Latest / Your Mic / Stop Asking Friends What They Think of Your Podcast

Transcript

Stop Asking Friends What They Think of Your Podcast · Your Mic

• 0:00
  It will always take longer and be infinitely harder than you can ever imagine. That's what no podcaster really realizes at the very beginning.
• 0:14
  Welcome back to Your Mic. My name is Freddy Cruz, founder of Speak Podcasting. This episode is brought to you by the Speak Originals Network, home to shows like The House of Theft and Made in House Houston. Can't wait for you to hear them and learn more about the hosts. In fact, you can do so at speakpodcasting.com slash speakoriginals.
• 0:38
  Now back to the show and all the things that podcast hosts, especially those who have thought to themselves, I'm going to launch this year. What they don't realize is that it'll take longer. It'll be harder than you can ever imagine. And I want to use a couple of examples. Actually, no, not a couple, three specific examples of people that I know, friends that I have that are in the podcast space that did not, that did not start off in the podcast space.
• 1:08
  First of all, I want to start with The Rose. They're a legacy client of mine. We produce her podcast, Let's Talk About Your Breasts. We started recording in September of 2022. Launched in March of 2023 with 19 episodes in the can because Dorothy Gibbons, co-founder and former CEO, is just a boss like that.
• 1:33
  They launched their show with 19 episodes. And yeah, it was a slow start. But then, then, we had our first Breast Cancer Awareness Month campaign of 31 straight days of episodes published. We did that three times. More on that in a bit. So...
• 1:56
  With the Roses podcast, we didn't hit that coveted 100,000 audio downloads mark until late last year. We started recording in September of 2022, launched in March of 2023, and it wasn't until late last year after Breast Cancer Awareness Month that we hit that 100,000 audio downloads milestone. That's like...
• 2:24
  More than two years of podcasting, of grinding, of planning, and marketing, and recording, and producing, and editing, and sourcing guests. More than two and a half years worth of that until they got to that milestone. And of course, the rose gets results in the form of patients walking through the door, raising awareness, and building brand. Okay? They get all that.
• 2:52
  But in terms of like the sheer downloads and what some of us in the podcast production space call vanity metrics, the 100,000 downloads, it took way longer to achieve that. Another example would be Dr. Angela Sturm, who is a friend of mine and another one of our legacy clients at Speak Podcasting. Her show is called Beauty Unveiled. We've been podcasting for over two years now and...
• 3:20
  She, on her YouTube channel, has over 1.6 million views. And she's been recording since 2012. Long before she and I ever knew each other, long before Speak Podcasting was ever even a thing. Because she put in the work. She was recording the videos and educating patients who wanted consults. Educating prospects. Educating people who want to learn more about rhinoplasty and facelifts.
• 3:50
  And taking care of their faces and whatnot. So it was a long road.
• 3:59
  to 1.6 million views which she accomplished this year. Another example would be my friend George Blitch who treated his first year, imagine going 52 straight episodes without worry about your analytics and what they look like. When you log into that dashboard
• 4:21
  And it can get very tempting to look at what progress you've made or lack thereof. And he, instead of obsessing over the download numbers and the retention counts, was treating it as a sort of masterclass, a journey in learning about the craft of podcasting, how he can tweak certain episodes and improve upon his skills as an interviewer.
• 4:47
  the art of storytelling, and guest booking, and figuring out what kinds of guests were appropriate for his podcast, The Son of a Blitch podcast. All that to say, it takes longer, but it also requires effort. So let's say you have KPIs.
• 5:15
  Such a corporate term. KPIs. Key performance indicators, right? And you have those KPIs and you want hard data that says this is working. You want it in six months. But you're only recording two episodes per month. Now, whatever your stated
• 5:36
  whatever your stated definition of success is, do you think you're likely to reach it by releasing two episodes per month for six months? That's 12 episodes, right? Or do you think you're more likely to do it if you were to compress a whole year's worth of weekly episodes into six months? So basically, two episodes a week, right? Two episodes a week for six months.
