What Do We Need to Stop the Scroll?

You didn't build your business the easy way, and this podcast, well, it doesn't pretend it's easy. Hosted by Ralph Estep Jr., a seasoned accountant, entrepreneur, and business coach with over 30 years of real-world experience, Grit and Growth Business is for small business owners who build it from scratch and are still fighting to make it work.

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Again, visit his website, gritandgrowthbusiness.com for tools, resources, and coaching. If you're tired of overnight success stories and ready for the real strategies that grow businesses, go over there, click on the follow button because you are just getting started. So Ralph, thank you so much for being an awesome There it is. It's that music that means it is Saturday morning. It is time for Ask the Podcast Coach, where you get your podcast questions answered live.

I'm Dave Jackson from theschoolofpodcasting.com, and joining me right over there, the one and only Jim Cullison from TheAverageGuy.tv. Jim, how's it going, buddy?

You know what? We missed the happy Memorial Day last week.

We remember those things that you'd print out or you'd go, you'd drop off a little film thing and then you'd go pick up an envelope full of these paper things that had pictures on them. I don't know what they are, but she had some of those printed and we framed those up and I So yeah, it was good. Very good birthday. So thanks for the wishes.

Memorial Day is where we remember those who are no longer with us.

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Tell him Dave and Jim sent you.

I think you got to scroll down. Dave, I think we can't see that because it's off to the right there. That's not showing on the screen, but you can check it out today. It's a good looking site. It really is. Yeah, it really is. You can see the latest episode beyond the true story, not a real enemy with Robert Wolf. You can request an episode, check it out today based, look at that artwork there. Isn't that cool? Based on a true story, based on truestorypodcast.com.

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had asked a question about social media. And I've always kind of said social media, the more I look into it, it's not that it's a waste of time. It's a great way. To me, I'm starting to think of it like a commercial for your show. It's something that reminds you. I remember there's a TV show here in the U.S. called The Connors. And it just went off the air. They had their big finale thing. It used to be Roseanne back in the day.

And I saw so many commercials where it was like, the final episode of The Conners is coming up and blah, blah, blah. And Tracker, there's another TV show that every time I turn on TV, they're reminding me to watch Tracker, which coincidentally, I just found out is the number three show, I guess, on CBS or whatever. So that promotion helps. And I think that's kind of what social media is. Like, I'll give you an example. So I was like, huh.

So I thought what I would do this morning is I got kind of I try to step out of me and go look at what I do when I do social. So for me, I'm still, you know, whatever you want to call it. I know there's some really bad things on social. X, but for me, a lot of my audience is still there and it's hard for me to walk away from however many thousands of people are following me.

So I start to scroll down and I see a picture of Doug Pinnock from King's X, which is fun because I'm wearing a King's X shirt today. Henry Winkler doesn't like carrot cake. These are the valuable things you're learning.

Adam Curry was live yesterday, but there was this thing, Daniel J. Lewis had said, hey, I might be changing my opinion on having episode numbers at the beginning of... the show title and so I replied I'm like I don't think that's a good idea and then I was scrolling down I see where Tom Rossi from Buzzsprout is at some conference but I'm still scrolling I'm like I'd stop to talk to Daniel because Daniel's a great friend of mine and I love everything he does and I'm scrolling down and I'm like

okay I see Doug's going to be playing bass for somebody and I'm scrolling and somebody went to bed before 10 okay and then there's Chris from Podtastic and I'm scrolling and I'm scrolling and nothing's really catching my eye and And then I finally, I'm like, about this time, normally I would be gone. But then I see Matt Cundall, and I'm like, oh, I like Matt. And then, but he's talking about something, some guy's teaching English, and I'm like, nope.

Then I see Rob Greenlee's talking about video. And I was like, okay, am I going to watch that there, though? No, but I might go over and watch that later. And then finally, when I get down here, because of course there's some political stuff, and I was like, wait a minute. Joe Rogan interviewed Bono. And that's when I stopped because A, it's probably three hours of Bono. I love U2. I love, well, I don't love Bono.

That's kind of why I wanted to hear it because Bono can be kind of a, I don't know, he's got opinions that I don't always agree. And then it's three hours of that. And I'm hoping that it's going to be An interesting conversation. And you never know with Joe. Sometimes Joe has, but that was one that stopped the scroll. I was like, oh, because I don't really, I don't even subscribe to Joe Rogan.

When that happens, if somebody says, oh, did you hear, you know, so-and-so, like I just, there's a really funny British comedian that lasts really weird. I forget his name, but he was on because he has a new show out. And I watched about 15 minutes of that and went, yeah, no. But Bono made me stop the scroll. So with that said, if you want people to stop the scroll, you got to have something that, A, I can't get anyplace else.

I can't get, you know, Jimmy Fallon's not doing a three-hour interview with Bono. It just, to me, that was like, okay. So the things there that made me stop were my friends doing something interesting, and it was a conversation. It wasn't like Daniel wasn't like, go listen to my episode. He was actually being social on social media. But the thing that made me like, oh, I am going to go listen to that later. So again, it's a commercial. Coming this week on Joe Rogan, Bono. So I don't know.

To me, that's where you'll notice if I were to go back and look, probably 80% of that I just scrolled on by. And so that's what people are doing. Some people call it doom scrolling. Cause a lot, like we saw there was a thing there with Elon Musk and I'm sure there was plenty of activity on that. But as I was scrolling, most of it, I'm just like, yep. Okay. Yep. And then I see the one thing and I was like, oh, okay.

Yeah. And then, so I don't know, thoughts, Jim, is that kind of what, is that what

you do on social?

I, you know, who knows, but we threw it out there and tested it and measured it. And I guess the point of this is do social, have some metrics behind it. I mean, if you enjoy doing it, if it's fun for you, just keep doing it. Like, do it the way you want. If you enjoy it, if you're doing it to, you know, to get an effect, get an ROI, if you need to do it for your job or whatever, it'd be great to probably have some metrics of tracking these. How is it working? How are people engaging?

