Episode 100
To celebrate Episode 100, I’m doing something different, letting myself be interviewed by the lovely Amanda Robinson (@shewakeboards) of http://www.socialsavvysociety.com/ fame. She’s a digital marketer now and former competitive wakeboarder (hence the show title).
We talk about me, my plans for the podcast and about my books at http://stonehampress.com. This was a live show so contains lots of references to people and things that sometimes aren’t apparent. Much of the extreme “live-inness” has been removed in the edit though….
Introduction
Amanda Robinson: We are live and I’m bringing to you an interview with Tim Lewis for his Begin Self Publishing episode number 100. We’re doing things a little bit differently this time. I am interviewing Tim Lewis, normally Tim is interviewing other people. But we’re switching it up and we’re gonna put Tim in the hot seat. Tim, do you want to give any information about what we’re doing here?
Tim Lewis: I believe you’re gonna ask me a hundred questions, which you’ve only sent me about 10 of them and that may be only because you’ve only written 10 of them or because you’ve got a cunning plan for the other 90 questions that you’re not telling me about.
Amanda Robinson: I know we’ve got a bit of a time limit here. Chances of me getting through all a hundred, this could end up being the most epic hundredth episode we’ve ever done. We’re gonna break this up, we’re gonna do a couple sections. Right off the bat we’re gonna put you into a tough spot and have you answer a whole bunch of questions without thinking.
Amanda Robinson: They’re gonna be one word answers, maybe two words and you’re just gonna go for it. So I’m just gonna rapid fire a whole bunch of questions at you and you need to answer them. Are you comfortable with that?
Tim Lewis: No, but I’ll do it anyway.
Amanda Robinson: Okay, we’ll work that out. Then I’m going to dive into some more serious questions, hold the tissues close, if we cry it’s all good. Then we’re going to get into an advice round where I’m going to ask you some questions and we’re going to tap into that wealth of knowledge that you’ve gained over these hundred, well 99 episodes that you’ve recorded. Okay, do you need to sign a waiver?
Tim Lewis: Probably, but again, I’ll pass on that.
Amanda Robinson: You’re passing on the waiver, you’re waiving your rights, we are live right now and you’re ready to go.
Tim Lewis: Yes, of course I’m ready.
Amanda Robinson: All right. I feel like I’ve asked enough permission now and I feel like it’s time to just kind of-
Tim Lewis: Stop being so Canadian and get on with it.
Quick-fire Round
Amanda Robinson: Okay, here we go, are you ready. What is your full name?
Tim Lewis: My full name is Timothy Michael Lewis.
Amanda Robinson: How old are you?
Tim Lewis: 44.
Amanda Robinson: Where do you live?
Tim Lewis: I live in London, England, well actually South Woodford, England.
Amanda Robinson: That was too many syllables there, we’re gonna just go fire a little bit faster here. So don’t over think it. You ready?
Tim Lewis: Yeah.
Amanda Robinson: How many jobs have you had?
Tim Lewis: 3, including this one.
Amanda Robinson: Have you ever been arrested?
Tim Lewis: No.
Amanda Robinson: If you were to ever be arrested for anything, what would you wish that it would be?
Tim Lewis: I wish it was for something cool that was for a cause I believed in. I know it’s probably a tremendously trendy answer. I don’t mind getting arrested for something I believe in, but I wouldn’t want to be arrested for falling over drunk in the street.
Amanda Robinson: So no falling over drunk in the street, no stealing comic books, nothing like that, you’d want it to be something a little more epic like saving kittens. If you were a super hero, which one would you be?
Tim Lewis: I don’t know. I’d probably go for Superman just because he’s kind of cool and I’ve got the glasses and a little bit of the Superman look, so I’m gonna go for that one. Even though they all seem very tortured characters so I’d probably just stay as myself.
Amanda Robinson: Okay, that works. What’s your favourite colour?
Tim Lewis: Blue.
Amanda Robinson: Why?
Tim Lewis: Because everyone else has blue … I do genuinely like blue. Though I’ve noticed my blue green colour perception is a bit different to a lot of other people, so a lot what other people think is green, I think is blue. I may well actually like green, but I don’t necessarily … I call it blue.
Amanda Robinson: Okay, so this is supposed to be a rapid fire question and answer and right now the most simple question of what is your favourite colour ended up being the most rambling answer so far. I would’ve expected the super hero part to be, but that’s okay.
Amanda Robinson: Okay, I’m gonna ask you a few more questions and this time we really need to focus, we need to hunker down, we need to get to know Tim. I don’t want this surface level Tim of you’ve been an amazing podcast interviewer, you have interviewed some really talented people and we don’t get to see the other side of Tim.
