The Power of Content: Strategies for Engaging Listeners and Increasing Podcast Retention

Dave Jackson [00:00:00]:

Ask the Podcast Coach for December 2, 2023.

Dave Jackson [00:00:09]:

There it is. It's that music. That means it's Saturday morning. 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 right over there is the one and only Jim Collison from the average guy Dot TV. Jim, how's it going, buddy?

Jim Collison [00:00:28]:

Greetings, Dave. Happy Saturday morning to you. Always great to be with you, and, and great to be back on Ask the Podcast Coach.

Dave Jackson [00:00:35]:

Yeah. I'm laughing because, all I got for Christmas was my sister in law's cold on Thanksgiving, and, it it caught me. And, I'm laughing because anytime I try to be slightly energetic, I'm gonna end up sounding like, you know, Charlie and the Bucks. Yeah.

Jim Collison [00:00:51]:

You got the cough button ready for for the day.

Dave Jackson [00:00:54]:

Cough button. I actually have in honor of, Bandrew, I have an empty box of Kleenex already I've gone through, so, you know, I was like, alright.

Jim Collison [00:01:04]:

It is I got some I got There, I could send you, but if I didn't make out, I Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:01:09]:

It's a lot of fun. But, you know, and, I wanna thank Jody Kringle From audio branding podcast? Because she sent me a coffee mug, and I thought, you know who would get more enjoyment out of this? I know a guy that likes coffee.

Jim Collison [00:01:25]:

I like a little island coffee this morning.

Dave Jackson [00:01:27]:

And, there you go. And that, of course, is from Our buddy, Mark, over at podcastbranding.co, he's done a number of, projects me because think about it. If you're thinking about starting a podcast in 2024, you wanna get Mark on the horn now going, hey. I need artwork. I need a website. I want you to make a PDF for me. Whatever it is, he can do it all over there. He makes really great looking stuff.

Dave Jackson [00:01:54]:

It really is. And then the other thing is you're ready for this? He's a nice guy. Jim, you will appreciate that. You've had your daughter on your show. Mark's daughter is becoming a tattoo artist. And what do you do when you're a pops? That's right. You're like, go ahead. Tap me up.

Dave Jackson [00:02:08]:

He's a great guy. He's gonna sit down with you. Maybe get a discount on a tattoo, But he's gonna sit down with you and get you set up so that you're not gonna get that on a on a Fiverr person. So when you're ready to look great because they see you before they, Hear you. There's only 1 place to go, and, of course, that is podcast branding.co.

Jim Collison [00:02:38]:

1st, big thanks to our good friend, Dan Lefebvre over there at based on a true story, based on true story podcast .com. This week, he has, Little Big Man, Public Enemy, and Dalmer. Although 2 weeks ago, I missed this one. I don't know how I did. The mafia in the movies. I mean, who doesn't wanna hear about the mafia in Casino, Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco, and The Sopranos? Like, didn't that sound awesome?

Dave Jackson [00:03:07]:

Make an offer of your kind of fuels. Yeah. Exactly. I gotta do that. Never turn on the family.

Jim Collison [00:03:14]:

Anyways, big thanks to Dan for his sponsorship. Check it out based on a true story podcast .com.

Dave Jackson [00:03:21]:

Our first topic today, this came up at the, school of podcasting, and the question is, like, we've all discovered, hopefully, And if you go to podcasts with an s, podcastsconnect.apple.com, and if you haven't done something silly like let your media host submit your show for you, You'll see stats over there, hopefully. And one of those stats is you can see how far people listen. And, Somebody asked the question, well, okay. Is there anything you can do to increase the, you know, the retention? And, of course, we asked our buddy, Glenn Hebert, and he said

Deep Voice Man [00:03:59]:

Don't be boring.

Dave Jackson [00:04:00]:

And that's always a good tip. Jim, do you have anything off the top of your head? Like, how do you you know, to me, I think editing. Right? Edit out the boring stuff. But we were talking about sometimes like, I kinda do a table of contents at the beginning of my show. Like, hey. On today, we're gonna talk about blah blah blah blah blah blah. The reason I don't do that on this show is because, well, it's live. I have no idea where we're going, but I try to do kind of a table of contents So people know what's up.

Dave Jackson [00:04:29]:

Maybe in the show notes, I'll explain what's going on. Anything you can think of to how do you get people to make it to the end?

Jim Collison [00:04:37]:

Yeah. I think confidence. I I I think people can hear when you don't know what you're doing. And that's hard because when you first start, you don't know what you're doing. Right. And and so you listen to the 1st few minutes, and you're like, they're not confident. This makes me nervous. I don't know where this is gonna go.

Jim Collison [00:04:58]:

I'm now I'm scared. Now I'm I'm changing the channel, so to speak. And so I think there there needs to be, you know, some element of confidence or comfortableness maybe is the the word that you're comfortable in the spot that you're in, That you're comfortable there. And it doesn't have to be, listen, read or a script or you know, it doesn't have to be that. But I think you gotta kinda feel like you belong there. You gotta feel like you're you're cut because listen, nobody Must to be embarrassed. This is the hard part about your podcast rodeo show. And it's that it's a you know, if you if you're embarrassed by those Kinds of things.

Jim Collison [00:05:39]:

You can only make it so far in that show, and then I'm you know, you're like, oh my god. David Dave is gonna embarrass him, and then I you know, I'm out, right, at that point. So People don't like when they're listening. They don't like to be embarrassed by things. And if the host is embarrassed or embarrassing themselves, chances are they're gonna They're gonna, you know, they're gonna go pretty fast.

Dave Jackson [00:05:59]:

Speaking of Dan from Based on a True Story podcast, if you wanna see this in action, go over, check it out. He says trying to get people to listen to the end is why I started 2 truths and a Yeah. And a lie game on my show

Jim Collison [00:06:12]:

Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:06:13]:

And it works. Yeah. I know, Joe Salcie High, when he goes to a commercial in the middle of his show, he will say He'll have, like, some sort of trivia. Like, who was the 1968, you know, hockey puck Scoring dude of the whatever blah blah blah. We'll find out in just a second, then they'll go to an ad. And so it's a little trivia concert. A trivia concert. I've gone to those.

Dave Jackson [00:06:41]:

Yeah. Yeah. A trivia question. Chris from Dealcasters. Live says, recipe for retention. Tell people what they're gonna get, Like a station identification, then give it to them as quickly as possible. Yep. Not as simple as it sounds.

Dave Jackson [00:06:57]:

It's not. But that's kind of what, Joe does.

Jim Collison [00:07:00]:

Yeah. And it kinda depends on the relationship I think you've created with your audience. You know, there are for for, like, a community podcast where you've got, You know, deep relationship with your with your listeners. They're looking for more a more personal angle on things. They're listening to it just because they they enjoy listening to the conversation that's happening there, whether that's solo or or a group of people. Right? They they're just They're there just to listen. I don't know if you have to be as programmed if you've if you've gone that route with your podcast. I don't know if you have to be as programmed.

Jim Collison [00:07:38]:

In fact, that may hurt you if all of a sudden you start throwing in traffic and weather on the nines. Yeah. You know? And and to you just you start doing the radio kind of things to attract them. I remember one time I I I did a a quick reset. I, like, you know, in the middle of the podcast, I said, yeah. We're here. We're talking with Dave Jackson. And and somebody said to me later one of my listeners said to me later, it's like, that was really odd that you like, this is a podcast.

Jim Collison [00:08:06]:

Why would you reset in the middle of it? And so some of those tricks could backfire on you depending on your on your audience 2. If they just want a conversation, get there. I I listen. I never tell the audience on Home Gadget Geeks what we're what's coming up on that. I put it in the show notes Right. Done. But they can expect they've been listening to it long enough. They can expect they're gonna get conversation, news reviews, product updates, and conversation.

Jim Collison [00:08:29]:

That's what we do. And, and so I don't try to, you know, I I don't try to get them to the end. But those those are good those are good tactics too To keep people listening, to the end.

Dave Jackson [00:08:41]:

Well, I said that once to a radio person. I'm like, why would you do a reset? Because I always quote, you know, Andrew Dice Clay once was like, You listen to the okay. Forget it. No dice today.

Jim Collison [00:08:51]:

Yeah. No. No dice.

Dave Jackson [00:08:52]:

And, no dice, man. And, but he did a reset. And she said, well, Think about this though. Not every listener like, maybe they stop the show to go into the store, then they come back out. You do a reset. It actually works. She goes, granted, I'm I'm acknowledging that if you listen straight through, it's kinda weird. She's like, but not everybody listens all at one point.

Dave Jackson [00:09:11]:

I was like, it's not a bad it's okay. You got me thinking maybe A reset. So And plus, you get the Just won't

Jim Collison [00:09:18]:

just won't make it awkward. Yeah. Like, I think that sometimes, you you, you know, you try to do these things and you make them super awkward.

Dave Jackson [00:09:25]:

Yeah.

Jim Collison [00:09:25]:

And peep people don't again, people don't wanna listen to awkwardness. They they most people don't. Some people, ironically, I think, or coincidentally, I never know how to use those 2 words. The, some folks enjoy hearing the train wreck or they enjoy hearing that. So That if if you're looking for that kinda audience, there not everybody hates it. Some some love to see a train wreck.

Dave Jackson [00:09:50]:

Yeah. Michael Butler, Who's been podcasting since 2004, does the Rock and Roll Geek Show, and he is the king of self deprecation. He actually has a segment called, oh god. No. It's time for a reading with Butler, and he'll read like email, and he just he butchers it all the time. And so that's kinda what he does, and he's, you know, he's he kind of just the whole time is like, he's I just wanna play some music for my friends. You know? So he's, you know, it does but it's kinda his persona. You know, how we all kinda have a persona, and Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:10:25]:

And that's just Michael being Michael. He's not I'm gonna be this self deprec no. No. That's just Michael being Michael. So yeah. So In terms of retention, and I think the biggest one would be editing. You know, just, you know, go in and look now again, when you look into Apple, if you look into Spotify, I believe Amazon now has this. You can see how far people listen, and that can be kinda soul crushing.

Dave Jackson [00:10:49]:

Number 1, Your followers, like an apple, you can see I looked at the school of podcasting. I think it was something ridiculous, like 80 Something percent of people follow that show. So consequently, when I hit when they hit start, there's a huge avalanche Because they've heard the podcasting since 2005, blah blah. So they skip the intro and all that stuff, and I can see right where my mid roll ad is. I was talking with, Scott Johnson from What Was That Like, and he's like he's like, I appreciate that you you swap out your ads So that you're not hearing the exact same ad, he goes, but I know what you're gonna say. I was like, no. That's fine. And so that was one thing we can So, you know, go in and look at those retention specifics and see if you can see.

