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[00:00:00] hector: N Y p fam. Welcome back to another episode, and today is another episode with a fantastic guest and actually a repeat guest, one of the few repeat guests that we've had on the show. Mr. Dr. Joe Solutio. he is the founder of the Edup Network, And if you wanna learn how to grow a network, the benefits of growing a network and all the things that come along with that, go back and listen to the first episode with Joe. But today we talk about writing a book from a podcast And how a podcast actually led to writing a book, and it's a fantastic interview and something that I've been thinking about doing, and I know a lot of people have been thinking about doing, which is turning their podcast interviews into a book And Joe's now hundreds of episodes in And he's been able to take a lot of the content that has come up in those interviews and turn those into a book that people can read. And so we talk about all the benefits that come along with that.

[00:00:52] hector: We also talk about the challenges that come along with writing a book, but it is a fantastic interview with a good friend of mine. So without further ado, let's get in today's episode with Dr. Joe Solutio.

[00:01:04] hector: Guys. N yp audience, I want you to welcome back for a second time, Mr. Joe Solutio. is it Dr. Joe?

[00:01:10] gina: It is now, Yeah, since 2019.

[00:01:13] hector: congrats on that. And I know we were at a wedding over the weekend and someone was saying, it was interesting the dad, and he had doctor at the beginning and someone made a comment and we're like, Damn, if if I went through all that work, I would make sure they called me doctor as well.

[00:01:24] hector: So I wanted to give you your due if that was the

[00:01:27] gina: Well, thank you. Joe's fine. Joe's fine. You know, they say if you're a medical doctor you have to do that, but if you're an educational doctor, there's juries out,

[00:01:33] hector: that's funny. Well Joe, thanks for coming back and. Time around. I would encourage you guys to go back and listen to the last episode with Joe. We talked about building a network, growing a network, and all the cool things that he's been doing with the Edit Network.

[00:01:42] hector: This time we're gonna focus on a little bit different. He's actually about a month away as of this recording, and I'm, sure as you guys are listening to it, the book is gonna be available for you to go out and read. well, I'll let him kind of explain how it came, but the podcast.

[00:01:55] hector: I think was a big part of birthing the book. So Joe, you wanna kinda wanna share that story and on the, how the podcast connected to the book or kind of what that through line was.

[00:02:04] gina: Yeah, you know, we, uh, the yet up experience of a podcast, of course, it's a higher education focus podcast, and we started, at the pandemic. We started January 25th was our first episode, January 25th, 2020. So We're like, Oh yeah, we're just gonna have fun with this podcasting thing in about nine episodes in then it was covid everything.

[00:02:21] gina: And so we were able to document through that process almost, what Covid did to higher education. And so my co-founder Vin Freight Test said really early on, he said, You know what? Someday we're gonna write a book with all these episodes. So let's start asking the same question to every guest to end the episode.

[00:02:37] gina: And it was, what do you see as the future of higher education? So, All these episodes

[00:02:46] gina: we've done 500 and something now, 508, I think five 15, somewhere around there. But the first bit we go back and you listen and of course they're a lot rougher than they are now. But we asked all these guests, what's the future of higher ed?

[00:02:53] gina: So we started to create book content really early on by asking that one question. And so we took a hundred interviews with college and university presidents and. Distilled those down. I got a co-author, her name is Kate Colbert, and she's doing a lot of the heavy lifting and coding and quoting and all that stuff.

[00:03:09] gina: And we take a hundred interviews with the college presidents and we distill it down to about five really big themes and we're writing a book about it. And that was, I think one of the big ideas we had at the beginning is like, what do we do with all this content and let's try to write a book.

[00:03:21] gina: And it all came together couple years later.

[00:03:23] hector: Has that made it easier or harder to write a book? Having all of that, you know, raw material to work with. Right. has that been cumbersome or has that made it the process easier?

[00:03:32] gina: Boy, that is a good question because I think my answer would be different before than it is now, and there's gotta be like a content sweet spot in there to write a book. We felt like a hundred was like a cool. Because if we're gonna sell a book, , but then we get to writing, it's like, how do

[00:03:50] gina: we get to this point. How do you take a hundred college and university presidents? Who do you highlight? You can't highlight all 100. So if you're gonna highlight some, how do you pick and where, How do the quotes have relevance? And there's just an overwhelming amount of content. So I. going in. It was not enough content in my mind, like we need more.

[00:04:06] gina: And then now coming out of it, we could have written a book with 10 college and university presidents. We could have written a book. So it's kind of a little bit of both to be honest, but it is an overwhelming amount of content when you get down to the richness. You're talking about an industry going through incredible change and students and parents and brothers and sisters, and everybody's experiencing higher ed.

