6: The importance of listening and 5 technology shortcuts to improve your life with Rey Brown

Rey Brown recalls working at Circuit City in 2003 when he was transferred to the mobile phone department. It was around the time the first BlackBerry® phone hit the market. Little did he know then that he would eventually be devoting a good amount of his time discussing mobile technology via podcasting, a term virtually unheard of a decade or so ago but widely popular today.

Brown spent time working for wireless carriers and device manufacturers over the years, including helping Verizon Solutions Specialists learn about Motorola Droid phones. Based on his interactions with customers, which he enjoyed, he quickly realized he wanted to help others better understand how mobile technology could improve their lives in ways they may not realize.

Brown decided he wanted to help people get more out of their devices. Brown’s mother was the director of several daycare centers, and he started teaching weekend classes when the kids weren’t there. He also discovered podcasting, realizing the potential it had for reaching others.

In this episode we talk about:

Rey Brown’s experienced working in the mobile industry for years long
His different podcasting journey
What does podcasting brought to him since he started it?
The exposure brought to Rey Brown through podcasting
How podcasting help his business?
The great benefits of podcasting
Getting clients out of Podcasting
Podcasting prepares us for new doors
It’s for the individual to determine getting in and starting a podcast
Defining success in our own terms
Making money out of podcasting
Podcasting as a marketing and media tool
Starting a podcast when launching a coaching class
The reason why Rey started smartphone made easy
Helping people to use technology better in their lives
What are the business goals for smartphone made easy?
The advantages of podcasting
Since 2004, why podcasting becomes really hot right now?
Keeping an eye on a goal to have a better and easy podcasting journey
Common mistake people making on a regular basis
The importance of being a great conversationalist and listener
The Darn Technology

What would’ve made it easier/What would you have changed?

“Awesome question. I would probably say doing a better job of having a well define goal and mind and having better expectations. So there’s a saying there’s no wind in comparison because someone out there will always have err then you someone will be bigger, faster, smarter, better so when you can prepare yourself with others and you can win their battle. So my podcasting journey with many others would have been easier if we would have keep our eye on our goal and not look at what others around us were doing and ended getting frustrated and were not getting the same result.”

“I would say doing research on their guest. Once you know that you have a guest, you can go to if this, then that, set up a trigger or a recipe, you can put in let say their twitter handle or their Facebook link or set up Google spreadsheet and let’s say that you book down a week in advance set up this trigger so that every time they tweet, it goes over to that spreadsheet, that way when you go toward to interview them, if you do interview prep hour before, you can go to that spreadsheet and then you can look at everything that they’ve been talking about and you know exactly what they care about, you know what’s on their mind, what they did yesterday and you can bring all these up during the interview to build report to them and get them to relax and get them to really be comfortable.

When someone is considering a podcast as a medium, how do I know if it’s for me?

“There’s a saying “Begin with an ended mind.” And if somebody end goal is to have a podcast become their full time gig, then yeah, they may start and have money at the top of their mind and there’s nothing wrong with that because we have to define success by our on terms and we have to ask ourselves “hey what do we really want out of this?” So yeah, there are lot of people that starts money out of their mind I would say there’s no right or wrong answer, it’s for the individual to determine.”

“For me, let’s say that I want to start a technology podcast and my end goal would be to interview the founders of twitter or interview some high ranking person at apple then, I would say If I won’t make a penny but I would get to talk to let’s say Tim Cook, just a result of my podcast or talk to the president of the USA for that matter, then I would say “hey it’s pretty successful. I did something that I would probably have never been able to do, if not have been for the podcast, and I may not made dollar amount from it but it fulfils something on my bucket list or it made me someone better so I would begin my podcast with you know what? I’m going to make this podcast something that the President or Tim Cook would want and have a conversation with me. So each and everything that I do, every decisions that I make for my podcast, I have it in mind.”

What are the first mistakes that podcasters often make?

“I would say just not being a great conversationalist and not really listening intently to what the person is saying and not going deep because the thing about social media, social media provides people access to stars, comedians, their idols, friends, whoever, that they normally would not have accessed to. Podcasting does the same thing. So when you have a guest that I would never heard of and you’re talking to this guest. This guest says something really interesting and then you just move on to the next question and basically you don’t have them go deeper, there’s a miss opportunity there and as a mistake that I see a lot of people making, they’re not going as deep with their guests like I don’t mind if guest and I came on with the attention to talk about let’s say five different things but for thirty minutes we only talk about one thing because I would rather go deeper with the guests and just go wide and cover a wide variety of topics and help people in that way.”

Which podcast should I follow, why and how often?

“The Tim Ferris show,The #AskGaryVee Show by Gary Vaynerchuk, and ESPN First take. There’s a new show I’ve listened to a few episode by Chris Brown from Dave Ramsey’s organization and it’s called True Stewardship. I’ve listened to Dave Ramsey show, The Ray Edward show because he talks a lot about copy writing on there and I absolutely love his style. That guy is a tremendous speaker I don’t know how he does it. I also listened to Dan Miller, Mike Hyatt, Social media marketing with Michael Stelzner, and the church that I attend Gateway here in Dallas. “