Latest / Buzzcast / Never Run Out Of Episode Ideas: Tips From Podcasting Hall Of Famer, Dave Jackson

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Never Run Out Of Episode Ideas: Tips From Podcasting Hall Of Famer, Dave Jackson · Buzzcast

• 0:00
  Jordan: Okay, so last night around like 10 pm, I was scrolling social media and I get this Instagram reel and it is New Heights and it's Travis Kelce and he's talking to somebody and the camera switches and it's Taylor Swift.
• 0:15
  Jordan: She has never, ever, ever been on a podcast and they she has not done a podcast recently.
• 0:22
  Jordan: No, she's never done a podcast.
• 0:24
  Jordan: I talked to Priscilla about this.
• 0:26
  Alban: Ooh.
• 0:26
  Alban: November 12th 2021, Late Night with Seth Meyers podcast.
• 0:30
  Alban: Talked about Red Taylor's version.
• 0:32
  Alban: November 3rd, she was on the Rolling Stones' 500 Greatest Albums podcast.
• 0:37
  Alban: In 2020, she did Zane Lowe interview series.
• 0:41
  Jordan: Wait, were those just interviews that they like syndicated into like podcast episodes though?
• 0:45
  Dave: Yeah, we're now.
• 0:46
  Dave: We're going to get into that lovely talk.
• 0:47
  Dave: Was it a YouTube podcast, or was it?
• 0:51
  Alban: late night with Seth Meyers.
• 0:53
  Jordan: It sounds like he did an interview.
• 0:54
  Alban: He did an interview.
• 0:55
  Alban: It's distributed as a podcast.
• 0:57
  Alban: Maybe this was not podcast first content and it was like repurposed from late night with Seth Meyers.
• 1:04
  Alban: That would be my guess.
• 1:06
  Alban: I feel like we're being pedantic now, but yeah, I think that to me she's been on four podcasts, four things distributed via RSS where she did an interview.
• 1:16
  Alban: But I'll have to defer to our resident Taylor Swift expert.
• 1:21
  Jordan: Courtney Priscilla.
• 1:22
  Jordan: She's never been on a podcast and this is like a big deal, because she chose a podcast to be the platform that she announces her 12th album, so this is like a big deal.
• 1:33
  Jordan: Also, I went and looked at the New Heights Instagram page and the rest of the reels only get like only, I say only a few like 10,000 plays or likes, and then some of them will get up to like 500,000 likes, and this one like, as of this morning, has about 5 million likes holy smokes.
• 1:55
  Jordan: I know.
• 1:55
  Jordan: So it makes me wonder what their download numbers are going to look like for this episode when it drops tomorrow.
• 2:00
  Jordan: Like I wonder if it's just gonna be like like record shattering downloads.
• 2:04
  Alban: Well, it's a.
• 2:05
  Alban: It's a big show.
• 2:05
  Alban: It's a isn't it an Amazon show?
• 2:08
  Dave: It is.
• 2:08
  Dave: I'm kind of thinking all the now ex-Wondery people are going hey, could you not have like dropped that about two weeks ago to you know, when they get five gazillion downloads on this episode that are, I'm sure, chock full of ads that would have paid for maybe somebody's you know job to stick around.
• 2:26
  Jordan: Absolutely.
• 2:26
  Jordan: I didn't even think about that.
• 2:27
  Jordan: I don't know.
• 2:36
  Alban: If you're wondering why Kevin sounds a little different today, it's because Kevin is actually Dave Jackson.
• 2:41
  Alban: Yeah, we are joined by the.
• 2:44
  Alban: You're not the pod father.
• 2:45
  Alban: What are you, the pod brother?
• 2:48
  Jordan: The dean of podcasting I don't know the dean of the school of podcasting.
• 2:54
  Dave: Yeah, I am the head of Podpage and I run the school of podcasting, so I've been doing that just a little bit, a little while.
• 3:02
  Jordan: Yeah, if you are not familiar with Dave Jackson, just a little bit, a little while.
• 3:05
  Jordan: Yeah, if you are not familiar with Dave Jackson, Dave's been podcasting for 20 years, started up School of Podcasting, became a podcasting Hall of Fame inductee and authored Profit From your Podcast and also has something like 13 podcasts I'm not exactly sure, because you have like 6,000 credits on Podchaser but you have like thousands of episodes and so when I was like looking for a guest, I was like who is the most available person that I know, who has the most free time?
• 3:34
  Dave: That's it.
• 3:36
  Jordan: Dave also does tons of speaking engagements, so I was fortunate enough to like catch you in between one of the speaking engagements.
• 3:44
  Jordan: But the reason why I wanted you to be on this episode of Buzzcast is because we are going to be talking about coming up with podcast ideas for your episodes and content planning, so I think that you have a lot of experience with that.
• 3:59
  Dave: I do For the School of Podcasting.
• 4:01
  Dave: In four weeks I'll be episode 1000.
• 4:04
  Dave: And I've probably got over 4000, somewhere at least 3000, if you count all my shows, because some of them I've done and I've started over 30 different shows.
• 4:17
  Jordan: Have you.
• 4:18
  Dave: Yeah, and some of them, like I, did one.
• 4:20
  Dave: I'm very creative with my names.
• 4:22
  Dave: It was called the customer service show.
• 4:24
  Dave: Go ahead and guess what it was about, and I made it the traditional seven episodes and I went oh wait, that's my job, not my passion, and so that was.
• 4:32
  Dave: That was a lesson from that one.
• 4:34
  Dave: I did one called the dates from hell show, where we thought we would get our audience to send in their dates from hell stories.
• 4:41
  Dave: And then it dawned on us about three episodes in oh we don't, we don't have an audience.
• 4:45
  Dave: Yeah, so if you're going to do an audience participation show, you're going to need an audience.
• 4:54
  Dave: And so we had about seven stories between myself and my co-host and then after that it was like, well, thanks, so much, we're done.
• 4:59
  Dave: So, yeah, so it's one of those things that for me I have a friend of mine that used to be a stand up comic and he said the hardest part when he quit doing that was turning off everything he watched went through the lens of how can I make this funny?
• 5:15
  Dave: Could I turn this into a bit?
• 5:16
  Dave: So everything I read, everything I watch, is like, ooh, can I tie this into podcasting?
• 5:22
  Jordan: Yeah, ooh can I tie this?
• 5:23
  Dave: into podcasting?
• 5:23
  Dave: Yeah, so I think some people set time aside to brainstorm.
• 5:27
  Dave: I just brainstorm nonstop.
• 5:31
  Jordan: I mean, that's what I was going to ask you because, like some people do prefer just like winging it and they're just going to like show up and you know whatever comes out of their mouth is what comes out of their mouth and what's on their mind at the time.
• 5:42
  Jordan: So I was curious are you more of a planner or are you like somewhere in between winging it and planning it?
• 5:49
  Jordan: Or because there's some people are crazy and they'll have batch content like months in advance?
• 5:55
  Dave: No, I well.
• 5:56
  Dave: First of all, the winging it thing.
• 5:58
  Dave: The minute I hear somebody go hey, thanks so much for coming into the show.
• 6:01
  Dave: I don't really know what we're going to talk about today, but it's Thursday and I promised you a show.
• 6:06
  Dave: That's when I hit stop, because that person's going to waste about 20 minutes of your life.
• 6:10
  Dave: I'm like, look, if you can't take time to at least come up with an idea of what you're going to talk about.
• 6:15
  Dave: And my buddy, eric K Johnson, says nobody gets on a bus without knowing where it's going.
• 6:26
  Dave: Oh, that's good.
• 6:26
  Dave: And like, if you don't know, like, who's driving the bus, buddy.
• 6:28
  Dave: So what I do and I'm sure we'll discover as we talk here I can be a little ADD, I'm a little all over the place and I remember I think my record was four or five times where I'm like oh, I got it, it's up here, I just need to say it and I would be going.
• 6:40
  Dave: And about 12 minutes in tangent, number one comes up and you're like wait, how did I get over here?
• 6:44
  Dave: I'm like okay, and so then I went to bullet points, which were handy, and I would.
• 6:50
  Dave: I just I look at the bullet points, most of my shows are solo and I just talked to my invisible friend across the desk and even with that I would.
• 6:57
  Dave: I would kind of I would stay on topic.
• 6:59
  Dave: But then what would happen is I would write my show notes based on what I just said and as I'm typing up the show notes, my brain would go oh, you know what you should have said there.
• 7:08
  Dave: And I'd be like now do I go back and rerecord or what?
• 7:12
  Dave: And nine times out of 10, I would just let it go.
• 7:15
  Dave: And I was like, well, wait a minute, what if I actually write a blog post and let's figure out what the heck I'm really trying to say, what's the takeaway?
• 7:23
  Dave: So that's the old teacher part of me is okay, you know, at the end of this class the student will be able to blank right.
• 7:29
  Dave: That's the and.
• 7:30
  Dave: So I kind of like, at the end of this episode, I want the listener to be able to do this or to know this, or to be able to identify.
• 7:37
  Dave: So I started writing a blog post and then from there I just I go backwards, I turn that into four bullet points because nobody wants me to talk and listen.
