“Instead of us having to learn skills and adapt to the way a computer works , the keyboard, mouse or touch screen, The computers are now learning how we communicate.” – DR. TERI FISHER
#022 – In this episode, I have a conversation with Teri who is an expert with everything voice technology (Amazon Alexa, Siri, Google Home etc.)
Teri and I chat about the importance of voice technology and why new creators should hop onto this opportunity now. Teri talks about how he landed his first paid speaking opportunity – he shares details that you can use if you want to become a paid speaker and the three steps people can use to optimize their content.
Hope you enjoy the episode!
Inspired to start your own podcast? DM me “Podcast” on Instagram and I am happy to point you towards some resources!
Highlights from this episode:
[4:38] Common myth about voice technology
[10:04] Can Tiktokers upload their videos as flash briefings?
[12:57] What are some fears you had when you started?
[16:32] How do you get clarity on your next step?
[21:47] First speaking opportunity
Connect with Dr. Teri:
Website
Instagram
Youtube
LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter
Podcast
A little bit about Dr.Teri Fisher:
Dr. Teri Fisher started in 2017 with his Alexa in Canada podcasts where he documented his journey learning about Alexa. He is a keynote speaker ,a podcaster, an author, educator, performer, and leading authority on all things voice technology. His social media presence has – (just to name a few platforms) 3000+ on twitter, 1000+ on instagram, 6000 followers on clubhouse. He does this while maintaining his day job as a Sports and Exercise Physician. And he is a husband and father – WOW!
Transcription:
Mahrukh Imtiaz
You are listening to the spicy Chai podcast. I’m your host, Mahrukh Imtiaz. And my mission with this podcast is to bring you the voices of content creators who are just a bit ahead of you. People you can relate to, you can hear about their struggles and wins and learn from their mistakes. So you don’t have to make the same mistakes. My hope is that this podcast inspires you to start putting your voice out there and creating content consistently so that you can make the impact you want to make with the skills you already have, and start creating the life you want to live.
So grab your cup of Spicy Chai, and let’s get this show started.
Hey, yo, what’s up? Welcome to Episode 22 of the Spicy Chai podcast. This podcast is to make content creation fun, easy and less stressful for you.
In this episode, I have a conversation with Terry who is an expert with everything voice technology. So I’m talking about Amazon, Alexa, Siri, Google Home, etc. And Dr. Teri and I chat about the importance of voice technology and why new creators should hop onto this opportunity. Now he talks about his first paid speaking opportunity. And he shares details that you can use to become a paid speaker, and three steps people can use to optimize their content. And now go and enjoy the episode. for
Dr. Teri Fisher
For content creators. It’s so important to be thinking about your voice presence right now, your audio presence and what that means going forward because content creators that are thinking about that and are optimizing for that are going to be that much further ahead.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Today’s guest, the man who’s teaching us all about voice technology since 2017. He started in 2017 with his Alexa in Canada podcast where he documented his journey learning about Alexa. How cool is that? Today, he’s a keynote speaker, a podcaster and author and educator, a performer and leading authority and all things waste technology. And I’m not even gonna get into the awards that he’s won because we’re gonna be here for the full hour today. His social media presence, just to name a few 3000 plus followers on Twitter 1000 Plus on Instagram 6000 followers, and clubhouse Yes, clubhouse that just the news platform. And aside from that this is not even his full-time job. He is a sports and exercise physician. And he is a father and a husband. Wow. Welcome to the show, Terry.
Dr. Teri Fisher
Oh, wow. What an introduction. Thank you so much for being here. Well, I’m humbled by that. It’s a pleasure to be here. Excited to talk about all this stuff.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
100%. And I know before we started recording, I already told you like I’m fangirling right now. I’m very excited. And I have definitely heard your story through your podcast through being your clubhouse rooms. But for the listeners, what is your story? What got you into voice technology?
