Center Of Influence Success For Crypto Podcaster with Gary Leland

NTE 24 | Crypto Podcaster

If you can manage a podcast and make it a hit, you’re an expert. If you can manage multiple podcasts and still make it a hit, it makes you a legend. The Crypto Podcaster Gary Leland walks us through his podcasting journey since 2004, making him a part of Podcaster Hall of Fame in 2016. Having a podcasting directory listed on Time Magazine’s 50 coolest websites, Gary shares how he approaches podcast as a part of his business structure. With multiple shows produced, he shares how he manages running various podcasts, what he learned from doing crypto podcast shows, how to start investing in bitcoin for your website, and a whole lot more.

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Center Of Influence Success For Crypto Podcaster with Gary Leland

I have an interesting guest for you. I’m going to do two things at once here, which is unusual, but I am going to ask them lots of questions about being a podcaster because this man was in the Podcaster Hall of Fame. He has been the earliest podcaster I’ve met yet, which is pretty interesting. Gary Leland has been podcasting since 2004. He has got many podcasts that over time he’s gone through in terms of Fastpitch Softball. He’s done HGTV-style ones, Fixer Upper Podcast, Hometown Podcast. You are one of the Founders of Podcast Movement. You were in the Podcaster Hall of Fame in 2016. You even have a day named after you in Arlington, Texas. March 1st is Gary Leland Day.

You’ve got a lot of interesting things. In 2006, you won the 50 coolest websites for a podcast website, which is something I love to talk about because podcasting isn’t about airing all of this. It’s also about what you do on the web and what you do with your businesses and how you track that afterwards. We’re going to talk a little bit about that. The reason you’re on New Trust Economy is that you’ve got Crypto Podcaster and you’ve got multiple shows there. The 4 Minute Crypto, Bit Block Boom, Crypto Cousins. I think you’ve got even a few more than that.

We’re in the process of setting up three more. We’re building Crypto Media Network. When I get into something, I get obsessed with it. I’m attention deficit and I get consumed with it and I’m into crypto. I’m into creating media. When I get into something, that’s what I do and that’s what I’m doing.

You’ve built some amazing businesses and things over time. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how you approach these podcasts as a part of the business structure?

When I get into doing something new like I got into cryptocurrency in 2017, maybe August of 2017, I wanted to learn. The first thing I do when I’m into a new subject is I create a podcast because then I can call anyone in the world and interview and they’ll talk to me.

That’s the secret right there. No one says no.

It doesn’t matter if anyone listens to my shows or not. I don’t create my content for other people for the most part. I do later as I get progressing but when I am first starting to learn a subject, the podcast is strictly for me. If other people learn while I’m learning, that’s great. If I have no listeners, I don’t care, but I can call up. I’ve called up John McAfee and I’ve interviewed him. Tim Draper, these are two billionaires. I don’t think they would have talked to me if I called them up and said, “Can I ask you about cryptocurrency?” I can learn from the horse’s mouth. That’s what I originally do. That’s how I start going into a new field, by creating an audio podcast. It’s simple. It’s quick. No one ever asks how many downloads you get.

Isn’t that crazy that they never ask?

One time for the Gary Leland Show, I was doing that to learn to move my brick and mortar store more online and to new areas and I wanted to find out about Amazon. There’s a guy named Chris Green. He had a book at the time that was $600 and he did at the time maybe $200,000 every two weeks. Amazon’s payout period is every two weeks. He did $200,000 every two weeks in sales of products. I called him up because I wanted to learn how to do it. I had called Chris and I said, “Chris, can I have an hour of your time so you can tell me how to make money on Amazon.” He just said no.

He would have said, “I have a program and it will cost you $5,000.”

When I called him up to be on the show, we can talk for an hour and a half. He answered all my questions. They were my questions that I wanted to know how to do it and hopefully, someone learned because maybe someone was in the same situation I was. When we got through he said, “Gary, let’s do this again. It was great.” Here I’ve got an hour of one-on-one time with one of the top guys on Amazon and he wanted to do it again. I’ve got all the right questions and learned how to build an Amazon store now. It wasn’t as successful as Chris has, but I still have two Amazon stores running because of it, making money.

