Overcoming Your Fear of Podcasting

Dave Jackson [00:00:00]:

Ask the podcast coach for June 10 2023. Let's get ready to podcast. There it is at that music. It means it's Saturday, and it is time for ask podcast coach, where you get your podcast questions answered live. I'm Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting .com, and joining me right over there. You know, and a lovely green shirt. What is on this shirt? What is that? I don't know. It's a racing shirt of some kind. Something I got pro race, whatever. There you go. Nothing better than free swag. That is Jim Colisson

Jim Collison [00:00:37]:

from the average guy dot tv. Jim, how's it going, buddy? Greetings, Dave. Happy Saturday morning to you, and happy disc golf morning. I got a whole round of disc golf in this morning before we even got to the show. So I'm feeling extra productive today. Well, then now are you tired at all? I'm super tired. Here we go. Let's just be let's be clear. I'm not doing anything the rest of the day, except drinking some coffee. There you go. And that coffee,

Dave Jackson [00:01:03]:

that one right there, is brought to you by good friend Mark, he said, scrambling for the the slides here. Mark from podcast branding dot Co. Now we talk about Mark all the time and how great he is. Now if you wanna see him in the wild, this is kind of like a a twin spin. If you go to I believe it's keep. I should have it in yes. flame alive pod.com. is a newly anointed mark from podcastbranding.cowebsite. And also with how great is this, it's an awesome supporter. So if you are looking for, like, well, what kind of stuff does this guy do? Just go to flame alive pod.com. That's one of the many websites he's done. And, of course, he is an awesome graphic artist and a podcaster And so if you are looking to look good, well, go over to podcast branding dot co, Mark will take care of you. And, you know, you gotta remember, they're gonna see you before they hear you. So check out Mark over at podcastbranding.co. the phone to me home.

Jim Collison [00:02:20]:

And that coffee's hot this morning. I think I just pulled it off the I just pulled off the stuff. Of course, big thanks to our friend Dan LaFeb over there based on a true story. based on a true story podcast.com, and you wanna if you wanna check it out. This week, he's covering 22 movies and his series The longest day in saving private Ryan, which could be the same movie, actually, to be honest. It was a long day saving for the day of saving private Ryan was a long day. So check it out if you need a new podcast or you just wanna listen to something different with the check it out based on a true story podcast.com, and we thank Dan for his sponsorship.

Dave Jackson [00:02:57]:

Yeah. So, Jim, If I remember right, you had some big event for gallop coming up last week. Did your ego survive?

Jim Collison [00:03:05]:

Hey. It's pretty amazing. I'm I'm not gonna lie. I'm famous for 3 days a year. So we we get together. You know, the podcast called to Coach is trending at about a half a 1,000,000 download pod downloads on a year now, which is which is kinda cool. A quarter of a 1,000,000 last year, so it's doubled over the last year, which is which is kinda cool. And so we get these folks together. We had about 800,

Dave Jackson [00:03:29]:

900

Jim Collison [00:03:30]:

in person, and then we had 3000 virtual. which we tried this is our 1st year we tried the hybrid event. So for 4 years, we were in person. 3 years, we were virtual. and I'd always dreamt of being able to have a virtual ticket on this where we did the 2 together. And the team did a really nice job on nailing virtual. We got so many great comments from folks on Facebook, which you know how people are so nice to you on Facebook. You know that general trend of nice things on Facebook. So We got a lot of great comments of best virtual conference I've ever been to. This was super awesome. Here was the key, Dave, on this. is that we put a mod we put 2 moderators in the rooms. So you had a live moderator, and you had a you had a virtual moderator. And they work together to bring in comments and questions from chat that was going on virtual, as well as take care of people in the room. We lit the stages really well so that it wouldn't be some dark dim. Right? We got really good cameras on that thing. Mhmm. And and my part was I did the in between the breaks, you know, of of each of the sessions. Right. Well, when you're at home, you know, you might go to the bathroom or get more coffee. But what do you do during the breaks? When you're in person, you walk around and meet people, whatever. So I brought people on the stage, and we interviewed them. We had some conversation. I had the camera facing the hallway, so it kinda felt like -- Oh, nice. -- they were there kinda thing. I've done this before, and this a little bit like this. And it just kinda adds they could hear the crowd. So we got really good feedback. I must have taken 200 selfies with people, you know, type thing. And Everybody I work with just thinks it's nuts. because the 362 days the rest of the year. I'm just Jim, the podcast guy. Right? But these 3 days, it's it's pretty great. So it's it's pretty good good ego boost. At Gallup, we say it filled my bucket

Dave Jackson [00:05:23]:

lots of energy coming off of it. My voice is still a little scratchy from it. But, yeah, pretty cool. Pretty cool. If you ever get a chance to meet one of your listeners, if they don't ask because sometimes they they feel it's weird. Like, they're bothering you before they leave, go, hey. You wanna take a selfie? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I learned that from Penn And Teller. Penn And Teller, the famous musicians out in Las Vegas. When you go to a Penn And Teller show, you're going to see them in the lobby because they realized that when you take a selfie with someone, the chances of them sharing that on social is great. And so they'll be like, oh, I got to meet Jim at the, you know, Galp Conference and blah blah blah. And so you just got a free plug for your your podcast. So Yeah. It's so great. Yeah. Never had to worry about that, Dave. I I folks coming up. If I was alone for more than 10 seconds, it was kind of weird. It was usually coming up and in selfies. Question in the chat.

Jim Collison [00:06:22]:

What did we use? So, Dave, what did they use for the conference software? No Zoom. Zoom's not allowed on those kinds of things for that. It's just I mean, it's okay, but we use webinar.net as our back end. We actually have team. We've kind of custom built our own. Mhmm. I think Suelgo is part of that platform. And then I use Streamyard for the brakes to go to YouTube, and they just embedded the YouTube videos in the platform. So when they would go to a breakout, they'd click on the breakout. And if they get their early, they would see my video that they could join while they're waiting for that. Then right on time, I would do a a minute countdown to give us some buffer. And then the production seems behind it. We had a whole room of producers, which was super cool. watching this thing. Behind the scenes, I'd start the timer, and then they would just cut over to the breakout room when they were ready to to get that done. That's pretty cool. Worked out. It worked out pretty well. Yeah. That's I'm just picturing

Dave Jackson [00:07:19]:

was there a chat

Jim Collison [00:07:21]:

on the Yep. Yep. I can't imagine a chat with 3000 people. It's pretty it's well, it's pretty the breakout rooms, the the well, no. It goes fast. It just does. No no matter how you slice it, you just brush super, super fast. But in our chat, you can scroll down and it holds. I think I think Google the the Google Chat does this as well where If you start scrolling, it won't bring up the new ones. It'll show you a little there's new comments below, you know, a little comment. Yeah. Hey. New comments type deal. So you can kinda stop the chat if you want. Our our because we do this, so much. You know? I have a podcast just about every week, maybe every other week during the summer. We kinda teach them how to use a chat room and not not just get chitty chitty. So they they'll jump in. And in the very beginning, they're like, hey, everybody. You know, coming in from Ontario or coming in from Bellevue, Nebraska, whatever. So they check-in, and then they get quiet. And then they start they they kinda know it, and then they'll, you know, they'll say hi to each other and that kind of stuff. But once things get started, they do a nice job of not filling it up with junk, I guess, is what I'm saying. Oh. So they've gotten they've gotten really good at that. So Yeah. They're they're used to it because we do it all the time. Right? I mean, it's just one of those kinda things we've just kinda taught them how to do it. Very cool.

Dave Jackson [00:08:41]:

Well, we have a this one of these there are some of these questions today are interesting. It was out on Reddit that was looking at Facebook. And I think we're falling back into that habit of overthinking things again. So this one is having guests on a second time. says my podcast focuses on certain events and in people's lives. And you have those times when you just click really well with a guest, what the story is fascinating. If in slash when they do something else, similarly, you know, that's noteworthy, I would like to have them to return to talk about the new event. My questions are, a, is doing this a good or alright idea? Or would people think it was repetitive Okay? And if a guest came back on the podcast, how long after the first episode should I leave it? Okay. Relevant information. New episodes are released every 2 weeks. Examples from your own podcast would be great. So when I saw this, it was just, like, okay, is this a good idea or would people think it was repetitive? But he said, if and when they do something else similar, but noteworthy. I would like to have them returned. So I I just saw this as I think I mentioned this. I heard about this on Conan O'Brien when Stephen Wright, who's that totally deadpan. You know? I spilled spot remover on my dog, and now I can't find him comedian. He was on a Monday on Johnny Carson, and then he was liked so much that they had him back on Friday. And I don't think people on Friday were like, hey. What's this guy doing? Is this a repeat? What's going on, John? He was like, no. This guy's funny bringing back. So for me, I don't know how long after I I don't to me, I'm just like, if it's good, if you're delivering value to your audience, I just kinda saw this as an overthink. I don't know. What's say you, Jim Collison?