Dr. Teri Fisher
Great question. So I so I should say, first of all, I’m a physician, that’s my job is, as you mentioned, it’s my day job. And, but I’ve always just really, really loved technology. Ever since I was a little kid like I would play with, like the my favorite toys were things like building radio control airplanes, and all this kind of stuff. And so I also, I tend to be a very creative person. I’ve been a musician since since I was very young. And over the years, I’ve always just been involved in technology. Before medical school, I did an education degree. So I’m very interested in teaching as well. And about three years ago, I first became aware, the three years, four years, I’m losing track of the time, something like that are yours now. Thank you for now, I know. Appreciate that. So I became very interested in voice technology. And I started diving into that area. And the more I learned about it, the more I realized that this is a huge shift right now a paradigm shift in the way people are interacting with tech. And it’s going to change the way that we interface with computers in all different areas of our lives and all different verticals, and all different industries, etc. And I kind of went down this rabbit hole of voice tech. And the more I learned about it, the more I was interested. And that’s sort of what started all of those resources that you were commenting at the beginning, the the blog, the podcast, etc, really to educate people about what’s happening with voice tech.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
And that’s a very interesting part because you took one piece of it like a very specialized Alexa. Right, and you kind of really just dug into it, you documented your whole journey. And that’s kind of where I think it all started. Is that correct? Or were there more pieces to that? Yeah,
Dr. Teri Fisher
So you’re absolutely right. The first my kind of first real interaction with voice, if you can put it that way, was through Amazon Alexa. At the time that I started my first blog, which was the lexan Canada blog now been renamed to voice in Canada to sort of be a little bit more broad. But when I started it, Alex actually wasn’t even yet available in Canada. It was it was actually it was only
Mahrukh Imtiaz
It’s not available yet. It’s in the States.
Dr. Teri Fisher
That’s exactly right. And so just the way it happened, though, it was I think it was within like two weeks of launching my blog that then Amazon made the announcement that it was coming to Canada. And so it was just like this amazing timing and but I just I just knew I mean, it was just a matter of time to let came. So I started, I was so interested in it that I started documenting it anyway, even though it wasn’t yet available to Canadians at the time. And of course, since then things have exploded.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
They really have I mean, I’m an Alexa user as well, Siri, Google, I think all of them kind of a mixture of all and on the topic of Alexa, what is one of the most common myths about voice technology that you that you come across in all of your years?
Dr. Teri Fisher
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think one of the most common myths would be people think it’s just for listening to music. They think of it sort of as just like this glorified kind of radio or something like that. But there’s so much more to voice assistants than that. But I think that’s similar to like, when any new technology comes on, you know, it takes a while for those really sophisticated use cases and applications to develop. It’s just like with a mobile phone, when it first came out, the applications were pretty simple. It was like, you know, oh, it was really cool. We could turn a flashlight app, and we can use it as a light. And you know, of course, since then we have things like Uber, you just like, you know, you just get a car and you drive wherever you need to go through your. So it’s the same kind of thing with voice. It starts with, you know, simple applications, listening to music, setting timers, that sort of stuff. And I think a lot of people still don’t realize that there’s so much more you can do with it.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
That’s true. And like if you take it back for beginner content creators, people who either have not started creating content, people who are just in the beginning of their journey, how soon can they hop on to this voice technology? Plain? Would you say?
Dr. Teri Fisher
So for content graders, I mean, they can they could get involved right now, there’s different ways that you can create content for, for Amazon Alexa, in particular. So one of the things that you can actually just like literally literally a couple days ago, I gave a presentation on sort of voice marketing one on one. And what I did was I kind of broke it down, I think there’s two main ways that you could start to create content as a content creator for for Amazon Alexa. So one of them is through native audio content similar to a podcast, right known as a flash briefing. And so podcasters will be very familiar with the obviously the process of creating audio. And then there’s, there are a couple steps you have to take. But there is a way that you can get that audio content onto Amazon Alexa, and then people can listen to it very easily. So that’s one kind of way that a content creator could get content on there. The other way is kind of getting back to what I was saying before is that you can actually create what is equivalent to apps on a mobile phone, you can create skills on Amazon Alexa. And these can be very simple. They can be built on templates that are free that Amazon provides all the way up to very sophisticated skills that require some custom coding. So there are different ways and it depends how much time energy, skill and money, you have to invest in those in those skills. Right.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
And that’s what I was going to go to next. So if I were someone who’s starting out, let’s say someone who’s just started a podcast, someone just just started to tick tock, would you recommend that they do touch the voice technology thing faster? Do would you say that they should wait a bit, create content for a few months, and then look into that.
Dr. Teri Fisher
I think the sooner you get on voice tech, the better because that’s the way the future is going. Just the same way again, 10 years ago, there’s a lot of similarities between kind of the evolution of voice tech, and the adoption compared to mobile phones like 10 years ago, because those those content creators that really optimized for mobile, whether it was through like their website, or getting on there was with apps at the time, like they kind of had a leg up on the competition. And so I think it’s the same now, with people that are taking advantage of the voice tech opportunity right now. Because you’re gonna get in there a little bit quicker, you’re gonna get the experience, and then things can can build from there.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
And if we were to break that down a little bit, let’s say I have a podcast, where I’m interviewing you, and I want to go into and really tap Amazon Alexa flash briefings, how much time and energy would I have to put up just to get started?
