We all want to get good at getting attention.

It’s not as negative as some might make us think.

After all, we’re born wanting attention. We want attention as toddlers. And we still want attention as adults.

(Oi, put that phone down and spend time with me will ya?!)

Episode 103 with John Follis from Follis Inc is all about understanding the different ways we can use for getting attention.

Scroll for the transcript.

If you prefer listening, use the player below or click here to listen in your favourite app.


Watch the promo of the conversation about getting attention on your Apple device or on YouTube



A quote from the episode that's all about getting attention


Here’s what’s in this episode about getting attention!

(Table of contents)


Listen now via your favourite app

Making Conversations Count is available in all podcast apps including:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify



Who is John Follis?

John Follis knows how you go about getting attention

John Follis is a creative who had the "Mad Men" world at his fingertips in Madison Avenue working for Pizza Hut, VW and Coca-Cola.

He's an advertising legend with over 10 years' experience creating commercials that have been seen all around America on TV networks such as CBS or ABC.

But not just there!

You can find them online too through John’s company Big Idea Video which has been running since 2013.



You’ll read:

  • John's experience with leveraging his podcast as a discovery tool before social was a thing (01m30s)
  • Success is about timing (08m30s)
  • Whatever platform or medium you use, you've got to get the messaging right (14m29s)
  • The algorithms are constantly changing (20m11s)
  • John's conversation that counted(23m30s)

John

I started a podcast in early 2006 when I was learning about it in 2005 and was fascinated by the concept, especially back then, that you could be sitting in front of your computer like we're doing and talk to virtually anyone. I don't know if it was around the world at that time, but it was certainly around the country. And I'm a very curious, interested person, interested in other people.

So the idea that I could have people that I find interesting to have a one on one conversations with was fascinating. But as you just pointed out, my main motivation was doing exactly what you just said because I found myself I had walked out of a partnership with a partner who was a brilliant new business guy. I was the creative genius and he was the new business genius, and so I didn't have to worry about finding business.

That was his job and he did it very well. When I walked out of that partnership, I suddenly found my first of all, I didn't think I could survive without another person wearing that hat and looked desperately for probably a year and a half, two years, and it was like trying to find a spouse. I was hoping that I would be fine, just that perfect partner didn't happen. And at that point I realized I would have to become that person whether I liked it or not. If I wanted to stay independent, if I didn't want to try to get a job somewhere, I had to figure out how to engage with prospects. So when I heard about podcasting in 2005, I thought, I've got a couple of options. I can try to chase after business, or I can have dangle the shiny object in front of people. And back then, most of the people you talk to weren't even sure what a podcast was.

They just knew it was the new shiny object. But most people couldn't tell you exactly what it was. As a new business strategy, these were people I invited, small business owners that I wanted to have a conversation with, with a hope, allowing them to get to know me and have a comfort level with me that they would consider working with me as a marketing consultant. Unfortunately, that strategy didn't really work out that way.

I realized after maybe talking to four, six or eight people that because I was introducing myself as the host of the marketing show, that it was hard for me to flip the script and say, oh, and by the way, I'm a marketing expert, advertising guy, and could really help your business. That first impression was 90% of how they perceived me. So after doing it a half a dozen times, I just realized that strategy is probably not going to work out and let me just try to find the most interesting people on subjects I'm really interested in talking about.

Everyone I basically emailed and invited on the show said, I'm not exactly sure what a podcast is, but yeah, I basically said it's an opportunity for you to talk about your business for 30 minutes to a worldwide audience for free.

As far as a quantifiable, a measure of getting business, hard to say. But what I learned from those conversations was immeasurable because there were so many things happening between 2006 when I started in 2012. I mean, that was at the dawn of Facebook and LinkedIn and Google and blogs and search engine optimization and all these things that didn't exist prior to that. So I would get experts on all those topics and it was just an amazing education.

Wendy

Well, I was just writing some notes down earlier and coming up to a milestone and going, how do I pick which conversation has affected me the most or motivated me the most?

It's such an emotive thing it's become and got a life of its own, the podcast has, from all the different conversations.

Like you say, John, it is what you learn and what you take away. It's like permanently, you're being mentored and mentoring. It's just such a fabulous feeling. I understand that jarring of I'm the host because then people think it's your job and you're being paid to do it.

