From Public Speaking Fear to 500K in Podcast Giveaways | Norm Farrar

Sadaf Beynon

00:00:00.240 - 00:00:36.840

Welcome to Podjunction Podcast.

I'm Sadaf Beynon and this is the show where business leaders share how they use podcasting to grow, connect and build their brands. Today I'm joined by a true giant in the e commerce and podcasting world, Norm Farrar, widely known as the Beard guy.

With over 25 years of experience in E commerce, Norm has become a trusted mentor to countless entrepreneurs through his podcast, Lunch with Norm. He also co hosts Marketing Misfits with Kevin King. Norm, welcome to the show.

Norm Farrar

00:00:37.140 - 00:00:39.052

Hi there. Nice to be here.

Sadaf Beynon

00:00:39.236 - 00:00:43.564

Oh, yeah, it's fantastic. I think we tried this once before, didn't we?

Norm Farrar

00:00:43.732 - 00:00:49.004

Yeah, it was a while back. Yeah, it happens.

Sadaf Beynon

00:00:49.132 - 00:00:52.680

It sure does. Well, thank you so much for being here.

Norm Farrar

00:00:53.460 - 00:00:55.276

Well, thank you for having me, Norm.

Sadaf Beynon

00:00:55.308 - 00:01:02.950

Let's just jump straight in. So tell us about Lunch with Norm and how does that fit into your overall business strategy?

Norm Farrar

00:01:03.530 - 00:04:36.874

Sure. So Lunch with Norm was a Covid project and it was something that actually I was really nervous to do. I was shy in front of a camera.

In fact, I actually turned down my sister in law to even MC her wedding because I was that afraid of public speaking. And by the way, just a little note, our first podcast, every technical issue that could come up came up.

So I was in the fetal position for most of that podcast, but it was my kids that got me involved. So we were just on our balcony and I got a phone call and it was from somebody in the Amazon world.

And I said, oh, you know, don't worry, I know a guy. And then another phone call happened, and another phone call happened. So three phone calls happened in 45 minutes.

And each one ended with, hey, I'll connect you or I know this guy. And so my one son turned to me and said, why don't you do a podcast? You know a lot of people and you're educated, at least I think so.

So we started to do it and it was three times a week for, for four years. And it was just last, last year we said, enough's enough. We're going to do one a week. And to see.

We weren't sure if that was going to change our audience. We thought that maybe we were providing too much content and we didn't want to have audience or the.

We didn't want to minimize the retention because we were giving overload. So what we decided to do was let's change up the community. Let's go from a podcast and stay with the podcast.

Let's get only the best of the best guest. There was a lot of filler because, you know, you had to do it 12 times a month, and now we could focus on that.

But then we focused on tying in the podcast to a newsletter, and that worked out incredibly well. So our podcast, you get the version of the podcast in there. It's broken down with the highlights.

We talk about the new podcast or the next podcast, plus all sorts of industry updates. And one of the things that I like to do is I try to build a community through being really personal, and I do that on the podcast like it's live.

So I get to know the community. I know a lot of them. I know a lot of their families because we've met at events, so that's really cool.

But by transitioning over to that newsletter as well, I thought, well, what's a different angle? You have to have a USP for the podcast. Ours is the Wheel of Kelsey, and it's our kind of unique intro.

And then with the newsletter, I thought, well, I have a ton of stories, like crazy stories that I could put in at the beginning of the newsletter and turn that into a business lesson, which then could come back to the podcast one way or another.

So it's just a different way of doing things, just trying to keep the audience, but giving them the choice of which community they want to join or if they want to join all three communities.

Sadaf Beynon

00:04:37.002 - 00:04:38.620

So you change the cadence.

Norm Farrar

00:04:38.770 - 00:04:39.192

Yes.

Sadaf Beynon

00:04:39.256 - 00:04:43.336

Of your podcast, you wanted to change the community as well.

Norm Farrar

00:04:43.488 - 00:04:44.296

Yes.

Sadaf Beynon

00:04:44.488 - 00:04:58.100

And you did that through the newsletter. So when you're trying to build this community or change who you're networking with, did. Did this help build your relationship with industry leaders?

Norm Farrar

00:04:58.960 - 00:06:23.352

Oh, yeah.