• 7:46
  Dave: Here is what we're going.
• 7:47
  Dave: You know, reading a podcast just doesn't work for me, and so I'd have the four bullet points and then I just talked to my invisible friend across the screen.
• 7:55
  Dave: So that's that's the way I always tell people.
• 7:57
  Dave: That's the workflow for me.
• 7:58
  Dave: That may not work for you, but it's a way that I no longer have an episode where I go.
• 8:04
  Dave: Oh, I should have said you know, I've kind of really figured it out.
• 8:08
  Alban: I think a lot of us listen to shows where we enjoy learning about the hosts and we kind of enjoy the human aspect and we enjoy some of the tangents.
• 8:16
  Alban: And then that translates to people going oh, the tangents are like really, really good and so I don't need to have a plan.
• 8:25
  Alban: But that stuff is only makes sense in the context of, like you actually have a show to begin with, and then the deviation is like you know, you're on a road trip and you're like, oh, it was fun when we went one hour out of our way, we went to this special place that we learned about.
• 8:41
  Alban: But that's okay On a big road trip or where 90% of the time you're going in the right direction, not just meandering across the country, and so I love like you've got this idea, you've thought through.
• 8:53
  Alban: Okay, here's what I want to write out.
• 8:55
  Alban: Synthesize that down to a handful of bullets and then, if you tell an interesting story in the middle, everyone's happy because they're kind of seeing how that's related to the overall theme.
• 9:11
  Dave: Yeah, I actually started making fun of myself because I will still, with my full four bullet points, my brain wants to call an audible in the middle of that, I'll be talking about something and I'll be like, all right, hold on.
• 9:15
  Dave: And I will just say that and leave a space.
• 9:17
  Dave: And then I actually have a jingle where I have this British guy go, oh, brilliant, Dave's going to go on another 10 second tangent, awesome, you know.
• 9:24
  Dave: And then when I get done with my tangent, there's a little bell and I all right now back to the show, and I was just like look, let's, this is who I am and so let's make fun of it.
• 9:33
  Jordan: Yeah, so do you use like a content calendar for planning out your episodes?
• 9:40
  Dave: Yeah what I do.
• 9:41
  Dave: It's kind of funny Cause I'm because I'm with you.
• 9:42
  Dave: When I hear people like, oh yeah, I've got you know I'm working on my episode.
• 9:46
  Dave: That's three months from now, I'm like I am about five days is like today I have an interview already done, so that's my backup.
• 9:55
  Dave: But today is where we recorded.
• 9:57
  Dave: This is Tuesday, so by tomorrow I need to know what the heck am I doing on Sunday, because my family knows Sunday is Dave's podcast day.
• 10:06
  Dave: He goes in the Dave cave and you will not see him and unless you're on fire, you know you should not call him.
• 10:13
  Dave: And I get home from church and I start recording and editing and by you know 11 o'clock it's done and so.
• 10:21
  Dave: But on Wednesday I figured it out and then it's usually like right now I'm thinking about episode 1000 and I'm like, okay, what am I going to do for episode 1000?
• 10:30
  Jordan: I'm like you know what?
• 10:32
  Dave: It's kind of a milestone.
• 10:33
  Dave: Let's answer the question Like, how do I grow my podcast?
• 10:37
  Dave: So what I'm doing in my head and I've been doing for a couple of weeks is like, okay, what makes me share stuff?
• 10:46
  Dave: What am I watching that I go?
• 10:47
  Dave: That was really good.
• 10:47
  Dave: Like I just watched stick on Apple TV with Mark Maron, so good, and it just made me feel the way I felt when I got done watching that.
• 10:53
  Dave: And you know, yeah, I don't want to spoil it, but it's a very Ted Lasso kind of thing and you just felt that when I was like, okay, so there's a lot about how things make you feel.
• 11:01
  Dave: So I'm, I'm jotting that down in my brain.
• 11:04
  Dave: But I also use.
• 11:05
  Dave: I used to use, um, what was the app with the green elephant that everybody?
• 11:09
  Dave: I used to use Evernote, until they tripled their price and I moved to note joy, which is like $48 a year versus whatever 150.
• 11:17
  Dave: And so I've learned this lesson.
• 11:20
  Dave: I'm also a musician and every musician knows the time when they they came up with this really cool chord progression.
• 11:24
  Dave: They're like I'm also a musician and every musician knows the time when they they came up with this really cool chord progression.
• 11:26
  Dave: They're like I should write this down.
• 11:27
  Dave: They're like, no, no, I'll remember it.
• 11:28
  Dave: And then two days later you're like wait, what was it again?
• 11:31
  Dave: And so I've done the same thing, where you, you come out of the shower with a great idea for an episode and you're like I should write this down.
• 11:38
  Dave: No, no, I'll remember it.
• 11:39
  Dave: And then you don't.
• 11:40
  Dave: So I just now know, anytime I get any kind of idea, it's going in NoteJoy.
• 11:45
  Dave: And what's fun is, there are times when Wednesday rolls around.
• 11:49
  Dave: I'm like, so, Dave, what are you going to record on Sunday?
• 11:51
  Dave: And I go um, and I'll just go into NoteJoy and I'm like, oh, totally forgot about this, totally forgot about that.
• 11:57
  Dave: Or I'll see where a lot of times it's articles about a topic that I'm like, oh, I need to go read that and then put my spin on it or combine it with this other idea.
• 12:08
  Dave: So, I'm always again kind of brainstorming with myself, but I've just learned that if you do not write it down and it doesn't have to be NoteJoy, it could be Apple Notes, it could be a piece of paper, whatever it is just write it down, because you're going to forget it?
• 12:20
  Jordan: Do you keep like different folders for all your different podcasts, too, in the app?
• 12:24
  Dave: Yeah.
• 12:25
  Dave: So in the app it's like every other app you have folders and then you can have folders inside of folders and then folders inside the folder that's inside, yeah.
• 12:32
  Dave: So Folderception, yeah.
• 12:34
  Dave: And I back when I used to teach computer software and the thing that I saw everybody just blow it on was file management.
• 12:43
  Dave: Like everybody just stored everything in my documents and I'm like that's kind of like having a filing cabinet with one folder in it, like you're not going to be able to find anything later.
• 12:52
  Dave: So I have it's very well.
• 12:54
  Dave: If you look at my note joy just goes on forever.
• 12:56
  Dave: But it's like here are podcasts.
• 12:57
  Dave: Like I have one folder for school of podcasting episodes and then I have one for school of podcasting ideas.
• 13:03
  Dave: So one is like this is what I'm harvesting.
• 13:06
  Dave: Now that it's done, I'll take my notes and that way, if I'm like have I ever talked about this?
• 13:10
  Dave: I can go into NoteJoy and do a search for it.
• 13:13
  Dave: But if NoteJoy goes away, I'm in a world of hurt.
• 13:18
  Jordan: Alban, what do you use?
• 13:19
  Jordan: Because you're often like taking notes and stuff like that when you're out and about.
• 13:23
  Alban: I use something called Obsidian.
• 13:26
  Jordan: Oh, I think I've heard of that.
• 13:27
  Alban: And Obsidian is another note-taking app and I think there's free versions of it.
• 13:33
  Alban: But the main benefit is it's all plain text files stored on your computer and you can sync them to other devices and I think you can pay them to back them up.
• 13:44
  Alban: But the idea is, even if Obsidian goes away, you still have all these files and they're on your computer and they're readable by any computer.
• 13:52
  Alban: That's been made since the sixties.
• 13:53
  Alban: The whole goal is this will never, ever go away, cause I think, like Dave you know, after Evernote tripled their prices and the product got worse, everyone realized we kind of want a way out from when a piece of software starts treating us poorly.
• 14:09
  Alban: I mean, kind of.
• 14:11
  Alban: The lesson I think I've taken from this is this is one of the things I love about RSS and podcasting and a lot of website building is it's all still normal file types that are not proprietary, that are easily movable to anywhere else.
• 14:28
  Alban: So you know, whether you're on Buzzsprout or any other podcast host, we're talking about MP3 files and for notes, you're talking about TXT files or MD files and just everything is yours, and I think we've gotten so far away from that.
• 14:41
  Alban: So, anyway, that's my note taking app and I love it.
• 14:51
  Dave: The other thing I love about NoteJoy is they give you an email so I can be reading.
• 14:52
  Dave: So if somebody sends something in email, I can forward it.
• 14:54
  Dave: And I just made a contact in my Gmail account first name, note, last name, joy and I forwarded the NoteJoy and it goes into my NoteJoy account.
• 15:03
  Dave: And then they have much like Evernote.
• 15:05
  Dave: They have a clipping tool, so if I'm on a website, I can just highlight an area and it basically sends it into my NoteJoy.
• 15:13
  Dave: And the fact that it works on a website, it works on your computer, it works on your phone, it works on a tablet, so you are never far away from what you need.
• 15:19
  Dave: That's awesome.
• 15:25
  Jordan: That is super cool.
• 15:26
  Jordan: Okay, so, when coming up with ideas, I think that a lot of podcasters run into trouble when they are just like banging their head against the wall trying to come up with ideas, trying to like, just make it happen.