Dave Jackson [00:11:37]:

That's the thing I love about Apple. If you see, Like, for whatever reason, this thing just dips. You can click on that and click play and go, what were we talking about there? Oh, Donald Trump. Oh, maybe that's why a bunch of people dumped out of a podcast about podcasting or something like that when you started doing something. But, the other thing, If you haven't played with this yet, if you are a podcaster and you've claimed your show in Spotify, they did this thing. They do it every year Where you can get a wrap up of what's going on. Now you can do this as a listener, and we'll talk about that in a second because there are some There's some shenanigans going on with that. But if I go through this, it says you know, it's saying, hey.

Dave Jackson [00:12:19]:

You know, people really were feeling what you did, and it's it's kind of a, You know, they have all these fun graphics, you know, ready? Let's take it from the top. And so they show that speaking of your top episode of Ask the Podcast Coach, And I wanna go back and listen to this now. We did an episode called I'm Not Done, and I'm, like, okay. Then there we were, 570% more than your average episode. It was streamed, that episode. I'm not done. Apparently, it was very popular, or more popular, at least on Spotify. Again, keep in mind, this is all just Spotify.

Dave Jackson [00:12:54]:

And then we had, according to them, 72% of your listeners discovered you in 2023, and this is something I thought of. Jim, how how much of a revolving door do you think we have in podcasting. Like, I know there are shows that I used to listen to. Overall? Yeah.

Jim Collison [00:13:13]:

Overall? Oh. I think it's pretty I think it's higher than you think it is.

Dave Jackson [00:13:17]:

Yeah. Because I'm like, 72% is a lot of people that just discovered the show. And meanwhile, here's how you know this. When you look at your numbers and they're not going up 72%, and, again, this is Spotify, but I'm like, That might mean that, you know, 68% of the people are not listening anymore. So you're getting it's, what's that fun fancy word, attrition? Right? Your attrition rate. So how many people are you gaining, but how many people are you losing? And I was because when I saw that stat, I was like, That seems pretty high. I mean, I'm yay. I got 72% more listeners, but I'm like, yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:13:53]:

Where's where's the old ones at?

Jim Collison [00:13:55]:

Well, thinking thinking of this show, I bet there's, you know, I'd I'd say probably 50, maybe maybe higher percent don't listen every week. So there's There is you know, there's a pretty small percentage if we think even if we include the live folks. Pretty pretty small percentage of you are out here every week. I can tell by the names in the chat room. Many of you are. Maybe 3 out of 4 in a month or 7 out of 8 in 2 months. But that number is pretty small. Most most folks, you know, they're not listening to everything.

Jim Collison [00:14:26]:

And then I think after a while, and I get this way, you get You're like, well, you know, I've heard everything, especially specialty podcasts like this one where it's podcast about podcasting. We were saying this to ourselves before we started the show. You you can only say so many things. I mean, the the the it's the the content is finite. The advice can be infinite because you can always be working off. You know, always Bring in questions and and that kinda creates some space. But eventually, you kinda run out of things to say or things to do, and then you kinda People are like, well, you know what? I've heard all of it before. I think I'll use my time listening to someone else's, you know? And then you you go to somebody else's podcast.

Jim Collison [00:15:07]:

And for a while, you're like, oh, this is new. This is great. And then you figure out they're saying the same thing. You know? After about 3 or 4 or 5 months, like, oh, they say the same things over and over again too. Yeah. So I think there's I think there's that I think there's that kind of turnover. And and people aren't leaving because they're disgruntled, so to speak, all the time. Sometimes they're just like, I want something new.

Jim Collison [00:15:29]:

Yeah. And I want something I want I want a fresh take, so to speak.

Dave Jackson [00:15:32]:

You're on song 3 of the new ACDC album, and you're like, yeah. This kinda sounds like the last 5 albums they did.

Jim Collison [00:15:39]:

Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:15:40]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the the next stat they had was podcast marketing close to the click. This was where people 6% of your new listeners started here, and I was like, cool. I'll have to go look at this episode And see, like, is there a button to subscribe or follow? And, you know, is everything that I want people to do on that landing page? I thought that was kinda kinda cool. And then our next fun little stat, it lets us know how many Countries we're in. So in this case, we're in 13 countries.

Dave Jackson [00:16:15]:

Of course, the United States was 83%. That makes sense. We speak English, etcetera, etcetera. And this one I thought was funny I have a bunch of shows. So I was looking at this, and they're like, oh, they like business, society, and culture, and comedy. And I'm like, well, that's kinda what we talk about here, but The next one is about what music they listen to, and, oh, now this one's different. All the other ones were, like, pop, Rock and I'm trying to figure out what's the difference between rap and urban hip hop, but apparently, those are 2 separate, But yeah. So they let you know pop rock, in our case, contemporary country, so that's what people are listening to.

Dave Jackson [00:16:54]:

They told their friends about you. They say here, it was your podcast was shared, and this was where I was like, direct link and WhatsApp. That I found interesting. I have WhatsApp on my phone. I'm sure by now it's been deleted, and I have to reinstall it. I've used it, like, twice in the last 5 years. I'm just not a WhatsApp kinda person. I don't have that many people overseas where from what I understand, it's it's much more popular over there, and We got a rating of 4 point o.

Dave Jackson [00:17:25]:

I I I guess that's good. And in terms of growth, they said, we had 16% more listeners. We had 80% more streams, and 29% more followers. So that's yeah. I'm like, alright. And which is kind of a boost in your arm. You're like, oh, I didn't think that. But this is what I thought was really interesting.

Dave Jackson [00:17:50]:

Give a shout out to your biggest fans, and this was kind of like, really? You're at a top 10 for 29 people. They're like, hey. Give us your top 10 podcasts. We're gonna be in that list. And then it said, we're the top 5 of 15 people, and I was like, alright. And then seriously? Yep. It says we are the top podcast for 1 person. Oh, wait a minute.

Dave Jackson [00:18:14]:

Number 1 for 3 people. I'm sorry. Well, that's cool. So whoever you are, thank you for for listening. And then what it was interesting is they then give you, those people listen to 10 times more than your your other listeners. And at the end of this, yeah, 66% joined you for the 1st time this year, Which I was like, wait a minute. Wasn't it 72% growth? I don't know. It's yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:18:38]:

Lots of stats. And then, they give you a little Graphic here at the end where you can you know, in this case, they're spotlighting the the top fan thing, and they give you a little graphic you can download To share on social media, and I thought that was here at the end. Yeah. Speaking of sharing And you can pick what color you want. So if I wanted, you know, black or whatever, and you can kinda click on these and then Download the graphic for it. So I was like, well, that's kinda fun and different and neat, but the one that jumped out at me was I'm like, wait a minute. We have to have some revolving door here because it just it just sounded like we had so many people coming in, And, I'm like, yeah. But the numbers aren't going up 72%.

Dave Jackson [00:19:28]:

So

Jim Collison [00:19:29]:

I bet where there's a lot of turnover in the yeah. Again, they listen for 6 months, a year, whatever, and then they're kinda like, you know, I I'm gonna I've I've heard this

Dave Jackson [00:19:40]:

Right.

Jim Collison [00:19:40]:

Before. I'm hearing the same things over again. I've done that to a few About about podcasting. Yeah. I've kinda heard everything there is to say. Now I look at the title to see if it's even interesting. Sometimes, I'll do a quick scan if they provide a Transcript. I'll do a quick scan of the transcript.

Jim Collison [00:19:55]:

Just say, is there anything new in there? Because it's you know, if you're gonna give it an hour, if you're gonna give it 90 minutes, I kinda wanna know. How did you get to that, Dave, on Spotify?

Dave Jackson [00:20:03]:

Yeah. Rich Graham. By the way, Rich Graham is the guy that turned me on to Alec Johnson, and I'm I'm getting my, last week, I don't wanna turn this into another Stream Deck Ecamm commercial, but Alec is a great guy, and Rich was the guy. Oh, you need to go see this guy, and I'm taking courses over there. Yeah. Now you have to have claimed your show in Spotify. So you go to podcasters, and all this stuff for whatever reason is always plural. So podcasters dotspotify.com.

Dave Jackson [00:20:35]:

Now the thing is if you have if you used like, if you went into Lipson because Lipson does that thing where they create a separate feed for the different places. So if you use Libsyn, when you claim your show, you don't wanna use your, you know, My website, .libson/ RSS. That's your normal RSS feed. Go into destinations and copy the feed for Spotify because otherwise, they're gonna go, we don't have that show. And so, you can then go into Spotify, claim your feed, and they'll make you do the hokey pokey and do a little, You know, authentic not what's the word there? We have to authenticate that you're the owner of your show, and then they'll give you all those fun filled stats, which again can be soul crushing. This show doesn't do I guess it does better than I thought on Spotify, but I know the school of podcasting does not. Bernie the cat Mops it up on Spotify, and there was just a, there was just a report that came out that said Apple users Typically are a little older than Spotify users, and I'm like, that makes sense, but that's how you get it. And then they did a thing as well as a listener.

Dave Jackson [00:21:43]:

So I got a thing. It's like, here's what you listen to in 2023, and the thing that was really weird about it was my number 4 artist I have never heard of ever 2 guys looking very poppy, and I was like, the who what? And so I'm going through the just like we did, but it's it's for you as a listener. And about halfway through, my phone rings, he said in quotation marks. And what do you know? It's the band that's number 4 on my list that I've never heard of. They're, like, going, hey. Thanks so much for liking us, and I'm like, I've never heard of you, and now that there's a promo for this band, I'm like, it's it's so weird. And then they give me my, Here are your top songs of 2023, and they're not in it. And I'm like, how can you be one of my top artists and not be in My top, like, 50 songs.

Dave Jackson [00:22:37]:

I was like, I they just it it smells like a promo.

Jim Collison [00:22:41]:

Like a paid app.

Dave Jackson [00:22:41]:

Yeah. Like, somebody somebody paid for that because they'd also I went out now. It did work. I went over and clicked their songs, and I'm like, yeah. I would not have, You know, would not have been, listening to this. So it's, that was

Jim Collison [00:22:56]:

It'd be genius if it was a paid ad. I mean, they would, You would think they would have to disclose.

Dave Jackson [00:23:01]:

That was You would think. Yeah. The old FTC thing. But I was just like

Jim Collison [00:23:05]:

If it if it was, it's genius. Like, that's a good idea.

Dave Jackson [00:23:09]:

Yeah. I was like, well, that's you know, it's a great income stream, but, so, yeah, they'll show you that on Spotify as a listener, and it was what's interesting is I didn't realize they've been doing this now for 10 years, the whole wrap up thing, and other companies have now felt like I guess if you're on Pocket Cast, They'll do something similar and show you here's the top podcast you've been listening to and things like that. So speaking of that, If you go to school of podcasting .com/ question, which for the record hasn't been updated yet, but it's still there, I am asking people, what's What's your favorite podcast of 2023? If you could only listen to 1 show and you're on a desert island, what is it? And please don't tell me this is hard because I know it's hard, but I always have to edit that out. People are like, oh, man. Great question. It's so hard. I can't pick 1. Blah blah blah blah.