What are they doing? We made a decision to move away from that you know, from that voice content and are going to just pop in the words up on the screen and that those were performing a lot better. So I'm with you. I, listen, I think the best social we get is one-on-one

conversations with real people. Like I, I had built these big groups and they had gotten a little squirrely on me. Like the groups kind of, You know, you get these big groups, then you got to start doing some heavy moderation because people are people, you know, and they start doing, you know, different things or we had some problems with just outright moderation. advertising in our groups. Like, everybody was just advertising to everybody about everything.

And you're like, guys, it's not a swap meet. Like, there's other places to go do that. Like, we're here for conversation. I switched my methodology last year to more individual one-on-one. Now, that's hard. Like, on LinkedIn, I have 22,000 connections now. And I try to interact with my customer As much as I can one-on-one. Listen, I love the groupthink, but man, groupthink can get away from you sometimes too. Oh, yeah. Groups do terrible things when they get incited, right? So I'm changing.

I have been changing my philosophy for more one-on-one. We'll see. It's so far so good, right? I mean, it's more work. It's a little more work. But those one-on-one conversations are a little more engaging, right, in that, and they're a little more helpful. And you don't get, I don't have, you know, we see this all the time in the podcast space. Somebody asked a question. three of the answers are more confusing than the person who is asking the question. Right.

And then there's always agendas tied to them. And, you know, everybody's, you know, asking any podcast group, you know, or should I host? Do people still ask that question?

Because I know on YouTube TV, on my TV, when I kind of go to the next thing and I haven't clicked, I want to watch the video. It'll start playing automatically. Quite a bit of it. And I can figure out, do I want to watch this or not? And then the amazing Jeff See totally, he says, I also think Dave hit on something really important. Your friends, community is going to be even more important with the rise of AI. Absolutely.

I just, the AI thing, every, speaking of YouTube, every time I look for anything on YouTube, it's just that AI voice thing. Zooming in on pictures from Amazon. And I'm like, I want an actual person holding the product. One other thing I should throw in, since we're talking about social and where this came from, two things. This one, let me share my screen here real quick. I'll read this. It says it's been, I've been podcasting since 2019 and truly enjoy it. So that's, let's just stop there.

You're having fun. Let's not overlook that. As it's a passion project, I've had little growth, but I put literally no effort into marketing or growth. So let's look at that sentence. I've had little growth, but I put no effort into growth. So we've kind of answered that question. I find guests that I find fascinating reach out and book discussions. I do it all myself, including all audio and video editing. I started a YouTube channel a while ago. I'll stop there.

This week on the School of Podcasting, I'm interviewing Thomas Umstadt, Jr. Just because it's fun to say Umstadt. Can you have a more German name? I love that. And he's an audio guy that started a YouTube channel, and he's sharing the insights. So that's coming up on the School of Podcasting. But in this case, Dude Vizzle says, I started a YouTube channel a while ago and push out clips and full episodes out to the channel from my show feeds.

My dream is to grow just enough, to monetize just enough, to pay someone to be my social media and marketing manager, slicing up clips, publishing them every other day or so on all social platforms. I have no interest in doing that myself. Well, for the record, you know, castahead.net will do that for you. I have no interest in doing that myself. If someone has recommendations, please share. But I just thought it was interesting that he was, we lost Jim, right? Well, that was interesting.

I saw that and I was like, well, what happened to Jim? And I was like, he's not there. Jim's not here, Dave. Jim's not here. And so I thought that was kind of interesting that his goal there was I really need social. And that's fine. Social is a great place to be social. But on the other hand, it's in terms of growth. We haven't really seen that. The other thing I thought I would talk about when it comes to social is is my buddy Satoris, a member of the School of Podcasting, and he's back.

And do I have to assign you now? No, you're back. Okay. Is another thing about Social Gym that just came out this week. I talked to him last night because of that whole unlimited consulting thing that I do. Satoris over at The Voice of Greece, he's just started this podcast called And he said something that was really like, I guess there was a volcano or something happened in Greece. And somebody said, well, why didn't they move the people?

And he said, well, on the beaches and stuff, they don't have sirens. That's not the way it works in Greece. It's not there. So he was giving kind of boots on the ground kind of, you know, knowledge. And for some reason, unbeknownst to him or me, he lost his channel on Twitter. Like they just banned him, blocked him, no kind of appeal. And he's just like, you know, and he had thousands of people following on him forever. So be careful when you're, you know, putting your group on Facebook.

Because I know Paul G lost 84,000 people on Facebook. And I was like, what's weird is I still don't get why Paul rebuilt his group on Facebook. I'm like, Paul, what are you doing? Let me introduce you to Heartbeat. I

I don't, I can't see this long-term. I've got some things going on to try and maybe build a, you know, to build a group internally or cause I, you know, I just, yeah, I can't, I just don't want to go into another platform. Right. You know, so, okay. So it's not Facebook. Then what are we moving to? And then, you know, it's just another platform.

I want people to go over to Heartbeat because I've had people say it's another app. I go, it's also a website. You don't need to install the app. And for me, when you move your group, I remember when – I want to say Don Miller, but that's not right – He does 38 Days to the Work You Love. I have to look up his name. That's going to drive me nuts. Maybe it's Dan Miller. And Don Miller is the guy. Yeah, Don Miller. We'll figure it out later. This is why you don't do a live show.

But anyway, it's Miller. I'm pretty sure that's it. Moved his group from Facebook to something. I think he used Mighty Networks. And he said he lost like 60% of his group. He goes, but the people that were there were really there. Like they were there to do that and they were engaged. And it was, he said it was a much better group. It was just much smaller. But it's, that's a huge ego hit to lose, you know, 70% of your group. It's like, ouch. For sure.