Amanda Robinson: We need to tease this out a little more, we really need to put you on the spot and understand what makes Tim tick, but you can’t overthink it Tim, are you ready for this?
Tim Lewis: I am ready.
Amanda Robinson: Okay, let’s go. What’s your biggest fear?
Tim Lewis: I suppose my biggest fear is not doing anything with my life. I’m keeping it brief.
Amanda Robinson: I’m impressed, this is like we’re moving up so we can really get into the good stuff. If you could do one thing differently in your life, what would it be?
Tim Lewis: Take more risks when I was younger.
Amanda Robinson: If you could do one thing differently starting tomorrow, what would it be?
Tim Lewis: Do more live video. But this might put me off.
In-Depth
Amanda Robinson: Okay, I’ll go a little more gentle on you. Why don’t I take off the pressure on the questions and rapid fire answer because we seem to be failing miserably at the rapid fire part.
Amanda Robinson: I’m gonna start asking you some questions about your podcast. You are celebrating your hundredth episode and we’re live recording this right now. This is going to be cut and put into a podcast recording.
Amanda Robinson: I want to dive into that a little bit deeper. I want to get a better understanding of out of doing 99 official episodes, this being your hundredth, I want you to think back and I want you to give us a little behind the scenes look, not a standard marketing answer, how to the stuff that people want to hear, I want to know from Tim Lewis, what is it about doing this many episodes that you have been passionate about, what have you loved, what has been the biggest challenge, what is difficult, what is amazing?
Amanda Robinson: I just want to get the behind the scenes look at your raw open thoughts on getting this far with your podcast.
Tim Lewis: You’ve gone from asking me quick fire questions to asking me a massive compound question.
Amanda Robinson: You’ve gotta keep Tim Lewis on his toes.
Tim Lewis: One thing I would say and I say this to people is that my idea of how a podcast was gonna change my life were just totally and utterly wrong when I started it. You all kind of think you’re gonna get thousands of downloads and massive success and things from the podcast itself and actually that hasn’t happened. There’s probably about 50 or so people who immediately download the show every week, so they would, I guess, be the subscribers.
Tim Lewis: That’s obviously 50 people who didn’t necessarily know me before or maybe know me a little bit. But the thing that has amazed me is the connections you make with people from a podcast. Any original idea I had of creating a self publishing course, which I … If you’ve listened to some of the old episodes, I may have said I’m gonna create a course, I’m gonna create a course, still haven’t created it. After all this time-
Amanda Robinson: Still saying that up until recently.
Tim Lewis: Yeah. I may eventually do that, I don’t know. But actually it’s just a fantastic medium for connecting with people and learning as well. My own personal sort of lessons from doing the interviews have been amazing, so it’s worthwhile in that regard doing a podcast. The thing is I kind of thought I knew a fair amount about self publishing when I started the podcast, but I know so much more now, enough to know that I don’t really know as much as I thought I did in the first place.
Amanda Robinson: Let’s talk about some of the challenges. You and I have talked offline a little bit about the challenges of staying consistent and keeping up with it and keeping current and where your heart is and what you’ve been enjoying and sometimes how that can change your behaviour. Do you want to talk a little bit about that for me?
Tim Lewis: I’ve always gone for basically the idea that podcasting almost like the idea of an audio-book. There are types of two podcasts, in my view, and I listen to both, there are those where it’s almost a life show recorded and they say all the ums and ahs and people go off on tangents and the rest of it. I’m much more with the audio book style, so I will edit out bits where the person goes off on a tangent, so I’m going to have a great amount of fun on this show editing it because I’m going all over the shop with the answers.
Tim Lewis: It actually takes me a lot of work to do each show, it’s probably like a day and a half, probably two, especially since I’ve started doing automated transcriptions. I think they actually do help the show a lot in terms of getting people to the website.
Amanda Robinson: I’m gonna reign you back in and I’m still trying to dive into the deep dive part of Tim, not the podcaster Tim, I want to get a little bit further in. I want to know, when it comes to podcasting you’ve been talking a little bit about perhaps not continuing with the same format that you’ve been doing or with the same speed that you’ve been doing or the same consistency. Dive into what that is and then tell us a little bit more about why.
Plans for the Future
Tim Lewis: My plan from beyond episode 100 is to go once every two weeks, I would say fortnightly, but I know nobody outside the UK knows what fortnightly means, so once every two weeks I’ll do a show. I’m probably gonna hire a guy to do the editing for me because I do everything myself at the moment. If I do two shows a month then that’s kind of affordable, if I’m doing four shows a month less so!
