Examining Listener Feedback

David Jackson  0:00  
Ask the podcast coach for June 11 2022. Let's get ready to podcast.

David Jackson  0:08  
There it is. It's that music. That means it's Saturday. It's time for Ask the podcast coach, where you get your podcast questions answered live. I'm Dave Jackson from the School of podcasting.com. And joining me he's back right over there. From Home gadget geeks and the average guy.tv. Mr. Jim Collison, Jim, how's it going, buddy? 

Jim Collison  0:30  
Greetings, Dave, happy Saturday afternoon to you. We've never done this before. Right? We'd never moved the show. It'll be an interesting exercise. From a podcasting experience standpoint. Can you move your show lifetime? And will people follow you? And so far we've got I don't know, seven or eight not our typical maybe 30 on a Saturday, but yeah, people will move. So thanks for coming out and joining us just the SAFTA that's gonna be a hard switch just to say this afternoon. Yeah. Although when people are listening to the podcast, do they care if it's morning or afternoon? That's probably probably not. That's probably Tuesday, where they are right now. And they're going oh, yeah, but listen to that one yet. So. But I don't know what we're pouring in the afternoon. What do we have we, we gotta get us what we've got. I didn't I didn't want to drink coffee. And soda just seems so pedestrian. So I said, Dave, is it okay if I bring a guest on the show? And you said yes. So let's get this important. And of course, that Guinness is brought to you by the one and only mark from podcast. branding.co If you are looking to look professional, there's really only one place to go and that of course is podcast branding.co Marc will take the time to sit down with you he is a podcaster so he already understands podcasting and he's an award winning graphic artists and he's gonna sit down and then go over your show kind of the the flavor of it, the vibe of it, the energy of it, so that your podcast is going to resonate even more with your audience because people are going to get it because if you you may not realize this they're gonna see you before they hear you. So it's gonna take that time to make sure that everything is in alignment with your podcast goal so whatever you need a website artwork a lead magnet, it's all there podcast branding.co and tell him Jim and Dave sent you and I thought that was the turnaround and I was not Oh

Jim Collison  2:40  
of course, the mug sponsored by Dan over there, Dan left based on a true story podcast at based on a true story. podcast.com If you're looking for something new to listen to, and something that's super interesting and maybe long form podcast, check it out based on a true story. podcast.com Dan, thanks for keeping the Genis cold keeps coffee hot. Keeps again as cold during ask the podcast coach.

David Jackson  3:04  
And there we go. And of course, if you have a question, if you're watching live, just throw it in the chat room. Or if you want to jump in the video the door is always wide open. Anybody can come in anybody can come in if you don't want to be on camera, just turn off your camera. And we'll be happy to watch your glowing silhouette blink in the in the time I think is what happens if you don't have your camera on or something like that. So

Jim Collison  3:28  
a big thanks to Neil who filled in for me last week, I didn't get a chance to listen to the show yet. Things have gotten a little crazy. I think we're kind of back to full speed on things and I'll be out again next week for my mom's funeral. But appreciate it Neil and appreciate you filling in for me while I was gone.

David Jackson  3:45  
And I did not know that's why you are gone. So my condolences to that?

Jim Collison  3:51  
Well, this last week was not was not that my mom passed away a couple of weeks ago and we're doing her family June 18. So next weekend I'll we'll be celebrating that as a family but

David Jackson  4:02  
the the fun thing that has happened two hours before we started the show. So again, if you have a question, you can throw it in the chat room, you can jump into the show. And I do feel better. I see that in the chat room well answer that. I got COVID The day before I left Florida, and 11 days later I finally tested negative even though my aura ring and my iPad watch were like Hey Dave, you're fine. And I'm like no I'm not. And so three days in a row now I've tested in three days in a row I am negative so I'm back on the horse and the fun part is and what you don't realize is when you are forced to do nothing. You when you finally are then back to normal, you have a giant mountain of stuff, just to try to get back to square one. And I'm trying not to do everything because that will put me right back where I was. That was my whole The reason I caught COVID In my opinion. I don't think it has anything to do with Florida. Besides fact that I was in I mean, this could have been in Arizona, it was in a large group. The first few days, I got four hours sleep each day, I increased my activity by running around a giant hotel. I didn't eat much, except for usually giant dinners. And I wasn't drinking water. So I'm not sure there's much more you can do to your body to just go, Hey, anybody got any kind of cold or virus? This body is just aching for it right now. So I am going to be speaking at Podcast Movement. I just found out about that this weekend. And I'll be acting very differently Podcast Movement, because I know Thursday night, I told myself, look, you're tired, you're getting exhausted. And as soon as I'm done with this Lipson dinner, I'm going right to bed. And I was within I mean, I could see the elevator, and I heard the voice of somebody going, Hey, Dave, we got a bunch of people over it. And that was it. And then once again, I stayed up till about 130. And, yeah, so but I'm feeling much better. And I felt much better for a big chunk of this week, it's just been waiting for the test to come back negative. So that's the good news. But two hours before we started the show, we got a I wish I had time to figure it out. Like literally probably three pages you think two three ads

Jim Collison  6:17  
healthy, really healthy feedback, some really good feedback, some really