Jim Collison [00:10:35]:

Well, I it it sometimes on the Gallup stuff, we get a guest that has too much information Yeah. And so I'll just try to book them as quick as I can. If we get any hours up and we got more to say, I'll say, hey. Can we come back and finish this in a part 2? And they'll say yes, and then we get them scheduled for for a week or 2 or 3 or 4, whatever works in their schedule on ours. we get it scheduled. I am absolutely a huge fan of having guests come back. Yeah. I think we think everything has to be original. And if your audience loves the guest, I'd have them on once a quarter. I'd make them regular. Like, Erin Lawrence is a great example of this. She's a she lives up in up in Canada that's burning down. Sorry about our friends in Canada right now. I know you guys are under a lot of stress right now with all the fires that are going on up there. But She is she's blogger. She's gadget blog blogger. She's dynamite at what she does. She has a great YouTube channel. For some reason, she likes me. So, like, she likes coming on the show. So once a quarter, we have Erin Lawrence on, and she she brings kind of some regular content. the guys over at thinkcomputers.org. They're systems builders. You know, they love doing that kind of stuff. We have them on probably twice a year. Yeah. I think it gets the audience used to the it they become experts for your show, and then they start to learn your audience. which is which is very cool. So I'm a big fan, Dave. I think sometimes we think it's always gotta be a different guest. Listeners like to hear people who are experts and that they like. And if they like that my my audience loves Aaron, I'm gonna have her run just as much as I can.

Dave Jackson [00:12:15]:

Yeah. I've had I was trying to think of how many times. I've had Glenn the geek on I think five times to where he just now he'll be like he'll email me and he kinda knows. He'll like, hey, I think I have something for an episode and my like, he doesn't even have to say what it -- Right. -- I just go, yes, because he understands who my audience is. He's never pitched something that I was like, I don't know about that one. So yeah. I've had a I'm trying to think if I've had anybody else on more than once. But to me, as long as they deliver value, Yeah. You know, like, Glenn doesn't come back and say, hey, I got an idea. It's about this time where I I got a booth at at the biggest horse thing. Like, yeah, we did that. that would be a no. But he's coming up with new stuff, and he's got great insights. Like, now I'd love to have him come on and talk about how do you sell your podcast. because that's what he did. So yeah. And Daniel says, did I ever ask Clint? Tell me a little bit about yourself on the

Jim Collison [00:13:13]:

the second and third time, that'd be funny. We we always do a callback. So we'll always say, hey, you know, hey, welcome back. I think I had you on You know, I think I had you on last year about this time. Get us caught up a little bit. What's been what's new and interesting in your so we don't get to need to know them again. but it's good for the audience for them to catch up. What's hap what's been happening? What have they been doing? What's been exciting? Some of those kinds of things. And you can use that as a marketing too. You can be like, hey. You know, we had Glenn back on episode 457. I'll have a link in the show notes. Or or, of course, you can always follow with the show.

Dave Jackson [00:13:48]:

at, you know, whatever. Ask the podcast coach.com/follow and never miss an episode. So do that whole nine yards. And yeah. As we record this, I believe John Lee Dumas is gonna start a new podcast called Canada On Fire. Alright. So -- Too soon, Dave. Too soon. Yeah. Too soon. Too soon. But yeah. So don't don't overthink things when it comes to stuff like that. And I just you know, I I think sometimes I don't know about this, but we get nervous about starting a podcast. Now he's already going. That was the other thing. But I I don't know. I I think we get too far out of the the listener side and too much into the podcaster side. We start evaluating different things and We just, you know, just do it and Yeah. Let let people complain. That's the other one. I'm like, you know, what? If you're not sure if something's gonna work, But you think it's gonna work, you know, throw it out there. And if they go, yeah. I don't like that. Okay. Well, then don't do it again. I don't know that I I know. In today's kind of environment, there are things you can talk about that people will just leave into and maybe unsubscribe because, you know, you don't think like me, but that's alright. We don't want those people. So keep that in mind. We got a question here talking about events. For those who do an in person podcaster meetup, what is the top 2 things I should be aware of? I'm doing one with our local library that is a great sound booth faith. I just moved off of MeetUp. MeetUp, I was paying them something like $25 a month I had lots of people that joined on MeetUp and never attended a meeting because they were nowhere near Northeast Ohio. And the problem with MeetUp is when you go over a certain level, they you have to pay more. And I was like, yeah. I'm not and so and nobody was using it to, like, use it like a Facebook group, things like that. So I just moved I asked my audience. I'm like, hey, I'm not getting any value speaking of getting value for meetup. I go, you know, we get a couple of people here and there, but in general, you know, and if we moved, where would you wanna move? And, of course, they all said, Facebook. And I was like, alright. Well, are moving to Facebook. I hope I don't get you know, I've been kicked out of my own Facebook group before before spamming them and letting them know a meeting was coming up. So I get worried about that. But in terms of personal I have found that I'm trying not to do anymore because it doesn't it doesn't resonate with people where we always have at the end open q and a, but there were times like that was the title of the meeting. you know, June 28th or whatever the next meeting is, open q and a. And people aren't, oh, I was hoping we're gonna well, that's always there. So I asked the audience, like, what about guest speakers? So, like, Kim Kragie, who's often in the asked the podcast coach. She's a a toastmaster kinda guru, grandpa. She's gonna talk about storytelling next week. So I have found having topics might bring more people in. I might have Alex from pod match come on. Just we're gonna try that. But the other thing is, I have found at least I did this. We we went virtual when COVID hit. And so when we went back to in person, there were people that started joining that were nowhere near Northeast Ohio. So we've kept it virtual and we're about 5050 at this point. We get people that come in person. The one thing I don't do that I wonder if I should. But we mean in a radio station, which is cool. But I'll I also wonder sometimes if I had, like, pizza. if people would show up. I don't know. If you've done anything with, you know, kind of podcast or meet ups, are there any out in your neck of the woods? I've started a couple, and then they always try I I get a month or 2 in, and they they kinda fall apart.

Jim Collison [00:17:44]:

I think the key for me is regular You gotta set a date and time -- Yeah. -- to a regular even I've got a group of guys that I meet with that not podcasts are related or whatever. but it's a very disparate group of guys. Like, we're we're all over the place. We don't even work together anymore. We used to, and not all of them even worked together at the same time, which is guys we like getting together and join a cocktail or whatever. And so I set the last Wednesday of 4 PM every month And we you you just gotta kinda you have to get it to the point where it's on people's calendars, and they start thinking, oh, yeah. No. I shouldn't schedule something on the last Wednesday of the month because that's the, you know, that's the meetup time. the more regular you can be I mean, like a small business, you gotta survive. You have to have enough capital to survive the 1st year you're not making any money. With a meetup group, you have to survive the 1st year until people get it get it on their calendar, and you get it to be regular, and you get some good content, people start looking forward to it. So those first you gotta go, like, 6 months. I love your idea. You can't people don't come to meet and greet for the most part. They might come to the first one. They won't come back for number 2. Yeah. Like, we already we already did a meet and greet. You what you said is, I think, so true you have to have content. Yeah. It's like a podcast. If if if we did this podcast every weekend, we just took questions from the audience, it wouldn't work. I mean, a total lie. That's what we do. That's what you wanna it somehow works. You bring content to it, though. So so so that's probably the magic in it. As you always have stuff lined up, but you have to have some content You've hit the nail on head. Scott says the 1 in Tampa, which I've been to every month is great. 2nd Tuesday every month for years. Yep. Yep. The northeast Ohio Podcasters is the last Monday of the month. Yep. So that always works.

Dave Jackson [00:19:33]:

