Podcasting Power Hour: Should all podcasts have seasons? Special Guest Fatima Zaidi CEO of Quill Inc.

This content is repurposed from episodes of Podcasting Power Hour. Podcasting Power Hour is recorded live on Twitter Spaces. On this episode we dicsuss: Should episodic podcasters still have seasons? We have a great conversation about the pros and cons and Special guest Fatima Zaidi CEO of Quill Inc. joins us.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
What you're gonna do, brother,when Jeff Townsend Media runs wild on you.
Have you been searching for a podcast? Do you want to learn from
some great content creators? Well you'vecome to the right place Indie Podcaster with
your host Jeff Townsend, the Indiepodcast Father. All right, all right,

(00:29):
all right, this is Jeff Townsend. Thank you for checking out another
episode of Indie Podcaster. This podcastis made for podcasters and other content creators.
Certainly don't consider myself a guru,or either do any of my friends
that will be featured in these episodes. But what we do like to do
is talk content creation, pick eachother's brains, and have a good time.
I'm proud to mention that this podcastis sponsored by Indie drop In.

(00:52):
Now, let me tell you somethingabout Indie Dropping. This is an awesome
network that my friend Greg has created. What he does is drop episodes from
independent content creator into his established podcastaudience on his feed, and he shares
your episodes to an audience that alreadyexists. Yes, it's like free advertisement
promotion for your podcast. He spenta lot of time, money, and
effort building it, and he alreadyhas an audience interested in the content,

(01:15):
and he can certainly help you bysharing your content is great promotion. Go
to indie drop in dot com slashcreators and check it out. If you're
a comedy, true crime, paranormal, for various other different kinds of podcasts,
you can benefit from this. SoI really encourage you once again go
to indie drop in dot com slashcreators and see if you can get your
stuff featured on indie drop in.We'll go back to the podcast here Indie

(01:38):
Podcasters. So what we've currently beendoing is sharing content from three different projects
that I'm involved in. The firstis Good Morning Podcasters with my good friend
Fuzz Martin. We also do somecontent on podcasting Sucks, and then in
these episodes you will also hear somecontent from podcasting Power Hour. Podcasting Power
Hour is a live thing we doon Twitter spaces. We get a whole
bunch of great podcast minds together wetalk podcasting. So if you're a content

(02:01):
creator a podcaster, I think you'lltake something away from every episode of the
content I'm going to share with you. With that being said, make sure
you check out Eddie drop in andmake sure you enjoy this episode. I
think it's important that we all continueto learn and grow every day, and
that will help us become even bettercontent creators. That's certainly what I try
to do, learn something new everyday. I'm excited to share this content

(02:22):
with you. I think it'll bea learning experience for you. Let's get
to this episode, and I hopeyou have a great time listening to it.
Welcome to Podcasting Power Hour with yourhost Jeff Townsend aka the Indie podcast
Father. I'm your co host Gregfrom Indie Dropping Network. Podcasting Power Hour

(02:53):
is recorded live every Monday at ninepm Eastern Time on Twitter Spaces. Every
week, an experienced panel of podcastersand other experts tackle your podcast in questions.
We will, of course put linksto all of our guests and any
irrelevant information in the show notes.All right, let's get this party started,

(03:15):
Greg, except the co host invite, have your eyes has gone worse?
And Sam? Sorry about that.I had to, which is fifteen
seconds more than it gives you.That's true. He doesn't call me old,
though I don't know what he callsme an idiot. I think I'd

(03:38):
never say anything negative about anybody.I'm always on the receiving end. I
heard you were making podcasters quick.Oh no way, was me. I
did that? That's my fault.No, you didn't. Yeah, I
know you're back. You're back,doesn't seem like it's stuck. You did
like a classic Oscar Award winning canwalk off and now you're back better than

(03:59):
ever. Best episode you ever putup. Listen to it today. I
thought it was great. Thank you. I appreciate it. I'd actually been
working on it before I had mylittle meltdown, but it was a necessary
thing, and now I have aclearer picture of what I'm gonna do for
my next steps. And it's allthanks to Jeff and Jeff Alone podcast.

(04:21):
Father. You gotta have meltdowns,man, This makes me get a nap
afterwards. It's right. Well,Jeff was the doctor, you know,
you gotta you know, you gotto give some credit to the person who
caused the wound too, because withoutboth, you'd still be in trouble.
Tanner, I was waiting for youto do an episode this week called maybe

(04:43):
you don't have bodies at dysmorphia,maybe you really are fat, But that
would have been an accurate thing forsomething I would never have done that though.
That's that's my way out. Ofmy zone of expertise. You guys
are just too funny. Well,we might as well go ahead and get
go win here. Welcome to PodcastingPower Hour. Here on is day the

(05:10):
eleventh. Tell it's the eleventh ofJuly. Already incredible. We were gone
last week celebrating the fourth of July, and we have some interesting guests today.
I will start off with my cohost Greg from INDI dropping. How
you doing, Hey, Jeff,how's it going? It's going, man,
Thanks for helping out always, alwaysthanks everybody who showed up and who

(05:34):
will come drop by during the hour. Shout out to fuzz mayor the fuzz
mayor the Fuzzy mayor however you want, award it mayor mcfuzz. What's up?
Okay, that's good to see you. Jim Mallard from The Mallard Report.
Eleven years in the podcast on thispodcast, right, Jim? Something

(05:57):
like that? But who's counting?Hey, Jim, one doesn't matter.
Have you heard Tanner's latest episode?Uh? No, oh that's how you
make it? Eleven years? Fuckingrick Wow? Speaking of potty mouth himself,

(06:21):
Tanner Campbell, Good morning, podcasters. What's up Tanner? Oh?
Man? That one gave me aheadache. I laughed. You appreciate that.
Uh, glad to see everybody.Hopefully not everybody here wants me dead
this week. That's we'll see howit goes. Is it true you're calling
yourself the best kept secret in podcast? I would fucking never do that,

(06:42):
and that's amazing. I would neverdo that. I would pay someone else
to say that about me, butI would never think of myself. So
I'm not sure I want to behere, but I'm just here just for
the ane of you. Spray paintedyour EV twenty goal yet and be dazzled
it. I'm like a like aI'm like a Boca bitch. We're spicy