That’s why I started the New Trust Economy. It is my way to ask questions and learn because we’re doing a blockchain venture for our podcast network. This was my way of learning and it so happened that I was invited to ChainXChange in Las Vegas. I was invited to interview Steve Wozniak, Gary V, a lot of the people who are attending there, all of these blockchain guys and women. There were lots of women there as well. I learned so much from it that I said, “I want to learn more, let me start an official show.” That’s how it came about. That’s how I’m in blockchain and crypto as well. It’s all about being curious.

There’s no better way to network one-on-one with people you’d get to network with than there is podcasting.

Let’s talk a little bit about the crypto shows that you’re running because you’ve got some interesting ones like Crypto Cousins. That seems fun. You’re not the host of all of these.

I’m the host of everything I do.

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You are the host of all of these shows.

I’m the host of the Crypto Cousins. I started that in 2017. That’s the one I originally started. I had a cohost with that one when I originally started. The two of us did the first season. Now it’s strictly my show. The cohost has gone on to something else and everybody I bring on is my cohost. I’d do the 4 Minute Crypto show, which comes out every weekday. It’s one news article about Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in four minutes or less.

There so much that’s changing. It must be hard to choose one every day.

My wife asked me, “Do you have a hard time finding news to do?” I said no. That is the easy part.

It’s hard to find which one to focus on.

All the scripts are written for next week already. That’s the easy part to find. Then I’m starting the Crypto Podcasters and that will be where I have three or four friends of mine who are podcasters in crypto space come on the show on a regular basis. Maybe two will be on a regular basis and we’ll bring a guest on every week. It will be a 30, 45-minute round table of us talking. When you get four podcasters together, it’s probably going to be more than half an hour. Then I’m doing something with Lyn Ulbricht. I don’t know if you are familiar with Ross Ulbricht’s mother from the Silk Road. He’s in prison for two double life terms plus 40 years for renting a website where people could buy stuff with cryptocurrency. That happened a few years ago. I’m doing a seven-episode mini-series podcast on the events leading up to his trial.

That’s a trendy area of podcasting. Doing the serial style shows on Bad Blood with Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes was also one that was in podcasting as well, even though it was a documentary before that or a book before that. There’s a lot of that going on. I think that’s going to be successful and curious. We’re all very curious about what’s the real story.

This is done from court notes and things like that. Not people’s opinions but are set straight from the court notes on what happened, then people can make their own opinion. I’m not saying the guy isn’t guilty of a crime, but I don’t think you get two life terms and 40 years for running a website. There are gangsters who haven’t got that much who got out and shot people. Life term probably would have been enough.

Let’s talk about some of the shows that you’ve run. You’re running this model of being curious about cryptocurrency. I want to talk about cryptocurrencies as it is exciting here because this is obviously a show on New Trust Economy and it’s the number one question I get. I want to talk a little bit about all the shows that you’ve done over time suit. You’ve been podcasting since 2004. You’ve had multiple different shows. Why do you move on and shift shows and discontinue them? Do you just continue them? Are they still living out there and syndicated?

Most of the shows I do are evergreen content for the most part. They pretty much stay on there. I took down one because it wasn’t even worth the $5 I was paying on part-time hosting on it. For the most part, they still exist. Once I get something going on well, I get burnt out on the site. I own the largest wallpaper store in Texas and it’s still running and it’s still doing great money. I haven’t been inside that building in a while. I hardly ever go in there because that’s not my passion. Once I get something going and complete, I get bored with it. I want to move on to another thing that I do. That’s the same way with the podcast. My first podcast was the Podcast Pickle show and when I got to episode 50, I decided right there on the air, I said, “I’m tired of doing this.” Fifty was a lot of episodes back then in 2001. I said, “I just want to let everybody know this is my last episode.” I don’t think that’s anywhere more because we co-hosted that on the server. There weren’t a lot of places to host podcasts back then.

