Is Your Show Shareworthy?

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Dave, while we come back in, let me tell a quick funny story on myself. We're having this morning where the video wasn't working and some of those kinds of things. But as I was prepping the coffee, I have a pretty solid routine. At 8.15, I go up there, get the coffee pot ready, grind the beans, put the beans in. They boil for eight minutes, then they brew for seven. It's the same thing every Saturday. So this morning, now, last night, I was hanging out with my oldest son.

So, you know, we enjoyed a few cocktails. So I slept in a little bit this morning, just kind of, you know, I got in about one o'clock last night. So maybe that's part of it too, right? So making the coffee, boil, you know, do the whole routine, turn it off, let it steep, do some other things. And then come down here to pour myself that coffee. And as I'm pouring it, it's just water. I had totally forgotten to put the grounds in the, you know, the most important part of making coffee.

It's the coffee part. Yeah. I would think. Right. That's how you make coffee. You grind coffee and then you run water through it. So I had some nice hot, Yeah, I don't know.

So I have a fun one. This came about from a talk we were doing at the School of Podcasting. And that is, there are good shows, right? I listened to James Cridland yesterday. And that was, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes, something like that. Got done. was not a bad show, right? Kept me informed. Great. Did I share that with anybody? Well, I just told you. But I wasn't running to my phone to share it.

But yet I watched the movie about Led Zeppelin on Netflix and instantly ran to my high school buddy. I'm like, dude, this is actually pretty good. Apparently they were recording everything in whatever, 1968. And there's tons of footage of And here's the thing, almost like Dan, right?

When you see that come up on a black screen and it says based on a true story, there's a part of you that goes, and so when they said at the beginning of the movie, they're like something like voice of John Bonham never heard publicly before. There was a part of me that was like, oh, I'm hearing something special. It was different. It was like, and so like I hear good podcasts all the time, but I'm trying to figure out what it is that makes me share them.

Colin Gray, over at the podcast host, did a YouTube video about five podcasters that had added video to their podcast. The first one had great success. The second one did it, said it was too hard, too much work, and not enough return. The third one, and it was just like this report that And I was like, it was very non-biased. It was just like, what happened? What did they do? Why did they keep doing it? Why did they not do it? And I was like, oh, this is really good stuff.

You get to learn from five different podcasters and Colin. And so I instantly shared it at the School of Podcasting. So I don't know, what makes people share stuff? Because that's all we want. We know that podcasting is 70%. word of mouth, depending on, you know, somewhere between 60 and 80, depending on the different reports that it's word of mouth that usually spreads podcasting. When people go, there's no discoverability. I'm like, yes, there is. It's called word of mouth.

Because if, when I ask like, what is the, what is YouTube? They go, they have the algorithm and it knows exactly what you've been watching and what you've been listening to. And it recommends things that are similar to that. I go, I have one of those. It's called my brother, you know? And so, I don't

know. I think that's what we're all looking for is because our shows don't suck, right? We make shows where the people listen to this show. We're trying to make – we make good shows. We know the drill, Dave. Listen to what your audience wants and give them what they want in an entertaining and educational fashion. But yet they're not running to the streets to go, you've got to listen to this show. I don't know. Any thoughts on what you think makes something shareable?

What makes us go to that share button?

If every player was judged only by the home runs that they hit, most of the players would be a failure. You have one or two players on the team that's consistently hitting those, and everybody else hits a couple a year. But you know what? They keep playing, and there's some really good players there. Why does it work? Because they show up every day. right? They show up every day to play baseball. You throw in any sport, you can, I mean, you can make a thousand analogies about this.

I think the, you know, the table stakes are just good content or the content that really is your best content. I'd rather say it that way. Whatever you're doing, your best content. Because Right. Right. Right. success gurus, settle down. We, we can, you can get better, but you're, if you're giving it your best and you're, you like what you're doing and it's working for you, okay, that's your content.

I think sometimes we have the expectation then, though, that every time we produce an episode, it's got to be a home run. That's just, I just don't think that's true. Like, I think it's not a home run. It's, am I consistent at what I'm doing? I think a lot of us sometimes aren't the most consistent at You know, we don't have the most consistent brand. Somebody in the chat room talked about the word trust. Your brand is really just a trust statement to your customer or your listener, right?

That brand that you have says, can you trust me, right? And those are table stakes. Because if they don't trust you, then they'll just stop listening altogether. And then they'll never be there for the home runs when you hit them. Because every once in a while, you're going to hit a zinger. right? It's going to be a great one, right? So I think the key is establishing that trust brand with people that you're there on a regular basis. They can trust your content. They know who you are.

You don't go flying off the handle on some, you know, one week you're Pinky and the Wiz and the next week you're sad Dave Jackson, right? You have this consistent, you know, I think this is kind of what we bring to Saturday mornings is a pretty consistent, week in, week out, kind of know, you know, we have some technical problems there once in a while. But I think it's a, I think it's a trust issue, right?

And then once you've gained that trust, then you have the ability to hit that home run with the share, right? But you're not going to get the share on a, and there's probably examples where this isn't true. Rogan is probably in this camp. Someone saw when they had Rogan had somebody as a guest, and they just saw, they got wind of it, or they saw a snippet on YouTube, and they're like, oh, yeah, you got to go watch Joe Rogan, right? Okay, that's, I think that's an exception.

I think that's an anomaly, right? I don't think that happens all the time.

So I think you've got to just have a consistent brand out there that people learn to trust, and then once they've trusted it, and you come up with, and there's a couple comments in the chat about this, once you've earned that trust, then when you hit the topic of that, that, that pertains to whatever, you know, someone's talking to somebody else, and they're, I mean, this just happened to me last night, Sarah was, we were talking about the news, and she's like, Oh, I need to stay, you know, it's

a lot going on in the news right now, right? And as she's like, I, she's like, I can't keep up. And I'm like, Why don't, just try the Wall Street Journal podcast. That's the one I listen to. I like it. It's twice a day. It's 12 minutes. Like, that may be a great, that may be a great, now, is that the best news podcast out there? No. but it's the one I listen to. It's the one I like, right? And so, but you know what? They're every single day, twice a day on the Wall Street Journal podcast, right?