[00:04:24] gina: Even those. Are telling you why they're not experienced higher ed. So there's so much to write about and so many people that have something to say. So it has been a balancing act to say the least.

[00:04:33] hector: A lot of people might say, Why spend the time writing the book? You've got the podcast, so why? the. And in your guys' mind, because it's a lot of effort, it's a lot of time, it can get expensive. I could imagine. So in your eyes, what makes it worth it to, take on this, whole new undertaking and, medium.

[00:04:51] gina: Yeah, that's important to the overall strategy, right? So I think, we knew originally that the, depth of information we had could warrant a book. Now we couldn't write it. I'm not a book writer and neither. Right, my co-founder. So we needed to find somebody that went, Yes, look at all your great content.

[00:05:08] gina: We could write a book with this. So that's what made it worth it in the first place, was finding somebody that was not us to do a lot of the work, right? Because if you sit down and you think about writing a book, it's like writing a dissertation. And I ain't about to write one of those again.

[00:05:20] gina: I already did that once. It ain't happening again. We found a paint, a purple unicorn, and our co-founder, who has higher ed experience was on a higher ed board and was an author of two other of our own books. And so it kind of lined up and from that point on the worth for us comes in expertise in the field, but then how do we leverage it?

[00:05:37] gina: Into keynote speaking opportunities. It's not just selling books. It's about how to become an authority in space. And, there's so many conferences in higher ed, so how do we speak at those conferences and come to those places and speak and end up keynoting. And then what comes of it, you know, there's, more episodes now that we have done since the hundred, so do we have like The PDF of the next 50 and the next 50 after that. And so we are thinking about it in terms of almost like a series at some point too. So I think that's what makes it worth it for us, is that we. Compelled to do something with the content. not everybody does listen to podcasts. To your point, not everybody listens to podcasts.

[00:06:10] gina: And so if there's a fan of the podcast that looks at it and goes, Oh wow, they've done 300 episodes, how could I ever go back and catch up? Well, let me catch you up with the book. And then you could come into episode 515 like you never needed to go back to, listen to the others. So it was just a strategy to meet people where they are with their learning preference.

[00:06:27] hector: That's a great point that it's not only about reaching new audiences, but it's also about being a little bit of a bridge to, new audiences and what a great point you guys had thought about the fact that it will one day become a book and so you started to ask questions. In that regard, is there anything else that you guys did that you were thankful? Like, thankfully we did this because now, it made rest of the process so much easier.

[00:06:49] gina: Yeah, I would say there was some intentionality in the who, when we were going for guests originally. You know, we wanted to be as diverse as possible with who we interviewed and higher education. you may have tunnel listeners that really don't care about higher ed, but if you think about your own industry or how you're podcasting, what you're podcasting about, we wanted to make sure we interviewed enough guests from.

[00:07:10] gina: Different backgrounds to appeal to enough of an audience, right? So we were really trying to cast a wide net. So we, tried to find as many women presidents as possible, and black and brown presidents and Latino presidents so that we could diversify the content and the perspective, right? perspective for us was critically important.

[00:07:27] gina: Everybody's coming from a different spot in an industry. Like I say, you may not care about higher ed now, but you know somebody that does, or you. Soon if your kids try to go to school. So there's always this real critical importance to the industry. But I think that was a big key for us was as many voices as possible.

[00:07:42] gina: And what ended up happening is people found out that we never said no, Hector, I'll be honest with you. at the beginning, we were like, Yes, We'll interview. Yes, we'll interview. Yes. We'll, I. And then I was booked out, Elvin books, He like books me and then he does a lot of the backend stuff. So he's booking me and I've two or three episodes a day.

[00:07:58] gina: You know, I was trying to hold the job and I was like, this cannot happen. So not that we have started saying no, but we're. Pushing things out further. And that's the part I hate cuz you know somebody that's awesome comes on and now it's March of 2023 before I get them. And it's very difficult to say yes to everyone.

[00:08:14] gina: So it's about balancing the diverse voice with wanting to service everybody at the same time.

[00:08:19] hector: You've had to create, I know you've had to make some decisions about your output and I've talked a lot about just publishing more often and you know, there's probably, I think an episode that we did about that. Go back and listen to it. If not, we'll make one because it's so important for people to realize that that is an option.

[00:08:35] hector: However, you guys, and I know Alvin, he's a workhorse and uh, so I'm not surprised you know, just yet a throttle him a little bit. But you guys have experimented with all sorts of. Publishing schedules, releasing all sorts of different amounts of episodes per week. Can you talk about what that journey has been like and kind of you've feel like you've now found a sweet spot.