And then just have content. And Yeah. The other thing to think about because on one hand, you're like, oh, this is a great networking, you know, opportunity, and a lot of podcasters are introverts. And the fun thing is you'll also and I I'm not I don't wanna get done again. I don't wanna go down this thing. But we have people we have a guy that streams live from his phone on Twitch. Okay. Technically, Not a podcaster, but I don't care. I'm not dying on that hill, but that's always kinda fun. they say he says here, I'm I'm not using MeetUp. Yeah. You're not you know, luckily, the library is going to do all the promotion which covers 3 Counties in Central Virginia. good to hear we're doing. Yeah. That's really it. And then the other one, like Jim said, if I can remember, and this is where I just need to automate this, and you you can in Facebook. The the one thing I noticed, I have had a Facebook group for years. And along the way, they've added a ton of features that I had I was not paying attention to. Like, I actually manually go in and say, let's welcome the new members of the School of Podcat that, yeah, you can automate that. there are a bunch of automation things that I I did. But you need to let people know about a week before and then the day of, like, the morning of, like, hey, don't forget tonight at 7, you know. And then the other thing, man, we had a guy get really he was so upset that he didn't say a word and will probably never come back. And that is we meet it's a high school. Well, it's we have a weird thing in in Akron where all of our schools now are community centers because we could get more tax money for that. So we we we rebuilt all our schools that are now community centers. And there's a local radio station that's in the high school. So this guy drives 45 minutes from Cleveland, comes in and is just, like, couldn't find this place. your directions aren't very good. And I'm like, oh, man. I'm so sorry. So glad you're here. Like, come on over. We're at a table. you're sitting 15 feet from us over in these chairs. And he's like, nah. I'm good. Like, I'm just gonna listen. Like, okay. So if you, for some reason, might have more than one door to different establishments in your building. Yeah. You might wanna add some It doesn't it doesn't matter with him. Yeah. There's always those people though. Right? It's like, wow. Doctor says she finds by the way, if you're in Nashville, Nashville has a really good group. Atlanta with Mark Deal has a really good group. Dave's group in in Northeast Ohio, fun people But I think I've only hit double digits twice. It's always like 5 or 6. Now if I count the people online, that's different. But in person, we have about 5 which is is fine. We have a good time. But Doctor says I find a lot of Nashville podcasters group for Harvey podcasters, so I'm a little out of place. Well, yeah, if you're there for trying to find people to, you know, produce in that whole nine yards. And that's the other reason why I quit using MeetUp because I was like, why did I start this? Same thing with a podcast. Right? Why am I doing this? Who is it for and what do they want? And I was like, why started this? So I could say School of Podcasting in front of a bunch of new podcasters. And I've gotten maybe 2 clients from that. Again, it's not a huge group. But I was like, I looked at my I went into my history, and I saw how long I've been paying them $25 a month. And I was, yeah, this is not a good return on investment. And then it was like, okay. Do we do we cancel? Like, do I just quit and say, yeah. We're not doing this anymore. And so I was like, no, I am having fun. Mhmm. It's it's for me a social thing now. It's my little group. and we hang out. And and a lot of times after the meeting, the the conversations get deep and there's nothing about podcasting. It's a bunch of friends hanging out. So that's kinda cool. So I was like, yeah. I just need to quit losing money on this. That's basically I've I've gone through we've talked about these different things. Like, I just found I I am so and I guess this is the wrong thing to say, but I'm gonna say, ready for me to be politically incorrect, Jim? Oh, boy. Here we go. I am grandfathered in. That's Aegis. Did you know that? I'm I'm good. I'm grand I'm grandfathered in on acuity scheduling, which is a great tool, by the way. I was paying $10 a month, and it dawned on me. I bought Tidy Cow like, forever ago. And they kept adding more features. And I was like, oh, this does everything Acuity scheduling does except for one thing. acuity, I could set up an event and sell tickets for, like, eight people. Like, it could stop at 8. And I was like, oh, that's a cool feature that in 18 years I've never used. And I was like, it's only ten bucks. And I was yeah. It's also a 120 bucks a year. So I now changed all my links to Tidy Cow, which is a what you call yeah. t d r says I just switched over to Yeah. It's a one time payment. I probably have a link here somewhere. But it does everything that Calendly does, and it's one of those lovely app Sumo things. And like I said, they keep adding more features to it. And the Calendly or I'm sorry. The acuity scheduling Their page was okay, like a landing page. You can make your own landing page. That's the other thing. So I forget what got me on the subject of this. Oh, saving money with meetup. And so so far, we're actually getting a little more because we had, well, 0. interaction in the meetup group, and that's because I never put anything over there. So, hopefully, we'll get a little more interaction. We'll have some discussion of that. And, yeah, Chris Stone says Markdale runs a a great podcast Atlanta meet up. Yeah. That's the one I would like to go to. I've driven to Nashville. for I I spoke once at podcast or at the National MeetUp once Dave Hooper and I forget the other guy's name with glasses. But it's it's it's a great group. Uncle Marv says, just heard the end of the comments on content. I just posted show 500 this week. Well, holy cow. That's fun. I didn't think it would would be celebrated. you know, that much. But and as soon as I clicked on that, got the long emails thanking me for show and content. Yeah. 500, man. That's we're at 440. I was like, oh, pretty soon we're gonna have 444, which is the magic number of I have no idea. But yeah. Sweet. Do we get to 666?

Jim Collison [00:26:22]:

Oh, that'll be fun. Are we gonna get to 666, do you think? Let's see. That's Maybe that's we should plan to quit. Right at 665.

Dave Jackson [00:26:29]:

That's it. Yeah. 665. There you go. Coach Dave says I use Teddy Cal for a long time challenged with 2 way sync. then they sync from tidy to Outlook. No problem. The opposite way, see, I use I don't use Outlook. I use Google Calendar, but that's good to know. And now Coach Dave says he's using HubSpot until tidy Cow can get that sink issue fixed. They're working on it. Well, that's good. Yeah. They do it's actively being developed, and it's just one of those they have tidy cow. They have another email client that's in of something, sendfox. is their email list management that's and they give you a one time thing. But then it's 10 bucks a month, which again is nothing compared to something like Mailchimp or something like that that will basically make sure your email's delivered. I forget what they call it. But there you go. Spoon says 444 is a tuning for actually, it's 4:40, but close enough. Yeah. Sandfox. Yep. They're all going in. So so yeah. So that would be my guess. Then the other thing is now what do I always say about podcasting, I'm like, you know, ask your audience. So I asked the people there, and they're like, why don't we get some outside speakers. And I was like, that sounds good. Because, a, all I have to do is go find some outside speakers, which isn't that hard and say, hey. How would you like to show up virtually on, you know, 7 PM on the last Monday of the month. So we'll see how that happens because, you know, right now, the group isn't really growing much. We get the occasional new people in, but this and then the other thing is again promoting it. So like I should being that we're now almost halfway through the month, I should start saying, hey, you know, be sure to invite a friend. We've got a special speaker this week or this month. that whole nine yards. So keep that in mind. And speaking of trying new things, another fun filled question here said, I wanna change my podcast theme. I feel restricted with my current podcast theme. I would like to add more topics to explore on the show, but my branding is working against me a year ago. I started yet another entrepreneurship podcast as I was building my first business as an excuse to meet and learn from entrepreneurs in my city. At 25 plus interviews now with over 40 episodes, not super popular by any means. I would love to know what that. I get less than a 150 downloads per episode. Let's say it was a 100. That is Five classrooms of people. Come on now. The podcast is called my first business, which I think is a great name. Mhmm. But I've been a lot I've been a lifelong student of how to live an interesting life of which business was just one part. Lately, I've been itching to make content about things other than business think Tim Ferriss, but not that intense. So his question is, is it awkward to feature non business content on a podcast called my first business? And I was like, here again, the favorite answer is my depend it it depends. But if he had a lawyer on to talk about the legal aspects of starting your first it's still about my first business. I don't know. If if he starts, you know, like, hey, welcome my first business. Today, we're gonna be talking about meditation. I'll be like, We we get into, like, false advertising. I don't know. And then a couple other things he asked here. any risk of rebranding it to my personal name instead. My first business, people know what it's about. I have no idea what this guy's name was. So let's say it's Craig Van Helsing. Okay, Craig. Don't know who you are. You know? That's not really unless you're a known name, Should I leave the old episodes as is and just post new content within the same channels? Yeah. I would. I would. If you're gonna rebrand make an episode called, we are changing the name. Where you go, hey, welcome to, you know, my first business Just so you know, on Monday, we're changing the name to the Craig Van Hilsing show where we talk about whatever I want to. you're gonna have a lot of people leave for the record. But keep that in mind. And then he gets into the Spotify allow for name changes while holding everything else constant. Yeah. It's all you have to do is change your name and artwork in your whoever your media host is and then the apps. Just think of the apps. Apple, Google, Spotify, Amazon, etcetera. They're just mirrors that reflect whatever is in your your media host. So Jim thoughts.

Jim Collison [00:31:12]:

Yeah. This I think in this case, let the title be your friend. I've listened to a couple different podcasts that have alternating content on a on a weekly basis. So when they shoot under whiskey, they release one that's then that's the title of the podcast, and then they have one called extra extra. And it's instead of being 2 hours, it's 35 minutes. And it's based on a new story. So different kind of content, but same feed. Right? And so they just let the titles. So that way, I know, hey. listening to a, you know, am I listening to a which podcast am I listening to? Cigar Authority does the same thing. They have an after show that they also put So they do a 2 hour pod oh, there's a trend here. 2 hour podcast and a 30 minute after show, and they do they put them in the same feed. I find them very successful. The the the the longer show gets more downloads than the shorter one does, which is crazy on that. Right? It's just You you think people want short content. But when they engage with you, they want as much as you can give them. So that's one of those counterintuitive I think piece of advice for a lot of podcasters. It's like, they can always listen to less, but they can't make up more. Like, they can't add more of your content. Once it's been listened to and it's done, it's done. So make it as long as you want it to. They'll turn you off if they don't like Well and but are is the whiskey show, like, on these different types of show, the extra x is it still talking about whiskey? Oh, for sure. Yeah. But but different like, I mean, it's still a little different content. The the subject is the same. But in this case, with this business person who's bringing in yeah. I I imagine if you like, I had Dan LeFeb on the podcast. The first time I had him on home gadget Geeks, we talked about his shows that related to technology. It was a stretch. Like, it was, like, you know, you kinda, like, I don't know. I got feedback from one of my listeners who said, when you started the show, I wasn't sure how you were gonna tie the 2 together, and I didn't think you were gonna keep me interested in movies that long, but you did. Right? So you can be creative about it with your with your audience. You do this all the time, Dave. You stretch things like you're like, hey. I wanna I'm gonna bring this back to podcasting somehow. Right? And we we kinda stretch it a little bit. So if you're a business podcast, and you're gonna talk about growing flowers. Well, maybe to bring in the business of growing flowers to talk a little bit. Right? You know, that kind of thing. Yeah. My Todd

Dave Jackson [00:33:43]:

Todd, the Gator, really liked my last episode of the School of Podcasting. If you go to school of podcasting.com/88 2, I believe. And I started off the show with Robo Dave, where I went to 11 Labs and uploaded 4:1 minute clips, and it spit out a thing that sounded a lot like me, which was kinda spooky. And then in London, somebody used Telegram. Telegraf some app and had Joe Rogan do a shout out for me. and it sounded a lot like Joe Rogan. That was really spooky. And so the whole thing was about, hey, if if let's go with robots are gonna take over podcasting? What can we do that they don't? And that's you know, they don't have the experience that we do, so embrace your humanness. But kind of now bringing this back to me, bringing things back. In there,

Jim Collison [00:34:38]:

a bring back inception. Yes. It is.