David Jackson  6:20  
good feedback, we're not going to read the whole thing because it's very long, very in depth, including like, I haven't read the whole thing yet cuz I just got back from my my church thing, but it's like, quote, almost like quoting chapter and verse. It's like on show 297. At the 31 Minute, Mark, you said this. So this is somebody who really, really was going into the show. And I noticed here in the middle, he kind of made a bullet point here of some things that he thought we could do better. So he says first and third in sometimes 50 shows of the month, keep the format as it currently is, which is a bit of a head scratcher. Because this show is is me and Jim talking, waiting for someone to ask a question in the chat room, where to go to ask the podcast coach.com/join And, and jump in. Now I always go out to Facebook, and try to find questions that aren't. What's the best microphone under 100 bucks. I I'm up to episode seven. How do I grow my audience? Which I saw at least three times this week? How do I record interviews? What's another really big one? How do I make money at this? I've been doing this for x amount of months. So and that's really that is asked? And I'm not making this up? The one about I've been doing this for you know, I'm up to episode 12. And I'm getting 21 downloads. How do I grow? My I mean that that's almost a daily question. And so if we wanted to, we could ask the same questions every week. But that's, that's as boring as me reading it every week. And I do occasionally I'm like, Hey, this is an oldie but a goodie, can I play music in my podcast, which is probably in the top 10. I haven't seen that in a while. So that's that's the format. So it says here, the second show of the month, have a podcasting expert on and do a deep dive into that experts topic like what was done in the already mentioned mark and Neil, you can't tell me you can't find 12 podcasters a year who wouldn't mind coming on the show to discuss some aspect of podcasting they're particularly good at just go through and I'm not sure why he thinks it's fun. But he keeps referring to me as jam and Dave. But okay. I like to call you that now. Going through jamuns awesome supports list of bunch of candidates, you both would know, hundreds of podcasts and experts to ask. Okay. The show is called Ask the podcast coach. Yeah, well, I

Jim Collison  8:58  
mean, there's some good, there's some really good points in there. Right? The preference this is, is we think about it through the lens of podcasting, everybody's gonna get this kind of feedback from time to time. And the urge, especially on first reading, is to kind of fire back Yeah, right as to kind of like, Ah, no, you know, I read through it a couple times in in. There's, there's some really good points, some things that we could do differently. The question Dave, is, are we right? And I don't think this format is where we go through and dissect it. And we just say, now we're going to keep doing what we do, or, you know, in this case, a little bit of feedback is get more voices. It's always a good idea. We'd love to have more voice, and we could listen, we could be proactive and ask other folks to come on. For every bit of that feedback. You get another side of feedback that says stop bringing in people I don't know, right. Alright, so you're gonna you're gonna get feedback. The question is, right diggin this. What do you do when you get when you have a specific listener? I asked you before the show? Do you get this feedback, this kind of feedback a lot? And you said, No, not ever, right?

David Jackson  10:12  
I usually it's right after the episode. So it'd be like, Hey, Dave, I don't know if you know this, but in the last episode, you said this, and some people might find that offensive? Or, or did you know there are 13 seconds of dead silence at the 42 minute mark? Where this person is going back to was near the top example, February 19 2022, at the 850 minute mark. And I was like, wow, that's like, oh, it was super specific. Yeah. So it's like, okay, so this isn't somebody who's, you know, they've put some time into this, this email. I appreciate. Appreciate. Yeah.

Jim Collison  10:55  
So I agree. I greatly appreciate the feedback. Like it's super great to get it. However, I've and I see this on the Gallup side of things, when, when I'm, you know, on a podcasting there, you get feedback from somebody and you don't implement it. And then, you know, six months later, you get a nasty email from somebody that says, I told you to do this, and you. Okay, so, you know, as podcasters, you have to make that decision, are we going to change our format? We, we were, you know, we talked about changing the format some and 20, early this year, early this year, we change the Summon, yeah, you kind of fall back to what you're good at, like, what you're comfortable with what you like doing. So the question is, Dave, when you get that kind of feedback, do you instantly change it? And I think that's the question each podcaster has to ask themselves is, okay, it can be valid. All those points are valid, right? That doesn't necessarily mean they're all They're all prudent for us to do that, obviously. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you know, what we should change to a, he makes a suggestion there about first, third, and fifth, and then a second and forth weeks and moving things around? Yeah, there's some good ideas in there. And let's consider having some guests on from time to time. But because we don't get a lot of that kind of feedback from the audience. Yeah, that's probably I mean, that's probably not something we're leaning towards doing. Appreciate it. Right. So I think that's as podcasters when you get that kind of feedback, you have to resist the urge to do two things. One is fire back negatively. Two, two is change, instantly change. Oh, okay. Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna just because right, you might put yourself in a place where that's not your best, you know,

David Jackson  12:46  
well, and in some cases, because it's one person, we assume it's everybody. I mean, I almost shut down the podcast radio show, because one person said You're mean, right, right. And I asked my audience, and they went, you know, obviously, what that person feels is what they feel they're like, but we didn't see it as mean, keep doing what you're doing and carry on. I know, one suggestion was I bring on school of podcasting members to ask questions and tell their experience starting a podcast, and perhaps some of the podcasts played and critiqued. Some of that we do on I do a show called the podcast review show with Eric K. Johnson, where we listen to somebody's podcast and critique it. The the inspiration behind this show. So that's, that's not a bad idea. It just, I'm not sure I would do that on this show. If you if that's what you're looking for. I have a show. It's podcast review, show. Go, go listen to that. This. Part of the reason I do this, is there are those people that like, I'd like to hire you, I want to ask you a bunch of questions. And here's my list and they come back and they're like, Dude, I can't afford your hourly rate. I'm like, not a problem. Show up Saturday at 1030 You can ask as many questions as you want, and it's absolutely free. And it's interesting how so many people have, in some cases, these burning questions. They don't have a budget, but they can't get up early on Saturday. And I'm like, okay, so it's always supposed to been kind of just you know, a Dave Ramsey show. You know, Dave I'm trying to get out of debt and you know, Dave's gonna go well do beans and rice and then you know, so it doesn't like intensity but think about it. Dave Ramsey does say the same thing over and over and over. And I don't know. Yeah, they love

Jim Collison  14:38  
it. People love it.