You mentioned getting business disruption from iTunes happening because you started podcasting before there was iTunes.

It destroyed the podcasting. Many things, not destroyed podcasting, but it destroyed a lot of things that were being built in the podcasting world.

Let’s talk a little bit about that because there are many podcasters here who post iTunes happening. They don’t have any view of what it was like before then.

You had people who were making hosting sites. You had podcast directories that were young and fledgling to find podcasts. You had a lot of tools people were making to do the whole podcast experience. When Apple came out, everything was right there. You didn’t have a use for it anymore. I quit using my own podcast directory and it was in Time Magazine’s 50 coolest websites. I quit even using it because iTunes was much better. It downloaded straight into my device. I’m not saying iTunes wasn’t great for podcasting. I’m not saying it wasn’t better for podcasting. I used to have to come in and put my iPod and a little stand and wait all night for it to upload my shows so I can have them the next day to listen to on my iPod. It was hard work back then. I had to use a third-party tool called Lemon. It is way better now. I sometimes think in the back of my mind, I’m still a little upset that my site got killed by it.

I don’t blame you. Too much disruption, you’ve got to ease into it.

NTE 24 | Crypto Podcaster — Crypto Podcaster: There wasn’t really a lot of places to host podcasts back then.

I think we were the second podcast directory. If you want to find a podcast, you were going to come to my website or a site called Podcast Alley. I doubt anyone even knows Podcast Alley anymore or my site Podcast Pickle. If you wanted to find a podcast, you probably went to one of those two websites and you did a search and you found your podcast there.

Before we start talking more crypto, I have to ask you these five best ways because this is a part of a BuzzFeed article I’m working on. It would help people get a sense of what you can do with your podcast that can improve your businesses and get you answers on something you’re very curious about. Let’s talk about the lessons and maybe a story about each one of these things. What’s the best way to book guests?

I personally contact them one-on-one. I try to message them if I can. I try to meet my guests online and message them in person. I find that when you’re doing podcasting if you just email them, most of them respond to that for some reason. I’ve had very few that have responded and I’ve gone up the ladder pretty high. I don’t think it’s how you contact them. It’s a matter of contacting most of the people in your space. When you are in my field, you want the press and they’re going to respond if they see in the header message “Interview request” or something like that. The message header before they open the email is more important than anything else. They see us for an interview, they’re likely to open it because for all they know, it could be CBS TV or ABC. They will open it probably.

Very frequently, I title mine, PR opportunity. PR opportunity might have a dash then what it’s about.

I used “Interview request.” PR to me could mean a chance to be in a magazine. It could be a chance to be paid. There are a lot of paid PR. I put in “Interview request,” and I am thinking, “They want to see me or hear from me in person.” Not, “I’m more apt to do that PR. I might not want to write something. That was just my thoughts. Either one’s a winner though.

What’s the best way to increase listeners?

It’s the social media. I joined a network. It’s the first time I’ve joined a network and they asked me if I would put the 4 Minute Crypto Show on their network. It’s called the Let’s Talk Bitcoin Network. I put my show on their network. Monday was the first episode. I do five episodes a week, but they’re doing two to start to see how it does. The Monday show has had seven times downloads as I ever have.

The network is helping.

On this particular case. I can’t use it as a model of how all networks are. It’s very important to research the network and luckily, I’ve been in this business so long. I have a lot of friends in high places so I could find out how the network did before I got involved with the network. It’s a strong network and you can tell by the shows that are on the network. They wouldn’t be on there if they’re not doing good, but the network, my shows went up nine times, almost ten. We could hit ten times than what my normal show is.

Good for you and good for that network. They’re doing something right and getting listeners in, so that’s valuable.

