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Today we will be talking with Johny Florida, host of the Wrestling’s National Committee podcast. Johnny will talk about the power and pitfalls of relationships with other podcasts in your niche, WNC’s podcasting set up, and how to use strategic partnerships to build your credibility.

MetaMoment:

Today’s podcast MetaMoment is…The School of Podcasting. I know, we just mentioned this podcast a couple episodes ago, but I wanted to give Dave Jackson an extra shout out for winning the podcast award in the technology category. Dave has been podcasting since 2005. Not only is he a podcast coach, he is also an employee at Libsyn – just another way for him to contribute more to the podcasting industry. You can check out his podcast at SchoolofPodcasting.com.

This MetaMoment has been brought to your by Libsyn. They are the media host I use and the number 1 place I recommend as I work with new podcasters. I’ve been recommending them for several years now. They are not a sponsor, but I have recently become an affiliate for them, so if you sign up with Libsyn and use the coupon code ‘JOSH’ you can receive a free month of hosting. In fact it’s more than a month because you’ll get the rest of this month and next month free – just make sure you don’t change your hosting level before the free month ends. Again, go to Libsyn.com and sign up using the code ‘JOSH.’

How Johny got started with podcasting

Johny knew about radio and even internet radio, but he’d never heard of podcasts until he began listening to them on YouTube about 4 years ago. Being a huge wrestling fan, he found the Don Tony Kevin Castles show and Solomonster, and that began his interest in podcasts. Eventually he decided to do a wrestling podcast himself, and eventually settled on the name Wrestling’s National Committee as a nod to political organization names, because the show treats wrestling like politics. Johny says there is politics in everything, even sports.

One example of the way they combine politics and sports is the Sunday breaking news show. They cover news in the wrestling world, but in particular they look behind the scenes of those news stories to find out the psychology of the who, the what, and the why. Politics is nothing more than psychology in a physical sense—it’s about the why something is being done—so there’s politics in terms of the issues in wrestling and the psychology in terms of why those are occurring. That’s why the show covers the politics of wrestling, to investigate the why of every move the wrestlers and corporations make. Johny has always loved figuring out all the pieces of puzzles, so this fits well. He regularly gets feedback from listeners on social media saying that they love the deep analysis even if they don’t agree with the opinions.

The power and pitfalls of relationships with other podcasts in your niche

The WNC does 3 shows per week, and Thursday’s show follows Wrestling Soup, another podcast that they look to as the indirect father of the show. Called Souper Party, they talk about wrestling and some news, but not politics itself in that show. Being that the show follows directly after and is inspired by Wrestling Soup, Johny and his team have developed a relationship with them and positive relationships like that have been very important in helping boost WNC.

However, although Johny loves working with other groups, not all relationships like that have gone well and he also suggests caution when working with other podcasters. For a while they had a joint show with another podcast, but it turned sour when one member of the other 4-man team became a problem. After that group imploded, Johnny ended up hiring two of those guys for WNC. The disgruntled team member then started throwing legalese around regarding copyright of the logo, and filed a complaint with MixCloud who pulled all the episodes down. Johny says they all learned a valuable lesson about being more careful creating partnerships, even between friends, because things can get nasty when they start to break up. He recommends doing more research up front, and simply being careful about who you work with.

WNC’s podcasting set up

For the normal WNC show, they broadcast live for 2 – 3 hours each day. Often it’s 2 hours of the live main show, and then they’ll do an After Party bonus show only for the people who donate on Patreon. In order to do the live show, Johny has three systems running at once: the Mixlr system, Skype and Audacity. He’s also got several laptops going at once and uses the Turtle Beach headset. In terms of cost, the Mixlr system ranges in cost from the free version to $100-$300 per year. This is the main way WNC goes live so it’s an important part of their set up. Meanwhile, Audacity is totally free so Johny also recommends that because there are so many different features and editing options included in it. It took a few days to get all the tech set up, but he learned how to do each podcasting process from the beginning. One thing in particular he advises is to always compress the audio files and export as MP3s because the size really matters. Most podcast hosts only have limited storage, even when you pay for the upgrades, and if you’re uploading several shows a week it can really fill up the storage space quickly. So compressing the audio files is crucial.

Use strategic partnerships to build your credibility

A major strategy for the WNC in building their show and credibility in the niche has been the Thursday show that piggy backs onto Wrestling Soup. Johny says you shouldn’t be afraid to follow up another podcast if you’ve got the blessing from them, and it’s a strategy brand new TV shows use all the time. It helps with your content, gives you somebody to vouch for you for your credibility and can provide support for both shows.

Strategic partnerships can also boost credibility. Johny has done this in a big way with their sponsor, the combat sports app FiteTV. The app is free and most o the content is free except the pay-per-view fights. They have an affiliate program, which Johny signed up for so that when he promotes them they become the sponsor of the show. Although it does also bring in some revenue, getting a sponsorship was more about adding to the credibility of the show as it’s still young, having only been out less than a year.

Because of building that relationship with FiteTV, Johnny is now a media agent for them. He’s also built relationships with Indie Wrestling across the map; he has relationships with 18 Federations in 14 States and also in England. He has then helped some of those get on FiteTV, so it’s been a great network to build. As FiteTV grows, WNC grows and vice versa. Affiliate programs can be simple and the benefits go both ways. It’s not just about revenue, it’s about credibility and relationships.

The best way to find Johny and WNC:

The best place to check them out is social media. Look up Wrestling’s National Committee on Facebook @wncshow Twitter @WNC4Lyfe or Instagram @WNCshow

Or you can find their shows on Mixcloud.com/WNC and donate at Patreon.com/WNC

Thanks for taking the time to listen to this week’s episode of the Creative Studio. If you found this podcast helpful or interesting, please share it with a friend.  You can reach out to me by calling (405) 771-0567.