Dr. Teri Fisher
So as a podcaster, I mean, you’re doing a lot of the work already. Because as I tell everybody, you know, they’re the biggest time commitment to creating flash briefings on Amazon Alexa, it’s not so much setting it up on Amazon Alexa, it’s just creating the content and being consistent with that. So podcasters already have a leg up there. So maybe I should just break down the flash briefing a little more. So it gives your listeners a little bit under a little bit better understanding. So a flash briefing is basically a native piece of audio content to Amazon Alexa, they are typically approximately two minutes in length. I’ve surveyed my audience about this, and that’s the length that they liked. So they’re very short. So that’s one thing if you’re a podcaster, you would either be wanting to condense your your content took about two minutes in length or take out like little snippets from the content to minute by minute bite sized pieces. Just as an aside the the actual limit that Amazon puts on for a flash briefing length is nine minutes. But the Nymans is actually too long, according to many of the listeners of flash briefings. So what you do is you would you would get your audio content, then it’s a matter of going in to create an Amazon developer account which is free and then you follow some steps to give your flash briefing a name Description. Then you put in some keywords. So it’s it’s more easily searchable, create a little icon for it. And then you’re basically plugging in the link to your RSS feed. So podcasters will be familiar with this. That basically, it’s, it’s the link to where you are hosting where you are uploading your audio files. And I’m simplifying things a little bit here. But that’s kind of the process. And then once that’s done, you submit that to Amazon, and they are usually relatively quick at approving it. And then it’s live on Amazon, Alexa. So that’s that’s kind of the the process involved. It’s, like I said, for podcasters. It’s not a big leap to go from podcasting to doing a flash briefing, right?
Mahrukh Imtiaz
And I would say even, let’s say for video creators, like let’s say tick talkers, like the 30 seconds where they create videos, I mean, they could potentially upload even that for flash briefings, right? or whatnot, be a bit.
Dr. Teri Fisher
Yes, the the audio part the video, because the video is, is it’s a little bit more tricky with the video, because it’s not necessarily available to everybody through the limitations that Amazon does it but you could certainly rip the audio and upload the audio as as your daily episode. What’s really cool about the flash briefing is once once your content is on, Alexa, well, there’s a couple of cool things about it. But two of them that I think are really cool. One is that your content is now searchable on amazon.com. So so if somebody like is looking for a particular topic, and they go to Amazon, and they’re searching for a book or a product related to your topic, and you strategically named your flash briefing in a way that it might be found in the search, it might be found, it might come up, and then somebody can click on that flash briefing. And all of a sudden, they’re listening to you on their Alexa device. So that’s a pretty cool way to have some discovery there. And the other thing about flash briefings is that the users that are listening to flash briefings, they tend to listen to them during transitional moments of the day. So things like when they’re getting dressed in the morning, brushing their teeth, because they can actually set up a routine with their smart speaker that say goes off at a certain time every morning. And then it does whatever you needed to do. So maybe like tells you what the weather’s going to be. That’s a feature I
Mahrukh Imtiaz
That’s a feature I use as well in the morning. You’re very familiar with that. The Good morning, and then it just gives you the weather the news for me and a few flash briefings that are part of it.
Dr. Teri Fisher
Exactly. So you’re the sort of prototypical user there. And that’s how a flash briefing can be brought into somebody’s daily routine.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
That’s amazing. And like, I’d like to touch on the piece where you know how you started this journey in 2017? Did you know what you were getting into in 2017? Like, was it just I’m going to create a podcast I’m going to learn more about Amazon Alexa, did you have a vision in mind which you’re now kind of really bringing to fruition?
