Produced By - Building an 8-Figure Podcast Empire from $0 | #69: Darren Lee

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Darren Lee, Founder & CEO of Voics, is a dynamic podcaster and entrepreneur dedicated to building influence and authority through podcasts. Hailing from a small town in Ireland, Darren’s passion for rugby shifted to bodybuilding and distance running after an injury. With a background in tech startups and financial technology, he has collaborated with Fortune 500 firms and global fintech companies. Darren's podcast, Kickoff Sessions, features top-tier guests like Justin Welsh, Sahil Bloom, and Matt Gray. With over 200 episodes, it has reached the top 5% globally and hit #1 in the careers charts. His love for podcasting led to the creation of Voics, where he continues to grow both ventures. Tune in to Produced By to explore Darren’s journey from Ireland to Bali, Indonesia, and be inspired by his relentless drive for improvement and success. ⁠⁠ Connect with Darren: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-lee1/ https://www.youtube.com/@Darren_ks  https://www.instagram.com/darrenlee.ks/  More: Voics: https://www.voics.co/  Newsletter: https://voics.ck.page/cc6967c322  Podcast University: https://courses.podcast-university.co/courses/Podcast-Accelerator  Connect with Tommen: LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/⁠  Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/⁠  X: ⁠https://x.com/TomasLoucky⁠  Podcast: Links: ⁠https://linktr.ee/produced_by⁠  Website: ⁠https://produced-by-podcast.com/⁠  Support: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/ProducedByPodcast⁠  Produced (email newsletter): ⁠⁠https://produced.beehiiv.com/⁠ More: Trailblazed (marketing agency): ⁠https://trailblazed.digital/⁠  My SkillShare Course: ⁠https://skl.sh/3Rh7ZtY⁠  Produced (LinkedIn newsletter): ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7092551882589528065⁠⁠  Produced By with Tommen is your weekly dose of inspiration where ambition meets creativity. Join us as we dive into the journeys of content creators, entrepreneurs, and other remarkable individuals who break barriers and redefine success. Each episode shares unique stories, challenges, and triumphs. From heartfelt struggles to incredible successes, these conversations will motivate you to push beyond your limits and chase your own dreams. Whether you're on a creative path or just love great stories, tune in and become part of a community that constantly strives to push the boundaries. Sit back, relax and enjoy. Connect with Tomas:X: https://x.com/TomasLoucky⁠⁠⁠Stan: https://stan.store/TommenLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/⁠⁠Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/⁠⁠Unproduced:Newsletter: https://unproduced.substack.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@unproducednotesSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033Ddo8ibDlLYoaP7FFLIWMore:Links: https://linktr.ee/produced_by⁠⁠⁠Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://producednewsletter.substack.com/⁠The Podcast Club: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/25420030/Tools & gear that support the show:Metricool: https://f.mtr.cool/HRJBZKRiverside: https://riverside.sjv.io/vDnDodFavikon: https://www.favikon.com?fpr=tommenRa Optics: https://ra-optics.myshopify.com/discount/TOMMEN?rfsn=8803777.591d19JamX: https://jamx.ai/podcasters-offer?ref_id=e02d48af-ef66-4e76-b804-c2e8d282a8bfSome links are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. If you find them useful, using these links helps keep the podcast running. Thank you!  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I think focus on YouTube number one, right? YouTube has to be top of funnel, top of mind. That's your awareness piece. So you need to have awareness. And if we can build awareness on YouTube, it gives us the most virality. There's a lot of search, a lot of capabilities on YouTube. Then you need to get kind of dialed in on who you're solving for. So what problem you're solving with your podcast, with your content.

This can be agnostic to being a podcaster. It can be any sort of content writing. You need to be able to get in the mind of who you're solving for and building that relationship with the viewer. So you're coming in every week or. every day and you're solving that specific problem which is either making them more money improving their health wealth or relationships is basically like all the problems in the world's help before we dive into today's episode please hit that subscribe button your support helps us grow

and inspire more people on their journeys thank you hello darren thank you for joining us today and welcome to the show appreciate it man let's do this i'm excited so darren can you please introduce so. Yeah, so do you have a bit of a backstory names Dernley from Ireland originally. I left Ireland quite some time ago. I've been in the podcast space for many many years. Background was in tech. So I was working in tech startups. Kind of fell in love with the building process at a young age. Very much more from like an entrepreneur perspective than let's say an engineer. But I've been building stuff online for many years with my show kickoff sessions has been around for

almost half a decade now. And we've been interviewing founders and executives every single week. But it wasn't just about, you know, interviewing people on internet. I was also building a lot of my own stuff. So she's been an entrepreneur since I've been 15, 16 years old, been building different stuff, whether it's in person or online. And I think over the past couple of years, I've really kind of found my love for the internet, I guess, to some degree when I've had kickoff sessions being built,

helping a lot of people build their own podcast, monetize their own content. So it's not specifically about podcasts anymore. It's mainly about content, content marketing, people building audiences and building brands. And that's what I've really fallen in love with. So it's been 24-7 every single day for the past couple of years. I've done the same thing over and over again. And how did you actually get to Southeast Asia from Ireland?

Or why did you make such a decision? It was during pandemic and lockdown, right? That everywhere was like losing their mind and basically couldn't try. travel and all these different places. So myself and my partner, who's my fiance in there, she's from America, we were looking for countries around the world that you could get a visa for. And you couldn't get a visa in Europe. You couldn't get a visa in the States. We tried Mexico. And after a few weeks in Mexico, Mexico got super like crazy with lockdowns. I tried Thailand. Thailand was crazy. Then ended up coming to Indonesia. Indonesia was a bit better,

spent a couple of months here, then went to Singapore and then came back to Indonesia. Asia. So I've been in Asia for many, many years, but I just have a love for it, right? It's just for me, it's the, it's the food, it's the culture, it's the people, it's the lifestyle. And I think ever since I've, I'll never go back to the cold in Ireland, that's for sure. Really? That was my next question if you plan to come back or not really. No, man. No, never, never, never, never. I'm set up here, right? My businesses are here. My family's here now at this stage. My studios and stuff are here. So I've been in Asia for quite some time and if anything it's going to be it's more this way right it's more getting away from the west and more into the east so would you say if you are in bali do you live