[00:08:53] hector: Can you share a little bit about, maybe what that is for you guys?

[00:08:55] gina: Yeah, so Elvin and I both have marketing backgrounds, so we're always about testing, how do we test this, test that. So of course we started out like everybody else, we started with one episode a week, and originally we did release three at the same time. Like we didn't just. Publish one. We published all three at the same time.

[00:09:10] gina: Cuz we felt like, well it's Netflix and if you go and you are in a watch Netflix show, you wanna go watch the second episode right when you want it. So if we did three, maybe we get you hooked to wait for number four. So that was kind of like a cluster, a cluster bomb, so to speak. And then because of the demand and we were actively recruiting guests, it would go one to.

[00:09:26] gina: We were doing like Monday and Tuesday, then it went to three. We were releasing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Then it went four. We were doing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. Then it got to five and every day podcast, and then we started doing bonus episodes on Saturday. So we were doing six a week for now.

[00:09:43] gina: Think about the recording of that,

[00:09:44] hector: The sixth one was the bonus one.

[00:09:46] gina: The bonus. Yeah. I mean, he had to go through the first five to get the bonus. But we were like, we just can't put out a six episode. We have to call it something different. But said, Okay, we'll do on the Friday and Saturday ones, we'll do 10 minute podcasts and the rest of them will do 40.

[00:09:58] gina: And then we said, What about a 20 minute episode? And so we started calling them different things like , what's the brand for the short episode? What's the brand for the long episode? So it, it was too much, Right? We had full-time jobs, so that was too much.

[00:10:08] gina: So we really scaled it back to three and we tested right. we felt like the feedback we got from people when we got to six, it was like, we can't keep up with your content. There's just too much. There's too much. So like, okay, we'll go back to three. Even that I think can be rough sometimes for people who are listening every day or whatever.

[00:10:24] gina: And there are a lot more people out there listening than we ever. and we think a lot of that is due to what you suggest and your advice, which I follow on LinkedIn, publish more. That was us. Well,

[00:10:33] gina: what if we publish more episodes? Yeah. It might be the same person listening twice, but they're more likely to tell somebody about it if they hear it more often, So it was back to the old marketing tactics of, how many times do you have to hear a message before it sinks in, seven times or whatever it is. So, Published and published and published until we found a sweet spot, and we would look at our fluctuations in audience. And for us, sometimes it wasn't about how many people listen to the podcast, but how many companies listened to the podcast that wanted to be part of it, whether it was through advertising or whatever.

[00:11:01] gina: So there were two different audiences we were trying to serve as well.

[00:11:04] hector: Yeah. So now that you've got the book and you've got the podcast and now they're kind of in motion, how do you see the two fitting together? or what sort of things are you kind of thinking about or trying to do to make sure that they leverage each other and are not kind of these siloed?

[00:11:21] gina: One of the most important and significant developments that have come out of the ET Experience podcast, it, its podcast, is our live podcasting, Because we work in industry with. Conferences. We thought, Man, we never have been to a conference where anybody has a podcast there live. So we pitched it to a a great friend of ours, a company called Anthology.

[00:11:39] gina: And they did, they're a big, huge, multi-billion dollar company. And we got with their team, we said, Hey, look, we'll come do it in person. We're gonna bring all of our equipment. We're gonna sit down and we're gonna be at the conference. And you know what? Nobody came over to podcast with us. That's what happened.

[00:11:53] gina: And the first day anyway, and then it warmed up and we did 17 podcasts in three days. And we were publishing them an hour after we recorded them so that people were walking from conference room to conference room listening to the podcast of their peers while they were going to session a session. And so, I imagine us that when we go to the next conference to your question about how do we leverage these things together, The book will be there.

[00:12:13] gina: The book will be there for sale. And because the book is based on our interviews with people in higher ed, we can keynote about the book, we can represent the ed experience brand and have the book there simultaneously. that's where the natural synergy was for us, is that, it's kinda like one or the other or both.

[00:12:28] gina: But if you just want one, you get it. If you want the other, you get it. But if you want both, we.

[00:12:32] hector: I'm fascinated by this. Live podcasting thing. You know, we've done something similar at Traffic and Conversion Summit. It's a big marketing conference. We had a Volkswagen booth, like a Volkswagen beat, but uh, the van outfitted with and rigged up with some mics and it was kind of the cool thing.

[00:12:48] hector: And it was really awesome cuz you were able to, bang out a ton of interviews in a short period of time. Everyone's there. But I'm curious for you guys. How and what was your thought process, or, I'd love to hear some of your insights I just think that the concept of going and doing that is I think there's something really there and I think it's gonna take off in the next little bit and people are gonna see more and more of it.