David Jackson  14:39  
I don't know how he does it because I would lose my mind saying don't buy the seven baby

Jim Collison  14:45  
steps. Yeah, kind of be credit card stuff you know live like live like none other so you can live like none other. Right? We know those things we know that actually kind of works, you know, interesting. So geek Ville radio is able to join us he says personally I work till three I am. So I'm rarely up in time for the regular morning time slot. This is a treat for me. But I may be a minority. So if geek fil radio had written in and said, You guys should definitely do this in the afternoons from here on out, because it works for me. We built an audience on 930, Central 1030, Eastern for 500 of these 400 of these things. Would it be prudent day for us all of a sudden to say, Okay, we got some feedback. Somebody really loves it. It's going to be this time from now on out, right. Well, one that doesn't work for me. I, this has been great today. But I had a whole my whole life. My whole Saturday revolves around the show. Yeah, right. I don't want to change that right now. Unless you said we were going to, and I'm I may have to say, well, they have to get somebody else. But right. I mean, so it's just because you get the feedback. I mean, again, sometimes very, very valid, I've changed things in my show, because of the feedback, we'll probably you and I'll discuss this, there's a lot there. And maybe some changes come out of it. So you got to just kind of work it through. Right. Yeah,

David Jackson  16:05  
another suggestion here. I also believe that each of you could take a Saturday off every other month, as both of you wouldn't have to be on the show with the expert. So he's really he really wants us to bring on experts take turns hosting that episode. And this and again, I hate to say this right after we had somebody on as a guest. And Neil was great. And we've had all sorts of cool people. But it's different when it's not Jim. It's just an ad. That doesn't mean it's bad. It just Jim knows my timing, he pays attention to what I'm doing. It's just, I don't have to worry about things I don't have to worry about. Like, it's just easier with Jim. Because as you might imagine, when you do something with someone for years, it just, you know, he knows when to jump in, I know when to you know, do this and that, whatever. So the expert thing, I guess the other thing I could say, and again, I'm not trying to be defensive. Anybody, anybody watching this right now, can go to ask the podcast coach.com/join and jump in, I had somebody email me again, I would love to be a guest on your show. On this show. They wanted to be a guest on this show. And I said, it's super easy. Ask the podcast coach.com/join. I'll be happy to, you know, ask you a couple questions or whatever you want to do, as long as it's podcasting related. And it's not a giant commercial. We'd love to have the conversation. And they didn't show up. So any expert that wants to come on. I mean, it I guess for me, for them to come on. It does have to excite me to a certain extent or excite Jim, I just heard somebody that's trying to build a media host off of Dropbox. And I just the curmudgeon in me said, that's been done before, and it didn't end well. Because eventually, I think Dropbox put a limit on some things.

Jim Collison  18:07  
They have terms in their terms of service, they make it pretty clear you can

David Jackson  18:11  
and so I could bring that person on as a new person with a new product except I go, Yeah, again, don't want to be a curmudgeon. But yeah, and no, Jeff, it can be anybody. It can be you, Jeff. So anybody can come in? And of course, if you be some sort of, I don't know, do you if you're trying to derail the show, and just be if you want to Baba Booey me, I'm gonna kick you out. I mean, it is a live show. Let's see, let's get down to in a nutshell, the show works much better with more than just YouTube talking at each other every week. Anyway, you can get more involvement from other podcasters or other potential podcasters, who would be welcome. And, and that's the part that I, I get that I understand his point. We have a lot of I mean, you just brought up a chat from another podcaster we get a fair amount of, you know, Coach, Dave, and Scott, I see us in the chat room and all these other people, and they ask questions all the time in the chat room. So maybe it's because we're not hearing their voices. And again, we've made it as easy as we can ask the podcast coach.com/join. And they don't want to come on, either in video, or their voice. And, you know, so I guess we could try to find people, but that's the thing. Now. Now you've got to start working with schedules. And it comes back to a couple things. Anytime you do a show. There are two things that you're going to judge I guess the content on or the strategy. Let's go that the strategy. One is does it work for you? So like Jim was mentioning and I would second that, if I did this in the afternoon. I'm trying to be done by this time normally, so I have so I can go bike riding, and anything else I want to do on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. So one of the reasons why we don't do two shows anymore is so I can get done earlier, I don't do the Patreon only thing anymore. So that's that's one criteria. Now if I said, Oh, actually, it would be better for me I could sleep in on Saturday, well, then maybe you would think about it. So does it benefit the host to where you're not gonna burn out? That's one criteria. And then the other thing is, does it bring value to the audience? And bringing on like he mentioned, Mark, I don't think Mark was planned. Well, definitely not. Mark just popped in from podcast branding.co. We asked him a ton of questions. It was an awesome episode, if I do say so myself, we all learned a lot. I actually ended up playing that interview on the school of podcasting. It was so good. So I appreciate it. It does have me, here's what it has me thinking. Okay, so, either A, I need to go find better questions in Facebook. And this is where I don't know, do you ever worry, like you're just doing somebody else's show? Like we could go to pot, we could go to pod news and talk about Spotify. And, you know, the fact that we do Yeah,

Jim Collison  21:14  
we do. I mean, here's the deal, right, you and I have come up with our own personality and built this show, based on what we want to do. Like, we've been doing these long enough. We like what we're doing. And, and certainly feedback is great to get it and but we're probably not going to do that many changes unless we want to do it. Like, as an example Dave, say all of a sudden, you were like, You know what, Jim? I want to do an interview once a month with somebody else would you be okay, like not being on the show for? And I would say, Yeah, that's fine. If you want to do if you want to do one a week, if that's what you want to do? Fine with me, that would work with me. But that's not what necessarily, that's not the show you want to have, right? And I think this is the point and sometimes for podcasters, where you got to let your listener go. And say, hey, respectfully agree, I agree with all that feedback that we got, we're probably not going to make that many changes, just to be just to be really honest, we have a group of people who come and we have a pretty healthy group. Listen, we moved the time, and we almost have as many as or you would get on a normal Saturday morning. And some people joined us that wouldn't be able to join us on Saturday morning. Does that mean we're going to change the time? Probably not. Like we're probably going to go back right to the time slot. It works. Because this is we do this for us. And so so there's there does come a point in time with your listeners where you go, well, thanks for listening. If you like it, hang around. If you don't, you know, there are plenty of other podcasts out there, we know that find the one that you really like and you want to engage with. And if you're not finding it helpful, you know, move on to the next podcast, right? I mean, at some point to in the process, you got to let the listener go and just say, yeah, we can if we try to be all things to all people, and we'll be nothing to everyone. Yeah,