this digital nomad lifestyle that people advertise online uh kind of like sort of viral on social media yeah for sure like a lot of people kind of you can come and chill in bali or thailand you know make like 5k a month and you know live a good life but I guess that kind of never has been my like appeal for me like I'm still like very hungry in my building process I'm much more in love with like the game versus like the chill the chill lifestyle so even though I'm somewhere in somewhere that's like beautiful I feel like that for me it actually allows me to work better and to kind of be much more creative much more even like logical if I need to be but at the same time if you want to have a chill lifestyle like age is the place to be it's a chill life

but I do think it's dependent on the individual like something I kind of have against people coming to Asia for it. People say like oh it's not conducive to like productivity which I actually think is a complete opposite. I think it's much more to do with the individual like you can be in London spending $5,000 a month on your apartment and still be unproductive so it's not to do with the city it's to do with the individual and for me I've just found a nice

happy balance here you know and I own like a few like charities here and whatnot as well so just been very much dialed into Asian culture for many years. And yeah, man, love it. And what's the local, let's say local scene like? Because it's a place popular among nomads. So do you meet like this type of people, entrepreneurs, content creators? Yeah, for sure.

A lot of people, it's very transient the culture, I would say. Like a lot of people come in and come out. So it is good to me, people. But again, you'd have to have your ear to the ground, right? If you're in the places, like in the co-working spaces and whatnot, yes, you're going to meet more people. But I think after a while, you kind of get a little bit sick of that. Like, even for myself, there's only so many steak dinners you can go to, right? Without having to actually do to work.

So I'm a little bit kind of more removed from that. But there is a really good scene there. So I think if you're early in your journey, being in Asia is a place to be because it's cheap, it's affordable. There's good people. It's young, right? Like, I'm 28. But the culture is just so young that it's just a good place to be. be right you don't feel like indebted by by getting older or whatever right so it's a good position

to be in and then you may want to go to other places right you might want to go to Dubai you might want to go to the US or whatever so even for me like I travel quite a lot so having my base in Asia is really good because I can even I just came back from Singapore was able to fly over spent three or four days in an apartment in Singapore I'm back and I have that flexibility whereas if I was again in a five thousand apartment in London, which I did for many years, you don't have that freedom, right? You don't have that freedom. Even when I lived in Singapore, I was living in a stupidly expensive apartment and I could barely spend a week in Dubai or barely spend a week in the US because it was just like I was just spending so much money and getting nothing in return. It sounds like perfect place.

You sold it to me. I've never been there. Never been so far. I'm definitely curious to visit. Right. Where are you from yourself? I live in London, but originally, I'm from Czech Republic. So central Europe. I was just about to ask if you can compare life in London because you lived here to where we are now. Because I've got an impression or I feel like that the life here is quite rushed, quite quick. And everyone is in constant rush. So what is it like in where you are?

That's a good point, man. It depends. Again, right? Like there's a lot of people that chill, take it easy. But then there's a lot of good entrepreneurs doing big things. So there's lots of masterminds going on in Asia. There's lots of different opportunities going on. But the same almost like matrix system approach that's in like London, New York, L.A.

is definitely not here in terms of, you know, you get up, you load yourself into the tube. You're going through that process. You're coming back. You go from one can to another can to another can, which is either like your house, your office, to your tube and back. And I live that lifestyle. And I think, yes, it's rush. but I feel like that a lot of people that are living that lifestyle, they don't think clearly, right?

They don't have clarity of thought. So that's a big reason why I kind of left that culture was because I was like, yeah, it was okay for money when I was like 21, 22, but I'm not going to really build significant wealth. And also the environmental factors of being in the UK really slow me down in terms of, you know, it's a drinking culture, it's a party culture. It's a spending culture, right? It's a buyer's market, right?

people are encouraged to buy stuff whether you walk on oxford street or you go to soho or you go or you go dating or you're on tinder or whatever it's just a spending culture and i'm not i'm not against spending money but i just think it's interesting because if you're not doing that it's not conducive towards like career progression or whatnot so i think what was a biggest one of the biggest kind of events for me that really hit home was my first day in london i was working for an investment bank it was in Canary Wharf and I walked in and they were getting ready for let's say like the day whatever and the manager said to me that we have thirsty Thursdays every Thursday so you finish work at 6pm you go down to the key you drink a ton of alcohol and then you get absolute belligerent

and I said that's weird because I have to be in the gym on Friday morning because I train every morning before work and she said no no you're not anymore you're going to be at Thursday Thursdays and I said no I'm not and I didn't go to one event at all in the entire period of time because I don't know I just kind of wanted to stick to kind of my values my core values and not to say that I'm better than the system whatever but it's more just like I feel like you get thrown into that lifestyle and it's very hard to undo that work so that was the biggest thing for me initially the second thing then was the health factor again went into this office and I noticed that everyone was fat bald and generally miserable so they're either in

their 40s, 30s, like super, super overweight, bald, pretty disgruntled looking down at this 21-year-old intern being like, who is this guy? And that kind of conducive behavior is just something I didn't want to be around. So even though I didn't know what I wanted to do in my life, I was still, I still, I knew what I was running away from. I didn't really know where I was going towards, but I knew what I was running away from. So for me at 21, 22, it was always about finding like what's the next step, where is the next part? And I went on and I built several different stores, e-com stores and businesses and brands from there.

And then that's when I kind of got into the podcasting. But I think you kind of need those wake-up calls. And I think that's a big juxtaposition between Europe and Asia that a lot of people probably never even feel, right? Yeah. I'm glad to hear what you said before about your experience of working in Canary War. Although I haven't worked there, but I worked in a project. up and it was kind of similar situation that after work, you sit with your colleagues for a few points,

but me, also similar to you, someone who goes to the gym in the morning the next day, I didn't drink and people looked at me like, you've got beer for free, why don't you drink? Why don't you stay with us? I was like, if I want to work out tomorrow and that'd be able to work, I wouldn't probably be able to sustain this. So I was just glad to hear something like that and I can relate to So I like your mindset and the approach you had. I appreciate it, man. Yeah, man. That's the problem with this stuff is that a lot of times people will push their own insecurities on you.