(07:06):
today. And before we get tothe special guests that's joined us for the
first time, we will go aheadand introduce the Hall of Fame podcaster from
the School of Podcasting. It's Dayact. And this is a great uh lesson
in marketing because I haven't heard Tanner'sepisode yet and I'm so close to just

(07:29):
ditching this and go I'm like,it's gotta be good. So when you
get your audience going, I wonderwhat he's talking about. That's that's great
marketing. So it'll be amazing,Dave, You'll quit this episode and then
you'll quit podcasting altogether. Okay,all right, paraphrase I just said along
the lines of, yeah, youmight have imposter syndrome, but you also
might be terrible, so you know, reflect on that and if you suck

(07:53):
it stop. I Yeah, Ijust did a thing of if you want
to have fun, if you wantto make your head explode, go over
to kickstarter and see what people aretrying to do to earn money and the
reason the reason they want money,Because it turns out that the reason why
people shows are not getting, youknow, huge, it's all the technology
has nothing. I'm sure they're allfine on content, they just need more

(08:18):
technology. And I was like,I don't think that's the case. I
don't know if I any better thanyou just did yourself, Dave. I
sure wish it was technology though,because I could use all the help I
can get. Okay, last,it's certainly not least. The special guest
tonight is the co founder CEO ofQuill and co host Fatima. Did I

(08:43):
say your name right? Fatima?You did? Thank you for thank you
for asking, thank you for joining. Yeah, it's great to be here.
I have to warn everyone it's likenine oh seven pm Eastern Standard time,
and I'm pretty uh narcoleptic at thishour. I'm like an early bedtime
person, so not my prime hour, but still really excited to be here.

(09:07):
Oh it's okay. Greg usually fallsasleep in the first ten minutes.
We won't take offense. Say sothank you for joining. A special shout
out to my little brother who's inthe crowd, Ronnie. You may see
him down there. Hey, Ronnie, make sure you send him terrible dms.
Let's give him niggies if I hearabout this Twitter account anymore. Geez

(09:33):
snoochy booches. Yeah, someone's cranky. Okay, Greg, I'm gonna go
ahead and let you kick us offwith something, And if you have any
question or anything you want to discuss, go ahead and start requesting the mic.
Yeah, no problem. I appreciatethat. So my topic of the
week is really something I've been workingon for the last couple of weeks,

(09:54):
and Dave, I'm interested in hearingyour thoughts on this. The question is
episodic podcast. We talked about ita little bit last time. Should we
season or should we not season?And what I'm trying to do is I'm
trying to collect statistics of people whoare episodic and season and try to understand

(10:20):
if they lose audience on the break, how long it takes to come back
from it, if there's no change, Because you know, more and more
podcasts are not set to auto download. I mean, certainly Apple is by
default, but most I think thesedays are not. So you know,

(10:43):
I'm still on the fence. Talkto Fuzz about it a little bit today
and it didn't help. I rarelyam a help. Greg. Yeah,
so that's let's just start off there, since you know I'm selfish and it's
of interest to me, and thenwe'll hopefully we'll get questions. I'll hop

(11:11):
in I as always because it's apodcast question. It depends, so there's
there's no one size fits all.I am not a huge fan. I'm
way too paranoid to do seasons becausejust because I take time off doesn't mean
my audience is going to like.Well, I would listen to podcasts in
the car today, but you know, Dave took off, so I guess
I'll just sit here in silence.No, they're gonna go find something else

(11:33):
to listen to and I'm too muchof a control freak. I'm worried they're
gonna find something else and then Ilose my spot in their routine. However,
if you're doing some sort of youknow, audio drama and it takes
weeks and months to get this thingtogether and you're just completely crispy, obviously
for health reasons, take a break, don't you know, drive yourself into

(11:54):
the ground. And I'm with Greg, I would love to know if people
have taken seasons, they taking timeoff, when they come back, how
many people stayed, how many peopledid, and things like that. I'd
love to know that, because again, that's my fears. If you leave,
you know, you lose your yourspot. I mean, I used
to listen to Mike Rowe when Itook a shower and that spot and Mike

(12:16):
started doing long shows, he changedhis format. Yeah, and he changed
his format from really short shows toreally long shows. So now, and
this sounds very weird. In themorning, I'm listening to Tanner Campbell Good
morning podcasters as I shower, SoI don't know how to make a vomit

(12:37):
noise. I'm not good at those. Yeah, So that's my thoughts.
I've you know, I get thekey. I think the other key there
is you said it was it's notseasoned. The other phrase it's yeah,
so is it epixotic or is itthe other one that you're talking about where

(13:00):
they have to So yeah, I'mI'm talking about specifically episodic shows and introducing
seasons because right, seasons is typicallyfor serials, right, and you know,
the that's the way I've always podcasted. I've never I've never had seasons.
I've always done only episodic shows.And the way I see it is,

(13:22):
or the way I saw it,which as you can tell him,
I'm rethinking it. The way Isaw it is is that you know,
let's say you get four weeks vacationat your job. You know, I
think an audience would be accepting ofyou taking you know, four weeks off
or five weeks or whatever during theyear and getting best of shows or feed

(13:43):
drops or some other like content inplace of yours, guest hosting things like
that, but to never be withoutan episode. That was my That was
my personal philosophy on things, because, like you said, I'm super paranoid
that maybe I'm you know, Ithink I heard it on maybe I heard
on your show, Dave or yousaid in here I can't remember, but

(14:03):
you said, like, you neverknow if you're good enough to where people
like can't wait for you to getback, or if you're just part of
their routine. Well, I mean, I just did this. I just
did this with practical stoicism. Itook six weeks off. And it's not
a it's an episodic Oh what arewe saying here? Yeah, episode,

(14:24):
it's an episodic show. And Ijust I think from the outset I explained
that these were gonna be done bybooks of by book. People who listen
to the show will know what I'mtalking about. If not, it doesn't
really matter. And so when Igot to the end of the first book,
I just said, all right,I'm gonna I'm gonna take a break.