David Jackson  23:11  
yeah. And so I'm sitting here thinking, you know, maybe we do, maybe I need to spend more time looking at the questions. And I love when I find a good topic, like in this case, like we're talking about what to do with audience feedback. So he actually fed the show. And we're not talking about microphones. And we're not talking about, you know, the VO caster from Focusrite. And, you know, everything else. So it is a little different. Because if I have to keep answering the same questions over and over and over, I'm not Dave Ramsey. I would I would just you know, and that's really where the chat room has come in, and save the day. Jim will will attest to this. There are times when we log in. It's 15 minutes, and I'm like, how's it going? He's like, gonna go, Dude, I got nothing. I go, there's just nothing in Facebook. There's nothing on Reddit. And the the chat room will come in and spark something. And we're like, cool. Let's talk about that. So, you know, John, go ahead. Yeah,

Jim Collison  24:07  
go ahead. No, no, you go, John in

David Jackson  24:08  
the chatroom says the feedback sounded like what I got in radio when we brought in a consultant and they just broke everything down, just to validate the paycheck. So

Jim Collison  24:20  
listen, I don't want to be mean spirited about the feedback either. It was really valid, in depth, thorough feedback, and in much appreciated very, there are some things in there we're going to think through I think this was just a good like, because you get that everybody every podcaster if they're doing anything is gonna get that kind of feedback. You know, Craig says, Jeremy to have great chemistry together. You go together like coffee and pour. And then you know, Kenny says don't change a thing. I like it the way it is. Yeah. So you get you get those. You get those listeners who say you must say you make that change. They say all of a sudden we start having guests on. We're gonna start Getting feedback like, oh, like I didn't, I didn't. I don't listen to the show to listen to them. I listened to it to listen to you. Yeah, right. We've been doing this long enough that we've weeded out most of the people who don't like us, they've just gone. Why? I never did understand this. Why would someone listened to his show? For listening to someone they don't like Glick at all? It's I don't, I just don't get that they'll move on. Like, quit fooling yourself that you're that it's it's, I don't I just I don't get it. Like, there's so many things to do. Why would you waste an hour or an hour and a half, in our case of coming out and complaining about the person, especially on a regular basis? Right. I just, it astounds me that someone would waste their time saying things about a podcast or they don't like when, by the way, it's not the only thing on like, you could be out mowing the lawn. I just don't get it i that just blows me away. Well,

David Jackson  26:02  
he, the person does mention here that and this is where I tell people this and they don't believe me, and I go, Well, your audience is going to come and go. And in this case, he left and he came back and he's kind of like, Hey, I noticed you're still kind of doing the same thing you guys always do. Why don't you do more of this? And so it's it's something to think about, but I'll try maybe to come up with better questions. But a big chunk of this is going to be me talking to Jim and Jim talking about, you know, automated lawn mowers or something occasionally, and I'm occasionally going to take a tangent on who knows what to where people are going. What's he's talking? I don't know. Just letting go. You know, and we'll we'll take it from there. The thing I guess that I was surprised, and I kind of wish it hadn't ended this way. Is this. Thanks for taking the time to read this. And again, thank you very much for I mean, this is a very long, detailed email. Very well done. Very well done. Yeah. Hopefully it contains something useful. It does. It really has me thinking about some stuff. But either this person has a very shall we say the name now? No, it's a fake name. It's not so much fake like he was. I think this is a pseudo name that maybe this person uses online. So I don't really it's not like I can reach out to whoever and I, for the record. I do love. Really good feedback. One of the biggest takeaways from podcast or from pod Fest was I get there. This the day before, people were getting set up, I bumped into Steve Stewart, Steve silver says, Hey, can we go to lunch? I'm like, I'd love to go to lunch with Steve Stewart. And we sit down, we're kind of catching up. He's like, Hey, are you interested in any feedback? And I go, Oh, come on. You know me. I love feedback. Good and bad guy. Okay. He goes, sometimes when somebody asks some of these, like really beginning one on one questions, he goes, there's there's a little more curmudgeon, just sneaking out a little bit. He goes, sometimes you kind of get the feeling that you're tired. I answered that one. And I said, Dude, I said, I could go home right now and be happy that I came to pod fest. And he's like, why not? He's like, no, no, I go, I said, I'm weird. I actually like negative feedback a little more than positive, because positive means I'm doing something right. And that's good. Negative feedback means there might be a chance to do something better, and then add it to the things I'm doing right category. So I was very thankful for that. So and that's where some feedback, you go, Oh, I can fix that. And then other feedback. You go. That's an interesting idea. That's not a direction I want to take the show in, though. Yeah,

Jim Collison  28:45  
yeah. So no, right on in, there are things I mean, there's things to learn in that. And there's some great reminders in all these in all the feedback that we get, at the same time, you have to kind of evaluate it from what what are we what are we trying to do with this thing? Dave? What are we? What are the pressures that we have that and let's be real honest, what are the pressures you have? Because they just show up? Right? I just show it. And in you know, I bring my jobs to bring the color commentator in this thing is to bring a little bit of right, you know, and I podcast for a living, right, it's what I do at work, of course, my examples are going to be from the podcasts that I give and that I listen to, and it's gonna be, it's gonna be a finite set of things. You know, it's why we enjoy the chat room so much and we enjoy it when you when you come on and and enjoying the show. So great. I, again, I think the point here is not trying to refute our own feedback, but to work through the process of what happens when you get that this was not overtly negative. By the way, I actually see it as very constructive and positive in a lot of ways to take the time to get timestamps like on this show at this time. If you said this, Hey, that shows a level of detail that I appreciate. I would never give a podcaster that that benefit of the doubt I just stopped listening. Right. That's, that's what I would do if I didn't like it. So great examples in some great, you know, just some, some some some things to for us to consider in there as well want to talk about it and see what pops out.