Dave Jackson [00:23:59]:

I just this is the one it is. I know.

Jim Collison [00:24:02]:

You're saying pick 1 before you get a call. Yes. We know it's hard. You don't have to say it. Yeah. So just have 1 ready to go.

Dave Jackson [00:24:10]:

Yeah. That's it. So, let's go. Logical. Yeah. Oh, you know what we're gonna do? I was gonna go back to notes, but we're not Because we actually got somebody went to ask the podcast coach .com/ask, and it was Darren, And he had this question.

Darren [00:24:27]:

Hello, Dave. My name is Darren. I am a longtime listener of several years, And I was listening to a an episode that you and Jim did. And in the episode, you had mentioned that you use a service called Toasty. And Jim just, offhand mentioned that he used a service called Magi And that it was $9 a month. I did a search for a Google search for Magi, assuming that it was Spelled m a j I, but I and I think I tried different Spellings, but I just couldn't find the service anywhere that he was talking about, and I wanted to check it out. So anyhow, if you could provide some clarification on that and where I might be able to find it, I would really appreciate it. Like I said, I appreciate everything you and Jim do.

Deep Voice Man [00:25:26]:

I also listen to The School of Podcasting, and be starting my own podcast here in the next probably 2 or 3 months, and I'm just kind of outlining for myself different services I might use. So I really appreciate it. Really really appreciate what you guys are doing. So, Keep keep doing a great job, and, yes, you can use this as a plot on your show. Thank you.

Dave Jackson [00:25:55]:

Thank you, Darren. Thanks for listening. And, here's the fun thing, and this is maybe a good lesson. Like, if I'm the guy behind MAGI, Which is MAGAI. It's a biblical thing. The 3 kings, since we're in the Christmas season here, were known as the Magi, And maybe that guy needs to go by magi.comormaji.com.

Jim Collison [00:26:18]:

Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:26:18]:

Yeah. Because I knew how to spell Magi, but if you're not you know, if you're if you haven't read the Christmas story, and if you go to support this show .com/magai, that's magai, that is my affiliate link, And that is something that I have done a lot. In fact, I just did a bunch on Black Friday. I bought a bunch of stuff around books, Different tools to help you write books and edit books and blah blah blah, and that is I bought Magi. I've been the guy probably loves me. I've probably given him $27 at this point. I probably had it for 3 months, and I've logged in twice. I have not taken the time to get up to speed, and I think When we're talking about Toasty, I think we were just going, oh, look.

Dave Jackson [00:27:02]:

Someone has come up with a service Where you upload your MP 3 file, and holy cow, it slices, it dices, it even juliennes. And, you know, there's Capt Show, there's Swell, there's, Pod oh, it's something that begins with pod. Yeah. That's funny. It was something like pod peach or peach Peach pod or I don't know. There's a 1,000,000,000 of these things. And I know, Jim, you had when we first mentioned this this morning, You had tried to sign up for Toastie. Did you get any kinda in I know it's like

Jim Collison [00:27:32]:

I did. No. I I got in. I got in. I I had created an account at Toastie at some point and or or maybe maybe I didn't and I did this morning. Who knows? It was, you know, in that preshow flurry of activities that we're doing before we before we get in there. And Very similar. And and I don't I I haven't used Magi.

Jim Collison [00:27:49]:

So maybe we just talked about it. I know I don't have an account with them, and Maybe we were just talking about it. I'm an Otter, Otter dot ai, and I have I use Swell as well. Sorry. Didn't didn't mean to make that rhyme. But, it is, you know, their personal does, you know, 20,000 advanced words and 200,000 standard words. I have no idea what that means. Standard words.

Jim Collison [00:28:13]:

Brands in workspace.

Dave Jackson [00:28:14]:

Yeah. As opposed to the nonstandard word? Like

Jim Collison [00:28:17]:

That's what it says. Advanced words In standard words. They must it must be a marketing thing or something. I don't know.

Dave Jackson [00:28:25]:

Right?

Jim Collison [00:28:25]:

So sorry, Darren. I didn't if I led you to believe that I had been using Magi, I I I have it. I I did, I had been using S'well, both S'well and, I pay for Otter, and I don't pay for Swell. I just use a one time a month. They give you a free plan. Toastie has a free, but you have to have the The audio has to be less than 60 minutes Right. To to try it out. So I need to find a piece of audio to do that.

Jim Collison [00:28:53]:

But S'well did a really nice job on transcripts. A little bit better than Otter, and and it's and getting some of those words. What I'm finding, Dave, with all of these services Mhmm. Is is the underlying technology you know, all of these services were taking advantage of OpenAI and ChatGPT Before anybody even knew how to say the word GPT. Like, they were using, I think of, what's the one? Oh, what's the there was 1 the first one out the door, Jasper. Right? That was, and what was the name of it before it was Jasper because they got sued by Marvel. Iron Man's

Dave Jackson [00:29:33]:

Assistant. Jarvis. Jarvis. It

Jim Collison [00:29:34]:

was Jarvis. Yeah. Listen. They they are a they are an amazing marketing company. If you ever wanna know or think about how to be successful with the launch of something? Look at look at Jasper slash Jarvis slash Jasper. They were in the morning. They were spending some money to make some money out there, and and they were doing a ton of things. So anyways, all of these rely on an underlying this is me generally speaking.

Jim Collison [00:30:01]:

On an underlying API layer and service they've purchased To Chat GPT in some form or another. As that's gotten better, it is is now that's in the public eye a little bit more. These services are getting better themselves. Now the question is and I was just talking with Jay Franzi who was on my show about this on Thursday night. The the the prompt engineering that has to go into this now is what matters. Who's the best prompt writer? They all have access to the API. They're sending prompts that they have. They take your audio.

Jim Collison [00:30:34]:

They put it together. They send the prompt with all that stuff To chat GPT, it all comes back. And and it populates the stuff in the website. It's not it's not magic. They're not doing the AI for sure on this. Right? So, the the winner in this will be the one who can adapt their prompts appropriately as this technology gets better. And so I think this is one of those areas we wanna watch. You you're gonna wanna watch them.

Jim Collison [00:31:01]:

We're this is not done. This market is not figured out. Right. And so you wanna kinda keep your eye on all of them. If you find one that's working for you now, great. Use it. But keep your eye on the other services. They may have some things.

Jim Collison [00:31:15]:

And when they say they've got a new announcement, might be worth checking out just to see if it's if it's I we'll talk a little bit later. I found a Thing I I discovered a thing I'd never seen before inside of, of of Otter. And so you gotta keep kinda staying with it Well, keep checking it out.

Dave Jackson [00:31:30]:

It's interesting too because I just got an email this morning from Deidre from, Capt Show, and she was saying how, You know, we we have all these tools. We're really focusing now on kinda readability. Like, we don't just wanna give you words. We want to give you good words. And not that they were giving people bad words, but they're just saying kinda like you said, we wanted to prompt to really give you what you not only like, Hey. Here's a newsletter. It's like, here's a newsletter you're gonna use, and so I also think Captcha was done something that because they're they're a little pricier than other Folks, but they're doing something that I'm like, oh, because I still pay for CapShow. I don't use it a whole lot.

Dave Jackson [00:32:12]:

I'll occasionally run something through it, But they have a phenomenal community, and they're doing all sorts of training for entrepreneurs over there. Like, they just did a whole thing on LinkedIn. They've done a thing on email. They've done all these little courses, so they're feeding their community, and they're building this community of people that are networking with each other and everything like that. And I was like, that's pretty interesting because there comes a point when you're like, oh, let me guess. There's a new AI tool. You upload your file, and it Does a transcript, and it slices, and they're like they're like, yeah. There are other people like that.

Dave Jackson [00:32:43]:

How are we gonna stand out? And so they've really leaned hard into their community, And so I thought that was kinda interesting. But, yeah, you mentioned something in Otter. What's, what's the new thing? Because I The thing I like about Otter, it takes them a while to spit it out, but I'll upload something there, and I forgot what they call them. It's on the right hand side of the screen, but they give you kinda, Like, main takeaways from whatever your transcript was. And I was like, oh, that's kinda cool. And, so what's, What did you find?

Jim Collison [00:33:15]:

Yeah. Well, it it it may not be new. I'm sharing my screen if you wanna throw that up. The, May not be new. It's just something new I discovered on the WAIT service. I have been using them to do full transcriptions for a while now. I have a paid plan with Otter. So, and if you haven't used Otter before, you know, you just dump your MP 3 in there.

Jim Collison [00:33:38]:

It's gonna give you a summary of keywords. It'll let you know and I find this helpful from time to time. It'll let you know how many, how often you speak versus your guest. We've talked about this on the show. This is how I know. Yeah. You see, it's where it says Speakers there. Sorry, Jay.

Jim Collison [00:33:56]:

I talked a little bit more than you did.

Dave Jackson [00:33:57]:

Oh, I always feel anytime I run this show, I'm like, man, I talk too much. Because it's like Dave Dave was 70%, Jim was 30. And I'm like, he didn't.

Jim Collison [00:34:06]:

That's okay. No. It's okay. You got you got a lot of good things to say. Go over to a little bit to the right then in this on the screen share that we're doing, if you can if you can

Dave Jackson [00:34:16]:

I'm trying.

Jim Collison [00:34:16]:

Get over to Here we go to the diagram.

Dave Jackson [00:34:19]:

It's just reset hold on. This is where I'm learning how to resize things in the when I try Okay. But you I'm trying to show the right hand side, and instead it just it zooms in.

Jim Collison [00:34:31]:

Can you can you share full screen just on it? Is that

Dave Jackson [00:34:34]:

is that I doable

Jim Collison [00:34:35]:

is that what you're doing?

Dave Jackson [00:34:36]:

I'm trying. And, let's well, here.

Jim Collison [00:34:42]:

One of the things while you're while you're figuring that while you're figuring that out, one of the cool things in in this otter was Early again, they they and and, in in, Jarvis, that's not what it is anymore, but Jasper. We're, we're early on getting, Transcript names in, and then you can go in with Otter, reset the name. If it doesn't recognize the person, and in some cases, I've interviewed him before, We use this for some of the Gallup podcasts that we do as well. It'll it'll, introduce the name or it'll show the name. There we go. We're I think we're

Dave Jackson [00:35:16]:

Yeah.

Jim Collison [00:35:17]:

I think we're good there, Dave. And so to bring the names in, 1 what Dave was talking about is you have this takeaway or this diamond tab. And in that is a summary, Which I actually copy and paste into my show notes. So I I expand it all, and it get it goes through and kinda gives me a Summary of what we talked about with time stamps. That's super helpful. I have to do some editing on that from time to time, and it kinda based on the podcast, How just how much? This week was a little bit more than than others. But, you can see here, it says speaker 2 uses well, it didn't recognize Jay's Name right away, I could I went in and fixed that, but it didn't update this this summary. But the chat feature, I've never really messed with.