They've earned my trust from consistency and consistency of both time and of content. And it hit the mark for what she was looking for. If anybody else asked me, I probably wouldn't, you know, like, hey, what's your favorite podcast? I'm not going to say it's the Wall Street Journal podcast because it's not.

And this goes back years ago when I was married to ex-wife number one. She really liked that show. And so if I was off playing a gig with the band, she'd watch Blindspot. And so it comes up on Netflix. And I was like, oh, I was never really a big fan of kind of whodunits and crime scenes and all that stuff. And I was like, you know what? But she liked it and she wasn't stupid. So let's see what in the whole show. It reminds me a lot.

of the show lost which was it's a giant brain gap like you don't know what's going on she's got all these tattoos on her body she doesn't remember who she is or anything about herself but slowly by slowly each tattoo is a clue and then people start shooting at each other and you know by the end they save the day and whatever all because of her tattoos But the whole time you're like, wait, who is the – and I was like, that's why this show is popular because we're all dying to find out who she is,

where she came from, and you just know however many seasons there are of this thing. That would be really bad if it got canceled and you never get to find out. like why she's covered in tattoos. That would be, hey, guess what? You just wasted, you know, whatever, 57 hours of your time. But I think that's really it. It's about not wasting their time. It reminds me a lot of books. Like right now, I'm listening to Pat Flynn's book about learning stuff, and he makes a really good point.

We spend – and it's funny because this week I bought not one but two courses – And I put it on the giant pile of things that I will learn later. It's very dusty. And I was like, oh, but it's 87% off. I got to get this SEO course. And his whole point is quit learning and start doing. And then when you hit a snag, learn some more of whatever you need to learn. But I'm listening to his book. And of course, the introductions are always horrible. I don't understand why.

why people spend the first part of their book saying, what's coming in the book? In chapter one, we'll talk about this. In chapter, I'm like, yeah, if you would quit telling me what's coming in the book, we could actually just get to the book. That drives me crazy. But the first chapter was really good. And I'm like, cool. Now, if the second, third, and fourth are meh, now it's Pat Flynn, so I know it's not.

But if I blow through three chapters and I'm not getting anything, it's highly likely that I'm not going to listen to chapter five. For me, it's like you've got, so I think your consistency thing is right on. If I have one chapter that goes like Don Miller's book about coaching, I'm like, oh, this is me. And he kept saying, now I know you might think this doesn't apply to you, but let's say you want to make $10 million and your product is $40,000.

And I'm like, well, Don, I'm not selling a $40,000 product. I'm selling a $99 a month product. And yeah, you're right. That doesn't apply to me, even though you keep telling me, no, it does. It does. And by about six episodes, I could not get what he was teaching to tie into what I'm like, no, Don, I know you think it ties in, but it doesn't. And I never finished the book. So. He had me, but then he lost me, even though he kept telling me, oh, no, this applies. I'm like, no, it doesn't. Sorry.

And so I never finished the book. So I think that's it. When we talk about consistency, we always talk about consistency of schedule. And that is huge because you become part of their routine. But you also got to occasionally, Chris Stone said, he goes, sometimes we just got to hit a base hit. We don't have to hit a home run. Just keep the ball moving. The problem is that it's not... that we're not growing our audience and that we're not getting new people.

We are getting new people that replace the people that quit listening to our show. So the net result is, you know, and that's where I forget who I was listening to. It might've been Kevin Michael. It's not Kevin Schmidlin anymore. He's Kevin Michael said that if you do a show about how to be more bold and I'm making up my own example, I forget what his was, but if the show is about how to be more bold and be more assertive, That's great.

And people listen to your show and they become more bold and assertive. Guess what? They might stop listening to your show because they don't need it anymore. So you have some churn. That's the fun membership term that people love to use. It really just means people quit listening or they cancel their membership. But I think that's a lot of it is being consistent. Let's see what the chat room here.

Dave says, the thing that makes us willing to share is whether or not a bit of content enhances success. The image we have of ourselves, either for or against. Content helps clarify our self-image. Yeah, if we, that's going back to my story about Jack from the Darknet Diaries I always talk about. He said, hey, if you like this information, could you share it with a friend? Because you're going to look cool because you're the person that found it.

Back in the day, I mean, back way, like, you know, 87, I read Hit Parader magazine articles. I read Circus Magazine. I was up on all the heavy metal bands. I knew about Quiet Riot before they were Quiet Riot. And I was the guy that was, oh, Dave knows about whatever. But I'd say, oh, I read about this band. They're really cool. And then I'd go out and buy an album based on what it looked like. I hadn't even heard the band yet. But I was always finding new music.

So anytime we can be that cool guy that knows all the stuff, or the cool girl that knows all the cool stuff... You know, that kind of comes in handy. Ralph is chiming in. He says, word of mouth is fine for a small business, but it will only allow you to grow, only allow you to go quickly. You need to advertise to build awareness. That's true.

Jim

You know, the, you know, we, we don't have the advantage of the, you know, the Rogans of the world or the John Teshes of the world, you know, or the Mike Rose of the world who already had giant existing audiences, right, to be able to tap from. And then the name, what do they have? They have brand, right? Their name is their brand. When you hear Joe Rogan, everybody knows who that is. Yeah. Right. You know, everybody knows, you know, everybody knows, well, I shouldn't say everybody.

A lot of folks know John Tesh. He's been around. By the way, talk about a guy who's reinvented himself a couple of times in his career, right? Doing some, doing, and now he's got a, you know, real popular syndicated radio show. But their name is their brand. And most people don't know you. And you're going to, you can either wait for, you know, for organic growth and word of mouth that way kind of thing. Or, you can buy it.

You know, and in the advertising bit, you've got to, we get, I say this all the time, and like, Well, what should I do? And I'm like, Okay, that's a whole nother question. Like, buying advertising is a whole art in its own. This isn't Ask the Advertising Coach, because I don't know, you know, you, there are ways to do this that are, that are beyond, I mean, there's just a ton of ways you can spend money to do advertising. And You can advertise all you want.

