from Doug and Lee (Founders) 

Podango is excited to bring you a complimentary ticket ($97 value) to the first ever Virtual Seminar Week.  The first 5000 people to register with the Podango code receive a free ticket. Go to www.podango.com/vsw for information on how to get your complimentary ticket. 
Virtual Seminar Week is next week, November 10-17 and includes over 49 top business leaders, trainers and inspirational luminaries that you can listen to all from the comfort of your living room.
Experts include:

• Jay Abraham –> Legendary $5000/hour marketing mastermind
• Carlos Marin –> Recruited & managed sales force of 600,000
• Dr. Joe Mercola –> Founder of the #1 natural-health site in the world
• Bill Bartmann –> Billionaire to bankruptcy & back again
• Bob Proctor –> Modern-day Napolean Hill (Discover The Secret)
• Bill Romanowski –> Secrets to peak performance (4 Superbowl wins)
• Tellman Knudson & Stephanie Frank –> Overcoming ADHD at home & work
• Miriam Adler-MacWilliams –> Discover the truth about options trading
• Paul Colligan –> How to use podcasts for profit (One of our own Station Directors: Internet Marketing Podcast Network)
• Gay & Katie Hendricks –> Creating love & harmony in relationships

We are excited to bring you this unique opportunity.

By Doug Smith – Podango President

Podango have been in Beta 1 release for one week now and we have made good progress. We are not without issues, but for our first beta we are very pleased. We have six stations opens for business and another 17 approved and building out their content. More requests to become station directors are coming in daily. We reject some and accept some. We are holding to a standard in order to establish a professional environment with great niche focused content. I continue to be amazed at the applications from all over the world about some very interest niches. I love the “long-tail” and I love talking to experts in niche markets. I love their passion and desire to share, listen and create online conversations.

In addition to our content and stations we also have make progress in other areas. Our transcriptions are starting to roll in and our traffic is picking up. We have a Google page rank of 6/10 after a week and our Alexa rating is improving each day.

Included in those six live stations are industry leaders in Paul Colligan (Internet Marketing), John Jantsch (Small Business Marketing), Roger Merrill (Leadership), a great world news station, old time music and an Italian station.  We love our station directors and know they are creating huge value for their audiences. Some argue that a station director model takes away from the democratic process of web-wide voting for favorites. Though that might be true to an extent, it is my experience that a few in the minority tend to strongly influence the ranking of content popularity in the fully open web and the station directors add some sanity to audience rankings and more importantly, they don’t stand on the sidelines and point fingers, they take responsibility to listen and produce great station content that will create loyalty in those they serve. It is really about the conversations and some of the best conversations are moderated by leaders in a field. They don’t know it all, but they know enough to find the answers people are looking for. We love our station directors. In the end, their success is our success.

And if you think this week was fun. Wait until next week at the Podcasting and Portable Media Expo where we are sponsoring the Podcasting Unconference 2006 in our booth. #301 come and visit. We will have 18 sessions/conversations moderated by podcasting industry leaders. Sound familiar.  So for us it is not just about giving “voice”, it is also about having “ears”. It is about the conversation.

by Doug Smith - Podango, President 

I had the privilege of attending and presenting at The Super Saturday Network Marketing Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida this past Saturday. I am a foreigner to the Network Marketing industry but this was a fun and enlightening event.  The event was sponsored by The Network Marketing Magazine whose editor George Madiou asked Leroy Maughan and me to present podcasting and the Podango Station model to the conference. The reception of this new means of communicating to a diverse, geographically dispersed, yet networked group of people was very exciting. Leroy and George are jointly managing a Podango Station called the Network Marketing World where by using George’s contacts with the training arm of this industry will provide great content on both the market and the skills necessary to be successful in this home based business industry.

We presented with 6 highly popular and successful trainers and leaders of this industry. It was a pleasure to learn from them and feel their enthusiasm for their topics. These six include:

Kathy Robbins who has reached the top position with four network-marketing companies, helped in the expansion of four of those companies to Europe. She is known as one of the best trainers in the industry.  