Jim Collison [00:36:02]:

And so, this morning, I was like and I don't know what made me think of it, but I just went in, to it because it's This chat is I can ask questions about the summary, or I can ask questions about the transcript here in this chat. And so I said, I went in and gave it a prompt and said, what's Jay think about Taco Bell? Well, he talked a little bit about Taco Bell in the show. And Otter came back and said, based on the transcript, Jay mentioned that after a previous show with Sammy. That was my daughter. He and Jim went to Taco Bell and got the $5 boxes from the app, implying that he enjoyed eating at Taco Bell. When Jim brought up later, with Jay that Jay said thanks sarcastically, that's kind of that was interesting to me. Right? Yeah. Sarcastically.

Jim Collison [00:36:48]:

Right? Likely referring to Taco Bell keeping him hooked in quotes. So it seems Jay has a fondness for Taco Bell, but was jokingly blaming Jim and Sammy for getting him addicted to it. That is not an AI prompt I've seen before To this level of detail, right, where it's bringing in it's it's implying some things. It's implying some emotions in this. And I've never seen, 1, I didn't know I could I could chat against the transcript, which is super cool. But, 2, I didn't realize it was bringing back, it was bringing back emotional cues based on the transcript. Then I said and in the show, we talked about how many monitors I have. And and I asked it, just a fact, how many monitors does Jim have? And I said based on the details provided in the transcript, Jim mentioned having at least 11 monitors currently, but says he has has counted 12 monitors previously, including his laptop.

Jim Collison [00:37:46]:

He shared he did it. Now this was interesting too. It says, he, he blah blah blah, previously including his laptop. He shares a screenshot Showing a setup with multiple monitors and varying sizes. Now how would it know? I mean, I did say let me share a screenshot with it. But based on just that quick, you know, based just on that quick reference of that, it says he shared a screen showing a setup with multiple monitors of varying sizes. So based on the information given, it seems Jim has a minimum of 11 monitors. Dave, this is This is a little better.

Jim Collison [00:38:25]:

I mean, these this kind of intelligence about what's going on in my transcripts, are Are pretty good. Now here's the question. Can I do a prompt like write, I'll say write 5 Twitter posts for, for this transcript? And let's see if it'll do this would be a typical AI Right. Function. Right? You you could do it. So Otter's Thinking, And, and it so it wrote 1. It didn't write 5. It wrote 1.

Jim Collison [00:39:00]:

In

Dave Jackson [00:39:00]:

Here's a fun prompt. Try, Please list all the companies mentioned. I did this because I did the episode where the question of the month, and I was trying to get everybody's URLs, and everybody said the name of their show. Yeah. Look at that.

Jim Collison [00:39:19]:

Oh, look at that.

Dave Jackson [00:39:21]:

So he's got a list of Taco Bell, Oculus, Blue. Yeah. I mean, the list goes on. There's probably 15 different companies mentioned. So I've done this, and then if I need somebody to, like, please list the URLs mentioned in this transcript, and sometimes it'll push back and go, I can't search the Internet, so you have to say in this transcript, please list the URLs that were, You know? So that that's a big time saver, at least for me.

Jim Collison [00:39:48]:

Let's see if Otter has any access to the Internet to To

Dave Jackson [00:39:53]:

do that There

Jim Collison [00:39:53]:

it is. No. No URLs. Right? Unfortunately, no URLs are provided for companies mentioned in the transcript.

Dave Jackson [00:40:01]:

Yeah.

Jim Collison [00:40:02]:

But the following companies had their names mentioned, but no URLs, and then it does it again.

Dave Jackson [00:40:06]:

Yeah. But I loved it because, no. We always We always have people that say their website way too fast or the name of their show too fast, and and the transcript was able to at least give me an idea of where to go look for this. So that that came in handy for for me. Now I didn't do that in Otter. I did that in Cast Magic, but I think, again, they're all Kinda using the same back end. It's all about the prompts.

Jim Collison [00:40:33]:

Yeah. That's pretty cool. And I I just didn't realize I saw this chat feature, and I thought it was more about chatting with your team members in, in Otter because you can have You can buy business plans that have multiple accounts associated with it and have team members associated with it. And, and so, I thought that was chat based on, like, we can talk about these Transcripts or these edits or things, I had no idea Yeah. It was actually an AI engine behind the scenes, going into your transcript. For me, that's a little bit of a game changer with I was getting ready to kinda dump Otter, to be honest. I was kinda like, well, I mean, it's a one trick pony when it comes to just transcripts for the most part. Now it's got these takeaways, but they're all Otter's trying to be a meeting transcription service, not necessarily a podcast Transcription service.

Jim Collison [00:41:26]:

It works for podcasts, but they're trying to compete with Teams. Teams is going into this space too where you can Turn on turn on the the listener. It's gonna listen to your meeting and do a transcription of the meeting. And then if there's takeaways, it's going to there was another area. I was talking about takeaways. Oh, I guess there's AI now built into and Sullivan and I were talking about this on Sunday. There's AI built into Zoom, and you can turn the a on the AI on in the meeting. It will record you, and then you can ask Questions to the AI during the meeting about what was said.

Jim Collison [00:42:04]:

Did someone give takeaways? Are there things that need to be done? What was you know, what what exactly was said? A little scary. It's kinda like that court reporter. Yeah. You know? Wait. Wait. Can you read that back to me? I don't need it. Write it back to me.

Dave Jackson [00:42:18]:

We do this thing, at the school of podcasting where we get together. We call it lunch with Dave. And there's always, you know, 2 court reporters in the room where somebody has launched this, and I'm like, I don't care. But, yeah, so that's always kinda fun. Jeff says, I tried most of these tools, and now that ChatGTP and Magi can ingest bigger transcriptions, I just use those. I am kind of starting to lean towards If they're all kinda just using Chat GPT, like, maybe I should take out the middleman and just learn how to prompt Chat GPT.

Jim Collison [00:42:52]:

Well, that's the thing. You now you become the prompt engineer.

Dave Jackson [00:42:55]:

Right.

Jim Collison [00:42:55]:

So are you gonna be I I so I listen. I like that idea, But I think I also like keeping an eye on the rest of the services because because, you know, Ryan over at Swell I don't know if that's sort of I

Dave Jackson [00:43:10]:

get his name.

Jim Collison [00:43:10]:

I get an email. I think I get a guy email from him all the time. He may come up with a prompt that, like, is just genius that he's using, and then you then either you buy his prompt by purchasing as well, or you try to backward engineer what he did, try to figure out what he did To get that, you know, to to to get that prompt.

Dave Jackson [00:43:30]:

Yeah. Doctor says, it's like hamburger wars. Every time one of them You do an update. All the others rushed to the drawing board to do it better. It is an exciting time. Yeah.

Jim Collison [00:43:40]:

That's good, though. You want that. That's what we want. We want competition. Like, This is why we don't want Ape OpenAI to win on this one for the most part, even though they are the provider for all these things. We don't want them to win. We don't want them to wipe out the rest of the the ecosystem because there's we need we need a lot of innovation at this point. So we don't want them to we don't want them to go away.

Jim Collison [00:44:00]:

Support them if you can.

Dave Jackson [00:44:02]:

Well, Cast Magic has a thing now where if you make a custom prompt, you can share it with their community. So you can go in to see what other prompts other people are using. I was like, that's again, how are you gonna differentiate yourself from something when everybody's kinda doing, You know, a little bit of the same thing, and so they're trying to to figure that out. So but it is it's exciting to see, and and, You know, I saw you know, I have seen people now that have the, you know, artificial intelligence generate And read and post the podcast. Like, the whole thing. Like, there's very little human involved with that, and I'm like Mhmm. Yeah. But what does that put out? We'll we'll see.

Dave Jackson [00:44:46]:

So

Jim Collison [00:44:47]:

Doctor in the chat before we walk away from this, Doctor in the chat had said, can you, the last her last comment, let's see, Have it list the companies in order from what was mentioned from most to least. So I put in the companies, can you can you list those companies From most mentioned to least. And it did it went right through and said Amazon, Zoom, Oculus, Microsoft, and then next to it said How many times it was mentioned?

Dave Jackson [00:45:14]:

Oh.

Jim Collison [00:45:14]:

See, I'm not sharing that screen anymore. I'm so sorry about that. But that prompt did work, Doctor. So that's a good. See, I never would have thought to say that. So, Doctor, thanks for that thanks for that prompt.

Dave Jackson [00:45:27]:

Yeah. So the if I hit this button, There we go. I've just seen this a lot, and person's trying to use 2 USB mics, and they're saying, hey. I just started. I had so many problems with the software. I have 2 USB mics already and wanted to connect them to the PC and record separately. So OBS was working good for the 1st few days on a lot of companies. There are a lot of complicated setups at the key point there, And yet it's all broken now.

Dave Jackson [00:45:56]:

I don't know why, and I'm not gonna read the rest of this. I love when somebody says this on Reddit because Bangs just comes in and says, don't use 2 USB mics. Like, it

Jim Collison [00:46:07]:

Oh, Bang. Yes. We miss you. Bang.

Dave Jackson [00:46:09]:

Exactly. And but it really is. When I hear something like, I'm trying to connect 2 USB mics, it just everybody just hops in and goes, don't. Just don't. Go buy a PodTrak P4, RodeCaster Duo, Something if that's what you're trying to do. But in the end, you know, that's it's you're just it's headaches. It can be done, But at the, you know, expense of your sanity, basically. And so

Jim Collison [00:46:33]:

There's so many there's so many better ways to do it that don't involve Plugging it in via USB, and you have so much better of an experience if you run it through a a a p four or or whatever. Right? We we talked about this, I think, just last week. There's a lot a lot of a lot better ways to do it. And it's not that much more expensive, and it's just a it's a much better experience. Do you Do you think when we mentioned Bangs, he has some kinda something running on the Internet that alerts him that we were talking about? Yeah. If he appears in chat, we'll know For sure that, though, his full name bangs not in there just to make sure we get we get it all in there. We'll see if he shows up.

Dave Jackson [00:47:14]:

Well, here here's one way to learn your prompts. Doctor says, I subscribe to prompts daily, a newsletter that sends you a prompt today. I've become kind of a prop to order.

Jim Collison [00:47:26]:

Yeah. After a while, I've done those kinds of things. And after a while, the the you get Some diminishing returns because you just can't keep up with everything, you know? It is it's that's me. Anyways, that's me. It's hard to keep up with a Daily. Like, eventually, you're you get I get bitter about it because I can't remember them all. And, yeah, I put them somewhere, but then I gotta read them again. So those those kinds of things are difficult for me.