That helps you YouTube. That helps everything because you’re promoting yourself from your show hopefully. You’re telling people where they can find you. If someone finds you from the podcast, they may have just listened to a podcast by fluke. They love YouTube or they may be loving something else.

That’s why we believe in multicasting or brandcasting as we call it.

Multicasting is what I call it. I have written a book about that few years ago.

We wholeheartedly believe in that here. Some tips on how you produce it in a professional way because I’m assuming you did it the hard way in the beginning and it’s gotten a little bit easier over time.

When you’re starting with taped videos, it was hard. I don’t think it’s difficult now to produce a podcast. My thing is just be intelligent about what you’re talking about. In other words, try not to lose listeners because you’re going to get listeners who are going to experiment with your show, but you don’t want to lose them because your show is poorly done. Simple things like background noise. I know someone who is a podcaster and he’s been doing it since 2005. He’s one of the biggest booked podcasters in the world and he still does it in his closet because the clothing makes such a nice place for sound. Acoustics are so good in there, there are no background noises.

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I’ve heard other people that cars and closets are the top two.

I hate listening in to hear a car go by or a lawnmower go by. What I hate when I listen to a podcast is when they rip out the audio out of the video which is fine, but they do not do their video in a way that you wouldn’t know the audio was ripped out. They say things like, “Look here, see my shirt,” or whatever. You know that’s ripped out of the video. They’re just lazy to do a podcast. They’re too damn lazy to do a show and it turns me off. I’m saying if you’re going to rip out the audio out of your video, at least make it sound like it was created for audio. That’s not that hard to do. It’s how you describe things and talk about things.

I always liken it to being a chef from TV. You’re doing one of those cooking shows and nobody can taste it. You’re required to describe it. It’s the same thing when you’re showing something because it happens. We’re talking about something and I want to demo it and you can’t do that on the air without describing it.

Some video people are so into their video that they send their audio out as a podcast, but they never look at your stats. They may find out they’re getting more listens from their audio than they are through video views. Maybe they should make sure their audio is catering to their bigger audience.

That is a great tip because we see that very consistently. While a video can add viewers. The reality is that the podcast tends to do better than the videos do especially on YouTube.

It’s the most consumable content on the planet. What content can you do when you’re driving your car, mowing your grass at work? It’s the most consumable content on the planet. The number should be higher.

What ways do you do to encourage engagement? Encourage people to talk back to you. I’m sure in the Bitcoin world, they’re talking back to you because I get a lot of that already. My show is not that old.

I have no problem in the Bitcoin world. I don’t do a lot let’s say for engagement to talk back to me. I asked for their comments and thoughts and I get a few. I do most shows for me, but I cater them to the audience. I wouldn’t say I do a lot. I don’t do any giveaways. I’m not into giveaways. I don’t think that should buy my audience. I don’t think that’s real audience. That’s just making fake numbers. People go, “I’ve got all these subscribers,” but they aren’t listening or watching. When you do that, you’re fooling yourself. You go, “I’ve got these numbers,” but you really don’t. I’m more on putting out good content.

If you put out good content, it’s like the TV show Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come. If you put out good content, they’ll come. It’s like the network I’m on. All of a sudden, I’ve been doing this show, plugging along and I’m getting okay downloads. All of a sudden, because I’m building good content, they come to me and say, “Can we put our content on our site or on their feed?” It’s just built good content. That’s the best thing you can do. If your content is good and interesting, people will come. I get emails and calls all the time from people and I don’t even ask for it. I think it’s the content.

What’s the best way to monetize your content?

The best way to monetize your content is how I do. To be honest with you, I wouldn’t be doing it. I’m not real big on monetizing content with other people’s ads. I created content around my world than my world around my content. For instance, two of my podcasts right now, I have the Hometown Podcast for my HGTV show and the Fixer Upper HGTV show. I own a wallpaper store and I have two HGTV podcasts. The Fixer Upper Podcast, the lady Joanna Gaines has a wallpaper book that has three of them. I saw more Joanna Gaines wallpaper probably than anyone in the country. That makes me more than anyone in the world and because of that, they buy much Joanna Gaines wallpaper in Europe. I probably saw more of that wallpaper than anyone in the world and it’s from my podcasts about the HGTV shows where we talked about it every time. I’ve got that in the crypto world, so I advertise, I made a website called the CryptoCryBaby.com, which sells t-shirts, hats, caps, all kinds of crypto gear.