He says, that's why I'm going to create a community of my own, just not willing to pay the $28,000 for a community that was the private label cost I was quoted yesterday. Only $28,000. That's all. Buy one, get one free, maybe. I don't know. Holy cow. Yeah, anytime you do white-labeled stuff, Because I know there's a white-labeled version of Heartbeat, and it's not cheap. So, you know, that's kind of tricky. The other thing, I have a clip. There's a guy named Rick Beato.

And if you go to the YouTubes and search for Dave Gilmore, won't come on my show. Now, Rick Beato has millions of subscribers. He's got billions, billions, I say with a B, of views now. And what I loved about it is if you Google that, if you Google, if you search on YouTube, Rick Beato, and Beato is B-E-A-T-O, Rick Beato, Dave Gilmore, you see the video from eight months ago that says, Dave Gilmore, by the way, is the lead guitar player of Pink Floyd, won't come on my show.

And then you'll see in the, also in the same search results, you will see where Dave Gilmore came on his show two months after that video. But if people talk about, I know we all talk about, especially in the U.S., you know, the nighttime talk shows, the Jimmys, right? The Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, the other guy from Comedy Central that I can't remember. Well, who is that guy on CBS? See, I don't even watch it. I can see he has jet black hair.

Anyway, but again, he's left such an impression on me. And he got really – well, both he and Kimmel got really political. Seth Meyers? Nope. Seth Meyers is on later. Man, he's got black horn-rimmed glasses. I can see his face. Oh, Colbert. Colbert, yes. Colbert, yeah. And so anyway, this is Rick Beato. Now, this is kind of a long clip. So Jim and I are going to stare at each other awkwardly as we listen to this.

But he's explaining – because he said – He had Sting on his – well, again, YouTube podcast on his channel. And he got more views of that interview than if you – because Sting has also been on the Jimmys and on Colbert. And if you add all their views together, they don't even come close to the views of Sting on his channel. And this is him explaining why – in this case, he's saying how YouTube is outperforming TV – And I would just say this is why podcasts are better than TV.

That didn't freak me out. I know that Dominic joined the band in 1990. I knew the whole history of him being in the band. He came on the Soul Cages record. He came in. He's been playing with Sting ever since. In addition, I interviewed Dominic here later on. That video has two and a half million views.

All the things that I asked, what instruments they played on there, who produced, how long did it take to write the song, how long did it take to record it, how far apart did the people stand? Like when I interviewed Ron Carter, when you did a Miles session, how far apart did you guys stand from each other? Did you rehearse for it? What's the difference between playing with McCoy Tyner or Herbie Hancock on the piano? What's the difference between playing with Elvin Jones or Tony Williams?

Ron Carter is the only person really that can answer those questions. And these are the ones that I ask. So what's the difference?

I forget who I was listening to, but they were talking about being on Letterman and how something happened in their first segment and how sometimes the guests will lean over and Dave will say something and you can't hear it because they're already going to commercial. And basically, Dave was just like, it doesn't matter.

We're just going to ask the questions on the card and it's like it's no... I've heard, not Craig, but Craig Ferguson, explain that one of the things that really burnt him out was he had to interview people he had no yearning to interview at all. It's like, here, you're going to interview the new pop princess, Sabrina, what's her name? And she's going to come out in a mini top and blah, blah, blah. It's like, I don't care. I don't care about this person.

So Rick has had people on his channel interview And it's people he wants to talk to. And I think that makes a big difference too. So I say that because I saw a thing in Reddit that somebody was talking about having big guests. And Chris says, Beato's interviews are incredible for music nerds. That's it. It's who's his audience? Music nerds, musicians. Rick Rubin, he said, actually interviewed him and Which was also great.

Yeah. And Rick will do, like, there are some people that are like so big shot smarty pants that you have to go to their house to interview them. And so Rick Beato went to Rick Rubin's house and interviewed him. And you get stuff that you just don't get in other interviews. One of my favorite quotes ever was there's a band called Extreme. They have a really amazing guitar player. The guy's name is Nuno Betancourt. And Nuno was talking about meeting Eddie Van Halen.

And every guitar player kind of wants to sound like Eddie Van Halen. And Nuno definitely has the talent to play like Eddie Van Halen. But he said, I still, you know, I'm tweaking the equipment, trying to get it to sound just like Eddie. And he said, I finally got asked to go to his studio. And he goes, and there's Eddie playing. Sounding like Eddie, being Eddie, like there's the guitar there. Holy cow, it's Eddie Van Halen. And Eddie goes, hey, I'm trying to tweak something.

Can you do me a favor? Can you play my guitar? And he goes, I'm finally going to sound like Eddie Van Halen. I don't believe it. And he goes, and I put on the guitar and hit a couple of chords and I start playing. And he goes, crap, I still sound like me. And that's where it's in the hands, ladies and gentlemen, when it comes to guitar players. And so when I say it's not the gear, it's not the gear. And I was like, that's a great example of that.

And so, yeah, Randy says I interviewed, I enjoyed his Brad Paisley interview. So also it's really belated now, but Randy just had a birthday not too long ago. I was checking out, leaning towards wisdom, and I was catching up, and I was like, oh, I missed his birthday.

Because, you know, in some cases, not so much in podcasting, but the people that have the biggest following may not have the coolest story. or the best content for your audience, or et cetera, et cetera. And so he's more about finding interesting people that can bring value to his audience, not so much, oh, they were on the cover of Time magazine or whatever.

And that definitely has its place, because it's cool to say, I had Dave Gilmore on my show, but if Dave is kind of boring, then in the end... Like, I've had Pat Flynn on my show. I've had John Lee Dumas. But the one that people talk about is Glenn the Geek. You know, that's why that guy's been back five. Not that John and Pat didn't deliver great value, but some of the stuff that Glenn said really got them, you know, going. And they're like, wait, how did he do that again?