Dave Jackson [00:34:41]:

I talked about how I watched the movie 8 days a week on Hulu. It's a Beatles documentary by Ron Howard. there were a bunch of things in there, like, the the early Beatles, they knew what their audience wanted. Right? These girls were screaming for no apparent reason. So all of their songs are about, I love you, girl meets boy, and they were all singular. It wasn't like, hey, everybody. I wanna shake your hands. Nope. It was I wanna shake your hand. If I fell in love with you, it was all singular stuff. And then later, they dropped enough acid to kill a horse and, you know, their songs expanded. But so that was an example of I'm I'm still talking about podcasting, but it was through the lens of the Beatles and the fact that, you know, it's this whole thing with AI is getting On one handed Spooky, it's also like, wow, that's cool. Like, I I sent Robo Dave to my brother. And in the middle of it, I go, oh, by the way, this isn't Dave. And he's like, what is this voodoo you are sending me, man? He's like, that's so weird. So thanks for that, Todd. But going back to to shows here and changing your brand, Brad says, when I go to new shows, I'm amazed that the number with titles like the Bob Smith show, chat with Susie. Yeah. I in the school of podcasting, I I don't wanna throw this person under the bus, but there was somebody Libson that literally had the name of the show, episodes spelled out 1, seasons spelled out or season 1 episode 12, and then the name of the person. That was it. Nothing like, what am I gonna gain from listening to? Jim Coles. And what's the takeaway? Nope. Just the episode in the season, and I just took a screenshot. And I said, don't do this. That was it. That was my comment on it. So Yeah. I would I like the idea of what Jim's talking about. If if you really wanna talk about something that's not related at all to my first business, Everybody does it, all the cool kids are doing it, start a second podcast. That's another option.

Jim Collison [00:36:45]:

Because that's Or just do it or just do it. Like, let your audience know, hey. This week, I just wanna do this. Right. And so if you wanna I'm I'm warning you upfront this may be a little different. And this here's what we're gonna talk about. Stay around if you want. Otherwise, we'll see you next week. I'll be back with because, Dave, you may not have enough

Dave Jackson [00:37:07]:

content to start a whole another podcast. That's true. I've done that. I've had a couple where I've talked about the mental aspects of podcasting and how to avoid burnout. Yeah. And I always kinda say, look, we're not talking about microphones and downloads today. But it is important.

Jim Collison [00:37:22]:

Well, you came on my show, and we talked about microphones and downloads. It's like and it's a gadget show, but I I I I you know, this was pre pandemic, and I kinda turned on the audience to say, hey. Look. We're all dealing with communication from a you know, from a computer standpoint where we again, we were this wasn't we weren't doing as much of this then as we were now. but it was good to talk about equipment. Those are gadgets. This all this stuff is gadgets. It works. Right? Now may not be the traditional gadgetry that we think, but I had a great conversation with you, and we enjoyed it. And I I thought it was good in the audience, you know, liked it. And so I think you can get kinda creative.

Dave Jackson [00:38:02]:

Yeah. Well, again, it's it's your show. You can do with whatever you want. Dan says my last episode was different than usual, but it was something I wanted to do. So I started by saying the episode is gonna be different. Yep. And, again, nobody's gonna punch you in the face. You could always try it as a segment. Sean says, near the end of the podcast where all the super listeners are. Right? And if you get enough feedback, do it a little more. Yeah. That's true. That's right. Bernie ran out of things to say. Coach Dave says, well, because he died. That was the problem. You might the the That that's way too soon.

Jim Collison [00:38:37]:

That is way too soon.

Dave Jackson [00:38:40]:

Speaking of gadgets, though, somebody asked, and I didn't even know this existed. Mackie M Caster Studio versus Roadcaster duo, which by the way, the shipping of that has been delayed. Now they're saying July. Are these even the same league? No. They're not. The Mackie Mcaster is meant for livestreaming. There's no recorder in it. So you know how Roadcaster has the only fans version. It's just streaming with a video thing and yeah. That's kinda what the mcaster is. Same thing. You can you can have little sound effects and, you know, that kind of stuff. And I think they have a thing where you can change your voice, but it's only one mic. It's really meant for live streamers that are probably gamers, things like that. It's 300 bucks. The Roadcaster duo is 5. He says I record my podcast using Riverside with my partners and guests Ever sure, m v 7. And I'd like finer grain control over vocal effects. Oh, well, you know, I don't have any setup right now, but the the road duo would have the whole maker, you know, Satan and then the elf in that whole nine yards. So which is always weird. That can get a little old after a while. I know I think if I turn them on, Jim would start rolling his eyes. Like, oh, Dave found the the elf button again. So

Jim Collison [00:40:02]:

Dan said in chat. He said my last episode was different than usual, but it was something I wanted to do. So I started just by saying, The episode will be a little bit different. Right? I mean, I think that's a great that's a great way of doing it. And then Sean says yeah. Sean says you could try It is a segment near the end of I like this idea. Near the end of the podcast, if you get enough feedback yeah. If you get enough feedback, do it a little more. I love that idea of throwing it in at the end. Yeah. And then see see what the audience says. If they ask for like, I'd really like more of that. Then you can You're like, okay. We can we can expand that segment out.

Dave Jackson [00:40:41]:

Speaking of new shows, Doctor is I'm prepping my own podcast and had something like podcasting for entrepreneurs. I DM Gordon Firemark and he said the entrepreneur magazine will come after me. Yeah. John Lee Dumas whose dad is a lawyer could have easily, you know, had free legal people, but there's a big old team of people at entrepreneur. That's what if you ever wonder why John talks he will say I think he has to say entrepreneurs on fire. And he usually says EO Fire. because it was just one of those where it was like, oh, this is going to either even if you had free legal from his dad, that was gonna get dragged on a lot. And so I would not now podcasting for entrepreneurs You know? That's that's you know, you could always that's a tough one. Yeah. Maybe, you know, It's I don't know if you reach out to them ahead of time and say, hey, I'm thinking of doing a podcast called podcast for entrepreneurs. a, are you gonna get any people to email you back from entrepreneur, the magazine? I don't know. But That it's true. They've gone after you know, they went after JLD, and he was eventually was like, okay. Enough of that. I'm just gonna change the name. So I don't know. be fun. But I I I remember when that happened. I was like, wow. That's when you're like, wow. I'm how do you know if you're gonna get sued is when you start making money at it? Mhmm. You know? And when you start outranking somebody for their keyword. That's when they're gonna like, okay. Release the hounds. I'd like to release some thanks. to the awesome people. And what's gonna be fun about this is I forgot to update the thing. So we're gonna do we're gonna do I'm letting everybody know. We're gonna do something a little different this time. because normally well, first of all, if you wanna start a podcast, I would love to help you. You've got courses. You've got coaching and community And unlimited, that's not a typo, one on onecoaching@theschoolofpodcasting.com. But Yes. This. Well, actually, you know what? We'll leave that in there. I mentioned it earlier. The spotlight supporter of the week is those lovely ladies over it. Keep the flame alive. Go to flame alive pod.com.websitebymark@podcastbrinding.co. But the other thing and I'll do this anyway, If you would like your name on this website, you could be here And that is the lovely awesome supporters over there. So you can see there's the $20 supporters. If you support us with 10 bucks, like Sean and Kyle and Doctor Norm and Norm and Jen and Michael, your name could be over there. And notice there is a link to your podcast over there as well. So you do get a link, and it's only $10 a month. I think there's even a $5 1, but that's just a a way to say thanks. And I'm trying to find the stop button. There we go. But I wasn't done with this. So ask the pot Castcoach runs on pod page. If you'd like to try pod page, go to tri pod page .com. And if you need more, Jim Culison, and who doesn't. The average guy dot TV is where you can find gym and home gadget geeks. And again, we're on our journey to 100. And this week, we added 0. We have no more new and and again, remember that when you sign up, your first shadow is gonna be huge. We'll will play sound effects and David Lee Roth and really point people at your website. There we go. And, yes, Somebody's mentioning Kyle Bondo, merchants of dirt. I love the name of that show. What are you? I'm a merchant of dirt. So there we go. So thank you for everyone who is an awesome supporter. Go over to ask the podcast coach .com slash awesome and be an awesome supporter. today. And Doctor's got another point here. She says, I changed it. Okay. So she changed the the entrepreneur thing. I went to chat GPT and asked for 10 good titles without entrepreneur in it. Yeah. And also, keep the word podcast out of it. Now in your case, you're saying podcasting for whatever small business people, something like that. That's diff but I like, when it's the, you know, the whatever. Janet Smith podcast, which is weird because then it would just be Janet Smith. which is maybe a red flag that maybe you shouldn't name the name of your show, your name, unless people know who you are. So if it's you know, The John Stamo Show. Okay. But even again, I called a show, not a podcast. Because when you put the word podcast and the word the You rank against every show. And I need to check. I think Daniel said this is not as accurate as it used to be. Like, it doesn't mess up you in search. I'll have to go back and listen to that episode. But titles are tricky, and you can always change them later if you need to. So keep that in mind. So here is we already did that one.