Because you'll find a lot of the times, if you're, let's say, your niche is Amazon or retail or whatever it is, you always think that you know a lot of people in your community. Like, if I go to an event, certain people will recognize me and they'll come up and say, hi. And you think, okay, I know my community extremely well.

But then you find out that there's bigger or much larger communities or smaller communities that they have no clue who you are. And if you start to go out there and either. So, for example, my buddy and I, who have the other podcasts, go to a lot of off Amazon events.

We were just at AI Bot Summit. We were at. He's going to funnel hacking next week. There's all sorts of different ones. And what do we do there?

We network and we start to try to bring people in to either guests or build the audience. And what happens is a lot of these Audiences or a lot of our guests have these larger groups.

They're well known on social media, they're an expert in their fields. And so that helps us grow our audience at the same time.

Sadaf Beynon

00:06:23.456 - 00:06:29.300

Talk to me a bit more about Marketing Misfits. What is the. Or what was the thought behind that?

Norm Farrar

00:06:29.760 - 00:09:44.540

My buddy and I are complete misfits. So we ended up coming up with the Marketing Misfits. I don't know, it was with a cigar and a drink or something. I don't drink. He does.

But I had my Coke Zero to his, whatever he was drinking. And we came up with this idea that he had a podcast called AMPM Podcast, which is Amazon as well.

And we thought, wow, we know so many really great marketers. He's in Austin, so there's, I mean, that's just a hub of really great digital marketers.

And we thought, well, maybe we could do something here and do it more like what's it called, My First Millions or the Kelsey's, where it's kind of bantering back and forth. And that caught on.

So we are now like, it took a long time to get our cadence down and we're both podcast hosts, so we were both kind of taking control of the podcast.

So now we know when to back off, when the other person is going to start to talk, we joke around, we know how to push each other, you know, play around with our buttons and what.

Ideally, what we wanted to do is find really incredible entrepreneurs or marketers or somebody in the digital marketing world that became successful thinking outside of the box and. Or finding incredible. Not failures, but hurdles that they had to overcome.

And all of a sudden these stories, were they just, I don't know, they were so unique. There were so many unique stories. We've only had about 40 in the can right now, but each one of them hit me in different ways.

First of all, they are lighthearted, pretty comical in some areas, but the amount of information you can get out of them, and not the hacks, but the tips, the true secret sauce that other marketers are using, it's incredible. And I think that's gonna change. Like what we're trying to do right now is get content.

And this has a lot to do with being successful as a podcast host. We gotta get the content. We know we're gonna revamp all of the content.

So our opening, our thumbnails, our descriptions, everything that we're doing is gonna be ripped down and repurposed. Not only like 30 second clicks, I'm talking about the whole podcast repurposed. Re edited once we understand and really get that cadence down.

So then we'll work with an editor and they'll make sure that it aligns with what we're thinking. So right now, if somebody goes and sees Marketing Misfits, it looks good, it's fun, pretty much unedited.

But the next version of this is going to be so different.

Sadaf Beynon

00:09:44.660 - 00:09:47.080

So what's the thinking behind that?

Norm Farrar

00:09:47.780 - 00:11:27.434

Well, right now it's content. We want people to come over. We want for the most part, on YouTube. YouTube, the algorithm to just get to know us.

And we are doing like repurposing clips, 30 second clips, minute long clips just to get some higher views. But if people want to see us. So if people want to come over to the podcast or over to the YouTube channel, right now it's just to see our guests.

And they're pretty good. Like I said, all of them you can learn from.

But we know that if you edit it, edit the intro or the thumbnails or just the content within the podcast, it could drive a lot more attention and retention because we'll get to know our audience a little bit better just from the stats in the back end. We'll see when they come in, when they leave, why they leave, and it takes a bit of time.

So yeah, I think within the next 10 podcasts we put out one a week, we'll probably be ripping them down and then recreating them in the new image. And by the way, if you want to check this out with Lunch with Norm.

Yeah, we started doing that like it took us 650 episodes to start this, but it's become quite successful. So we started to do it on YouTube and now we've got this very completely different 30 second to one minute opening.

Sadaf Beynon

00:11:27.562 - 00:11:28.010

Yeah.

