Starting Your Own Podcast with Kyle C. Rheiner

Intro: Welcome to the Start Local podcast. 

Liam Dempsey:  Hey, everybody. This is Liam Dempsey. I’m your host, and we’re going to talk about helping businesses in Chester County in the greater Philadelphia, navigate the COVID-19 economy. 

Today, we’ve got Kyle Rheiner with us today. With offices in Westchester and Wilmington, Kyle is the food and beverage practice leader with Arthur Hall Insurance. He specializes in insurance for the craft beverage industry, which, as I found out, includes both beer and liquor. He’s the founder and host of the Mighty…He’s the founder and host of the Beer Mighty Things podcast. Kyle, welcome to the show. 

Kyle Rheiner: Hey, Liam. Thanks for having me. How are you?

Liam Dempsey: Yeah, very well. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for your time. I know it’s a crazy busy time for everybody and we appreciate you taking the time to be on the show today. Before we get into talking about podcasting, we’re kind of building on some conversations we’ve had with previous guests about pivoting to online, and we want to talk to you about your podcast and getting that started, tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Kyle Rheiner: Well, born and raised in Pennsylvania. Grew up in the Lehigh Valley for 18 years. Went to West Chester University and I never left. So I’ve been in the Chester County area for 18 years now. So, literally split down the middle. You know, met my wife. We never left. So that is that. 

I’ve been in the insurance business ever since graduating college. So, Saturday I graduated. Monday I went to work and, you know, I was more on the financial side for about eight years. And now i’ve been on the property casualty side for eight years . i’ve worked in restaurants as did my family, you know, my whole life my mother worked in restaurants. My family worked for Bethlehem Steel, and you know, so I worked in restaurants. 

And then, you know, I worked at Iron Hill Brewery in Westchester, learned how to brew. I’ve brewed with other brewers and kind of matched all those up as far as you know, my insurance niche. I have a good network and I thought that, you know, the property casualty world would be a good fit. And eight years later, it definitely is. 

In addition, I’ve two daughters. Yeah. In addition, I have two daughters, my wife’s a teacher, and you know, we’re keeping busy. 

Liam Dempsey: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thanks again for taking the time. I wanted to talk to you really about your podcast, The Beer Mighty Things, and you came to us through one of our guests who would might have been on your podcast.

And in advance of this show, you and I were talking about you putting together a podcast really in response to COVID-19, and you weren’t a podcaster in February and maybe not even in early March. But by late March and April you were. Tell me a little bit about what were your reasons for launching the podcast? What was your thought process behind it? What were you trying to do or achieve? Or what goals were you aiming for?

Kyle Rheiner: Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So, you know, I’m a member of the, you know, Brewer’s Guilds, right? Pennsylvania, New Jersey. And, you know, I was sitting out in Pittsburgh at a Brewer’s Guild meeting. I’m in the conference room and there’s some really valuable content going on. And, you know, as I look around, I realized that a lot of the folks from the Philadelphia area or the Lehigh Valley, they weren’t attending because obviously they have a business to run and they are four or five hours from the Pittsburgh location. And we spread it around, you know, at some point we’ll do Pittsburgh, and then we’ll do Harrisburg, then we’ll do Philly, and we kind of rotate so everybody kind of gets that chance. And while I was sitting there, I realized, wow. this is really good content. We’re not recording it. There’s no way to provide the rest of the guild members, this content. So, literally sitting there, you know, I’d been aware of anchor, and, you know, obviously there’s just podcast platforms out there. So, I made a placeholder and I made it craft mighty things. I’m a big fan of the dear mighty things quote from Teddy Roosevelt, eventually. So, I made the placeholder and eventually it clicked in my head. It was like, “Oh, dear and bear rhyme. Let’s make it the Beer Mighty things podcast”. 