So alcohol is a perfect example. Like alcohol is the one drug that if you don't use it, you're a weirdo, right? You're the freak. You're the unusual one in the room. And the irony with that is a lot of people will voice their own insecurities around alcohol and around even being in social circles. with you by throwing that on you. And if you drink and whatever, that's completely fine.

It's up to you. But it leads to people bending their behaviors around you and treating you differently as a result. So I haven't drank alcohol for like two and a half years now. And the second I pull that from my existing kind of day to day, or week to week, lifestyle, my life is dramatically improved. Right. And I think a lot of people that are. putting the hand up and saying, oh, you should be doing X, Y, and Z are the people that should be

looking internally to say they should be making the changes. And that's a difficult thing for people to be going to face. But, you know, you fast forward a couple of years and quitting alcohol and leaving that lifestyle has completely transformed my entire life. So I'm kind of a case study to say that, like, you know, you don't need to do what everyone else is doing. You don't need to fall into that trap. You don't need to go for the beers or the thirsty Thursdays or whatever it's called, right?

it's a name for every day. Yeah, there's a name to drink on every day. Whereas you can bend your own reality and kind of pave that path forward. But even for yourself coming from Czech Republic, right, that's a difficult change. And you've made that change. And now you're coming to do even more changes. So it's like we shouldn't be looking down on people who are looking to actually improve their scenario. If anything, when people are trying to blow their life open with drinks, drugs,

partying and everything, that's when we should be intervening. but that's not when people intervene, which is actually the irony of the situation. Yeah, yeah. And out of curiosity, have you visited Czech Republic? Yeah, man, I've been to Prague. Beautiful. Oh, it's so, so beautiful. Yeah, it's such a beautiful city.

It's really good for nightlife too, right? There's a really good scene there in Prague. That's what people often say. Yeah, it's really, really big for a, and I'm Irish, right? So, like, Irish people just know, it's almost like an Irish person views a map as, like, areas to go drink and Czech Republic is definitely up there in Prague but thankfully I don't drink anymore but that's literally how Irish people view maps right they're like which city can I drink in but yeah man it's beautiful I love I love the area I'm glad to hear it and in Ireland do you actually come from

Dublin or somewhere else no in the south so a place called cork very very remote so I'm from a very very remote area like back ass and nowhere like I grew up with like no electricity had no data, my phone, like no, I had no internet until I was like 16, 17, basically, until I went to school. Yeah, man, it was like really remote. And just always having to be like...

It must have been beautiful childhood without social media, without, you know, any online presence. Yeah, pros and cons, like very isolated, right? So, like, Ireland is an isolated country, which is the reason why, like, depression is so high, like, mental health is so bad. alcoholism is so high, drug abuse is so high,

because it's a very insular isolated country because it's raining 80% of the time. It's difficult to get around, especially for eight months of the year when the weather is so bad and it's raining 24-7. So when you are as remote as what I was, that's when a lot of the negative behaviors kick in,

which is a, it's a negative of the country and people don't talk about it, but I don't give a shit. Like I'll say anything about just the reality, right? I just, I don't talk over fluff with this stuff. So for me it was like it was a it was okay like it was a tough enough like upbringing and then when I kind of went on to university then it was like okay I needed to put the pillars in place to build a life that I want to build even though I didn't really know what I wanted to do but I knew

what I didn't want to do which was live a life of just being stuck in Ireland and being mediocre. So it was about just how can I push on from there which was learning skills, building a network, building a podcast, building up my own self, building my fitness and everything. So that kind of allowed me to keep on kind of pushing, I guess. But it's tough, man. Like, it's tough to get out of those cities a lot of time. And especially if your environment is so baked in that behavior. And as you said, how you were growing up, kind of isolated place, where or how did you actually get the mindset that you've got, that you want to, you know, pursue entrepreneurship, get to podcasting, to travel the world?

What were the influences? That's a good point. So I was a good of sport. as a kid. I was a 100 meter sprinter and I was a rugby player. But I wanted to, I wasn't smart, like at all, like really, really super, super, like stupid in school. I was so actually stupid that basically the teachers call me super dyslexic. I didn't want me to read or write. I swear on my life, that's correct, right? But I went to a, I went to a ropee school, basically that kind of was like a school to kind of go semi-professional or professional. And the school was quite wealthy. So when the kids would

rock up in the morning. Their parents would rock up in like beamers, Mercedes, Audi's and all the, and like the fathers would like, they'd own like land in like Canada and they'd own like a dentist practice and they'd own like tree dentist practices and stuff like this. So I was just seeing this wealth even though like I was not wealthy in the slightest, like super, super below middle class family. And I was observing this the entire time. And I just saw how these guys lived. Right. They had two months off and the summer, they were in the beach, they were in like the sea, um, seaports for two or three months of the summer. The fathers are making up a million a year. And I remember just thinking, like,

this is the opportunity, basically. And I remember even just like being over these guys houses at 15, 16 years old and asking the father's questions more so than the kids, like literally hanging out with the parents more so than the children. And I was just kind of capsulated by that. And growing up in Ireland, you're almost taught that like money is like bad because most people are like broke. whereas I viewed it from the other perspective I was thinking I was like well this is this is the opportunity all I got to do is put these pieces together

and for the most part most of these people are very ordinary you know that they're not special and so on and so forth so that allowed me to basically kind of have that kind of path that okay it is possible and then all true university it was just finding that kind of pat and meaning

all time and finding that kind of that vehicle and over time then I was finally able to kind of put that piece together. So I was kind of exposed by these, by people that were wealthy quite young, but I didn't understand what the, the mechanism was, right? Like, was it the skill? Was it the trade? What was it? And it was only until later when I kind of quit all sport, because I got like a really horrible injury when I was in my late teens that I started a piece together, okay, like what are the actual factors that these guys have, which is they're building

assets, they're building a brand, they're building a company, they're building something that's scalable and sellable and they have skills. So even though I had a bunch of businesses from 16, 17, 18, 20, there were all failures. I kind of knew that like basically it does work. Like this stuff is real. There is someone on the other end that is viewing things, that is buying things, that there is consumers on our side. And it wasn't until like 20, until it was like 20. And it was like 20. that things really started to click, whereas like I started actually seeing small bits of success and then still slow down from there

and it wasn't until 2024, or sorry, until I was 24 in 2020 is when I started my podcast and that's when I kind of was solidifying where I wanted to go effectively. Yeah. And if you didn't get the injury, would you continue with the path of being professional sport player? That's a million dollar question, right?

