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The Episode You Should Have Deleted · Your Mic

• 0:00
  Welcome back to your mic. My name is Freddy Cruz founder of Speak podcasting and today we're going to talk about something Steven Bartlett said that I have not been able to stop thinking about and if you don't know who Steven Bartlett is he's the host of diary of a CEO one of the biggest podcasts on the planet highly recommend you listen to him right after this episode, of course.
• 0:23
  Now here's what he said and this might blow your mind. He deletes 20 episodes a year. 20.
• 0:37
  He flies guests in his team spins weeks preparing. The guest clears their calendar gives them hours of their life and then the conversation happens and it's just not good enough.
• 0:52
  And if it's not good enough Bartlett pulls the plug. He said it's the worst and maybe the most important part of his job. Now let's sit with that because I've been there. I know exactly what that feels like and I want to tell you all about it. Okay. I had a guest on this was like two podcasts ago. Remember I've talked about Freddy's huge ask podcast. Well, there was a guest. He was an author huge credentials. And I mean, this wasn't just some rando who self published on a Tuesday.
• 1:22
  His previous book had a Netflix series made about it. He was a big deal is a big deal. His new book was really, really good. It covered a topic I was genuinely curious about. I wasn't performing curiosity. I was actually legit curious. We're talking dog geared pages, highlighted passages specific questions.
• 1:42
  The kind of prep that tells a guess wow, I respect your work and I respect your time. But then, but then what what happened was we hit record.
• 1:54
  And the interview was just not good.
• 1:59
  And when I say it wasn't good, I didn't mean it was just a little rough around the edges. I mean, it was completely unusable.
• 2:07
  The guy sounded exhausted. I was curious as to whether or not he was drunk or high or drunk and high on bath salts. I told myself after the recording that maybe I was just being.
• 2:19
  Maybe I was being precious. Maybe I was too close to it. Maybe a fresh set of years would see something that I couldn't.
• 2:29
  Turns out I wasn't being precious. The episode really was garbage and no amount of editing was going to resurrect it. So I sent the email. Now, keep in mind.
• 2:46
  The email was going to a PR contact. I had a real relationship with not just had still have a real relationship with I know this person. I respect them. Okay.
• 2:58
  This wasn't just some cold booking and I don't remember exactly what I wrote because this was years ago, but the message was essentially the source material wasn't usable.
• 3:09
  Not the guest, not the person, the conversation, the recording, unusable.
• 3:16
  That email was uncomfortable. It cost something because it always does, but not sending it. It would have cost more.
• 3:24
  Because here's what Stephen Bartlett figured out over five years of making those same calls so many of them every year, sending those same uncomfortable emails, having those same hard conversations with his team, every time you protect your standard, even when it hurts, you make an invisible deposit.
• 3:46
  And I love this. He calls it invisible trust. The people listening to your show, they can't see it.
• 3:54
  You, well, you can't measure it. You can't put it in a media kit or pitch it to a sponsor, but when somebody opens their podcast app, season name they've never heard of in your episode description and clicks anyway, that my friend is invisible trust, paying it out.
• 4:15
  They're not clicking because of the guest. They're clicking because of you because of every decision you have made that they never saw every episode you refused to publish because your gut said, no, every standard you held when nobody was watching.
• 4:36
  A data scientist ran the numbers on diary of a CEO and found something really strange. Most shows that size have wild variants. Famous guest, spike, unknown guest, crater.
• 4:54
  The audience is cherry picking based on who's in the chair.
• 4:59
  Bartlett's numbers look different though. The episodes cluster tightly. The audience shows up consistently, almost regardless of the guest. And I can attest because I enjoy all these episodes. The majority of them are with people who are in the medical field, who I have no idea who they are, but man, they are amazing. And that is what tells the tale.
• 5:22
  Five years of deleting 20 episodes every year, five years of painful decisions in the data, finally caught up to the standard. We will not waste our listeners time.
• 5:35
  And here's where I want to talk to you, you the person with 200 downloads or 500 downloads total. Maybe you haven't even launched it and you're already thinking about this stuff. Good. Think about it. Do it now.
• 5:52
  You're building that account right now. Every episode you publish is a transaction, an agreement, a promise that says, I ain't done a waste your time.
• 6:03
  And here's the temptation. I know this voice. I've heard it. I felt it. It's fine. It's not my best work, but it's fine. This guest is kind of famous. It'll get us some attention. We've got a slot to fill.
• 6:18
  Every one of those sentences is a lie. You're telling your audience a small one when they might not notice right away, but they feel it. They don't always know they feel it. They don't always know they feel it, but it registers somewhere and slowly and quietly the balance drops.
• 6:40
  Invisible trust compounds both ways. Every episode that respects your listeners time deposit every time that doesn't withdraw. And you don't always know how low the balance is until somebody stops showing up. That author interview, the one that I shelved haunted me for about a minute. Okay, maybe about an hour for being completely honest here.
• 7:09
  I done everything right on my end. I really did objectively speaking. I read the entire book. I had notes, man. Again, dog ear pages and highlighted passages specific questions. I watched YouTube videos with this dude. The prep it was there. I promise it was the curiosity. It was there. And it still blew up in my face. And I had to make a call that felt so unfair because I hadn't done anything wrong.
• 7:35
  But that's the thing Bartlett nailed when he said he assumes it's his fault. Not because it literally is always his fault, but because ownership is the only posture that keeps your standard intact.
• 7:50
  The moment you start publishing bad episodes and blaming the guest, you started making peace with mediocrity.
• 7:58
  And mediocrity will absolutely destroy your invisible trust account. The uncomfortable email that I sent out to that PR rep, it protected something.
• 8:08
  Sure, maybe it cost a little bit in the short term, but the listener who would have heard that exhausted scattered low quality conversation with a guy who I thought was high or drunk or high and drunk, possibly on bath salts.
• 8:23
  Well, that listener was protected too. They'll never know it. And that's the whole point. The best decisions you make for your audience are the ones they never, ever, ever, ever see.
• 8:38
  Bartlett said something that I think about a lot. And he said, I think everyone reading this, this was a LinkedIn post, I think everyone reading this has their own version of the 20 deleted episodes.
• 8:51
  The product you shipped because the quarter needed it, the higher you made because the seat was empty, the thing you put your name on that you knew when your gut wasn't great.
• 9:03
  You've got a version of that as a podcast host as well. Maybe you've already published it. Maybe you're sitting on it right now trying to convince yourself the edit is going to save it.
• 9:16
  Trust your gut. Your gut knows. The listener you're protecting will never thank you for it because they'll never know.
• 9:25
  You, however, will. And over time, the data will know in one day, maybe in year three, year five, year seven, somebody's going to click on a guest they've never heard of.
• 9:40
  Just because your name is on the episode and you'll have earned that click a hundred, a thousand times over.
• 9:49
  And that is the infinite game of podcasting. Not the biggest show. Now I die of a CEO, but the most trusted one in your industry.
• 10:02
  That is your episode. If this hit for you, share it with a podcaster in your circle who needs to hear it, the one sitting on an episode they know and their gut.
• 10:13
  And they shouldn't publish. Send it to them. No note required. They'll know why you sent it.
• 10:20
  And if you want to build a show with that kind of standard baked in from episode one, the infrastructure, the workflow, the whole thing, you know where to find me.
• 10:28
  Freddie with a Y at speak podcasting dot com that is S P E K E podcasting dot com keep your mic hot and protect those listeners.