So this was January of 2020. Just made a placeholder had some ideas, wrote down some names, didn’t do much with it. And then COVID hit and I’m sitting here and now, you know, getting really used to Zoom. I had the microphone, I had the camera and I’m sitting here going, well. ‘

Zoom gives me this capability to just hit record. And, you know, this is my way of, you know, connecting with my clients to see them and to engage with them. And then I thought, well, why don’t we just start putting out craft beverage, you know, industry content, small business owners, branding, you know, safety manufacturing, how to build a brewery, all that stuff. You know, why don’t I just start interviewing these folks, you know, and at the same time promoting them. So I did. That was April 7th and here we are, July 22nd and we’re approaching 2300 listens and 43 episodes. 

Liam Dempsey: That’s a lot of episodes in a short run. 

Kyle Rheiner: Yeah., I mean, there was a time where I was, you know, doing one or two a day because people were at their computers. They’re available. You know, they were home. And it was pretty easy for me to just reach out to my clients and other industry resources and say, “Hey, do you want to pop on and talk about how to build a brewery? Do you want to talk about this and that. And they were like, “Yeah. Let’s do it. You know?” It was how are you adapting to COVID 19? Right? You can’t be open. Now you’re doing beer delivery. You know, there’s new beer delivery platforms, you know, so I just reached out to everybody. Everybody was very willing to just hop on. And, you know, they’re familiar with the technology then already with zoom and seeing each other virtually. So I just kind of ran with it.

Liam Dempsey:That’s really interesting. You had shared earlier in the conversation where you were out in Pittsburgh and you reserved a/or booked a name on Anchor, which is a podcasting host. Tell me a little bit about the steps that you took to actually get the podcast off the ground. What did  that look like in kind of a technical sense? You had some podcast hosting with Anchor, but talk us through that, between that, and you know, publishing your first show. What went into that?

Kyle Rheiner: Sure. Well, there’s a couple of things. Again, you know, I think before you do anything, you need to have a, why am I doing this? Why am I gonna, you know, how many episodes am I going to put out? Right. And what’s going to be the goal here? So I’m a firm believer in niching and I just, you know, do one thing really well, you know, don’t do everything half assed, do everything really well. And so, you know, You know, again, this was a something that basically my wife said, “Hey, you should start a podcast.”

You know, you have a lot of friends out there that are interesting and people would want to hear it. So, you know, a couple of friends of mine in like November, we had, you know, started goofing around some of the, the microphones and whatnot and figuring out how to do it. 

Anyway, I really determined that my why. My goal was to:

1.Be a better speaker. 

2. To be a better listener

3.  Know how to ask better questions, how to be a good interviewer.

And that was kind of, alright, so those are my goals that I want to get out of this. 

All right. Now, how do we go about doing it? So, you know, obviously have a plan and kind of narrow down your niche. But then what I had done as I started to kind of dig into this was, alright, how do, if I record a, if I record a podcast, where does it go? How do I get it out? So you find anchor, you find Libsyn. You find all these different ones that’ll fit. We’re not right. Some cost money, some are free. So, you know, how deep do you want to get? And I’m a firm believer of, you know, what used to keep it simple. Stupid is now keep it super simple to be a little more kinder about it. But keep it super simple. How do I do this as simply the least amount of time consumed. And put it out good quality, right? So obviously the microphone is important. It makes a big difference, but obviously your content is even more important. 

So again, I researched,  you know, how to start a podcast, you know, how to lay out an episode,  how to ask better questions. And I kind of went through that. I watched a lot of YouTube videos. I found some of the best guys like Pat Flynn,  one of the original like podcasters, you know, talks about all the different equipment. I spent hours looking up, Okay, what microphone do I get? I found out there’s dynamic microphones and then there’s condenser microphones. And I was like, what do they do? What are they good for? Some are better for online like this. Some are better in with multiple people. Some pick up noise that’s around you. Some don’t. It’s like, “Oh my goodness!”. So you go down a rabbit hole. But I watched a number of videos from again, Pat Flynn, Sonny Leonar -, Doozy,  John Bunn and Nick Miller. I actually just took a zoom workshop with them there. They had created a podcast years ago. I guess that was like, how do film weddings? And they super, super micro niched it. And, you know, they’re making 300 grand a year. 

