Tracy Hazzard is a seasoned media expert with over 3000 interviews for articles in Authority Magazine and her Inc. Magazine column; and for her multiple top-ranked podcasts. Tracy believes that the best way to be seen, heard, found, and rewarded for your expertise is to find your unique binge-able factor – the thing that makes people come back again and again, listen actively, share as raving fans, and engage even more. As the CEO of Podetize – the largest post-production company for podcasts; and a founding sponsor of the non-profit, Podcasters United, Tracy helps speakers, authors, and entrepreneurs get more raving fans and engagement.

Check out her podcasts: The Binge Factor and Feed Your Brand

Key Moments

[00:00:35] Tracy Hazard, media expert and CEO of Poditize, is interviewed by Seth. She has 3,000+ interviews, writes for Authority and Inc Magazine, and has top-rated podcasts. She is the founding sponsor of Podcasters United and has engaged fans. Check out her podcast, The Binge Factor.

[00:03:17] The speaker faced frustration after a project was canceled and sought a new client set.

[00:07:43] In 2017, the company officially formed its own entity after already operating for a year and a half with a waitlist. The transition resulted in a rapid increase in clients, from 10 to 100 within the first 6 months, and the company now serves over 1,000 clients.

Find Tracy Online

https://thebingefactor.com

https://podetize.com

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Also, if you’re getting value from the show and want to buy me a coffee, go to the show notes to get the link to get me a coffee to keep me awake, while I work on bringing you more great episodes to your ears. →  https://gmwd.us/buy-me-a-coffee

Follow Seth Online:

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Seth Goldstein | LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/sethmgoldstein

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Seth’s Marketing Junto Newsletter: https://MarketingJunto.com

Transcript (Provided by CastMagic.io)

Seth [00:00:00]:

Entrepreneur’s Enigma is a podcast for the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, for the wins and the fails that we all face being entrepreneurs, how we learn from adversity. Every week, I talk to a different entrepreneur with a story to tell. I’m Seth Goldstein. Come with me on the journey. This is Entrepreneurs’ Enigma. Let’s get started. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Entrepreneurs Enigma podcast.

Seth [00:00:35]:

I am as always. You’re probably still gonna be hearing hearing this from me, but I’m Seth, your host. Today, I have Tracy Hazard of politicize. She is a seasoned media expert expert with more than 3,000 interviews For articles with, Authority Magazine and her Inc Magazine column, she has has multiple top rated podcasts. She is the CEO of Poditize, as I said, the 2nd The largest postproduction company for podcasts. There’s a lot of peas in there. And the founding sponsor, for the nonprofit Podcasters United She has speakers, authors, and entrepreneurs, the most raving fans in engagement. Check out her podcast, which I was on, The Binge Factor, which was very fun, And feed your brain, and we’ll have all these links.

Seth [00:01:27]:

Don’t worry about this. Like, don’t take notes. Just listen. Don’t swerve off the road. Don’t you know? We’ll have Tracy on, and we’ll, you know, just go with it like that. But she’s been around, and let’s have her on. Hey, Tracy. How are you?

Tracy [00:01:39]:

Good to see you again, Seth. So excited to

Seth [00:01:42]:

be here. Been a while. It’s been we were just talking before the show that it’s it’s been at least a month or so.

Tracy [00:01:47]:

I think maybe 6 weeks or something. Yeah. Close to that.

Seth [00:01:50]:

Since it just yesterday came out, this is awesome. It was fun. And Tracy’s a great host, You know? And I know she’s gonna be a great guest because if you’re a great host, you kinda know how to be a great guest. So Good. Well, no pressure. Right?

Tracy [00:02:04]:

Yeah. Fire away. I’m ready.

Seth [00:02:06]:

Fire away. Fire away. So, Tracy, how did this all get started? Like like, what’s their what’s their origin story? Like, how broad that is. But, like, what’s your origin story? How did you get into entrepreneurship and doing your own thing and all that stuff? Like, I mean, the origin story a little

Tracy [00:02:23]:

So I never considered myself a an entrepreneur for the first, I don’t know, maybe 20 years, like, of my career. I had businesses. I I considered myself a business owner, not an entrepreneur. I never used that term before. And then I was doing my we We had a consulting business where we would design products that you buy every day. You can still buy our products at mass market, at Costco, we

Seth [00:02:46]:

Oh, that’s cool.

Tracy [00:02:47]:

Yeah. So we designed these products, and I designed, oh, you know, over 250 in, like, 3 years or something like that. And, and they do about $4,000,000,000 at retail. So, like, I mean, there’s a lot of products that we did. Yeah. And, like, that’s

Seth [00:03:02]:

It’s b b, billion, Billions.