(14:46):
See you motherfuckers. That take forweeks and when I when I left,
I had the podcast was number fiftytwo to forty eight. It bounced
back and forth in the philosophy categoryon Apple Podcasts. That's when I left.
I just came back three weeks ago. This is the third week that
just passes last Saturday, and it'snow at number thirty seven in the philosophy

(15:09):
category, and as far as listenersare concerned, I also switched podcast hosting
providers when I came back, soI don't have a complete grasp on that
yet, but it seems as thoughI went from about fifteen thousand monthly listens
for a weekly show to what islooking more like almost twice that twenty seven
thirty thousand. In the absence it'sactually grown. It hasn't. It hasn't

(15:31):
gotten, it hasn't diminished, butthat could be. You know, this
is one of the problems with theway that we can't track podcasts that hidden
in that gain may be a significantloss, and I can't tell because you
can't you can't divide that up.You get what I mean when I say

(15:52):
that, Yeah, well, weknow by your Apple statistics that your engaged
listeners absolutely went down for some periodof time, but your total listeners could
have gone up, so people couldhave been testing it out or whatever.
But you did have a little dipfor sure on Apple, which doesn't paint

(16:15):
the whole picture. Because you know, if you're like me and my show,
one of my shows is like sixtypercent I Heart, So when iHeart
takes a dip, I get hithard. So it just doesn't It doesn't
paint the whole picture. But I'dbe interested to see in a month what
your engaged listener stat looks like.Again, well, what does Fatima think?

(16:37):
Since I feel like Fatima might havesome pretty good insights here. She
is, after all, the CEOof Quill, which is a pretty bad
ass company. What do you thinkon this, Fatima? Yeah, so
I am in the camp of everypodcast should probably be broken up into seasons
similar to a Netflix or you know, Crave ra Amazon Prime show. And

(16:59):
here's my thing. After every showthat we produce, we like to take
the time to do an autopsy onwhat's going well, do a deep dive
into the analytics and think about howwe can make things bigger and better,
and how consumers are responding to thedata. What is the average consumption rate?
Like playing around with different formats,are there particular drop off points?
What insights can we draw? Andif you're constantly focused on just creating new

(17:23):
content, you're really not going totake the time take those four six to
eight however long you need weeks toactually you know, do a little bit
of a dissection on your content andthink about ways that you can change it
up for your audience. And youknow, we all know when with podcasting,
what really matters is consistency. Consistencyis key and you know, fresh

(17:47):
seo patterns, and your users arelooking for you to drop content at a
particular time. And if you're producinga weekly show or a bi weekly show,
it's pretty tall order to constantly be, you know, keeping up with
the content without taking breaks from yourepisodes. And so I'm always in the
in the camp of I think peopleshould break up their shows into seasons,

(18:08):
and they can be broken up fromanywhere from six to twenty four episodes and
then letting your users know after aseason is complete that you'll be back in
forty eight weeks with new content dropping, so please subscribe to our show.
And that's really how we've always doneit. And Fatima, it's not literally
that you need to break it intoseasons. What you're saying is whether you're

(18:30):
actually splitting them into seasons in yourpodcast hosting provider, or you're just setting
the expectation that breaks are taken.Exactly, that's what's important. Exactly,
that's exactly it, so that yourusers are you know, aligned with what
you're posting and publishing schedule is andthat in between content you will take some
time to go away and come backwith a fresh perspective or a rebrand as

(18:52):
we like to call it. Andif you look at a lot of the
MPR, Gimblet Wondery productions, Imean the usually you know will we'll take
away their content after a set numberof episodes and come back with a new
structure, our new concept and newtheme. And a lot of work goes
into that, you know, researchand pre production phase and doing a deep
dive into your analytics. And Ijust don't think it's feasible to be proactively

(19:17):
creating content, at least not goodcontent while you're also thinking of ways on
how you can make your show better. And that's why she's top thirty under
thirty folks, you should be listeningto her. I want to get Jim
Mallard and Dave Dave Jackson's probably therest of his hairs went great, but
hearing this But no, Jim Mallard, you have a live show every week.

(19:37):
What are your thoughts? You're doingterrific. Jim, I've got to
get used to this this mic buttonI have to push to talk with used
to. I'm used to talking myself. It's difficult. I think that depends
on what type of show you Ilike. So then I guess I've just

(20:00):
fallen in that habit and that comfortlevel. And you know if I take
some many weeks off that bad thingsstart getting lazy. Well that's part of
it, right, It's like drumor anything like that. I'm just doing
a one off I mean, Ihope pretty much come off as one off
interview. So I think part ofit is how you feel about it.

(20:22):
I think Fatima and Dave and everybodyup here would agree that you should take
breaks when you need them. Andbut but there are people who, I
mean, I do it daily anda weekly and another weekly, and for
me, doing those are like thatis a kind of therapy to me almost
to be involved in that. Itsounds like maybe Jim is a little bit

(20:42):
the same there, like he likesthe work. I feel like this question,
the question like that's my you know, when you've got the family and
the life and the kids and allthis other stuff going on in that block
of time. Tuesday night, Igot like I get up in the studio
and all that world World's first worldfrom go away for a couple of hours
and I get to focus on somethingelse for a little bits everything else.

(21:04):
So that's what that's what Dave said, right, It's it depends. Well,
I don't think breaks, so Idon't think breaks are really the question,
right. I think Fatima hit iton the head, like I'm thinking
that you need a delineation between whatyou have done and what you're gonna do,

(21:25):
because if you if you don't takea break, how are you going
to put a line in the sandif you want to change something major?
Right, You're just gonna go fromepisode you know one and forty to episode
one and forty one with like anew co host or a new theme or
a new something you know. Tome, I think, you know,

(21:47):
I was thinking back on my pastpodcasting and you know, just as a
basic example, on my fandom podcastthat I had for a long time,
I started, uh, we startedcovering like science fiction, fantasy and like
superhero stuff, DC, Marvel,like everything fandom, and then we whittled

(22:07):
it down over time to mostly sciencefiction and like Marvel. And it's really
awkward, and I like a likea weird transition over time, like if
you started episode one and then listento episode like two hundred. They're completely
different shows. I mean we evenlost a co host and so breaks.