Now, doing it because that’s what they did. They did one thing. They did it well. So, there’s so much information out there.

 I just went and looked for it. And, you know, you find one and then that kind of sparks another question. And then as I started to do these, I started looking up, as you start to do these, I looked up,  transitional questions. You know, how to ask better questions, how to start a question. And then I also started to think about the best interviewers. You know, Howard Stern is one of the greatest interviewers of all time. Joe Rogan is phenomenal as well. There’s so many. So what I started paying attention to was my question in my mind was, how do they open up an interview? You know, how do they start their show? And then, how do you sign off on your show?You know, how do you exit the show? 

And so, I started to then kind of get a little more granular on those items and just take the notes. I keep them in front of me. I have a show document. I kind of follow it. Anchor and any of these places will probably have you know, tutorials. You know, again, how to set up your podcast, how to create your show and have a flow. 

So I listened to, I mean, I spent hours just listening and studying not that mine’s fantastic and we can always learn, but at least I had a pretty good foundation.  All that stuff is free information. It’s out there. And that’s. So, I did, so I’m a continuous learner. I enjoy learning and reading and  you know as much as it was some tedious work, I truly enjoyed it.

Liam Dempsey: Yeah. I get that and I really liked where you were talking about how you’d start with maybe somebody like plant Pat Flynn who’s a very well known Podcaster and he’s mentioning folks and talking about things and that’s raising questions in your mind leading you on to the next stage of research. So you didn’t have to have your entire list of questions. You had one or two, you started research, those got answers to those that raised other questions. And so you weren’t having the launch tomorrow with everything in place. You could take the time to do the research, to get the show that you wanted. I would get it that live in a way that worked for you and for what you were trying to achieve.

Kyle Rheiner: Yeah. And now that, you know, so you always have that kind of, you have one or two ideas and that springboards into another and what you just mentioned there was something that, you know, I researched the typical time of a person’s commute. Right. 26 minutes is a typical time of a commute sounds like. All right, I should keep my podcast either to 26 minutes or to 52 minutes so that their way to work and home, they can listen to it.

The other thing I realized was episode eight apparently is the death of every podcast where, you know, it’s kind of like when you’re working out or something, right? You don’t see results right away, so you quit.  and what I had done was I built a library before I made the podcast public. So I made those eight episodes first and recorded all of them before making the show live. So it was already there. It was already past that, you know, that fall off point. And I scheduled them, you know, how often am I going to do these? When am I going to put them out and you want to be consistent? 

Liam Dempsey: Yeah. That’s a great way forward. It used to be seven. So i’m glad to see that the average Is up to eight now. So, that’s promising for the podcast world. Get one extra shot. Well, it is. I mean, it’s like anything new especially, you know, for a small business. And you know, okay Arthur Hall’s not a small business. But you know your practice, your immediate practice, your business, and your client base. You know in a sense that it is a small business. If I can put it like that and you have a certain amount of time per day dedicated to work and some weeks, it’s going to be more. But some weeks, the family’s going to need more. It’s going to be less. And so it all has to be done in a manageable way. So, that’s awesome that you had that foresight to tee those all up. 

And the topics you were mentioning, starting a brewery, branding a brewery, pivoting to online distribution or pickup distribution or reservations, none of that is immediately time sensitive in the sense that it needs to go live today at two o’clock or it’s no longer relevant, good content. So pacing that out to be manageable is a really wise approach. Well done. Thank you.

I want to touch on kind of kind of two things here is one of the things that you shared about was one of your goals was to make you a better listener and to ask better questions. I wonder, and I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself here, but I wonder what kind of payoff you’ve seen in terms of client relationships. So maybe we’re not necessarily that you’re interviewing a client, but you’re taking those skills that you’re developing to go back to them. Yeah. I’m guessing craft insurance, craft beverage insurance, you get annual checkups or semi annual checkups. And what has that been for you been like for you? What kind of benefits are you seeing there, Kyle? 