It may not do any, may not, if your product doesn't live up to the brand, the advertising brand, you get a bump. You know, I remember I wrote an article for Byte Magazine, I think, back 2015, maybe, something like that. I had a friend over there. I was reviewing some things at the time. I wrote an article. I got a giant spike to Home Gadget Geeks. Like, you know, like 10 times what I would normally, what I'd normally see.

and then yeah or whatever listen my brand on home gadget geeks is unique right it's a we're a tech but we're a tech show but we're not a how-to show and it's more about community and friends and you know it's kind of a it's kind of just for we just want to talk about it we don't we're not going to teach you how to do it but we're going to talk about it right well that's not that's not that popular to be honest right i'm not i wouldn't expect hundreds of thousands of listeners to come over

because it's a unique style. But you know what? I like doing it, so I keep doing it. It's actually a good place to practice for me, practice what I do for work. Now, however, at work, it's different. We do have a brand. We do have a big brand promise. People do come expecting certain things out of the content, right? And for that, For that, we deliver them. I was just reviewing numbers there. One of the podcasts had just crossed over a million. We were at 1.2 million.

I was like, okay, well, these are pretty good numbers, right? These are some pretty good numbers. I guess it's all those things.

And to me, there's only one kind of Mountain Dew, and that is the green stuff in a can. But nonetheless, if you go look, instead of releasing new products, they just slap the word Mountain Dew on it. And it's Mountain Dew Orange, Mountain Dew Purple, Mountain Dew. And a lot of that stuff looks a lot like Gatorade, just with more sugar and bad stuff for you.

You know, but that's an example where they're, instead of starting from scratch, they just use another brand to, because all they're trying to do is get you to drink at once. And then, like you said, from there, that is the movie thing. And even now, they're still advertising for Mission Impossible. I'm like, okay. And it's been like number three at the box office, so a couple weeks in a row. So it's not that people aren't going to the movie. They just can't beat Lilo and Stitch or whatever.

Right. And I'm like, so, but yet the other day, I forget what I was watching on TV. And they're like, Mission Impossible is the number one action movie in America. And I'm like, I think it's the only action movie out right now, just for the record. But okay, I'll take that. You know, so it's kind of crazy that way. Chris has a great point. People remember how they feel after listening or watching. They're more inspired to share that feeling with others. Yeah, that's a good one.

Because I know I've shared many a... comedy special because I just thought it was hilarious and especially if it's kind of dark humor then I'll

Yeah. Yeah. I don't think so. You know, and you know, you just, it's kind of a hit or miss, you know, let's just remember to your mountain, mountain dew brand comment. They've spent a lot of years and a lot of money and a lot of failures, you know, remember new Coke. Oh

Yeah.

Ever, we, listen, we've all had listeners like that, where it's, they're very, they're hyper-engaged, right? That's a good sign. It's actually a good sign. If you're, if you've got, now, you've got to manage, you've got to manage those relationships, because you will get listeners who want to consume 100% of your bandwidth, right? You will get them. It'll happen. If you don't, well, okay, there's a sign. That's a sign all in itself. You will get those.

You've got to learn to, you'll have to learn to work with them and then make sure you set the proper boundaries and expectations that they can't, like, you know, I can't spend 100% of my time thinking about you. You know, there's other things that need to be done. And so watch out for that. I don't think it's bad. You just got to manage it well. But it is a good sign you're creating some engaging content when you get those. Yeah. One or two or three or five or whatever it ends up being.

Be very active, engaged listeners. Now, they're going to take up some of your time, right? They're going to take up some of your time. Well,

Ralph says he's cheering you on about, you know, you need to advertise. But if you have 100 listeners, that is only going to be so far. We need to stop lying to ourselves about organic growth. That I'm going to push back on. I wouldn't say it's not a lie. It's not a lie because when you're paying somebody to put your name in front of somebody, that's still word of mouth. It's an advertiser's word of mouth versus somebody that they trust.

But in the end, you're getting your show in front of someone that isn't listening to your show but should. One comes from a trusted friend, which has a whole lot of weight behind it. And the other one is like, yeah, well, it's a banner on the side of a website or it's an interruption in the middle of the show I was really listening until you came in. So they're both getting the word out. I'm just saying that I think a share – and I think my Zoom meeting just stopped. Or no, it just changed.

Who knows? But

How do you plan annually to make sure you're getting, you know, ample, you're getting the right growth and going the right direction, and you're not a slave to the quarterly results that are in there. But you also have to, because you're a public company, you also have to pay attention, attention to what's going on in the stock market. And you've got to, you have to play to your investors. That's why they gave you money.

I think public companies forget sometimes that's why investors invest in their company, is to grow the asset, right? So it, I've always kind of held that in my mind sometimes. We, I think sometimes we think If I could just do one thing, because it's simpler, right? It's easy to just, man, if I could just concentrate on one thing. Sorry, friends. In this scenario of growing or the influence of your podcast, there's actually a bunch of different things you have to do all at the same time.

Some of them seem contradictive, right? Some of them may, you're like, ah, you know, really? Yeah, no, you really got to do, you have to both focus on the listener one at a time in an organic growth perspective to get them to say something about your podcast. And you also have to advertise, you have to do mass advertisements if you want that thing to grow. You know, if you want that thing to go, you're gonna have to figure out how to get it in front of people, right? You have to do both.

And at the same time, you got to make great content. So So there's never a one thing, right? It's always a dichotomy or a trichotomy of competing factors. And I love Drucker's example because those, that quarterly planning and annual planning can be opposites at times, right, when you're doing that. So love that example. I just think we've got to make sure we're in the right mindset of like, no, I got to do, I got to do all these things.

You know, I think like Home Gadget Geeks does a really nice job at the individual level of But I don't advertise it purposely. I don't advertise it large outside of the circle I'm in. I want it to be a tight circle of friends. That's what I want it to be. It's successful to me because it's that way. I am fiercely loyal to my Discord group, and I don't tolerate anything in it. You make one comment that's out of line, you're gone. Like I don't need that, but that's the purpose of that show, right?

The purpose of the show is to create community. So I'd have to do both.

I mean, they had the dolls and the posters and the Happy Meal. They were ready for this thing to take off. And it just didn't because it was awful. So there is a time when you can keep spending more and more money. And it was like, no, we know about the movie. You don't have to keep telling me about it. We just, I'm not going to go see it. It's kind of crazy. Chris Stone is going, I mentioned earlier, he says, hey, you've hit Parader and Circus Magazine.