So basically for me, I think being injured was the best thing that ever happened to me, right? Because in every piece of pain there's a lesson, right? It's always with a lesson in the pain. So I blew out my kneecap, diso-de-my-necap, tore my hamstring, tore my ACL, tore my MCL. I had to get over four surgeries on my leg. I also nearly lost my leg through a blood clot because the blood clotted so badly after the surgery that I was like about an hour or two away from losing my leg. so all of my left leg was basically like completely gone. And afterwards, it was so bad.

It sounds terrible. It happened during just during training. That's actually the irony of all of it. I jumped for a ball and my knee popped out. And then it just got worse and worse and worse from there. But basically what happened from here was that was a blessing in disguise because at 18 years old, I now have no school, no direction, no idea where I'm going. Because to that point, I had basically zero school.

And it was about, okay, how do I? I turn this around? How do I actually get myself into education? How do I figure out what I want to do? And I just took all the lessons basically from sport into school. I took all those lessons from into school into bodybuilding. Took all those lessons from bodybuilding into entrepreneurship. It's the same. It's basically the same thing over and over again. It doesn't change, right? It's just the same pattern repeated. It's just being consistent, failing forward, 1% better, making changes, having a schedule, hitting the schedule. It's the same stuff over and over again. So it kind of, it bended to a reality whereby it was like almost anything apart from like aerospace can be achievable.

You know, something is like if it's not super, super complicated, you can figure it out. It's just going to take you that little bit longer than the average person. I've seen some pictures, as you mentioned, by the building. So was it just as a hobby or did you take it more seriously even to compete? I was competing. Yeah, when I was younger. I was actually going to compete again about a year ago, a year and a half ago. But again, the level of severity you need to be at the top of the game is completely different than when you start, right?

So I was competing when I was younger, early 20s. I've been training every single day, you know, pretty much for like 14 years. So it's always in my core focus. And what I always say is like fitness and nutrition, once that is dialed in, everything else is easier. Like relationships are easier, work is easier. the podcast is easier when your diet and your training is dialed in. I've noticed that whenever that deviates, that's when things kind of for me start getting a bit wild.

I start getting a bit lazier. The execution isn't as good. I'm kind of drifting a small bit. So thankfully, I try to just keep that as dialed in as possible. Now, I'm no angel, right?

Things go up and down from time to time. But it's a really good indicator that that's like a very good barometer for life is the actual, is their approach towards, towards fitness. I like it and I feel the same because when I train, when I usually work out in the morning, I feel like it positively influences the rest of my day. It's like that accomplishment early in the morning and you just feel better.

So that's definitely something that I can relate to. Yeah, for sure. 100%. Was that competing as a regular bodybuilder or is it as a physique or what kind of categories were in? Physique, men's physique. So I'm not a six foot four. so it has to be a smaller physique.

But yeah, it was meant physique. I'm still only, I'm still pretty light. It was like 75 kilos, 5 foot 6, 5 foot 7 on the best day. So it's a smaller category. But I much prefer, right? Because even recently, when I was going to go to do another show, my coach actually wanted me to do it the bigger category. It was like bodybuilding, whatever it's called.

And for me, I would just need way more size. So I think I was, I think I was like 85 kilos in the top of my bulk. He wanted me to push up to 90s. or 95 and then cut down to like 80 whereas for me I much prefer like a much more of a smaller look beach look much more lean and even now like I'm I'm sure I'm very very aggressively dieting right now I even have a banana women right now because like I think for me my best focus is when I'm dieting which is quite interesting right when I'm kind of on this hamster wheel of just trying to put on a bit of muscle and put on a bit of size I feel like I'm just much more I don't know focus I'm just

less, yeah, I'm less focused, less focused. Whereas when I'm, when I'm dieting and I'm coming down, that's when I feel like I'm much more dialed in, basically. And once you're dialing in on that, you know, the deep work, all that stuff just flows really naturally. Are you looking to elevate your online presents? Check out Trailblazed, our digital marketing agency. Whether it's standing out on social media, crafting a stunning new website or developing impact for visuals, Trailblazed has got your back. visit trail-based dot digital and reach your online potentials a day. And do you plan in the future to compete again or you never know? No, the business is too much of a focus now, right?

My main focus is just the business and the podcast, right? So they're the two kind of shining lights right now and then on the back end is the fitness, right? So I think fitness is my cornerstone for how everything functions. But if I was to put that focus on, I know I'd, go way too fair on it and the podcasts would slip, the business would slip. So it's much more important to me to have a consistent flow of this training and so one that feeds into everything else I do.

And as I saw some of your videos on YouTube that you also run a lot or try to do running, so do you have like this approach of hybrid athlete? Because I like it. I trained or tried to get bigger before as well. But then I found out that I wasn't really flexible and it wasn't really like a practical in life. So I was surprised. I'm glad to see that you're kind of similar, that you try to be practical as well. So what's your approach when it comes to this?

Yeah. So I want to transition into long distance running full time. So that's like full long distance marathons and ultras. However, for me, it's all about timing. And what I've noticed is the amount of time that goes into those trainings is crazy, right? So recently I've been going for a marathon. I was meant to run in one week in Cambodia. However, I got Dengue, Dengue fever a month ago.

So I was training for about six weeks, eight weeks. I was running well. I was running like sub two hour, half marathons, pretty dialed in. And then I just got like this weird fever. And I was like, this is strange. I got up and I ran 12 kilometers. And then I came back and I was shivering. It was so weird.