Kyle Rheiner: Well, you know what? I’ve been introduced. So I have so many new friends like in New England. Now, all these breweries in New England  even the farmers and all the stuff like “Hey, anytime you come up here, you have a place to stay. We really enjoyed our conversation. Oh, I think that you should speak with this person, right?” So it’s all, you know, my business is relationships and my podcast has become relationships. And this has been a great way for me to meet new people, right? If I call somebody and say “Hey, I’m calling about insurance”. They’re gonna say “Yeah. I’m good (and hang up)”.. if I say, “Hey, you know, I would like to learn more about you and tell me more about myself”. You know, in such and such a way, now all of a sudden we see each other via zoom we’re here, where you’re not going to miss the appointment. I don’t have to drive to you. But I have seen that, you know, I get to read body language, right? You know, being in sales, I understand body language and what is, you know, what people like or what is off putting. I get to read that. So I’m able to kind of, again, as you just, you know, some of your questions here where you’re, you know, what they call is double clicking, right? You ask a question, you kind of double click into it to expand upon that answer. So again, understanding, you know, what my clients like, what my clients don’t like, what they wish they had more of. 

Again, just these relationships and this is a good way. I mean, right now we’re not exactly in front of people, so it kind of helps you stay sharp too. But yeah, to be a better listener, you know, all of our spouses would appreciate that. Right. So, I’ve learned to, you know, 

Liam Dempsey: We’re here.

Kyle Rheiner: I can see you. Right. So, you know, this is our conversation. When I’m speaking to my wife, you know, No phone, right? I want to sit, I want to listen to you and fully comprehend. And if I don’t understand what you’re trying to say, well, I can ask a more clarifying question because I actually have a list of them on my screen here where I can say in other words, or I agree, or I understand, or walk me through this process. Can you tell me about this? 

So again, just asking open ended questions to fully understand. And, you know, I have a friend who said, you know, my kind of life goal is to be interested in who I’m speaking to and also have them be interested in me. And I think that is kind of what all this comes to a head about is, you know, let’s learn about each other. Let’s listen more. Let’s fully understand. And If you just ask yes or no questions, you’re not gonna get, you know, any answers. You’re not gonna know anything. So, you know, how do we get people talking? How do, you know, how do I become a better listener, better questioner? And in turn becomes a better relationship as well as, man, I know a lot more about you. Because I ask better questions.

Liam Dempsey: So before I ask you about, you know, what kind of additional benefits you get, I want to ask you about promoting the show. Because, you know, it’s one thing to record. It’s one thing to publish. It’s quite another to get to the point where you’re getting 2,000 plus downloads, 2,000 plus listens. I think it’s another, it’s probably a better way to, in my ear to put that. What are you doing to promote the show? Because ultimately, good content if nobody hears is a wasted effort. So how are you doing that? How are you doing that when your day job is insurance sales, and insurance protection, and taking care of your customers? What does that look like for you?

Kyle Rheiner: Yeah. So you mentioned there that you know, the content, if it’s not heard, it’s kind of lost. At the same time, I would argue that, you know, saying you have a podcast, you have a library, it stays there. So whether people find it now or later, well, they’re right. So…

Liam Dempsey: Yeah. That’s a really good point. 

Kyle Rheiner: You know, maybe you didn’t catch that. Maybe you didn’t catch episode three, but guess what? You can go back to episode three or maybe episode three wasn’t pertinent to you at that time. And now three months down the road, it is. And you’re like, “Oh, man! I should have listened to this before. It’s perfect. So to tell you the truth, I really haven’t promoted the podcast. What I have found is that a lot of the listeners will promote it themselves. Hey, I was on this podcast. Hey, it went really well. Hey, I really enjoyed talking with Kyle. Check this one out. So they’re promoting it themselves or putting it out in their own email blasts. You know, I will post the story on Instagram. If you follow my Instagram, @beermightythingspodcast, you’ll see that it’s very strategic. 