Tracy [00:03:04]:

Billions. Yeah. It was big. And so but, you know, of course, we were just the lowly designers making, you know, 1% on the top of I think so. It was still, you know, not on all the billions.

Seth [00:03:15]:

Billions. Not bad. Yeah.

Tracy [00:03:17]:

Well yeah. But we would make it on the wholesale. So it was a whole really different thing, and we would work For companies and manufacturers and other things, and we had this manufacturer we were working for, and we done what I thought was a really great project. And Then they got bought and canceled our contract. And I was like, we just did this fantastic design work for you, and now they’re gonna it’s gonna sit on a shelf. And so I was super frustrated, And I decided we needed a whole different type of client. We had started our 1st podcast In three d printing called WTFF, like, a month earlier. And so I was just I just was frustrated, and it was like, we gotta have a whole different client set.

Tracy [00:03:56]:

We’ve gotta figure out a new way to get clients. And I went on Meetup, and I just typed in business meetings and business networking. That’s kinda broad for Meetup. It’s Fricking.

Seth [00:04:04]:

That’s kinda broad for Meetup.

Tracy [00:04:05]:

It’s kinda broad. It’s pretty broad. Yeah. But I was, like, looking for something local. I figured there couldn’t be too many. And 3 events showed up, and 1 was the next night. And it happened to be something called CEO space. And so the Entrepreneurship was in the title, and I was like, okay.

Tracy [00:04:22]:

I’ll go check it out. It was at u at University of California at Irvine, UC Irvine, And I was like, I’ll just go check it out. And I had just had my 3rd baby. So my last baby. I just had a baby, you know, months earlier. And I You need

Seth [00:04:37]:

the break. You need to get

Tracy [00:04:38]:

out of the house. To break to get out of the house. So and that’s why I chose it because it was the only nonvirtual meeting. Like and, of course, this is, like, This is, like, 2014. So, you know, I I get in the car. I go all the way over there, and my husband calls me and says, the baby just threw up. And I’m thinking to myself, and I I’m all He can’t figure out what to do. Right? Like you know?

Seth [00:05:00]:

He can’t figure out what to do?

Tracy [00:05:02]:

Yeah. So I I step out of the car, and I go like, I’m here. So I’m gonna go in and let you deal with the throw up because I know you can. And

Seth [00:05:11]:

Yeah. That’s how

Tracy [00:05:11]:

it’s been about that. Chad. So I was like, I know you can. And then if it’s a dud, I’ll just leave early and come home. And so that is what I did. And I walked in there, and it was a giant group of people. The guy who ran the Organization, he’s passed away since then, but, he was at the front giving he happened to be in town traveling and giving a speech there. And then they did a Rapid networking where they they would you would stand in front of someone else.

Tracy [00:05:39]:

They call it a snap, and they would stand in front of someone else and he and they would say to you, what do you need? And I was like, no one ever asked me what I need.

Seth [00:05:48]:

That’s kinda broad.

Tracy [00:05:49]:

Yeah. What my job has been. I almost cried. Like, I literally was like, oh my god. I’m home. Like, it felt like the right place

Seth [00:05:56]:

to be.

Tracy [00:05:57]:

And so they asked me, what do you need? And I didn’t know what to say, so I said, I need more listeners to my podcast and more viewers to my or more readers to my blog. And the guy said, I think I have a contact for you, and he wrote it down on a piece of paper, and he handed it to me. And for a week, I had it on the front of my desk at just staring at it, trying to decide what to do. Should I follow-up on it? What it Is it that really what I need, or is that just what I said? You know, like,

Seth [00:06:29]:

I was legit? Is this guy full of it? Like, oh, no.

Tracy [00:06:32]:

Am I gonna get, like, to hold a bunch of, you know, who knows what? And if it wasn’t for that single card, I would not have my podcasting business today.

Seth [00:06:44]:

Wow.

Tracy [00:06:45]:

I can isolate it to that one thing. And so what and it ended up being was someone who who said, oh, you’re really onto something with your podcast, and look how it’s making your web It’s like, oh, amazing. And so because we were doing all this stuff because I was a writer before we became podcasters, so I was combining the 2. Yeah. And That and we he was like, you’re on to something. Can we run some tests? We have some clients. Would you produce their podcast for them? And that’s how we ended up with our first 10 clients was through joining that organization, which I eventually joined and I eventually taught at, so So I became a mentor there, and and that’s how I entered the entrepreneurship world without even ever calling myself prior to that.

Seth [00:07:26]:

Oh, that’s Wild. That no. That’s a good story. That’s a good origin story. Most people are like, well, I got into

Tracy [00:07:32]:

it. Yeah.