[00:13:06] gina: Yeah, I think so too, right? Because I mean, it's just a combination of everything. That's cool, right? You go to like a higher ed conference. You go to a conference. They're not, sometimes they're not awesome. I mean, there's moments, there's boring moments or whatever. What do you do between sessions, right?

[00:13:20] gina: There's always at these conference, no matter what industry you go, Session. It has meaning. And then what do you do in the middle of it? People are walking around, they're talking, whatever. What if in between those sessions, they could stop, they could talk about their experience at the conference.

[00:13:33] gina: And then the conference, of course, is getting free testimonials, right? So that's why they want you there is because you're gonna, you know, how is your experience at x, y, xyz, Oh, I love xyz. You know, so they're getting these walking, breathing testimonials in real time. And the institution for people who we interview, Or getting free marketing for their college.

[00:13:50] gina: , we were paid to go and podcast. So we'll interview anybody. And so you can be from a small college or a big college or a company, an ed tech company, and we're gonna sit down, we're gonna ask you about your company, and we're gonna talk about what's going on in higher ed, and we're gonna give you that experience.

[00:14:03] gina: And then you sit down and you throw the headphones on. And you throw the mic on, right? Hector isn't there? This like, who the heck are these podcasters? Who are all these podcasters that are out there? And how do you. I hear that all the time. Like, how do you do this podcasting thing?

[00:14:15] hector: What's. That just recording in. Now granted it was a Volkswagen van, but it was just a spectacle. People were coming up and taking pictures and recording videos of just the recording. They didn't even know who was in their recording, but it is cool

[00:14:26] gina: It's the experience and so these conferences want you to have a good experience. We had one guy we sat with that first conference that said best part of the conference was when he came to the podcast cuz it was just like this, I dunno, it satisfies your, ability. You wanna be a star a little bit and you have your mic time.

[00:14:41] gina: It's just cool,

[00:14:42] hector: Yeah, it gives you your little 15 minutes.

[00:14:44] gina: Yeah.

[00:14:46] hector: So, Joe, this has been really fun. I'm curious. Last couple of things here. You have a. very niche audience and one that a lot of people might make excuses about and go, Well, my demographic, they're highly educated.

[00:14:59] hector: They're maybe a little older. They're, they're whatever. Right? but you guys have really built a thriving community. of people who have figured it out. And so I'm curious what that experience has been like, kind of, seeing this, community grow. and if there's any advice for people who are maybe making excuses about, well, my audience is this, or my audience is that because, you you guys have kind of bucked all.

[00:15:24] gina: I mean, I know profile and, begin to understand all the different audiences out there, but I will tell you a higher education audience was very hard to break into. you think about higher education professionals in universities and colleges. podcasting, you know, the demographic of your professors, of your presidents, of your administrators is older, not younger typically.

[00:15:45] gina: And we had a really hard time at first, like, breaking into the industry. But we found our. diamonds in the rough People that listened to the podcast that we're in our demo, that we're passionate about education, that helped us boost our message and we included them in the process.

[00:16:00] gina: You know, I like to say we're like a crowdsourced higher education podcast, and we listened to the other ones out there that were. Not awesome. And we said, How do we make hours more fun? Because if you're gonna listen to something, it can't be boring, right? People wanna listen because it engages them. So you have to find ways.

[00:16:15] gina: To engage people. And so we thought, how do we do this? Can we play a game in the middle? higher ed people gonna want to play a game. You know, I started something called Higher Ed Word Association in the middle of my podcast where I literally stop the episode and I say, It's higher ed word association.

[00:16:28] gina: I'm gonna give you a statement and you're gonna tell me exactly what's on your mind when I say it. So I'll say something like, Oh, I don't know. drops, students who drop outta class, what's on your mind. And so right on the spot, the guest has to tell me what comes to mind and elaborate on it.

[00:16:40] gina: And it just kind of keeps a different type of energy going. I've, done, true false questions. I've just kind of broken it up so that I can get a laugh or two outta the audience while I talk about something that's critically important, which is educating our communities. So, you know, I think that's, you gotta figure out how to serve your audience in.

[00:16:56] gina: That brings more people in. How do you serve your core? How do you bring more people in? And there's a strategy that has to be built around that. It just doesn't happen for no reason.

[00:17:05] hector: .

[00:17:05] hector: Couple questions to get us outta here. I know Elvin does a lot of the production law, the back end. Is there a favorite tool or e piece of equipment that you that you stand by?

[00:17:14] hector: If someone is asking you, you know, Hey, I'm about to get into podcasting. Is there something that you feel confident and excited about? Actually recommend?