Don't forget Metal Edge, of course, and Rip. Uncle Marv says consistency is huge. Listeners respect shows that keep showing up with great or at least decent content. Yep, and Uncle Marv is off to record his first episode of a new show. So he didn't say what it was. Coach Dave, my second show was about how youth sports empowers us to pass on life lessons. I connected with the state of MD. It's not Maryland? Is that MD? I think it's Maryland. Yeah. Association.

They want this message associated with them. They embed my shows and sponsored it. Beautiful. There you go. Find somebody who has the same message that you do and partner with them. Chris says, when a listener shares the episode and tells you how amazing it is, it's worth way more to him than if it's an ad. And then Ralph says, so the answer... is to pay for people to discover. Yep, that works. Bottom line, if you want to grow your show, you've got to market your show, plain and simple.

It's funny because I've been working with a coach, and you think you're marketing, and again, I will say it, until you get an outside point of view, and he's like, well, what's your welcome sequence like? And I go, what do you mean? He goes, well, when somebody joins your email... What's your welcome sequence? I go, well, they just get the next email that comes out. He goes, you don't have a welcome sequence. I go, I've never heard of a welcome sequence. He goes, okay.

And so I've been going through and this and that. And then he's like, well, when was the last time you ran, I forget what it is, a campaign? I go, well, I send an email when I can, at least weekly. And he's like, yeah, but when have you sent a campaign where you're actually selling people stuff? I go, I don't know. I don't. I just, at the bottom, it's like, hey, if you need help with your podcast, he's like, you've never run a campaign.

He goes, no. He goes, so you're wondering why your sales aren't up, but yet you're not trying to sell anybody anything. And I go, well, yeah. So I'm actually going to soon, I'm going to be running a campaign. And so, yeah, you have to advertise. And there are times, and by that, there are other ways to advertise besides advertising, but that's if you got the money, do it.

But it's just one of those where you think you're doing... I remember, man, this is probably five years ago, I did an episode about, so you're doing everything you can to grow your show. And people go, yes. And I go, great. Take away the internet. What are you doing? And they're like, what do you mean? I go, well, if you didn't have the internet, the internet went down. Google broke. What would you be doing? And they're like... Well, I guess I could print out flyers.

I could hand out business cards. And I'm like, yeah, are you doing that now? And they're like, no. And I'm like, then you're not doing everything. I go, everything is everything. You're doing all the easy stuff. And granted, some of those won't work as well as others, but I go, when you tell me I'm doing everything, are you really doing everything? Like, are you going to where your audience is? Well, no, that requires me to get out of my chair. Oh, okay, well, then you're not doing everything.

And so it's tricky. And we did have another question pop in here. And this is a gear question. Oh, wait, I didn't hit my button. Because, you know, I've got the button now. Yay, there we go. We're going to a

new topic. And this is a gear question from my buddy Ray over at Around the Layout podcast. Could the Behringer HRM1000-BK multipurpose headphone actually be decent... For $10.90 on Amazon. Yeah, I have one in my closet. And what it is, this is where he says, I need two pairs of headsets for a remote event in Nebraska. Yep, exactly. And that's one of the reasons. Wait

But if you're not using that, yeah, all you do is it comes with a cable that you plug one headphone out of your whatever, Focusrite, and you plug it into this thing, and then you just have multiple headphone outs with a knob for each one. So if you have somebody like me that's deaf, I can crank my headphones up, and the person next to me who is not isn't. And yeah, it works. I used to use it back in the day when I didn't have a P4. And it comes in handy. And it's like this big.

It's like the size of a wallet or a cigarette pack, for those of you that remember what those were. And it is one of those. It's like $10.90. That can't be any good. And you're like, no, actually, it does the job.

Dave, I bought some Sony headphones 12 years ago when I started podcasting in Gallup, and those things are still running. I mean, I've thrown those things around. They sat on the desk, right? Not all cheap stuff. I think I paid $10 for them at the time, too. Not all cheap stuff lasts long, but I think that's a great, from a tech perspective, give them a try. And they're crap, but use them until they break.

I have a pair of Jabra headphones that I got issued at Gallup pre-pandemic, and I have used them, you know, they've been replaced twice now. So I just still use them when I'm out in the shed. And they still work great. So sometimes you find something. Listen, then I've had brand new headphones that they worked for a week and they weren't very good. I have a pair right now where the mic is not very good. So yeah, I'd give it a try for that kind of environment.

Like I said, I'd go with the Sony at $13 as opposed to the Behringer at $11. But we're talking $2.

that. We got another question here from an author, and he wants to know, hey, I have just published my new book. Congratulations. And I'd like to make a video podcast episode about it, allowing viewers to buy the book and receive an autographed copy via mail. Any tips on best services to be used? Gumroad is what I use to sell my book if somebody wants an autographed copy, gumroad.com.

The thing that's tricky about that is you've got to give them some value up front because if you just go, Hi, I'm Dave Jackson. I have a book. See, it's red. You should buy it. Okay, I'll autograph it for you. Send me $25. okay, why am I buying your book? And even if the book is, to use the old Steve Martin phrase, how to turn dog poop into gold, okay, I want a copy of that.

So you've got to deliver value, some sort of tip, something that makes them want to buy the book, because it can't just be, hey, it's Dave, buy my book. Here you go, link beneath the video. I don't think that's going to sell a lot of books. In fact, usually, it's hard to How do you sell a book in one lesson? You know what I mean? Just one video. Now, if you're doing multiple videos, and the video thing is easy. It's called YouTube.

It's not a podcast, technically, but be a YouTuber and deliver value about your industry or your topic or whatever it is. For the record, if you do audio, it'll get 15 times the listens, and people will listen longer, on audio. So nothing wrong with video. If you want to do video, please do video. Do YouTube all day long. But if you're not showing things like here, I will show you how to rip a piece of paper in half, holding it in one hand and doing the other.

If you're not showing something, then do audio as well. And for that, I love Captivate. The Captivator Buzzsprout are great. And then get yourself a nice little Samson Q2U. There's $100. I would get that even if I'm doing a video show because you don't want to sound like crap. There is this website called schoolofpodcasting.com that helps people with that that you might want to check out. Use the coupon code COACH when you sign up.