And that's not quite how it works in podcasting. You're self funded, you're self driven, unless you've got a corporate behind you yet you do have to put in some self promotion to say, look, I hope you like what I'm doing, I hope you like me enough. I hope you learned to trust my judgment calls and some of the responses that I give or some of the questioning that I do so that you would pick me if ever you needed help in that area. But it does feel odd and it's taken a very long time to kind of see how you interject that I'm doing this because this is kind of a passion project and I love conversations. And like you, John, I'm curious. But also I'm here. I need to make money.

John

Yeah, in retrospect, I could have mixed up the podcast, so it wasn't always me interviewing someone else, but maybe it could have been me talking about my expertise and doing it a little bit more self promotionally. I tried to do an intro and an endtro that referenced my blog and things like that, but that wasn't enough. And whether or not I could have done anything that would have changed the perception and caused or made the podcast a tool to get people to contact me, I don't know, it could have just been the nature of it being a podcast that it may not be the best tool to get business. I've been on a ton of podcasts. It just seems like everyone who's doing it is kind of doing it for the same reason as you, but it's not a money generator for them. So I think it's really the exception. That that's been the case, yeah, as a branding tool and that sort of a thing, and it has many other benefits and it's part of the reason why after doing it for as long as I did, which was about six years, I just decided there was no longer a good return on my investment, my time investment.

Wendy

And the thing is, though, John, sometimes it's about timing as well, isn't it? I've kind of came into it when, as I said, it was a podcast, it was a Covid baby. It was because I've got time. But then equally in the marketplace, there was lots of people who suddenly had the time to launch a podcast. So there was a bit of a boom there.

John

A huge boom. Huge.

Wendy

But then the competition stiff, so you've got to be exceptionally good. The quality has got to be there, it's got to be great listening. But there's also been a huge learning curve around podcast and what they are for and why you would want to listen. My husband, he doesn't do any of the social media platforms and he's like, You've got a what? Cast? I found a podcast that was about his football club and he listened to that and he said, I didn't think that's what it was. And it's these conceptions, isn't it, when people say it's radio interviews that have just gone into a fixed format. There's been a huge education as well in terms of what podcast is about, what kind of material you can listen to as well. I mean, there's genres on anything and everything now, isn't it?

John

There's so many podcasters like yourself who are doing it really well. In fact, conversations on the award, that is a nice credential to have. Right, thank you. A lot of people are doing good jobs and how many people can say they've been nominated for a significant award? Right. Awards, I think, are good branding tool for credibility and not many people can claim them. I've always tried to keep my fingers in the pot of the evolving media landscape.

So unlike a lot of my peers who would just either ignore the new things that were coming along or just be confused by them and dismiss them, I always wanted to learn more about them. Not so much recently, because I haven't really needed to, so I get to focus on more personal passion projects. So I've slipped a little bit as far as keeping up with Instagram and TikTok and some of the newer, shiny objects.

When I was more proactive with my business, I felt I had to stay involved with it because it was all part of marketing. So with podcasting, right around the same time was blogs. And so again, I started getting involved with these things simply because A, I was curious about them and B, because I felt I needed to. If I was going to continue branding myself as a marketing expert, I do not just know about them, but had the experience of being involved with them. So then when I talk to prospects, I really knew what I was talking about.

Wendy

I mean, there are so many platforms that businesses can expose themselves. I like that word. And I know that it depends on who you are and as to which platform works best for clients. But in your own experience with your own business being a marketer, has there been one platform that has been the sure fire way for new business?

John

Yeah, everyone's looking for that silver bullet, right? I wasn't so much about platforms as about the things that are going to get your prospect excited about what it is you're promoting or selling. And that's more than a social media platform.

That's been more of, how can I say, a means of communication. What media form is best? It used to be a question of is it print, radio, outdoor, or TV? So I think what has transplanted TV has been digital video. I've been doing video since the late 90s.

Even previous to that, we did a lot of TV work for the clients we worked with. So whenever you have the ability to get in front of your prospect with some kind of video, I think that's going to have a better chance of engaging them and getting a response from them versus a post on Instagram. This is why TikTok has exploded. This is why Instagram reels has exploded. It was the same mantra that I was talking about 20 years ago, more video. And why I started in 2013. My company called Big Idea Video. When explainer type, these animated explainer type videos. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that term, but especially with B to B businesses that require a bit of explaining or storytelling, these little animated, these little whiteboard videos became all the rage back then. So I just think that you can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much video is kind of the way I look at things.