I advertise that on my show and I’m doing a conference for my second year called Bit Block Boom. I advertise that on every episode. I’m a believer in creating your own sponsorship opportunities instead of selling this. When I first started Fast Pitch TV show, Eastern Sports, this huge company came up and said, “We’d like to sponsor your show.” I was like, “How much will you give me?” We settled on $3,000 for the year back then. They paid me in advance. We don’t mess with that little amount. I was like, “Wow.” I only had 100 listeners an episode. After the year was over, my listenership had gone up from 100 to 1,000, so I tried to increase the price and they said no, but those ads are still running on those first 100 episodes.

I’ve never had a sponsor like that again. I’ve always done shows and sponsored my own. From then on Fastpitch TV sponsored my softball store, SoftballJunk.com. I turned down sponsorship opportunities. I believe the best sponsors are things that you make 100% of the profit on instead of a onetime payment or 5% or an affiliate program for 6%. Find a product, make it and sell it. People will buy it. You’ve got an advertising source. Most people make a product, they don’t have anything to advertise it on. Here you’ve got this great advertising source and just do what most people do. Make a product and sell it, except you have an advantage. You have an advertising source.

That’s why we invented Podetize because I didn’t want to have old ads on things. Also because our particular, we were advertising events and books.

I saw your booth down there. I want one of those flags for my mic.

We’ll send you one. It’s yours. We have a new mic launching as well, a new microphone that’s meant for live streamers and for people doing event recordings, so you don’t have a whole ton of equipment. We did these things because you’re right, at the end of the day, the best way to monetize your show is to have your own stuff. We’ve been doing products for 25 years.

That’s the best way to monetize it, make 100% of the profit. Why make 8%? Why are they giving you 8% or 6% because there is still a lot of profit left in there? It’s not rocket science. There are a lot of things you can make. You don’t have to invent something to make. In your case, you do. In my case, I do but Crypto Crybaby, I didn’t invent a t-shirt that said Bitcoin on it. Let’s face it, I didn’t invent a t-shirt that says, “I am Satoshi Nakamoto.” These are the things that I see everywhere.

Let’s talk a little bit more about crypto and what you’re doing there because I’m sure that there have been some interesting things that you’ve learned. You said that this was a learning experience for you. As you went in there, what’s something interesting that you learned while you were doing your crypto shows?

My general knowledge of crypto now I feel is high level. When you do it every day instead of once a week as I do, almost my full-time job now is crypto. I know mining really well. I’ve been mining now for about a year. I did a CPU mining and also a GQ mining and I got the basic miners set up somewhere. That’s a great resource. My ASIC miners are off right now because crypto Bitcoin is so low. I can’t afford to mine it. That’s a bummer but I don’t know that I’ve learned anything specifically because I have the whole world and all the people I’ve met. Maybe I’ll think of something in a second. It will be that one thing I’ve learned. I would say I have learned that hodling is not a general rule. It’s a guideline, but it’s not a way of life.

I don’t even know what that means. You’re cutting me so early in my experience of that, you have to explain to me what hodling is.

Hodling is someone on a forum some time ago who was drunk. Maybe Bitcoin was going from $1,000 to $100 and they said, “Are you selling yours?” The guy said, “No, I’m hodling.” He was saying holding. It was hold on for dear life, but it stuck. Now people do a lot of hodling. I know a lot of people who hodle. People hodle Bitcoin especially no matter what Bitcoin does. If Bitcoin hit $20,000, they didn’t care because they think it’s going to be $1 million and they hold it. Even though it went down to $3,000, they weren’t worried at all. They hodle. Hodling is a good thing.