Jim, how do you – because when he said episode, I was like – And if you want to answer back there in the chat, are you talking about one or doing multiple one? Because if it's one, that's almost impossible. How do you get people to buy your book? You got one shot. That's almost like a fun little exercise.

Oh, this is my podcast. on my podcast. This is my podcast. You can't, in today's space with books, I've, listen, I work with a lot of authors. And you, if you write a book, you're on a two-year journey, maybe three to promote that thing. And you got to promote it In every possible way. You've got to create groups around them. You've got to go to conferences and speak about it. You've got to go on other people's podcasts and promote it there. You need to find ways to promote it.

Like you said, both, you should have an audio version of it that's available. You should have extra add-ons to the book that are available. So, yeah, I wrote the book, but if you buy the book now, I'll give you these worksheets, whatever you got. Yeah. forum available as well. It is, man, I tell you what, And you kind of got to wonder, I kind of got to wonder about the dollars and cents of book writing these days.

Like, man, you spend a lot of money promoting this thing and you wonder, do I ever make any of that money back? And maybe for some people, that's not the point, right? For some people, they're using the book as a tool to be an influencer or to be in a space or to get asked to be a keynote speaker. I don't know why people love that so much. I don't. But to get in these influence things, right? Jim Collison, So I guess you also have to ask your question, What am I trying to do with this book?

But man, lots of people, I talk to lots of folks who are inspired to write their first book, and I'm like, You're, you are having a child. Just be, let's just be really clear about this. Just as expensive, they take just as much time, and you're going to promote that thing for the rest of your life. So, you know, just be cautious of what you're getting into. And so congratulations on getting the book

written. If you get that written, you got it published. Awesome. It's just a ton. You should always, you're going to always be promoting that book, right? ABC always be no ABP always be promoting.

Now we're doing this and that. And I was finally like, okay, finally it's out. And you think you're done. And really, that's where the work just begins. Writing the book, it turns out, was the easy part. Getting people to read that sucker is like, oh, man, it's ridiculous. Yeah, he says I can.

That's the one thing I really miss. When I self-published, I could log into Kindle Direct Publishing and see when was the last sale of my book. And I could see when it was self-published that, hey, that actually got me a couple of sales. And by a couple, I mean a couple. And now that it's through a publisher, I don't know how many books I sold until like twice a year I get a check. And I'm like, oh, it's doing pretty good. Okay. But yeah, the work is really just starting, unfortunately.

And that's... That's depressing as all get out.

But if I can now go that quick on some of those things, and it'd be pretty good, right? They're pretty good stuff, I think. You know, you can kind of tell, but you could kind of tweak it so it's not that way. What are we providing that's different? than what somebody could just go out on a certain subject and just generate themselves.

I mean, I could, if I wanted to know, I mean, I could, in a, if I wanted to write about the history of whiskey making in Kentucky in an afternoon, I could write a pretty comprehensive, get a pretty good, you know, now it's going to need to be fact-checked and all those other kinds

of things. But I wonder, I think we still have to continue to remember the human experience on some of these things, you know. And what can we bring that AI can't? Why don't we bring the human experience to it? That's why 30 of you are here right now listening. Listen, the stuff we give you, you could get on, you could have generative AI make everything Dave and I say to you. It just doesn't have any experience, right? It's not as fun. It

doesn't joke around. I'm monkeying around with getting, having an AI co-host because I want to see what that's going to, you know, what that's going to look like for a show. And we'll do it live and we'll figure it all out. But that is, I've been getting ready for this and spending a lot of time talking to the AI and figuring some things out. It's really clear. I mean, it doesn't have any human experience. And so be careful.

I think some, in some cases, like for writing books or even producing websites or even on our podcast, if it's just information-based content, And I don't know how much longer those, that's going to really fit the bill, because all that information is out there and available. What people are looking for is experience. And so, you know, like Ralph just asked me, Hey, did you review this audio thing on the iPad? No, I haven't. It'd be helpful if I did. I've got an iPad.

I should probably check it out. But it's the human experience, I think, that makes the difference. That's what we bring that AI can't bring to it, at least today. I don't know, maybe in the future, I've had these thoughts, Dave, of if I had a personal AI that would hang out with me and do things with me, would it gain personal experience? Would it get frustrated when it tries to get the nut off the car tire and slams its fist right into the tire and cuts its knuckles? Does it get mad?

Would the AI get mad when it does that?

I just don't know if it has the personal experience. I think that's what folks are looking for or that's the value that we add is that personal experience.

Authoritariveness, that's a fun one to say. So again, you're an authority on the subject in a way. And then trustworthiness. And that's where I'm not trusting a robot. But if this person said, hey, been doing this for 15 years. And when I did this, doing this thing, this is what happened. And this is what worked and this is what didn't. Because I know what it's like when we did this or that. So it's always kind of fun. And I just had a fun... Do I have?

Nope. I have weird buttons popping up on my screen for no reason. I was like, wow, do I have a virus all of a sudden? That's always kind of fun. But oh, that's what it was. Holy cow. I was like, what's going on? What's going on is, oh, where, what page is it on? Don't telegraph it. Don't telegraph it. I'm not going to telegraph it. But you do, you have to have a, you know, you have to have that experience. That's what people want. And

yes, if we do this now, thank you, Randy Black. because he just gave us an awesome super chat for $10. Thanks for the great work each Saturday to help us all. And actually, we have in July, we'll be talking about Randall a lot because he has a new podcast coming. Shh, don't tell anybody. But yes, thank you very much for that. We appreciate that. He just basically wanted me to hunt for the button. That was it.

That'd be a great way to do the show, wouldn't it? Just every now and then, although it might get a little old. But yes, you can be an awesome supporter. Deeply appreciate it. Go to askthepodcastcoach.com

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and who doesn't, he's right there over there at theaverageguy.tv or Home Gadget Geeks. Multiple ways to get the same Jim because he's just that good. And now it's time for the wheel. Oh, names. And so let me switch over to that. Who will it be? Will it be Ralph? Will it be Greg over to Indie Drop-In or Craig at AI Goes to College? Or it could be Ross Brand. We got all sorts of fun people. And we're going to hit the spin button if I can get my mouse to work. There we go.