Jim Collison [00:45:49]:

Well, you hold on. Before you move on, if you do have your name and the show name in iTunes and all the other god podcast players. I think you're doubling up your name both in the title and in the author. Oh, yeah. I think Google's smart enough to know using that author tag that it associates your name with the podcast. And so you're wasting space. I mean, you're wasting valuable keyword space. So I don't know. I Dave, there's times when putting your name in there. It's appropriate.

Dave Jackson [00:46:20]:

But -- Oh, yeah. Put it in in the the author field.

Jim Collison [00:46:23]:

But -- Well, for sure. But, I mean, even in the title, there might be some times where your name is appropriate. But, you know, your mileage might vary. It's it is doubling it up a little bit. Yeah. When it's,

Dave Jackson [00:46:35]:

you know, meditation for you know, small business with Katie Cromitsos. Yeah. You know, I've seen that kind of stuff. So Here was a a fun one that I saw, and it's about your RSS feed. How to download the RSS XML for linking on my own personal website. Does anyone know how to download the XML file from an RSS host I'm using RSS.com. Well, for the record to answer that question, put your RSS feed into Chrome, select all copy, paste in the notepad you've got it, but you don't wanna do that. I noticed that many of the major podcasters rehost the file on their personal websites even if they use hosts like blueberry, RSS, or lipsondot com. So for, like example .com slash feed slash podcast, that many times it's actually PowerPress. And so it's not that they're rehosting it. It's that they're using the RSS feed on their website. He goes, I think it's a good idea to make subscribing easier. It doesn't make subscribing any easier, but can't figure out how to download and properly host this file in a directory on my own website. So there are a couple of things that that and that's it. It doesn't make it easier because it's on your website. an RSS feed, if it was, you know, dave.lipsond.com/ RSS isn't gonna be any easier to subscribe than you know, dave.com/feed/rss. It's the same thing. What you wanna do is get the links to Apple Google's Spotify and Amazon. And you can get those links simply by going to your show and searching for it. In almost all of them, they they have some sort of share button, and it'll give you the link and you can copy that. But the The thing I always point out from my own personal experience was in the early days of podcasting, I was using PowerPress, which, by the way, phenomenal plugin. They're adding podcasting 2.0 features to it. But your RSS feed is on your website. and I, all of a sudden, got super duper popular. And so if you have, let's say, Apple Podcast set up to check your feed once an hour, and then you get 3000 people checking your feed once an hour. Even though the RSS feed or the your actual, you know, that document is just a text file. but the more episodes you get, the bigger it's gonna be. And so that's why Blueberry even has podcastmirror.com. So in the event that you're getting, like, hey, I'm almost taking down my website because all this bandwidth, because I've got popular. you can throw it on podcastmere.com. But I I just the thing was, like, I make it easier to subscribe. I was like, nope. Not really. And then the other thing to keep in mind, anytime you say, I want to do this to my feed, my my my sphincter. It's just a little, like, I'm a little tighter on that because that's you've gone from outpatient surgery. We're talking about rebranding Right? Okay. Change the name, change the artwork. No big deal. No harm, no foul if you have a typo. You mess up your feed. You at times, you can lose your audience. I don't know. Have you ever messed with your feed, Jim, or anything any played No. Lord, no. Yeah. Like, there's other things to mess up, but

Jim Collison [00:49:49]:

but don't don't do not go in there and change the feed. I did I mean, I've changed the name of the show. In fact, the feed still I think still has the old show name in it in some cases or whatever. But

Dave Jackson [00:50:03]:

no. I think the URL's got some stuff in it. But I try not to. It's just It's just too complicated. Well, and the other thing I always because on occasion, I'll get somebody to lips and they're they're obsessing. Again, overthinking things. And I always ask them, like, Jim, what's one of your favorite podcasts?

Jim Collison [00:50:21]:

Are you asking me? Yeah. This one. Okay. But

Dave Jackson [00:50:25]:

Oh, we'll say Windows weekly. Windows weekly. Great. What's their feed? No idea. Exactly. And that's where I'm like, feeds are not meant for people. They're meant for apps. And, again, I think sometimes we I don't know why we get distracted, but this is something that I'm like, yeah, you're worrying about something you you you don't need to worry about. It's already set up. Apps are reading it. As long as it's valid, you're you're good to go. And, yeah, I was just like, that's that's a weird one. So keep that in mind. Here's a inner again, I I saw these, like, these are different. changing a person's voice while keeping it sounding natural while being interviewed is something they're trying to do. Due to the topic and their experiences, they are very concerned that their voices will be recognized. I'm trying to find a way to do this live to alter their voice and yet not make it sound robotic or weird. Yeah. Does anyone have any plugins or methods that work just changing the pitch didn't work. Ideally, it would change as we're recording, so I don't have issues when, for example, we, the host, and they overlap. And that's a I was like, well, there's a question I haven't answered a lot. the the thing you have to think in mind, keep in mind and this is one of those where I say, you know, when people talk about they're gonna steal my content. Like and I'm like, if I can hear it, if I can see it, I can steal it. And the person that you know, steals tutorials from the school of podcasting. You know, nothing I can do about that. Welcome to the Internet. And so if somebody really wants to figure out who that is, if you go in and you change their voice, 7 whatever tones down, And so instead of talking like this, they now sound like this. All somebody has to do is take that same tool and go, hey. Put it up 7 tunes and all of a sudden they will sound like this. So that's not really a way to to keep them super safe. The only and people are talking about this on Reddit. I think the only way if you really wanted somebody to not be discovered, would be to record it normal, take their part, have it transcribed, and have somebody else read which sounds like a whole lot of hassle in my book. But and then don't yeah. It's gotta be somebody else. Let's let's see. because anything you do in post production can be undone in post production, I would think. Am I missing anything?

Jim Collison [00:52:57]:

No. I think you're right on. it it's a difficult problem. There may be some way through AI here in the future where it would there's gonna be a delay. Right? There's gonna be a delay. But where it's it's listening, and then you could have AI read it. You could have an AI voice

Dave Jackson [00:53:14]:

read it. Right? So you could have any voice at that point. Eleven labs. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That would work. And you and and that's gonna sound just as robotic, which isn't very these days. It's pretty good. As if you took something and made them chime like this. So, yeah, it's that's the part that's really spooky about 11 labs is you can go over and say, give me a thirty year old male with a southern accent. And next thing you know, howdy? You know? You're like, okay. That's weird. So but that was one I was like, I've that's a that's a question that's out there, a bit. This one I see a lot, and I'm like, I wanna start a podcast. Have a really great idea and a key demographic in mind. However, I'm so scared. I'm so scared to promote it. I'm scared of what people would think and how it would potentially affect my kids which makes me wonder what the topic is. I'm also scared that no one would care. I don't wanna dump a bunch of money into something and have it not work out. Anyone have any tips or things I could do to get over my fear. So they have a key demographic. I'm scared of what people would think. So to that, I go, well, guess what? Were you have you gone to Walmart in the past 6 months? And they'll go, yeah. And I go, guess what? the person standing behind you in line was looking at what's in your cart. They're looking at what you're wearing, and they're judging you plus or minus. Alright. It's just something people do. Do you care what people did that stop you from going to Walmart?

Jim Collison [00:54:51]:

I don't know. What would you say to people that are like, In some cases, it would. I think for people well, it's fear. Like, the this is the fear of being judged or the fear of failure or the fear I mean, And it's a real thing. I I think sometimes we think and you and I were both talking about this in the in the pre show a little bit. I think sometimes our advice is, like, Well, you gotta get past it. But I think we need to give people real strategies for actually getting past it. We've done this in the past. Let me give you an example. So sometimes when I get that fear of doing that, I I have to trick myself into just actually getting it done. So sometimes we overthink things, and we think about it. We think about it. We think about it. And then we then we don't do it. I'll just start doing one thing that will lead to the next thing. And I try to just not I almost try to fool myself into getting, you know, to just getting started. Now once I get started, you kinda start realizing, okay. This okay. This isn't as bad as I thought it was. But I think you need to come up based on who you are and what you know you've been successful with in the future. I mean, in the past. And then start thinking, okay. How can I use who I am to get this done and get past the parts that are a fear? because they're real. Right? I mean -- Yeah. -- we're all afraid of things. We're all afraid to do things. We all struggle with that kind of stuff. And I think, individually, we just gotta look at it and say, I gotta get I gotta find out some successful strategies to get past this. Another one might be do it with someone else who has done it before. Right. Partner with someone. You're not you don't have to be alone on this thing. Do it I mean, I ran I ran a lot of miles in my forties. I ran 5 marathons and probably a 100 half marathons. Wow. Never did them alone. Never. I always did it with somebody else, because running alone is boring. Like Now because I know there's people who do it. And you're really great at it, and it your time to be alone, and it's fantastic and blah blah blah. For me, I'm not out there unless I'm, you know I I I've got somebody doing it with me. I am a social runner. It's kinda what I it's what I said. So, Dave, I think there could be some strategies thinking through that to say Yeah. How do I use who I am to get past it? And I I've really gotta do some things.