Wendy

It's not so much spray and pray, is it? When you look at TV advertising, that's going to be premium time on premium channels to premium audiences, it's kind of the same cocktail of looking for that formula, isn't it? Being able to put your message in places that people are going to connect with it.

John

What it does is it forces businesses to realize that people's attention span is very short. They probably are not going to listen or watch to a 30 minutes podcast, but they will listen to and watch a 30 second video. And because my training is 30 second TV commercials, there's not a big leap between a 30 second TV commercial that's got to captivate someone, get their attention, and in that period of time get them interested to know more about your product or service.

Between TV commercial and a video, it's really the same thing. So it's not just a matter of having video, but having really short, compelling, creative, entertaining videos that get people excited about the product or service that you're trying to promote. And because my expertise is writing and design and art direction and video creation, that's what I excel at.

That's my skill set. I don't come out of the business side of marketing, I come out of the creative side. I'm really a creative guy that realized that I've got to be more smart about the marketing behind the creative. But I just think that every business can have a lot more really compelling, short, creative content. And then the question becomes is how you get that video in front of the person. But the first step is creating a message that you want to get in front of people that if they see it, they're going to get excited about it, they're going to react to it. There's a lot of video crap out there, but it's not created by people who are talented at communicating a message in 30, 60 seconds.

Wendy

It is about getting that curation right, isn't it? Because I know that it's got to be clear, it's got to be concise, there's got to be a hook, and there's got to be a call to action, right? Quite a lot. And I always try to do that. If you can explain it to a seven year old, you're going to at least be speaking the same language as most people on the planet.

John

Yes, and that's why 'explainer videos' became so popular, because they dumbed it down with words and pictures, almost storybook like a children's storybook with these little animations.

Because quite honestly, so many businesses, especially in the B2B space, are a bit esoteric, and you almost have to really break it down to its simple essence. And as a creative person, it was a lot of fun for me at that time to learn some of the software that enabled me to create these animated explainer videos, which a lot, there was a big market for it back then I don't know about now.

I haven't really needed to continue pushing that narrative, but, yeah, so that's a very long answer to your question. I would say video, really well done, creative, compelling video. The thing about that is, once you have that, you can put that on any platform. You could put that on Instagram, you cold put it on TikTok, you could have your YouTube channel. You can multi purpose that sometimes you don't really know what platform. It really depends on your audience, where's your audience going to be. If you're talking to people of a certain age, I have to say I'm glad I don't have to think about this stuff right now because I think my mind would explode trying to figure this stuff out.

Wendy

Yeah, I do know exactly what you're talking about, John, because I have a list, I have a workflow of where I have to market the podcast to as just an example, and the list goes on and there are certain things that you get habitual about.

So you know you're going to go on LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and TikTok, but then that list goes deeper because you need YouTube links, IMDb, Google Console for the website. So when you start to really break it down, it doesn't matter whether it's a podcast or a video or digital content of any form, whatever it is that you're creating, you've still got to have in mind getting the most out of it to the most people.

So, yeah, I do get it. And I did a LinkedIn post a while ago and I think it was entitled it was a blog that I'd written. How do you get anybody's attention these days? Was the question. And the headline that I put was, I am a man trapped in a woman's body. And it was just talking about the mentality of how you're taught in the industry that I'm in, the approach that the training has given me. And you just go, you know what? It took me nearly 30 years to embrace my feminine side because I'd been taught to be a man in my job. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. We're still loading the bullets, John.

John

And the other thing is, at least my experience is by the time I figure something out, Instagram Reels, or TikTok, whatever, they'll change it. The algorithms would change or there's a new shiny object and then they got to start, oh my God, now I got to learn about this platform.

Wendy

And the funny thing is, everybody is going on. It's the algorithm, right? Which, yes, is a computer, but who programmed the computer? It's humans. We're doing this to ourselves. Why?

John

I'm still fascinated. I could get cynical about it, but it's fascinating. But again, as a creative person, my tolerance for learning about the stuff and this analytical stuff, because a lot of it is very analytical and algorithmic based and all that stuff, my tolerance level for that is limited because at the end of the day, if I'm not creating something, that's my talent. That's what I do better than most people. So if I can't do something that allows me to showcase what I'm really good at, then maybe I should hire someone else to figure out all this other stuff because…

Wendy

I don't know, John. I think I would just throw in a caveat now to listeners and say not to stress about it. Because if you open your ears and listen to those posts that have gone viral, that have gone off the trajectory scale of anticipated expectation, nobody knows why they've done that. So there's really little point in trying to figure it out. You should just be creative, go with the flow. Whatever you feel like putting out there is what you should feel like putting out there. That day, that time, whatever, because ultimately that's what may be the next big deal. Who knows?

