Busting Myths and Navigating Challenges in Podcasting w/ Dave Jackson

My guest today is People's Choice Podcast Award winner , dave Jackson . Didn't know I was going to say that , did you ? Hi , dave , welcome .

That came from I had a niece who was probably three at the time and there's nothing better than a three-year-old belly laugh . She's just cackling it up . I walk by and I go Emily , what are you doing ? I said Roger Rabbit is teaching me reading . I went huh , she has no idea that she's actually being educated because she was having so much fun .

If I can somehow make education fun , it's not quite as painful , not as much something people go ugh school . In a nutshell , that's who Dave Jackson is .

You know , they just seem lost when it comes to podcasting .

And a lot of that also comes from we hang around with people who know the same things we do . So I remember once I was out to dinner with someone and they said something and I said oh man , total Pete Best . And they said who's Pete Best ? And I go you know who Pete Best is . She goes I have no idea who Pete Best is .

I go he's the original drummer for the Beatles . And she said how do you know this stuff ? And I go everybody knows who Pete Best is . And she goes nope , you grew up with a bunch of musicians . You think everybody knows that nobody knows who Pete Best is . So I think that's another one . We undervalue the knowledge that we have .

And I think the other one is we we're afraid we're going to look stupid . You have the ability to edit out anything . It's not a live radio show , so you can always go in and edit out anything . You can redo it . The only way something that makes you sound stupid goes out is because you published it .

So that's another one that I run into , and then the other one is part of a podcast is kind of putting yourself out there . So on one hand you are convinced that nobody wants to listen to you , but you're not sure .

And if you put out a podcast and you get 13 downloads and there's 15 people in your family , then you kind of somehow get confirmation that nobody wants to listen to me , and when you first start it takes a while to build an audience . So those are some of the things that I see that stop people from actually starting a podcast .

If you've ever been in the car and your favorite song comes on , so you turn up the radio and then the phone rings . Well , you turn down the radio enough to where you could hear the phone , I'm like ha , you know how to mix audio . So I'm not going to say there's no learning curve , but it's not as hard as you think .

I've had many a client that I'll be like okay , there you go . Now you're in Apple and Google and Spotify and all the different directories and I'm like now all you have to do is create a new episode and be like great , but what's next ? And they go , that's it . And they're like no , seriously , what's next ?

I go , that's it , create another episode and tell everyone you know about it , and they're always thinking it has to be harder than it actually is .

Because they all have different perspectives and different slants on the news and things like that . So you might know the same information as your neighbor , but because of the way you were raised and your personality and whatever it is , I have a friend of mine that does a podcast about podcasting .

Like I do , I'm a little more goofy than he is and he's very much just the facts , and we both had people say hey , I tried to listen to your friend , but you know they'll tell me that guy's way too dry and his audience will tell him that guy's way too goofy .

And so your style , your personality , may really resonate with someone who is talking about the exact same thing that somebody else is .

With a podcast , you can listen to me on Monday , you can listen to Daniel on Tuesday , you can listen to , you know , elsie on Wednesday , whoever , and so I have a huge queue of Episodes that have come out . I just listened to a show yesterday that came out in December of last year .

So that's one of the benefits of podcasting is it's time shifted , so somebody can find you . You know , if you find me today I'm getting ready to produce episode 900 . So I've got 900 episodes that you can listen to all the way back to 2005 .

So it's Is their competition kind of , in a way that Studies show that right now the average American listens to about nine episodes a week . So in that aspect there's nine slots and if they've got nine shows are already listening to , you've got to bump somebody out to claim their spot . So in that aspect that there is kind of a bit of competition .

listening . I was just speaking in in Houston , texas , and I started off every talk and I said I have extra skin , I need you to answer this question . And I said I'm gonna take a picture . I said everybody who has no idea who I am and you've never listened to my show , please raise your hand .

And then I took a picture and the one room they're probably about 11 people in there and I'm like that's how you grow your audience . You you find people who should be listening to your show but they don't know about you and so that's you know .

I was like well , there's 11 people that might actually be listening this Monday that weren't listening listening last Monday .

It determines why are you doing this , and then what are you going to talk about to hold their attention . And then from there it's everything from what equipment do you need ? If you don't have a website , I'll show you how to build one . And then how to get into all the directories . And If you want to make money , how to make money .

So there's a bunch of courses

. And then there is a really awesome community of people that range from everything from marketing people to psychologist to college professors to , you know , just your average show person and the average she and whoever else is in there . So we're all helping each other and we have one goal and that's to help each other make the best content .

So a lot of times somebody like , hey , I need some honest feedback on this . Does this hold your attention ? Somebody will throw up their artwork , things like that . So there's the community . And then last year I started something , and that is I now offer unlimited coaching .

So if you're a member of the school of podcasting , there's a link you use and you can schedule a quick thirty minute call , which often isn't thirty minutes , it'll go longer , but that's because I love teaching and I used to . I still offer , if you want to hire me , one on one coaching . I still offer that .

But I just spent so much time Knocking on doors trying to get somebody to hire me . I was like I've already have people who have said yes to the school of podcasting . Let's just shower them with coaching . So that's the . That's the school of podcasting in a nutshell . A lot of people say they came for the courses , but they stay for the community .