Seth [00:07:32]:

This day and that’s a that’s a great story. I love it. Thank you. We’re gonna take a quick break here from our sponsors and get right back to the show. And so fast forward, so how long have you been doing monetize for.

Tracy [00:07:43]:

So, officially, we incorporated and did all that in 2017, but we’d really been doing it for about a year and a half prior for those 10 people. And the problem was is they kept referring people to us, and we had this giant wait list. Yeah. And so we were like, I think we need to move it out of our cons our Product consulting business and move it into its own entity. And so it took us about another 6 months before that all flowed out, and then we ended up with If from going from 10 clients to a 100 clients in the 1st year in the 1st 6 months really because it was the 1st calendar year. Yeah. So we’ve Tripled, and now we have over a 1000 clients that we produce their show. And we also have our technology and our self-service side of things.

Tracy [00:08:26]:

Yeah. So that run that SaaS and all of the stuff that we have there and all the service that we do for podcasters in general, it just that runs on its own. So we have Tons of users on that side as well who never use our production. It. I

Seth [00:08:38]:

mean, you are a living podcast then.

Tracy [00:08:41]:

Yeah. I I think well, in every year, we start Brand new ones. So when I say I have many podcasts, I do. We the very first one that we did in three d printing has 655 episodes, and we stopped doing it In 20

Seth [00:08:55]:

50 5 episodes. That’s a lot of episodes for mostly we’ll get past 30.

Tracy [00:08:59]:

Yeah. Exactly. Well, we did a a daily show for while, and so that’s why it built up a lot in the beginning, and then we we went out weekly towards the end.

Seth [00:09:07]:

Thousands of it twice weekly.

Tracy [00:09:09]:

Yeah. I

Seth [00:09:10]:

haven’t seen, but that’s a daily. Oh my gosh.

Tracy [00:09:12]:

It is it is your rare because most people can barely pull out of of 1 a week. And then I and so but I start a brand new one every year for my and so that I can see what it’s like for clients to start a new one because it’s harder. How much

Seth [00:09:25]:

Change is constant. Yeah.

Tracy [00:09:27]:

Yeah. And so this year, the new one is called United We Pod, and you’re the 1st person to hear that title. United WePod and United WePod is actually a promotion podcast for other podcasts. And so Oh.

Seth [00:09:41]:

So it’s like the Hollywood Reporter. Before.

Tracy [00:09:44]:

Yep. And so it’s launching in October officially off the Podcasters United nonprofit. It’s out of the nonprofit group.

Seth [00:09:51]:

I like that.

Tracy [00:09:51]:

I love that. So we’re really excited about that. So that’s our new one for this year, and what we’re we’re working on is saying how to handle a compilation Where, honestly, we could feature a 120 podcasts a day of that, but notifications crazy. Who’s gonna Flip out over the notifications. We wanna see if we stress the system, what happens?

Seth [00:10:14]:

Yeah. How much is too much? How how much is it too little, and where

Tracy [00:10:17]:

do we have to decide on that?

Seth [00:10:18]:

You’re not getting it now.

Tracy [00:10:20]:

Yeah. So I’d rather I experiment before you do. Right? And I can tell you what the best solution is.

Seth [00:10:26]:

What are you thinking? Weekly?

Tracy [00:10:28]:

It’s daily. It’s daily, and we will do up to a 120 episodes a day In the it at height of it, we’re gonna, like, scale up and see where the tipping point is, but we can scale up that many. Well, I’m not recording them all. There are clips of everybody else’s channel. Birthday. Yeah. I’m not recording it. Yeah.

Tracy [00:10:48]:

It’s not all that. I’ll do 1 a day.

Seth [00:10:50]:

You’ll do 1 and then

Tracy [00:10:52]:

Yeah. But

Seth [00:10:53]:

if you eat you know, sleep and breathe podcast and you love it, you know, the whole that So the adage, you know, if you love what you do, you do, you don’t work a day in your life. No. I’m sorry. You do work. It’s still work.

Tracy [00:11:04]:

It’s a lot of work.

Seth [00:11:05]:

It’s a lot of work. But if you enjoy it, you’re you’re always joining every work day.

Tracy [00:11:09]:

Well, you know, I think at the end of the day, it isn’t even the work that I enjoy. It’s the interaction with people. I’m a I’m an extrovert, and I Love the interaction with people. I am energized by it. I love to say, what’s your problem, Seth? And how can I solve this? And what can I do more for? And it gets me thinking and challenged and energized, and that is what drives me as much as my work.