John

Yeah, well, I do think it needs to be strategically targeted. I'm a big believer in it's not just about being creative, it's about being a disciplined, creative person. You're well aware of what you're trying to achieve with the creative message. You know who you're talking to, you know what media platform it's going to be on, so you can discipline your creative message well enough, so it's more targeted.

Wendy

Yes, I agree entirely with you, Joh. I wasn't trying to be flippant about anything else, but it is simply that when you know what you do and how you help and the difference that that's going to make, that's kind of your strategy embedded in you like a stick of rock, isn't it? The message goes through your core, so it's then allowing that creativity to happen.

Wendy

In every episode. I like to ask the guest about a conversation that acted as a noticeable turning point. So, John, tell me your conversation.

John

So when I was operating my ad agency and found myself needing to be not just the creative director, but also the new business guy, I realized I had to really step up my networking skills. So I was invited by a woman friend of mine to attend a women in communications meeting in New York City. And some very high powered women in communications, PR, advertising, marketing were at this event. I enjoyed the event. I was leaving the event. I was introduced to the president of the organization who said, so glad to have you here, John. I hope you consider becoming a member. To what you applied. I thought this organization was called women in communications, not women and men in communications. Oh, yes, yes, it's women in communications, but we do have some male members, and I hope you consider joining. I said, so how many members do you have in total? She said, oh, we have about 500 members. And I said, how many of them are men? She goes, I think we were up to seven now. So instead of leaving that saying, okay, why would I want to join? I said, seven out of 500. A lot of the women were pretty good looking, and I was single. So I said, I may not get any business out of this, but maybe I might get a date. So I joined the organization, and it wasn't cheap. I think, again, this was probably 30 years ago, and I think it was like $400 a year to be a member. And I said, let me give this a shot, see what happens. And every month, they would have a big event, and I would put on my suit, go on the subway to this event, and often I would find myself after the presentation, mingling around and trying to engage in conversations with women. And there were little groups of women, and they were all women. Like she said, there's just a couple of guys that would attend these things. And I would find that women would maybe politely talk to me for a couple of minutes and then wander off and talk with their friends. And I kind of felt like I was at a party that I wasn't really invited to. And so pretty quickly, after joining this group and spending the $400, I started to think what a waste of money this was. But I said, I've got a year membership. I can't give up. Let me keep going. And I went for the next few months and finally one more month ago, and I didn't make any kind of business connections at all. I had a couple of interesting conversations. No business came out of it. So I said, let me just go to the… I had to really force myself to go to this last event. And one of the women that spoke at this last event was the president of the organization who ran one of the top PR agencies in New York City. And as I left that event, really annoyed that I had spent this money and more importantly, my time over the past year attending all these events, getting no business out of it, I walked into the elevator out of the event and looked over to my left. And there in the elevator, standing right beside me was the woman who was the president of the organization, who just gave the most amazing, inspirational talk at this event. So I figured, okay, well, I now have one more opportunity to have a conversation with someone and see what happens. So I just looked at her and I said, I just have to tell you that I really enjoyed your presentation. I thought it was very inspirational, and you were a great speaker. And I was sincere when I said that. And she looked at me and she said, oh, thank you very much. And she said, Wait a second. You're a member of this organization? And I said, yeah, for the past year I've been a member. She said, wow, that's impressive. And then she asked me what I do, going back to what we said earlier, that my strength is creative. I had a business card, Wendy, that had these very wildly excited looking eyes, basically taking up the whole space on the front of the business card. And on the back of the business card, it said, in addition to my information, it said, if you want people excited about your business, you have to get them excited about your marketing. And again, the other side of these wildly crazy excited eyes. So when she asked me what I did, I simply said, well, I help businesses get their prospects excited. And then I handed her my business card, and that was it. Just those seven words. And meanwhile, the elevator is going down to the first floor. So I know I have about another 30 seconds of conversation before we're going to leave the elevator. And she took a moment and she looked at my business card and she flipped it over and read the back of it and she said, you know, I think this is the first time anyone who has actually introduced themselves with a claim and then immediately supported that claim by something that they handed me. She said, I love your business card and would you be available to continue this conversation in another week or two? I've got to get back to the office. I can't keep chatting, but here's my business card, give me a call and maybe we could grab lunch. And three months later, I signed a contract for $93,000 project.

