Take Permission

The Right Tools & Mindset For Success

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The most important podcast tool you need to invest in

The tool is never as important as what the tool creates. I own a drill but it took me almost an entire weekend to build four steps. I own a $1,400 laptop with about $3,000 worth of graphics software on it but I can’t create a decent logo to save my life. I get asked what tools are best for podcasting usually followed by “for a person on a budget”. The short answer of what you need to start a podcast are these three things.

A headset.
Some software.
A web site.

The tools don’t matter
There are about 10 other details that I could go into but the short answer is that you don’t need much to start a podcast. The tools frankly don’t matter as much as you hope they do. I got 50,000 downloads using a basic headset, a $20 piece of software with a website hosted for $7 a month. If you want a step by step on how to get a podcast set up then visit my friend Cliff Ravenscraft. But you’ll be wasting your money on equipment and tutorials if you don’t have the most important thing in podcasting.
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Why I started Take Permission Media Network

You can ask my wife, I’m not very organized. After trying to start my own podcast in 2009 and ending up sounding more like a computer than a human I got really, really lucky and Cliff Ravenscraft asked me to do a podcast with him on his network GPSN. The next week I called Cliff on Skype and we started Business Tech Weekly. It felt so amazing to be on iTunes and to sound good. The shows were full of helpful content and we had a growing audience that would show up on Thursdays to chat with us during live shows.

In early 2010 I read Seth Godin’s book Linchpin. Half way through the book I felt this incredible urge to share what I was reading with other people. A podcast was the perfect medium to share my thoughts and most of all to connect Linchpins together. I used my $30 headset, used one of Cliff’s digital products to learn how to create my podcast the right way this time, and I was off and running. Oh yeah, I also emailed Seth Godin to ask his permission to use the book cover and he said yes with very little hesitation.

Be A Better Husband Podcast was born in 2010 because I wanted to encourage other husbands who like me, struggled to be the husbands they knew they should be. As 2010 progressed I started another podcast with my business coach Justin Lukasavige based on Dan Miller’s book No More Mondays. In the summer of 2011 I got tired of updating separate sites and I wanted to start even more shows.

Take Permission Media Network was supposed to be like Cliff Ravenscraft’s network GSPN, full of my own content. I had built http://www.takepermission.com/ and was preparing to move my old Linchpin and Be A Better Husband episodes.  I had mapped out new shows around Steven Pressfield’s book Do The Work and a show about homeschooling your kids. Then my friend Aaron Curtis bought me Anything You Want by Derek Sivers. That book ruined my whole idea and I’m so grateful it did.

More to come…

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How to network using social media

from http://shortsaledailynews.com/
Scale is the difference

The biggest difference between networking 15 years ago and networking today is scale. Sometime over the last few weeks I reached the 1,000 followers mark on Twitter. Do I know all of those people? No. Am I connected to them? Yes. Our networks are scalable because the internet doesn’t care where you are as long as you’re connected. If you were good at networking before LinkedIn or Twitter started you’ll be good at networking now. Social networks are built to connect people and their ideas. That is not a new idea.

The connections are valid

Those who think the new networking creates less valid connections are focusing on the ease of the tools instead of the depth of the connections the tools provide. It is true that most things worth doing are more difficult. Thanks to the internet connecting is the easy.

Even if you’ve never met

Progressing beyond a connection into a relationship is where lives change and the world becomes a better place to live. The internet can help you go deeper in your relationships if you want to. My children live 17 hours from my parents but they see each other through Skype anytime. My mom watches out family YouTube channel (http://www.YouTube.com/Traubfamily) to experience the daily highlights my kids produce. Cliff Ravenscraft and I have done 81 episodes of our podcast Business Tech Weekly over skype. I’ve never met Cliff in person.

Scale the results too

Facebook is measured by the number of friends you have. Relationships are measured by the change they bring; joy, commerce, knowledge, encouragement, wisdom. I think you should ignore the number of friends and connections you have on the digital networks. Focus on the fruit of those relationships. If you use the tools the internet provides us you can not only scale the amount of connections you have, you can scale what those relationships produce.