Dave Jackson [00:57:13]:

It I can't I can't let it defeat me. I've gotta find ways to to get past it. That's it. I was listening to a book on dieting and losing weight. And they said some purse some people will say, you know, I I can't give up Coke, or that sounds like cocaine. Anyway, I can't give up McDonald's. And and the person that loses weight is like, okay, how can I figure out a way? Like, you have to think it's possible. And the only thing that kinda jumped out me, I'm scared of what people would think and how it would potentially affect my kids. If you're talking about how let's say this is a mom. I don't know if it's a male or let's say it's a mom. Yeah. And you're talking about how you had sex with the entire high school football team. That might affect your kids -- Yeah. -- a little bit. So keep in mind, or if you talk about your kids, you know, if you're like, well, welcome to, you know, the busy mom podcast. And, man, my kids are driving me nuts. maybe not something. You gotta be careful when you talk about your family in a podcast. I learned that the the hard way. Be very, very careful with that. I'm also care that nobody would would care. I get that, which is probably the biggest reason why they're not promoting that whole, like, it's better to be how's that go? It's better to think you have if you're a singer. It's best to have people think that you have an endless range than to sing outside of it and remove all doubt. You know what I mean? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So it's the whole, like, if I put this out there, I think nobody's gonna listen to this. if I put this out, nobody listens to it, now I've convinced myself that I'm worthless. And that's a horrible thing to feel. So that goes back to, you know, where's my good friend? Especially when you're starting out, you know, you don't want Oh, I don't know where Glenn ran away to. Doggone it. Glenn, Glenn. Glenn, where are you at? Come here, buddy. Well, we have David Lee Roth. I lost my Glen. Oh, here. No? Yes. Maybe. You know what? The time is gone. Glen would Glen would say don't be boring. And I I thought I had -- Oh, pull it in. I'll do it. Don't be boring. Right? That was pretty good. Yeah. And I know you're really just trying to do Kermit the frog, but in the process. Hey. It's the same person. I'm pretty sure. Oh my goodness. And then I don't wanna dump a bunch of money into something. Well, a bunch of money is defined by many different people. Maybe that could be a contest. imitate Glenda Geek.

Jim Collison [01:00:00]:

I just we've heard that quote so many times. Times. Yeah. It'll be boring. Yeah.

Dave Jackson [01:00:05]:

And I could've sworn I had it here somewhere, but I don't. Anyway, but speaking of this, we do have this one. No one will punch you in the face. There we go. But in terms of dummy a bunch of money into it, if you're doing a solo show, I'm not making this up. You can start a podcast for under a hundred bucks. Samsung Q2 you done, maybe 5 bucks on a wind screen. But, yeah, it is hard to say just start when you're scared. You know? But there's only way I mean, you know, I I'm afraid of heights. And I got up in a hot air balloon. Because I saw a bunch I saw a three year old get on a hot air balloon and wasn't scared at all. And I was like, alright. If that kid can do it, I can do it. You know? And and I didn't die. So it's it's hard facing your fears. But the thing to keep in mind, if nobody likes it, they won't listen. Somebody's gonna like it because they're bazillions of people in there. Now are you gonna be famous and, you know, that whole nine probably not. Most people are not. But that's where you gotta answer, why am I doing this, who's it's for, and what do they want. and then how am I gonna measure my success? That's that's really it. But we did have kind of in a similar vein. How do I get inspiration? I've always been a podcast enthusiast, and I've been listening to podcasts covering all sorts of topics for many years during the first lockdown. I started my own podcast covering a very interesting topic for me, environmental politics, which I eventually stopped because of university and work. Now, as I finish university, and I have a typical 9 to 5, I wanna start another podcast to do something creative after work to which I kinda wanna go why not environmental politics. But okay. However, I can't seem to find a topic that it's that's worth investing my time in. I'm not aiming to become extra famous or rich with my podcast, but I'd still like to talk about something I'm interested in that can be appreciated. How do I find a topic? I already made a list of things I like and I made market research, but I don't seem to have the Eureka moment what would you suggest? And and so part of me goes, if you can't figure out what to talk about, don't start a podcast. Am I allowed to say that? The other thing is See, he's already done a podcast. If you're brand new, we were talking before we started. There's a a website called Story Worth that I actually ordered because I do a show where I talk about me called building a Better Dave. And it was like 80 bucks for and what they do is they send you, you can pick a bunch of questions. And then they will send them to you and you basically type out your answer And then if you want, they will make a book out of them. And I was like, oh, that sounds neat. I wonder what the questions are. So I wanted to see the questions because those might be good for that show. So if you hadn't been podcasting before and wanted to just get in the habit of talking into a microphone and things like that, we all have grandparents. That was the one I one of the questions was tell me about your grandparents. Then I was like, oh, okay. But it could be like, what's your favorite childhood memory? If you just need something to talk about, you know, pick anything and just talk into the microphone just to get used to, you know, the equipment and recording and things like that. But if you can't I I would say whatever you whatever you pick for your topic, no matter whether you wanna monetize or not, you are gonna talk about it for free for a considerable amount of time. And so if that's more than, you know, 9 episodes, And that's another good thing. Right? Always, like, write down 20 topics that you would wanna talk about. That's kind of a way to filter out. Am I gonna talk about this or not? I don't know what I'm sure you run into people that, like, I wanna start a podcast about what? I don't know.

Jim Collison [01:04:02]:

Yeah. Besides the fear of having a topic, and it can never get you know, to the to the launch point. You know, I think if you're searching for a topic, do a bunch of Zoom calls or whatever you wanna use. with with groups of people that you know and talk about some things. See if anything sticks or lands with people. You know? I don't know why people think they have to actually do the podcast for it to be a podcast. If you just wanna talk you can just schedule time with people. Like, you know, find some people who are interested in this topic, say, like, hey. I wanna talk about I played disc golf this morning. So I wanna talk about disc golf. Put that out to your communities and say, I wanna do a call See who shows up. Have a conversation about this golf. See if you're any good about any good with it. See if it's interesting. See if it goes beyond a single call. See if you know enough to take it beyond a single call, right type deal. Test it out first. I think some people think once they say it once, they can't ever say the same thing again. I mean, Dave, you and I at 4 100 40. I mean, we repeat this infer. We say the same thing all the time. Right? Just because you said it once in the original. So just because you do some test pilot, practice, whatever, doesn't mean you can't come back around and do that again, or take the content you recorded in these conversations and make it a mega episode. I mean, there's lots of creative things you can do. You don't have to do a podcast the very first thing. There's tons of things you can do to lead up to the podcast. If it catches on, if people get interested, This is the the number one sign you should start a podcast. Somebody goes, you know, you should start a podcast about that. Right? Number one side, then you know. Right? So that's that's more of those are my thoughts. My

Dave Jackson [01:05:56]:

my my oldest friend I've known him since I was 12, was in town this week, and we went out a a couple times out to dinner and things like that. And this is a weird idea. And Jim just mentioned this, and I was like, that's you can actually do that. We had conversations and didn't record any of them. Right. You can actually just you don't have everything doesn't have to be. I know. It's -- Are you conversations that aren't recorded? Yeah. We talked about old we talked about old eighties guitar players and bands. you know, all sorts of crazy stuff. We talked about, you know, wives and kids and, you know How dare you have conversations

Jim Collison [01:06:39]:

without recording?

Dave Jackson [01:06:41]:

because there is somebody asked me once. They said, what is the difference between a conversation and a podcast? because you want your podcast to be conversational. I go a a podcast is a conversation where the boring stuff has been removed. I go, that's, in my opinion, it's kind of a if it's an interview thing. Yeah. I I knew an NPR guy that put a lapel

Jim Collison [01:07:01]:

on and a recorder in his pocket and for months recorded his whole day. and and was was gonna wanted to make I don't know you've I don't know where it went, but was gonna make was kinda make something out of that. Could you imagine your trying to edit your whole day. Would you edit the you editing your whole day? Like, does that all of a sudden become an edit inception when you're

Dave Jackson [01:07:27]:

when you're doing something like that? There's a a podcast they did for Chris Kromitsos called The Messenger. It was very meta. It was a podcast about a documentary about podcasting, and he would just dump hours of conversations many of them him playing with this kid. I'm like, you know, you could hit the stop button on that. And so But that was one where it was cool, but I had to listen to a lot of stuff. There's a a podcast coming out Tuesday called Lady Bird and they went through archives like hundreds of hours of Lady Bird Johnson who was the first lady to Lyndon B. And I guess it's really interesting, all sorts of behind the scenes stuff. But she had to wade through like, it took her a year and a half to make this podcast. She's there's a Texas school that has a podcasting part of their curriculum. And so they're using Lipson and I and I kinda coaching them through how to set things up, etcetera, etcetera. And I was like, man, that's gonna be a really cool podcast. But it's it's weird because she talks about how she met you know, LBJ and, you know, kinda her first impressions and the fact that he asked her to marry him, like, after their first meeting, you know, stuff like that that's kinda kinda interesting. But and she said, it's interesting because she's really gonna promote it. She's in Texas. And apparently, everything in Texas is named Johnson at the end of it because they were just huge at the time. So that'll be fun. But that's one where you know, those those were recorded, never thinking they were going to be a podcast. So there was a lot of editing to find the good stuff and cut out the boring stuff. So There and there's there's also an interesting technique to that that