Dave Jackson [00:47:49]:

And the I can't remember if we talked about this or not. Have we talked about how Apple's latest update is affecting downloads? I can't remember if we talked about this or not, but what it is, this is an article on The Verge, and it used to be that if you didn't listen to a podcast, and you hadn't touched the last 5 episodes, Apple Podcasts would stop Downloading your show, and eventually, they'd be like, hey. You haven't downloaded any of these. Do you you know? What's up with this? And so let's say it's been 3 months since you've listened to this podcast. Maybe you're in the hospital, didn't have your phone, whatever happened. Right? And so what and when you say, oh, yes. I wanna listen to this show. It would download 3 months of like, it would download everything you've missed, And so all of a sudden, you, you know, you get a big old spike.

Dave Jackson [00:48:43]:

Well, Apple has changed this now in Apple Podcasts that when you say, Oh, yeah. I wanna listen to the show. They will download the latest one. And so people are seeing now, especially on these daily shows because that's where that would happen a lot, it's easy to Missed the last 5 if you're got one every single day, and so more and more people are going, I'm noticing my downloads are down a little bit. And is that for everybody? And it started, you know, around October, November. Well, what that's when that update rolled out, And so I just I've been reminding people because I get that a lot at Libsyn. I saw it in Reddit. I saw it in Facebook.

Dave Jackson [00:49:21]:

They're all like, Are your numbers down? I'm like, hey. This might be the cause. And then the other thing is, you know, we're in a holiday season, and sometimes that means more listening, And sometimes it means less because some people will, you know, listen to podcasts while they're baking cookies and other people are Hanging out with friends who are in town that they haven't seen for a while, but I just wanna make sure everybody is aware that, yeah, your numbers may be going down a little bit, and it might be, you know, due to, the fact that, you know, Apple has changed their their app a little bit. The other one, And and this is where we're gonna are you ready to get some hate mail, Jim?

Jim Collison [00:50:01]:

Oh, for sure.

Dave Jackson [00:50:02]:

This this would be great.

Jim Collison [00:50:03]:

Do it.

Dave Jackson [00:50:04]:

I've seen this a bunch. Hey. There's a new studio downtown. I'm all excited to let you guys know there's a new studio, and this is some place in Texas. It's only $150 an hour. And so I reached out to them on Facebook, and I said, hey. Congrats on starting your business. It looks fun.

Dave Jackson [00:50:20]:

Your target audience is not Joe Podcaster or Jill Podcaster because Those people don't have a $150 an episode or an hour. And if it's 2 hours, it's $300. I'm like, because if I did, Let's say I don't even know if they if that's just the recording, if they edit it, whatever, but if it was, if let's just say it was just the recording, I do An episode a week, that's $600 a month. I could buy a PodTrak P4 and 2 Samsung Q2Us and have lots of money left over, And so I'm not pooh poohing the idea. I'm just it sounds like a great idea, and I just said you need to focus on companies Who don't wanna set up a podcast thing in their their company. They have a marketing budget And, you know, that, but Joe Schmo, I don't think is, you know, what it it Galp, do you guys have an official, like, podcast studio? I mean, you guys got me in. This is a big company.

Jim Collison [00:51:18]:

Now we do now. Yeah. They built one right before the pandemic for me, so it's pretty cool.

Dave Jackson [00:51:21]:

Nice.

Jim Collison [00:51:22]:

Yeah. It is it is perfect. It's way more than I expected. Yeah. It's way more than I expected. They were putting some new space in. We were growing at the time, this was pre pandemic, and we were growing crazy at the time. And, and they needed the conference room that I had sequestered, you know, 5 years before that up on a 3rd floor where nobody was That we had no offices yet.

Jim Collison [00:51:45]:

All of a sudden, had a whole bunch of people in it, and they wanted their conference room back. And I think the facility guys felt bad. Like, he's like, okay. I need to move you, but I'm gonna I'm gonna put a studio in for you. And it has it has really nice lighting. I have, like, adjustable lighting on the wall. I have a Office light I can turn on and then I have some lights I can bring up and kinda mess around to get the right color temperature in there. Of course, it's wired for everything.

Jim Collison [00:52:10]:

It's They they put up sound, sound tiles on it to kinda keep the the reverb down, and, and it's comfortable. And they gave me this big desk

Dave Jackson [00:52:21]:

Nice. Which

Jim Collison [00:52:21]:

was super cool. I was like, thanks, guys. Now I didn't get into it. They finished it June of June or July of 2020, and I didn't get into it. The 1st time I even used it was July of 2021. So it sat a year. You know, we work from home. Right? I did I did everything from home in those days.

Jim Collison [00:52:38]:

So it sat a year I felt bad. It sat a year before we even used it. And I'm just now, to be honest, fully moving into it from a You should standpoint. We just bought a big green screen for it to just because the green screen's gotten so much better now than it used to be, And so we bought a big green screen that they need to install over over time. So yeah. No. It's a pretty cool it's pretty cool. People walk in.

Jim Collison [00:53:00]:

It looks little more impressive than it actually is. You know, it just it takes just a little bit to do podcasting. But, it's fun to have a space dedicated for it and to be able to do it that way. We we also, Dave, to be honest, we have a big sound stage. So you the room next to it is a think of a think about 3 big conference rooms all put together. And we have Pull down screens

Dave Jackson [00:53:22]:

Oh, nice.

Jim Collison [00:53:22]:

Ceiling the ceiling is open and has got got the, you know, got the drop down, Brackets for lighting and some of those kinds of things if you wanna move stuff around. I mean, it's they did a really, really we do a lot of those. And especially during the pandemic, we did a lot of things that So having a full out sound stage, for us was super helpful. So that's it it is nice to have that access to that kind of But this is one of those areas you were just saying it. From an organizational standpoint, they have committed to this kind of media, And they they they're paying for it and funding it and and doing those kinds of things and building some stuff around it, and they believe in it and they use it. Yeah. And so not all companies will. You know? Once you go down the rabbit hole on this one, it gets a little expensive, You know, to to think about building the whole room out just for it, much less like a podcasting room, I can't imagine how expensive that sound stage was to get that all configured

Dave Jackson [00:54:19]:

And whoever is in charge of posting the show, your company show to Whoever's you know, whatever host, Lipson, Captivate, Buzzsprout, Blueberry, whoever, use a generic email and make sure the IT guy knows that Because I run into that lips and a lot, hey, Carol doesn't work here anymore, and we can't get into the account. And you're like, oh, here's the email, and they're like, yeah, that's Carol's. We can't we don't know where pat it's like, so make it very generic so that you can share that email and password. You let the whole team in if you want and things like that, But I I do run into that, not a lot, but where people are like, yeah. Joe used to do the podcast. He left. You know, he downsized, whatever. We can't get in.

Dave Jackson [00:55:02]:

So make sure more than Joe knows how to post the stuff. Get the IT guy involved in the event somebody leaves. You're not, sunk that way. And then, I thought this was a fun question. Jim, I'll see how long I can get through this before you finally just have to interrupt. Bitcoin podcast. I wanna start a Bitcoin podcast, and while I should have the technical chops both in Bitcoin and the production side, I don't want the show to be Just a Bitcoin show. I would like to interview businesses, talk chess, time preference, and impacts on life, dad stuff, space, History, politics, community, and a bunch of others.

Dave Jackson [00:55:43]:

Yeah. Yeah. I see Bitcoin in everything, But I'm unsure as to how to structure this. I'm currently building the studio for the podcast, and I've reached a point where, set design and and and podcast direction meet. I appreciate any feedback. And I think he was looking for feedback maybe on the studio. I'm not really sure, but I just know when I read and everybody in in the group. Jim, you wanna guess what they said?

Jim Collison [00:56:10]:

Just to just say it. It's this I'm sure it was painful.

Dave Jackson [00:56:13]:

Yeah. Pick pick a, you know

Jim Collison [00:56:15]:

Narrowed narrowed down.

Dave Jackson [00:56:16]:

Yeah. Like and I just said, look. Let's let's Look at this. Let's take it in a different direction. If if this was music and it was jazz, death metal, country, Urban, hip hop, and classical, how likely are you to find 1 person that's gonna love all those genres? And so that was Yeah.

Jim Collison [00:56:38]:

But not listen. I do a variety show. Yeah. So this is kind of a variety show, just to be honest. Right. I mean, yeah, we're talking about podcasting. But, I mean, just today, we probably had 3 or 4 different subjects Yeah. In on this thing.

Jim Collison [00:56:50]:

I think it kinda depends on how you do it. If you're creating community, not everybody has to like everything that you do. I had a I had a guest on who's been a long time listener, and I've even podcasted with him. Oh, I don't know. 4 or 5 weeks ago. And in the pre show, he says to me, Jim, I gotta be honest. I only listen to Home gadget Geeks When you have m and on the show. Right? That's it.

Jim Collison [00:57:14]:

I don't listen to any of the other ones. And I'm like, that's fine. Like, at least he listens to those. Right? And that that's scratching his itch. So I I think, I think that's okay. I think you're gonna have trouble early on. Well, maybe not. But you you could have trouble early on attracting some listeners Just as peep just as you're all over the place, you'll find some people, though.

Jim Collison [00:57:37]:

You'll you'll find some people who who like the variety. You know, SP says he's if it's space he's in, he's gonna try it. He's gonna at least try it out. You never know. Like, how engaging, You know, how engaging are you gonna be in this? I don't think it's a listen. What's your what's the purpose of your podcast? If you're gonna grow community, do whatever you want. Yeah. Like, do it just do it the way you want it.

Jim Collison [00:58:00]:

If you want it now, if you wanna make money, well, okay. Now you gotta ask yourself some your your questions. Right? That all the things that we talk about.

Dave Jackson [00:58:07]:

And Yeah.

Jim Collison [00:58:08]:

Could you make money with that kind of podcast? Totally. Are you fighting an uphill battle? Probably.

Dave Jackson [00:58:15]:

Absolutely. What? Then it might be that he does that and just starts throwing things. Every episode's a new throw it on the wall. Then their adventure is like, okay. I've done 20 episodes. All the ones on Bitcoin seem to go really, really well. The ones on, You know, cross country ballroom dancing, not so much. So they you know, maybe then you you narrow the herd And just pick the topics that are resonating with the audience that you did attract.

Jim Collison [00:58:41]:

It's a little late on Bitcoin, just to be clear. Like, You you know, we're we're we're into that's a fairly mature space, and and we're and maybe that and again, you you can do it if you want. Right? You you can absolutely do it if you want. But There is I mean, there are a lot of topics where you could do Bitcoin and because it's beginning to infiltrate into some of those spaces and it's starting to You know, it's it's getting more uses. Not many, but it's getting more uses, and it's a good conversation. You can also do a variety show where you kick it off with Bitcoin and then have an Talk about give some updates on that and some other things and then go into another topic. You'll attract some people who who like it eventually. You just gotta gotta get the word out.