Dr. Teri Fisher
Yeah, that’s a really good question. When I started it, I really started it because I just I love playing with technology. And as I mentioned, like, I like educating I like speaking of the musician, I like performing. And so it was a really fun creative outlet from my day job as a physician. And it really all stemmed from and I still say this is all everything that I’ve sort of done in the voice tech space, it all stemmed from a passion, a hobby, and I just, but at the same time, I did have a feeling that if I just kind of continued to do this, and just have fun with it and do a good job and provide value to people and educate people that opportunities, opportunities would come from it. And that’s basically what’s happened. And as you know, I’ve expanded this to a number of other resources. And it’s been a wonderful journey. But still, you know, I really consider it more of a hobby, a passion than my job, because it’s not my full time job. Yeah,
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Yeah, and you know what you can tell that with your voice with your podcast, even in the interview, like you can see the excitement, like you can tell that it is passion. And I want to break down what you said there about you started with knowing that if you stay consistent, you’re going to eventually get opportunities out of that. So I want to ask that when you did start, what were some of the fears, initial fears that you started with? And how did you get over those? Because a lot of people don’t stay consistent enough. And that’s because of fears hold them back. So I just really want to touch on that piece. Yeah,
Dr. Teri Fisher
You’re asking great questions. These are really good, thought provoking questions. So the fear, you know, when I first started it, you know, and I think it’s kind of that impostor syndrome a little bit. It’s like, who am I to be talking about the stuff at the time, there weren’t as many people certainly in the voice tech industry as there are now. But there were some that had sort of already established themselves, you know, podcast hosts and event producers and that sort of stuff. And I was like, you know, in my first couple of podcast episodes, I remember I was apprehensive about asking some of them to come on my podcast to be interviewed. And I was like, Are they gonna? Are they gonna have any interest in like talking to me? But, but what I found was actually there, they were very generous with their time. And you know, they were they were great. And I learned a lot from them. And it also actually created a lot of connections, a lot of opportunities came from that by interviewing these people in the voice tech industry. So I think that was sort of the the biggest thing, but at the same time, I also knew and and there’s maybe there’s a lesson here for people it’s just that you know, if you really are interested in something, and you sort of you know, you spend The time learning about it, you can become an expert on that. It just it takes time and over, over time, you can continue to work on it. And I think the key really is to do something you’re passionate about, because that’s what kept me and still keeps me consistent is because I just love learning about the stuff and it’s just so much fun. You know, I don’t I don’t think if I was if I wasn’t, you know, interested in as much as I am like, I don’t think I continue to do it at the same pace or rate that I’m doing it up. Right,
Mahrukh Imtiaz
I can see that it. And people say that when you grow the fears are mean, but they just change their names, or they just tend to change their faces. So what are some things that you will struggle with today that you didn’t struggle with? When you started? Four years into the journey? Five years? Yeah,
Dr. Teri Fisher
Well, for many years, it is. So another great question. You know, one of the things that I know now being four or five years into the journey, like, I have so many ideas of things that I’d love to do now that I think could really be valuable to people to help them. And, you know, part of the challenge with it now is finding the best ways to prioritize my time it comes down to time management and making sure that I have time for everything. As you mentioned, like I have two kids, I have a wife, family is extremely important to me. So that’s something that I’m always making sure that, you know, is a priority. What does that mean? In terms of my fears? Like, Oh, am I gonna, you know, now now I’ve got responsibilities to people to when it comes to the voice stuff, because I’ve got sponsors now for my show. And so I always want to make sure that I’m doing a good enough job and representing those people, well, who have invested some some time and some money into what I’m doing. So it becomes I mean, it is being run more like a business. But it’s funny, like, psychologically, I still consider it a hobby. And so I want to represent the people that are involved with what I’m doing very well, I guess, you know, it’s a long kind of long winded answer to say that, you know, my biggest fear now is that I just wanna make sure that I’m continuing to do a good job in representing people well, that are also investing in in what I’m doing. I
Mahrukh Imtiaz
I can totally see that, especially because you said, now you have sponsors, and probably like, the bigger you grow, obviously, people have these expectations attached, I can totally see that another problem dealing with yet but hopefully soon, you know, so and you said, time management there and being like someone who’s doing multiple things. And what I would really like to dig into there is first, how do you get clarity on what your next steps should be, especially when you have so many ideas?