Wendy

Wow.

John

That was a four month project that I cleared. $88,000.

Wendy

It's kind of one of the sayings that I always use all the time, John, which is you just never know where a conversation is going to lead. And this is it, isn't it? It's similar to podcast, isn't it? We don't know what the quantifiable effects are on your business. It's like going to networking is fairly similar. You can be part of a group for a year and be excluded from the little huddles. And it's not just because it was women only. I think this is a universal thing, isn't it, that body language plays a big part when you're networking as to whether you feel welcome or not.

John

Sure.

Wendy

But it just goes to show that you kept that open mind that right until the last moment, there's going to be an opportunity here. I've got to keep looking for the opportunity that is here. And what better reward than for the president of the association? That's amazing.

John

I know. And you got to factor in that luck was involved in that for sure. A> Had I not joined the organization to begin with and how do I not continued? And like I said, I really had to force myself as the year was coming to a close and I continued going to the events with no results, I really had to force myself to continue going, especially to that last one. I was almost ready to say, screw it, why bother going? Yeah, I think it does speak to not giving up. I kinda also believe you make your own luck. You could say, oh, well, that was just lucky that you happen to walk into the elevator right at that time and blah, blah, blah, and she had a project that you were a good fit for it. Well, that's true. But you also make your own luck, right?

Wendy

Yeah. There's lots of what if, what if, what if? But if you'd have said to yourself, I'm not going to get anything out of this and I'm not going to go, then, well, funny enough, you wouldn't have gone. You wouldn't have gotten anything out of it. So I think it's that erring on the positivity of I can make this happen and see where it will lead or not. And a lot of people do the not.

John

It's just, again, it's like anything, I think you have to have an ultimate goal. You can't just be doing things without having some kind of a plan or strategy or goal. And my goal with that was to hopefully meet someone that I could be a good answer to their problem. When I met that woman, we did have that lunch and it was at that lunch where we could talk in a relaxed environment, where she could introduce the situation and learn more about me to determine whether or not I would be a good solution to the problem that she was facing with one of her clients that needed an advertising campaign. So yeah, you have to keep doing things and hope for the best. But I think also you can't do that without having a clear strategy and a goal that you're trying to achieve.

Wendy

And you've got to not be scared to put yourself forward and ask the right questions to be sure that you're using your time in the best manner as well. You're not going to just go for lunch just in case. Right. She said that she got something in mind, so your goal would be to find out what she's got in mind. Right, but then how you present yourself without just turning on the sales pitch, isn't it?

John

Yeah. And listen, I think part of the problem with social media is that people just post, post, post, post and they don't realize that sometimes it just feels like it's all going into a black hole. At the end of the day, if you're not having conversations with real people in real time, you could be posting like crazy and nothing's going to happen. And maybe you can hope that one of your posts is going to get a response. But you've also got to realize that you've got to do whatever you can ultimately to create a conversations with someone.

Wendy

Yeah. Which is funnily enough. John, what I teach people to do.

John

There you go.

Wendy

Little shameless plug there. It's fascinating. After that project, did that give you the confidence to do more in terms of the new business side of things? Because it wasn't naturally a fit for you, but did it build your confidence as well?

John

Yeah, I mean, it certainly was an unexpected and very rewarding conclusion to my membership in that organization. Ironically, I did not renew my membership in that organization.

Wendy

And you could afford it.

John

I don't know what was going on, but I think I found some other organizations. I always had to look for new avenues and venues to network and I maybe replaced that organization with another organization simply because I had gone the full year and had many conversations and it was only on the elevator out of the building on the last one. So even though. I did get that. I just thought there might have been other organizations that would be more fruitful. Yeah, but it's a crapshoot. It's just new business is something I think every business owner, depending on their situation, has to be as good as they can possibly be at it. Because if you are the face of your business, even though you may not be comfortable with it, I think you have to know how to present yourself and get yourself in front of people. Which is why another thing that I forced myself to do was to speak as much as possible and rather than be an audience member and wait till the presentation was done and then afterwards try to engage with some of the people in the audience. I figured if I was the featured person. That's a way for me to introduce myself to everyone in the audience right. And then have people come to me afterwards.