• 15:35
  Jordan: And so you were talking about how you're just like constantly aware of things.
• 15:39
  Jordan: How do you continually come up with these ideas without you know getting burned out or hitting a creative wall?
• 15:46
  Jordan: Or even if you do hit a creative wall, what are some ways that you get over it?
• 15:50
  Dave: Well, the first thing is I live where my audience is, so I hang out a lot on Reddit.
• 15:55
  Dave: In Facebook I'm in the Buzzsprout group on Reddit and I'm basically not there to say anything, although I chime in a lot.
• 16:03
  Dave: A lot of it is just like what are people talking about?
• 16:06
  Dave: What are people stuck on?
• 16:07
  Dave: Because I don't want to guess.
• 16:09
  Dave: Do you think they'll like this?
• 16:11
  Dave: I can be like well, I know gym mom 27, will you know when I can see an exact question that somebody asked?
• 16:16
  Dave: So there's that.
• 16:17
  Dave: And then I listen to a lot of podcasts and.
• 16:20
  Dave: I hear what people talk about and, yeah, when you get stuck, that's the hard part.
• 16:24
  Dave: And what has happened to me is either my life changed, so, like I used to, my very first show was for musicians and I did that for, I think, 12 years and I wasn't a musician anymore.
• 16:37
  Dave: The band I was in broke up, I was married.
• 16:40
  Dave: It was just like okay.
• 16:41
  Dave: So getting the content wasn't as easy.
• 16:44
  Dave: I did a show called Weekly Web Tools Same thing.
• 16:47
  Dave: I think I had reviewed every web tool on the internet and that's when things get tough.
• 16:53
  Dave: And right now, daniel J Lewis and I do a show called the Future of Podcasting.
• 16:57
  Dave: Well, originally, the idea that was there's a show called Podcasting 2.0.
• 17:02
  Dave: That is uber nerdy and I was like, oh, I'm going to take that content and see if I can bring it down to where, like, normal people can understand it.
• 17:09
  Dave: And the problem is I was really excited about the kind of streaming Satoshi parts and that hasn't officially gone away, but it's definitely not where it was before and that was going to be my main thing.
• 17:21
  Dave: So when the content goes away, it makes it really hard.
• 17:25
  Dave: In fact, Daniel and I are both kind of like what do you got?
• 17:28
  Dave: And I think our next episode is just going to be welcome to the future of podcasting.
• 17:32
  Dave: We just don't know what to talk about.
• 17:37
  Dave: So when it doesn't see if you can find a new source of income or not income, but content, and so this is where blogs come in handy.
• 17:46
  Dave: Like, I use In-Out Reader, there's Feedly, so you know.
• 17:48
  Dave: And it sounds weird in a world of podcasting like, oh, don't forget about blogs.
• 17:52
  Dave: But those a lot of times will trigger me into like I didn't even know that website existed.
• 17:57
  Dave: So it's one of those where it's like you go to the buffet and you fill up your plate with everything that you love and then you're kind of like, oh, I'm out of food, and then meanwhile, while you're eating, they added whole other things to the buffet.
• 18:10
  Dave: I didn't even know that.
• 18:11
  Dave: What Bustle sprouts?
• 18:13
  Dave: Oh, I love those, you know.
• 18:14
  Dave: So, sometimes it's not a bad idea to go back and pretend you're starting over.
• 18:18
  Dave: You know, maybe last time you use Google to search, OK, maybe this time you try perplexity or you know something else and go try Bing yes, it's still around and you might find out that, hey, there's other sources of material.
• 18:32
  Dave: And I think the other thing that just for newbies, when you're starting out, I highly recommend you time how much time it takes to do your episode, Cause so many people try to squeeze their life into their podcast.
• 18:47
  Dave: And that is backwards.
• 18:48
  Dave: You want to squeeze your podcast into your life.
• 18:51
  Dave: And so many times people are like, oh, I'm going to do a daily show, and in my brain I'm going, no, you're not, because that's the other thing.
• 18:57
  Dave: The more you do it, you know, the more content you need.
• 19:00
  Dave: And so I always recommend, I'm like, hey, before you even hit record, I'm not talking about writing a script, just give me 10 topics that you're going to talk about.
• 19:09
  Dave: And if they come back and they go, yeah, I got seven.
• 19:11
  Dave: And I'm like, yeah, well, what are you going to do when episode eight comes around, like you know?
• 19:16
  Dave: And then you just kind of figure it out and again, in some cases, it's go find a new source.
• 19:20
  Dave: And that's where, again, it doesn't matter if I'm trying to think what I watched.
• 19:25
  Dave: I watched the stick thing.
• 19:26
  Dave: Not really anything there with podcasting, but I could, because golf is a lot like podcasting in the fact that you know if you move your head or if you move your feet, all these little things affect how the ball goes.
• 19:38
  Dave: Well, your social media, your microphone technique, you have all these little things.
• 19:43
  Dave: So I can turn an analogy into anything.
• 19:45
  Dave: So if whatever I'm watching, I'm always like, okay, is there anything here?
• 19:50
  Dave: And then I look at what are people talking about in you know whatever Reddit and what's the hot topic, and then it's like, okay, how can I squeeze that into podcasting?
• 20:00
  Dave: So recently Ozzy Osbourne died and I was really bummed.
• 20:03
  Dave: That was like watching a big chunk of my childhood just go up in flames.
• 20:07
  Dave: And I was like I don't really want to talk about podcasting.
• 20:10
  Dave: And then I listened to his audio book and I'm like, wow, there are a lot of really good lessons here for podcasters, like I don't know, don't do drugs, kids, but other things on how you know, he was super unique, like you knew Ozzy the minute you heard him.
• 20:24
  Dave: So it's just a matter of always staying open and then writing it down.
• 20:28
  Dave: And there are times when you're like I don't want to do this anymore because, oh, I mean, jordan Harbinger is a great example.
• 20:35
  Dave: When he did the Art of Charm, it was kind of a.
• 20:39
  Dave: It had a slant of how to pick up people and, you know, be kind of a player.
• 20:43
  Dave: And he was like, yeah, I don't want to be a 42 year old player, you know.
• 20:48
  Dave: So he switched to the Jordan Harbinger show and there are just times when you're like, hey, yeah, I started this show when I was 22 and I'm not 22 anymore.
• 20:56
  Dave: And I don't really care about this, and if you're not passionate about your subject, then you know it's time to go.
• 21:01
  Dave: Hey, I'm going to stop doing this show, but I am cause.
• 21:04
  Dave: You know we can't stop.
• 21:05
  Dave: I am starting this new show and if you'd like to hear more from me, go over and visit me at you know, and then promote your website and send them on over.
• 21:14
  Alban: I'm hearing a few lessons that I want to take from this Dave.
• 21:16
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 21:17
  Alban: One is you have started 30 shows, but you're only running a handful of those now, because one sometimes the creative inspiration leaves.
• 21:27
  Alban: Two is the shows that are the ones that stick around are the ones you're immersed in the communities, whether that be the Reddit, facebook communities, or you're reading the newsletters, you're reading blogs, you're connected to what's happening, and so your mind's always kind of firing with ideas.
• 21:45
  Alban: Oh, here's my reaction to this podcast, here's my reaction to that take on Twitter.
• 21:50
  Alban: And the combination of that is you come up with lots of ideas, and so when Wednesday comes around and you go, what am I going to talk about on Sunday?
• 21:59
  Alban: Well, there's 40 notes sitting there for you in note joy, because you've been thinking about this constantly.
• 22:05
  Dave: Yeah.
• 22:05
  Dave: And then it's a matter of the things that still have that passion, Like, hey, I wrote that in NoteJoy a week and a half ago.
• 22:12
  Dave: Am I still passionate about talking about that?
• 22:14
  Dave: Sometimes there are things that I look at and go, oh yeah, I see what I was thinking there, but now that we're never going to talk about that.
• 22:20
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 22:25
  Dave: So it's that second kind of round of almost like a draft.
• 22:26
  Dave: You know, you have your first round, your second round.
• 22:28
  Dave: It's like, okay, it's Wednesday, who's going to make it to the big game on Sunday?
• 22:30
  Dave: Because that's when I record.
• 22:31
  Dave: And I'm like, okay, so we're going to talk about this and then from there.
• 22:35
  Dave: A lot of times I've already done the research and it's in no joy.
• 22:38
  Dave: Or it's like, oh, I need to do some more, like I did one about running your podcast as a business and that took me about a month and a half because I was working with these companies that made business accounts for your bank and they were ridiculously slow and that was the problem.
• 22:54
  Dave: I didn't realize that I actually announced it like, hey, next week we're going to talk about running your podcast as a business.
• 22:58
  Dave: And it was like no, we're not, I can't get all the info I need.
• 23:02
  Dave: So sometimes you pull the trigger a little early, but it's again where I'm not going to feed you a turkey on Thanksgiving that's half cooked.
• 23:09
  Dave: So I was like, when that you know, he said hey, I know, I said last week we're going to talk about this.