Dr. Teri Fisher
I think it all comes down to priorities, and recognizing that there are certain things that need to be taken care of sooner rather than others. And I mean, you may you may have heard other like entrepreneurs talk about this, but there’s like different seasons. And in terms of you know, your business and what you’re doing, you know, and for example, clubhouse is a great example of that. Right, who knew that clubhouse was going to come on the scene like this and just have so much engagement right now. And so I have shifted a lot of my time right now to clubhouse, because it is, in my opinion, the perfect, the perfect social media channel. For somebody that’s interested in voice technology. I mean, it is all about our voices. And so it just makes sense. And so a lot of other things that I’ve been working on have taken a backseat right now because I just see so much value in clubhouse, and how I can engage with people and teach people about voice tech and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, I mean, that’s a great example. I mean, I joined clubhouse the beginning this year, I think it was January 3, I think. And I’ve spent more time on clubhouse than I have on any other social media platform average just because of the nature of it. And
Mahrukh Imtiaz
I can see that and you you said priorities depends on priorities. Could you break that down a little bit? Like how do you figure out your priorities? Is it through a business mentor? Is it through doing a vision board? Like what does that look like for you? For
Dr. Teri Fisher
For me personally, and this may not be the best, I may not be the best person to answer this question, to be honest. But all I can say is from my personal opinion, my personal opinion is history. It’s based on my calendar, because I look ahead and I see okay, there are these particular events coming up, there are these particular opportunities for me to speak out there are these. And then I kind of think how I can leverage those, those touch points, those opportunities that are gonna be involved with to provide value, and to also provide promotional things that will help expose people to what I’m doing. So maybe a good example is. So I was asked to give a presentation just this past week, as I mentioned as part of a voice tech online conference. And I thought, how can I use that to provide some true value to my audience, but at the same time, do it in a way that provides a resource that I can then continue to grow off of in my business. And what I realized again, this kind of comes back to clubhouse is in clubhouse, I was getting a lot of people asking me, How do I get started with voice technology for marketing. And so I realized I needed to create a resource for people to understand that. And so when I was asked to give this presentation, I thought I’m going to give a presentation on voice marketing one on one. And so what I did was I did create that presentation, I recorded it I have it as a YouTube video. And now when I get that answer in clubhouse, I can refer them to that particular video. So I was kind of killing two birds with one stone by giving a presentation, and also answering my audience because I was listening to them. And that was all based on the time that I knew that I was giving this presentation. So I kind of gave myself the deadline, I need to prioritize this particular presentation for this particular date, because that’s on my calendar. But ultimately, it’s going to serve the the online conference, but also serve the questions that I’m getting on clubhouse. So hopefully that gives you an example makes some sense. Yeah.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
I love that. I love that. Because it’s, I love how you approach it too. Because it’s like, how can I add value? And how can I continue to add value and it’s like, also creating resources, depending on the problems that are coming up versus thinking about things and just creating it because you think people need it. So I think it’s just really, really understanding what’s needed out there. And in terms of time management, do you currently have a team helping you? And if yes, when did you first hire someone? And who was the first person you hired? Like, not like name but like the position?
Dr. Teri Fisher
Yeah. So I, it’s another great question. Up until very recently, I was doing everything myself. And so it was, it was a lot of time, I now have an assistant that helps me with a little bit of my social media and a little end and helping me with podcast notes. So blog posts and newsletters. But that I mean, it’s a great question, something that I that I’m constantly thinking about is, you know, if in order for me to scale things, I need to get more help. Yeah, that’s sort of the extent of the help I have right now. But it’s something that I’m always thinking about.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Yeah, it’s one of the questions people keep asking, like, when should I get help with? And also another one that keeps coming up is, when do I hire a coach? Do you have a certain coach? And what would your thoughts be on that?
Dr. Teri Fisher
Coaching comes in different forms, I don’t have a formal coach that I’ve hired. But I have some people that I respect tremendously in the industry and outside the industry, that I consider friends, and we chat. And so it’s almost like a little bit of a more of a mastermind type type experience. And also, I would say that, you know, a lot of the stuff that I learned is, I’m a big consumer of podcasts. So, you know, I will listen to podcasters. And although it’s not direct coaching, I think there’s a tremendous amount that you can learn from hearing them provide their value and their expertise to other people and even coach some other people. So yeah, I don’t I don’t have a formal coach at this point. I definitely think that is valuable. But I have, I would say, mentors slash friends that I’m fortunate to be able to bounce ideas off of them.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Agree, I love that. And you are now currently also speaking, I want to touch on that a little bit. When did you get your first speaking opportunity because of what you were doing for fun? And how did that come about?