Wendy

Yeah.

John

So it's always better to be the person on stage than be the person in the audience listening to that person on stage. So I tried to do that as much as possible and that was actually a better strategy for me to be the person on the stage, because I did get business from doing that.

Wendy

Yeah. I think it's a massive marketplace as well, isn't it? Hugely rewarding for yourself personally and for the business? Certainly, if you're up there sharing lots of valuable insights, which I'm sure you.

John

And now, because the way things have changed, that stage has become zoom, that stage has become the computer. So I would encourage people to, if they have a business, to feel comfortable talking about their product or service in a way that's engaging to their prospective audience. And I think podcast being a guest is a good way to do that.

Wendy

Absolutely. And lots of things in business, and I think I've said this many a time, there are things that we're all going to have to do in business that we don't like doing. Do the things that come naturally to you and do those really well. But it's worth pushing yourself to embrace some of these other technologies and platforms, isn't it? To be able to reach your audience and get comfortable with it. It's going to take practice.

John

Well, you recently had a guest on your show who was a woman who spoke at Google, right?

Wendy

Yes, Simone. Yeah, absolutely.

John

And I didn't hear the whole thing, but this was a woman who got herself to speak on stage. I don't know if it was done virtually or physically on stage.

Wendy

Physically on stage, yeah.

John

Which is not an easy thing to do, especially with Google. Right.

John

So there's a high five for social media. And again, I would be interested now, knowing that story, I want to look at her social media content to see what she's posting on social media. Because if it was an Instagram post that got Google interested in her enough to invite her to speak, I want to see what that was. Right.

Wendy

Yeah.

John

Because it's not just posting, but it's what is the content that you're posting and is it engaging and exciting people. So obviously, in her case, it was doing that and she said, understandably, that kind of turned her career around. When you get a speaking gig at Google, it doesn't get better than that. Right. Maybe a Ted Talk.

Wendy

Yeah, she did say, actually, that and she talks about it's a half an hour talk that she gives at Google. But she delivered a minute of brilliance.

John

And there was that a minute of brilliance that she was able to pick out and use as her Instagram Reel or whatever it was. So kudos to her for her editing abilities to take that nugget. And I think that was pretty smart. And I think that's a creative use of the media where you just don't throw a lot of stuff up there. You really take the time to make sure that what you're posting there in 30 seconds or 60 seconds is going to be brilliant, to use her words. Right.

Wendy

This is what gets people's attention, because audio, video, it cuts through the written word. I think the written word has its place, but I think audio and video, you can just get to the heart of things, can't you?

John

Well, the thing is, I don't think people read anymore, especially if you have the choice of clicking on the social media. It's swipe, quick sound bites, video sound bites. So it's very different than it was 20 or 30 years ago when there was a lot more stuff to read. And I think we're trained because of platforms like Instagram, Reels and TikTok to just watch short videos.

Wendy

Yeah. I mean, they say, don't know that it's our attention span. Yet when you consider how much time you find yourself dead scrolling, looking for that bit of content that will actually excite you, you could probably lose a good half an hour and longer over the course of a day. Yet if you were to show yourself those stats of how much time you waste, would you have preferred to have immersed yourself in a book?

John

I think it's generational Wendy. I think when you talk to people my age, maybe your age, they would agree with you about the book. It would be interesting to ask people on how many books they've read this year. Yes, I would say the answer for most people would be zero.

Wendy

You know, throwing down Brad Sugar's challenge that he gave on the show, which is a book a week. What week are we on now? I don't even know. It's like 30 something, isn't it? I'm a big book reader, but even I confess I've got more books unread that I want to read at the moment than the other way around on the bookshelf that I read. Yeah, it's just about using your time wisely, isn't it?

John

And knowing your audience. If you're turning to appeal to people over 60, then write a book. Yes, absolutely. If you're trying to appeal to people under 30, be on TikTok, translate it into audio.

Wendy

An audio book?

John

Well, everything should be an audiobook, regardless of the age. There's a real advantage that I mean, I'm all for video podcast, but I'm sure you know the statistics that about 80 or 90% of the people who digest podcast do it through the audio only format. Because you could be walking on the beach or walking anywhere or driving in your car or whatever and getting that content. You don't need to see my face sitting in front of my computer to get the message.

Want to listen to the audio version? In a place with limited downloads?

Click to listen to a lower bandwidth version of the full episode:

John Follis – Lower Bandwidth version