And that whole nine yards and, you know, and all really Glenn said was...

And I was like, that's kind of a cool criteria because you can have somebody with great content, and as long as they have great content and they can get it out of their mouth, it doesn't really matter if they're known or not. And he said you can kind of get away with it if they're known and they're entertaining, they can talk. But if they don't have great content, he goes, you've got to work. You've got to work at that.

So it's one of those where you have like two out of three people you got to put in some elbow grease as my grandma used to say to, to really get that to go. Do you, have you had anybody, I know you interview all sorts of people on home gadget geeks that have

you ever interviewed somebody that wasn't quite a household name that really just, you know, brought the goods?

I try to find, I try to take advantage of the You know, in the gadget space, it's changing all the time, right? So, you know, it was hot last year. It's not hot anymore, and nobody wants to talk about it. So I try to kind of, as people are into things or they've really gotten into some kind of gadget, I try to capture that right then, right? And then I also have a group of folks who I just say, hey, when you have something interesting to say, call me. Like, let's get you on.

And that just happened this morning. I had a guest who I have on maybe every other year. And I just say to him, hey, when you're ready, just ping me. He's a great guest, super smart PhD. And I just say, when you're ready, you just ping me. And I've had folks where I haven't had him in a year or two, and I ping them and say, you want to come on? And they're like, I got nothing. Like, no, I appreciate that. That is. Yeah, no, I don't have anything to do.

Like, you know, and so there is that, you know, you're not going to hit it with everybody all the time. And it's not, you know, the more of a niche you go into, the less people who are actually going to listen to it, regardless of how interesting it is, by the way. Like I have no interest. in these music interviews that this guy that you're talking about earlier, these music, it's great that he's asking all these details. I couldn't care less about any of them.

You know, I just don't, Jay Franzi, who's been on my show a bunch, and he's out, he's sometimes out in chat. Jay also is in the music space, and he's like, oh, yeah, I've interviewed, you know, Pat Benatar, and, you know, he starts rattling off all these names, right? And you're like, well, that's super cool, but I'm still not interested in anything they have to say. I couldn't really care what Pat Betatar is saying about anything at this point, right? That's not saying anything about her.

I'm just not interested in those kind of topics. So I think, you know, your, this, I think this all comes back around, one, making sure you're not, like, with a guest philosophy, making sure you're not, you moving the needle so far and so fast every week, you know, where it's, I might be guilty of this on Home Gadget Geeks, where one week it's this topic, it's topic A, and then the next week it's not topic B, it's topic Z, all the way on the other end of the spectrum, right?

And you're sending, you could be sending your listeners into a little bit of shock, right? Doesn't take but a couple times where they hit play, they hear the topic and Like, nah, they move on to their next podcast. A couple times doing that, they may not come back. How do you know you're doing that? You don't. It's just one of these things you got to kind of have your... ear to the ground for the feedback that you're getting and from your listeners and such.

So from Dave, from guest selection, the way we do that, I don't, I listen, I'd rather have guests that my audience knows. That's why I go through this repeating, you know, 10 or 12 or 15 people set because my audience knows them and they actually, they, Oh, Hey, Aaron Lawrence is going to be on. Yeah. I want to listen to that one because Aaron brings some interesting stuff, right? I want those guests to have some name recognition. in the space, in my listener's space.

So that's what's important to me.

You get last minute schedule changes. Oh, we can't get Robert there, you know, at this time. Can you move it to this? I'm like, well, we kind of advertise the live show. And they're like, well, it doesn't matter. It's this or nothing. I've had them do the bait and switch where they're like, oh, yeah, you're going to get this guy. And then. you get a couple days out and you're like, oh, this guy's no longer available. Can we serve you up this guy? You know, right? And you're like, oh, come on.

You know, so I like it. Listen, if you're on my show, it's because you're my friend. And so I always appreciate the folks who come on and give their, you know, 90 minutes to be on the show. That's what I like. I'm not gunning, I'm not running and gunning for the, either, for the big names. I've done that, and they don't they never turn out very well. You know, it's just like, that wouldn't be, I don't, I personally, I don't like that.

Now, there's some, there are podcast hosts who know how to handle that kind of talent, know how to get that done. I think Jay Franze is one of those. Jay knows how to do it. He gets, he's gotten some big names on his podcast. He knows he's willing to put up with their shenanigans and knows how to handle talent. He's been in that space. He kind of understands. I don't have time for that. You know, I'm just like, no, if you're going to do that, I don't have time for you.

That's a preference thing, by the way. That's not an either or that's a preference. No, I guess it is an either or, but it's a preference thing. What do you like?

you guys, like, why did you buy a company that is free? Like, that's kind of weird. And they brought up that originally there was something in the terms that made people a little nervous, like it was going to be, spyware is too strong a word, but it was like they were going to have, and they're like, we changed that immediately. I'm like, oh, great. And they're like, it's also, I said, I would ask about this. And they're like, okay. And I said, but I'm not quite sure.

What are we going to talk about? Because I don't want it to be just a giant commercial for Audacity. And I said, would you be open to a pre-interview? And they went back and

forth. They're like, well, is this pre-interview off the record? And I go, yeah. It's just I'm trying to make sure. I don't want to waste your time, and I don't want you to waste my time. And they're like, great. And then we kind of went back and forth on some questions. I said, also keep in mind, I'm primarily an audio show. The School of Podcasting is primarily just audio. I have a video channel, but it's not a case where I'm recording this and putting it out as a video podcast. It's audio.

And at that point, they went, yeah, never mind. And I

was like, okay. Because I was kind of, I wasn't feeling it. I was just like, you know, I go, and I said, but they said they had some new stuff coming down the pike. I go, okay. Please, I'm a fan of Audacity. I didn't tell them I don't use it, but I was like, I'm a fan. I know a lot of people use it. And anytime you have new features, let me know. I'll be more than happy to announce them and blah, blah, blah. And I have a course at the School of Podcasting about Audacity. Hint, hint.