I was like, what the fuck? and I came back, doctor came, and I had dengue. And if you're familiar with dengue, it's kind of like malaria, but it's an internal, like fever or whatever, right? So on the external,

I was like covered in like almost chickenpox and whatnot. And I was like, hyperventilating. I was at fever. I'd like my bones are cracking. They call it like the bone cracker disease. But internally,

like my liver was like bleeding. My kidney was fucked and everything. This only happened a month ago. So at that point, I spent like, like two weeks basically like bed bound in the hospital. This was only like a month ago. And I came back afterwards and I was like, okay, I got like three weeks to this marathon.

And I went for a run in Bali. I did three kilometers and I almost nearly died. Like I was the closest I'd ever been to collapsing because all my body just hadn't handled it. And I had to pull out of the race, which was super fucking disappointing. And yeah, I was very annoyed about the process. So I think now it's July. now, I think the next target will be maybe January, February to hit a marathon in Asia again. So move much more into that transition.

But it's weird, right? Because my brain sometimes is like, yeah, I want to go into these ultras and then I also want to keep up like all my strength and my size. And it's like 50-50, right? So I think I'm going to be doing a combination of it, which is like hybrid training, which is, you know, commit to a marathon for 16 weeks. And then take those lessons, go back to bodybuilding and put back on like 10 kilos and then just go back and forth. because that's kind of how Nick Baer kind of positions it. He kind of goes in and out. Him as well actually, yeah.

Yeah, so he goes in and out. He doesn't really commit fully to one. So that's the beauty of where we're at with, you know, 10 years plus training in the gym is that our legs are going to atrophy quite significantly, but our upper body actually won't. It's kind of weird why that is. So my legs fall apart straight away. In the six weeks that I was training, my leg, I think I lost like half the size of my legs,

which was so wild. It was crazy. It was so crazy. Even though I was training, right? I was training like my legs twice a week still. They just shrunk. It was so weird. Yeah.

But I do think you can get it back. That's the thing. Yeah. And muscle memory is always kind of powerful. If you are out and then it helps. And then if the COVID didn't happen, do you think you'd stay in Ireland? No, fuck that. No way, man.

No. Like, I don't know. I just. I just didn't like living in Ireland in general, right? You know, I think it's a slower culture. It's much more of like a nine to five culture. Like there's not that many entrepreneurs that are doing a lot of cool stuff there. You know, my fiance is American.

I spent a lot of time in America. I don't have any ties to Ireland anymore, which is a blessing, I guess, to some degree. So I don't really see much of reason to be there. It's super expensive, right? It's crazy expensive. They're trying to tax you for like nine. 90% of your entire life there. So I think when I had the opportunity to get up and leave, I was like, okay, I'm out.

I'm done with this. And I think, look, I'm telling this tale of many other people. I know there's a mass exodus of Ireland from people in their 20s. They've just got up and left. People have gone to Australia. They've gone to Canada. They've come to Asia. And the reason being is because the cost of living is so high.

The standard living is pretty grim. You can't even get houses there anymore. There's no accommodation. the job opportunities are kind of shit like who wants to pay who wants to spend four years in college to go in and do a graduate role for 30K when you can go online

and work a remote job or build a freelance business or build an agency and make that in a month like logically it just doesn't make sense anymore so the way things were done supported those countries Ireland, UK, USA to some degree but the internet is leveled

the playing field and how you can do anything, right? You see people on LinkedIn that have six months experience making 20, 30K, 40K a month because they're good at what they do. It's not about how much years experience you have, right? So that's the way I kind of reframe things. And, you know, I'm one of the money that I've left, right? Even in the UK, I just saw yesterday, it was a Matt Baker got married and he moved to Cyprus, right?

He got out of the UK and he moved to Cyprus. I know even people like Lara Costa, spent a lot of time out of the UK now and whatnot. I don't know. I just think back in the day being in those cities like Dublin and London was essential, whereas now, like, you couldn't give me those apartments to pay for it. You know, if you gave me the best apartment at a discount rate in Dublin, I wouldn't take it anymore. And it's interesting, especially with Ireland, because quite interesting in economics or geography. And you often see how wealthy Ireland is or how high it ranks on. ranks of health but then when you know more about it it's because it's not tax haven right so

companies have HQs there and this and that and actually the citizens don't benefit from that as much yeah like so the average salary in ireland you could look it up as like 24,000 I imagine imagine it's a 24,000 euro a year because the medium right is taken from guys that work in the post office making 15k a year all the way to people that work at corporate jobs. But, you know, as the entrepreneur, like, as a entrepreneur, I know that the role of the entrepreneur is not to make all those employees super wealthy, right? So the fact that there's a complete outsized proportion of employees to entrepreneurs in Ireland,

and there's a dominance of multinational companies, has the downward pressure to make people poor. Like, it literally has a pressure of that. Because one, there's less small business owners. because the tax is really high. Dude, I'm pretty sure a business tax there. I don't have a business in Ireland deliberately, but I'm pretty sure it's like 20, 30, 40%, right?

So the first time business owners or entrepreneurs are getting absolutely axed. So that's why they're not living there. Yes, big brother fucking multinational company is coming in and they're getting the tax benefit. But that just means that you build a society of employees. And because of that, everyone is benchmarked to the median salary.

which is like 60K. Okay. So I don't know what society we live in, but 60K is not enough anymore, right? I'm 28. I'm 28. I have no kids, have no mortgage,

and I couldn't live off 60K a year. Because it's just not enough, right? So it's terrifying me, terrifying to think how people, with many kids and everything, who go through all that path, who pick the right path, go into these jobs and think that

this is correct. Whereas if you open your head up and think of the reality of the world and who actually runs the world and who runs these companies and who runs the country, you'll quickly discover that what you're being paid is not enough to be able to take care of you forever or people around you. And if people kind of look at that and think, oh, that's not true. Well, then like you actually believe their narrative, right? Because there is no way in world. If you're making 80K, 100K and you're getting tax 50% and you've two kids in a mortgage, that you are financially well off. But you're not though, right?

You're like, you're physically not. And inflation's so fucking crazy in those countries as well now that it just, man, it's literally, it's literally a system, right? It's literally a matrix.

The way it's been configured, the way it's been manipulated, the way it's been interpreted, the way they pull people from schools and students, from universities and bring them into corporations. It's all a system, dude. It's all a system.