Having been successful, both corporately and in the network-marketing arena, it seemed natural for Kathy to consult with network marketing companies in the areas of operations, sales and marketing and expansion.

Sandy Botkin who is a CPA, attorney and former trainer of IRS attorneys nationwide. Sandy’s book, Lower Your Taxes Big Time!, is the best-selling tax book at Amazon.com. He lectures all over the nation on tax planning for self-employed and corporate taxpayers… he’s been written up in Newsweek and many other magazines.He is also a syndicated writer and noted author of this famed tape series “Tax Strategies for Business Professionals” and “Tax and Financial Strategies for Residential Real Estate.”

 Doug Firebaugh, an Expert in M.L.M. and Network Marketing, is CEO of PassionFire International. He is a successful entrepreneur who has spent the last 25 years in the sales and Direct marketing field, and has been blessed to help multitudes of others break numerous records in performance by training people on how to “Maximize their Human Success Capital” that lies within them.
 

Dale Calvert who started his first business from his parents home at the age of 14. For the past 25 years he has been supporting entrepreneurs and marketing professionals with some of the most powerful training programs in the industry. A directory of Dale’s websites can be found at DaleCalvert.com. His new course will teach you 21 Ways to create leads in your local market.
 

Max Steingart, Money Magazine called him “The Matchmaker” in 1983. He was named “The Success Story of the Year” by INC Magazine five years later. AT&T called him a visionary of the computer industry. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush congratulated Max for his innovative efforts helping people meet the right people.

Since 1996, Max has devoted his time to researching, studying, understanding and teaching people the secrets of online relationship building through the use of Instant Messaging.
 

Paula Pritchard, As one of the most consistent top performers in network marketing, Paula has proven time and time again that her business building methods work. Her techniques for building large successful organizations have created many successful leaders in the industry and have been well documented in her book Owning Yourself and the CD audio training series “What You Need to Know to Build a Profitable Network Marketing Business.” Today Paula is known worldwide as one of the top network marketers, trainers and leadership developers.
 

These are great leaders and they have much to share. They are not tech geeks, but could quickly see the advantages of podcasting in reaching larger numbers of people. We will have a few of their presentations on the Network Marketing World station soon. We also have the reaction of the audience to the conference. It is an enjoyable audio segment. I encourage you to have a listen.

I continue to be amazed at how readily people are seeing the advantages of time-shifted content consumption. Thank you Tivo.  Stay tuned for a ton of great content for this market from Leroy, George and friends.

by Lee Gibbons, CEO

Learning! That’s what moves me. (Creativity and Innovation–count that as one, combined thing–comes in a close and highly compatible second).

I am absolutely stoked for this week. I will be in San Francisco for the entire week attending the Corporate Podcasting Summit, followed by SuperNova 2006. These two events actually overlap by a day, so that will make for a challenging juggling act on the 21st (I’ll use creativity to get through the challange that creates). But, what has me so excited is the amazing learning opportunity I will have.

Learning, this week, will come in two forms: learming of people, and learning of things. Or, building relationships and cultivating knowledge. But more important that just meeting new people, one must build relationships. And, rather than listening to a new idea, one has to cultivate knowledge.
It is the difference between counting the seeds in an apple v. counting the potential apples within seeds. Both relationships and knowledge require follow-on efforts for them to bear fruit. And when that effort is expended, the potential is as endless as the number of apples within a given seed. If you mearly meet someone and never work to nurture the relationship, it is as helpful as encountering an apple seed while eating an apple.
When you learn of people, and nurture and build a relationship, or learn a timeless principle and cultivate knowledge around it, the relationship or principle continues to give and give and give.

So, this week I am all about learning. I will post about the people and things I learn. Maybe I will be able to pass along some ’seeds’ that can benefit you as well. As a matter of fact comment here with any questions you might have.