Norm Farrar

00:11:28.090 - 00:12:50.376

And now we edit it. We fine tune the editing a lot more within the podcast. So what we say on the podcast, I kind of embraced my bloopers, literally.

I'll be talking and I'll mess up something. We'll go down a different rabbit hole. That is not nothing to do with the podcast.

And a lot of people tune in live to see, you know, the NASCAR accidents, you know, and that's what I'm about. I'm. And at first I was really nervous about that. I'm not a very good interviewer. I never wanted this to be an interview.

I just wanted it to be a little bit more knowledge. Never went to school for it. But I then we found out that people just wanted me to talk casually and they trusted me.

I think out of anything that what I've learned from my audience is that they know we don't do it for pushing products. We're not. I mean, we vet everybody. And I think when they watch the podcast they know that I'm doing it to truly share great content.

And if there's a few mix ups and bloopers along the way, I just embrace it now.

Sadaf Beynon

00:12:50.448 - 00:12:51.720

It's entertainment, isn't it?

Norm Farrar

00:12:51.760 - 00:12:53.512

Yeah, it's entertainment, yeah.

Sadaf Beynon

00:12:53.576 - 00:13:03.460

Fantastic. Now it sounds really, really interesting. I'm curious to know what impact it's had on your brand and your business growth.

Norm Farrar

00:13:04.320 - 00:15:19.348

Okay, so this is really interesting. So I'm in the digital world, I'm into E commerce, so this is hilarious. I find it hilarious. I don't have a website.

I don't have a website for my business. So the only way I've been able to get leads is from the podcast or the newsletter. And I think that I've stopped.

I have not produced and created a website, although I've created about 500 for other people. Like that's what we used to do was website design, SEO prior to getting into the Amazon world. I love saying that I don't have a website now.

That's going to probably change. I've got to create a website for the podcast, of course, so they have it.

But my business, AMZ Club or Flatworld, we provide all sorts of different services from Amazon. Managed brand services, content, press releases, just a wide variety of services that.

I had this conversation today with somebody what they wanted me to promote on their podcast and I didn't want to really promote anything. They said, well, how do you get your leads? I said, I get my leads off my podcast, but that's not why I did it.

I truly wanted to share information with people and if I got business that way, I knew that if I do what I really like now, at first it was all horrible. I basically got an ulcer from it. But now I really love doing this sort of stuff and some people think, oh, you got to be in it for something.

No, I do it because I like it and if I can generate business from something I like, then great. And that's it. I don't have a website, so. And I don't talk about my business on my podcast. And by the way, that's what these guys said.

They said, we've listened to a bunch of your podcasts but we don't know what you do.

Sadaf Beynon

00:15:19.404 - 00:15:24.116

What you do. Yeah, yeah, no, that I, I think that's so refreshing.

Norm Farrar

00:15:24.228 - 00:16:47.942

Yeah. And I definitely wanted to stick to that. You Know, it's. I know that's probably the wrong business model.

You know, most people, you're doing this for either your brand, to expand your brand, brand awareness. And it is brand awareness, if you take a look at it. You know, Lunch with Norm has a very distinct logo, and I get to bring out the beard.

And I only grew the beard for personal branding. That's the only reason I grew this thing. So I never used to have a beard.

And I thought, okay, you know, this is just about a year or two before COVID 2017. And I was thinking, how can I get recognized in the audience when I want to talk to a speaker?

I go to a lot of events, and nobody would remember you because you're just another face in the crowd. So then I thought, oh, I'm going to start growing this thing.

And I remember going to Jordan Belcroft or Belfort, and I was three rows back, and I asked the question, and then I reached out to him, I said, do you remember? Do you remember me? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I have another question. And.

And he responded, yeah, you were the guy in the third row with the beer. So then I said, okay, now, yeah, that's great.

Sadaf Beynon

00:16:48.046 - 00:16:52.630

That is so great. So you grew the beer just for brand 100? Basically.

Norm Farrar

00:16:52.710 - 00:16:57.700

My wife hates it. She can't wait until I retire, and I can.

Sadaf Beynon

00:17:00.400 - 00:17:21.200

That's very funny. I love that.

I wanted to ask also, and I know you've Lunch with Norm's been going for quite some time, and Marketing Misfits is a little bit more recent. So my question was going to be, what have you. What has been some of your biggest challenges in growing your podcast?