And how I post since it is a grid of, you know, three across on Instagram, I usually do, you know, three episodes, right? A snapshot of each episode. And I use the Spotify kind of description as, you know, I screenshot that and I post it. I have created the different highlights and Instagram where you have, you know, it’s all my guests in order, then it’s all my episodes in order. So I keep track of that. I try to build a brand that way. I only have, I just got 400 followers. It’s organic from one. Again, I’ve spent $0 on this and,  I’ve actually, I don’t even have this up to monetize it. 

My goal is to provide an educational library of all things craft beverage and small business. And I’m not trying to profit from it. So, I really have not promoted it. I haven’t boosted any posts. I am, I did get permission to post my episodes as they pop up in the Brewers Guild of Pennsylvania, in the New Jersey Brewers Guild. And those are the people that want to listen to it. That’s my audience. So, you know, doing some posts, but, you know, Hey, on their page, on their group with their permission, that’s how it’s getting out there. But ultimately, you know, I’m, you know, the folks are kind of promoting themselves and, you know, we’re getting a following a little bit, you know, people are starting to pop in and listen. I have a steady audience that I can see again. I’m approaching 2300 listens. So basically every episode has at least 50 listens consistently. 

It seems like there’s about 50 people every single day that tune in, which is pretty cool. But again, when you’re using anchor or any of these, right, it automatically will go to Spotify, Apple, Google. Then you can, you know, set it up for Castbox, Overcast, which I didn’t even know were things.

Personally, I’m a Stitcher guy. So, where I get to go to stitcher.com or the app. I get to make a playlist of all my podcasts and hit play. And it updates automatically every day. And now, you know, mine’s on there. So I get the, you know, I’ll see it at all. And you could share it, you know, “Hey, Liam. Our podcast went live today. Here’s the links to Spotify, Apple, and anywhere else. If you search it, just go find it.” And then you’ll see, you know, those folks are posting, Hey, I had a great conversation and they’re putting it on LinkedIn. You know, wherever. So they’ll put it out themselves, you know? 

Liam Dempsey: Yeah. That’s a good point, right? You’re relying on the guest of networks to help promote the show, which in turn makes it much more manageable for you. 

Kyle, you shared that your goal wasn’t to monetize this, to not turn it into a revenue stream. Tell me a little bit about what kind of returns or wins you’re seeing through the show that aren’t money related. How else are you benefiting either through the business or just through your own personal development?

Kyle Rheiner: So again, if we come back to my goals, which was to become a better speaker, listener, and you know, interviewer, essentially, you know, I received the text message last night. So, these are some of those gratification that’s coming back to me where I’m understanding how I come through to the listener here was one last night, that said, “Hey, I listened to your podcast with this person on this topic. I really love your relaxed style really, like how you transition into, you know, business to personal. And you have fun. You guys laugh and tell jokes like just casual.” I’ve gotten a lot of those comments on we really like your relaxed style. Again, We like, you know, it’s funny or, you know, it’s not stuffy. it’s not dull and boring. It’s the kind of every episode is a little different. Every guest has different energy. And, you know, they say that, you know, I’m pretty good at adapting to those energies and making it flow and keeping everybody interested. So getting those ideas of feedback and “Hey, you know, you made me laugh. I almost crashed my car today cause I was laughing so hard. Like I’ve had that, you know, I’ve had to pull over”. 

There was a really funny episode with the brewer from Oxbow Brewing. If you guys want to tune in, she was wild. It was so funny, but you know, and then a lot of these folks I’ve never met before. So I’m trying to do my best to be respectful and you know, and we’re having these really good relationships who, you know, where you hop on the podcast and you may have thought that I’ve known these people for years. And in turn, literally we didn’t do any rehearsing, and we just hopped on and had a conversation. Like that’s my favorite thing to do is just personally, like I’m gonna grab a beer at a brewery and talk to the person next to me. And that’s why a lot of the breweries don’t have TVs because they want you to sit and talk to the person next to you. So, yeah. It’s just getting out of the comfort zone. I don’t know. The more you do it, the better you get with anything. 

Liam Dempsey: Fantastic. So we’ve got a little bit of time left and you’ve painted a very positive picture of getting a podcast off the ground, having fun with it, getting value out of it, and growing it into a real program for your business. But I imagine there’s some headaches. Tell me a little bit about your biggest challenge. Either getting it off the ground or keeping it going. What’s, where’s the one one challenge that you keep running into that you still find yourself addressing on an ongoing basis? 