• 6:03
  You might be more likely to get to that definition of success by releasing two episodes every single week, as opposed to two episodes per month for six months. But what about this? What if you were to try and compress all that effort into time, meaning instead of, instead of,
• 6:25
  two years worth of podcasts of a weekly show, so 104 episodes, right? If we're talking in terms of a weekly show, 52 times 2, 104. If you were to compress that into two episodes every week for a year, we're talking going ham on your podcast publishing schedule. This is assuming you've got the bandwidth and the desire to do this.
• 6:53
  Are you more likely to have success? So given those three scenarios, twice a month for six months, two times a week for six months, or broaden the time horizon, but also double down on the work, and it's two a week for a year. And which do you think is more likely to get you to
• 7:23
  whatever your stated definition of success is. And if you gave an answer other than the third one, maybe you might want to reconsider just exactly how dedicated to the craft of podcasting you are. So we got time, we got effort, but then there's feedback. Okay? There's feedback. There...
• 7:52
  There's the family and friends group, right? The family and friends group, they just want to see you do well. They just want to support you. Hey, even your friends who maybe told you that it's a bad idea for you to launch a podcast, maybe they're doing it out of a place of love, out of a place for protection, of protection. They don't want to see you get hurt. They don't want to see...
• 8:17
  Your feelings kind of take a big, drop a big deuce because you're going to try this for a few months and not get anywhere with it. And they just think that you'd be better off not launching. Same goes for your family or spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatnot. You're coming at it from a place of love. Maybe they're going to tell you, oh, it sounds great, Freddie. Oh, I loved it.
• 8:48
  Do they really, though? Step back for a second. Do they really love it? And so the family and friends feedback, the triple F's, it ain't it. It ain't it, boss. If you want to hone your craft as a podcast host, you got to find yourself a podcast community. And this doesn't necessarily mean that you find yourself
• 9:16
  a podcast community of only people that are in your space. So let's just say for instance, you're a personal trainer for women over 40, or you are an accounting coach for founders over the age of 60.
• 9:35
  You don't go and only isolate yourself to those groups. You find an actual podcast community. Because when you think in terms of what makes for a successful podcast, some of the fundamentals translate across genres. Is your episode yammering on for three, four, maybe even five minutes before you ever get to any sort of nugget of value?
• 10:04
  That will turn off any listener, no matter the genre, right? If your podcast cover art looks like it was made with Microsoft Paint at 2 in the morning, well, that ain't good. And those kinds of podcast cover arts, well, anybody who, whether it's an accounting podcast listener or a true crime podcast listener, would see that on their phone and be like, eh,
• 10:33
  Scroll. What about titles? What about planning and outlining and subjects and interview guests? A bad interview guest is a bad interview guest. If it's a show about financial and wealth management, and you bring in somebody who's a karate instructor, if that karate instructor is a guest and it has no relevance to the topic, well, that's a bad guest.
• 11:04
  Same goes for any genre. So the fundamentals are the same. So you don't necessarily want to isolate yourself into those silos. Find yourself a good podcast community and get that proper feedback. Network. Go to podcast conferences.
• 11:26
  At the time of this recording, my friend Brittany and I are going to be co-hosting Illuminate. It's a creator experience, October 3rd at the Health Museum. And we are gathering podcast hosts and social media creators and business owners and marketing teams from all over the country.
• 11:46
  to do this one very thing, to network and collaborate and figure out what's working for who, what's not working for them, and to walk away with not just a new outlook on creating, but also leaving with tactical plans that these people can incorporate into their social media and podcast plans for the next six months or a year.
• 12:15
  And also, bonus, they'll leave with content. So if you have any interest at all in collaborating with fellow creators, whether you are a marketing professional or if you're a business owner or a...
• 12:30
  If you podcast full time, we'd love to see you there. On the podcast track, we're going to have Frank Raciopi, who is a journalist for Forbes Magazine and founder of the Earworthy Newsletter. I highly recommend you subscribe to that letter. Victoria Meyer, who is the host of The Chemical Show, which is a fully monetized show, and she monetizes her show by charging guests.
