us form, that's another way to reach us. Send an email to me directly if you like a De Wolf, like my first initial last name at odd aveda.com is another way. So all of those ways, all the usual suspects. And we'll book a discovery call, we'll learn more about what it is you're trying to accomplish. Whether you're an author, a publisher of authors books, we work with a partner with a lot of sort of what I like to call one to many, where we have publishers that have working with authors, and they're sending us multiple projects, and we become their white label, or their trusted referral partner, to help them augment their team with a world that's very specific. Not everybody can do audio, most publishers know how to do print. So we become the adjunct to their team. So anyway, that's that's where we are automated.com.

Robert Plank 22:01 Very nice and very fun and very cool. And people really undervalue what you're mentioning here, I've just having a harmless phone call. Because a lot of people don't do it. Right. A lot of people are just so afraid, and so shy just to have that quick conversation. And I've had conversations where maybe the timing wasn't quite right, just yet got to know the person when the timing was ready, then I went and signed up, or maybe there was their referral situation that happened, or you know, even some times, I thought I knew something. And then I had a conversation like this, and I was like, oh, I need to go back and, and like, get some of these other things in my business, figure it out, and then come back to you. So it might be a harsh wake up call. But change needs to happen somehow, right. And change won't happen. If you keep sitting on the sidelines, and you don't go to audit aveda.com. But when you make the next step and take the risk and be glad you did later, then you can send that email to De Wolf at au de IVIT a.com de wolf at auditive eda.com. And just talk about this podcast and audiobook possibilities, share your book and your hopes and dreams with David and his team and just see what can happen, then that is a step in the right direction. So that way, you don't have to continue to be frustrated and go it alone and wonder what might have been get your podcasts out there, get your audiobook done, and have David and his team help you do it. And as we're winding up and wrapping down our conversation here, David, I always like to ask about some wise advice because we everyone has some kind of quote or lesson that can really just energize us and send us on our way. So with all of your many decades of musical and podcasts and audio book experience, does anything jump out at you as far as a helpful quarter lesson to help us? Yeah,

David Wolf 23:49 the thing that's very, it's indigenous to the way I've lived, and I've always believed that, you know, find joy in the work you do, you know, find the thing you love to do, and integrate those things. I've always been a much more integrative approach as opposed to work and play being compartmentalized. So in my life, that's what I've tried to do. And I've been very, very fortunate and lucky and blessed that I've been able to the most part I've I've lived my life my way. But everyone listening and watching can do that as well. You just have to step back. You know, I practice meditation. And when I started meditating about seven years ago, it really began to give me some perspective about these sorts of things. And I'm happy to talk to anybody about any of these things as well. We don't just have to, you know, we're not transactional when, when we do our discovery calls, sure we're in business, but you may I've talked people out of doing an audio book because there just wasn't time for them. It'd be better off spending money on marketing their print book, you know, that's the way we roll and that's the way I like to roll as I'd like to just, I'd rather show it like you did today in a generous way. With the gift of some experience and insight that may be helpful help and if there's a transaction wonderful, even better but it's not. It's not the why

Robert Plank 25:01 you're a person with judgment and personality. Imagine that. And so you say the intersection of joy and work is where you should go and where we should also go is right now run, don't walk to audit vita.com. We will see you there. And thank you very much, David for a pleasant conversation.

David Wolf 25:17 Thanks for having me, Robert.

Robert Plank 25:22 Wind podcast.com forward Slash Free. Go there right now to see what you could be missing in your podcast. Maybe you aren't active enough on social media? Are you writing and broadcasting an email for every episode of your podcast? Do you follow up with your podcast guests? Do you do things to make your podcast interview and content creation easier? Go to d of y podcast.com/free to claim your gift right now.