[00:17:20] gina: You know Elvin, if he were here, he would tell you, he does everything on his phone. So he does all the graph design, he does all the editing, he does everything on his phone, and he does it in the bathroom while his kids are sleeping because he lives in a New York City apartment with one or two bedroom.

[00:17:33] gina: So he would tell you if it's not accessible on my mobile, wouldn't use it. So I don't know exactly what he is using, but I do know that it has to have that level of convenience for him.

[00:17:40] hector: I've tried to get him on before and he's always deferred to you, but I think. He's the real mastermind

[00:17:45] gina: he's the mastermind, let's be honest. He put me on, he is like, You're better on the mic. You do all the mic work, and I'll sit behind the scenes. I'll be honest with you, I do have a Zoom pod track p. This is my deal. It's my baby. So one of the things I said, and back to my original point in your question, how do I diversify my audience?

[00:18:00] gina: I brought in iNode sound effects. That was one of the ways I evolved. And so I downloaded all these sounds. I've got like 16 different sounds and I rotate 'em. And while my guests are talking, I hit sound effects, right? Like, I don't know, water splashing or a bomb going off, or you know, mic drops or words that say fabulous or amazing.

[00:18:19] gina: So my guests have a different type of podcast experience, so Pod Jack P eight,

[00:18:24] hector: I love

[00:18:25] gina: and I do it in episode and it's hard, man, that's hard to do to time those things, right?

[00:18:30] hector: so hard. but done well, and I think to your point, constantly looking to level up is something that, you have to do and find ways to, do within your constraints because it seems like, that's not gonna get added by Alvin on the toilet. So you need to do it live there in.

[00:18:45] gina: Yeah. Sometimes it's two or three seconds late, I tell my guests that in advance,

[00:18:48] hector: so.

[00:18:48] hector: is there anything you're excited about when it comes to podcasting? When you think about, I don't know, whether it's tech or videos or Google or YouTube or, you know, I could even maybe in regards to your book, just when you think about the future of, your show even, what do you get excited about?

[00:19:01] gina: for us, it's, continuing to have the conversation around helping people get education or experience it. I would say for the broader podcasting, universe, eliminating pod fa I think, for people that start podcasts, it's important to stick.

[00:19:15] gina: Because there is a true, valuable medium here that companies are becoming more and more interested in. And it can't be just, Oh, let me start a podcast and do a couple episodes and see what happens. Because I think that can hurt the overall industry. It shows us to not be serious, producers and media influencers that we are.

[00:19:31] gina: So if you're gonna start a podcast, come up with something good and stick with it, Do, once a month for 12 months, and just stick with it over a period of time and make it a daily habit. and then increase your number of episodes from there. But this is a serious media outlet.

[00:19:44] gina: I mean, we've had over 200,000 downloads in our 500 episodes. It's created incredible partnerships and networking opportunities and everything on top of the podcast itself. If you know what you're

[00:19:54] hector: Yeah. So valuable. And I had never really seen what people were talking about when they were poo-pooing the free hosting platforms, you know? but that makes sense. And I get that now because Yeah, you are grouped in a little bit with all of the, the other ones. And so we collectively kind of have to raise our, our game. Joe, what's the name of the book? By the time this comes out, people can go get it. Can you let us know where and what to get?

[00:20:15] gina: That's called commencement, The beginning of a new era in higher education with insights from a hundred plus college and university presidents. It is on Amazon. Just look up commencement and if you start typing the beginning, you'll, find it real fast. And, you can go to commencement the book.com if you wanna buy it direct.

[00:20:31] gina: And, we appreciate anybody who supports us and listens and of course listen to this podcast cuz Hector gives out great advice and having great information on. Appreciate you.

[00:20:39] hector: Yeah. And the add up experience and is there any. Anywhere else people should go and connect with.

[00:20:44] gina: You can get me on LinkedIn. I'm easy to find Joe Solutio, and then of course www.edexperience.com.

[00:20:51] hector: Well, Joe, congrats on the book. Congrats on all the success. And for some reason, I feel like I'm the guy on the side of the marathon, like holding the cup, as you're running by. And I don't even feel like that. Maybe I'm just sitting there waving with a sign.

[00:21:04] hector: Maybe I

[00:21:04] hector: just have a sign

[00:21:05] hector: that's

[00:21:05] hector: say, Go, go.

[00:21:06] gina: , Yeah, if you had water, I would take it. I would take a drink. Some days I'm gonna need it.

[00:21:10] hector: well, thanks again for coming on and , guys, go get the book and go listen to the podcast and we'll see you guys on the next one.