Navigating the Modern Media Landscape: A Conversation with Donna Serdula and Isaiah Hankel
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[00:00:00] 

Isaiah Hankel: Hi Donna, good to see you.

donna serdula : It is great to see you. It's been so long.

Isaiah Hankel: it was. How was your trip?

donna serdula : I first went to, Savannah and then I went to Arizona. So traveling for speaking engagements is fun.

Isaiah Hankel: quite the, that's both coast, coast to coast. Good for you.

donna serdula : Yeah, it was fun.

Isaiah Hankel: article published. I saw

donna serdula : Yes. Right here. The watch the woman, a woman's world.

Isaiah Hankel: that's great. Hey, first of all, anything that's in print still, I mean, we're such tactile right? It's amazing to see it in print still. I don't know, I guess for some,

donna serdula : It is for me. It is for me. And I keep them. I keep them. I've never created a scrapbook or anything, but I have all the different magazines and the newspapers. And it is, there is something thrilling about, seeing the name. And I'm, hoping that maybe my phone starts to ring off the hook [00:01:00] from all the people who read Woman's World.

Isaiah Hankel: it's right in the checkout counters. I mean, that's

donna serdula : Yeah,

Isaiah Hankel: you see something in, I still think in terms of circulation, this kind of stuff, I don't know if people, if this is phased out, like if that makes me. like it's like a generational thing. Like, does the, does like Gen Z look, they think of circulation, like they want to get published in print or they just, they're trying to get on the biggest podcast maybe.

donna serdula : you know, that's a really good question. I have never seen my stepdaughters. I judge everyone like in terms of like the whole Gen Z is like, I look at my stepdaughters because they're 23 and 27 and I don't think I've ever seen them with a book or a magazine.

Isaiah Hankel: So great. So yeah. So then that's exactly what I, it's fascinating what's happening. I think everybody. Most people have like a show now. I mean, as, we say this on the show, but most people, I mean, the, podcast, I mean, it's even affected the presidential election. I mean, to see both candidates going on these shows, which did not even happen when it could have happened, four years ago because of everything like you think it would have happened more than, [00:02:00] but it wasn't as accepted. And so I think with like what happened over the last few years, accelerated everything online, accelerated podcast, accelerated videos to now, even people. Who are running for president on both sides are doing all kinds of shows to all kinds of, and they're basically podcast shows. They're

donna serdula : Yeah.

Isaiah Hankel: shows.

donna serdula : it's long form. It's long form. Some of these podcasts are three hours. And you can't hide, you can't hide ignorance. You can't hide anything in three hours. , it really, it gives a person time to really show who they are and what they're about, which, and I like that.

Isaiah Hankel: and well, people want to, I think they're, people want to watch. we've talked about this, right? Like two human beings in the same room interacting because you can't fake that now with AI, AI. I mean, the entire podcast can be faked with AI entire podcast. I mean, even, I think even shots like this very soon, it's going to be pretty easy, but when you have two people interacting in a room together, it's like, actually, I was just doing a test [00:03:00] for the, for, audio on another device.

Somebody was using Skype, which I haven't, Didn't know people still use Skype.

donna serdula : Oh, I know. And that Skype was like it for so long.

Isaiah Hankel: I guess Microsoft's still holding it up, but they said, is your background real? Like, so they, people automatically just assume things are fake. Like this is just going to keep happening more and more. So again, I think there's the real power right now is people in a room together. And that's why a lot of these shows will have three, four people in a room together. They're sitting in chairs. you can't, it elevates the, it elevates them.

donna serdula : Oh, it does.

Isaiah Hankel: or whatever you want to call it.

donna serdula : It kind of goes to what you've always said, which is the more effort you put into something, people see that and the easier it is, the more people can do it, you know, so you have to keep elevating and going a little further and, , to put people into a room, you know, and do a podcast or show that way, yeah, it makes sense.

It is harder to do.