If I had sold my Bitcoin at $20,000 instead of hodling to $4,000, I could have bought five times as much Bitcoin when it dropped. They don’t want to sell their Bitcoin and it shoot up. Instead of having ten Bitcoins, now they’ve got nine Bitcoins because they didn’t hodl. Hodling is holding on no matter what it does that they are true believers. I don’t know that hodling is as effective in all Altcoins. I agree with most Bitcoin maximalists, it’s got a long way to go. I don’t think you’re going to lose money hodling but you could make more money if you didn’t hodle.

Monika Proffitt is the co-host of the show as well. We don’t do episodes together except when we talk to each other. We each do separate interviews because she’s more on the financial markets experience than I am. We’re doing this one because of the podcast angle. The interesting thing that she mentioned was that there’s this rumor out there about Japanese housewives helping to hold the currency more stable because they are holding. They are holding for the long-term. Have you heard anything about that? Do you have any confirmations on that?

I haven’t heard anything about that. I believe and I feel like I am up to date.

You haven’t heard that at all?

I read probably 100 articles a day or at least glance through that many. I read a lot, but that would not be a surprise that anyone is hodling, especially when it comes to bitcoin. I know people who have so much Bitcoin and maybe they sold off some at $20,000 because they wanted some spending money, but they aren’t selling. I talked to a guy who is in podcasting, he was given 30 Bitcoins when it was $1 and when it got up, I said, “Did you sell any at $20,000?” He said, “No, I’m waiting until it’s $1 million. I’m not getting rid of any of them.” There are a lot of people who feel that way about Bitcoin, they’re not going to sell them come hell or high water. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with hodling. I am saying maybe it’s not always the best dictates.

The statistics on the number of young people in Bitcoin for instance or in crypto, in general, shocked me when I first read about it. I met this young woman. She’s an actress in LA and I met her at a party. She said she’s holding Bitcoin. I said, “Why did you invest in Bitcoin? I’m so curious, why did you go into and doing it?” She said such an interesting thing to me. She said, “I felt like learning how to trade stocks or to invest in real estate or do all of those things was more complicated to learn.” There was deeper knowledge in there where people had been doing it for a century like that thing. There’s this deep idea that there’s a community that you have to be in the crowd to know what to do. Bitcoin seemed new and it’s only so many years old. For me, that felt like people can’t be such deep expert. It removed that barrier to entry for me and made it more of a level playing field.” I was like, “That was the coolest answer that I had ever heard to why to get into it.” She felt it was more equal, more level playing field and I thought, “That’s a cool and interesting angle and reason to do it.”

That’s a good angle but I’ve also found kids 25 to 30, I’m calling them kids because I’m 64. When I told my nieces I was doing Bitcoin, they were like, “I love Bitcoin,” and going on about it. I said, “Do you have any? Do you know much about it?” They said, “I just know that I love it.” It was weird how much they were into it, but they didn’t know what it was if you asked them a question about it. There’s something about cryptocurrency or Bitcoin that the younger people want, but they aren’t sure what it is they want. They know they like it. I don’t know if it’s the fact that it’s decentralized or one of these centralized economies or what it is.

I am seeing that a lot in the female population that we tend to be talking to here. There are a lot of closed markets. There is a lot of that feeling of being disenfranchised in the whole process of how things happen in the banking industry and other things. I hear that from a whole young generation. I was on Larry King Now, they asked the questions about crypto. I’m not an expert in it, but there is no reason why it is not going to take hold when you have an entire generation who is annoyed and disgusted by the fact that a bank says after 8:00 PM Eastern time you get an assessed fee if you transfer at 8:05. When we live in a 24-hour digital banking world, they know there’s not an actual person behind it.

Why does it take so long for my money to be transferred? Why would you have seen it? Did you come here for 24 hours? It’s not like they said, “We’re going to send Gary’s money from one account to the other.” They got it.