Dr. Teri Fisher
I’m trying to remember back the first big opportunity, I think it was a couple of months into and I started doing it. And it came about by inviting some of those conference producers onto my podcast, and creating those connections, and them sort of getting a sense of who I am and what I like to talk about. And then when they put on their events, they asked me if I’d like to participate in the event. And I think that was the the initial part. The other thing I’ll say is for people that want to sort of get into speaking, you can put your name out there and like ask people if they’re looking for speakers and volunteer your time. Because I can remember doing that as well as one of the early sort of speaking engagements that I did about voice Tech was, I saw a particular conference coming up, I was interested in potentially speaking at it. And I contacted them and I said, Hey, here’s the thing that I speak on, there’s my area of expertise. They didn’t really have anybody at the time that was speaking about voice Tech was very new. And so they’re interested and I just volunteered my time. What that meant is, you know, by me doing that, I came into that talk, I’ll say I was very prepared for that. I knew I wanted to do a really good job for that. And other speaking opportunities came from that from people hearing me speak. And so that was a way to kind of break into it as well. Yeah,
Mahrukh Imtiaz
I love that. And would you say that was because of the niche of or would you say this would work for most content creators, like just kind of searching conferences, obviously doing the work as well, trying to see how you can give them value and then potentially asking them if they need a speaker?
Dr. Teri Fisher
Yeah, I think it does work for all niches, I may have had a slight advantage there because this is so new, and there weren’t really a lot of people speaking about it. So when I approached them, that was sort of unique, but even if it wasn’t, I think if you’ve got sort of an interesting angle on a topic, or there’s something different that you can or a different way that you can present it. I think that’s got a lot of value too. So certainly, like if you’re a speaker about an area that an industry that’s been around for a while, I still think you should, you know, approach people and try to volunteer your time and do a good job of speaking.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
I agree with that. I think people miss a lot of opportunities, but just volunteering their time. And I know I personally have learned a lot just by doing that, like, Hey, do you need someone for this thing? Sure. I’ll do it. And then as you said, like go in and really give a lot of value. I want to take it back there and this goes back to your career as a physician and you doing this as a hobby when you started like this thing in 2017? What is one thing you know, now that you didn’t know, then that you would go back and tell Terry, as someone who’s doing a full time job and doing everything by themselves? From what I hear, what
Dr. Teri Fisher
What would I tell Terry back then? perhaps get some help your earlier, like I was, I mean, that’s something that I’ve learned. I did everything, as I said, for years years. And, you know, part of part of the issue with that was, as I mentioned, like, I love tech, I love putting websites together, I love producing podcasts, I love, like, kind of pushing the limits and looking at what new technology and tools are out there. I love playing with different tools, I love doing all that stuff. But I think as as you try to scale a business, you’re holding yourself back by not getting some help with some of those things. And I still, like I said, I’m still trying to learn to do that better. But I think, you know, trying to let go a little bit of of some of the tasks that are involved in a daily basis, I probably would have been helpful to me and, and still would be helpful to me.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Yeah, I can totally see that. And that’s the thing. It’s one of those things where you don’t know when to ask for help. Because for me, too, personally, I love editing podcasts. And it’s something people are constantly telling me that like, you know, maybe you can get help with that. And then you can focus your time somewhere else. And it was like, but I actually liked this part, I actually enjoy it. I enjoy taking clips out nerd here as well. I respect that I respect that. You know, I like learning. But when it comes to that, like when you doing everything yourself, what are some resources that helped you? I know you spoke about a mentors earlier on. But what are some of the resources that really helped you along the way?
Dr. Teri Fisher
Also, in terms of doing things myself? Like, it depends what we’re talking about. Because when it comes to podcast production, I would just go online and search for stuff. I mean, there’s so there’s such a wealth of knowledge on there, like, how do you how do you set up a pot? Like when I first started my podcast, it was new to me to like, I’d never done it before. So I just searched for YouTube videos, like how do you do it, and I taught myself how to do it. I mean, you could pretty much teach yourself how to do anything now with the internet, so. So that’s probably the biggest thing and then listening to podcasts. And then and like I said, I love playing with tools. So I would experiment with different things, even if like it’s something as simple as like scheduling meetings, like I use a tool, very common one is Calendly, I’ve got nothing to do with them in terms of affiliate. But you know, that just it just makes a lot of it easier in terms of having to go back and forth with scheduling things. So finding the tools that kind of increase your efficiency, I think are tremendously important. And I do try to kind of seek those out because I recognize the value of those. Oh,
Mahrukh Imtiaz
100%. Same thing with Calendly. Like the amount of people I’ve gone on their podcasts and they don’t have it, it takes us like good 2025 minutes to just set up a time to the point where I’m like, why don’t I set up the Calendly for you, like you know, it will be easier that way. But love Calendly is when it’s a free tool as well for everyone listening, so anyone wants to use that. I’m really, really impressed that you’ve been doing this for four years, mostly by yourself, and you’re managing all these different things. We spoke about some of your fears, we talked about some of your speaking journeys. And I really liked the tip of go search for conferences that are coming up and then reach out to them, the producers and potentially invite them to a podcast or you know what, just let them know that you’re available as speaker. I really, really liked that. I really liked that you were so honest about the fact that you decide to hire help a little later, and that you would do it earlier if needed be. If you were in my shoes today, what would you have asked yourself that I didn’t.