• 23:13
  Dave: Instead, we're talking about this today.
• 23:15
  Dave: And they already knew that because it's on the title of the episode.
• 23:18
  Dave: But I just said I'm still working on that and my audience appreciates the fact that I'm not going to, you know, feed them half cooked turkey, because I don't think that's going to go over.
• 23:26
  Dave: Well, but another area, because we're talking about solo shows if you're doing an interview show and somebody was a killer guest, here's a novel idea Bring them back.
• 23:35
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 23:36
  Dave: You know what I mean.
• 23:36
  Dave: It's like Glenn Hebert from the Horse Radio Network.
• 23:39
  Dave: He's been on, I think, five times and at at this point he knows he just has an open door.
• 23:44
  Dave: He'll send me something on Facebook or email is like, hey, I got something for you.
• 23:48
  Dave: I don't even ask what it is anymore because he's just he knows what I talk about.
• 23:53
  Dave: He knows my audience and so Glenn's been back a few times.
• 23:56
  Dave: I've had a few people back because if they bring good content and they're going to help educate my audience, I you know why not.
• 24:03
  Dave: So that's another thing, that the idea that I'm never going to repeat myself.
• 24:08
  Dave: You know, when I'm in these groups I see the same questions over and over and over.
• 24:14
  Dave: So there are times when I'm like, hey, I think I've talked about imposter syndrome twice, I know, for a while every year.
• 24:21
  Dave: Like the first episode of January was kind of a how to launch your podcast of January was kind of a how to launch your podcast.
• 24:29
  Dave: And over the years I've noticed my audience is less kind of how to start and more how to grow than they used to be.
• 24:34
  Dave: And that might just be because it's easier to start a podcast now, but yeah there's.
• 24:38
  Dave: there's no rule that you know the podcast police are not going to knock at your door and go hey, mr Jackson, I'm sorry, but I think you did that back in 2007.
• 24:46
  Dave: Come with me.
• 24:49
  Alban: One of the questions I wanted to ask was how do you avoid pod fade?
• 24:52
  Alban: And what actually I've heard is you've pod faded constantly.
• 24:55
  Alban: You've had a bunch of shows that you went, oh this was fun for seven episodes and then I'm totally okay letting that show go because you learned a valuable lesson, which was, yeah, I enjoyed talking about customer service for exactly seven episodes and I didn't have more in me.
• 25:12
  Alban: That got me excited to go join those communities and learn more and develop opinions about it.
• 25:18
  Dave: It started with delusions of grandeur, because I had won awards for my customer service stuff and I have plaques and stuff, and I was like I'm going to start this, I will position myself as an expert and people will hire me to come in, I'll be doing presentations in front of companies, and at seven episodes I was like that's going to take a couple of years.
• 25:37
  Dave: And that's when I just realized I was like, yeah, this is something I'm good at, but it's not something that, like, I'm going to talk about.
• 25:44
  Dave: I remember once I was at a Christmas party with my ex-wife and somebody walked up and said, hey, are you the podcast guy?
• 25:51
  Dave: And she just rolled her eyes and said, all right, I'll see you in 20 minutes, cause she just knew, like, this is what Dave loves to talk about.
• 25:57
  Dave: And so, yeah, I've never.
• 25:59
  Dave: When it's not fun, life is too short.
• 26:02
  Dave: When I did the show, my original one was called the Musician's Cyber Cooler, because back in 2005, boys and girls, the internet was called cyberspace.
• 26:14
  Dave: And then cyberspace was connected to cyber sex and so I was like, all right, it's not the Musician's Cyber Cooler, it's the Musician's Cooler Big picture of a water cooler.
• 26:24
  Dave: And people still kind of like, so, like Bartles and James, like what's huh, like wine coolers, and I was like okay.
• 26:34
  Dave: So I was starting to run out of fumes with that show and I was like you know what I need?
• 26:36
  Dave: I need to rebrand.
• 26:37
  Dave: People are confused.
• 26:37
  Dave: So I branded it the marketing musician podcast.
• 26:40
  Dave: Well, that's obvious, even got a custom theme song.
• 26:43
  Dave: But the gas was out of the tank and I was just like, eh, and the music business had completely changed and I was just like I wasn't proud of what I was putting out anymore.
• 26:53
  Dave: I was just like it was like, well, yeah, that'll do you know.
• 26:57
  Dave: And it's like after a month and a half of like, eh, I guess this will do you know, I got it.
• 27:01
  Dave: I want to be consistent.
• 27:03
  Dave: And so that's when I was like, yeah, you don't like this anymore, and I just went, hey, thanks so much.
• 27:07
  Dave: And I said I'm going on a very long hiatus.
• 27:10
  Dave: If I go, if I see something that I really want to do, like I'll come back and do an episode, but I'm not doing a weekly.
• 27:16
  Dave: So I have a lot of shows that are still going, but I haven't put out an episode in you know 10 years.
• 27:22
  Dave: So so it's like I never.
• 27:23
  Dave: I couldn't really bring myself to kill it.
• 27:25
  Dave: But the other one is what is the overall goal of your life?
• 27:29
  Dave: We're going to go deep into the pool here.
• 27:31
  Dave: All right, it dawned on me that I did a show called the Podcast Rodeo Show, where you would listen.
• 27:35
  Dave: First of all, horrible name.
• 27:37
  Dave: It has nothing to do with rodeos or horses.
• 27:40
  Jordan: I loved it though.
• 27:41
  Dave: And if you have to explain your name, you've picked a bad one.
• 27:44
  Dave: Yeah, to explain your name, you've picked a bad one, yeah.
• 27:48
  Dave: And so it was.
• 27:49
  Dave: I'll grab a podcast and see how long I can hang on.
• 27:50
  Dave: And I would just review like the first couple minutes, and after a while it just sounded like, oh, this is the guy that.
• 27:55
  Dave: Just, he's a nice guy and he rips your podcast to shreds.
• 27:58
  Dave: And I'm like, well, I don't want to be the rip your podcast to shreds guy, I want to be the helpful teacher guy.
• 28:03
  Dave: And I was just so I I kind of did a gentler version of that.
• 28:08
  Dave: And then people were like, no, no, I want the Simon Cowell version of this.
• 28:11
  Dave: And so after a while I was like this is not serving my purpose as a podcast consultant, if anything.
• 28:18
  Dave: It's people like I don't want to work with that guy, he's a jerk.
• 28:20
  Dave: And so I rebranded it and it's a little more.
• 28:23
  Dave: I mean, the podcast rodeo show was constructive.
• 28:28
  Dave: The early episodes were not and I was just like, all right, let's rebrand this.
• 28:30
  Dave: And then I also said I'm only doing that show because it's kind of consulting if you pay me.
• 28:36
  Dave: And so that show is very inconsistent because not everybody's paying me to get an audit of their show.
• 28:43
  Dave: But that was just another one where I was like, in the end, this isn't really helping.
• 28:47
  Dave: What I'm trying, you know, I guess if we talk about a brand like this show doesn't fit my brand anymore and I just was like, yeah, all right, that's enough of that one.
• 28:57
  Dave: The other thing I don't do anymore is it used to be like if Jordan would stand next to me in an event for, say, 20 minutes, I would start a new podcast somewhere in that 20 minutes.
• 29:07
  Dave: Dave is starting another podcast and I now know that.
• 29:13
  Dave: You know, any of us could start a podcast and have it in Apple probably in about two hours.
• 29:15
  Dave: That's not the hard part, it's getting people to listen, it's making great content.
• 29:20
  Dave: So I've learned.
• 29:20
  Dave: Now I'm like cause I think in the early days at one point I had seven podcasts going and that's just.
• 29:26
  Dave: I would rather if I had to do anything over again, I would do one show and it would be amazing Like, hands down, don't even try.
• 29:33
  Dave: That's the guy If you want to talk to you know something about podcasting or whatever.
• 29:37
  Dave: He's the guy.
• 29:38
  Dave: And it's hard to be the guy when you're doing that show and this show and then I'm researching for that.
• 29:42
  Dave: I got to do social because I'm an army of one.
• 29:45
  Jordan: Yeah, I mean that's one of the things that you know we're always saying keep podcasting.
• 29:49
  Jordan: And I think that it's nice to have like a little asterisk there that says, as long as it's still your passion, right.
• 29:57
  Jordan: And if it's not still your passion, find that new passion and start podcasting about that.
• 30:02
  Jordan: We could say that you pod faded several times, but you didn't actually pod fade, you just started new ventures, and I think that there's a good lesson here for podcasters that if their podcast no longer serves them, if it's not something that they're super passionate about I don't have the same hobbies that I had 10 years ago so if it no longer is in that lane for you, either drop it and start up something else or, like you done in the past, if you had pivoted just slightly and you just want to maybe do a different version of it because maybe you've grown or matured as a person, then you could rebrand it, so long as it still applies to the audience that are already in that feed.
• 30:43
  Dave: Yeah, One of the questions I always ask people, and they're like it confuses them.
• 30:47
  Dave: I go how are you going to measure your success?
• 30:49
  Dave: And they'll be like what do you mean?
• 30:51
  Dave: I go, you're going to do this, why are you doing this?