Seth [00:11:33]:

That’s the whole reason why I have Entrepreneur’s Enigma. It’s a business tool. It’s me for me, so I get to have recently talk talk to people, especially in a pandemic project when I couldn’t go out and talk to people. I’m I’m I’m an extreme extrovert, and everyone I’m get become more of an ambivert now because of of the hybridness, but I’m Still more of an extrovert. Like, I like to come out and talk. You know? I’m bubbly, and I like to chat with people. And sometimes I’m a little too much for people, and that’s a good thing.

Tracy [00:12:00]:

Well, I have discovered that I’m I’m good in both media. I’m absolutely good on on virtual and live, and it does not really matter to me. I Still I I don’t know. I still exude the energy and receive the energy either way.

Seth [00:12:13]:

So can your kids keep up with you?

Tracy [00:12:15]:

No. Not not always. Oh, my youngest is giving me, run for my money, though. I think she’s gonna be me.

Seth [00:12:21]:

Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Poor husband. 2 of

Tracy [00:12:23]:

them now. Be me with a lot more technology integration. Like, it’s I know.

Seth [00:12:27]:

Yeah. So my my my, my 10 year old is me, technology wise. Looks just like his mom. God bless him. Thank god. But he acts just like me. My wife deserves a medal. She deserves a medal because there’s 2 of us in the world deserves a medal because there’s 2 of us in the world.

Tracy [00:12:44]:

That’s what my husband says about my youngest. So

Seth [00:12:47]:

Oh my god. Oh my god. And you run with her husband, don’t you?

Tracy [00:12:50]:

I do. We actually, this is our 3rd business we’ve together over the our 31 years still married. Yeah. 31 years. So we’ve been doing it a while. And we And

Seth [00:13:00]:

you still like in college?

Tracy [00:13:02]:

We met in college. We were best friends, and we’ve always been best friends. And along the way, he had a business with someone else. And what one of the things that we discovered was that If you’re if you have a partner, it’s now a marriage of 3. So Yeah. Your spouse is in there anyway, And it and you’re not in control. And that was not a good place for me. I like control.

Tracy [00:13:25]:

And so we’d said, that’s it. We’re gonna be partners. And since then, we have We stayed married

Seth [00:13:31]:

for 31 years.

Tracy [00:13:33]:

Yeah. Well, we’re very different. So, I mean, when everyone meets him, they’re like, my gosh. Your husband is like the polar opposite of you, but so cool. He’s such a nice guy, and he’s just he’s just so different in our job.

Seth [00:13:44]:

My wife, thank god, my wife is opposite I mean, I have some best friends, and I talked to them. And I’m like, we would never work out because you’re too much like me.

Tracy [00:13:52]:

Yeah. Exactly.

Seth [00:13:53]:

Like, you need the opposite of the track. She’s quiet. She She’s more of an ambivert. She’s very much an ambivert where she kinda comes out, exudes, and she’s like, alright. I’m done. I’m done. Peace. And I’m like, I’m still going.

Tracy [00:14:05]:

But you know what? The funny thing is is he’s the one who wanted to do he wanted to do video, and I didn’t wanna do video even though I’m the extrovert in the group. Right? I didn’t wanna do video because back then in 2014, you there wasn’t live streaming. It wasn’t as casual an environment. Yeah. And so I talked him into podcasting of which he never really listened to at that time until I introduced him to it. And so I talked him into podcasting so I didn’t have to have my hair done every time we want to record a video.

Seth [00:14:35]:

A video with it.

Tracy [00:14:35]:

He wanted video. Well, because three d printing is a This whole media type. Yeah. So we instead would do these audios, and then we talk about it, and then we’d put a video on YouTube of the machine running. Oh, that’s cool. I got out of being in front of it, but it’s funny because now I love it. I like, I would I can be in front of the camera all day long. It doesn’t matter.

Seth [00:14:55]:

Well, there you go because you’re pretty prolific with it. So what’s the best thing about being an entrepreneur in your mind now that you can call now you now you call yourself an entrepreneur?

Tracy [00:15:02]:

Now that I call myself that you know, the best thing For me, personally, is it’s always something new, always original. It’s never repetitive. I cannot stand to do the same thing twice. It’s why we have a production business because I didn’t wanna edit because it would require me to listen to the episode again. So So I was like, I need a team. Right? Like, I and I they didn’t they didn’t do it my way, so then I trained them so I wouldn’t have to, like, review it again. So

Seth [00:15:31]:

I know.

Tracy [00:15:32]:

That’s how it happens. Like, I love this idea of always having a new challenge, something new in front of me. And that’s what entrepreneurship is like. Some people think it’s chaos, But I think it’s challenging.