So I don't know which one you want to focus on when you answer that question.

Norm Farrar

00:17:21.360 - 00:19:46.444

Probably Lunch with Norm, because at first I do this out of the house. I have two podcast studios.

One was the first one, and now I use it if I do any sort of creator or influencer marketing on Amazon, because it's literally. Well, we got a StairMaster in there, a filing cabinet, and a table. So it's very small.

So I used that originally, and it was just no sound tiles or anything. It was just a white background. And I look back at those first podcasts, it was so bad. Then the challenge was the equipment.

I've gone through thousands and thousands of dollars worth of equipment to get the right setup. So I've gone. I've burned through four different types of cameras. So this has been the best one so far. It's a Sony Z. I'm Canadian Z.

A I think it's called. I've gone with mevo cameras. I've gone with Brio from Logitech and then my first one, which was horrible, but it was another Logitech camera.

The proper stands, just in case I need to have an iPhone in front of me, setting up multi camera shoots, putting together if I wanted to have a. Like, right beside me is a tent, a photography tent, in case I had anything I wanted to put up there. Other lights.

This didn't have anything in the back. Put up the tiles. And then I put up a bookshelf and I thought, okay, what should I put on the bookshelf?

So it's products that I did some influence work with. But I used to put I love cigars right here because it was a bit of a personality thing. Yeah.

Then the lights, the orange lights in the background did to give me a bit of color. Usually there's a little bit of light if I'm wearing black. Forgot to turn on that light as a kicker light to separate me.

The iPad that's connected to a teleprompter. And I have a stream deck, which I was never using before in case I want to flip back and forth between screen and a proper mic.

I was using the lap laptop mic.

Sadaf Beynon

00:19:46.492 - 00:19:46.764

Yeah.

Norm Farrar

00:19:46.812 - 00:20:36.596

Then I went to a yeti mic, and now I went to this sure mic, which is a condenser mic. And I had to figure all this out. Holy crap. It was a lot of. It was very, very timely. A lot of wasted time. I got to know it. Even the stands.

What stands you need. It's. It was crazy.

So at the time, which is the one really cool thing about COVID is something when you're an empty nester that you never expect will happen is that you kids come home. So I. They got to come home for about a year and a half. And while they were here, they were helping me figure all this out.

But this also another door opened because if somebody wants to set up a podcast now we know how to do it.

Sadaf Beynon

00:20:36.668 - 00:20:37.400

Yeah.

Norm Farrar

00:20:37.740 - 00:21:40.910

So and my son Kelsey, who's the producer, we have something very unique. Like I said, every podcast has to have a USP something. We have something called the Wheel of Kelsey. It's at the end.

Everybody loves the Wheel of Kelsey. Actually, Kelsey's been asked to go onto podcasts just because of how people know him from our little banter back and forth at the beginning.

But also the Wheel of Kelsey. He's also been offered to go on stage and be Velcro to a wheel of a live Wheel of Kelsey. But it's a.

It's a prize that everybody gets either by the guest or something that we'll give away. And we've probably given away, oh, I would think, four to five hundred thousand dollars worth of prizes over that time period.

And just on our 500th anniversary, we gave over $125,000 on that one episode to people.

Sadaf Beynon

00:21:41.210 - 00:21:42.914

Yeah, that's amazing.

Norm Farrar

00:21:43.042 - 00:21:59.310

Yeah, that's our usp. And, you know, it came by a fluke. We were just joking around about it and it stuck.

And I even have heard other podcasters say we got to do something like the Wheel of Kelsey. And that's great.

Sadaf Beynon

00:21:59.690 - 00:22:09.008

Yeah, I can imagine. So, sorry, what you were saying about the challenges. It sounds like it was small improvements over time, would you say?

Norm Farrar

00:22:09.144 - 00:22:21.072

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's. That's an ongoing development. And then you've got the production side.

Sadaf Beynon

00:22:21.176 - 00:22:21.680

Yeah.

Norm Farrar

00:22:21.760 - 00:23:13.196

How do you do it? Do you do it live? Do you do a pre record? How do you edit it? Finding a good editor? Even the intro, you've got music.