(22:32):
Yes, but I do think that, you know, I'm leaning more toward
even creating seasons in your hosting,breaking it up, putting a line in
the sand. It gives you somethingto market to, It gives you you
can get some new cover art.You can you know, you can redefine
your niche, Fatima, Is thatkind of what you're saying, like,
give you give you a chance tojust like almost not quite start over,

(22:56):
but iterate. Yeah, I thinkthat's that's exactly it. You know,
iterating is like a really good wayof putting it. It's just you know,
pulling your audience, serving them,collecting feedback and insights, and then
finding a way to engage with themfurther. It's it's a lot of work,
and I think professional podcasters need tospend more time doing a deeper dive
into their analytics and seeing where thedrop offs are, where the trends pointing

(23:21):
to what can they be doing toincrease the production quality of their show or
play around with different themes and conceptsand knows there a whole new slew of
guests that they want to source.There's so many different ways to take your
show to the next level, andI just think that sometimes podcasters get caught
in this cycle of just constantly create, create, create, without thinking about,

(23:42):
well, who are we creating thisshow for? And it's better to
be something for someone rather than everythingto everyone, And sometimes you really need
to take step back and be alittle bit more introspective about that. Well,
Fatima, and I mean absolutely nodisrespect by this text. This is
actually a compliment. You are operatingat a level that I think most podcasters,

(24:06):
at least I'll speak for myself andI'll speak for Dave because he listens
to me in the shower. Youwere operating at a level that other people
aren't. And when I say that, I think I mean in regards to
your team and the assets you haveand the resources you have so for doing
what you just described, how mightyou suggest that an independent podcast like like

(24:29):
myself or even I know Dave's kindof small team, so I'm kind of
making fun Dave, I'm sorry,or most of the other people up here,
how would you suggest that that thoseone team or the one person or
two person teams do what you justsuggested, because I think you're right.
Yeah, And it's interesting that yousay that, because you know, actually
that's one of the reasons we launchedthe Quail Podcast Awards. We were so

(24:49):
tired of the same you know,production companies or you know, the NPR,
the Gimlet, the Wondering podcasts ofthe of the world getting all the
recognition profiling, and we're like,there's some amazing indie content created shows that
just aren't you know, being ableto get the same line light because they

(25:10):
just don't have those millions of dollarsin production budgets. And I would say
some of my favorite podcasts are definitelythe ones that are independently created, you
know, the ones that you typicallylisten to in the shower and aren't superscripted
and rehearsed, and you can tellthat there's you know, a lot of
love that's gone into creating the show. In terms of what you can be
doing as a one person team,we're you know, we have two companies.

(25:34):
One is Quill, which is absolutelyas you mentioned, a production company
that works with Fortune five hundred friendsto launch their branded content. But we
also have a company called co Host. It's a product that we built for
indie content creators and professional podcasters,and that's really what we had in mind.
It's like, when you're one personshop creating content, but you still

(25:56):
want to take your show to thenext level, what technology can you use?
Someone at the beginning of this commention this I think it was Tanner,
which is you need to have theright tech in place in order to
understand the ROI of your podcast,who's listening to your show, and then
from there, how do you findyour audience? And I think that that's
you know, this is a shamelessplug, but that's what we're really doing

(26:17):
with our product. Co host it'syou know, nineteen dollars a month,
so it's not like you need awhole team of people around you, but
it gives you access to data andeven if you're not on our hosting platform,
using platforms that you know, allowyou to see where your downloads are
coming in from, where you needto double down on your marketing efforts,
and how you can further engage withyour listeners. I think that's really the

(26:37):
future of podcasting. Preach that wasThat was awesome. Thanks Fatima Buzz.
Do you have any thoughts before wego to Ed has his hand up and
Michelle has requested to speak. Anybodyelse that has a economy supposed to go
ahead, and I'm supposed to goafter Fatima. Well cool, thanks,

(27:00):
Jeff. I think the only thingI would say is when taking breaks on
an episodic type of show, thetype of content you make matters, I
guess in terms of that. Right, So, even if it's episodic,
if you're doing current event type stuff, people aren't going to be able to

(27:22):
go check out your back catalog Tanner. Your stoic podcast is evergreen, and
it's something that you know, peoplecan walk away, and it's kind of
like reading an audiobook almost where youcan set it down and pick it back
up. Whereas if you're doing somethingthat deals with current events or anything that's

(27:48):
in the now, you're you know, taking a break could be kind of
deadly to that, you know,people picking that back up and herning to
back on in the shower. Sothat's when I was talking to Greg earlier
today. My wife's podcast is veryniched, and it's neared toward teachers,

(28:14):
specifically toward helping teachers find free techtools that they can use in their classrooms,
and so she's speaking only to teachers, and mostly the teachers in the
US and the You know, sowe do seasons. We do going on
our fifth season, and we seea drop off at the end of the

(28:36):
year when teachers are fed up anddon't feel like learning about teaching anymore and
or talking about teaching or having anythingto do with that. So we turn
the show off right around the endof the school year here in the Midwest,
and then we'll drop an episode inthe middle of the summer in order
to remind people that we exist,and then we'll pick them back up at
the beginning of the school year,and our audience back very quickly. But

(29:02):
again, it's really topic based.So that's all I get. Fatimas was
way better. Yeah, no shit, Tanner, thank you really sucking up
here. This is a little overthe top. I'm just kidd ed.
You had your hand up for awhile. Go ahead. Well, I'm

(29:22):
just an incompetent hobbyist. But recentlyI split my four years of podcasts into
seasons just by year twenty nineteen,twenty twenty two, and I've noticed that
I'm actually getting more listeners to olderepisodes now that I've kind of made them
more easier to find because I brokethem into specific years. And then I've

(29:47):
noticed that every time I've taken abreak, I'm about to take my third
break in two years. And I'venever really had any problems with people being
patient waiting for the next episode out. I don't know if it's because of
me or because of what I'm talkingabout, but I've never had these problems.
I just wanted to throw that inas someone who is probably the least

(30:11):
wisest of anybody talking right now,I really think how Mark as Quick when
he takes a break. He alwayssays, Hey, I'm going to be
taking you know, a six weekbreak, and I'll be back, and
I'm doing it because I'm to spendtime with my wife and kids or whatever,
working on a project, whatever thatmight be. I really like when

(30:33):
a host is I'm actually speaking ofthat, I'm going to put my mic
I'm mute because my daughter's going tocome hug me good night. So go
ahead amongst yourselves here. You can'tuse ask with as an example because his
audience is the same as my audienceas podcasters, and there's like a certain
amount of understanding that like Dave ifyou tell about the podcasters you're taking a