• 12:59
  And she's going to talk about that. And we are looking forward to all of that and more at Illuminate, October 3rd at the Health Museum. And I'll leave a link in the show notes for you to jump in and get involved if you wish.
• 13:15
  So that's feedback. Your action items are going to be to put in that time. If you are thinking about lighting your mic on fire and throwing it into a dumpster, don't do that yet. Figure out how you're going to invest more time into your show. Planning, outlining. One of the things that I like to do, and this is an action item for you, is to plan in the wild.
• 13:43
  One of the ways that I like to get ideas for my shows is to screenshot items that I see on Instagram and LinkedIn. I'm a soccer for a great carousel. I've talked about this in the past. But I get a lot of ideas from business carousels on social media.
• 14:02
  I'll screenshot. I'll plug into Perplexity, which is my LLM of choice. Perplexity has every single transcript from all of my interviews and all of my podcast episodes and every book that I've ever written, every article that I've ever written. So it knows me and it knows my context. It knows my business. It knows everything about me.
• 14:20
  in a professional sense. And so it will create an outline for me based on whatever screenshot I upload. And if I'm feeling really sexy, I'll have it script. I'll have it script said carousel into something. And this is where it gets really interesting. So interesting that this is how AI is meant to be used.
• 14:46
  Not just, hey, write me a great script for my podcast about podcasting called Your Mic. No. You upload.
• 14:54
  an insight, something sticky, something that sticks to the ribs. And you provide your own context and your own personal experience. And that's how you are a tastemaker. And that's how you end up with killer podcast episodes. So that's planning in the wild. That's batching your content as you go. And so you do that for about a week or two. Then you go over all those outlines. And if you script, you go over those scripts. You plan a morning or an afternoon to record.
• 15:24
  Then you record. And that could be in the same afternoon whether you're planning an entire workday around it. Alex Hormozzi talks about recording all of his content over the span of a day. And they publish like 300-something pieces of content every week, which is almost impossible. Nothing is impossible in this world, so I'll say almost impossible for people like you and me. But...
• 15:51
  be that as it may. Plan, go over your plan, record, and then produce if you are producing. And if you are producing your podcast on your own, this is where scripting actually helps because there's very little guesswork if you were to go and buy a script. So that's time. That's effort would be next. So when it comes to effort,
• 16:19
  We talked about Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We talked about the 31 straight days of episodes. And that's the kind of effort that it'll take for you to get to the next level and then the level after that. And so with the Rose, that's what we have done for the past three Breast Cancer Awareness Months. We've planned throughout the year and recorded throughout the year leading up to the big month of October. And that's what takes us to that next level.
• 16:50
  Then there's the example of Dr. Sturm and more examples like Carolyn Chromings from the Chromings Law Firm and Hazem and Mac from Integrity Bank. And we batch record in 90 minutes to three hour time spans. And we get anywhere between 10.
• 17:11
  three episodes to seven episodes. Dr. Sturm has, you know, in one sitting has recorded up to seven videos, which is astonishing and amazing. And so when you're really good at what you do professionally, it comes naturally to you. You can talk about this kind of stuff in your sleep. So when you have a plan, you're planning in the wild,
• 17:40
  And you can do this sort of thing. Time, effort, feedback. Join those Facebook groups, those online communities. Get out and network and meet people who are also on the same journey as you. Maybe they're not accountants. Maybe they're not trainers. Maybe they're not doctors. But they are creators and you are.
• 18:04
  you all are on that same track. That track being to turn your expertise into something that can grow an audience, and that audience which can help you build authority and build your business.
• 18:20
  And if you have any questions about anything that we've gone over, please feel free to contact me, Freddie at speakpodcasting.com, S-P-E-K-E podcasting.com. I've got a link with some free resources for you, including the official Speak Podcasting Roadmap and some prompts for using AI to grade your podcast. So link in the description. I'm going to have all the stuff that we covered in that description below.
• 18:48
  And I really appreciate you spending time with me for this episode of Your Mic. Keep yours hot.