• 30:55
  Dave: And they'll be like oh, I want to help people, I want to reach the world, Great, Okay, how are we going to measure our success?
• 30:59
  Dave: And that's where I'll find out.
• 31:01
  Dave: It's a very polite way of me saying is this a hobby or a business?
• 31:04
  Dave: Because they'll say well, downloads.
• 31:06
  Dave: And I'm like okay, but like, congratulations, I'm going to wave my magic wand.
• 31:10
  Dave: You now have 8,000 downloads, how has your life changed?
• 31:13
  Dave: And they're like oh well, I don't know, I'd probably get a sponsor.
• 31:16
  Dave: Oh, so, really, the goal here is monetization.
• 31:18
  Dave: And they're like well, yeah, I'd like to.
• 31:19
  Dave: Okay.
• 31:20
  Dave: So we need to know that upfront.
• 31:22
  Dave: And the reason I always ask it is in January.
• 31:24
  Dave: Everybody and their brother is like hey, this is the year we're starting a podcast and my numbers for the school of podcasting will go through the roof In February, much like gym memberships in America.
• 31:34
  Dave: My numbers come down, but my membership goes up.
• 31:37
  Dave: So if I was only basing my success on download numbers, I'd be in the fetal position on the floor in February?
• 31:44
  Dave: Yeah, but because I based my success on how many new members I have, I'm ecstatic in February.
• 31:50
  Dave: So you have to know, like, why am I doing this?
• 31:52
  Dave: Really, that's important because if you don't get your why, you are going to pod fade and then how are you going to measure your success?
• 31:58
  Alban: Yeah, it's so easy to look at numbers and just think this isn't as big as it should be, without any reference to the purpose of the show.
• 32:07
  Alban: I do have times where I notice I can write something on a blog for work and if it doesn't get thousands of reads, I go oh yeah, that wasn't a great, we didn't do a great job here.
• 32:17
  Alban: We should have done something differently.
• 32:18
  Alban: But recently, personally, there's blogs I've written that got 10 views and I'm like, dang, that's cool.
• 32:23
  Alban: 10 people like that enough to read it.
• 32:25
  Alban: And I'm like, dang, that's cool.
• 32:26
  Alban: 10 people liked that enough to read it.
• 32:26
  Alban: That seems like a lot and it just depends on, like, what was the purpose?
• 32:29
  Alban: Was it sharing something and just the sharing was the important piece, or was it?
• 32:34
  Alban: No, this needs to turn 40 hours of work into real monetary value and for that conversion to make sense, there need to be thousands of reads and those reads turn into customers and here's how that works.
• 32:47
  Alban: So it is good to approach it from the beginning with what is the goal here, so that you have a chance of actually succeeding it, and then, when you succeed, being able to like, be proud of yourself and go okay, that was good, we hit it.
• 33:00
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 33:00
  Dave: Well, when I have somebody say, well, I only got 80 downloads on that episode, I'm like that's a hallway.
• 33:05
  Dave: They're like what do you mean?
• 33:06
  Dave: I go.
• 33:06
  Dave: And I used to be a teacher I go.
• 33:08
  Dave: We had 20 people in a classroom.
• 33:10
  Dave: We had one hallway.
• 33:11
  Dave: That was four rooms.
• 33:12
  Dave: That's a hallway.
• 33:13
  Dave: Now those people could be listening to serious, they could be watching Netflix, they could be playing video games.
• 33:19
  Dave: I go, but they chose to download your show and I go, so don't?
• 33:23
  Dave: I always hate to hear the word only in front of a number.
• 33:25
  Dave: I'm like if it's 20, that's a full classroom.
• 33:27
  Dave: And when I would walk in and I had a full 20 people, I'm like, ooh, I got to bring my A game today and I hope they pay attention and you know that whole nine yards.
• 33:35
  Dave: Now we all want bigger numbers, we all have an ego and we want to.
• 33:45
  Dave: It's like 100 people.
• 33:46
  Dave: That's a small theater in some cases.
• 33:49
  Jordan: Yeah Well, and it's also, honestly, a source for ideas and content too, if you have an engaged audience.
• 33:56
  Jordan: So, like one of my podcasts, it's over 13 million downloads.
• 34:01
  Jordan: But the audience I don't know where they're at.
• 34:03
  Jordan: They are so far disengaged.
• 34:03
  Jordan: I don't know where they're at.
• 34:04
  Jordan: They are so far disengaged, no engagement whatsoever, will not talk to me, and then you know, this podcast is like, obviously nowhere near that, but we are constantly getting engagement and we're constantly getting content, ideas.
• 34:21
  Jordan: We're constantly getting questions from listeners, or stories or, you know, follow up on things that we can use for our podcast, and so I think it's really, really valuable.
• 34:28
  Jordan: If you do have that small engaged audience, make sure that you have a way for them to reach out to you.
• 34:34
  Jordan: If you have like a text to show link in the show notes, for example, or an email that they can email you, because you can use listener feedback, questions, stories as a constant generation.
• 34:45
  Jordan: Dave, you always have people asking questions at the end of school podcasting or you have these kind of like roundup episodes where you will ask a question of the month and then everyone sends in their voice messages and you use that and you use it as like commentary, and it's really cool because all this engagement will fill out a full episode for you.
• 35:05
  Dave: Yeah, what I do there.
• 35:06
  Dave: Because this is the thing.
• 35:08
  Dave: If I said, hey, let me know what you think, okay, probably not going to get any answers, and if I do, they'll be like it's cool.
• 35:14
  Dave: So I ask a very specific question.
• 35:17
  Dave: I let my audience specifically know how to answer it.
• 35:20
  Dave: I'm like, hey, let me know, Go to schoolofpodcastingcom slash question.
• 35:24
  Dave: I need it by this date.
• 35:28
  Dave: And while you're there, don't forget to tell us a little bit about your show and your website.
• 35:31
  Dave: And I used to joke, I'm not giving any awards.
• 35:33
  Dave: Who can say their website the fastest?
• 35:35
  Dave: Because people would be like, hey, thanks so much.
• 35:37
  Dave: I'm from the such and such podcast, my website.
• 35:39
  Dave: I'm like, what I'm like?
• 35:42
  Dave: And I'm literally slowing it down.
• 35:44
  Dave: It's at 0.2 speed.
• 35:45
  Dave: I'm like.
• 35:45
  Dave: I think that was a K and it's one of those things.
• 35:48
  Dave: Every time I do that, by the way I go, is this going to be the one where nobody answers?
• 35:52
  Dave: Like the imposter syndrome comes in and I'm like, what if nobody answers?
• 35:56
  Dave: Well, if nobody answers, then I'll answer the question myself.
• 36:00
  Dave: Or make up someone AI to the rescue, rescue yeah.
• 36:03
  Alban: We we did in the old days.
• 36:06
  Alban: I used to do walkthroughs for Buzzsprout and I remember the first time that I did one, I was like no one's going to ask a question at the end of this webinar, you know, and I might have five people on here and nobody really wants to be the first person to ask the question.
• 36:19
  Alban: And so I wrote a couple of fake questions that were written by my wife or other people and I just put their names on it and I was like, oh yeah, we got a question for Marie and here's what she asked.
• 36:29
  Alban: And as soon as I did that, then all the other people started jumping in with their questions and I was like, oh, great question.
• 36:35
  Alban: And I was like all of that was just fear that I'd imagined.
• 36:38
  Alban: Yeah.
• 36:39
  Dave: And as soon as people realized, hey asking questions and them getting answered as normal.
• 36:52
  Dave: Then it kicked it off enough that we had tons of engagement.
• 36:53
  Dave: Yeah, when I was probably 13, I called a radio station.
• 36:54
  Dave: I'm like, hey, can you play some Judas Priest?
• 36:54
  Dave: And they're like, no like, but you can request Loverboy.
• 36:56
  Dave: And in my brain I you know my mouth I threw up just a little bit thinking about Loverboy because I was a Judas Priest fan and I was like, hey, rock and Rick, can you play some Loverboy?
• 37:03
  Dave: And he's like on 97.5, you know.
• 37:05
  Dave: And there was my voice on the radio and that's.
• 37:07
  Dave: And why did I do that?
• 37:08
  Dave: Because I heard other people go hey, rockin' Rick, can you play some, you know, whatever.
• 37:12
  Dave: And so I called in, and so it's the same thing when you kind of prime the pump, you know.
• 37:17
  Dave: So have your cousin call in and leave a voicemail, and then people go like yeah.
• 37:23
  Alban: Something that I've also kind of been picking up as we've been talking, Dave, about coming up with content ideas is there isn't just one format, and sometimes I think it can feel like the one format I have is solo show, where I teach something and that well runs dry.
• 37:40
  Alban: Oh, I'm doing teardowns and talking about what could be improved, how you could change something.
• 37:48
  Alban: You can do a show where you're doing an interview, you can do a coaching call, you can do a you know, explaining a myth about podcasting, how it's wrong.
• 37:57
  Alban: You can have a debate, you can do a case study, you can do a mailbag and something about like.