Jim Collison [01:09:11]:

a a pastor that I used to listen to a church podcast. Oh, this was even before Pod. Remember when they used to send out messages on tape? Oh, yeah. You can get on my tape. Those are actually podcasts. But -- Yeah. -- the the they just didn't have an RSS. So Chuck's Wendell would preach And then he would take a 12 12 sermon series and condense it down into shorter versions of each one of those. Then he'd take that and combine it into one thing that was that was even smaller, and then take those smaller things and combine them together into another series into a book. Like, he was the best guy I've ever seen of taking long form content and reusing over and over and over again. I think some people think, you know, say you have a year of podcasts, and they think on the first run, they've gotta condense those down into into one thing. Well, no. How about we start with take the best of the month and then maybe take that month and k. of that that you have for the months, take that, how can I get the best of the quarters? Right? Condense it down again. Releasing it each time. people can listen to it again. Right? It's a summary. It's good stuff. And then maybe on a yearly basis, and then maybe you you take your every 5 years, you put all that stuff together. So don't feel like you gotta, you know, you gotta take a gigantic thing and condense it down into 1. Condense it down each time, and then Just keep keep working your way down. Yeah. I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah. I

Dave Jackson [01:10:47]:

yeah. Again,

Jim Collison [01:10:48]:

you can make things way much bigger and complicated and keep it simple. Yeah. Well, you can reuse content. And this is a good way to reuse content. And in the process of reusing the content, you're condensing it down. It just it's a lot less daunting of a task if you do it little chunks. bring it together logically than to try to take a whole year's worth of content and condense it down to an hour at the end of the year. Yeah. The I'm thinking of these best of shows that people used to make, that's really, really daunting. What if you did the best of the month, and then you could say the best the quarter. And by the way, when you get to the end of the year, your job's done for you. Pick whatever was best of the quarters. Put that in your year end review, and you'd be done.

Dave Jackson [01:11:32]:

There you go. Robert Lewis, oh, the happy diabetic, I believe, if I remember right, is his show. or the Happy Diabetic Chef. I know he's a Chef. Says I'm rebuilding my website recommended way to show off the podcast, perhaps a separate tab. This is where it's tricky. I would you always have to ask yourself, and I I switched the school of podcasting about a year or 2 ago. Is this a podcast that has a business or a business that has a podcast? because for the longest time, it was a podcast that had a business And I was like, it might get more listeners if I promoted the business. Here's what you can get from joining the school. The podcast oh, by the way, you can listen to the episodes over there. So I have a tab that just says episodes, and then I Also, I believe I know I definitely have schoolgirlpodcasting.com/subscribe where I can send people to subscribe. But make it always treat every episode like a blog post. I see a lot of people that love to do that. Lipson Captivate. They all have like a set it and forget it player where you'll go over your grab a code and you'll put it on one page and there are all your episodes. You get 0 and I mean 0 SEO from that. It's great. You could have a page called Binge and let people binge, but I always say treat every episode. You've already got your episode description, copy and paste that into your blog, copy and paste the code for the player, Presto, and then I have links to Apple, Google, Spotify, and and Amazon there. and then, you know, put it on a link. If you're using WordPress, you can make a a category and call it, you know, show or podcaster ever. And then it's really easy to just make a link that will filter out everything that's not a podcast on that. And then, again, you can make that a tab, things like that, But definitely get the you know, the I actually for some of my shows, what I put in My media host is a paragraph, maybe 2, maybe some timestamps and links. When that gets to my website, I expand on that because now I'm in the land of Google, and I want more good words, not just a word salad or word vomit, something to to keep in mind here. Anne has a question. Did you ever listen to speaking of teens for me? I did. I need to finish I will finish that today. What I what I didn't do Anne, And your show is very good, by the way. And it's good. I'm gonna answer this now because I need tone of voice for this. And, Jim, you can tell me if I'm, you know, just do one of these if if I'm because I'm gonna say something that might be controversial. But Anne has a very and I say this to point out that men are idiots. Okay? So I don't wanna look like an idiot. I'm not agreeing with these people, but Anne is from the south. And so she has this episode lovely. So and that's not how she sounds at all. But it's a southern accent. We know what it sounds like. If I'm a comedian and I wanna sound smart, am I gonna use a British accent or a southern accent?

Jim Collison [01:14:42]:

Okay. It depends on your audience, but most Americans respect that. Yeah. Yeah. The British shacks. And Anne's

Dave Jackson [01:14:48]:

speaking of teens is a is a show that I was like she was talking about stuff that, a, they should be talking about on the news, and they're not. I listened to a thing on TikTok. And I was like, oh, And so as I was listening to it because this is one of those where I'm it's my first impression. So I'm going through, and I hadn't seen her website yet. Right? I'm going from the aspect of I founded in a in a an app, and I'm listening to this. And I was like, oh, that better be because she was saying stuff, and I was like, oh, holy cow. So I said, number 1, and this is what I mean by this, that she she needs to have really extensive show notes. because there are idiot men that are gonna gonna go, you know, a, it's just some southern bell that's bored. and I she doesn't know what she's talking about. And the beautiful thing is when I got done and I went to her website, have I shot myself in the foot yet, Jim? I'm just pointing out the -- And I think I think I think you're okay. Okay. because I'm I'm like, I'm I'm not agreeing with these people, and I'm just saying that that women get the short of the stick a lot of times. And so what was beautiful about this is I went to her website, and everything she talked about she had a link to. because there were some things TikTok that I was like, I knew there's the Dallas project where they're gonna the the idea was we'll keep the information in America. And that way, it'll never get to China. Okay. Maybe not. You know? And so it was really cool. But, yes, I I need to send that over to you because I did the audio version of it. And I said I would check out your website. And then I went to London, and I will finish that today. So thanks for thanks for the polite nudge. We have people commenting on me on the thing here. And oh, that's the other thing. Anne's an attorney. You didn't mention that. at the beginning of your show. You need to. You need to say because it'll show your commitment. I'm a I'm a a mom of, you know, whatever how many kids you got, former attorney now teen advocate. you know, because I had a a business coach once that I've been inducted into the the podcasters' hall of fame. He goes, why aren't you mentioning that? I'm like, you know, it sounds kinda douchey. Like, look at me, and he's like, dude, how many people can say that? And I'm like, I don't know, 12? 15 maybe? He's like, would you please mention at the beginning of your show? I'm like, okay. So it's anything you can do yeah. Michael Ray says it's it's authority. So keep that going. And then we have a bunch of start things. We did that Oh, and when we were doing the the conversations, me and my friend, yeah, at the end of the meal, we asked the the the waiter if he could rate and review us. Yeah. Hey. This was a great conversation. Would you give me a 5 star? rating. Yeah. Could you give me a 5 star about it? DR said something that that caught my eye. We're talking about, you know, conversations and podcasts are where you remove the boring stuff. she said where boring stuff should be removed. Is there a place where boring stuff should not be removed? I was like, you always wanna remove the boring stuff. So that caught my eye.

Jim Collison [01:17:55]:

And then But but hold on. Boring is in the eye of the beholder. Like, what may be boring to you may not be boring to someone else. That doesn't mean this is such a gray area because humor is is subject to the to who's listening. Right? That kind of humor that they like. So I think Yeah. This may be boring to you. Even as a consultant, you may say, this isn't that interesting. But there may be an audience that really, really likes the boringness. You know, we we talk all the time. I think we gave advice for a lot of years, you know, 20 minutes on the podcast. And yet, there's all these really good podcasts that are 2 or 3 hours. Yeah. Do do what you need to do on this thing. And don't yeah. You know what? If you if you think it's boring, then stop doing it. But if you find it interesting, I bet somebody else is gonna find it interesting too. So don't let that this is Dave, this is the kind of stuff. When we say these kinds of things, This is the kind of stuff that actually keeps people from podcasting because they're like, well, someone said it's gonna be boring, and, man, I'm afraid to put this out there because I'm gonna get judged for it being boring. So but I I think podcasters, be careful what you say to folks who are starting this kind of thing because they're sensitive to it. And they're just because you think it's boring, other people may not. Well, yeah. I I've listened to shows where

Dave Jackson [01:19:25]:

I remember 1, it was for military people. and they just went into so much jargon. It was like, oh, back when we did the k m 27 and the the thing, and then the Dublin captain I was like, okay. This must be really good because I have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah. So but -- But if you listen to a group of military guys and ladies

Jim Collison [01:19:44]:

talk to each other, You you

Dave Jackson [01:19:47]:

you may not understand it, but they are in perfect sync. And and that's where I go. I'm not your target audience. Right? It's boring to me, but I'm not the guy you're trying to reach. So keep that in mind too. So if somebody says, like, when I hear somebody mention how somebody's audio was bad, and I didn't think it was bad. I'm like, well, what do you do in podcasting? Like, oh, I'm actually a professional engineer, and I'm like, ah, that answers that question. So always consider the source. Yeah. I I did a review once of a toy train. Guy was doing a podcast about toy trains. I never had a toy train. I had a sheltered life, apparently. And but Eric, this was on the podcast review show. Eric Kay Johnson did So Eric was really into the show. And I was like, yeah. You know, it wasn't bad. I just I'm not the target audience for that, so keep that in in mind. So Michael Ray has a quick question. Would it be possible to put a local news RSS feed on a website? Yes. You can put any RSS feed on your website. Now If it's copy written or things like that, that gets itchy to get an increased traffic for a local business. That's a head scratcher. because the RSS feed like, you can put an RSS feed into WordPress, and it will take the items in the feed and make them into posts. but then you get into the whole weird Google duplicate content thing. I was like, if you if you're trying to increase traffic for a local business, you know, write a blog post about them and put it on your website because otherwise, you're gonna end up with everything in that feed on on your website. We just answered that. Coach Dave, I am taking over a podcast. The feed is a mess.