So when I go to places and I like this week I hung out with alex and filipo from pod match super nice guy and you kind of know each other online but you kind of get to know each other a little better . So I would just say , friends , you know I don't take much to to be grateful .

I try to to recognize , just how you know worse life could be the fact that I have a house , you know , a roof over my head , I've got food in the fridge and if I want to go buy something in amazon I don't have to go check the checkbook first . I grew up fairly poor .

I've been in that situation where you're looking at the , the vending machine , and you're like do I want mountain do or gas for the ride home ? Which one do I ? You know ? So there's a difference between poor and broke and I've been broke and so I'm grateful every day I wake up and you know I'm above ground and I have the opportunity to serve people .

I Back in the day when there were a , you can make dvds or cds that were were learning tools , and so I made one for as a resume and I sent it to a company and actually got me hired . But you basically put it in .

It would play a presentation and at the end it'd be like your next should be your next step should be a Call Dave Jackson at this number , b called a Jackson at this number , or c called a Jackson at this number . And it worked . They called me and I got the job , and so Everybody said you should market this .

This is great , you could call it a digital resume . And so I build a website . I got everything all set up and was put it out there and in A lot of nothing happened . And then I was like , well , that's interesting .

So I google the phrase digital resume and it turns out there are a bunch of people that were way ahead of me with this idea and they were doing it better and they were doing it cheaper , and so I learned from that . The lesson I learned from that was always see what currently is out there . As much as I just said , we don't have competition .

You do want to know what you're up against . And the other thing . I would say that the thing that most people don't do and they end up wasting a lot of time is they don't find somebody who will tell you the truth . I'll give you an example .

Two months ago , a member of the School of Podcasting came to me Kim from the Pharmacist Voice and she said hey , dave , you know I love you . I'm like uh-oh , what's going on ? She's like do you know ? You have a typo in the name of the School of Podcasting ? I was like that can't be true , seriously . She's like yep .

I went over and I saw it said plan , launch , grow , monetize . I was like we're missing an eye that's supposed to be monetized . And so , uh , you need somebody to listen to your show . I had a guy on my show that was getting six figure downloads like huge , huge show , and I said how , what do you attribute to that ?

And he said well , I got a bunch of people together and I said I'm making this show for you , you're kind of my target audience and I want you to listen to this episode and I want you to answer just a few questions . Number one did you listen to the whole thing ?

And then number two if you did listen to the whole thing , how far did you listen and why did you stop ? And then his last one was on a scale from one to 10 , where 10 is . I'm going to tell everybody how likely are you to share this episode with a friend ? And if he got a seven , he wasn't really happy . He was looking for nines and tens .

He might settle for an eight , but seven is a , is a C in you know grading , and that was average and he wanted to be more than average . And I just read a book called Listenable About Podcasting and that person made a great point . He said you don't just want to be liked , you want to be loved , you want to be their favorite podcast .

And so I think a lot of people and I I totally get it that I just spent 10 hours on this episode . I just want to get it out there . I'm tired of listening to it . So the last thing you want to do is is give it to somebody and have them critique it .

But and everybody assumes that people are just going to rip it to shreds and there might be something I'm a teacher . I'm always of the mindset there's something else I could improve . But there's no sense trying to market this and promote it If it's not going to resonate with your audience .

Ron Howard's a famous director and actor and he's won , you know , a gazillion Oscars and Emmys and things like that . He sits in an audience before he releases his next movie because he knows when they're supposed to laugh and when they're supposed to cry . And he said if I sit in the audience and they're not reacting the way I want them to , he goes .

It's back to the editing room . Because you want it to resonate with your audience and I think that's one of the things that a lot of new podcasters skip . They're just happy to get it out there and that's fine . I mean , there's nothing wrong with that . But in the end you want to make sure it's resonating with your audience .

Then it makes sense to start telling the world about your show .

But I also I've been , yeah , I've been lucky enough to meet some of my listeners , so I can think about Ken Blanchard and Kim Kragi and other people that listen and I'm like okay , is this gonna work for Ken ?

And a lot of people talk about that making a , an avatar , you know , a target audience member , so that when you're putting together your content you're like alright , is this gonna resonate with so-and-so ? And you know once you get that it's .

That makes editing easier because you can listen to something like oh well , this is gonna be boring to to this person and they , they move them out . So it's , it's tricky , but it's it's . You know , for me it's a lot of fun , but it is a lot of work .

No , just , I think everybody and I again consider the source , but I really think everybody can benefit from a podcast , especially if you're , because if you think about it every week , if you do a weekly show , you have to kind of assemble your thoughts , you have to put them together and I know I've been in situations like today where you kind of have to to

Pivot a little bit . You have to be able to improvise and I know I've been in situations where I was .

I know we talk about divorce on this show my , my second wife . I actually was invited to her third wedding . I've had a very friendly divorced and and the pastor that married her didn't show up at the reception and she looked at me and said hey , jackson , you know God , why don't you get up there and pray for the meal or whatever it was ?

And you know I was like okay . So it gives you skills that are not only great in podcasting but they're also great in other areas of your life . So you know you don't have to be great to start . This is a zig-ziggler line . You don't have to be great to start , but you have to start to be great . So that would be the thing . Don't be afraid ?

Again , nobody's . We have a running gag at the school of podcasting . Nobody's gonna punch you in the face because , well dear , you know it's remote . Give it a shot and come visit me at school of podcastingcom .