Luckily, my son's a professional musician and we got the animation, so we have that with the lunch with Norm, the intro and when we exit. So it's making the podcast look professional. But there's so many growing pains. Repurposing. Do you do. Who do you do the repurposing with?

What's your best value? And also repurposing the newsletter. You know, using that, that newsletter for the podcast has. You talk about leads.

Has given me way more leads than directly on the podcast about the podcast.

Sadaf Beynon

00:23:13.308 - 00:23:14.188

That's crazy.

Norm Farrar

00:23:14.284 - 00:23:30.774

Yeah, it's absolutely crazy. If you are not doing. I'm just anybody listening. If you're not doing a newsletter, a good newsletter. Value, value, value.

You're crazy because that's where the leads come in.

Sadaf Beynon

00:23:30.862 - 00:23:36.810

Yeah. Yeah. I'm fascinated by Wheel of Kelsey. I think that's just fantastic.

Norm Farrar

00:23:38.990 - 00:23:42.770

I really want to see him on stage velcroed to a Wheel one of these days.

Sadaf Beynon

00:23:43.310 - 00:23:47.050

That'd be amazing. So does he do something similar for Marketing Misfits?

Norm Farrar

00:23:48.110 - 00:23:53.358

Marketing Misfits. My other son kind of coordinates it.

Sadaf Beynon

00:23:53.454 - 00:23:53.998

Okay.

Norm Farrar

00:23:54.094 - 00:24:27.394

We pretty much do our own production there. And because we have the base for lunch with Norm, we use a lot of the same people I just use for the lunch with Norm side. Yeah.

And AI is, you know, that's another thing altogether that's coming in. I'm finding that I. I'm coming out little secret here, but I'm coming out with a faceless side to the podcast.

Sadaf Beynon

00:24:27.522 - 00:24:28.050

Okay.

Norm Farrar

00:24:28.130 - 00:24:39.266

And Also, I'm using the Notebook LLM and I'm getting them to review each podcast and bringing it out into its own podcast.

Sadaf Beynon

00:24:39.378 - 00:24:40.242

Oh, wow.

Norm Farrar

00:24:40.386 - 00:24:58.516

So they're going to go through and take not what I'm talking about, but what the guests are talking about. And then we're taking that and we're going to use video to blog AI and bring out blog articles. And so we kind of tie it all together.

Sadaf Beynon

00:24:58.668 - 00:25:01.540

Oh, wow. Wow, that's fantastic.

Norm Farrar

00:25:01.620 - 00:25:01.924

Yeah.

Sadaf Beynon

00:25:01.972 - 00:25:10.036

So what are you, what are you wanting to, what are you hoping to achieve with that as far as your, as far as your business goes?

Norm Farrar

00:25:10.228 - 00:25:53.190

Well, I want a bigger audience. So, you know, I, I want to get the word out there. And I think by marketing with the Notebook LLM, with the. More of the guests than with me, you're.

I think we'll see some new markets. The algorithm will probably pick it up a different way. And I think we can also get a lot more information.

With Notebook, you get a whole series of FAQs that you could bring in to the conversation. Now, the crazy part about Notebook LLM is now I can add, I can be in the interview.

Sadaf Beynon

00:25:53.770 - 00:25:54.610

Okay.

Norm Farrar

00:25:54.770 - 00:26:03.538

So if they're talking, if the two hosts are talking, I can also. I can be the third host if I want to bring them down a different path.

Sadaf Beynon

00:26:03.634 - 00:26:04.194

Yeah.

Norm Farrar

00:26:04.322 - 00:27:27.900

So, yeah, it's kind of interesting the way that it's rolling out and then because I have personal stories and they fit perfectly in with faceless videos, they take about 90 seconds to read. And I can go in there as an animated character and start talking about it, then post it into all sorts of different social media.

So now they see entertaining videos. You know, like, for example, you know, when I was in my teens, I played chicken across a train bridge with a train. And we did this.

It's so stupid, but we did this. We had nothing better to do. I was outside of Montreal on the South Shore, and we would go sit under the train bridge.

If we saw light coming way down the tracks, we would have played chicken with it. So one day I played chicken and I lost and I had to jump off a train bridge. Yeah, jump off a train bridge.