So that's why I think it's just an interesting observation that I feel a lot of those countries, um, they killed it from 20, from 2000 to 2015. They killed it because there was no opportunity elsewhere. Whereas now you have a lot of young guys who are into fitness and they just start putting a fitness content and then all of a sudden they're coaching people and then they

have a group and then they have an app and then they have all this other shit and they're making they're making probably 10 times more than the fitness coach who did the fitness degree is as the PT. And that's just a raw reality. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's sad to you here. But let's transition to more positive topic to your experience with podcasting.

When you were about to start podcasting, did you just grab a microphone and start it? Or did you, how did you actually start? Good point. For me, it was more figuring out what was going on in my own mind. Because for a long time, as you can tell, I'm pretty introspective. like I've always been looking at things being like, is this really the way it should be or is this the way it should be done? So for me, it was always about a search for meaning and purpose. I remember during a pandemic, I read demand search for meaning by Victor Franco.

And that for me, you really open up my eyes in terms of the pad is actually the search, right? The pad is not like where you go or what you do or the business model or the product. The pad is the search for fulfillment and meaning. And if we know that that's what the goal is, then everything else is like part of that process. And the best way to do that was to find people on that path, which is the whole idea for the podcast. So I started super rough, $60 dollar microphone, money back guarantee because I genuinely felt like I was going to have to return it. It wasn't going to work out. I had the crappy camera from my own, my old laptop.

I used my phone. I sell it hip the phone to the wall. It was like super rustic and everything. But it was getting better though. That was the main thing, right? And I was so fearful of like, you know, the podcast failing. and everyone hating it and da-da-da-da. So as a result, I was really committed to making it better.

And I think through the episodes, I more fell in love with the production, the quality, the positioning, the how it sounds, how it feels, like the feeling of basically of creating a really good episode and really connecting with the guests and connecting with the audience. That's kind of what I fell in love with.

So I came in for that search for meaning and purpose, which I'm still trying to figure out to this. stay four years later, but then you stay for much more of the experience that you have. And 230 episodes later, I'm still only getting started, I think, a lot of times. As I look at other people, look at some of the big podcasts, just doesn't think I still have a long way to go, but I'm committed to the process, though. Do you remember both back then and even now, what are your biggest influences from the podcasting scene? So for me, it was Pat Flynn, if you're familiar with Pat Flynn from a smart passive income. I'm actually,

meeting Pat Flynn pretty soon. I'm really comfortable to that and he's been a huge episode. Yeah, that's the goal, right? The goal is to get it done. But I'm going to meet him soon, which I'm really excited for it. But he was the biggest influence for me because I literally open up YouTube, typed in how to start a podcast. And I see Pat Flynn's face pop up. And then I see he had like a eight point video tutorial. And I was super broke, right? I'm super broke living in Ireland. So like depressed, no idea what I was due in my life and I watch every single one of his tutorials. And then he's going through

which Mike Dubai and I'm on Amazon like, ooh, that's too expensive. And I'm looking at this like software. I'm like, oh, that's too expensive. And I'm like, I'm using all like a piracy version of all the software and I follow every single step. And if it wasn't for that dude, I would not be here. Like he's had the biggest influence on my, on my entire journey versus anyone else. And most people outside of the podcast and content world, don't even know he exists. They don't actually know his influence and how much he's impacted people. So he's played a huge role on my journey, man, because he was the one that, like, basically taught me about the process.

It was just like, and like for me, I'm such a process driven person, saying my, like, my business, my podcast, my relationships, right? It's not like it's input equals output. Output equals outcome. And I just fell in love with that process, which was really helpful. And then I think over time, I like to think that you graduate from people. I mean, it's a nice kind of term. Instead of like saying, oh, I don't need this anymore.

You almost graduate to someone else. I think people like Justin Welsh have had a huge influence on me from an entrepreneur perspective. He really helped me figure out the whole concept of just offers and building offers. And then I feel like I kind of graduated that content for a while and moved. You did much more. Together, right? Two. Yeah, you have two episodes together.

One of person as well. Yeah, it was cool, man. I really enjoyed meeting him. He's a fantastic guy. and I hope to mean them again pretty soon. And yeah, we just kept on growing from there. More people then that kind of came in to almost like help me grow, help me scale, help me build bigger businesses.

So it's been a lot of the people that I've interviewed have been reflections of where I am in my journey and where I want to go. And that's a beautiful thing is that you can look back through kickoff sessions over the past four years and see where I was mentally. You can see that I was a young, insecure kid, short-head. no idea what I was doing. And then you can see over time, I'm slowly figuring things out.

I'm detaching from the matrix a small bit. I'm building my first business. I'm slowly figuring things out. And then I'm going all in. And I think not many people have that experience online, apart from like Imangazi, maybe a few other guys as well. And that journey allows me to look back at it and think,

okay, like we're doing something cool here. And I can kind of follow them in that process. And I don't look back in that too often, especially I don't get that much time anymore. But, you know, I do think that in like 10 years time, I'd love to sit down and just watch all my old episodes and be like, that dude was a nerd. But at least I'm moving in the right direction. And you can see the evolution and the progress and, you know, nice, nice reward. Yeah. And what will be then your current inspiration or podcasters that you follow if it changed from before?