• 38:05
  Alban: As soon as you start thinking of all the different formats at least for me, it becomes way easier to think okay, I actually could do the same show four different times, very similar, but one of them is a teardown of another show showing what it does well, and another one could be the mailbag episode.
• 38:20
  Alban: One could be you just working through the blog post in your bullets, and all of those will have different takes, even if they end up being on like similar topics.
• 38:30
  Dave: Absolutely I.
• 38:31
  Dave: I started a segment called because of my podcast and I would just ask people I'm like hey, can you answer this question Because of my podcast blank.
• 38:40
  Dave: And that blank is something that wouldn't have happened, except you had a podcast.
• 38:44
  Dave: And all that is is that's Dave tired of saying you really should had a podcast?
• 38:48
  Dave: And all that is is that's Dave tired of saying you really should start a podcast?
• 38:50
  Dave: Like, really, there's so many benefits.
• 38:52
  Dave: But when somebody else does, I can go hey, lookie, what they did.
• 38:55
  Dave: If they did it, you can do it.
• 38:57
  Dave: So it's a very passive, aggressive way of promoting the school of podcasting.
• 39:02
  Dave: And but you know, when somebody goes, you know like I just saw where Lou Mangiello is going to Germany because he does a Disney podcast and he's going to get to see the new cruise ship that just launched in Germany I'm like that's because of my podcast story.
• 39:16
  Dave: And people like whoa, I didn't know that, you know.
• 39:19
  Dave: So, yeah, but same thing for me.
• 39:21
  Dave: I mean, if I get tired of talking about content, well, let's talk about gear.
• 39:26
  Dave: Okay, well, let's talk about how much I hate Spotify and YouTube.
• 39:29
  Dave: That never gets, and it's funny because you would think that would get old.
• 39:32
  Dave: But people like oh, I love it when you rant about so-and-so, we get that too.
• 39:36
  Jordan: It's so weird.
• 39:37
  Dave: And it's again.
• 39:38
  Dave: I have a jingle for that.
• 39:40
  Dave: I have one that's like and now it's time for a power rant, you know, and it's like people are like oh, I love it, Dave's going to go off and go crazy, and I'm like all right, you know, and it's just my opinion.
• 39:49
  Dave: So anytime things are kind of getting, you know, am I going to do this or that?
• 39:55
  Dave: I can just go.
• 39:55
  Dave: Oh, you know what, let's talk about gear as much as I go.
• 39:59
  Dave: It's not the gear boy.
• 40:00
  Dave: Does my audience love to talk about gear?
• 40:02
  Jordan: You know, it's actually so smart about your because of my podcast.
• 40:07
  Jordan: Thing, too, is that you're appealing to people's egos.
• 40:10
  Jordan: There's been so many times that I have myself thought, oh, I should send this in because I was excited that something happened because of my podcast I one that comes to mind was um, I got a deal with a children's app and the only reason that happened was because of my podcast.
• 40:24
  Jordan: I was like so pumped about, pumped about it and, for whatever reason, I immediately thought, oh, this would be such a good thing for Dave's podcast, but this was like way before.
• 40:32
  Jordan: Yeah, it was way before.
• 40:33
  Jordan: I had like met you in person and I never get the fact that it's scary to send things to Dave.
• 40:40
  Dave: I'm like I'm I'm pretty much a big powder puff, like just I'm a huggable kind of guy, you know.
• 40:52
  Dave: But I, when I go to podcasts, oh I, I was in an elevator with you but I didn't say hi and I'm like, why story?
• 41:05
  Dave: You know?
• 41:06
  Alban: schoolofpodcastingcom slash contact, send it on over All right, Dave, so you got to give us one what is, you know, as small of a kind of story as you can give us a really cool moment.
• 41:16
  Alban: That happened because of your podcast.
• 41:18
  Dave: Short is not my strong suit, but here's the fun part Back when the New Media Expo was the event so this was back a ways the head of that stepped down, and so the head of the New Media Expo talked to some folks at different media hosts, and all three of them, he called three of them and they all said what do you think about Dave Jackson?
• 41:38
  Dave: So welcome to humble brag theater is what we should call this.
• 41:41
  Dave: So the guy turned around and called me and he's like well, I'm not going to call anybody else, because everybody's saying you Now, how did that happen?
• 41:48
  Dave: Because of my podcast, because I'd interviewed all those people or I'd met them at events.
• 41:52
  Dave: So I'd build a relationship, and I always say podcasts build relationships that lead to opportunities, and those opportunities lead to more relationships, which lead to more opportunities no-transcript.
• 42:36
  Alban: Well, some people will tell you I really love editing podcasts and I love putting them together, and you go okay.
• 42:43
  Alban: And then you go, look, and Jordan actually has a history of doing podcasts for years.
• 42:48
  Alban: And then we go, okay, well, this is an easy hire.
• 42:49
  Alban: This person's obviously telling the truth.
• 42:52
  Alban: We can see.
• 42:53
  Alban: Oh, she says I love engaging with podcasters in Facebook.
• 42:56
  Alban: Well, we knew that was true because she was engaging with podcasters on our Facebook.
• 42:59
  Alban: And there's something too if you're creating a podcast because you're passionate about it, it's a real proof point to everyone in the world.
• 43:07
  Alban: If you think you need someone to run the podcasting track at New Media Expo, the guy who's been doing podcasts about teaching you how to podcast for years is going to be kind of the obvious answer.
• 43:17
  Alban: And if you're trying to hire someone to edit and host podcasts at Buzzsprout, well, maybe the person who's in your Facebook group constantly talking about her podcast and how much she loves Buzzsprout is a pretty easy hire.
• 43:29
  Dave: Exactly.
• 43:29
  Dave: I spoke to an event in Chicago and somebody said you're not a podcaster, you're a brand.
• 43:35
  Dave: And we all kind of went how dare you, I am a podcast.
• 43:38
  Dave: He's like, no, you're a brand.
• 43:38
  Dave: And he said you have to figure out what you want to be known for and make that your show.
• 43:44
  Dave: He goes because you're known for what you're known for, so I'm a podcast.
• 43:50
  Dave: It's like the guy that came up at the Christmas party hey, are you the podcast guy?
• 43:51
  Dave: Yeah, you know.
• 43:52
  Dave: So when people come up and like, hey, are you the horse guy?
• 43:55
  Dave: Hey, are you the NASCAR person?
• 43:56
  Dave: Are you the Disney guy?
• 43:57
  Dave: You know, and that's what you're known for.
• 43:59
  Dave: And then people when they go, well, I need a Disney person, they go oh, I got the person for you, it's Lou Mangiello.
• 44:05
  Alban: Exactly.
• 44:06
  Alban: And then Disney goes.
• 44:08
  Alban: You know, we really need to get the word out about this new cruise ship.
• 44:11
  Alban: Who are we going to call up?
• 44:13
  Alban: And you know they've got an internal list of all these people who create content about what makes Disney special and Lou's probably up near the top of that list and they go well, we've got to get Lou out here.
• 44:23
  Alban: So make sure we send him a ticket and an invite and then he gets the opportunity.
• 44:27
  Alban: I mean, that might maybe that's the differentiator between a show that might pod fade, which you know, you kind of would like to be known as the person who was the expert in a specific area.
• 44:38
  Alban: But it may not be a passion, it may just be kind of a desire to be successful.
• 44:42
  Alban: Yeah, and being able to stick with it is like, oh, this is something I really love, and then that proof point kind of bears itself out over time.
• 44:50
  Dave: Why I hear a lot of people say, well, what you should do is go to YouTube or go to wherever and find another show like yours and see what's popular over there.
• 44:59
  Dave: And I'm like, but if we all do that, like we're all going to end up talking about the exact same thing, and if you're not passionate about that, I get this strategy.
• 45:07
  Dave: It makes sense.
• 45:08
  Dave: Hey, this is obviously if this person shares an audience with me and it was popular over there, it might be popular over here.
• 45:14
  Dave: But if it's something I don't want to talk about, like I don't really like.
• 45:18
  Dave: If somebody got something about you know 10 different microphones and I'm like, oh, I should do an episode about 10 different microphones.
• 45:23
  Dave: No, I should do an episode about 10 different microphones.
• 45:25
  Dave: No, I don't want to do that, that's not my jam.
• 45:27
  Dave: So that's the part I go I get the strategy.
• 45:29
  Dave: But if that's not really what you want to talk about because what happens if I did an episode about here at 10 podcasting microphones and it went ballistic You're like, oh great, yeah, except now I got to talk about stuff that I don't want to talk about.
• 45:51
  Jordan: Yeah, if just based our entire content calendar off of what's hot, what's trending, this entire podcast would be about Spotify, YouTube and AI, that's it, and we'd be the Spotify, YouTube and AI podcast.
• 46:03
  Jordan: And I don't think anyone wants that, Even though it's hot topics right.
• 46:06
  Jordan: It's hot and it's the podcast.
• 46:07
  Jordan: And I don't think anyone wants that, Even though it's like hot topics right.
• 46:08
  Dave: It's hot and it's the thing, and I'm sure when we go to podcast movement, there will be a lot of discussion about those exact things.