Now, luckily, it wasn't right over the river that was below us. Oh, wow. I had, I jumped. I hit the concrete. My leg pretty much wrapped around my head and landed in this ten foot snow bank.

And so I had to take that information and kind of turn it into a business lesson.

Sadaf Beynon

00:27:27.980 - 00:27:28.332

No way.

Norm Farrar

00:27:28.356 - 00:27:32.712

But those are the stupid stories that I have from, you know, my life.

Sadaf Beynon

00:27:32.836 - 00:27:38.528

So that's fascinating. I'M curious to know what business lesson came out of that.

Norm Farrar

00:27:38.664 - 00:27:39.920

I don't know, I forget.

Sadaf Beynon

00:27:40.000 - 00:28:01.610

I'll have to look it up. Yeah, that's great, Norm. I really like that. I really like that.

Norm, you were talking earlier about newsletters and having a really you recommend that everyone who's got a podcast should have a really good newsletter. I'm curious to know what makes a really good newsletter.

Norm Farrar

00:28:01.770 - 00:30:28.026

Well, if you take a look at still 95% of newsletters, they're bad. They talk about you, you, you, you, you not. And I'm talking about product wise or service wise promotions.

They don't talk about the value, any sort of value. So one of the things is first of all, just like a podcast, what kind of newsletter do you want?

I want to build a community, more a loyal community around getting to know them and a personalized the newsletter. You don't have to do that. You can build it around a brand, you can build it around your niche. You can become.

And by doing a good newsletter, you become the authority for sure and you can publish it everywhere. So what makes a good newsletter is just don't make it about yourself. Now that being said, I did, but that was different circumstances.

So I made it personalized about me. But the information has got to be broken up into multiple types, multiple types of content. You might have some infographics in there.

You don't want to blast it with a lot of sponsorship.

You don't want to have it too long with just like our, the way that we write our stories is there might be one or two sentences per paragraph and even maybe two sentences, one sentence, one shorter sentence, one longer sentence. Something that people could just read at a, at a glance. Visuals are very important for me.

I added the podcast and I said this is what you missed out on. You know, here's, here's four items and I give them three and I say for the fourth click here, takes them over to the podcast.

Then I talk to them about the upcoming podcast and what they'll be able to learn. Then we'll take just different news from either the AI world. Amazon updates. Everyone has the Amazon updates.

We also gamify it so there's a thing called Find the Beard and it'll just, it's like different places all over the world. Like Where's Waldo?

Sadaf Beynon

00:30:28.118 - 00:30:28.386

Yeah.

Norm Farrar

00:30:28.418 - 00:30:36.230

And you gotta, you gotta find me, you know, waving and then you can have polls and surveys.

Sadaf Beynon

00:30:37.210 - 00:30:38.882

You can interactive.

Norm Farrar

00:30:39.026 - 00:33:42.722

It's gotta be interactive, you know, or people aren't gonna look at it, have a video in there. And have a link to the video in there. Yeah, get links or outside links.

Like for our Amazon update side, we have about five or six updates that click to external links. People click on it. We have a whole section not at one time, but maybe once a month. We'll do 10 best tools, AI tools, best new AI tools.

Our top books that we recommend. And those get a lot of clicks. So you've got to balance it between trying to get people to click and also providing just entertainment.

If it looks like it's just four clicks or clickbaity, people are not gonna, not gonna really look at it. And it's gotta be consistent. If you're not consistent, it's like a podcast.

I read a stat that the average podcast has seven, seven episodes before they die. At seven times, people figure, oh, it's not so easy. Seven is the average podcast will live. And so if you're any.

If you have eight, you've beat the average. And that's kind of like newsletters. If you know, you might not have a big audience at first, but it'll grow.

As long as you're bringing out good quality. You could do paid. My, my buddy, my partner Kevin, he has paid advertisements for his newsletter and it grows very quickly.

Mine, I'm doing it organically to see, you know, how, how I can just grow it organically without being using paiding. Paid income, pay per click. Yeah but those are some of the, the important things.

I mean, if you want, check out my newsletter and you'll see what I'm talking about. Also, this is kind of important. We use Beehive as a host, but it used to be lunchwithnorm beehive, which is spelt wrong. Yeah.com we have.

It just pointed to LWN. That's lunchwithnorm.news. Now that's a lot easier saying, hey, if you want us to subscribe, just go over to LWN News. And that's a.