David Jackson  30:20  
We got some great feedback. Speaking of that in the chat room, John C. Payne says the show works best for him as a conversation between Dave and Jim on major topics. But I get the most from deep dives into some things you and others are dealing with. And then Craig brought up a great question is negative feedback, easy to take, you know, is easier to kind of absorb when it comes from someone you like and respect? And I think I think it probably first is somebody

Jim Collison  30:47  
you don't know at all. Yeah, you're right. Right.

David Jackson  30:50  
Yeah. Because if you think about it, at least for Huh, that's a great question.

Jim Collison  30:54  
Cuz Listen, every every Sunday I have I have a cigar with Edie. And he gives me feedback on this show. Like in and I saw hear from him. Right. And he makes fun of some things. Yeah, of course, it's easier to get feedback from him. I have a relationship with him. Right. So he, you know, he he's critical of some things. I'm like, Yeah, okay. Well, this is, you know, this is kind of the way it is. But I think

David Jackson  31:16  
the other thing, too is, Steve knows what this show is why I do it, who it's for. So his feedback is based on Hey, Dave, you're trying to be this helpful podcast coach guy, then you're kind of coming across a little curmudgeon II and I was like, that's a good, that's, you know what? So if somebody else had come up that I didn't know, and put it that way, they would be just as useful. But that's a great question. It is hard not to get defensive. But that's where I found the other thing that was cool. As Steve said, Are you up for some feedback? That's a great question right there. Because some people might be like, No, not really. You know, so and

Jim Collison  31:56  
that's okay, too. You may be in the, in the spirit of, you know, in the spirit of it. CO three podcasts is Dave, I surprised to see you posted that graphic aimed at that guy who wanted to do the show about a bowling league, you know, talking about that had a little chromogen.

David Jackson  32:12  
Yeah, I didn't even put it at the beginning. I said welcome to curmudgeon corner. Yeah, and but that doesn't know, I would agree. In fact, I'll probably take that down when we get done with the show. Because that that was slightly out of character. But I was just like, and here's here's, and that is, again, it's all baggage, because I thought if this guy comes back in four days, and said, I've put two podcast episodes up about my brother's bowling league, I'm not getting any downloads. How do I monetize this, my head's gonna explode. So I'm, I'm putting baggage that I hear from other people on that poor person. And this guy, and I thought about it later, I thought, You know what that might be? Because how many people there's, there's four people on a team. Let's say there's, I don't know, 12 teams, you got 50 people listening to a podcast. And it can all be about them. And they're interviewing the other players. And like, that could be a really hyper focused podcast, that I've never thought of, like every podcast, every bowling league should have a podcast where they interview the captains or something like that. So who am I to say that guy shouldn't have a podcast? I just at the time, I was like, if this guy turns around and says it's not working, because I brought my Blue Yeti, with a laptop to the bowling alley, and nobody's listening. I'm just gonna be like, Well, yeah. So it's, it's really hyper niche.

Jim Collison  33:37  
Right? But you don't want to you don't want to shut that down. If that's what they want to try, right? You want to let them okay. Okay, but you're gonna have these you're gonna be up against. I mean, I never thought d&d would be a pod castable thing. And it's huge. Right? Right. I mean, so you don't want to crush that spirit. You know, much like you don't want to crush the spirit of you know, if somebody's taking the time to give you feedback. You don't want to crush that spirit as well. But at the same token, if they can give me honest feedback, I also should be able to give them honest feedback at times and say, Hey, okay, yeah, now appreciate that. Probably not going to do that. Just to be honest with you, you know, just, you know, I got some feedback. In one of the podcasts that I do, I'm being sarcastic. They're not saying home gadget geeks, but the I got some feedback in that. And like, hey, the music is so loud on your intro. I can't even hear what you're saying. So you know what I did fix the music. Like, that's really good. That's, that's actually really good, helpful feedback. You know, the so it's, it is it's not, not everybody, even if you send it into a show, not everybody's going to be able to do it, or not. Everybody should do everything. You've told them either. So

David Jackson  34:57  
Right. Yeah, there are times Like when somebody sends in a non weight of meat, yeah, nonfiction podcast, so some sort of, you know, audio drama. I always tell people, I'm not a fan. Like, if you can get me to like this, this must be an amazing show. But I'm just gonna probably tell you I'm probably not gonna like this but there are people in my audience that love this stuff and they're gonna go listen to every episode. So you know, it's sp has a great point he goes some people like Coke. Anyone with any kind of flashing strobe watching the show started, we some people like fresca, some people, if you haven't watched the boys, here's Dave doing a tangent. If you haven't watched the boys on Amazon, you have to simply for the fresca jokes. Some people don't like sugar, you cannot please all the people all the time, stick to your niche and cater to the audience. Yeah, that's, that's

Jim Collison  35:59  
really well, and that's how shows get washed down. You know, you start, you start a Pepsi podcast, and you start getting some feedback from the coke people are like, hey, I really liked you. But you don't, you don't like Coke, right? And you're like, Okay, well, maybe every other week, I'll talk about coke. And then your Pepsi listeners go, hey, yeah, what are you doing? I signed up for this thing for Pepsi. You know? And then the fresca people are like, Well, maybe you could just at least do fresco once a month. And you're like, No, you're I'm a coke. I'm a Pepsi podcast, when that's what I do.

David Jackson  36:33  
When I was a musician. There were rock bars. There were country bars, there were comedy bars. And there was always that one bar. That literally would be like Monday night is comedy night, Tuesday night is open jam session. Wednesdays country, Thursday is rock and Friday is metal. And every single time somebody tried that, it never worked. Because people like, you know, they want to show up and know what they're gonna get. And so when you start doing a different form, you know, in the Coke and Pepsi thing here, you know, I walked in here, because I wanted a Pepsi and you're talking fresca, what are you going to do, you can turn around or walk right back out. And the more times you reinforce the habit of your audience, not listening to you. They're just going to quit listening to you. So it's, it's tricky. And it's hard, because we do want as many downloads as we can get. But we're not going to do that trying to be everything to everybody.

