In this episode, Jacob Kelly, former social media marketing manager of Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, and founder of JAK Marketing brings a ton of value for anyone who wants to learn to turn their creative passions into a business. We talk all about how to stop waiting and start taking action. We also get into the way that the education system may not teach us what we need for business. He talks about how much of what you learn in online business and social media marketing will be learned only by doing. But, that school can in fact give us the foundation to get there.
Trying Not To Give Up
Did you know most people quit producing their podcast by episode seven? Jacob discusses the difficulties of persisting, but how to build systems and habits that will help you surpass this seven episode barrier.
Jacob has shown perseverance as he has gone from episode zero to well over a hundred with hardly missing a beat. We discussed the idea that as creative people we need to find ways to carve our own paths. This can be in our own work, or in our side hustles. Or both.
Jacob is the founder of JAKMarketing and hosts the hit podcast My Social Life, in partnership with Trufan. We went deep into the topics that are discussed on his podcast. Specifically how we are often curating our own social media content to build a reputation, but that there is always a real person behind the feed and stories.
We discussed in great detail how to start a podcast, from the technology requirements to editing, uploading and everything in between. Jacob answers questions like how did you get started? What is the free way to start a podcast? And how do we go about marketing each episode to get the most engagement.
Finally, we discussed that having purpose and meaning in our work is so important. Jacob shared his own current learning goals and some wisdom for young entrepreneurs. This is one of those episodes that could have went on for days. You are sure to learn a lot from giving this one a listen.
Keys To Starting A Podcast
- I have lists all over the place. I have a list on Twitter of people to D.M. to come on a podcast. I have a folder on my Instagram of photos I've saved of people to reach out to. I also have a note on my phone that I write in when people come to me, or I see their stuff. So I have lists all over the place. I'll find those and I'll start messaging people.
- It is different being a guest, but I actually love being the interviewee because in every single podcast I get something different out of being the guest. Right? I think part of my love of being a guest is because if I ever have a job interview or something, I would do far better than I would before.
- I found that I learned by doing, I learned so much more by doing and I figured out my podcast interview cadence. I figured out how to edit better. I figured out how to read people better. There's just things that you're only going to be able to learn by actually doing it. So what I always tell people is to just start!
- I think it was the commitment to having my first guest that got me from planning to taking action on the podcast. It held me accountable to getting it together and figuring out how to edit and all that stuff.
- Anchor is completely free, but I was being fancy and I got Simplecast. Fifteen bucks a month, I believe is what the charge is and again, it's very similar to anchor, a little bit different. It comes with its own website for your podcast and you can brand it yourself.
- It's great for preserving your audio. If anything weird happens and it’s the best sounding audio quality of anything that I've ever used to record audio remotely. With Zoom, it would transmit from my computer to your computer and record on your computer. When it's recording straight into your computer, it keeps it in a higher audio quality.
- A negative is the amount of time commitment that podcasting takes. But to not scare anybody listening to this, it doesn't have to be that way. I don't have to do any of that. I choose to. If you want to just sit down, you can literally stop recording, schedule and be done with it and spend two minutes editing the podcast. With my personality type, I have to do it that way. But you don't have to if you're starting.
High School Creativity And Business
Jacob talks about his creativity growing up and how it actually started with an interest in the film industry. He started out wanting to be a filmmaker in a role of director and writer. But, he found very little outlet for that passion. And social media was yet to be an interconnected space where he could do as much self learning as someone could now.
We talked about the fact that now, even though it’s not too long later, it’s much clearer that you can find very high quality learning opportunities on google, or social media platforms.
But, turning to where there were possibilities in highschool, he got interested in business and enrolled in a specific highschool program where he got to make his first pitch for investment dollars. Funny enough, that became a digital media agency to bring local businesses a greater return on marketing investments.
He explains how education, both in highschool and college didn’t lead to specifics for starting his businesses. But that it did establish a solid foundation for him to build off of. While there is a lot of hate for formal education, it can really create a base for us to then go pursue strengths and interests on.
Memorable Quotes
“It was pretty quickly on, that I realized the relationships I'm going to form through the podcast are far more valuable or equally as valuable as the downloads. My podcast has connected me with people literally all over the world, Australia, England, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Florida, all over the world.”
“I didn't start recording because I didn't think I was ready. I had to figure out the podcast name, had to come up with cover art and I had to be able to do my intro and had to know who I was going to interview. I had to figure out how to get guests and how to do interviews. You could have given me another six months of trying to figure it out. I still wouldn't have been ready because I found that I only learned by doing.”
“Just start, especially for your audience. I think that's going to be key. To stop debating and start doing because you're going to learn. You're never going to be ready by thinking, planning and strategizing. I understand that it does have a place and that can be important. But there's a point where it becomes counterproductive, so just start and you'll figure it out along the way.”
Guest Bio
Jacob Kelly got his start in sports social media at 19 years old as the Digital Manager for the Ottawa 67’s of the Ontario Hockey League. He built their social marketing strategy and scaled the platforms to great heights, earning and approximate earned media value of $1,480,000 in his time with the team.
In January 2020, Jacob started his own company, JAK Marketing and has since taken it full time. Prior to running this agency, he was the Digital Manager for the Ottawa REDBLACKS, responsible for all social media channels, email and web content.
In addition to the CFL day job, he leveraged his podcasting experience to launch a second show, called REDBLACKS Unfiltered, which launched at the top of the football podcast charts.
In partnership with Trufan, Jacob hosts the hit podcast “My Social Life”. A podcast that he started a few years ago to tell the stories behind the people on social media.
He continues to be a leader in the podcast space and has interviewed many influencers in the online marketing world. He’s interviewed over a hundred people, including YouTuber JustDustin, Karla Gregg, Nik Sharma, Sean Does Magic and more!
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