Hey, guys, you want to promote my stuff? But it was just one of those where, in the end, it just wasn't, as the old saying goes, if it's not a hell yeah, it's a no. And it was like, I can't really... If we're going to be talking about features, yeah, you can kind of talk about them without showing them, but it probably makes a whole lot more, a better impact if you show somebody how it works, depending on what the scenario was.

But that was one where I was just, well, let's make sure we're a good fit. And you kind of go back and forth. And in the end, they're like, they were probably thinking, yeah, this guy doesn't do video. So this isn't a great fit for us. And for me, it was like, my audience really wants to know how to grow their audience and tools and stuff, and I talk about you guys on a regular basis. You're something I recommend. And so they might have just thought, well, this guy's already talking about us.

Why do we need to spend our time? So it wasn't entirely awkward, but it was just, yeah, let's not do that. Never mind. And I figure I saved my audience.

they were looking for podcasters that run a business. And I was like, hey, that's me. You know, and then in the pre-interview, they pitched me so hard on, they're really looking for clients. And I was like, cause she's kind of a business coach. And I was like, oh, I see this is okay. So we'll see. I doubt that I'm going to get chosen, but it was like, okay. Well,

And then, yeah, kind of, I have to kind of remind oftentimes those clients that, this isn't the audience to pitch to like everybody that listens is doing what you're doing. You're pitching to the wrong, like you're singing to the choir. Right. But there, you know, there's this, you know, in the current business coaching space and it's valid, you know, get on as many podcasts as you can get out there and get your message out. No podcast is a waste of time.

Get, you know, do the, do every interview you can get your hands on. But I do need to, at some point protect my audience from another pitch, you know, they're also doing that kind of thing. You know, it'd be like you having, you know, another podcast coach on your, like, and they come on and pitch their stuff and you're like, well, it's kind of what I do. Well, I, you know, I

Because there's some people, like I've had other podcast consultants on the School of Podcasting, but it's because they have Either something that I didn't know or something like that. And I've also kind of vetted them if it happened. I've had multiple members of the School of Podcasting go, this looks kind of spammy. And they'll forward me an email. And if you're a podcast consultant that is spamming podcasters, shame on you. Because we all get enough spam. We hate spam.

And you're spamming podcasters. Like, you're not coming on my show. Like, ever. Like that's your no. So I usually vet them. And I'm also not, the other thing that's interesting is like, I'm not a, I will interview you if you interview me. I'm like, I don't think, cause that's not always a good fit. You know what I mean? If you're a podcast about, you know, whatever, soccer, you know, and you're all about how to help your kids coach. Well, that's the coach Dave, right?

Talks about coaching soccer, right? Right. Well, he might come on my show because he has this cool strategy that help people grow his audience. But my audience isn't interested in how to coach soccer. You know what I mean? So like it's and likewise, so he'll be a good guest for me. We could talk about how he grew his audience. I'm not a good guest for him because I don't know a thing about coaching kids in soccer. So the whole like, oh, let's do an interview swap.

I'm like, that doesn't always work. Yeah.

am i doing what did i say about that's todd the gator said is that

Now I'm thinking of the jerk. I found my special purpose. I told her that when the time came, we'd start a podcast together because we're both pretty funny gals. Her mom passed on Christmas Eve. Man, that sucks. I mean, your mom passing sucks anyway, but oh man. I gave her some time to mourn as one does. She's still struggling. So for Mother's Day, my husband bought me the Mayano two-person podcast kit and told me to follow through on my promise. That leads me to now. We have a loose promise.

I have the setup. Bye. Bye. Bye. Any advice or links to helpful walkthroughs would be fantastic. I don't know how much time to devote to combing the web. So if you know of anything that can condense the learning curve, I'd be super grateful. So the first thing I would say was, A, if you need a media host, Captivate.fm or go to supportthisshow.com slash Captivate. But the thing I loved about this is the fact that podcasting doesn't always have to be about making money and promoting a business.

It's just two people having fun. And that's, I guess, what kind of got me on that particular one. And I go back to the guy that contacted me that said he was going to kill himself, but he heard me say that sometimes starting a podcast can give you a purpose. And he ended up not killing himself and started a Master Cauldron, started his podcast about his hobby. So, you know, keep that in mind. So here we go. Boy, talk about sometimes people have their own show.

I have no idea what the chat room is talking about

said he did a name change for his main show. How long should I play a pre-roll for people about the name change? And so the question is really, When do you think 80% of your listeners are actually, have actually listened to a show? So of those 200, let's see what his answer was, 200, I have about 200 listeners a day for a daily show. So when you think about the numbers, like, when have 80% of what you think are your subscribers or your main audience? when have they consumed it?

Is it consumed within three days? Is it consumed within a week? Are they, is it a slower roll kind of thing, where they, you think maybe it's taking a week? I think that kind of dictates that pre-roll strategy. You know, let's just say most consume, 80% consume it within a week. I would run it for two and then be done with it, right? Put it in there, get it, you know, you want to overshoot it a little bit, but you don't want it to go too long. If you think it's three days, I'd run it for a week.

and be done with it, right, type deal. The other strategy, Ralph, would be run it for a week, then run it once a week, maybe like on Fridays, for a month, so that they get, for folks who are really far behind and may just be catching those, they're embedded in there, you know, as well.

If you have some semblance like, Hey, this is evergreen content, I would, like, people are listening to it sporadically, and it's going to be evergreen, I would spread those announcements out maybe over a course of a month. So maybe not every day, maybe every third day, so that you're sprinkling them in just as you're trying to catch people. Shouldn't be forever. I don't know if I do it more than a month. You're a daily show.