Jim Collison  37:33  
Well, I'd prefer engagement, we that feedback and some engagement. I like it doesn't mean we're going to do it, but I like it. The folks who show up on Saturday when we move the show, you know, and that's to me, that's engagement. Right? The comments were getting in the chat. That's engagement. That's what I in podcasting, I don't really care if we do five or 50 or 500. I mean, I'm here because I like hanging out with you. Right? That's, that's the only reason I do this. I don't care. This is gonna sound a little weird. I mean, I do want you to listen, but I don't care if you do if you don't, I get an hour and a half with Dave Jackson every Saturday morning. And that's part of the best thing. You know, the best time of the week for me, I do that all day long. So the motivations for me to do this are really all in relationship. If we do more downloads, great. Listen, if I thought we could by having a guest on every other week, who's an expert if I thought that could get us 1000 downloads, but alienated some of our current listeners. I think it's a mistake. Like it's a huge mistake.

David Jackson  38:36  
Well, yeah, the thing I love about this is, again, likewise, you're just fun to hang out with. And I get instant feedback from 30 people every Saturday on what I'm talking about. And that has many times, then spurred me to do a deeper dive on the school of podcasting. So a lot of things get tested here, because I have live people in front of me. And that's something I don't have on my other shows. So I keep forgetting we're doing an hour today, not an hour and a half, two minutes. So I do want to thank our awesome supporters. You can become one by going to ask the podcast coach.com/support And we do want to thank James over at the dog Podcast Network. If you got a little pooch, you can go over there and they've got long shores and I can never say long shows. I don't know why. It's always long shores, long shows short shows. They're all about dogs. They're all about keeping your dog healthy and being a great dog owner. Check it out dog a podcast network.com Ask the podcast coach runs on pod page. If you want to try it out, go to tripod page.com. And if you need more Jim Carlson and who doesn't go over to the average guy.tv And check out his show home gadget geeks. If you're thinking of starting a podcasting well when you think podcasting think school of podcasting us To the coupon code coach when you sign up to save on a little bit, and again, if you'd like to be an awesome supporter, or see the awesome supporters that are supporting the show, I got a list over to ask the podcast coach.com/support. So thanks to everyone for doing that. The other thing, I did have some questions I always go out to, to Facebook to see what's going on. And this is from I guess, it's, it's always fun when you get a name. That's so not American. I leave maybe a li F F. Here. Can I share my screen? Because you can actually read these now? How would you pronounce that Jim? A leaf Azhar?

Jim Collison  40:42  
I think yeah, I think that's close enough.

David Jackson  40:46  
So he's this is from a Facebook group. I want to know if it's normal for the podcast listenership to drop in the following month, during the first month when our podcast was launched, it peaked at about 1.3 1000 listeners with a total downloads at 1.7 1000. So 1.7k. However, for this month, I noticed that not many people were listening to and downloading the podcast, despite consistently publishing the episodes every week. Here again, I see people really get hung up on that schedule, and the schedule is important. But that's not why people are listening, only 29 downloads and 25 listeners so far. What should I do in this case? How do you deal with this? And I see this question kind of a lot. And, again, I don't want to underestimate the power of a consistent schedule, because when you do that, you become part of their routine. But people aren't listening because you publish every week. That's, that's not why they listen, it's convenient. And they know when to expect you. And they trust that you'll be there. But they're listening for the content. And I swear, I think people are still getting a little confused and hung up on the consistency of schedule, and not the consistency of the content. And so I to me, and I again, I kind of sound like a broken record, I always want to ask these people, did you get feedback from someone who's not your mom? To give feedback? Because if they're not coming back, man, it's hard not to say it might be the content, because why else? Now there are things like if it's a wedding podcast, or if it's something that's fairly time sensitive, and all of a sudden, it's not that season anymore. So if you're all about deer hunting, and it's not deer hunting season anymore, maybe that has to do with it. I don't know. I mean, what we just saw where people come and go. So maybe for whatever reason, you know, so

Jim Collison  42:50  
things change situations change, you know, I like to talk about this hardener, this Gartner Hype Cycle, it's it's a very popular technology, we think about this and technology adoption where you know, you begin with a trigger, and then there's a peak of expectations and a trough of disillusionment. And then eventually it comes back to it to a, you know, a plateau of productivity. And in podcasts follow this similar track, right? When you launch them, there's this peak of activity you've been talking about, people are going to try it out. You know, newsflash, not everybody, even you're going to get people to listen to it. At first, they're gonna go, Yeah, this isn't for me, right, and then you're gonna see this trough, and you got to survive the trough, right? You have to, and this happens in almost every new thing that you do, you just got to be able to survive that trough. I think a lot of podcasters quit right at the very bottom. And I go, I can't do this anymore. And that's the time to double down and the bottom you're getting by that time, hopefully, you're getting the most feedback you're getting. You've, you've worked out all the kinks in your show, it's working the way that you want it to. And then you can start growing again, like on a second launch, I really wish we put as much effort into a second launch as we did the first one, like after 10, or 15, or 20 or a year have a second launch, right? There's no law that says you don't, you can't write why why not have a second launch? Why not put all that effort into it? After you figured some things out? I just don't think we put enough effort into that in in this is the cycle we go through as podcasters. So David, that the answer is they're in the trough, hang tight, they'll stay at it, you'll pull out of the trough, right? It may last a month or two or three, whatever. But eventually, if you work if you keep working at it, and you keep listening to your audience, doing the things that work for you in them, you'll you'll plateau out.