Tim Lewis: I did think about doing a Cynthia Sanchez… There was a Pinterest expert called Cynthia Sanchez and she basically just did episode 100 and said on that show: “I’m just finishing the podcast completely”. I thought about doing that because I’m always obsessed with numbers, but I thought I actually enjoy doing the podcast, I want to keep doing it.
Tim Lewis: But I’m spending all my time doing the podcast and I’ve not got enough time for all of these other projects I want to do like creating the course etc, even though I might never actually create the course. I’ll just leave this as a resource for self publishers on itself.
Amanda Robinson: I think I need to be your accountabilibuddy, I think I need to hold you accountable to creating a course. Even if it’s just one video that someone pays you 99 cents on iTunes for, I think it’s my duty to hold you accountable.
Amanda Robinson: I think honestly just jumping in here with an opinion, I would be sad if you discontinued the podcast after episode hundred. I’ll just share my personal experience of seeing you podcasting. It’s been inspiring to me, I’ve wanted to do podcasting, I’ve been sitting back and watching everybody else around me do it and I’ve been wanting to, never diving in.
Amanda Robinson: But what’s it done for me is knowing you and watching how you go about your scheduling, watching how you approach guests, watching how you onboard them onto the show, watching you structure it, just having a little bit of a closer look of how you build it and how you run it, has been really inspiring to me. I’ve actually taken some of those tips and tricks and I’ve woven them into other parts of my business.
Amanda Robinson: So you’ve been an inspiration to me in ways that you don’t even know and it does centre around your podcasting. It feels like a little part of me would die inside if you stopped podcasting, but I completely understand that podcasting requires a lot of consistency and it pretty much owns you, especially in the structure and the format that you’ve built and the quality that you bring to your podcast. It owns a pretty big part of your life right now.
Tim Lewis: This is the thing, you can do podcasting where you’re basically just recording something and shoving it out there. That works at the moment, there are a lot of very popular podcasts where people are just doing that. But I’m always thinking if you’re looking at quality in a product, you’ve got to be looking about where things are gonna be, so in a year or twos time when there’ll be so many more podcasts out there.
Tim Lewis: If you’ve not got a higher quality produced one, then it’s gonna be difficult to keep going in my opinion. That’s why I think take the time to produce it into a good show. Some of my episodes have been better … If you go back and actually listen to the first sort of 10 episodes, there were lots of audio tricks and things I just didn’t do. I didn’t even know about noise removal really until about episode sort of 30.
Tim Lewis: Also the first 10 episodes or so, it sounds like I’m talking accelerated because I literally took every single gap of any significant length out of it and I’m kind of a bit loathe to actually listen to those episodes again. I probably should do it because I maybe could remaster them in some way.
Tim Lewis: It was intended to be just about 20 episodes where I take people through an audio course for self publishing, but then I kind of started interviewing people and I got to addicted to interviewing people. It’s kind of turned more into kind of self publishing/direct marketing interview show. I’m not sure the title of it really applied, but I’m gonna keep going with the show.
Tim Lewis: It’ll probably be once every two weeks. I did a load of shows while I was interviewing e-book aggregators and I really should have a follow up show saying this is my opinion on who the best one is. Because I interviewed like five of them and I never did the follow up show, just because I’ve not had enough time to actually prepare the show to do it. It’d be nice to do some of those shows where I actually take doing more stuff in depth. That’s the plan, anyway.
Favourite Shows
Amanda Robinson: That’s the game plan, I like it. This segways nice into one of the other … The next questions that I had for you. I wanted to talk about out of your hundred episodes, the 99 sorry, the 99 episodes that you have done, I wanted to get a better sense of … Can you name two or three of them that have absolutely stood out for you in your mind either in a way that has changed a part of you or in a way that has made an impact on your life or in a way that makes you say oh gosh I’m never doing that ever again.
Tim Lewis: Yes I can. Mark Schaefer’s one actually, Mark Schaefer’s interview jumps out at me. He actually totally hijacked the original topic, which was supposed to be about him getting the rights back to the Tao of Twitter. He’s probably more passionate about self-publishing even than I am. He basically makes the case for why on Earth would anybody want to go with a traditional publisher anymore.
Tim Lewis: Also, the fact that he was promoting his book Known at the time and I think there’s a lot of truth at this idea that you’ve got to just keep plugging away at things until eventually something takes off. This is what I think a lot of Christian business people do well because they’ve already got the faith that eventually it’s all gonna work out and they’ll be successful. The rest of us are like is it really working, are we really gonna get there? Mark is inspiring.
Amanda Robinson: That’s an example of one episode, do you have other examples of … That’s actually a very inspiring episode. Do you have any examples of episodes that you found that were more challenging?