Kyle Rheiner: So, family time’s important, right? So, you know, I don’t do these during work hours because I respect my business. You know, I’ll do them on a lunch break cause we got to take a lunch break, but I’ll do them at night after my kids go to bed. 

The thing that I hate is  editing. Now, I use Garage Band and it’s actually pretty easy because Zoom, you can record separate tracks. So I can record Liam’s track. I can record my track. And the thing that is pretty neat with that is I can see when people are speaking and when they’re not. And I can see when you’re overlapping and I can move that or I can delete it. I can delete things here and there.  And  sometimes, you know, I learned a few years ago, I was always like gotta be a perfectionist. Well, that’s the death of anybody because that doesn’t exist. 

So progress, not perfection is the new motto. And what I have hope everybody should, you know, switch to because again guys perfection doesn’t exist. Don’t bother, just be better today than you were yesterday. That’s all we can do. If you can look yourself in the, you know, mirror at the end of the day and say Hey, I did a good job. I did my best. I learned something new. I helped somebody. That’s what it’s all about. 

So, editing. You know, when we’re talking business, you got to think of the things that what, you know, what I’m good at, right? And I think that I’m putting out some good content. I’m having good guests. I have a good structure. And what I’m not, you know, what I don’t do for a living is edit audio. I’m not, it’s not what I do. So technically I shouldn’t do it. I should outsource it. And you can really like, you can use like Fiverr or some of these websites or wherever and look for somebody who you can literally pay $5 to do it for you.  And I should probably do that. And some of these, some of them are kind of like download, upload, publish. You’re good. You don’t have to do anything. But really, that’s my Bane of having a podcast is the fact that I have to like do that little extra work where you know, Joe Rogan’s got his team where he records it. He steps up and walks away and goes, does a workout or does whatever the hell he’s supposed to do. And a team uploads it and uploads to social media and does all that stuff like do what you are good at and outsource the rest.

Liam Dempsey: Yeah. I’d agree with that. And he’s not here today as we mentioned earlier in the show but my co-host, Joe Casabona does all the technical and audio editing. I do all the social media. He does all that. And so, yeah. When we hit stop on the record button, my work’s done until the podcast launch. And then it’s my job again. 

Kyle Rheiner: Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Before I say goodbye to you this afternoon, a couple of things. I just want to remind that a lot of the stuff that you’ve talked about, Anchor and Libsyn and GarageBand, we’ll link to all of that in the show notes over at [startlocal.co].

And before again, we say goodbye, tell people where they can find you online and where they can find the podcast, and where they can find your business, please.

Kyle Rheiner: Sure. So, business wise, you know, arthurhall.com. Long time, large insurance agency in Chester County and again, in Wilmington there, I run [craftbrewinginsurance.com]. 

Also, as well as you can, you know, there’s a couple of links there, but [craftbvgins.com] because it’s not just breweries, it’s distilleries, it’s wine, it’s all things craft beverages helps her, you know, all that stuff. 

@beermightythingspodcast on Instagram and food and beverage practice leader.

And I think it’s like,  on Facebook would be,  you know, facebook.com/Kklerheinerinsurance. So, you know, a lot of that stuff. But I mean, those, that content is really published on Instagram at beermightythingspodcast. And that’s the main, I mean, it’ll link to me personally from there. kyle.c.rheiner.cic, you know, write that down or say that five times fast. 

But, yeah. [craftbrewinginsurance.com], @beermightythingspodcast, that’s where you find me. I’m on LinkedIn. I don’t really use Facebook. I post, but I don’t look. And I’m an Instagram guy. I like the visuals. I like the pictures and I feel like there’s a, you know, there’s less negativity on that so I can keep my positive vibes going.

LLiam Dempsey: Well done. Well done, Kyle. Thank you so much. And folks, thanks again for listening. Until the next time. Stay safe out there.