(30:56):
break, so you're just like,oh, cool, I get it.
Yeah, that's it. But Ido think that's a key ingredient, though,
the problem is when you just disappearand anytime if you take your car
into a mechanic and they go,yeah, it's going to take about a
half hour, so you sit inthe waiting room and now it's forty five
minutes and now it's an hour.The more you don't know what's going on,

(31:18):
the worse the thoughts become. You'relike, oh my god, it's
going to be eight million dollars.So when you just leave your podcast and
it's like, well that was weird. He was doing one every week and
then all of a sudden, Idon't know. I hope he's okay.
I hope he doesn't have some diseaseor whatever. So I think one of
the keys to a successful break isletting your audience know, hey, I'm
taking a break and I'll be backon this date, and then they know,

(31:41):
oh okay, so they know whento come back. Anyone else wants
to join in the discussion or havea question or anything podcasting, go ahead
and request that being said, we'llgo to you. Michelle Me Michelle Hi.
My name is Michelle Jackson. Irun an award winning show called Michelle's
Money Hungry, and I actually wantto talk about both the taking a break

(32:07):
and changing the format. I've beenpodcasting for about four years. I was
doing daily shows. I'm in thepersonal finance space, so there's always money
things coming up and pop culture stuff, and there came a point where I
just got tired of having to producethe content weekly, but I still wanted

(32:28):
the show to release weekly, andso finally, just for my own creative
juices and just timing, I changedit to seasons and designed content specifically to
address an issue like deep do aDeep Dive. So right now I'm literally

(32:50):
doing a thirteen week series all aboutthe student loan forgiveness policy. What I've
discovered is the downloads have tripled,the feedback has been incredible. I get
sponsors for this content, so it'seasier for me to get sponsors for content
when it's siloed like that. I'min the process of preparing for this for

(33:15):
the fall, when I'm doing anentire fall all about women and money,
and I think it's going to bemuch much easier again to get sponsors the
pacings better. So I did allthe recording in two weeks and it's just
freed up an amazing amount of timethroughout the summer, even though episodes are

(33:37):
releasing weekly. So if you're wondering, like how people react to you changing
what you're doing, for me likeit's been overwhelmingly positive. I also take
breaks. I think the past threeyears in particular have been very stressful,
So I've taken breaks like for sixweek two months, and I just let

(34:01):
people know, hey, I'm takinga break. I have a multi media
platform though, so by that whatI mean is I have a website,
I do freelance writing, I haveother things that I'm doing, so people
do know I'm out there and doingother projects. But I think if you
just speak to your audience, they'repretty pretty open to it. And because

(34:25):
I'm able to market these seasons better, it's just been a wonderful experience.
I highly recommend it if you're wonderingif it's a thing to do, so,
similar to one of the speakers before, I would do it episode a
week. You know, maybe somepop culture moment and money happened, or
maybe there was a policy that happened, and it just got to the point

(34:47):
where it wasn't as sustainable as before, and this has been so much better.
Michelle A couple questions. If youdon't mind, do you think that
your downloads have tripled because you've you'reyou know, you've serviced a underserviced niche,

(35:10):
or do you think these are personalfinance listeners who who just like the
topic. How do you think thatthat happened. I just think that I
don't think it's so much an underservedniche. I just think that it's a
very Actually I'll say it this way. I do think you're right in thinking

(35:31):
that maybe people aren't talking about thatspecific topic as a part of a show,
like I haven't necessarily seen other showsdoing that. I think it's relevant,
so it's it's something that's top ofmine right now. But it's also

(35:51):
evergreen because quite frankly, I don'tthink that I think that whatever policy changes
occur or don't occur, it's stillan issue that's going to be with us
for years. So it's an evergreenpiece of content that impacts a lot of
different people. So I think that'spart of the reason why there's so much
interest in it, women in money, same thing. I've gotten a lot

(36:15):
of buzz around people being excited tolisten to the show and the concept that
I'm doing for that series, andthat one's kind of ballsy because I'm going
to do the whole probably the wholefall. It's all about women and money
and different moments and their money.So just touching on, like doing a

(36:37):
deep dive in conversations that people probablywould like to have but aren't having.
I think it's helpful. Also withmy show, I don't do the boring
like this is how you win boost. I think it's so boring, And
most shows in personal finance I finddo a lot of the same content,

(37:00):
And so I think it's helpful forme in terms of like the response to
the content that I do, becauseI approach it very differently. So for
example, my most downloaded episode wasabout the personal finances of a sex worker.
Why because no one talks about that, but it's really an important conversation

(37:20):
about body autonomy and policy. Andso I think in creating your content,
you have to you have to considerwhat's interesting for people that's not being covered,
and why would it be interesting topeople, like who are going to
listen. I don't know that it'sjust personal finance people listening. I think

(37:45):
it's people who have student loans.I think it's people who are pissed off
that people might get loan forgiveness.I think there's people who have very strong
feelings both ways. I think thereare people who have no idea how it
works. And so that series istouching on a lot of that that different
types of those different types of information, and then I'm marketing that content across

(38:07):
my platforms. You'll be sorry,no, no, go ahead, Greg,
I thought you were. I thoughtno no. I was saying,
you're gonna You're gonna be a greatcase study because this is exactly what I'm
hoping to learn. Because what you'redoing is, you know, you're kind
of you're staying in the same generalniche, but you're moving around in like

(38:28):
your focused niche. So when inthe in the fall, I might DM
you and just see how it's going. Please for my own please do personal
knowledge. Absolutely do. And I'min the process of By the way,
this side note, I kind ofquickly mentioned that it's easier to find partners

(38:49):
for this content because you can identifyorganizations or people who are really aligned with
it. So right now I'm pitchingfor responsors and partnerships for the Women and
Money episodes, and I'm hoping thatI can get that all taken care of
before they go live. So thegoal is to raise a certain amount of

(39:12):
money, pay for my time andfor the content, and then release them
with those with those partnerships. Sowe'll see how it goes. It went
well for last year, and soI think it's going to do better this
year. And if I could justgive like a quick vote of confidence.
There's only two people I listened towho talk about money, and one of