That's a good question. I was just thinking about this beforehand. And I think people like Chris Williamson have opened up the playing field for what is possible to do with production. And the speed, elegance, positioning, branding and alignment, he's opened up a whole new world of what's possible. And looking at someone like that is a huge inspiration for me as a business owner and as a podcaster because I look at something like that and think it's possible. people can go do this you can scale to that level you can have that connectivity with people

and even how he presents himself from a positioning even with his words like his word choice how he speaks it's hugely influential for people so that's been very impactful for myself in terms of stylistic team and I think that's a good way to

frame it he's really at the top end and I think if you're getting into this podcast space in 2024 you should not trying to, you shouldn't try to be like Joe Rogan. You should try be like Chris Williamson because if you're trying to be like Joe Rogan, you're going to waste 100 episodes because he's Joe Rogan because he's Joe Rogan. He is, he can chill, he can come in and wear a top of pizza on it and no one gives a shit right. It's chill and relax and everyone can smoke weed and move on. Whereas if you're not starting today with the best foot forward, which is

like you positioning yourself as a authority, as the influence, the systematic way to build and grow and scale, you're going to struggle, right? You're going to really, really struggle. And that's being my focus, right? For the past three years, you know, I've grown 50 podcasts in the past, like three years. We've been managing over 50 podcasts. It's all about, it's all about positioning. You know, that's where it's one and last. From the podcast to the listeners, to the revenue in the back end. It's amazing example because I really like Chris Williamson as well, whether it's his podcast, his kind of online presents, his lifestyle, even his business, I think he's amazing. I can definitely recommend him as well. And when did you start thinking or when did you

connected podcasting with business? Because you've got a podcasting agency and now you mentioned that you are helping others. So was it the idea from the beginning? No. This is what's interesting, right? I think the best opportunities kind of come to you. and because I was quite literally in my basement figuring out how this podcasting works like for production, design, content writing, how do we show up on LinkedIn? How do we show up on YouTube? I was just so deep down the rabbit hole that when I would record with someone like today, people would say, hey, like how do you do that thing with your light?

And how do you do that thing with the recording? And they would say, well, can you just come and do this for me? And in the beginning, I was doing a lot of this in a, freelance bases. I was like, yeah, sure. I'll come in and just help you with your podcast. So I would meet with people for free. And I always recommend working for free in the beginning because it's the best way to cut your teeth and to truly understand what product and what problem you're solving. If you can figure out what problem you're solving, you can make as much money as you want in the future. But in the beginning, when you're working for free, you can observe and you can see what

problem you're solving. So I was helping a lot of podcasters fix all of their issues in the beginning. And I was doing it. Like, I would come in and I'd fix the problem and move on for free. And they would say, this was great, fantastic. And over time, guys would say, okay, we'll start paying you. We'll start paying you retainers. We'll start paying you consulting fees. But the next problem came was why people couldn't implement the feedback. I would tell people, hey, do X, Y, and Z, and they wouldn't do it. So as a result, I would have my team in kickoff sessions, do it further. So I'd say, hey, we'll create your thumbnails. We'll do your editing. We'll do your content writing. And that's, That's how we built the media company was because I said, fuck just waiting.

I'll just do it. I won't bother waiting a week. I'll just do it for the next 20 minutes. So that allowed us to grow really quickly. And because the model was kickoff sessions, people would look at kickoff sessions and say, well, I wanted to be like that. And I would say, okay, we can do it like that. And whenever I would get on a call with someone, they would say, let me see your portfolio.

And I would say, well, I have a bunch of other clients you work on. But here's me. and here's what I do for me every single day and the pace and the speed we go at and people are going to say, okay, where do we go? Where do we sign up? So it allowed us to go from like zero to seven figures

in 12 months, probably 14 months. And now, like, the goal is hit like multiple seven figures a year within the next year. We have the done for you offer, which way we run people's podcasts fully end to end. And we've been scaling that really aggressively. Now we have a done which you approach, which is a coaching program.

So we not only, do the podcast for people, but we also coach people. So that's a coaching program that we've been building for the past couple of months. It's now fully built. It's fully deployed. And we're really growing that aggressively. So we have, we have a big team. We've like over 10 people now in total. And yeah, just trying to get the path to eight figures is the plan, right? So I think that's where all out of my focus goes on now every single day, pretty much. Yeah, that's really impressive. And do you think there is still big market for the podcasts because of course there are loads of podcasts i love podcasts listen

too many but sometimes i feel like that the market is oversaturated already so what's your opinion about this well i think that there isn't enough good ones right there's a lot of agencies but not a lot of good agencies a lot of fitness trainers but not a lot of good fitness trainers a lot of accountants but a lot of good accountants so you have like two million podcasts that are that are opened you only have 200 000 that are active of the 200 thousand that are active, you only have a percentage that are come out weekly. Of the ones that come out weekly, majority of them don't even fucking repurpose their content. Of the ones that don't even repurpose their content, there's even a shorter and smaller and smaller and

smaller. So if anything, the niche is so tight and it's so, it's so binded in that it's a really, really good niche because it's not, it's not hard to become a category king, right? Because you only have like fucking 40 people that are even competing in here. And I think the unique mechanism that we have is that we're children right like where kids are average age and the company is like 21 22 like the guys are dialed into youtube they're dialed into styles and thumbnails and mr beast and did so like we're just so young and so tied to the to what's happening in the market that we we have an ear to the ground 24-7 whereas a lot of the older guys they're like fucking audio nerds that worked for npr and they just basically don't understand like where

the market is going whereas i i think I think honestly, like you can track my post. I was one of the first people in the world to say that YouTube will run the podcast game. In 2020, I was writing on fucking LinkedIn saying that YouTube is where the podcast market will be in four or five years. It will just be on YouTube. No one's even going to listen anywhere else. And I used to get a whole, I used to get a whole truckload of DMs, man, and comments being like, oh, you're just trying to ruin it for everyone. you're trying to basically turn it into like,

you're trying to turn it into like a commercialization. It's all about the sponsorships and everything. I literally looked at the thing five years ago and I was like, this is a fucking mess. I was like, this is a shit. We've audio here. We got video here. It was such a shit show.

I said, YouTube is the only thing that matters. And everything else doesn't matter. And basically it came true. It all came true. And it wasn't a random hypothesis. I didn't put my hand up outside and say it was going to work. I remember distinctly looking at it saying this was such a mess

that the only person I could solve it was YouTube. The reason why I came to that conclusion was because I tried to solve it. Not my people know this, but in 2020, I saw how fragmented the podcast world was that I was trying to build a tool to consolidate everything

and tie in audio, video, clips, content writing into one SaaS platform. And I couldn't build it. So I literally gave, gave up. And I remember I gave up and I was sitting in an office in Dublin

and I was thinking I was like well it's a good thing YouTube we're going to do it. That's actually genuine I was watching my head. I was like if I can't do it at least Google can do it

and I just left it let it be at that point. I was like okay I'm going to go back to consulting and helping people on that because it was too big of a problem to crack and it was four years later

audio is still a shit show. No one has even fixed it yet four years later. And I was like oh, there's this is a few companies I tried to do it, they had a crack off it. It wasn't great. But that's where we are, basically. Yeah, it's interesting. Actually, I enjoy listening to it on YouTube as well, because I like the video, even if it's in the background, I like to have a look sometimes. So it's a good point. Yeah.