David Jackson  44:43  
Yeah, there's a book by Seth Godin. He's a super famous kind of marketing author called the dip, a little book that teaches you when to quit, and when to stick it out. And that's really it is the fact that you've got everybody worked out You tell all your friends and neighbors and this and that, and they come in, they cause this spike, whether it's small or large, or what, and some of them are gonna like it. Some of them are not, some of them are gonna come back and some of them are not. And that's why you have to forget, it was the jack writer from Dark Net diaries was talking, I forget how long he had to do it before he noticed that his audience was telling other people. And that's, I think that when you go into that dip, you haven't found that, that enough people that are just saying why you got to hear this podcast, and telling their friends to where it starts to pull them out of that dip, the numbers go up, and things like that. And I think that's part of it, I think you hit the nail on the head, I think we we quit too soon. And I Well, we we've seen that over and over people quit it. So it's seven or whatever. So

Jim Collison  45:55  
Dave, we've been doing called to coach on the Gallup side of things. For nine years, this July, it'll be nine. And I track those stats fairly regularly. I don't spend a lot of time in it. But I was just noticing I was going through the stats. The other day, I hadn't done it in maybe six months. It's going through the stats. In Yeah, we saw a bump when COVID hit, you know, everybody kind of came back to podcasting. The best months we've ever had are the last three months that we just had, like nine years. And when I say the best, I mean, like 30 to 40% increase in numbers. And what why? I don't know, like, you start looking at things we we didn't do any different content we didn't you know, we've we've changed a few things. So even after nine years, you can have a doesn't mean it's stuck. Like we've said everything there is to say and by the way we have in nine years, we've said everything there is to say on the topic, it's been said, Let's just be really clear about that. What the numbers are jumped have jumped. So don't and I think for some podcasters don't don't underestimate that. But there is a time to stop, too. There's a time when you've run it, if you're tired of it, if you're resentful. You know, it's it's time to go. Jeremy says something to chat kind of about the CES, talk about second launch, we're about to hit episode 500 and August around our ninth anniversary. And we're lucky congratulations, by the way, it's a big number. And we're looking at rebounding, rebranding a bit and evaluating what is working and what needs to be freshened up. It's a great time to do that. And then take that same show, just relaunch it. And all that means is you're putting the same amount of time, energy and effort that you put into the original launch. Right? Launch it again.

David Jackson  47:40  
Yeah, cuz that's coach David asked, that doesn't even matter. Because on one hand, when you launch the first time, you're telling everyone you know, so when you go back and you tell everyone, you know, they're gonna go, Yeah, I know, you told me about six months ago. So I can see where he says it doesn't even matter. But to me, I think it's the maybe the excitement, or, you know, doing kind of a for me, it would just be a concerted effort. Because I am I am horrible at I mean, some weeks, I will go out and I will schedule three tweets during the week to promote my stuff, I will schedule things on Facebook, I have this set up so that while the week is dripping by, I'm having some sort of promotion going on. And there are many, many weeks, many weeks that I do zero, I put it out there. I might do one tweet when it goes out. That's automated. But other than that, I'm working on the next episode. And I which is really dumb, by the way, for the record. I mean, that's, that's stupid. I should be flipping that I should be spending more time promoting and go from there. But that's, you know, if we're going to be honest, I'm like, Yeah, I don't promote near as much as I should. But when you have that first thing, you're you're you don't have all that other stuff that's going on, you're not, you know, so that first time you're like, Okay, I'm excited. I want the word tell the world about it. And which is interesting, because you're like, well, aren't you excited to tell the world about episode 394? And I'm like, Well, yeah. Then why aren't you doing the same thing? And that's a good question. You know, so SP says it's always either deer hunting season or getting ready for deer hunting season. There you go. There's your car. Gonna hit a deer season. I've done that. Yeah, so if I had, so

Jim Collison  49:36  
is it too soon?

David Jackson  49:38  
Not too soon. I do miss my Prius though. That was a nice car. But now that I work from home, I really almost could get by with an Uber. You know, go to the grocery store twice a month and skip the car payment. You never know.

Jim Collison  49:52  
I skipped three weeks in a row. I don't know if I've on home gadget geeks. Sorry. I had to mention it. On Home gadget geeks if if I've ever missed three weeks in a row, and at the end of three weeks, I got an email from one of my listeners, it was like, Hey, you okay? Like, is everything all right? I haven't heard from you in three weeks. It's good to get that feedback like, you know, say one. No, I'm good. I'm good. And just life. It's, you know, life overwhelmed me. But too, you know, somebody's waiting for it. Yeah. You know, and I sent him a nice note back. Hey, thanks. Now, all as well, you know, I am good. We'll be back on track this week. And, you know, and so it's you, you know, yeah, let's leave it there.

David Jackson  50:40  
Yeah, I, until my shows, I put out an episode that was basically just hey, for the record, I'm fine. I'm getting better. I have COVID. I plan to come back on this date. If I don't come back on this day, and I'll let you know. But this letting you know, that's why you're not getting any episodes, and I'm on my way back and things should be fine. So you know, and just to keep people involved, but I have stopped shows and had nobody say it. Where's the show? And that's when you kind of go, I made the right decision? Because nobody was waiting for it. Kenny has a question here. Before we go on to another question here. My podcast is the marketing arm of my website. Bingo. I gauge the success of my podcast by the number of memberships that get each month. That's it. That's why you always have to go back to your why. Because if your why is I just want to talk with Bruce about you know, Superman. Okay, well, you're doing that. So your show is successful. Or if you're Kenny and you're driving things to your membership, awesome. If you're trying to get the word out about I don't know, some sort of situation that you can't get on the news. And the numbers are going up, then you're happy because you're that's the whole point is to get the word out. So really does depend on on kind of what your your Y is. I did see this question and was like, alright, let's let's talk about this briefly here, as we round the corner here and head towards home and ask, Okay, question about iTunes reviews and ratings. I got a review on Tuesday. And it looks like I got a large spike in listens after that. And anyone know why. And that's why I brought this up, because Jim was just talking about, we just got a bunch of downloads, we're not really sure why I really don't understand what a review does in terms of how the podcast is listed in the app, or is the spike unrelated to the review? Bingo. And she wanted,

