I recently ran across a podcast by a very substantial international law firm (no, I’d better not name them here – but get in touch and I’ll dish the dirt!). The subject-matter looked really interesting – lawyers and social media (well, it’s interesting to me as an ex-lawyer, now involved in business audio, which ties in very closely with social media). So I downloaded it.

It started really well – a good, strong piece of opening music, then… as soon as someone started talking, it went straight downhill – in fact, the ‘hill’ in this case was a perpendicular cliff-face!

Chris Tarrant, when he was doing the Capital FM breakfast show, used to say that anyone on a dodgy phone-line sounded as though they were ‘talking through a sock’.

This particular podcast, recorded over a trans-Atlantic phone-line, sounded as though it was being muffled by an entire sock drawer! As if that weren’t bad enough, it was full of echo, digital wobble and bad editing – all of which made it ultimately unlistenable.

It was a great idea, in theory. Unfortunately, the producers shot themselves in both feet. What a waste of an opportunity!

I’m putting together a new FAQ page for the website at the moment. One very common question is:
‘What’s the difference in quality if I make my own audio in-house – without outside help?’

Well, there’s one fairly extreme example for you. I’ll see if I can pull out a clip (which doesn’t identify the people involved) and upload it here, just to give you a taster of how truly awful this thing was! ‘OOPS!’ doesn’t even begin to describe it!

I can see the logic behind that – we have to approach what we do from the customer’s perspective rather than our own (as I was saying about M & S not so long ago); but there’s a problem:  Picture yourself in a room with a bunch of lawyers, coaches – or sound people, if you like.  You know you need one of them, but how do you choose?  Chances are, they’ll all set out broadly the same benefits.  So you need to find something that distinguishes one from the rest – their ‘USP’.

Last week, I was talking about Mindy Gibbins-Klein’s book, “24 Carat BOLD”.  USPs are something Mindy and I disagree on.  She hates the phrase and I don’t.  Ok, so that might have something to do with a bit of piggyback brand awareness – the fact that USP means something else to me, beyond the out of favour marketing acronym.  Seriously, though, I do think it, or a descendant of it, has a place in marketing and brand awareness in the 21st century.  These days, we’ve moved away from the hard sell culture, towards a greater awareness of the importance of building good, strong relationships in business and relationships, whatever form they take, start with attraction.  So, perhaps what we should be developing is a UAP – unique attraction point.  What do you think?

I wasn’t trying to be clever – I think in pictures and that was the picture which kept coming to mind. (The fact that someone who works primarily with sound, and has a guide dog, thinks in pictures may seem a bit odd to you, but that’s another story!). Anyway, it rang a few bells with the audience on the night.

As time went on, others started asking me about putting some podcasts together to help people at different stages of business – start-up, expansion etc – and eventually the two ideas came together (or should that be “collided”?) shortly after 5:00am last Friday, 6th November 2009 and “The Savvy Business Mountain Guides” were born. I’d already written an ebook, on an aspect of law for non-lawyers but this time, I thought, I could do something a bit different and combine the book with some audio and audio-visual material so that contributors can, literally, speak for themselves. I’ve run it past several people and so far the response has been fantastic – what do you think? Constructive criticism is as good as enthusiasm – so let me know.

It’s a major project, which I must be mad to take on at this stage in my own business life – but then, as I said to a fellow business author last week (who is in the process of completing her second book) – “You don’t have to be bonkers to go into business – but it certainly helps! The trick is to find the method in your madness, so you can infect other people with it”.

I’m aiming to get the first book launched within the year. Over the coming months, I’ll keep you up to speed with how it’s going, who I’m talking to and, no doubt, what I’m learning from the exercise. If I can work out how to upload multimedia material here, I’ll do some of that by way of audio and perhaps even some video.

If you want to get involved, email me at sherie@savvybc.com.