(39:37):
them is my girl Katie from FortCollins, and the other one is Michelle,
who is from them and so theyboth live, they both live where
I live, and they're both killers. So if you don't subscribe to Money
with Katie or to Michelle's podcast,and you care about finances, especially if
you're a woman, I guess.But even if you're a fucking white dude

(40:00):
me, I would never talk toTanner about money though. No no,
no, no no no. Heneeds all the podcasts help he can get.
Yeah, yeah, don't talk tome about money. I'm bad with
money. It's not your phone.Podcasting Power Hour is part of indeed drop

(40:21):
in network. If you are apodcaster looking to grow your listeners, check
out indie drop in dot com.Indie drop in is always free and we
have opportunities right now for comedy,true crime, scary and paranormal podcasts.
Just go to indie drop in dotcom to learn more. So one one

(40:45):
piece of anecdotal information in favor ofseasons is on indie drop in. When
people send me episodes to feature,I always say, send me multi part
episodes if you can. I havenoticed a crawl my platform that multi part
episodes outperform single part episodes. AndI just think that people love stories and

(41:09):
stories that go on for a longtime. So having a season focused on
a topic that has a story kindof woven through many episodes, six,
twelve, you know, twenty four, however many I just can't see how
it would be bad. It's itcan only be good. I think the

(41:30):
the only fear is maybe not evenreal of losing losing listeners. So as
a that's a it was a greatcomment. Thank you so much, Michelle.
Like that cleared it up, Ithelped. That helped me so much
anybody has anything else to comment onthat before we go to Pixie. Yeah,

(41:52):
just one thing. I want tobe mean for a second. I
want to be angry Tanner for aminute. These motherfuckers are listening for free.
If you want to take a break, I take a break. I
don't know. I don't know aboutyou, Tanner, but every week that
I'm off is hundreds. I'll justsay hundreds of dollars in ad revenue that
I miss. That's because you monetizethe podcast like a school. But that's

(42:15):
okay. We can talk about that. I wasn't going to say thousands or
ten thousands because I'm not you Pixie. What's going on? What's going on?
Guys? Uh? So we didseason We are getting ready for season
four. First season was us,you know, just having fun with the

(42:39):
hobby. Those twenty five episodes.The first episode are introduction, the twenty
fifth episode that was our wrap up, and so then we took breaks off
between each season, kind of workingon our studio, working on sound quality,
working on ourselves as podcasters. Whenwe came to season two, we

(43:01):
did new music, new artwork,and so you could see a progression every
season that we've done we've been ableto get guests on. We've also been
able to add video to each toeach thing that we've done, we've added
a little bit better stuff, betterquality. There's a connection between me and

(43:22):
my co host that didn't start outat the beginning, and so and each
each of the episodes sort of well, they all tie in together and a
bigger picture, but each of theseasons have their own little like season two

(43:42):
no, Season three was down anddirty. So the next the next season
is going to be like stripper superheroes, you know, like our origin are
we villains or are we superheroes?So, because me and my co hosts
have a knack for comic books,that's where we're going to take our next

(44:04):
season when we come back to it. We're already planning. I already have
six interviews lined up here local whereI'm at for my podcast. So I
think taking breaks, being able tounderstand how good you are, what you
understand, what you're coming back toat a podcast, it really does help

(44:28):
and grow and develop you as anindividual. I'm still not very good sometimes,
and I think that having a partnerin your podcast as help and having
seasons really can help somebody I'm gladthat I have seasons. That way,
I can take a break, Ican do the things that I want to

(44:50):
do and not be overwhelmed, andI can also count down the seasons giving
people a rough estimate of what's goingon. Only noticed I'm looking at my
analytics. I only noticed that they'veonly slightly dropped, and I'm retaining a
lot of people because I'm still marketingthe podcast, and I'm still doing throwback,

(45:13):
you know, Thursdays and letting peopleknow that there there's good content for
people to listen, no matter ifwe're putting things out new and fresh or
it's just stuff in the past.That's what I had to say as I
killed her room. I was waitingfor Tanner to talk because he asked the

(45:34):
comment me and I like to talk. I'm a tough fucking podcaster. Jeff,
fuck you. Wow, someone's alittle bit angry. All right,
we have somebody else requestion. Let'ssee, trying to make sure that you're
content creators. So if you arenot, yeah, send me a d

(46:00):
so I'm not accepted you because I'mtrying to vet three people here. Sorry,
David. Well, before we moveoff this topic, who is the
woman that was talking about that shetook seasons. That's a pixie. Pixie,
Okay, Pixie awesome. My questionis because as I was listening to
that, you changed your music.You changed this, like, you changed

(46:22):
a lot of stuff, which isgreat if you want it. I always
say your podcast is a recipe,not a statue. How do you determine
because the only thing I didn't hearyou work on was your content. Like
I went out and researched my audienceto find out what they really wanted to
hear. Are you doing any ofthat kind of stuff? Yes, we're

(46:43):
always engaged with who are core audiences. I've known my core audience from basically
episode twenty until now, so Iknow who's actively listening to my podcast.
Because of my analytic ex I knowwho I'm talking to because we do a
lot of to and fro with peoplewho are engaged. We send out surveys,

(47:07):
I send out stickers, I doa lot of If you give me
feedback, I give you said item. So it's kind of it. It
really is. My podcast is spicyand it's it's all about strippers, so
we don't have a lot of femalelisteners. Hit Dave shower selection. Just

(47:30):
that's it. We know who's listeningto our podcast. It's men ages twenty
five to fifty five that have orwanted to go into a strip club and
they really like the kind of contentcontent that we bring out. They I've
had a couple of people reach outand say, hey, you need to

(47:51):
drop your co host and it needsjust to be you know, female strippers,
and I tell them time and timeagain, the show is not a
show unless there's the two of us. Those are some thirsty ass they really
are. They really are. They'relike, you need to have less men
talk, and I was like,wait, it's it's bad, but we

(48:16):
do. We know who our targetaudiences, we know who we're marketing to,
and especially me here on Twitter,I know who's going to gravitate towards
my podcast. Nice. Yeah,you definitely sound like you're You're definitely focused
and targeted, which is great.So I just when you were talking about

(48:37):
all the other stuff, I waslike, I didn't hear a thing about
the content, So I just wantedto make sure and you're definitely headed in
the right direction. Thank you,Dave. Chris, you requested to speak,
go ahead. Sorry, I wasjust finishing up that DM for you