• 46:14
  Alban: Yeah.
• 46:16
  Dave: That's where I kind of go.
• 46:17
  Dave: So let me get this straight.
• 46:18
  Dave: You're going to be a thought leader in your show by letting AI write your script based on data from a few years ago.
• 46:26
  Dave: How does that work?
• 46:28
  Dave: Again, my logical brain kind of skips a beat on that.
• 46:31
  Dave: I'm like I'm not sure that's going to work.
• 46:33
  Alban: Dave, when you say, go somewhere else, see what's successful and then replicate that, and you're saying, yeah, that doesn't work.
• 46:39
  Alban: I mean, you're talking about doing 10 different podcast mics and I immediately thought of Andrew Scott, who does podcastage and he's at 10 years of reviewing mics.
• 46:50
  Alban: He really enjoys that and does a really good job and so anytime I've ever thought what is different about this mic, he's got the review, he goes through everything about it and you learn a ton.
• 47:02
  Alban: I'm not that person.
• 47:04
  Alban: So when we start talking about gear, we wrote a blog post about what podcast gear do you need?
• 47:09
  Alban: And I went we can't make a bad blog post summarizing 10 years of what Bandrew's already done and just like saying here's like the 10 things and then like links to all these Amazon pages.
• 47:19
  Alban: I'm like that's what everyone else has done and we're just going to do a worse version.
• 47:23
  Alban: And then I went well, the thing I actually want to read is somebody just saying, hey, here's what you should start with, just go get it.
• 47:29
  Alban: And also, after 10 years, here's what I came up with and here's why I like it.
• 47:34
  Alban: But like, then you're done.
• 47:35
  Alban: And we wrote that one and that ended up being one of the best equipment blogs who wrote because it was like maybe uniquely buzzsprout and there wasn't somebody else who'd already written it, and we didn't try to replicate someone else.
• 47:48
  Alban: We actually went in a opposite direction because we knew trying to replicate what somebody else did was a losing strategy, because they already were doing it, probably a lot better than we would do it.
• 47:57
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 47:58
  Dave: I just did a thing where I'm now teaching a live course for six weeks every Thursday night and I did this big email campaign and I followed all this and you know, I had a business coach coaching me on every email and, like I sold some seats, but not as many as I wanted to.
• 48:14
  Dave: And he said, okay, now write a email asking people why they didn't buy.
• 48:19
  Dave: And I was like, ooh, that's awkward.
• 48:21
  Dave: Like hey, hi, I'm the guy that you didn't, you know, believe in enough to you know, buy his stuff, like you know.
• 48:28
  Dave: And plus, there's a part of me it's like why, why didn't you buy my stuff, you know?
• 48:32
  Dave: And I sent it out.
• 48:33
  Dave: It's the best thing I've ever did, because I found out that I was selling a kind of a like how to get up and running, how to launch your podcast, kind of thing.
• 48:41
  Dave: Yeah, a large chunk of my email list is people that have already launched and they've been doing this for two years.
• 48:47
  Dave: And I said, well then, what do you want to learn?
• 48:49
  Dave: And they're all like, how do I grow this thing?
• 48:51
  Dave: What's this?
• 48:51
  Dave: And then that's always the almighty question.
• 48:54
  Dave: And so there may be times that your show isn't bad.
• 48:58
  Dave: You've just attracted the wrong audience.
• 49:11
  Jordan: You know, again, it's not bad, it's just they don't want what you're selling.
• 49:13
  Jordan: So maybe your marketing needs to shift, because the people you're hanging out with are not the people that need your show.
• 49:16
  Jordan: That's exactly what happened with my podcast was I created it for kids and, unknown to me, took off among adults.
• 49:18
  Jordan: So my podcast I made for kids, adults went hog wild for it and it turned out that, like once I sent out a listener survey and I started getting comments from people about what they wanted to hear more of, I went, oh, my audience isn't kids anymore, it's adults, and I I literally took my podcast out of the kids and family category, put it in mental health, and it did so much better because I had pivoted and I was doing, you know, more adult content.
• 49:47
  Jordan: You know Jane Austen, sherlock Holmes kind of stuff.
• 49:49
  Jordan: So it's really good to listen to your audience and, like be aware of what they do want.
• 49:54
  Dave: Yeah, that's my old customer service stuff.
• 49:56
  Dave: I was always about let's, let's go talk to our customers and find out what they want, cause otherwise you know you're serving roast beef to a vegan and they're like yeah, thanks, but no thanks.
• 50:08
  Jordan: I am very, very excited for our listeners to hear this episode.
• 50:11
  Jordan: I think that this is going to really help them when they feel fearful that they're not going to have ideas for the podcast.
• 50:18
  Jordan: I honestly think if you just pull some of these tips and make sure that you are passionate about your topic, make sure that your publishing cadence is at a rate where you're not going to run out of ideas very quickly, Maybe you can adjust those kinds of things and you know where to look for ideas.
• 50:36
  Jordan: Then you should never run out of ideas for your podcast.
• 50:39
  Dave: There you go, yeah, and you may run out of passion, but you won't run out of ideas.
• 50:43
  Dave: And if you do, you know it's time to start the new podcast.
• 50:46
  Jordan: I love that.
• 50:47
  Jordan: Thank you so much, Dave.
• 50:48
  Jordan: Dave, if our listeners are just super excited to get a hold of you, where can they do that?
• 50:53
  Jordan: Where can they find you?
• 50:54
  Dave: Yeah, my main website is schoolofpodcastingcom.
• 50:57
  Dave: If you want to see the 8 million things I'm up to, you can go to powerofpodcastingcom.
• 51:03
  Jordan: Awesome and for our next deep dive episode it's a long form episode I want to talk about how to cut down on editing time, so if you have found ways to make the time you spend editing your podcast shorter, please send those in by tapping the Texas show link in the show notes.
• 51:18
  Jordan: And, as always, thank you for listening and keep podcasting.
• 51:21
  Jordan: I saw that there was a study, like a recent study, and they said that the music that you listen to between the ages of 13 and 17 are like the most foundational, like kind of it has like the biggest impact on you as a person.
• 51:42
  Jordan: And I was thinking I'm like man, what music was I listening to at 13 and 17, like between those ages?
• 51:47
  Jordan: I'm kind of curious what music you guys were listening to and maybe how that impacted you.
• 51:53
  Dave: The fun thing was I was a very young hippie because I'm the baby of the family, so I grew up with my brothers and sisters Beatle Stuff and then later I got into hard rock and I remember like for me it sounds weird.
• 52:08
  Dave: Van Halen's first album is like something in the case, like only break in case of emergency, like I do not listen to that album because I love it so much that no matter how bad a mood I'm in when we get to, I think it's track six is like atomic punk.
• 52:22
  Dave: I'm like, yeah, and it just brings back all these great memories and it's just a great thing there's.
• 52:28
  Dave: I wish I knew the name of this documentary, but there's one where it's people in not hospice, but they're in elder care and they're, you know, the lights are on but nobody's home.
• 52:39
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 52:40
  Dave: And they put headphones on them and start playing music from, like you said, like their twenties, and this one guy could barely move and gets up and starts dancing.
• 52:48
  Dave: What it's a?
• 52:58
  Dave: Yeah, it's a.
• 52:59
  Dave: I'll have to find the link to you, but it was just amazing.
• 53:00
  Dave: So, yeah, I'm totally with you that.
• 53:01
  Dave: So for me, I grew up on Van Halen and Ozzy and Judas Priest, but I also had the Beatles.
• 53:03
  Dave: I mean, I grew up with, oh good God, harry Belafonte was what my mom and Benny, benny Goodman, my mom, my dad, listened to country, and I mean country when it was country, three chords and the truth, that kind of stuff.
• 53:14
  Dave: Saturday morning he'd come in we're trying to sleep in.
• 53:17
  Dave: He grabbed the blinds and the sun hits you in the face.
• 53:21
  Dave: Sun's up, why aren't you?
• 53:22
  Dave: And then he'd go in the living room and turn on, and that's why me and my brother have really bad memories of country music because we were forced to.
• 53:33
  Dave: You know that.
• 53:34
  Dave: And Hee Haw I had to watch Hee Haw on Saturday nights.
• 53:36
  Jordan: Oh, yeah, so.
• 53:39
  Dave: I don't know, Alban.
• 53:39
  Dave: What did you listen to growing up?
• 53:41
  Alban: This is kind of a strange thing to say, but I did not really love music until I was probably like 14.
• 53:45
  Alban: Oh, wow I think I just grew up listening to a lot of like family music.
• 53:53
  Alban: You know, the music we listen to as a family when we're in the car, yeah, and so it's kind of just like everyone's music and so it didn't have as much.
• 53:57
  Alban: Now it's nostalgic, but it never then had a deep like impact until probably like eighth grade, and so you're probably maybe these are the right.
• 54:05
  Alban: Uh, ages jordan, but I think there's a lot of a lot of radiohead, red hot chili peppers, oh yeah, probably uh, linkin Park in there, some angsty teenager music, a lot of like Christian music, I'm sure Outkast.
• 54:23
  Jordan: Oh yeah.