Isaiah Hankel: Russell Brunson calls it a dramatic demonstration. Like if you can do like something dramatic, cause like you have [00:04:00] to always kind of try to separate yourself from the starter crowd, the passive crowd, can get on and run. I mean, remember when having a blog was a big deal? Like if you posted consistently on a blog every week, even like you, ahead of the curve now, I mean, especially with AI, whatever, everybody can post a blog. can get on short form content, right? But to have that long form content real effort, a real amount of time and flying people out. , just that alone will separate you from 99 percent of the people that have a podcast where they're just talking on their own. I

donna serdula : It's, well, it's the consistency. It's the consistency. It's the effort. I think a lot of people, they come out the gate, you know, like, Oh, I'm going to do a podcast. How hard can it be?

Isaiah Hankel: Right.

donna serdula : And that's why you see, I think there's, what was the number? I heard a stat, like the vast majority of podcasts have less than 10 episodes.

Isaiah Hankel: And I would say, yeah, you, I like what you're, where you're going here. Like the first step is just consistency. Can you even be consistent? Sure. Go [00:05:00] by yourself and podcast for a year first, but then you got to constantly be elevating. And I think this is true for anybody who's trying to, whether you're trying to advance in your career, your own business, whether you're trying to get hired, like you got to ask yourself, How can I elevate a go, uh, above like the passive crowd?

I actually read this article that talked about how getting hired is like selling, like you're selling yourself, right? This is

donna serdula : yeah.

Isaiah Hankel: most of us hate this idea of selling ourselves. And so it said, step one, it was a two step process, really. It said, make a list and update your list. Like you have to have a pipeline of something

donna serdula : Yeah.

Isaiah Hankel: to actually follow. Most people don't even do that. They're just. Looking at job postings online or they're hoping for that next promotion. And then it says, you got to move from the passive crowd to the active crowd. As in, you got to go out and shake hands.

You got to go meet people. Most people, their entire approach to getting whatever goal they want is to sit back and think about it. And research as much information as possible as if that is taking action in some way when it's really not

donna serdula : [00:06:00] It's in some ways, I think that action, right? It's so hard. And once you do it, then you start to risk the rejection. And that's also that place where you're uncomfortable. You're most uncomfortable. You feel safer researching because you feel like you're active.

Isaiah Hankel: sure.

donna serdula : , I think for people, you, they need that push, right?

It's like you've got it. And, but we both know, as soon as you start to, you know, you raise that vibration, you start to get active, things happen. is it magical? Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. I don't know. But things just naturally start to happen. But you have to get out there. You have to.

Isaiah Hankel: People congregate for a reason. I mean, they always will. They're always the, it's biological. Like you can't get rid of the biological trust factor. The one study that I used to quote on it all the time. It's kind of ridiculous. It's like if you meet somebody online. Like they had some sort of measure for trust, right?

This was like some behavioral psychology study. And the [00:07:00] trust factor was like at 10%, right? Well over 70 percent if you meet him in person. It's gigantic. , and that was, that was being kind, you know, in most cases it was up to like a 70 or 80 percent increase in trust just from meeting a person. And that's why so many people will meet somebody three years ago. And that's the person that ends up giving them maybe a referral for a new job or for the promotion or the opportunity versus everyone that they meet online and they have all these nice topical conversations with.

donna serdula : I think it's going to get even more. I think we're going to find that, one on one in real life becoming so, so much more instrumental and so much more important because of everything that you said earlier, which was, is that a real background? Is this person real? Is this fake? Fake. is that a filter?

How authentic are they? We don't know anymore. We really don't know.

I think we're going to see a hyper localization take place where, we want to do business with people that we know we've met. We, and we trust [00:08:00] because , what can you trust nowadays? You look around and it's hard.

It's hard.

Isaiah Hankel: It's true. This is like two different games. I mean, you have people I would argue that you, maybe you have to play both games. Maybe you have to play the, you know, the LinkedIn or the tick tock or whatever game of figuring out that, but then you have to back it up. It's kind of, it's all like a funnel, right? You can get people's attention that way, but are you going to sustain it? Not unless you have that three hour with real human beings, not unless you meet them in person.

donna serdula : So true. Good stuff.

Isaiah Hankel: Good to see you, Donna.

donna serdula : All right. I'll talk to you later. Bye bye.

Isaiah Hankel: Hey, short and

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