Dave Jackson [00:59:22]:

Well, I know, Craig Van Slyke from livewellandflourish.com, he's a a big chat GPT guy, and he's going to talk to a bunch of tax preparation people. And I'm like, I I don't want Chatti PD to my taxes, But I think everybody's kinda like, this looks cool. It's like you said, Bitcoin and maybe it's chat GPT And taxes, chat gpt and health care, chat gpt and blah blah blah. So we'll see why. I

Jim Collison [00:59:51]:

mean, chat AI does a great job of comparisons. Right. That's what it it there's a couple things that does really, really, really well. Writes well. It also does comparisons very well. And you think in the tax world, you'd say, Hey. Here's here's a tax return I did. Compare it to 10,000 other returns.

Jim Collison [01:00:11]:

And did I miss anything? Like, that would be a that would be a very good use of AI for the and it would it could come back with a, Hey. This it looks like this person may has missed a deduction for the energy savings of America thing, whatever, you know, blah blah blah blah. So for a tax preparer, that that that kinda use, I wouldn't want it doing all of my taxes. Right? But but From a comparison standpoint, it may be a really good tool.

Dave Jackson [01:00:37]:

Then and I think you hit the nail on the head on on the guy just wanting to do a podcast about everything. If your goal is just to have fun with your friends, done. There you go.

Jim Collison [01:00:47]:

Just do it. Yeah. Do it. Have have a good time. By the way, people like to listen to other people having a good time together in that setting. Like, this is Dave, we we've gotten this feedback. I'm not making this up. People listen to the show because they like the dialogue between the 2 of us.

Jim Collison [01:01:01]:

We're we're friends. We give each other a hard time. We have a few inside jokes. We Laugh at each other. There's times you say things and I just laugh out loud. And people you know, I'm the laugh track sometimes for your comedy. Right? And, and vice versa. People enjoy that kinda dialogue.

Jim Collison [01:01:21]:

It what they don't enjoy is really uncomfortable dialogue sometimes, you know, or too Right. To perform it. And some some do. You know? Just just be yourself. Have fun with it, I guess.

Dave Jackson [01:01:31]:

That's it. Alright. Well, I've teased you enough. Well, I'll see if,

Jim Collison [01:01:35]:

Oh, wheel. Wheel. Wheel.

Dave Jackson [01:01:37]:

Should show you. Yeah. This is at wheel of names.com, And I found this because my boss had to figure out who was working Christmas Eve at Libsyn because, technically, we have that day off, but we always have somebody always has to take one for the team, and, so I was like, oh, that's cool. So what we're looking at are my $20 supporters. We always do the featured supporter of the week, and so I'm gonna hit the I'm gonna click this, and we do have ads. If you're wondering how is this free, there's an ad on the left, and I'm just waiting for, Like, I'm waiting to do this and have, like, some big giant, like, you know, adult product show up. Hopefully, that will not happen. But, Anyway, so we've got everybody on there.

Dave Jackson [01:02:23]:

Let's even do a shuffle. Okay. Now it's really, safe and free and and, fair, so we'll give her a spin. And this week's featured awesome supporter is there he is. He's like Beetlejuice. That is craig@livewellandflourish.com. So thank you so much for being an awesome supporter. And speaking of that, you can go to ask the podcast coach.com/support and support the show.

Dave Jackson [01:02:57]:

In fact, this month, we like, Jim got to see the wheel of names early. We posted a webinar from, Jessica, who did a whole thing on Canva and how to use Canva to sell books, that was kind of fun. So it's not just ask the podcast coach, plus you get invited to, The occasional group coaching and things like that, go to ask the podcast coach.com/awesome. Also, this podcast is brought to you by PodPage. If you wanna check out PodPage, go to tripodpage.com. And if you just can't get enough Jim Collison, I mean, how can you not? Go over to the Average Guy .tv. Yeah. He's got the little green thingy right there in the background.

Dave Jackson [01:03:38]:

There's that and this. Right now, we're using Ecamm Poorly, but we're using it, but I'm getting there. You can you can check out ECAM by going to support the show.com/ecamm, And, again, thanks to all of our awesome supporters. And, yeah, I when I saw the wheel of names, I was like, awesome supporter time.

Jim Collison [01:03:58]:

Well, you know what I like about it? As as soon as I saw it, you know, I was like, this will be interesting. And then I watched the video you made where you're you're showing it. By the way, they're giving us some advice. You can cut out that ad if you want to. You could Oh, yeah. In Ecamm, you could just show the wheel.

Dave Jackson [01:04:13]:

Well, the Other thing is just to show you because I was like, wait a minute. So if I go back and click on this, you can actually Just go over here and go close the ad. I was like, oh, there you go. That's easy enough. And it it does all sorts of stuff. You can share it, and you can actually I I've not played with any of this, But, apparently, I can link this to a Google spreadsheet. I was like, okay. High-tech wheel of names .com.

Dave Jackson [01:04:36]:

So

Jim Collison [01:04:37]:

No. I like it. What what I like best about it is it shows every single $20 supporter

Dave Jackson [01:04:42]:

in there.

Jim Collison [01:04:43]:

So every week, There, you're being you're being shown on that. For some people, that matters. Others, it doesn't. But you're you're up there. And it's a good reminder. It's a good reminder for me of who supports the show. And so you just every week, you're gonna show up on that, and then you spin the wheel. Then that's you know, there's a little bit of excitement Right.

Jim Collison [01:05:01]:

Who's gonna get picked this week. But, Actually, everybody recognized. Right? Because you showed the whole wheel. So kinda cool. I I think a really good idea. And a good segment for this kind of show Where we are kinda interactive, and we can kinda play with it and have fun and show some things and some of that. That may not be for everybody's show, but, do they have a paid version? Do you know?

Dave Jackson [01:05:23]:

I don't see 1.

Jim Collison [01:05:25]:

Get rid of the app?

Dave Jackson [01:05:26]:

I kept thinking there's gotta be let me see here. No. It's like that's odd. You'd think there'd be some way of, like you know, it's in different languages, which is great fun, but when I go to I know that you can store like, I stored my settings on my computer. So if for some reason, you know, I cleared my cache or my history And this didn't come up. I can reload, you know, my awesome supporters, and even when I saw the option to Share it in the cloud. It was like, no. It's it's still free.

Dave Jackson [01:05:59]:

I'm like, okay. So somebody's pet project, and, You know, I was like, oh, rich grandma wants to know what the heck is squoosh? Oh, do you not know the magics of squoosh? So Squoosh is a really cool, tool. If you need I do this all the time. Somebody will have an artwork. Let me see if I have 1 here. Let's go to, and it's squoosh.app, and squoosh is s q u o o s h. And so if I go into podcast and ask the podcast coach, and we'll go to images. And So here is I guess it doesn't really matter.

Dave Jackson [01:06:45]:

Here, 1400. So I'll open this up. And over here on the right hand side, there's a resize button. So if somebody wow. It says my image is 1 pixel wide. That's not very wide. So I'll make this 1400. Yeah.

Dave Jackson [01:07:00]:

I don't know what's going on here, but anyway, you can come over here and compress it. So I use this all the time because somebody will make a 3,000 by 3,000 kind of artwork, and then it's 10 megs. And you're like, yeah. It's supposed to be under 500 kilobytes, And so that's what there's also, Daniel pointed me to one. It was like, JPEG Something something. And, oh my gosh. He's back. Are you kidding me? Holy cow.

Jim Collison [01:07:30]:

Woo. Yeah. I told I told you he was listening. Not listening. He has something set up Yes. That when when he's when his name is invoked, he gets notified.

Dave Jackson [01:07:39]:

He's like Beetlejuice. Thrice I was named and thus summoned. Multiple USB mics are a path of pain and ignorance.

Jim Collison [01:07:48]:

Thanks, thanks.

Dave Jackson [01:07:48]:

Thanks, Ubanks. Good to see you. Yeah. Absolutely.

Jim Collison [01:07:51]:

Good to see you.

Dave Jackson [01:07:52]:

Yes. Your ears are burning. I was explaining how People do that. So, yes, Doctor says, I hate it when someone tells me to clear my cookies. I have to say goodbye to all my automatic passwords. Oh. Yeah.

Jim Collison [01:08:04]:

That's horrible. That is that's a fate worse than death. We we that that drives me crazy because it's like, should I why should I have to really clear my cookies? Why? Tell me why. Oh, we don't know. It just works. And you're, like, no. That's not good enough. You do you know what you do to me when you clear my cookies, especially when it comes to websites? Because I log in to 20 different websites a day.

Jim Collison [01:08:28]:

Do you know what that does to me? So anyway, I that, I've I don't get too mad about too many things except when somebody says, oh, yeah. You're gonna have to clear your cookies. Just like, I'm gonna kill you now.

Dave Jackson [01:08:40]:

Yeah. It's it's, not something I'm happy to say, or because there are times it's you know, I had somebody this week using Internet Explorer. I was like, what? Are you running Windows 98? I'm like,

Jim Collison [01:08:55]:

Delete that browser. Let's let's, first of all, delete that browser. It's time to get on to a mod no. I get it. And do you have to from a support perspective, Dave, do you have to give that advice Sometimes for

Dave Jackson [01:09:05]:

Yes.

Jim Collison [01:09:06]:

Folks, if they're having trouble oh, I'm sorry.

Dave Jackson [01:09:08]:

Yeah. Not not a lot. We recommend and I don't think it's if I do a hard refresh, That's not clearing your cookies. Right? That's different. A hard refresh?

Jim Collison [01:09:20]:

Yeah. No. That's not clearing your cookie.

Dave Jackson [01:09:22]:

Yeah. So that's That, I recommend more than clearing your cookies. Clearing your cookies is when I've run out of ideas, You're like, I don't know. Clear your cookies and reboot. Let's see what happens, and we have some feedback here. Georgios says that you can actually clear the cookies only for a specific domain. Yeah. But I know how to do that.

Dave Jackson [01:09:42]:

Yeah. Try try explaining how to do that via email to somebody that says, what do you mean copy and paste? Gary says, boy, we've hit a nerve. We said clear your cookies, and the chat room has come alive. I have to do that every quarter with one site for content that can't change Passwords without doing that. Yeah.

Jim Collison [01:09:59]:

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. By the way, they're probably storing that password in the clear, which is not a great

Dave Jackson [01:10:04]:

And then I know this happens. Jeff is, I'm like, I don't I always tell people I clear them, but I don't. And then you move on, and they fix it another way. Yeah.

Jim Collison [01:10:14]:

Yep. Yes.

Dave Jackson [01:10:15]:

I had someone yesterday. We we had a weird issue for a while with with, our recording part of Lipson, and the The solution, and it worked every time, was do a hard refresh. It was something with a token not being placed behind the scenes. And, people like, I did that. It didn't work. I'm like, no. No. This has worked for the last 15 people, and or they would go control and then type the letter f and the number 5.

Dave Jackson [01:10:39]:

And I'm like, no. No. The button at the top of the screen that says f five, not the letter f and 5. So

Jim Collison [01:10:48]:

Yeah. Well How many how many how many tabs do you have open? That's what I always ask. How many how many tabs?