Seth [00:15:42]:

It’s challenging chaos. It can be chaos at times, but sometimes it’s not that chaos. And so what keeps you up at night? What’s what’s the scariest thing about being an entrepreneur?

Tracy [00:15:51]:

Employees.

Seth [00:15:52]:

Yeah.

Tracy [00:15:52]:

My staff is my family, and I worry about them.

Seth [00:15:56]:

And you’re in California, so you can’t have freelancers.

Tracy [00:16:00]:

Well, we can, but we have to be documented really carefully, and they have to be You

Seth [00:16:04]:

don’t have

Tracy [00:16:04]:

to be softlocked. Lots of other clients and, yeah, it’s not easy. But I also I have 86 employees around the world. Many of them are in the Philippines and other, other areas of the world. So, you know, but I just

Seth [00:16:17]:

have great because they’re they’re exactly 12 hours difference.

Tracy [00:16:20]:

That it’s it works for me. I’m a night person, so that works for me as well. So I can Do my meetings there early morning and my late night, and it works out. And we also have staff in Rhode Island, Florida, Arizona. So we have staff on all time zones. Yeah.

Seth [00:16:36]:

I love it. Let’s just hold on to that. Philippines, Rhode Island.

Tracy [00:16:39]:

Yeah. It’s like big time zones.

Seth [00:16:41]:

Different than that. That’s a riot. And then so what is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Tracy [00:16:47]:

You know, that’s a great question, Seth. That the things that I carry with me, I I think It it’s integrity. If we cannot carry our integrity through everything we do, then we’re not being authentic. Mhmm. And for me, being in integrity is showing up in the world.

Seth [00:17:07]:

Yes. So

Tracy [00:17:07]:

in other words, if I say I’m gonna be here on your podcast, I’m gonna be here. I’d have to be dying to not be here.

Seth [00:17:13]:

Usually, I’m early. You beat me to your sitting there waiting, looking

Tracy [00:17:17]:

at you. Well, I you said 5 minutes early, and I thought I was late. So

Seth [00:17:21]:

No. You actually do I I stopped doing I I say 5 minutes early, but never no one’s ever 5 minutes early. So I’m like, you were.

Tracy [00:17:28]:

Woo hoo. Yeah. That’s it. That’s right. Because if I say I’m gonna be there, then I’m gonna be there. And I think that’s what I love the most about podcasting too is that This is a demonstration of my integrity. I said I was gonna show up, and I was gonna serve you. Yeah.

Tracy [00:17:42]:

I do it. And you have an embodiment of Who I am and and what I’m about. I love that.

Seth [00:17:49]:

It’s it’s amazing. It’s great. And so people can can find you at thebingefactor.com, And that’s everywhere, literally. YouTube, everywhere. Like, it’s incredible. And then podet podetize .com, which is podetize.com.

Tracy [00:18:07]:

Yeah. It’s podcasting and monetize mixed together, podetize.

Seth [00:18:10]:

Oh, that makes more sense. Now you have nothing to remember that. And you have the podcasters united podcast. I mean, what was that called again?

Tracy [00:18:19]:

United We Pod. Podcasters United website will launch in October as well. So

Seth [00:18:25]:

Oh, and this podcast is coming out in November, so we’ll have You have to Well,

Tracy [00:18:29]:

it’ll already be out. That’s why.

Seth [00:18:31]:

Oh, it’ll be out. That’ll be awesome. Put that in the show notes as well. Tracy, this has been so much fun. So glad we got to chat again.

Tracy [00:18:37]:

Oh, me too, Seth. Thank you, and thank you for for committing to your podcast 2 days a week.

Seth [00:18:42]:

Oh, yeah. I I love this thing. We’re at we are literally as of time of this recording, we are at a 170 episodes

Tracy [00:18:52]:

Woo hoo.

Seth [00:18:52]:

As of today, which is a Thursday. So and you will be episode I have my little cheat sheet over here. You will be episode 183.

Tracy [00:19:02]:

Oh, I like that number.

Seth [00:19:04]:

I don’t know what but I don’t know the significance of what that is, but It’s a cool night.

Tracy [00:19:07]:

It works.

Seth [00:19:09]:

It works. Alright, Tracy. Thanks for everything. That was a great show. If you’re enjoying Entrepreneur’s Enigma, please view us in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps other podcast listeners find our show. If you’re looking for other podcasts in the marketing space, go no further than the marketing podcast network at marketing podcasts .net. Goldstein hopes you have enjoyed this episode.

Seth [00:19:59]:

This podcast is one of the many great shows on the MPN Marketing Podcast Network.