Tim Lewis: Some of my first interviewers were a bit sort of touchy at times. I interviewed Ryan Hanley and he was a lovely guy. He was the second interview I did. It was actually quite a good show in the end and I edited bits out of it but Ryan likes to talk so I had to edit quite … I think the recording went on for about an hour and a bit.
Tim Lewis: Same with Mark Coker actually, the one where Amanda interviews him is a challenging interview. Actually, episode 98 at this time, I have no idea who is gonna be the guest or if I’m gonna do a solo show. Got Ian Anderson Grey recorded and he’s gonna go out after this live event, obviously this’ll be well in the past by the time that happens. But 98, I don’t know so anybody wants to pitch guests for episode 98 who hasn’t been on the show before, can pitch it.
Amanda Robinson: I feel like we’re not supposed to pull back the curtain that far. I’m trying to get a look at Tim, but we’re not supposed to let the cat out of the bag.
Tim Lewis: This is one of the things that nobody ever tells you. I think Michael Hyatt made this point, it’s very easy to compare your backstage with somebody else’s front stage. There’s all sorts of stuff that goes on in the background that people don’t see. It’s very easy to look at Facebook and everybody’s having a great time and they’ll all sort of surfing with whales and doing all sorts of other stuff. Your Facebook feed is basically you in a frozen lake in a canoe with a dog. It’s the only dog that I follow on Facebook.
Amanda Robinson: I feel very special. What you’re not seeing behind my curtain right now is I’m trying very hard … The dog is in the room here and he’s got a squeezie toy and he’s been tearing it to pieces and squeaking the squeaker and I’m trying to distract him while trying to stay focused on Tim.
Amanda Robinson: These are the things that I’m learning on the fly. Outside of fun Facebook feeds and kayaking on ice and Tim reflecting on good episodes and bad episodes, I’m gonna shake it up a little, I’m gonna ask you another random question before I dive back into one last bigger questions that I’ve got for you, does that work?
Tim Lewis: Of course it does, yes.
More weird psychological stuff
Amanda Robinson: Big question and I want you to actually put some meat behind this one. If you could be stuck in an elevator and I mean stuck, the elevators not going anywhere, the doors aren’t opening, it’s stifling hot, you are starving, you probably need to pee, it’s not a good situation, it’s just not good and you’re probably in a building somewhere very stressful that you don’t want to be, if you could be stuck in that elevator with anybody, anyone in the world, alive, dead, current, past, present, who would it be?
Tim Lewis: The Dalai Lama or something, he’d be a good person to be stuck in the lift with just as sort of a … I’d probably get annoyed with him praying in the lift.
Amanda Robinson: Let’s get a first, second and third choice then. Your first choice of being stuck in an elevator in a stressful situation with anybody in the world, anybody, choice number one.
Tim Lewis: I was going for the Dalai Lama as a purely … I think it’d be a good non-stressful person to be stuck in the lift with.
Amanda Robinson: Okay. I’m going to pause a little bit back … We’ve gone from one end of the scale to the other, right now we’re at the other end of the scale. I’m gonna pull us back half way before I pull us back all the way. Pulling us back half way, we already learned about Tim, I’m gonna pull us back up a notch and I want to ask you a question that is not related to podcasting whatsoever. I want to know … I’m asking so that all of us can know, I want to know something about Tim that we don’t know, that is very atypical for Tim. What don’t we know about you that you’re about the share?
Tim Lewis: If I knew what you didn’t know about me then … I’m sure there’s an answer.
Amanda Robinson: Remember this is a PG podcast!
Tim Lewis: This recording can be expletive because I can edit it out.
Amanda Robinson: You gave me those notes before we started the show to keep it clean, I appreciate it. Back onto the question, we’ve given you enough of a delay to think of some. But what is it about you that we don’t already know?
Tim Lewis: For some reason and this is probably absolutely boring story, but I’m gonna say it anyway. I almost managed to lose a student election when I was the only candidate standing.
Amanda Robinson: How?
Tim Lewis: In the University of London, all the elections have reopen nominations. So you have the candidates and you have reopen nominations. I gave such an awful speech saying that I wanted to be the postgraduate student officer and then came and spilled my drink over a woman’s speech that she was gonna give in the next minute when I sat down.
Tim Lewis: I won by one vote and then I didn’t get the place at the university so I resigned it. Then eventually I did get the place to go to that university, but I’d already resigned the post. So I managed to almost lose an election when I was the only candidate.
Amanda Robinson: That actually takes talent. We know you’re talented, but that’s pretty good. Pulling it back to podcasting, I want to … By the way, I love the comments, I love the people who are following this and I love how it’s becoming … It’s a community, this isn’t just a whole bunch of observers and a whole bunch of people watching this, watching and observing and just casting judgement , I like how they’re actually participating and playing along with us.