(48:58):
there, No, I appreciate thatnow. I really just hopped on because
Pixie has you know, had nothingbut great things to say about this space,
and I tried to listen when Ican. Today was just one of
those random days where you know,I had the day off at least from
side gigs, but that doesn't meanthat I didn't have like a stack of
admin tasks to get through, andmy latest episode getting that published was one

(49:21):
of them, so I at leastdid accomplish that and forced myself to make
new episode art for at this time, which took a lot longer than it
should have. But I wanted toask because this has just been one of
those It's been in my gut allday and I feel like if I don't
talk about it, I'm not goingto get it out. I really went
off the rail. I mean,I just threw away the script and I
just said, you know what.I know we're supposed to be doing part

(49:43):
three of our Timothy Leary series rightnow, but because of what happened last
week, I wanted to kind ofrecap what I went through as a lobbyist
and activist forming like a two dayprotest at our state legislature that actually led
to like a piece of legalization passingin real time to save the hemp industry

(50:04):
from this like you know weird deadlinethat they put on North Carolina version of
the FARMAC back in twenty eighteen,and I wanted to use that as like
a motivational piece to let people knowthat yes, it's okay to be angry,
but if we put that anger towardssomething productive, we can still make
change, especially on the state levelright now. But it's just a lot
more dropping of the F bomb thannormal. And I call out some people,

(50:28):
like some rather important people, onsome very specific things that I probably
should have gone easier on them.But I also feel like my listener base,
as small as it is, doeskind of grow from people expecting me
to be as passionate and as rawand as honest as I always am.
But it's such a drastic change frommy usual just you know, reading the

(50:51):
story that I've kind of already builtup in my head when I'm covering like
a specific individual, or if I'mcovering like a specific bill or a topic.
This was more about me sharing likea blow for blow emotionally of what
happened the day that we watched,like all this occur in real time.
But I when I went back andlistened to it, and it's already published,
so it's not like I can takeit back. But when I went

(51:13):
back and listened to it, Icouldn't tell if I was disappointed in how
much I let the language get awayfrom me, or if I was kind
of just I don't want to sayjustifying it, but feeling like it was
justifiable in the moment because of itbeing kind of a off the rails train
of thought, very passionate, youknow, improved moment of audio that turned

(51:34):
into an episode that I'm I thinkI'm proud of, but I'm still not
one hundred percent sure. And Ijust I didn't know if anybody had any
advice on how to look at that, like objectively, just from the point
of like, did I go overboardwith the language you're asking this group?
You probably didn't go bard of thelanguage, at least for us. Here's

(51:57):
what I'd say. If your audienceis used to X and you suddenly deliver
why and I talk I talk aboutthis frequently in regards to politics. I
personally think it's a really fucking badthing and disrespectful thing to do to drop
a political discussion in the middle ofa podcast about comic books because something happened,
because I feel like those people mightbe showing up to your show to

(52:20):
escape that shit. It's everywhere.It doesn't. That doesn't sound like exactly
what you did, but it soundslike what you did was in alignment rather
with your core audience, but wasjust a little bit different and a little
bit more let's say, uh,graphic, wanton, and gratacious in the
language, which is probably okay.But if you're going to do that,
and I think you maybe should continueto do that, if you feel passionate

(52:42):
about it and it relates to youraudience, maybe have like once a month
or once every other week and publishit as a you know, publish it
as a I don't know, anafter dark episode or I hate to use
the word bonus, I hate thatfucking word. But just an episode that
is labeled as being distinctly different thenormal episodes, but that some of your
audience is still an online I don'tthink there's a problem with that, Chris,

(53:06):
Why don't you take a look atyour average consumption rate for that episode
and see if people dropped off inthe first ten to fifteen to twenty minutes
or if they stayed till the end. They stayed till the end, well
there's your answer. And if youfound that they were dropping off in the
fiftieth person tile, then you probablywent overboard. And I feel like there's
been a good enough basis set withyou know, because we're only like five

(53:30):
episodes in, but the podcast ideaand the people kind of building up the
audience waiting for it to happen hasbeen going on for about two years with
the whole movement, so there wasalready kind of like a built in fan
base that kept asking for this overand over and over again. And I
finally with again Pixie's encouragement and helpfrom She was one of the first people
that I met with all that,you know, finally actually getting me to

(53:51):
sit down and record the first episode. And I got lucky enough to like
fall into one of the most amazingproducers I've ever worked with. I mean,
doesn't charge me because he believes inthe movement that much, and what
the podcast is for, I justrecord the audio is like one stream of
conscious thought. With subscripting. Iemail it to him, and he has

(54:12):
like a completed episode with full scorymusic that he writes himself. He knows
how to read my cues audibly,Like if I start going into a bit,
he knows exactly what music needs toplay before then. And I don't
ever have to communicate with him.It's like he just already knows all my
thoughts without me having to say it. And I hope to God nothing ever
happens to him, because if so, like I would just not have a

(54:34):
podcast, Like he is so muchmore of the talent behind my show than
I am. You know, I'mjust the one that kind of fell into
a topic that you know, hecould speak passionately about. But I my
audience face turns in because they're alwayswaiting for me sometimes to snap, I
feel like, because it's always thereunder the surface. And people have told
me that like they they like thekind of manic calm of the episodes because

(54:58):
they can always tell that I'm holdingback a bit, And so I'm just
hoping that once they realized when I'mnot holding back and I talk about punching
a senator in the dick more thanonce, that that's not going to just
like scare them away forever. ButI don't think that it will. Yeah,
you're the Lewis Black of cannabis advocacy. Congratulations, stick with it.