Jim Collison  52:37  
it could be Dave, it could be related to the review. Not saying review itself did it? Right. But it could like that could be a cause is it? We don't really know. There's a whole bunch of other things that that, you know, I I hate that we I hate that we don't I mean, I know we've gotten away from people, we're always like, rate and review. So it'll help my show visibility. And I know we've been negative Nellies on that that's it's good social proof. And you should be asking for those kinds of things, you should just have the expectations that they may or may not do what you're expecting them to do. But it could it could do that. It could be all the work that you did to get the review is what by you asking people in your newsletter and on the show and in the program and on YouTube to do a review. All those things put together could be what's causing it right. By the way, it's it's not a bad question to ask. I think you should be regularly asking, you know, I need to now next week, I need to dig in a little bit and say, Hey, what's going on with our numbers? Because we're significantly up and not like a spike in one week. Like this has been a three month trend. What's going on here? Like maybe there are some things to learn in that. Now. I know for a fact I haven't gotten a single iTunes review on my on my on my Dallas shows. And it's still going up so I know that's true, too.

David Jackson  54:02  
Yeah, I'm somebody I it's interesting when you're a person that's been saying, my favorite piece of equipment is the Zoom pod track p four, and then focus right since you temporarily a a focus or the VOC caster to and I put out a podcast I put out a video said this thing is pretty cool. So in this case, Mystic Mac is saying hey, what's what are your thoughts on the focus right, versus the new road podcast or to which I have ordered the new one with my own money. And at the end of the review of the VO caster I said, so if you're looking for just an interface, meaning there's no recorder in this thing, and you want it super simple, and you want it to be easy, this is a good investment for your whatever two 300 bucks, but does that make it my number one recommendation? No, because most people I know I also hear me say you should always be recording twice. And so I'm like, well I could buy another recorder and plug it into the output jack and then have my squad cast and my Audacity or whatever so, but now this is from Focusrite it's the Kim is asking is that from M audio No, it's focus right. VO caster to the VO caster to has two inputs. It has a tr tr RS cable to plug in your phone with the built in mix minus much like the road caster. It has an audio out for your camera, which is kind of cool you can with the VO caster to connect via Bluetooth. It has a button on the front to automatically set the gain for you. And what it has a mute button which comes in handy because I've been coughing today, although I'm not using it I'm using the the mute button on the road caster. So it's pretty sweet. The the VOC caster one does not have the Bluetooth option and it only has one input. And again it's it's small, if you're in to the environment, it is made out of recycled plastic. So but it's it's fairly sturdy. So if I were to drop this, I wouldn't feel like it was going to shatter into 1000 pieces where the Zoom needed hard plastic it's a little different. So the Zoom is cheaper and does more but it has a little more of a learning curve. So

Jim Collison  56:20  
that's that's the retail on the focus, right?

David Jackson  56:23  
This I want to say is 300 bucks. And looks like a Gameboy comp,

Jim Collison  56:27  
you know like it does Nintendo x y

David Jackson  56:30  
x y double because that yeah, kind of thing. So if you go to my YouTube channel, I've got a video on it. They did some things that made it simple. It's just I was kind of like, man, if this thing had a recorder in it, I'd be like it might take over the the p four. So Uncle Mark by the way, I stood next to Uncle Marv, he had a nametag on the said Mark because it didn't say Uncle Mark. It took me like day three. Before I knew I was talking to Uncle Mark. And he also was like, oh, that sounds so good. Uncle Mark. So, so funny. He says it looks like it would be perfect for zoom calls. Yep. Or stream yard if you're counting on using the recording from the stream on the Exactly. So that's that person that wants it super simple. And they want to keep it you know, plug and play and that whole nine yards. So it's it's a cool device. I got to send it back. I just wanted things I gotta find the original box because I gotta send it back to to Dan, the man from focus, right because so but and the road caster i From what I've heard the road caster to shipping mid month, and then because right now you can get one. But when you turn it on, it's like you need the new firmware update. So you can look at it and it's pretty, but it's not actually running yet. So, Jim, what is coming up on home gadget geeks?

Jim Collison  57:52  
Yeah, I spent a little time Mark Robertson, one of our listeners comes on the show. And we spent some time talking grills and barbecue. So it's our every summer weekend to do a grilling barbecue show. So come don't come hungry. Make sure you've eaten before you listen. And I bought a new pellet smoker out of the deal. So check it out. It's available right now because we're doing this later. It's available right now. Home gadget geeks.com

David Jackson  58:16  
Is that kind of a Father's Day gift to myself kind of thing? For sure. Yeah, it's

Jim Collison  58:21  
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Well, good price. It's gonna be awesome.

David Jackson  58:26  
Well, speaking of when your audience goes, Hey, like usually the question of the month is the last episode for the School of podcasting. And because I had COVID. And that particular episode takes a lot of effort. I did not put it out. And I had some people that are like, Hey, where's, like I submitted my answer to the question of the month. Where's the question of the month? Well, that is coming in this week's episode. And the question was, where are you listening? Your show is your show primarily I was asking you about Amazon. Because Amazon is you know, it's Amazon. And I know many people. I had a guy this week, he was watching his stats voraciously. Like, hey, it's been X amount of time they haven't updated. And I went in and he had submitted a show to Spotify. And I think Apple and that was it. And so I'm just asking, like, is that a strategy? Am I missing something? Do you just not know how to submit your show? Whatever it is? So that's the question I'm not I've yet to hear the answer. So I'm dying to hear what my audience thinks. But that's coming up on the school of podcasting. Thanks to a podcast branding.co Based on a true story podcast.com And the dog podcast network.com. We will be here back at our regular time next Saturday morning. 1030. Eastern and we will do another fun filled episode of Ask the podcast coach thanks to everyone who came out at the special time we really do appreciate that. And we'll see you again real soon with another episode of Ask the podcast go.

David Jackson  59:58  
Hey, almost When you did this, I was like, Oh yeah, I need to click and broadcast because it's gonna take two seconds to. To do that.