What would you do if you were starting a podcast now?
Amanda Robinson: This is what makes it fun. Okay, back to an actual real interview question here, now that we’ve come off of putting you in the hot seat and off of random elevators and psychological questions. I just want to know, with your experience that you’ve had from podcasting, I want to know what advice that you have for someone starting out in podcasting or someone who has been podcasting for a little while. What honest, raw, true, Tim has done this before … You’ve got the scars, the blood, sweat and tears. What advice do you have for those people?
Tim Lewis: If I was starting now, I would probably do every show like this one, probably a bit more polished at the end of it, but with a live recording first and then a video version of it. Because that’s the only way I think you can ever really be discovered in podcasting now.
Tim Lewis: It was brought to my mind that they did an infinite dial survey of radio and other listeners. Apparently the average American who listens to podcasts only listens to six podcasts. So if you think about that, you are a new podcaster coming in to start a podcast, you have got to dislodge one of those six people’s podcasts and make them listen to your podcast instead or you can get new people who are starting to listen to the podcast for the first time to listen to your one.
Tim Lewis: But to get new people to podcasting you’ve got to have your podcast somewhere else. You’ve either got to spend on advertising or you’ve got to have it on YouTube or somewhere like that where people can discover it. That was a mistake that I made, I think this is something that’s changed in the last couple of years in podcasting because a lot of the first people who were podcasters, there were so few shows around that more or less anybody could get downloads. But now it’s changed into a more mature.
Tim Lewis: There’s still strong growth in podcasting, there are still gonna be new people picking up the show, but I think just having an audio show to begin with was a little bit naive on my part at the beginning. Though I don’t regret doing it at all, it’s fantastic fun doing podcasting, it’s just time consuming.
Amanda Robinson: You’ve brought up a really good perspective that I hadn’t even thought of about how it is hard to get discovered. I’m just thinking about myself, the average person will have six podcast and that’s their roster, that’s what they listen to and it’s hard to get them introduced to new content or moving off of those or listening to more or other ones. I have a rotation of probably around 25 podcasts that I burn through, I listen to podcasts constantly, it’s a bad addiction.
Amanda Robinson: Back in June 2015 when you first started podcasting, a year ago video wasn’t where it was and there were only a few sort of podcasting pioneers who were using the video tactic, what we’re doing now, interviewing now and then splicing out the audio and dual-purposing that content. There were only a few people that were doing that and even for them I don’t think it really took off, I think it’s been more quite recently that this is starting to become a tactic that I think is almost becoming necessary in podcasting.
Amanda Robinson: That leads me to another question, if you were to change up your podcasting format and if you were to do this on a weekly basis, would this convince you to stick with podcasting on a weekly schedule compared to your existing podcast format?
Tim Lewis: I’m very tempted to do it, I’ve always been very tempted to do another show, possibly multiple other shows. In fact, I’m gonna be an occasional guest podcaster on a show about London a guy from Australia is doing, assuming he ever gets to start off the show, which is gonna be a little bit random.
Tim Lewis: This is something that I kind of understood a Social Media Marketing world for whatever reason and this maybe is an American and Canadian thing, a lot of people find me very funny. I think it would be actually quite amusing to try and do a podcast or some sort of show where I can bring out that humour a bit more.
Tim Lewis: Whether you can do a show on your own and be funny and be a little bit self referential, you would have to be some kind of live event where you could respond to questions or I could try and find a straight man or woman. (responding to comments) Where did all this hashtagging thing come from? These are all irrelevant hashtags that everybody seems to be using nowadays. I quite like it, it’s a fun thing, but it’s like abuse of hashtags.
Amanda Robinson: Abuse of hashtags. You need to put into context for the people who are going to be listening to this, to the audio version after the fact and not actually seeing these hashtags that we’re putting up on screen.
Tim Lewis: This is something that I’ve criticised other people for doing and I’m clearly making the same mistake. What happens … And I hate when other podcasters do it is where you’ve got a video stream and you put the audio out there and then you don’t describe what’s actually appearing. We’re getting lots of hashtag inappropriate comments let’s say on the feed.
Amanda Robinson: Can you describe the current one on screen for us please?
Am I funny?
Tim Lewis: Some people think you’re funny. Some people do think I’m funny, I know it’s bizarre as it may seem but-
Amanda Robinson: That’s comment coming through from Ali who I guarantee you on the regular live broadcast for Social Media Examiner is dying of laughter watching the crowd cast comments.