Dave Jackson [01:10:53]:

Well, somebody asked this question. What's your plan as since we're we're talking about Spotify wrap up, What's your plan to end? This was Alex Sanfilippo from PodMatch .com. He said, what's your plan to end 2023 strong with your podcast? Do you have anything off the top of your head?

Jim Collison [01:11:12]:

For me personally or or just advice Generally, you

Dave Jackson [01:11:15]:

know, for or or I know for me, I've been doing a a better job of because everybody knows I'm a little all over the place. Like, right now, I'm up to my shoulders, right, in learning Stream Deck with Alec Johnson. I'll have a link to that in the show notes, and then I'm gonna move on to Stream Deck. Like, I'm gonna learn the tools I have, and we had that, that group coaching that was in the, you know, the Awesome supporters about books. And I bought a bunch of software to help me write my book, and I was like, I wanna I I have, like, ideas for 4 different books I wanna write in 2024. And I was like, hold on there, Sparky. Let's finish Stream Deck. Let's finish Ecamm, Then we can move on to books.

Dave Jackson [01:12:00]:

So I'm much but by doing that, I'm writing them down. I'm like, okay. I don't wanna forget. This is where I wanna go, but I'm much better at being focused than I was, say, 2 years ago. Right now recognize, oh, look what you're doing. You're gonna go start another new thing and not finish the thing you started in the 1st place. So So for me, that's I wanna, I wanna tidy up some, tutorials in the school of podcasting because we got, you know, 29 days left before this year's toast. And so that's something I I plan on doing to kinda wrap up 2023.

Dave Jackson [01:12:31]:

Anything, off top of your head?

Jim Collison [01:12:35]:

Yeah. I'm gonna I've been working on the site a little bit more. I neglected the average guy dot tv for a lot of years, and I've been kinda coming back, paying attention to more of the analytics as they're happening in real time. Been experimenting with some posts, been thinking about building some pillar posts, some pillar pages That and basically, a pillar page is just a page where everything else points to it on the on the site. I've been thinking about and I've actually The audio side of things from a podcasting standpoint, I think we'll just continue on where we've been going with it. I've been slowing down a little bit for the month of December. I have a procedure, this coming up this Saturday that's gonna gonna put me out for a couple weeks. So I have been slowing down on purpose on the audio side of things just because that's kinda more real time work.

Jim Collison [01:13:23]:

So I I won't have a lot of that to get done at at the beginning of the year. But it it it it galloped, we're gonna spend some time looking. I think 2024 is gonna be a really interesting year, for us. And so I've left I know this is this is a novel idea, but I've I've left some room for change. Right? Where I'm like, hey. I'm not At this point, you know, some people are like, what's your goals for 2024? I'm like, I don't know yet because the teams that I need have not decided their goals yet. And so we're right? We're just it's just kinda like so this is gonna be one of those weird years where I don't do a lot of planning at the end of the year. I think it'll be probably spring or or maybe early, summer here in the United States, here in the Northern Hemisphere, that we begin to do that planning.

Jim Collison [01:14:11]:

So it's it's a little it's a little bit up in the air, but I've been learning a lot about SEO. So it's been a good good thing to do some writing and and test things out.

Dave Jackson [01:14:18]:

Yeah. That's another thing you can always learn. And speaking of learning, Doctor says, I bought a ton of Udemy courses, and I'm ready to do some learning. Yeah. That's something where I again, especially with Black Friday, I bought all this stuff and I was like it it's like buying a book Thinking you have the free time to read the book, and I'm like so I just started putting, like, at my calendar, And it's open for members of the School of Podcasting Tube to book coaching time, and there's a certain period I think you can't After 48 hours, you can't book time with me or or within 48 hours, something where like, you can't book something with me tomorrow because that gives me a chance to look at it and go, okay. I don't have anything on that day. That's not mine, and I'll put, like, read for an hour, you know, write a newsletter. All the stuff that you just kinda instead of me going, woah.

Dave Jackson [01:15:07]:

Well, I got some free time. What should I do? I'm like, no. Let's actually Think about what should I like today? I'm writing a newsletter. I just I wanted to do it yesterday, didn't get done. The whole, you know, getting sick thing kind of makes you sit down and watch, cute but not very funny Eddie Murphy movies on Prime. Yeah. That was, I I've seen Eddie Murphy. Lot of those.

Dave Jackson [01:15:27]:

Well It's a lot of those. He he kinda hinted. He was on The Tonight Show. Wait. We need to, we have a jingle for this.

Jim Collison [01:15:36]:

Oh, lovely. Here comes another 10 second tangent from Dave. Brilliant. Such absolute rubbish.

Dave Jackson [01:15:43]:

Yeah. So we're talking about the Eddie Murphy movie on prime, And, he said this on The Tonight Show. He's like, well, there are all these shows, you know, Elf, It's a Wonderful Life, 4 Christmases is one for me that I I always wanna watch every year. We all have our own list of of holiday movies. It's like, I'd like to be in that, and I'm like, Sure. Those are royalties that you get, I'm assuming, and so I watched it last night. It was very cute. But here's the thing, I thought about this.

Dave Jackson [01:16:09]:

Like, 4 Christmases has a couple scenes that I just wait to see Elf. I'm waiting for him to go, Santa. You know? I'm waiting for him to get in the fight with the the little person. There are these funny scenes that you remember, and the whole movie was cute. There were some really cool special effects, But in the end, it was cute. It was a cute Christmas movie, but there wasn't that one funny scene of, like, wait till you see this thing, And and so, yeah, it was cute.

Jim Collison [01:16:37]:

I liked it. I liked the Tim Allen Santa Claus ones. Yeah. Those are my those are my favorite. I mean, I I like Elf too, but Tim Allen did some good Christmas ones.

Dave Jackson [01:16:46]:

He did. Doctor says something. This is something we should all need to think about. In fact, that brings up a good point. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds as though free time is a bad word. Nothing wrong with taking a breath, which is what I did night, I was like, look.

Dave Jackson [01:16:59]:

I'm sick. I need to take it easy. I'm gonna watch this movie. Also, at least in the US, if you're having a tough time with the holidays. Because sometimes the holidays just come up and kick it right in the the the chimney, and And if that's you and you're struggling, a, that's you know, it happens. 311. Did you know there was 311? No. 31 I think that's the right one.

Dave Jackson [01:17:26]:

Is it 811? I'm probably giving out the wrong number. And here it is. 988, support for crisis intervention.

Jim Collison [01:17:34]:

Okay. 988.

Dave Jackson [01:17:35]:

Yeah. And they also say Kerry Narcan. And if you don't have Narcan, there is let me copy this and throw this in the chat room. You can actually get a Narcan kit, and that was a thing that was kinda like, oh, I guess this is the we live in now. When I was in Indianapolis, I stopped at a the occasional rest area, and every rest area had a, Like a Narcan kit on the first aid slash Narcan stuff. So if you happen to pull into a Rest area and end up overdosing. You can

Jim Collison [01:18:08]:

Oh.

Dave Jackson [01:18:08]:

Yeah. And I was, like, really?

Jim Collison [01:18:10]:

Got it.

Dave Jackson [01:18:10]:

We're gonna have a Narcan kit every, like, 5 miles? I'm, like, well, That's the world

Jim Collison [01:18:14]:

we live in. Pandemic. Yeah.

Dave Jackson [01:18:17]:

So if you, so if you are having a hard time with the holidays, that is something you can do. Here's this is another question we got a lot of. And when I talk about, Sometimes it's hard to do this show because it's the same question over and over, but I was like, but on the other hand, if we don't play our greatest hits, Like, there are people that are actually asking these questions. And so in theory there we go. Except that's not the one we wanted. We wanted this, which should now become

Jim Collison [01:18:48]:

can never you can never show that enough. Right? I mean Yeah. You can never show that enough.

Dave Jackson [01:18:53]:

So and and basically, to boil down this question is kind of like, is it good? This is I started my 1st ever solo podcast About my journey with mental health, speaking of mental health, at the end of October. So it's I've been at it for about a month, and I Didn't have any following to begin with. It's early, for me to be able to tell if my podcast is growing. Well, that one, I'll just stop here. If you got 10 downloads on your last episode and you got 12 on this one, your show is growing. So that's easy to figure out. Or should I But be expecting a certain number of downloads within the 1st month. I'm definitely not podcasting for the hope of being able to monetize one day.

Dave Jackson [01:19:34]:

Good. A lot of people don't. You know, you can just do it for fun and to get your message out there. I really think that what I've been talking about is a very relatable and can Be help to my fellow, depressed folks. With that being said, I have no idea if I'm on the right track or if I need, my approach. So I I saw that, and, that's that's it. That's enough for that one. I I thought I saw it someplace else, but it's the same question.

Dave Jackson [01:20:00]:

So I always get that kinda like, hey. Is this good? And so, I see this a lot, And it really first of all, downloads really only come into play. They they help you see what's working and what's not, But in the long game, downloads really only come into play if you're trying to get an advertiser. Right? Because if you're just doing

Jim Collison [01:20:24]:

Or ego.

Dave Jackson [01:20:25]:

There you go. Yeah. So but that's why I say it. It helps you see what's working and what's not, but And I always use the example if I did the Pygmy Pony Show. Right? That's a pretty neat show. And if I got 300 downloads of the Pygmy Pony Show, Holy cow. Who knew that many people were into pygmy ponies? But if I do the Hey We're All Fat Show And I get 300 downloads, I'd be like, that's this is really there should be more because, you know, we're all fat. This should have thousands of downloads, so it's hard to say what's the number.

Dave Jackson [01:21:00]:

I know I did a show that was purposely horrible, And I got 10 downloads every episode. So if you're getting less than 10, you're doing something wrong. But I don't know. What do you say to this, Jim? Because It's there's no kind of, like, one size fits all answer.

Jim Collison [01:21:16]:

Yeah. Just listen. Getting getting visibility today is hard.

Dave Jackson [01:21:20]:

Right. It's

Jim Collison [01:21:21]:

it there it was it was easier earlier in podcasting. But there's so many podcasts now and and so much vying for people's time. And then you have to think about your own influence. What's your own circle of who do you have access to and how can can you, You know, can you put a post on LinkedIn and reach a couple 1000 people, or can you do it on Facebook and get a couple 100 people? Can you Build influence in a way where people will tell other people about it. Listen. People just don't magically find podcasts. They have to have a reason. Right? They gotta they you've gotta give them a reason.

Jim Collison [01:21:55]:

You have to market to them. You've gotta promote it in some way that influences them to give you an hour. Let's just say that's the time to give you an hour of their time, and you're buying an hour of someone's time is very, very valuable. So you're buying it. You're They're giving you something for that. So you gotta you gotta make it worth their time to do it. They won't do it with if they don't know. It's not magical, so you gotta do some kind of marketing to get it out.

Jim Collison [01:22:23]:

If early on I think some people, folks I'll just I'll build this podcast, and folks will just listen. And you're like, well, maybe not right away. It may take some time. Get a few. Use those 1st 10 weeks to get you know, we've talked about this before. Record 10 and then throw them away so you're better at it. Then the next 10, use those as your marketing, then do a big once you've kinda gotten good at this, Then do a big launch. Kinda do a relaunch.