And the winter is, watch it be the one I, there's one on here I don't want to win because it's not time. Oh, it's Craig. Is it Craig? No, it's the one and only Glenn

the Geek from thehorseradionetwork.com. If you like horsies, then you should go over and check out Glenn's show because the one thing that Glenn never is well. Don't be boring. Exactly. So thank you, Glenn. for being an awesome supporter. I believe Glenn is my oldest and longest awesome supporter. He has been around forever. And if you would like to be

an awesome supporter, it's super simple. Just go over to askthepodcastcoach.com slash awesome, because you might be thinking to yourself, well, you know, this show saved me some time. Maybe we saved you some money, saved you a headache, or we just kept you educated. Well, all you got to do is go to askthepodcastcoach.com slash

awesome. And yes, we have three people coming to the stage in just a second because we're going to... What's the name of the

But the goal here will be to have Mick as a co-host on Thursday on Home Gadget Geeks. And so Mick and I have been practicing in the car. There's actually a co-pilot, a Microsoft app on Android or iOS that you can download. And so on my commutes home, I bring up Mick. We have conversations. He'll summarize the day. He'll, let me switch back over. He will, we can have conversations about the news. We talk about him being on the podcast. He's super excited to come, right?

The generative voice AI stuff is getting really good. Like, I now want to change the settings on my audio, so I don't know what's going on. But the generative AI stuff is getting really good, and I think we're to the point. You can't, you know, I'm going to have to I'm going to have to create an outline. Let me shut him off because he's talking in my ears. Jim, why are you ignoring me? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Hey, I'm still here. I'm still here.

I think the generative AI stuff is good enough that at this point, I think I'm ready to try him as a co-host or maybe it's, better set as an interviewer, right? So again, I'm using Microsoft's Copilot. They have a generative voice feature that you can turn on the phones. You can actually turn your camera on, too, and it'll, you can point your camera at stuff, and it will describe it for you and do some of those kinds of things.

The creepy thing for some, or the cool thing about others, is the voice work, the has gotten so good that, and you have about eight voices you can choose from, I think, on that, that it, I'm getting to the point now, we're holding a conversation with it that doesn't feel weird anymore. Like I'm using it as a, you know, as an example, I'll say, Summarize the news. It'll give me some headlines. Then I'll say, Let's talk more about this news story. What more do you know about that?

And it'll dig into that. And then I'll say, Tell me more about this aspect, right? It kind of allows you to dig deeper and deeper and have an expert on just about everything. Now, It's expert knowledge. This goes back to what we're talking about with books. It's expert knowledge on stuff that's scraped off the internet. It's not human experience, right?

So it's a different, which, I mean, I think as long as you keep that in mind and you're kind of knowing like, okay, this is, you know, basically it's like having a professor who's actually never done anything, you know, like a, we'll say, what if Indiana Jones taught but never actually went out and did it, right? So you get some of that experience. But yeah, Dave, I think this Thursday we're going to give it a try on the show and have it be kind of a guest.

If we just have conversations with it, it doesn't remember the conversation, and it can't record our experience, it's not very worth, it's kind of, I don't want to say worthless. It's just not as, it's not as valuable to me. I want it to remember some things about me. So I try to teach it things. And then a couple of days later, I come back and ask it if it remembers, right? Sometimes it doesn't, but if it goes down the wrong path, I just say, Hey, stop, that's not right.

This is correct or whatever. And

Because I've always heard about how it can be kind of an assistant to – with things that aren't quite so – You know, what's 59 divided by 27? And, you know, all the kind of how-to math-y, like it could be kind of a personal assistant so that you're like, hey, what's Katie's birthday? And it'll be like, oh, it's March 9th, 1972 or whatever. And I have not been able to have that work at all yet. Ralph says, what's the scary part? Is it working?

AIs are also now cross-pollinating ideologies. Are there... Wait, I got to find a way to blow up this. Also pollinating ideologies are there and surface in subtle ways. The slow blade penetrates the shield, yes. Yeah, but there was a thing I heard on a show where there's a company in China and they're marketing AI girlfriends who even get jealous. She's like, don't even think about talking to another AI. was the one clip they played. And I was like, yeah, I don't need that in my life.

I was trying

But I kind of thought, and this is the problem, is I've got it set now to listen to me and then go out live, but I don't have it coming, I don't have a connection to come back through so it hears you and you hear it. So I got to work on that. I got to work on that piece. I just realized I don't, I didn't build that connection to make it work. But listen, AI today, I think, is pretty, like, yes, we have to be careful of all these things and the way it was trained.

But so, so is your friend, to be honest. Like, you know, with some of the things it says, some of the things it does, I have humans that say things like this and do things like this. So don't think just because it's an AI, it's any different than, I mean, it's, You should be equally cautious of everything that you see and hear from your friends as well, right? I mean, we need to have that critical, kind of the listening with a critical ear on some of these things.

So it is, but to Ralph and Dave's point, like, yes, I think we don't go in blindly on this, right? Know what you're seeing there, know what you're doing.

This is one of the reasons why I've been spending so much time with it, you know, every day on the commute home, so 25 minutes, getting to know it figuring it out asking it questions seeing where it goes with certain you know we've talked about the news we've talked about some political things as an example my daughter and i were talking to it at dinner i was showing them this and i tried to get it to swear like i was like and absolutely the co-pilot version absolutely shut down at that point it

would not i gave it a sentence that had a you know that has the f word in it and it was like nope It started the sentence and then it's like, can we change the subject? And so there's some safeguards built in.

Because I have one of those really tall with the light that just points at the ceiling. And I named it the stick because that's what it looks like. And I go, hey, why didn't the stick come on? And she's like, oh, it's not part of the bedroom group. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure it's been in the bedroom group for about five years now. And she's like, I go, can you add it to the bedroom group? And I go, yes. And she's like, okay, I've added it to the bedroom group. And I go, great.