That's another key factor.

Also something that you want to make sure of is that if you're not using that platform or if you're following up with anything on your news with your newsletter with email, you gotta make sure that your email is set up properly. Most people don't realize the importance of email deliverability. And this is even with your newsletter, like is your. Like.

We found out that we were blacklisted because we were on a shared server.

Sadaf Beynon

00:33:42.866 - 00:33:43.458

Right.

Norm Farrar

00:33:43.594 - 00:34:37.574

And that shared server, we don't know who it was, was getting some spam spam problems.

You know, spam reported for spam wasn't us, but it's a shared server, so you started to see all these blacklisted servers, and that's why people weren't getting our newsletter or our emails. So we had to go and try to figure this out.

We changed, and we made sure that the DMARC and the dkim and all the other things were correct, but we paid some good money to make sure that the deliverability was optimized properly. Which is the same with a podcast, by the way.

If you don't optimize it properly or if you're not on the right host and people can't find you, then, you know, you're doing yourself a disservice.

Sadaf Beynon

00:34:37.702 - 00:35:00.254

Yeah, yeah, No, I really like how you've made the link between the newsletter and the podcast. They're very similar if you. If you look at it in. In that way, and also what you can achieve because of that perspective.

So I really like how you were saying how you're describing yours, that it seems like it's quite a mix of education and entertainment. It's not just one or the other, Right?

Norm Farrar

00:35:00.342 - 00:35:01.890

Yep, exactly.

Sadaf Beynon

00:35:03.350 - 00:35:28.890

Fantastic. Norm, this has been a lot of fun.

I've really enjoyed your stories, and I've loved hearing about your podcasts and how they fit into your business and your brand.

But, Norm, before we wrap up, I have to ask, since your beard is practically its own brand at this point, has it ever led to an unexpected or funny moment in your podcasting or business journey that you can share with us?

Norm Farrar

00:35:29.580 - 00:36:01.158

Well, yeah, it wasn't pleasant at the time, and I never thought I'd be saying that I use product in my beard, but I was making hamburgers one night on a barbecue, and my middle of my beard right here went up in flames in a microsecond. A microsecond.

And so I'm smacking myself in the face, and then for the next almost two years, I look like Yosemite Sam, you know, because it was like this.

Sadaf Beynon

00:36:01.214 - 00:36:03.014

While you're waiting for it to grow back.

Norm Farrar

00:36:03.182 - 00:36:17.526

Yeah. So that, you know, I mean, it was a story and it was kind of funny, but wasn't at the time. But then I found out people liked that.

People liked that look. I thought, oh, okay, great.

Sadaf Beynon

00:36:17.678 - 00:36:21.804

That's great. I guess it all adds to the. The evolution of the beard.

Norm Farrar

00:36:21.902 - 00:36:23.472

You never know where it's going to go.

Sadaf Beynon

00:36:23.576 - 00:36:29.408

Yeah, I love that. Norm, where can our listeners find out more about you and your podcasts?

Norm Farrar

00:36:29.504 - 00:37:12.306

All right, well, you can go to lunchwithnorm.com which is just the website, but if you want to listen.

We go live every Wednesday at noon Eastern standard time on Facebook, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube if you want to get the edited version, which I think is really cool. They launch every Tuesday at noon. So you can check us out there for the newsletter. Like I said, it's LWN News.

And we have a WhatsApp group, a very active WhatsApp group. And that's just Lunch with Norm. We tried to make everything lunch with Norm, so I'm pretty easy to find.

Sadaf Beynon

00:37:12.458 - 00:37:24.562

That's fantastic. Thank you. We'll be sure to add all those links to the show notes. Nirm, thank you so much for joining me today.

It's been so great hearing about your podcasting journey and learning so much from your all your insights.

Norm Farrar

00:37:24.706 - 00:37:26.402

Well, thanks for having me.

Sadaf Beynon

00:37:26.586 - 00:37:42.010

It's my pleasure. Well, that's a wrap on today's episode. If you're ready to grow your business through podcasting, I'd love to help.

Please feel free to connect with me anytime on LinkedIn. My handle is sadafbeynon from norm and me. Thanks so much for listening and bye for now.