That's you know, it's a lot of chances for people to hear those things. I've been listening to the Wall Street Journal podcast, and they have this really obnoxious commercial that Reba McEntire does, and I cannot hit fast-forward fast enough to get past that commercial, right? So you don't want to annoy them. You know, you don't want to, you know, annoy them with that. But I think that's the number. I don't know if we can say a hard number on that. Look at your audience. Look at the bubble.

see how many days that you think they're going to be out there. If it's more evergreen, it should probably be less frequent but longer, and make a call. I don't think you can go too wrong on that.

Because every time they go to break, there's this little music. And I'm just like, no. And there's no way to fast forward. It's a live radio thing. And I'm like, oh, it's so annoying. So I know for churches, they say if you want somebody to really hear a message, You have to say it three weeks in a row because not everybody comes every week. So I'm with Jim. I think I would sprinkle it in for a daily show because that could get really annoying.

And then no longer than a month, probably a couple of weeks. And then, like you said, then turn it on and then turn it off. Because otherwise, if it's every day, you're like, hey, because you know, they're going to be like, I know you've told me 14 times now. So

For that kind of series, I like that. Like, you know, every day for a week, every week for a month, Every month for six months.

It's time for Jim to get his nerd on. MrRanger420, that's pretty funny. As I'm reading that, I'm like, oh, I know what that means. What laptop would be the best to start a new podcast with? I'm looking to get into podcasting and want a laptop slash tablet and a mic that won't

break the bank, but also help me get the ball rolling. Any suggestions would be lovely. What say you, Jim Collison?

But between the 500 and 1,000 range for most podcasters, if you're not doing heavy video editing, you're going to be just fine in that space. You know, you want to make sure you get, if you're doing a lot of editing, the more hard drive space that you have, the better. You want to make sure it has ample ports available to it, whatever you're going to do.

But in today's world, with most modern processors, you know, in the Windows space, we've kind of gotten away from the really low-end, cheap processors for the most part. There's still a few out there in the budget space. You've got to be careful of that. You want to get a modern processor that's got a little juice to it. You don't have to go with the highest one, Core A5, Core A7, Core A9, somewhere in there, right? But You know, I would say seven, well, I'm going to change that, 750 to 1,000.

If you want to splurge a little bit, you can go about 1,200. Get a really nice laptop. It's going to last you a while, especially if you're buying it now, right? There's no, it doesn't look like there's any Windows changes. You know, if this was a couple years ago, Windows made a change, right, where they had a TPM requirement for an upgrade to Windows 11, and that's tripped a lot of people up. You could have bought a laptop then that didn't upgrade to Windows 11, which would have been a hassle.

Today, we're kind of clear of all those things. So I think based on your budget, 750 is a nice spot to get in. go up to $1,000 or $1,200. I'll be honest, though. Just go with the Mac. Right now, a little bit more expensive. You and I both have Minis. If you don't have to go mobile, a Mac Mini is just a great podcasting tool, so to speak. I have an M4 now. I love it. the price was right. You know, again, you're in that $1,000 category, right? If you're going to go that. They're cheaper.

They're advertised cheaper, but you can bulk them up just a little bit. So they, you know, you're right at that $750 to $1,000. So that, for a lot of folks, if you're saying no to Mac, yeah, you can do the same thing on the PC side. But I think for podcasters, I love the Mini. Do not buy an iPad. No. Do not buy an iPad for podcasting, right? You're going to need a full-fledged computer.

But I'm smart about the management of keeping where I keep files. They sit on my desktop until I'm done. delete what I don't need every week, and I move what I want to keep onto my, onto storage. And so that is, that's taken care of. So you could, would I, would I go with larger storage options for some, if you're bad at storage management, or you don't have external storage, and you're going to just use the cloud as your backup? Yeah, you probably want to go, you want to go full terabyte.

and maybe two. The problem on the Mac side with that is you pay a serious tax. Yeah. Apple tax, as we call it, for two terabytes. Like, you're like, this shouldn't be that much. Yeah. So, you know, probably one terabyte's the sweet spot on the Mac side. I did half, and it's just fine. That's just fine for me. Again, I do heavy management on that, so a lot of great. The M series, yeah, I think Dave in chat says Amazon's running a deal on the M4 Mac Mini for under $500. Just be careful.

Like, you know, too cheap is bad, too.

And if you've got a USB, like the mic I'm using right now, Rode PodMic USB, USB-C, to usbc on an ipad you could probably make it easy to record but that's half the thing is how do you get a microphone into an ipad and then it's how do you get the files yeah and then how to get the files off the ipad into and that's we're sometimes uploading files like if you know off of an ipad like you can't it's just it adds complexity You can't,

I, and so I'll, maybe I'll retract that statement a little bit and say, don't go with an iPad. There are some really good iPads out there. And if you're comfortable doing podcast processing and using the app, kind of the app model, if that's working for you, Certainly the M series iPads are great. Like that cheer, that chip is awesome. And so it'll do some great work for you. If you're comfortable with that. Yeah. Go down that route. I'm a PC guy and a Mac guy. I want a full OS.

I want to be able to do some things with it that I, the way I like to do it. So it's just a preference thing. It's good to clear that up.

supporters, again, is my buddy Ralph over

at gritandgrowthbusiness.com.

If you're a small business owner, go check him out. He's got a few episodes out now, and he's been podcasting for a while now with the Ask Ralph show. But now, if you're ready to go in and take your business seriously, he's got Transforming Challenges into Growth podcast. That's his first episode. So you can be in there on the ground floor as he rolls out this show. Check him out again at gritandgrowthbusiness.com. And Ralph, thanks for being an awesome supporter.