Tim Lewis: Yeah, I’m definitely good at making witty and not necessarily appropriate comments. Thankfully I’m not overstepping the mark too much, that often can happen at some point. I’ll say something and then maybe that was a bit too far.
Amanda Robinson: I wonder how the staff at Social Media Examiner feel when we’re watching their live broadcast and we’re just hijacking all the comments down the left hand side saying hi to everybody like hi Tim, hi Ali, hi Lowell, hi Jen. Then we’re always laughing at Tim’s witty comments. I always wonder if that’s throwing them off or if that’s distracting or if that’s hard for them to deal with. I always wonder what’s going through their minds when they’re broadcasting live and seeing comments.
Tim Lewis: It’s better than not seeing anything really so that’s always the case. Whenever Jen’s on any broadcast I always try and make her laugh in the comments, it’s a bit unfair really.
More Podcasting Advice
Amanda Robinson: Okay, let me just check … I think I’ve exhausted all of my put you on the spot questions. I was asking you about advice that you would give to other podcasters, I just want to touch on that one more time before we start to migrate off. Because you gave some really good advice that even I hadn’t ever thought of that perspective about how it is hard to be discovered when you’re starting podcasting if you’re doing an audio only podcast and not leveraging other channels to make you more discoverable. From your experience in other realms of podcasting, what advice would you have for someone starting out?
Tim Lewis: Trying to think of all the things … I think learning the audio software or finding somebody who actually can teach you. I took Cliff Ravencraft’s Podcasting A-Z course and that was very good in terms of getting me started. But trouble is Cliff is like an Audition guy and that’s paid and I didn’t want to pay for it so I used Audacity which is free instead.
Tim Lewis: The trouble is I’ve only learned Audacity by what does this button do and I should’ve spent more time before I started podcasting actually learning how to audio edit it. The other thing of course is you can just pay somebody else to do your editing for you, the thing is how ever might good I think I am at audio editing after all this time, I’m sure there are proper audio engineers who … This is where live broadcasts are hard you end up reading the comments and it’s distracting you … We’ve got a question, Tim are you a Mac or PC? I’m on a PC.
Amanda Robinson: I’m on a Mac, which prevented us from starting this on time when we were supposed to because I woke up this morning to an operating system update that basically ground my whole computer to a halt. Tim was very gracious and he pointed out that even though I am typically always late, I always deliver.
Tim Lewis: You always produce the goods in the end, it just takes you awhile.
Amanda Robinson: I get around to it. Back to the advice … Just joining, whose Tim? That’s a good segway into sort of recapping as we’re coming closer to the end of this broadcast. But Tim runs the Being Self Publishing podcast, this is the live recording of his hundredth episode and we have been grilling Tim … I have been grilling Tim with some great questions, some awkward questions and then some podcast advice questions.
Amanda Robinson: We have been juggling it with the lovely comments of our friends and followers here who know us well enough to know what makes us laugh on screen. This is an exciting … I enjoy this a lot. Bringing it back to Tim. Tim, can you give us some final advice and final thoughts on podcasting?
Tim Lewis: I am a tremendous fan of podcasting. It’s not necessarily for everybody and it’s not the way to great riches, but if you want to have a bit of fun, then podcasting is certainly something worth considering. But don’t think it’s gonna pay your mortgage in two episodes. I don’t know if you’ve got any questions about self publishing, but this show is actually about self publishing. It may not have seemed about self publishing, so I’m happy to talk about that regard, trying to steer back to the original intent of the show, it’s turned into a little bit of a marketing show at times.
Amanda Robinson: You surround yourself with very talented marketing people … I’m amazed at some of the talent that you have had on the show. You are an excellent podcaster, you’re an excellent interviewer and you’ve got excellent skills at netting great people and having great conversations. There has been a whole undertone of me trying to tease out exactly why you’re slowing down or refocusing or possibly stopping the podcast, which I think we’ve decided you’re not doing that.
Tim Lewis: No.
Amanda Robinson: Then trying to encourage you to stay with it because it inspires me and I enjoy it so I don’t want Tim to slow down and stop. I do want you to explore all of these other things that you’ve been talking about for a very long time including starting a course and diving into all of these other things that excite you and that inspire you.
Amanda Robinson: I know we talk about a lot of these things when we go to Social Media Marketing World or in Social Media Marketing Society chats and I want to see you continue to run with it, but I also want to see more from Tim. Let me see if I can find that comment, somebody was saying something about they’re excited to see what Tim has coming next. This did start with a question.
Tim Lewis: I think you were asking me what I’ve got planned next and the answer is I’m not entirely sure. But I’ve got a few potential things that I could talk about, prevaricate about. There is the course, whether that will actually happen or not who knows.