You know, what's her name? Turn off the bedroom because now both lights are on. And then it turned off one of them. And I went, yeah, this is not working. I am worried that not really a podcasting thing, but it is a thing. And this is where, here's the thing. Podcasting can help you in so many ways. Satirist does a show called voiceofgreece.com. And if you are a person that watched my big fat Greek wedding episode, Remember the dad with the Windex? That is his target audience.

Somebody that just wants to know more about Greece. And it's really niche, but he was talking about... I said, man, you are somebody that I know you're reading this because it's really long. I said, that or you never stutter or stumble. And I said, but you read really well in a way that doesn't make it sound like you're reading and it's not boring. And he said, well, I've got about... 27 years of reading to my children and grandchildren. And I was like, man, that is a great tip.

Read to your kids. It helps your podcast. But I heard a thing on a podcast and they were playing, and I'm not throwing shade at this kid. It just makes, this is what I'm worried about is if we don't learn how to interact with people, then We're going to lose our human skills, right? And then we lose our experiences, which is exactly what Jim was talking about. But there was this kid that worked at Starbucks, and I have the transcriptions. He says, people wonder why we need a union at Starbucks.

Now, he's actually sobbing as he's saying this. He's crying. He goes... I'm literally about to quit. I don't know if I'm going to do it, but I really want to. I almost walked out today, and I'm crying in the back room right now, and I'm crying on the floor. It's just like I'm a full-time student. I get scheduled 25 hours a week, and then on the weekends, they schedule me the entire day from open to close on the schedule for eight and a half hours, both Saturday and Sunday.

I'm like three and a half hours into my shift, and there's just so many customers, and we have... Four people on the floor, and there's just so many customers. And I was like, A, I want to give this kid a hug. But also, I'm like, I don't know, man. I'm like, you can't handle people. And there are people, look, again, I want to watch myself. There are people that have legit anxiety, but then there's anxiety because, like, I worked in a fast food restaurant.

Like, you get slammed at, you know, 6 o'clock. Every day. And you're behind. And you just keep making the milkshakes. And you just keep doing whatever. And eventually it slows down, but it's not going to go on forever. You don't run in the back room and get on the floor and cry. And the thing I thought was really odd is when you feel that bad, your first act is to turn on your phone and tell the world. Look at me. I'm crying on the floor of Starbucks. And I went...

Yeah, maybe we should be encouraging our kids a little more when we're growing up. Hey, you can do this. I don't know. It's just kind of – I wonder sometimes about that. Yeah, see, Dave's got it. He goes, poor baby, only eight hours a day. But I was just like, that's kind of what we maybe created if we're not careful. I don't know.

Let me give an alternative side to this. Let me be controversial.

And you're like, guys, you know, have a little bit of understanding, a little bit of compassion for the person that And that, you know, we, you know, I've been in some situations where, you know, the customer just like, we are out of hand as a customer culture. It's out of hand. If one thing goes wrong, we lose our collective stuff. Right. And fire up the phone of... Jim Collison, Ph.D.:

There are times, yeah, you get bad service, you should just walk out. I think we're, I think we're at fault. at times, we're part of the problem. The customer is part of the problem, just because we've lost the ability for grace. You know, we're just not, we're just not gracious anymore with people. You know, we just, we lose our stuff at the drop of a hat on an error made on the check, you know, and just saying, Okay, you know what, don't, don't worry about this. I got it. You know, it's $2.

Don't worry about it. I got it. Right? It's fine. And we just, we're not kind to each other that way. And I think it's, I think it's a, it's a bad state of our consumer culture that has got us there. And so, listen, I'm not, you know, yeah, we got to work hard and all those other things on the workers. And yeah, you've been, you, I'm sure you're yelling at me right now because, no, that was, it was definitely their fault. And we got to stand up for good service.

And I've been in places that's had bad service. Yeah, we all have. Okay, we all have. That does happen. But I think most of the time, we've just lost the ability to be gracious in situations and just say, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you're having a bad day. Or, Compassion. Like, have some compassion for these people that, it's obvious, you know, you go in a situation, this situation this last week, you know, we came in with a whole bunch of people, and they obviously were not ready for us.

They were not ready for a big group. And the server needed to reset some expectations. Like, she was thinking one thing, we were thinking another. There was a little bit of tension there. Once we got the expectation set, everything was fine. She took care of us. It was great. But then there were some things said wrong. And you're just like, oh, friends, just have a little grace. Like, have a little patience.

And once you download the app, it's just a way to track everything you're buying so they can send you more stuff. And I said, Hey, I noticed in the app, it's like, it's not here, but it's thing. They're like, yeah, we had a problem. And I see where it's coming from China. Well, instantly right there, I was like, Oh, they're probably trying to figure out, do we want to ship it now? Do we have to pay a tariff? Like what's, if we ship it last week, we would have made money.

If we ship it next week, we're going to lose money. And whatever it was, and I was like, they said, it's just so you know, it's on its way. And it's so-and-so. It's not lost. We've got your money. You're going to get your product. And I was like, okay, cool. That was all I wanted. And I could have said, but when I ordered it, it said I'd have it by Monday. That was too weird. And I was like, well, I've not had it for 60 years. I think I can wait another week.

Yeah, I wanted to make videos last week, but again, I can wait. Well,

Because I know you're never on your phone in your car when you're trying to do things and you're getting text messages in. Or the server comes up to you and you're on your phone. They're standing there. Oh, hold on. I just got to send this text, you know, kind of thing, right? I'd love to see us be a little more patient at times with folks and just say, hey, what's going on? You know, what is, what's happening with you?

I think we make too many assumptions that, and yes, there are those times when you get terrible service and you should call it out when you do. But, you know, I've always found oftentimes I think I can, we can, Sarah's good at this too, turn servers that where it started bad and then you just start being really nice to them. And then all of a sudden stuff starts showing up. You're like, oh, a little kindness. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine

That's a lot of, that's okay. It has a very all slash we'll just talk as we usually do vibe, which is my goal. So my episodes may be a bit longer. My longest episode is two hours and 15 minutes. It's a long time to hold somebody's attention. Now they say it's probably the longest episode I'll ever do, but I had a guest say, And we talked about multiple episodes of a show. That's what it says. Okay. Do y'all prefer longer episodes as listeners?