If you need more help, I don't know what's going on with my mouse right now. Holy cow, we'll just do it with a keyboard. The show

is brought to you by theschoolofpodcasting.com, where we have courses. We have unlimited coaching. I was talking about how I was talking to Satiris last night about his Voice of Greece show. And then I went in and I was going to go see a movie and decided not to because I was very shocked. There were actual people there. in the movie theater. Like I would have been, like it was almost completely sold out. I was like, oh, I'm not used to going to the movies with people in it. That's crazy.

But yeah. And we also have an awesome community over there. Use the coupon code COACH and that'll save you when you sign up. And if you go to askthepodcastcoach.com, that is using PodPage. And if you'd like to use PodPage, you can use my affiliate link, which is trypodpage.com.

It's amazing. And I'll just to vibe on that a second. Somebody asked in Reddit for a great-looking website, and I meant to send them to podglomerate.com, except they're on WordPress, and they were having a serious error of some sort that basically gave you an error message. But they used PodPage for their network site, and that was up and fine. So just something to think about. We're using Ecamm Live. If you want to check out Ecamm Live, go to askthepodcastcoach.com slash Ecamm. Links will be

in the show notes for all this stuff. And if you need more Jim Cullison, and hey, who doesn't, check him out over at theaverageguy.tv

and check out his show, Home Gadget Geeks. And it's time to find the featured supporter of the week. And yes, Ralph is on the wheel twice now. Once for the Grit and Growth Business Show and the Financially Confident Christian. Who will be the winner? The winner? I can't talk today. Earlier I said a cup of, a cop of coffee, and I know a lot of cops drink coffee, but that was weird. Now, well, let's just spin the wheel. And I also see there's someone on here I got to take off.

I was like, oh, oops. Oh, look at it. The one and only. Chris Stone from castahead.net. I didn't see it, Dave. Do you have it up? Are you showing it? Yeah, do you not? Holy cow. There we go. See? Honest. There we go. Awesome.

Yes. If this show has saved you time, if it saved you money, if it saved you some headaches, if we have kept you educated or entertained, maybe it's time to give some of that back. Go over to askthepodcastcoach.com slash awesome podcast. And here's a fun question. It's one of those golden oldies that we go back to every

now and then. And that is the old network question. And I just thought it was odd. He said, seeing if there's any resources that might point me towards a new podcast network, I think we have an awesome show and our local network hasn't been the most helpful for marketing or cross-promotion. Any helps on this? Thanks. Well, if you're just doing cross-promotion, there's this thing called Google Podcasts. And you Google whatever your topic is, and then the word podcast.

So if you're doing a show about golf, Google golf podcasts. Go out to those people and go, hey, I'm thinking of setting up a network where we'll all cross-promote each other. That's the easiest and the best one, because there's no contracts, there's no money, etc., etc. He says, we do audio-visual as of late. Our metrics vary between getting 30 to 100 listens an episode between all sources. Between all sources, that's interesting. So that's not just audio, that's audio and video.

Our genre is society and culture, and our cover topics from true crime to paranormal with some humor sprinkled in. So I'm starting to see why maybe, well, no, true crime and paranormal are somewhat related, especially when ghosts come in and kill you. We started late last July. Had a lot of hiccups, but we've been consistent and slowly growing. We are initially approached by a network that does local pods. I hate it when people, oh, come on my pod. No, show.

Anyway, I'm really just trying to find a better partner to help with reach and engagement, but I suppose that's more my job. Yes, it is. I was posting to see if there are better ways to get us in front of scouting slash producing eyes and ears, reaching out to see if there are any avenues I'm unaware of. I'm absolutely doing what I can for discovery and engagement. And that's the one I always go, are you putting flyers out in the local laundry? Are you doing everything?

You're doing the easy stuff probably is what you're doing. And I'm delegating more social media projects promotion to my team. So he has a team. That's interesting. So my thing is that everybody thinks that a network – I was looking for – I have a book. There's a great book called Make Noise by Eric Newsom. And he has a great point. He said networks don't make small shows big. They make big shows bigger.

And it reminds me a little bit of musicians that start off and they're like, man, we need a manager. And I'm like, you haven't had a gig yet. Like you get a manager when there's something to manage and you no longer can manage it by yourself. Then you get a manager so that you can go back to working on the music stuff. And I'm just, I guess I need to go find some people that are on a network that go, oh, this is what really, I mean, everything was going good.

But when we joined, you know, the Collison network, like we just exploded. I've never heard that from anybody before. And I think it's a great way to definitely help grow your show. So go find some like-minded shows and cross-promote. But I know, like, Jordan Harbinger is on Podcast One. And one of the benefits there—now, Jordan, by the way, was a big show already when he joined Podcast One. But that got him access to Adam Carolla and a bunch of other celebrities.

Like, he just interviewed Kelsey Grammer. And going back to the Rick Beato discussion— How did Jordan open up that discussion? Hey, thanks so much for coming on the show. I just read your book on the plane. He read the book. He didn't just go, I'm just going to ask him about Cheers. He actually read the book. And consequently, it was a really good interview.

And you heard Kelsey Grammer, in my opinion, in a very transparent and honest way, say, thank you very much, because not everybody reads the book. And so, you know, that Joining that network got him access to, you know, quote, celebrities. And that definitely helps because there's another one where a lot of times Jordan is talking about traveling or government things overseas that I'm, you know, CIA, FBI stuff that I, but kind of, but Kelsey Grammer, I love Feedback Friday.

I listen every Friday to Jordan, but sometimes his guests are not really what I'm interested in. And so that was something I thought was interesting. But just the other thing to keep in mind with networks is, A, go talk to somebody on the network and say, what were your numbers before and after and what you feel are the benefits of that? And then I wish I could remember the name of the show. There was a show that joined a network and they didn't read the paperwork.

And what they didn't know is they had signed away the brand. to the network. Like the network owned the show now and they were the hosts and they got really giant egos because they were on this network. And apparently we're a nightmare to work with. And so they got fired from their own show and they kept the show going without them. And I was like, yeah, somebody didn't read the paperwork, but you know, so let's see here. Two guys talking. Oh, there you go.