Dr. Teri Fisher
If I was in your shoes, if I was interviewing myself right now, though, I mean,
Mahrukh Imtiaz
If you were interviewing yourself right now, on a podcast for beginner content creators, yeah. Would you ask yourself that I didn’t.
Dr. Teri Fisher
Why is voice so important for content creators right now as a whole? Like, what is it about voice that is so compelling? I
Mahrukh Imtiaz
I love that question. And do you mind answering?
Dr. Teri Fisher
Sure. That was like a softball. I set myself up for that question. That way. Yeah, here’s the little little the thing that I say. And if you’ve been somewhere you may have heard me say this already in clubhouse, but for the listeners voice technology right now. I think it’s it is a huge paradigm shift in the way that we interact with computers. What we’ve seen history shows that about every 10 years, there’s there’s a change in the operating system that people use with with computers. So as a kid, I remember coming home from school, and my parents had bought our first personal computer. It was a Tandy computer from RadioShack. And it ran MS DOS. So we put in a little floppy drive, we loaded it up all there was was a keyboard, and we had to type there was no graphics, right? Approximately 10 years later, Microsoft Windows came out and then you could use a mouse. Approximately 10 years later, the iPhone came out. And now you could use a touchscreen. And for all three of those things, though, for each of those mobile, sorry for each of those operating systems, MS DOS, MS Windows, and like a mobile OS, whether it’s Android or iOS, you have to have a piece of hardware in your hand. You either have to be have your fingers on a keyboard, you have to have your hand on a mouse, where you have to have your hand on a smart screen on a touchscreen. Now here we are 10 years later, and because of the advances in natural language, understanding natural language processing, machine learning AI, computers are powerful enough that they can just understand How we speak. And that’s completely turn things around. Because instead of us having to learn skills and adapt to the way a computer works by learning how to use a keyboard, mouse or touchscreen, the computers are now learning how we talk, how we and how we communicate. And what that means is that we no longer have to have our hands on hardware. As long as there’s a microphone in a room somewhere. And a speaker, you can interface with a computer. And so what that means is that kids today, they don’t have to learn how to read or write to be able to talk to or interface with a computer, they can just talk to a computer. And then taking that a step further. There are like five main reasons why voice is so compelling right now. And you may have heard this vo ice is the kind of I use the five letters and voice voice is versatile. So you can multitask. When you’re when you’re speaking with someone, right? You could be driving, can’t be driving when you’re texting, oh is omnipresent. So the sound it sound, it’s audio, so it’s all around you. So with text, you have to be looking in a certain direction to be able to read it or consume it, that audio could be behind you, somebody could be calling your name. And you’re aware of that. The AI part is innate. So when babies are born, the first thing they do is they cry. And so it is completely instinctual for us to use our voices to communicate, see is contextual. So you can hear the motion in a person’s voice. But you can’t necessarily tell the emotion in a text or written piece of content, you might think someone’s being sarcastic when they’re not, etc. And then finally eats efficient. So we can communicate three to four times faster when we’re speaking compared to when we’re typing. And so when you take those five reasons together, and you realize that the interface is now different with interfacing with computers, that’s why I keep saying like, I think this is a completely different game. This is a paradigm shift. And more and more, we’re going to be living in a world of ambient computing, where that’s just speakers and microphones around us. And that’s how we’re going to interface with computers. And so that was a very long winded answer to say, for content creators, it’s, it’s so important to be thinking about your voice presence right now, your audio presence, and what that means going forward, because content creators that are thinking about that, and are optimizing for that are going to be that much further ahead.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
I love that. Thank you for asking that question. And thank you for answering that. And you talked about like the voice, I do want to dig into that a little bit. So for some people who want to optimize that, what would that look like? Let’s say the first three steps for people who want to optimize that, what would that look like?