Jim Collison [01:21:28]:

Pro

Dave Jackson [01:21:30]:

You wanna take a prom you prom you? No. It's a it's a mess. I I think that might be an autocorrect. it's faded. I made a pod page and a survey thinking move the feed of 301 redirect and clean break with a new season, new artwork. Yeah. If it's a mess, see if you can we'll see if you can import it.

Jim Collison [01:21:52]:

If any idea how many people are still attached to the feed. because if it's a mess and it's been a mess for a while, might be easier just to start over just to be honest.

Dave Jackson [01:22:05]:

Yeah. You know? You could redirect it. And then whatever was looking at that And, you know, you could. that would work. Make sure you've got something. Make sure the feed you're redirecting to has at least one episode in it. I've seen people do that. They'll redirect it to a feed, and they haven't started the podcast yet. And that's not a valid feed. And, you know, people think it broke because they went from having episodes to none. And yeah. So at least have an episode there. And but Daniel's done that. Daniel in the past actually somebody had their URL was up for auction or something like that. So Daniel bought the URL and and redid that. So Heather says, hey, Jim.

Jim Collison [01:22:48]:

Hey, Heather. I said, hey, Heather. Oh, there we go. I went over to LinkedIn. It's crazy because this is the things I don't I don't like about Streamyard is I I would love to be able to get LinkedIn comments. You know, I keep the Google chat open. And just this week, I thought, you know, I should probably be on LinkedIn when that happens. We'd ask folks to let let folks know they were listening on Twitter as well, and I'll retweet that. So I've been trying to keep that chat room open as well so we can respond to those kinds of things. But Heather, thanks for joining us. Yeah. Doctor says

Dave Jackson [01:23:21]:

unless I'm missing the first part of this comment, no meaning that there are too many people not giving value have run off run out of stuff to say but continue to that's I I my favorite

Jim Collison [01:23:32]:

They can, though. That's the thing. We shouldn't judge them for that. Just don't listen to it. Yeah. That's it. This isn't a crazy thing. Why do we complain about other people doing these things? stop listening to it and go listen to something that is interesting. Right? Vote with your download. Yeah. For sure. If they wanna do that, we always say Anybody can start a pod anybody can do a podcast. So so Doctor, I'm not trying to be hard on you. But I just I think we do this oftentimes as podcasters. We make you know, hey, anybody can do it. Then we judge them when they do. And you're just like, hey. Don't you don't have to listen. No one's

Dave Jackson [01:24:06]:

no one's making you listen to it. Well, I always love when people are like, did you hear what Ben Shapiro said on his show? No. No. No. No. I'm like, oh, so you were listening. Like, if you want him to go away, quit listening to him. He will quit doing it if his yeah. Vote with your ears. Exactly. Alright. So and, yes, TDR says I'm crushed. No. She's not. Not really. No. So I I have a question, but I'm gonna we're gonna do something we've never done on the show. we're gonna tease a topic for next week. Oh, I like that. Yeah. We never have on that. I saw this, and I was like, you know what? We got 3 minutes And and I have lots to say on this thanks to my my there'll be 2 divorces under my belt. No.

Jim Collison [01:24:49]:

Ian, experience. You have lots on marriage experience. I do.

Dave Jackson [01:24:53]:

But Ian Antonio, in the podcast movement group, is asking, Hi, everyone. How does podcasting affect romantic relationships? I've been thinking about that. And I was like, oh, I have lots to say, about that. So that'll be in next week's ask the podcast coach. Now you can go to ask the podcast coach .com slash follow and follow the show and never miss a a fun filled episode. So that's coming next week, and we do have time for JD's comment. which says, I understand what you're saying, Jim, but there are some things that are objectively boring and uninteresting and should be done. Not true.

Jim Collison [01:25:34]:

But I know he's I know he's joking. It's not true, though.

Dave Jackson [01:25:37]:

When so there's nothing okay. So name a show you don't like. I don't know. Well, you don't listen to him. That's true.

Jim Collison [01:25:47]:

Everything's interesting to somebody at some point in time. for something. That's -- Right? I mean -- Which goes -- That that it's such a judgment call that does shouldn't exist. It's just like, let it be. You don't have to let it do its thing.

Dave Jackson [01:26:00]:

You know, just let it be. Yeah. It's fine. It's fine. Listen to other things you're interested in. But that goes back to that person that was scared that nobody would listen. Somebody's gonna listen. I I made a show called The Worst Podcast Ever. It was in a grumpy old man voice. Yeah. I purposely made the audio as bad as I could. and I still got 10 downloads. Yeah. So you will yeah. I always say if you're getting less than 10 downloads, there's there's a problem. You might wanna check your technology. Bernie is a cat. Bernie the cat is a great example. You know what? Let's let's Bernie the cat has not put out an episode in a a very long time -- I loved Brandon. -- due to the fact that he is dead. So I think I have, like, one Bernie in the can. Of course, I could make more. I've got all these recordings. So if I go to Bernie the cat, he's here somewhere, which I believe if you go to Bernie, the cat show. Okay. In the last 7 days, he's had four people listen to the show. In the last 28 days, he had 10. So, yeah, there you go. So if you want Bernie the cat, I think it's Bernie the cat show, if I remember right. because somebody had berniethecat.com. I'm like, how dare you? So how are we doing? Okay. We have a minute. Yeah. One last question here. I love this question. I have a Biz podcast that recently rebranded it. It used to be for creative entrepreneurs, but I have now niche down to content creators, any tips on niching down. Go to Amazon and look at 2 and 4 star reviews because those people will give you more information than this sucked or this was great. So they'll explain why. I would have given it one star, but they did talk about this. I would have given it 5 stars, but they didn't talk about that. Go to YouTube. Look for your topic and then read the comments. that'll give you some insights into what the audience is is looking for. Because content creators aren't content creators mostly entrepreneurs?

Jim Collison [01:28:01]:

That's a good question. It can overlap. Yeah. For those, it can overlap. Yeah. What are your thoughts, Jim? It gets harder when you niche down. So you have to get more passionate. You have to become a greater, you know, greater spurt on that. And you run the risk of repeating in when you're you know, because you you're you're just narrowing the field on which things that you can talk about. Now there's a I think there's a greater reward in that because you're gonna attract a smaller audience to it. It's just the way it's gonna be. smaller doesn't I mean, 100,000 people is smaller than a million people. So, like but still a 100,000 a lot. Right? Right. But it you're gonna it's just naturally gonna attract less people. So just I think it's you gotta change your mindset going in saying, okay. I know that I'm gonna I'm limiting my audience on this thing. And so but when you limit your audience, you have the propensity to get greater engagement. So do things that this is where, like, meetups, like, in person or or virtual meetups, those kinds of things work. Or the the Patreon models of of paid engagement for certain things, those work better in a niche down niche niche or niched down situation. So it just changes things a little bit. You have some opportunity for personal engagement, which I don't think you get on a big wide podcast. I mean, you can. But it it it can be a little bit better that way. But just to realize, it's gonna take a little more work and maybe a and may. May take a little more work, may be a little bit harder in the process.

Dave Jackson [01:29:36]:

Yeah. because you say it's for the Biz side. It's for monetization. That sure sounds like an entrepreneur. to me.

Jim Collison [01:29:44]:

Yeah. We don't have enough information, to be honest, in a in a comment. You know? But -- The good news is we'll be here next Saturday,

Dave Jackson [01:29:51]:

same time same back. ask the podcast coach. You can even go to ask the podcast coach.com/question and actually jump in. The video is optional, but we'll have to do a little vetting to to get you in, but would love to talk about that. And then we'll we'll talk maybe next week about how to make sure your spouse doesn't go, are you podcasting again? That's not good. Jim, what is coming up on

Jim Collison [01:30:17]:

the average guy dot TV at over there at home gadget gigs. Yeah. I took the week off because I was busy doing this this work podcast, and it's always nice to kinda get away from that. But if you wanna go back and listen to it, we got some episodes. Check it out homegadgetgeeks.com.

Dave Jackson [01:30:32]:

And on the School of Podcasting, this kinda fell into my lap. I did a video for the school of podcasting, and I go, what it's like, it's a tip, but it's not a course. They're like, what do you call these? And they're like, common podcasting mistakes. And I've done that in the past, but I came up with about 4 that I've not talked about in the past. One of them we kinda talked about today with feeds And so we'll be talking about some things you might wanna avoid with your podcast on the school of podcasting .com. So thanks to the awesome people in the chat room. As always, it's always great to answer your questions here live. If you go to I'm hoping this is right. the pod well, if you go to ask the podcastcoach.com, in the bottom right hand corner, there is a microphone there. So if you're listening to this going, I can never make this live because I live in wherever and it's 4 in the morning, feel free to leave your question there. We'll be happy to answer it on the show. And be sure to like, subscribe and ring the bell so you get notified when we go live. And Coach Dave is like, we do not have enough thumbs up, so do that now. Thank you so much. We'll see you again next week with another episode of Ask the podcast coach. Tell a friend,