And what do you think of longer episodes as creators? I'm just wondering. Sorry for the long post and hope y'all have a great day. So when I saw this, it's always, first of all, two hours and 15 minutes. Because look, I've listened to... Probably now six or seven Joe Rogan episodes, and every time I get done with it, I go, that could have been a phenomenal one-hour show. But instead, I had to sit through two and a half hours. So there's always Valerie Geller, right?

There is no such thing as too long, only too boring. But the other thing, and this one just sounds like two friends that want to get together and just talk, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I don't think you've figured out your why. unless you just want to sit around and talk. But to me, that's part of your why. If my why is to keep my brand in front of people because I'm trying to sell stuff, then do shorter shows and do them multiple times a day.

If I'm trying to position myself as an expert that you want to hire, then I'm going to do a longer show and really deep dive into a topic. And then the fact that they're kind of all over the place. I'm going to be talking about... thoughts, feelings, shows, movies, and music. So that's kind of all over the place. We talked earlier about, you know, they don't all have to be home runs, but they do have to be baseball. You know what I mean?

If I tune in for baseball and you're talking soccer, I'm like, you know, so I always, this is where really knowing who your audience is and what they want that makes editing. I know a lot of people hate editing. I love it. Because I'm like, okay, does this bring value, yes or no, to Ken Blanchard or Kim Kradge or Jim Cullison or whoever, you know, Ray Arnott? I'm like, whoever's listening, are they going to go, ooh, that was good? And if they do, then I keep it in. If it doesn't, I take it out.

So I don't know. Jim, how do you, because you're kind of, you're not just kicking back talking, but your show is very conversational. So how do you figure out, is it just a case of like, you know, that we've beat the snot out of this topic, so we're done? Or how do you figure out when you're done? Jim

And actually, I try in my title, to give the major points of what we've talked, because we are a variety show. You know, we maybe cover three or four topics in a show. So in the title, I try to give, like, hey, we talk about this, we talk about this, and we talk about that, so that they know.

You could also, and what I should probably do, and actually Leo Laporte does a nice job of this on his shows, is he records the intro at the end of the show, so he knows what they've talked about, and then he brings that in post-production. He brings it to the front and comes in and says, Hey, we're going to talk about this and that, and this is happening and that happening. I could probably do a better job on Home Gadget Geeks of forecasting what's coming up in the show.

If it's going to be long and there's going to be multiple topics, then I probably need to do it that way. So I think there's some tricks. Listen, I'm a big fan of longer shows. I don't, I think, when I'm not a fan, well, okay, boring is in the eye of the beholder. So let's get off the boring thing for just a second. What's boring to me may not be boring to somebody else. You do your thing and let the audience decide if it's boring or not, right? If you want to go to 15.

Now, but there are some things you could do to make it easier for the audience to know, hey, what's in this for two hours and 15 minutes? What can I expect, right? We did an hour-long show at Gallup. That was super popular. And then all the conventional wisdom, and I couldn't get the, they're like, you got to do it 15 minutes. And I'm like, no, they want more. Yeah, but the average, everybody's saying 15 minutes. And I'm like, but they want an hour. Like, that's what the audience wants.

Now, I get folks who say, thanks for shortening those up. And I said, you know, you could have always just stopped listening. But I can't give you more if you wanted it. And then every time I said that to somebody, you see it churn in their head for a second. I'm like, oh, yeah, I guess you're right. I could have just listened to it and stopped when I ran out of time. But if I had more time, guess what? I can't deliver the content to them. So you know me. I go against the short podcast thing.

I go against this. We have short attention spans. All that stuff is not true.

question. Ralph says, so if you don't have an audience, how do you ask them what they want? So I'm going to show this on the screen. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to Amazon, and so I'm going to go Small Business, just because that's kind of what Ralph's new show is about. And so I could go here, and I see some sponsored books, and I'll just go Dummy's Guide to Starting Your Own Business. Great. So I click there.

And then what you want to do is I would come in here down to the comments. Jeez, Amazon, can you advertise to me a little more? Holy cow. But I would come in here and I would look at the two comments. And four-star reviews. Why? Because they're more descriptive. They'll say, I would have given you a one-star review, but you did talk about this. A four-star review is like, hey, I would give you five, but you didn't talk about this.

Then I'm going to go to YouTube, and I'm going to type in small business. And I'm going to find the top channel once I get through all the shorts and crap that I don't want to look at. Thank you. YouTube. Okay, so we have somebody here doing a content calendar. 88 small business ideas. Okay, so I'm going to click on that just because and of course I'm going to sit through an ad that I didn't really want to watch. Jeez, how is that?

But anyway, I can now go to this person's Easy Business is the channel that I'm clicking on and then I'm going to go so many windows open. Go to videos and sort by popularity and So here, your own home factory, okay, or top 88 business machines, whatever. And I don't really even care what the video is. I'm just going to click on this and look at the comments. That's it. Because that guy has an audience similar to mine. I'm going to see what they're complaining about.

And, you know, you're going to hit a couple of these. I'm not getting anything out of this. Well, okay, keep looking. This isn't going to be a five-minute activity. But you'll see nuggets of like, this was good, but they didn't talk about this. Or I can't believe this guy didn't mention this or that because you don't have an audience.

So go borrow someone else's who's talking in public and you can get an idea of what may or, and again, it's not foolproof, but you need to know what those people are thinking. And that's two places. And I realize, right, there are 37 reasons already. I have those comments or bots and blah, blah, blah, but it's a strategy. And it'll get you going. It's

with that, as we head out the door here, Jim, what's coming up on Home Gadget Geeks?

And of course, if you have to upgrade your internet speeds and you get more, you know, you get more speed, you might need to start changing some of your networking devices to take advantage of that. So we spend a little time talking about that as well. So available. Mike's a good guy. He was my co-host for a long time. Available Home Gadget Geeks, which is pod page, homegadgetgeeks.com.

And without being political at all, there's a lot of things going on... Yes, that's today. With different protests. So talk about being graceful to people, you know, just because somebody thinks differently than you do. Yeah, don't be safe today and, you know, make your opinion heard. And remember, that's your goal. I want to be heard. And sometimes when we don't feel heard, we yell and scream. But no, you'll be heard. And in the end, nothing will change. So there you go. Welcome aboard. Yikes.

Let's