Huddling is not a general rule. It's a guideline, but it's not a way of life. Click To Tweet

They see that and they go, “This is ridiculous and archaic,” as in their minds. They’re waiting for the disruption. That’s why I think there’s a possibility of it.

Internet money is only an internet protocol that had not been made yet. It was the only missing protocol. When you look at it that way, it’s impossible. I’m going to use the number ten which is a relative amount of Bitcoin. It’s not like you’ve got to be a millionaire to have ten Bitcoin. You will have more Bitcoin than it’s possible for 0.001% of the planet for people to own when this goes crazy. If you’ve got one Bitcoin, you are going to have more than 0.3 people. It is amazing because of the fact there will only be 21 million Bitcoins ever. When this stuff goes wild, there are going to be some people who will get rich easily without much Bitcoin because there is not much to go around.

If you think about it, if every million there, I think this is in the United States that if I wanted a Bitcoin, there’s not enough Bitcoin forum and you have people like Tim Draper who already have 225,000 Bitcoins or something. It’s definitely not enough for every millionaire to own a Bitcoin. Personally, I’m not a financial advisor, but I believe people should put 1% into Bitcoin because if they lose and I’m wrong and it did go to zero, you lost 1%. The chances are it could go up 1,000%. Your possible gains to your possible loss are huge. It’s just a matter of what you can afford to lose. No one should put more than they can afford to lose. Whatever your financial situation is, 1% of your savings is not more than you can afford to lose. That happens when the stock market tanks, you lose 1%.

This is where our show is much more focused on the business blockchain, the business that is offering coin and everything. We tend to talk a lot more about that side of it rather than the currency itself. I do hear from so many people, the reason why they’re listening to my show is that they are listening because they are considering bringing blockchain into their business. They’re considering taking cryptocurrency as a part of their store if that’s what it is.

I do that on my website on my store. I’m not a financial advisor, I just was talking off the cuff there. This is my personal feelings. I take Bitcoin in my stores, both of my retail stores, on my websites. I don’t get paid very often but when I do, I’m pleasantly surprised.

The challenge that I’m asking you about here is that when we were talking about these things and we have someone curious about how to get into it, what we’re not finding easily is that basic information of how do I get started investing in Bitcoin? How do I get started taking cryptocurrency in my store on my website? Is there a wallet? What do I have to do? The problem that we find is that the books that are out there are awful. Let’s do 101, which Monika wrote the 101 book, which is a great description of what these things are, but it doesn’t tell you how to go about doing that. That’s missing in the marketplace. Do you guys talk about that on your show? Do you get into that?

We don’t get into that unless I interview someone who happens to be in that world. I use a service on my websites, which is just a WordPress plugin for coin for crypto. You go to their site and you set it up. It takes about 30 seconds to set up. It takes longer than 30 seconds, but it’s easy to use. You add the plugin, you go to their website, you set up your account, you put in what cryptos you want to take. You tell them right then, “Do you want to receive crypto or do you want to receive cash?” If you want to receive crypto, you’ll give them a wallet to put it in. If you want to receive cash, they’ll cash it out and send you the cash value at the time so you’re not losing. I guess when the market’s dropping like crazy, you want to get to cash. When you think the market’s going to go wild. You want to get to crypto. I can’t think of the name of that tool that I use right now.

What people don’t realize is how accessible that is. It’s not as hard. There are plugins being created, there are apps, there are wallets, there are all of these things out there. It does still seem like this is what I’ve discovered to those young people or even to some of us older folks who don’t understand anything that’s not conventional or it’s not offered by our bank. We don’t understand how we’re supposed to get into that. That is what I’m hoping my show will be able to bring that angle on and introduce more and more of those things and resources like you. Now they can watch the market and listen to what’s going on in the news. They’ve got 4 Minute Crypto at their fingertips on their phone.