Amanda Robinson: You’ve got an accountabilibuddy now, it’s gonna happen.
Tim Lewis: You nominated me as your Facebook live accountability bunny … Buddy and that lasted about 10 minutes, mainly because of the time difference. I wasn’t sure if you were going live the next day or not and I just totally lost … I got totally confused.
The Future
Tim Lewis: One of the ideas I’ve been toying with is basically creating a book from just pure audio. Obviously I’ve been recording lots of podcasts, I’ve got a load of recording equipment. Usually what people do is they create a book using … Just writing it on the keyboard, basically you write a book … You might use dictation software, but you’re in effect creating a text file. Then if you want an audio book done, you either have to sit in front of a studio or something and record it yourself and then you go to ACX, which is a platform for releasing audio books onto Amazon.
Tim Lewis: What I’m toying with the idea is just recording basically a couple of hours of me prevaricating about a topic, editing it down to the same sort of level I would … More than the level I would for podcasts because audio books are a quite lot more work than what most podcasters do. Then transcribing that and then in effect I’ve started with the audio book, release that as an audio book and then release the transcription.
Tim Lewis: As far as I know, nobody’s really done this before so I think it’d be an interesting kind of … Spend of couple of weeks recording a couple of hours of audio for maybe a book about messenger bots or just me trying to set the worlds to rights.
Amanda Robinson: I think you can kill two birds with one stone here. I think that you can … Because I’m supposed to hold you accountable, so I’m trying to find you ways right now to hold you accountable. You can do a course, record your journey, document your journey the whole way and turn that into a course on how you got from A to B to C on publishing a book based on all of your recordings versus going the more traditional way.
Tim Lewis: Yeah.
Amanda Robinson: And don’t fail.
Tim Lewis: I’ve even got a “Failure is Not an Option” mug, I haven’t got it up here at the moment.
Revenge of the Accountability Bunny
Amanda Robinson: I think that I will write a book … This is where the accountability comes in, I shouldn’t be saying this. If you create a course based on your journey of taking your digital recordings and turning them into a book, I will take your course and I will follow it step by step and I will produce a book based on Tim’s teaching.
Tim Lewis: That’s a hostage to fortune. But maybe if we get to episode 200 you can come back and we can both say the course is still going but it’s like … But we’ve got a whole load of new extra accountability listeners now.
Amanda Robinson: Jen’s comment, whose the bunny now? I love these guys, this is great. Okay, I think we are getting to the point where I have exhausted … I do have a billion questions I could ask you. We have exhausted the quality questions and we’ve held the audiences attention for a good long chat here. We’ve kept it PG, thankfully.
Tim Lewis: Yeah.
Amanda Robinson: Lowell saying you’ve ruined this live cast. No, it would be nothing without Lowell.
Tim Lewis: Yeah, I’m sure the hour and four minutes of recording … I can edit it down to a 20 minute episode. (clearly failed..only edited down to 43 minutes)
Amanda Robinson: Keep all the good bits. All right, do we have any final thoughts, any closing thoughts for your hundredth episode?
Tim Lewis: It’s been a really good experience doing a hundred episodes. There have been some weeks where some of the listeners may have noticed the odd, phone-it-in show, I’ve done a short solo show. But even then most of the time they’ve been really fun to do and I’ve usually managed to find some value that I can provide every week, even with the ones where I’ve been ill or a guest has dropped out at the last minute.
Tim Lewis: Every single guest has been great and I wouldn’t necessarily want to go and sort of say some of them are better than others, even though I did. You’ve done a fantastic job as an interviewer, you should consider podcasting or being a video superstar. Obviously you’ve got your slight internet speed problem. Maybe you just need to find some live streaming thing where you can have an automated figure that sings so you can set up the audio.
Amanda Robinson: I like that. Oh no, I don’t like that, Lowell says next episode Tim interviews Amanda Robinson.
Tim Lewis: There’s episode 98, but that would be even more weird in matter that I interview you before you interview me.
Amanda Robinson: I don’t think I like this idea. I don’t know if I’m cool with this. I feel much better being in the driver’s seat. To give you a glimpse at the backend of what we’re doing and how we’re doing this interview, we’re using Belive.tv for this interview to push it to Facebook live. This gives us some control, gives us some lovely things to do where we can show our name badges. I hate the orange, I wish it was pink. Then I can read the comments, I can change the screen configuration. But you’ll notice that’s it’s I can do these things, so I’ve got a little more control on my end.
Tim Lewis: Do you feel like you’re a control freak then? You want to be in control?
Amanda Robinson: I am. I don’t think I feel like I am, I think it’s pretty apparent. The idea of Tim interviewing me and Tim holding all the questions and Tim putting me on the spot and Tim driving the ship from the backend with the show-
Tim Lewis: You’ve actually got a ship there, that’s quite amazing.