See, there's a great example of a network. Great to see you here. He has a podcast network. And those are all – but it's all cross-promotion. Like two guys, there's something – he has a police show. There's a bunch of shows, but they all cross-promote each other. So that's a great example of a network. Now, does it make them a gazillion downloads overnight? Probably not. But it's a good way – to me, that's the best use of a network.

The other one is if you're all doing shows about football – you might be able to pull all your numbers together and get a sponsor. And that's where the fun begins because then, well, this show got 100 downloads and that one got 212. And this one, so have fun with the math, divvying up the money because when money gets involved, in the immortal words of Cyndi Lauper, money changes everything. So that's always fun.

Chris says, do you feel that some shows feel like they are competing against each other for listens when they're on the network. I know that for a fact. Back in the day when I was on a pod show, ask Adam Curry about running a network. First of all, he will tell you straight up, rule number one, you can't monetize the network. He will say that over and over.

And he said it was babysitting because the shows that were big got more money from sponsors and consequently were getting more exposure to because people were looking for the show probably because it was good. And then there's that. Anytime I hear the discoverability problem, what somebody is really saying is nobody's discovering my show. And so all the smaller shows were like, Hey, how come they got more money than I did? And you're like, well, you're doing a show about super duper niche show.

They're doing a show with a much wider audience. Consequently, they get more downloads, you know, and that's the way it was. And he just said it was a nightmare. And so then instead of having this network of people working together to cross promote or whatever it was, you had a bunch of people complaining about each other and hating each other. And so he's, he doesn't talk about it a lot, but when he talks about the early days of pod show, he'll be like, Oh, it was just a nightmare.

So yeah, Yeah, let's see. Here he says, we'll have to talk about a program dedicated to the benefits or pitfalls of networks. 20 years this year. 20 years, holy cow. It's not all roses and chocolate. I've made it where the network does the work when the people on it don't want to, for the most part. We will have to have you come on. Gordon would also share very deal-oriented stuff about the copyright and the details not to be taken on any network.

Yeah, that's the thing that it gets kind of tricky. Much like we always talk about when you have a co-host, be sure to talk about, have that awkward conversation about who owns what. But then also when you get into a network, that gets kind of icky and you just got to know what you're getting into because otherwise, you know, it gets kind of, it can get kind of icky that way. Another oldie but goodie that we can throw in here. I'm looking up, I'm like, all right, we're almost at time.

We got time for this one. Best way to share links from when and where? I just wanted to survey people on if they do any personal advertising for their shows, how they share links to it. I've done some sharing through Discord and usually share a Spotify link because that's what I listen to most podcasts on. That is definitely going to be a question of the month on the School of Podcasting is not how many, but what percentage of your audience is on Spotify.

Because I am here to tell you it's either hit or miss. It's either 80%, or six. It's, you know, I think this show is probably like eight, something like that. But anyway, he says, my podcast is available most everywhere. So I'm confused about if there's a preferred way on the receiving end. If someone shared a link to a podcast with you, bonus question is where people share links and do personal advertising besides shouting out into the void. Not sure what he means by that.

But for me personally, Always share a link to the episode on your website. Why? Because depending on how many other people then share that same link, that can boost your SEO. And then on that episode or somewhere on that site when they land, have links to at least Apple and Spotify. You might want to throw in Overcast and Pocket Cast. But that way the audience is in charge of where they listen. So many people used to share Apple links online.

And until about, I don't know, 5, 10 years ago, if you shared an Apple link to somebody in Europe where 70% of them are using an Android phone, it was completely useless. So always share a link to your site. Jim, what do you do when you're sharing links?

Make it easy for your Apple podcast friends to have a button there or whatever so they can easily subscribe to it. But I want to bring them back. You know, I want to bring them back to the page. I want them to come. If they're going to click on something, I want them to come back and see some things. That's what I'm trying to do. Is it the most successful way of doing it? I don't know. But it's what I like. That's where I want them to be.

Why aren't you saying, hey, go to askthepodcastcoach.com slash follow where all the buttons are there and you can subscribe on whatever app you want because especially if you're linking to that stuff, And so for 150 episodes, you've been linking to Podalicious, and then Podalicious goes away because it turns out making links for people is not really a great business model if you're not charging for it, and nobody will pay for it because, hey, I could do this on my own website for free.

Now you've got 150 links that are dead, and that's not good for SEO either, and it's annoying for everybody. So that would be my advice on that, and I'm going to Do a quick scroll here through the chat room. I don't see any other questions. And so with that, talking about not wasting people's time, we're going to get out four minutes early. Holy cow. Are you kidding me? Yes, we are. It is.

is with me this week. Talk a little gardening tech. And so we spend some time. It's amazing the technology that just, you know, if you're a raised bed gardener, if you've got, you know, if you've got hanging plants, if you're doing drip irrigation. All that stuff has automation available for it now, which is super cool, including all the manifolds for your irrigation, if you're doing it that way. So, T.J. and I spent some time talking about that, as well as a few other topics.

It's available today, HomeGadgetGeeks.com.

Novelmarketing.com is coming on and he's a guy that's, I love him because he's kind of a nerd. He's definitely a mad scientist and And so as he was trying YouTube and trying new things, he kept great notes. His pitch was amazing. He sent like graphs and charts of here's what's working, here's what's not working. And I was like, oh, dude, you are definitely coming on the show to talk about this. So we're talking some real life examples of what happens when you do YouTube. Is it worth it?

He is making some money. The question, is he profitable? Ooh, that's the question that I'm going to leave you with. And we'll see you next week with another episode of Ask the Podcast Coach. If you're watching on YouTube, you know, like, subscribe, and ring the bell. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next week.