Since I started doing podcasting, my knowledge started increasing because now I look at so many blogs, I subscribe to so many things or they’re in my feed. I look at so many articles now where I didn’t before that when something happens, like the other day, somebody came up to me and said, “I heard about this thing.” I said, “That’s five-month-old.” It was just getting the network TV. They heard it on network radio or something like that. By the time the public hears it, you’re so behind the timeline. The problem with the public when it comes to wanting to buy crypto is this stuff is a base it off of TV and by the time it gets on TV and the news there are so behind your timeline that the price is already jacked because all the people found out about it 30 days earlier. It took that long to make the mainstream media.

That’s why I feel podcasting are a little bit on the edge because we’re out there. We’re reaching out to the movers and the shakers, the new people, the people were curious to learn from and know. We’re inviting them on in the early stages to get to know them and get to know what’s going on. I do feel like we have an edge.

Everybody should do it. There are not too many. You think about it, I think there are 100 million blogs. There are something like 600,000 podcasts.

The numbers that I heard was that there are less than 250,000 English speaking active podcasts. They’re posting new episodes.

In crypto, that happened since the price has dropped. If you go to the crypto podcast on iTunes and look at them and look at the date of the last episode, nine out of ten haven’t done a podcast since August of 2018. They’re not making any money because they were trying to sell sponsorships or whatever reason and now maybe they’re out because they lost all their bitcoin, who knows?

The last question I want to ask you is because there are six degrees of separation up there. This is a New Trust Economy podcast and maybe some of our audience, some of our guests may know someone. Who would you like to have on your show that you haven’t gotten yet?

Andreas Antonopoulos, I’d like to have him on my show. I have pretty much gotten almost everybody. I have wanted him. We’re trying to get Tom Lee with Fundstrat, but he’s committed to come on the show. We just haven’t set the day.

I know Tom Lee because he’s right here in Irvine.

He told me he’d come on the show and gave me his business card. He said, “Use my personal email because I had been sending it to a generic email.” I just emailed him so I’m waiting to hear back. I enjoy seeing him on TV and he’s a big Bitcoin bowl and so am I.

I had a five-minute interview with him when I was at ChainXChange and that’s how I met him. It was the most interesting conversation. It could have gone on and on. I gave him a good block of time. He’s super nice and amazingly knowledgeable. You’ll enjoy that episode. I know I will. I’ll be listening in for when that happens too because I want to hear him. Gary, I’m so glad you came on the show. I’m so glad we got to talk podcasting and crypto and all things fun about what’s changing in the market places as well. Thank you for sharing that with us. Is there anything you’d like to leave my audience with? Anything you’d like them to know both about podcasting and crypto?

In podcasting, I’ve been saying this for several years now. If you want to podcast, just start. It doesn’t matter if it’s good, it doesn’t matter if it’s bad, it doesn’t matter if you have the intro, it doesn’t matter if you have an outro, it doesn’t matter if you have anything. Pick up your iPhone or Android phone. It has everything you need to start. The recorder on there is fine. Here’s what I found out. People who wait until they think they have everything perfect, no matter how you wait, no matter how perfect you make it before you start, when you listened to that first episode in a year, it sucks. You might as well get the first one out of the way because you can’t start improving until you start doing. Go ahead and start doing and then you can start improving it. The guy who’s waiting until he’s perfect, you’ll have half a year advantage on him. Start it. Check out CryptoPodcaster.com.

Gary Leland, thank you so much for joining me. You can find us at NewTrustEconomy.com and also on social media, @NewTrustEconomy. We’d love to hear more about what you are looking for and what you’d like us to cover. Would you like more crypto episodes? Let us know. We’ll have Gary back again because I’m not an expert. We’ll have Gary back again if that’s the case. Thank you all. We appreciate your time.

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About Gary Leland

I am a video and podcast producer. Some of my current productions are The Crypto Cousins Podcast, the 4 Minute Crypto daily video and podcast shows. the HGTV Hometown podcast, The Fastpitch TV Video show, and The Fixer Upper Podcast.

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