Dr. Teri Fisher
So the first thing is thinking about? So first of all kind of goes back to what you’re talking about earlier is think about like, do you want to have some type of content on like an Amazon Alexa device in terms of audio flash briefings? Because that’s an option. But you don’t have to do that. The second one is thinking about do you want to create like a custom skill, kind of like, again, like an app? And do you want to have that sort of presence so that your audience, it’s actually way that you can kind of scale your voice because the audience, if you go that route and create a skill, the audience can actually talk with you through the speaker, even though you’re not actually present. And so it’s a way that you can kind of scale your voice. And you can design that in many different ways. And the other thing I’ll say is, it’s very important to think about the content that you have already online, in terms of long tail searches, longtail keywords, in terms of SEO. So if you think about how somebody would search for pizza, off the top of their head online, they might just type in the keyword pizza, right? But if you’re going to, if you’re going to talk to a smart speaker, and you want to find out where to order pizza, you’re not just going to typically a person not just gonna say, pizza, they’re gonna say, where can I order a pizza. And that’s critical. Because if you’re gonna want to optimize for search on voice, you’re going to want to think about those natural ways that people ask questions and answer those questions on your on your sites. Because ultimately, when the smart speaker goes to try to retrieve that information, it’s going to be looking for the matches to those questions. So it’s much more natural sounding search type of queries. And so I think that’s something that people want to think about in your particular niche and your particular vertical, what are the common questions in the way people ask those questions, and then optimize your content for that, because that’s going to help for voice SEO. Absolutely
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Absolutely love that tip. Honestly, this, this whole conversation has been gold for me. So before we get into our final question, Terry, where can our listeners connect with you online?
Dr. Teri Fisher
So I’m my username on most social media platforms is Dr. Terry Fisher. And it’s about Dr. T E R i f i s h er, so that’s on Twitter clubhouse, Instagram, my YouTube channel is at youtube.com/dr Terry Fisher. And in fact, my website, which has links to everything that I’m doing, is that Dr. Terry fisher.com. And I think the one other thing I’ll just mention is I do do this event called The Voice den, which is the event that happens once a month, and that’s one that I was mentioning is I do have some sponsors, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are both sponsors for that. So big shout out to them too, for their for their sponsorship. And, and I encourage people to come and join it sort of a casual, fun, online reality type show event. And that’s at the hoist n.com That’s
Mahrukh Imtiaz
That’s amazing. I’m definitely looking forward to attending next one I’ve attended to some on clubhouse. So I’ve been part of that and And to our final question, Terry, you’ve been in this journey for four years. If you were to go back to 2017, and achieve what you’ve done in four years, in six months, what are some things you would have done? Like, if you were to go back? Like, let’s say, you got a magic wand? Yeah, you’re able to go back and you have to achieve whatever you haven’t for years and months, what would you do differently?
Dr. Teri Fisher
That’s a good question. I would, to be honest, I would, I would do a lot of stuff the same. But it kind of gets back to what we were talking about is I would probably get somebody to help me as well earlier. Because, you know, it has taken me four years to do all this stuff. And a lot of it was doing the busy work, because we talked about creating the websites producing the podcasts. And again, it comes back. It’s the same issue, right? I think, in order to sort of have it happen sooner, you need to get some help at some point. So I think, what’s the lesson in there? I guess it’s a question of, What do you want to do? What do you want to prioritize? Do you want to do you want to just enjoy the journey and you know, if you enjoy building the website, then do that, like, enjoy building the website. If you want to create your podcast and you want to enjoy editing the podcast, then, hey, enjoy editing the podcast. But if you want to, like really move things fast, and scale quickly and grow your business, then you need to find the people that are good at that, and offload some of those tasks so that you have more time to then kind of be the thinker behind it and then figure out what what the next steps are. So that’s what I would do to to accelerate it you would have to write in my opinion, I think you’d have to find some help earlier.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
I love that. Well, thank you so much, once again, for coming on for being so authentic with your answers. Honestly, even for me, someone who’s been following you for a bit, just a lot more clarity on how can I make the most of the voice technology? Is it for me or not? So for those listening, I hope you guys got the same out of this interview. Thanks again, Terry, and we will help see you next week.
Dr. Teri Fisher
Thank you so much for having me. This is a really fun conversation, great questions, and I really enjoyed it. So thanks for the opportunity.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
If you’re listening to this episode and are inspired to create your own podcast, then DM me the word podcast on Instagram. You will see it in the show notes as well. And I’ll be happy to point you to some resources. Well Until next time, lots of love from your favorite. You got this beautiful!