• 54:23
  Alban: That's probably the stuff that I was listening to then.
• 54:25
  Alban: It is funny, like you are right the music that you listen to at that age.
• 54:31
  Alban: Maybe it's because your personality is changing so much.
• 54:34
  Alban: Some of it made its way into adult album.
• 54:38
  Alban: Some of it is clearly just like it stayed in the 15-year-old version and never made it through.
• 54:45
  Dave: Yeah, Well, and it's interesting because if you listen to their new stuff, which sounds just like their old stuff, in many cases you're like why doesn't this like?
• 54:55
  Dave: Why am I not wanting to pump my fist in the air?
• 54:58
  Jordan: Yeah, it doesn't hit the same.
• 54:59
  Dave: I'm like I'm not 17, thinking my parents are idiots.
• 55:02
  Dave: You know what I mean.
• 55:03
  Dave: But back then that's what the songs were about, you know, and it's like oh yeah, I now have mad respect for my parents.
• 55:09
  Dave: And there's no song like that, like, yeah, my dad was awesome.
• 55:12
  Dave: You know, you don't hear that in too many songs.
• 55:14
  Alban: So, yeah it's funny I I've gone back and listened to a little bit of Lincoln park recently and I'm like none of this describes my childhood, but it's all like it's very whiny music.
• 55:27
  Alban: It's like so angry and I'm'm like I didn't have this anger at that age and I didn't have the experiences of this music, but still it resonated that I was, like you know, playing video games like, yeah, this is awesome jordan did we get your picks?
• 55:45
  Jordan: you know I was trying to think of this and, um, I think that I actually had a very um genre fluid upbringing I was brought up like in my teen years I was very similar to you where I listened to like a lot of the Beatles or like even the monkeys and like that kind of like 60s rock.
• 56:06
  Jordan: But then also I was really heavy into my dad, was super into like blue, so it was like Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley and like Stevie Ray Vaughan and stuff like that.
• 56:15
  Jordan: So I have that kind of foundation.
• 56:17
  Jordan: And then my mom was also into like Black Sabbath and the who and Electric Light Orchestra and then she also got really into like the emo phase with me in my mid teens.
• 56:32
  Alban: So my mom and I would I don't think you've ever told us you had an emo phase, but I could have guessed it.
• 56:36
  Jordan: Oh, I had a big emo phase I had the haircut and everything.
• 56:39
  Jordan: But mom and I would just rock out to like Taking Back Sunday and my Chemical Romance and stuff like that.
• 56:44
  Jordan: In fact she always stole my CDs and I'd have to go in the car and like get them back because she was just like so into it.
• 56:49
  Jordan: So it was a lot of like emo stuff.
• 56:51
  Jordan: And then, like in the later years, we started getting into like this like indie revival of like Death Cab for Cutie and stuff like that.
• 56:57
  Jordan: So I have like a very wide smattering of genres.
• 57:00
  Jordan: It's all.
• 57:01
  Jordan: It's all like rock and blues based, I think, but it's it's pretty wide.
• 57:06
  Alban: I don't know.
• 57:06
  Jordan: I don't know what that says about me I have.
• 57:08
  Jordan: Maybe that's why I have too many hobbies or something.
• 57:09
  Jordan: I don't know.
• 57:11
  Alban: Death Cab for Cutie and Taking Back Sunday were definitely.
• 57:13
  Alban: Those are two that have made it.
• 57:14
  Alban: They made it from my teens into the adult version of me.
• 57:18
  Alban: Taking Back Sunday came through Jacksonville like a few years ago and my buddy and I went.
• 57:23
  Alban: We were like this is the greatest show we've ever been to and it was everybody, was our age and we're everyone's like oh man, this is just formative music age and where everyone's like oh man, this is just formative music, you know what?
• 57:39
  Jordan: So the lead singer of Taking Back Sunday they came to Boise and we saw them it was me and my friend and I saw him at a bar and he asked me to sit with him and so I sat with him and like hung out with him for a while and I wanted to like absolutely die because I loved him so much.
• 57:51
  Dave: I think it was the last podcast, movement Evolutions, and I'm sitting there and I look over and I go.
• 57:57
  Dave: I'm pretty sure that's the drummer of Guns N' Roses, what?
• 58:00
  Dave: Yes?
• 58:00
  Dave: Yeah, and I go hey like are you so-and-so?
• 58:03
  Dave: And he's like yeah, and I'm like oh.
• 58:04
  Dave: And then my brain was like oh, it is him.
• 58:06
  Dave: And I was just like, and I was just like love, love your stuff.
• 58:10
  Dave: He's like thanks, man.
• 58:11
  Dave: And I was like, okay, yeah.
• 58:13
  Dave: So that was kind of crazy.
• 58:15
  Jordan: It's so funny how you get like so starstruck around these kind of people.
• 58:19
  Alban: It is and it's.
• 58:23
  Alban: Uh, there's gotta be a skillset for being able to talk.
• 58:24
  Alban: You almost have to not know somebody really well to be like a normal fan.
• 58:28
  Alban: I think that if you've listened to everything someone's done you've listened to a thousand episodes of Dave's show and then you see him at podcast movement it's going to feel a bit weird because you're like oh, you've just talked to me for a thousand episodes, but I've never talked to you.
• 58:40
  Alban: Yeah, there's almost something that makes it easier when you're only like a casual fan.
• 58:45
  Dave: Yeah, yeah, I listened to Curry and the Keeper, so I know Adam's wife through that and I got to hang out with them at a Christian conference that he was speaking at.
• 58:55
  Dave: And as I walk up I hear her voice coming out of her head and it just made me smile and I was like, oh, wow, that's weird, tina Curry's voice is coming out of that woman, you know.
• 59:04
  Dave: And I was like, and then it's like, oh, that's because it's Tina Curry.
• 59:09
  Dave: And then after that you're still like, wow, but it's, it's her voice.
• 59:10
  Dave: It's like, right there, I've heard it.
• 59:12
  Dave: So it's weird to kind of like not fanboy out.
• 59:15
  Dave: And and then it's weird because, like I had a friend of mine, I've always said if you come to Akron Ohio, I will buy you some Luigi's pizza.
• 59:22
  Dave: There's not much here in Akron Ohio, but Luigi's pizza is where it's coming to.
• 59:26
  Dave: And he said do you remember how you used to close the very first podcast for musicians?
• 59:31
  Dave: And I go, dude, I don't remember what I did for breakfast, you know.
• 59:35
  Dave: And he said you used to say for those who have money there is therapy and for the rest of us there is music.
• 59:42
  Alban: And.
• 59:42
  Dave: I go.
• 59:43
  Dave: I said that, and he's like, yeah, I go, that's not bad and but it's weird, because they know it's not weird, it's just like they know you through your show and I have no idea.
• 59:53
  Dave: Even when I went to get pizza, I told my brother I go, hey, in the event, I end up dead tomorrow.
• 59:57
  Dave: It was George and I'm like because I don't really know this person that I'm going to meet, but they remember everything you said, so that's always kind of, and then you bond over the show and then you got a new friend.
• 1:00:10
  Jordan: Well, that's the hard thing as a fan too is like it's like you want to convey to this person how important they are to you and how much of an impact they've had on your life, but you don't want to come across as like a stalker, like it's like what's the least creepy version of how deeply I care for this person.
• 1:00:28
  Dave: Well, and you don't realize the impact you've made.
• 1:00:30
  Dave: My favorite ever was a woman came up to me I was doing a book signing and she said you're Dave Jackson.
• 1:00:36
  Dave: And I go, yeah, and she goes oh, thank you so much for you.
• 1:00:40
  Dave: Know, I listened to your show and if it wasn't for you I wouldn't have long.
• 1:00:43
  Dave: And I was like, oh, thank you very much, that's very nice to say.
• 1:00:45
  Dave: And she goes no, and I'm like you don't get it Like if it wasn't for you and she'd just shower, and I'm really uncomfortable.
• 1:00:55
  Dave: I don't know about you.
• 1:00:56
  Dave: I'm awful at accepting compliments.
• 1:00:59
  Jordan: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:59
  Dave: And so I was like well, so fun.
• 1:01:01
  Dave: And literally a third time she's like no, you still don't get it.
• 1:01:04
  Dave: And I was like okay, well, that makes me feel very good, thank you so much.
• 1:01:07
  Dave: And finally that was like an acceptable answer.
• 1:01:10
  Dave: But that's when I was like it was a great exercise in like okay, I guess I'm going to learn how to accept compliments now, cause I'm doing a horrible job at this.
• 1:01:18
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 1:01:18
  Dave: But that was a that was a fun one, and it was.
• 1:01:21
  Dave: I'm much better at that now Cause I got lots of practice with that person.
• 1:01:24
  Jordan: Well, you're gonna have to use that practice when you go to podcast movement next week, cause I'm sure you're going to get a whole lot more of that.
• 1:01:31
  Dave: Well with you.
• 1:01:31
  Dave: As soon as you hear your laugh, you're like oh, that's Jordan.
• 1:01:35
  Jordan: I know I'm looking forward to that one.
• 1:01:39
  Dave: Yeah.