BUSINESS AND MARKETING 1st ANNIVERSARY EPISODE 
Thank you for joining us today for episode 25 of the Select Business Team podcast.  I’m so exicted about this episode because it marks the 1st year of creating this podcast.  Select Business Team brings business professionals together to discuss options for growing and expanding business with a focus on marketing, leadership and revenue and our podcast provides conversations with business owners on similar topics.

Since today is our 1st anniversary, we are celebrating and this episode is packed full of information to help you, the business professional. The overall theme is lessons I’ve learned from this first year of production, but there are several valuable ideas that I share as I’m talking. The first few minutes you’ll hear me thank a few people that stepped up to the plate to really help this podcast get started, then the real nuggets begin.  

In addition to thanking a few people, I also share with your my personal insights about this journey.  If you are looking for marketing ideas, keep listening, because you'll hear several.  Here’s a little bit of what you can expect:

Challenges people have being interviewed on an podcast
Time management issues of creating a podcast
What’s in the analytics - can you guess what country gets more listens than my own state?
The bigger vision for podcasts

At the very end I'll mention a new program I'm launching called Next Level Referrals.  If you want to build a solid referral business, it's worth listening to the end and getting the details!
Lets get this 1st anniversary episode started.
It’s  hard to believe that it has been 12 months since we launched the podcast for Select Business Team. Today I want to share my appreciation for those that have made this journey possible and talk about a few lessons learned along the way.

It has been such an interesting experience, but in reality, this might not have ever started if it wasn’t for two very special people. You see, I had been thinking about a podcast for a long time.  I tried to recruit my son to help me but he wasn’t interested.  Then one day I was talking to Ben Piper,  who is the owner of Commonwealth Consulting Group and an SBT member. Somehow we got on the subject of podcasts and he said he had one. Truly I was in awe and he could see my excitement.

He volunteered to show me how to get started. Otherwise, I might still be talking about it and not taken action! Initially, I was intimidated, but after hours of research, it wasn’t as hard as I thought. The hardest part is making time, which I’ll talk about shortly.

Shortly after showing me the equipment, Ben told me about a meetup group for podcasters and encouraged me to attend. That’s where I met Charlie Birney of Podcast Village who has been a true inspiration for me. He’s got a heart of gold and is always sharing his knowledge and offers his studio at a discount to members of meetup.

I’ve done a lot of recordings at his studio and we share ideas regularly. You’ll hear him on an upcoming episode. Again, a big thanks to Ben and Charlie for helping me get started and bringing this podcast vision to life.
THANK YOU
One other person that I’d like to thank is Rick Becker. He’s someone I went to high school with and while we didn’t really know each other then, we reconnected through a mutual friend and he’s become my running partner. He’s got a great voice and after a lot of convincing, he agreed to do the intro for my podcast.  When we recorded the intro, I truly didn’t have any idea what I was doing. I didn’t know about voice levels and how to set the microphone on the recording software. We did several ‘takes’ and thanks to my amazing editor Evan, we have an intro that I love! So thanks Rick, and to his wife Susie for putting up with me and Evan for all...