And can you share some advice and tips from your podcasting journey, whether it's for people like me, like podcasters or any people that want to start? Yeah, for sure. I think focus on YouTube number one, right? YouTube has to be top of funnel, top of mind. That's your awareness piece. So you need to have awareness. And if we can build awareness on YouTube,

it gives us the most virality. There's a lot of search, a lot of capabilities on YouTube. Then you need to get kind of dialed in on who you're solving for. So what problem you're solving with your podcast, with your content. This can be agnostic to being a podcaster. It can be any sort of content writing.

you need to be able to get in the mind of who you're solving for and building that relationship with the viewer. So you're coming in every week or every day and you're solving that specific problem, which is either making them more money, improving their health, wealth, or relationships is basically like all the problems in the world's solved. And for the most part, most podcasts are not doing that. So that's your first protocol is to solve problems. From there, I would think you'd need to go into an owned audience. So you need to transfer from a free audience, a rented audience, which is YouTube to a owned audience like your newsletter and cultivate that cult, effectively, cultivate in your newsletter. And that would really build that relationship with them. And I would

suggest, you know, weekly newsletters, maybe even twice a week, just sharing that insight continuously. And from there, then you'd kind of build your paid programs from there. So I think what I'd like to say is like, we've been able to make a crazy amount of money from an extremely small audience. And it's not about getting lucky. It's actually about solving problems. So the fact that we're able to dial into a very specific problem and help a lot of people allowed us to make a proportionate, outsides proportionate amount of the money. And that's where I think most podcasters get it wrong because they're talking about

relationship advice and traveling and this and that, whereas they don't actually solve a problem. So you can't build a product. You can't build a service business off it. and you can't get sponsorship off the back of it because no one wants to work with you. So I've learned that the hard way, which we had to re-engineer kickoff sessions. We've done that over several iterations.

But now for me to go and connect with a podcast, especially either in our coaching program or in our agency, it's very easy for us to go and just switch, flick to switch because a lot of people need help and they need help with the strategy in the beginning. Yeah. And you told us before what are the plans with your agency, but what are your plans with the podcast? Is it, you know, where do you see it?

Yeah, man. For me, for me to be fair, I do want to, I want to increase the amount of tours that we're doing. So we are planning a very big tour right now and it's very difficult, but we're doing it and it's going really well. But I do think that I'm going in need to travel more. It's a feature not a bulk, right? I'm trying to decrease the amount of virtual podcast that I'm doing and trying to increase the amount of in-person. Now, we're finding a nice balance, to be fair, it is working. But I think the game is going to be one in-person in-person in-studio.

So we're going to be picking up our tours. We have another tour coming up in September, which is going to be very elaborate. Like we're basically trying to solve the biggest problem, which is helping young people live richer and more filling life, on the biggest scale, which is going to be traveling, literally around the world, doing it. So it's not going to be cheap, but it's going to be good. Yeah. So the concept of doing it, right, is like just going to be able to connect with the biggest entrepreneurs in the world. I do have a few big guests in mind that I love to get, right?

But it's part of the journey. But for me, it's always a, it's an internal bottle, right? I'm not competing with some other show. I, you know, I wish everyone else the best. For me, it's, I really want to improve. from where we were yesterday, you know, and a blessing and a curse of my personality is that I look at how I was yesterday and I don't look at it positively. I look at it as if I need to get better and better and better, which is a good and a bad thing, I guess, I guess, right? It's a good thing.

It's a bad thing. But I think that's the challenge that we're having right now, which is we need to keep leveling up the quality in the guests, in the conversations, in the style, in the tonality. And that builds a better podcast. It also allows me to build a better. other business as well. The bigger the podcast gets, the bigger the business can get as well, the same time. Yeah, it sounds like a great goal and definitely exciting adventure for you to travel and speak with such people. So we'll be excited. And I guess we'll have to comment again that you've got some amazing guests. Yeah. And then we will be slowly finishing. Do you want to promote yourself, promote your services and anywhere where people can find?

You just, if you type Darnely into Google, you should find me. And if you don't, I didn't do a good enough job. That's why I describe it. Or you will find it in a show note. Yeah. And then do you want to share any final advice or any message or something that I should have asked you and did not in the end? Yeah, man. I think for a lot of people, they struggle just going zero to one.

So like if you were thinking about planning a podcast or you want to, you know, start writing on LinkedIn. in or start writing on Twitter or putting out reels, just good to go zero to one. Be less concerned about the growth hacks and design and having things as perfect. Make sure they are really focusing on just getting the reps in because I think quantity is really important in the beginning and quality proceeds it as a result. So the desirable look that you want or the feel that you want comes after the work. So I think that's really helpful for people. one more question i always curious if there are any books that are currently reading or any books

that were impactful to you if you want to inspire us or give any recommendations i got a ton give me a second oh man i got so i got so money as always so 48 laws of power always my um my my top favorite for that can we expect a robert green on kick-up sessions oh i've messaged them too i've mess him too many times at this stage he's probably sick of me. I'm reading Leaders Eat Last recently, which is really good. So obviously as a young entrepreneur, it's like really important. You understand like leadership because like you're just very emotional. So that's very, that's really good.

There's lows. I'll leave it at that. Just one recommendation for now for people to fill in the gaps with. Yeah, that sounds perfect. I think then Darren, we can finish it for today. It was amazing chat. Thank you so much. because as a fan of your podcast, someone who follows you,

it was amazing to welcome to my podcast and to chat with you. I wish all the best and I will be more than happy to welcome anytime in the future again. For sure, for sure. Yeah, and I really appreciate. I'm happy to promote the podcast as well as time goes on and as you released episode. Thanks for listening to Produce by with Tomer. Check out show notes for all the links and don't forget to like, subscribe and leave your feedback. Speak soon.

Thank you.