Amanda Robinson: We’ve got everything in Canada. We have complemental hockey sticks just for crossing the border. Belive.tv, is it free, yes it is free. It is less buggy than it was in the past apparently, I think. It seems to be a little more stable, which is great.
Tim Lewis: As the guest, I can’t see any of the comments or the actual name badge things. So I probably drifted over so that I’m covered up with the name thing. I just see myself as a little box in the corner and then you as the big box in the middle. Any of the comments that you push up on the screen I see.
Amanda Robinson: Okay, I think this could start getting a little out of control from here on in.
Tim Lewis: I think we need to come up with some sort of … You know how they say a story has a beginning, middle and end, we need the end bit of the story somehow. What I would normally do at the end of the show is say how can people find out more about you, but giving that you’re interviewing me I suppose you could say the same to me. But then everybody should probably know that already.
Who is Tim Lewis?
Amanda Robinson: But they don’t, au contrare my friend. We are broadcasting live to an audience that you may not have had exposure to before and likewise for me. So in this case, this is a great opportunity for you to actually drive attention to those hundred episodes that will be released. What is your podcast, what is the name of it, where can we find you and what do people need to know about you?
Tim Lewis: My podcast is the Beginning Self Publishing podcast, which you’re actually viewing the only ever live episode of so far. You can find it on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, you can even go onto my Beginselfpublishing.com website and click the subscribe on Android button if you’ve got some other weird podcasting app on an Android that isn’t Stitcher Radio.
Tim Lewis: It’s also on YouTube actually, but the YouTube video is just a big static image and then the audio, so I don’t know if I’ll do that for this one. I might try and grab the video from this. I’m also the author of five books that are available on Amazon.
Amanda Robinson: I didn’t know that, I knew you were an author of-
Tim Lewis: I wasn’t gonna do a self publishing podcast without have self publishing books!
Amanda Robinson: Some people teach, some people do.
Tim Lewis: There’s the nasty comment those who can’t teach. But no, if you search for Timothy Michael Lewis on Amazon, you can find my free time travel novellas, which is the Timeshock Series. There’s also two fantasy novels I’ve written about magpies, which are probably the only fantasy novels about magpies, which is probably why they don’t sell because people don’t generally like magpies.
Tim Lewis: ind of more comedy fantasy than actually proper fantasy and they’re fairly short. I will be releasing the third book in that series at some point in the summer and that will be the end probably of all my fiction book writing. I’ll get on to the exciting world of non-fiction after that. The trouble with doing the podcast is that I haven’t really done much in the way of writing, I’ve basically written one book a year.
Amanda Robinson: Jen says shocking, comedy!
Tim Lewis: The trouble is all the books I’ve written are supposed to be serious ones, but I can’t seem to write anything without making it in some way funny.
Amanda Robinson: We noticed, trust me! We have noticed it.! What we’re gonna do is we’re gonna drop links into the comments on everywhere that we spread this little broadcast from what you’re watching now to if we upload it on YouTube to Tim’s actual podcast audio recording. We’re gonna drop links to everything that we talked about in this interview including Tim’s five books and his podcast. I would strongly urge all of you to check out the books, lead Tim so more positive reviews about magpies and help support this amazing, brilliant man who is extremely talented and does so much in the backend and only shows a small percent of what he’s actually capable of.
Tim Lewis: Thank you so much.
Amanda Robinson: On that note, I think that this is a good way to wrap up episode number 100 of the self publishing podcast with Tim Lewis.
Tim Lewis: It’s the Begin Self Publishing podcast.
Amanda Robinson: Begin Self Publishing, I ever have it written down, I’ve got my little … I’m making notes, I wrote it down. I haven’t been properly groomed as an interviewer for you.
Tim Lewis: I actually got the audio music wrong originally. I wrote down on the thing Begin Self Published podcast. I got upset with them because they recorded it wrongly and then I went back to the email it was like I told you the wrong name, so I can’t really accuse anybody of getting the name wrong of the Begin Self Publishing podcast.
Amanda Robinson: Episode number 100 of the Begin Self Publishing podcast with Tim Lewis interviewed by Amanda Robinson.
Tim Lewis: It’s good night for me.
Amanda Robinson: It’s good morning, more coffee for me.
If you liked this show then…oh there aren’t any shows like it! But some of my favourite interviews are How to reclaim your rights with Mark Schaefer, Getting to Number 1 in Amazon with Adam Croft and Twitter Chats with Madalyn Sklar.
(For the interested here is a link to the full uncut version on YouTube)