Jim Collison [01:22:48]:

And and, you'll learn some things about yourself, and you'll have some material for folks to come and listen to and And then work on your word-of-mouth. Those are the only 2 ways to get podcast, promotion. Buy it Or have someone say it Yeah. For you. Right? Those that's it. That's all that's all you get. You can be on other people's shows and some of those kinds of things. But, Yeah.

Jim Collison [01:23:10]:

I I just I I I think it just depends on you. How influential are you? How what what do you have access to?

Dave Jackson [01:23:17]:

Yeah. And and you made a great point in about, you know, getting people to say it. So maybe not focus on being the most downloaded show, Focus on being the most talked about show because when people are like, oh, did you hear what they said on, you know like, I don't I don't I didn't see the video yet, But I guess, but we're just I said Trump earlier, and I'm gonna say Elon Musk, so we're gonna get blocked on YouTube. But I don't know what he said, but somewhere, apparently, he dropped some some colorful language, shall we say, because I saw the headline where it's like Elon blah blah blah. Yeah. And I was like, well, that's, you know, he did something different. You know? I don't know if he dropped an f bomb or what, but, You know, but now people are talking about it because he it's not the typical thing. So when you can kinda do something that's slightly different, people are like, hey.

Dave Jackson [01:24:07]:

Did did you see this? Like, I remember there's a thing on YouTube, and it's it's kinda funny. It's kinda weird, but it's back before our time. Yes, Jim. There were things before our time. Yes. TV would say good night at the end of the night, and they would play the Star Spangled Banner, and it's this old black and white video of a flag flying, and I think it has the the words of the Star Spangled Banner or something like that. But when they switch from, like, 1 page to the next, they would have these weird subliminal messages like and I'm just making 1 up. Like, drink more milk or Always you know, you you are in control.

Dave Jackson [01:24:47]:

Always do what the government says or what you know, put on a big tinfoil hat for this. But if you watch that video, you're like, okay. I don't know if this is doctored, you know, that whole 9 hours, but you definitely I'm talking about it now, and I haven't seen that thing in a couple years, but it For me, I was like, that's that's spooky and weird, and it makes you wanna share it with somebody. So Try to be that. Not so much tinfoil hat weird craziness, but, you know, if you can get people to talk about it, or in some cases, Just the fact that you're talking about it. You know? Todd the Gator does a show about a video game That I I'm not much of a gamer, so I have no idea what he's talking about. But I'm sure if I played that game, I'd be like, my god. Somebody's doing a podcast about my favorite game.

Dave Jackson [01:25:35]:

So sometimes just doing the podcast will will give people, like, oh my gosh. This is different. I can't believe Somebody's doing them. Like, for me, it'd be, you know, Nintendo, Tecmo Bowl was probably the last time I was really into gaming. We'll be here next week. Jim, good luck with

Jim Collison [01:25:53]:

Yeah.

Dave Jackson [01:25:53]:

Good luck with your, your, procedure. The

Jim Collison [01:25:56]:

procedure. Yeah.

Dave Jackson [01:25:58]:

And part so just just

Jim Collison [01:25:59]:

Well, hold on. Just so folks know, just partial prostate removal, should be fine. Not cancerous at least at this point and, but these are all preventative. So Make sure, gentlemen and ladies, make sure you're getting your your annual physicals. We caught this 10 years ago and have been treating it and working with it. It's just now time to do some things about it. And so they're going in Monday morning, and they're removing part of it. And I'm hoping I'm I feel well enough next Saturday To be with you guys.

Jim Collison [01:26:27]:

If not, we'll figure some Dave will figure something. Yeah. He always does. But I'm I'm hoping I'll feel well enough. If not, I'll be back the next week.

Dave Jackson [01:26:33]:

Now I have to go find this video. Apparently, Elon told BSO

Jim Collison [01:26:37]:

to No. Later, he corrected it with Iger.

Dave Jackson [01:26:40]:

Oh, he told Iger to to go Have relations with himself, in a way. So, at any rate, well, Jim, do you have anything coming up On the Average You Got TV, are you taking a week off? Or

Jim Collison [01:26:54]:

well, I'll be taking next week off for sure, but Jay Franzi was on Thursday night. Jay's been out in chat all morning.

Dave Jackson [01:26:59]:

Nice.

Jim Collison [01:27:00]:

And Jay and I catch up a little bit on, on his AI. We talked a bunch. I should say about a half an hour on some AI stuff, what we are actually using, so not just theory, but what we're actually using. And then we look at failed tech gadgets that we purchased in 2023 that didn't work. And so it was just a fun it was kind of a fun walk down at least the annual memory lane to say, yeah. I bought this. Maybe not a great decision. So That's available now posted home gadgetgeeks.com.

Dave Jackson [01:27:29]:

And on the school of podcasting, I actually was really fleshing it out last night. I'm gonna be talking about we we talked about this a little bit today. You learn by doing things wrong. That's really I mean, it boils down to it. You know? And I talk about, you know, the first time you kiss somebody for real and When you rode a bike without training wheels and, you know, the 1st time you drove on the freeway, right, by yourself, that's all these things you're, like, a little uncomfortable, And how do you overcome those? So it's not directly, like, let's talk bandwidth and downloads, but it is something that a lot of people run into Because I did stand up comedy in Indianapolis, and I'll actually be playing my set, which worked kinda, But there were a couple that were like, not not very funny. You know? What I needed to do was have my stream deck there so I could be like, take my wife, please. And then I would've just killed, but that wasn't there. So that's, that's coming out on the School of Podcasting, And, yeah, we'll be here next week and, getting ready for the holiday season here.

Dave Jackson [01:28:36]:

Ask the podcast coach.com/live. If you haven't already, subscribe to the channel, smash the bell. You know the hole in your own yards, and, we'll you next week with another episode of ask the podcast coach. Well there we go. Yeah. So but you think you got it set, and apparently, this I I have a button that says open notes, And really all that is is it's just opening and sharing my screen now here.

Jim Collison [01:29:25]:

And I

Dave Jackson [01:29:25]:

was like, well, that's not what I set it up to do. So Still a bit of a learning curve.

Jim Collison [01:29:30]:

Getting better at it. Yeah.

Dave Jackson [01:29:31]:

Getting better

Jim Collison [01:29:32]:

at it.

Dave Jackson [01:29:32]:

And then the the whole thing where I dragged your screen on, I was like, okay. Then I got all cocky. And I'm like, okay. Now let's drag Jim on top of it, and that messed everything up. And I was like,

Jim Collison [01:29:43]:

Oh, that's alright.

Dave Jackson [01:29:44]:

But that's just one where I I just need to Open it up now and just play. Like, okay. Now if I wanted to do this, and I because I wanna change I wanna change our background and make us a little bigger, Like, in a way I mean, I left the bottom so we could put comments down there, but I was like, do I really need Ask the Podcast Coach at the top? I'm like, you know, maybe just have the logo And, you know because we need to see our smiling faces and, like, you know plus I need to add some Christmas stuff on there. So

Jim Collison [01:30:11]:

Yeah. Christmas is coming up. Christmas is coming up. Okay. I'll send you a note on, probably Wednesday morning then. I'll try I'll just send you quick in Slack. I'll just send you in the Slack group, I'll give you the hey or Yeah. Alright.

Jim Collison [01:30:28]:

Hold on. Let me see if we get this done.

Dave Jackson [01:30:30]:

Oh, there we go.

Jim Collison [01:30:32]:

And, and and yeah.

Dave Jackson [01:30:35]:

Can we see, I still am not cool enough, man. Oh, you know why? Because I turned them off. And in fact, I felt naked half this half this episode today. I did not have a blurry background. I'm like, how can you be on video without a blurry background? That's

Jim Collison [01:30:50]:

You know, I've got this spot right here that's just black because it's just a curtain covers the wall. I should do something with that. Like, that's a that's that's prime real estate right there. I used to have in the in the old days, we used to have a monitor up there that would have things that have things on it. Yeah.

Dave Jackson [01:31:07]:

I still miss the skis.

Jim Collison [01:31:09]:

Yeah. I gotta it took a lot. For some reason, I had a guy at work Just didn't like that look. And I thought I liked it. I thought it was kinda personal and but he was like, no. No. Take it down. So

Dave Jackson [01:31:22]:

Well Sounds good.

Jim Collison [01:31:23]:

Sounds good. Sounds good. Gonna do?

Dave Jackson [01:31:25]:

But,

Jim Collison [01:31:26]:

I took it down. I took it down.

Dave Jackson [01:31:27]:

Did you survive Thanksgiving with all the grandkids? And

Jim Collison [01:31:30]:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know

Dave Jackson [01:31:32]:

he sounded like he had a hand. I actually, your ears were were burning because I had to do a a Thanksgiving story In my church, so I was explaining how we used to have 20 people at Thanksgiving, and I said, you know, kids don't know that things are gonna change. And I said, explain when I'm there was one time where my sister dressed up like a pilgrim, and I dressed up like an Indian, and I said, you know, that was the way Thanksgiving always was, and I said and then, like, 2 years later, uncle Larry had Betty moved to Texas, and then uncle Jim and And Pete moved to Louisiana, and then I'm like, next thing you know, I'm like, and this year we had 3, you know, and I'm like, so I said, so you don't know, And I said, you know, my my buddy was saying he was gonna have a house full of kids. It's gonna be a lot of work. I said, but I told him, you know, yeah. But you're like, those are the best memories for those kids ever. They're gonna remember those.

Jim Collison [01:32:20]:

So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. It's super good. The kids really love it. And, I gotta stop scheduling my physicals for the week after Thanksgiving, though. My my blood numbers were off the charts.

Jim Collison [01:32:33]:

My doctor was like, Are you are you trying to eat fat? Are you, like, you know and and triglycerides were up and and cholesterol was up? So I was like, okay. I need to schedule, like, the end of August. That's usually, like, a good August is a good month where I'm not, you know, in. So I'll next year, I'll schedule my physical for August and not not the 1st December Yeah. Or the the the week after Thanksgiving. That's just a horrible I used to do sometimes I do it too. I'd I'd I'd schedule the physical after we came back from a ski trip. And, of course, I'm just eating like Right.

Jim Collison [01:33:09]:

In the in the car, the whole way down and back in the ski trip. Right? And I come back and I'd be like, why are your triglycerides off the chart? And I'm like, because I drank about 8 Gallons of soda. That's why. Every restaurant, every everything you do. So yeah. Well, Okay, friend. Alright, man. I will, I will see you yeah.

Jim Collison [01:33:31]:

Thank you, and I'll see you next Saturday.

Dave Jackson [01:33:32]:

Alright. Take care.

Jim Collison [01:33:33]:

Alright. Take care. Have a good one. Bye.