(55:21):
In my case, I was gettingready to record an episode, and this
is back when Joe Rogan had justmoved to Spotify, and article came out
and said something like seventy nine episodesof Joe's show had been pulled. And
I opened up the Curmudgeon Handbook andit said, oh, I must do
a podcast about open RSS. It'slike it's in my DNA. I had

(55:43):
to do it. And I justwent off on freedom of speech and watch
out, they're all gonna come andget you know, it's all great,
they're gonna come take our guns,They're gonna take our free speech, blah
blah blah. And I just wantto And I had a listener of mine
and said, I tune in toyour show to get away from that shit.
I don't want to talk politics.I'm like so, so I think
it was Tanner that said that,And that was very much a case where
they tuned in for a and Igave them Z and they're like, yeah,

(56:07):
no, don't do that. SoI uh, And it was.
It was very much just in amoment, like it was unscripted, and
then I tried to edit it intosome sort of of of uh so it
sounded like I had put some thoughtinto it and I hadn't. And it's
one of those where you get done, You're like, oh, I just
chewed up all the time where I'msupposed to do something that I had planned,

(56:29):
and now I'm either staying up tillthree in the morning to do the
right stuff, or I'm going toput out the stuff that I just you
know, vomited out of my face. And so in my case, my
audience and it was one person.But if I have one person that contacts
me, I'm like, okay,that's probably ten people. And whoever said
that that's a good suggestion, Ishould go back and look and see how
far people listen. But by oneperson was like, yeah, don't do

(56:51):
that. Didn't do that anymore.Pay attention my old radio program directing mentor
my Elliott rest in Peace just wentto his celebration of life yesterday. But
he used to always tell me whatyou don't say won't hurt you. So

(57:13):
I guess that that's just a pieceof advice. For editing is if you
feel like you went over the edgewhen you're recording. It's great that we're
all doing this and most of thetime most of us here are doing this
recorded and editing and post. Youdon't have to leave that stuff in.
And even if it takes some extratime, if you're going to offend your

(57:37):
audience, you can pull that out. So and that's coming from Mayor mcfuzz,
a local politician who has an absolutelyno politics rule on his show.
So that's just my advice, allright, right, or or hear me
out here, or be the shavingthe way you wish to behave. You

(58:02):
will repel the people who find thatrepulsive, and you will attract the people
who like you the most. That'swhat brands do, right. Strong brands
repel people and they attract people.And I don't know, Chris, You're
five episodes in which made me gigglewhen you said that after asking such a
serious question. So I think you'reprobably doing fine, Bud, And I

(58:27):
know what's the serious question for libingfive inn And I expect people to giggle
at that. It's just there's beenso many people that have been dangling,
like massive funding and financing and supportover my head for like the last two
years, with a number of projectswhere it's like there's been the podcast,
and then there's supposed to be abook that I'm working on, and then
I'm also supposed to be doing anothervideo project for a different company that all

(58:49):
revolve around the same movement. Noneof anyone who's paid me for any of
this, mind you, They justall kept telling me, this is what
you need to do, this iswhat we believe you were meant to do.
So by the time I actually finallygot down to do it, I
feel like if I didn't put outlike the most polished, perfect product I
could, I was somehow failing thembased on all the support they were giving
me over the last two years.And it did kind of create a complex

(59:10):
when I started. Uh. Instoicism, we call that as sending to
an untrue belief Uh. Yeah,don't assent to untrue beliefs. Man,
If you're taking all that support,if you don't know that's true, have
a conversation, find out if it'strue. Maybe they're really happy with what
you're doing. Yeah, take thatsupport to Whole Foods and try to buy
an avocado with it. Ask formoney. I don't know what that means.

(59:34):
All right, we got three peopleup here waiting Tanner yourself to do
it. Man, I don't knowhow you do it. Uncontrolled Chaos podcast,
you were next in mine? Whatyou got? Okay, well,
first of all, what's up everybody'sspuds here from a metro kas podcast.
Hey, Pixie, and I recognizesomebody else. I forgot who it was.
The big question I have is thatmy show Control Kas podcast is a

(01:00:00):
birdly honest podcast with a splash ofbullshit to the extent that we treated as
zef Like, Okay, you're seeinga group of nut jobs that are just
sitting there at a bar, youknow, having some beers or your choice
of alcoholic beverage, and you're just, you know, listening in on their
conversation, like Pixie can voucher that, you know, of how weird my

(01:00:22):
show is. The big question Ihave is promoting on social media. Now
I can tweet until my thumb's goingnumb, but I'm getting like zero interaction.
Is there a like a social mediathat's like, oh, this is

(01:00:44):
like this is the social media touse for promoting podcasts? Or am I
doing something wrong? I'm trying tofigure it out because I've been doing this
for like what almost fuck uh onehundred and was it one hundred and forty
episodes so far? I think Idon't remember, but I'm just trying to

(01:01:07):
figure out, like the like thetips, anybody that has any tips on
promoting on social media? Can youtell us what your last post was?
Uh? Yeah, I posted itright up there. It was a clip
from the late from the latest episodewhere I posted a clip from the from

(01:01:28):
the episode, and uh, itwas just a little tidbit like it's it's
right up there if you can lookwith the screen. Yeah, I'm I'm
in the you know, space,so I'm not off the real at the
at the very top of the space, there's something cold chaos, I see.

(01:01:50):
Yeah, okay, real quick way, we're all reviewing that. If
Fatima has a hard stop here,she has another commitment to go to.
Did want to give you a minuteto talk about the work you're doing and
recently launched co hosts and all that, because I appreciate you taking your time
to jump on. Yeah. Absolutely, And I can't remember who was just
asking about social before this, butyou know, I think you can't really

(01:02:14):
be on all of the platforms,and certain channels are really going to resonate
with your content and certain channels won't. And I think I'm a huge proponent
of using tracking links to see youknow where your downloads and listeners are coming
in from, so you can reallydouble down those on those platforms rather than
trying to do everything and trying tobe everywhere. And sometimes it's the audience

(01:02:37):
that you're really trying to track won'tbe on any of those channels, and
that's okay too. In terms ofthe work that we're doing, As I
mentioned, I own a production company. We work with Fortune five hundred brands
like Microsoft and PwC and Expedia tolaunch their branded content. But we also
have a product that we built forprofessional podcasters. It's the product that was

(01:03:00):
built by podcasters for podcasters because wesaw a lot of gaps and pain points
within the industry. Found that youknow, the product itself or the product
itself is really catering to folks likeyourselves who are really trying to take their
show to the next level and understandwho's listening to their podcast, how are

(01:03:20):
they listening to it, and wherecan they find new audiences? And really
that's the goal that we're trying toachieve, is help podcasters drawing their qualified
audience, because we all know thatpodcasting is a marathon, not a sprint.
But there's anything that we can doto try to accelerate growth. I'm
all for it. So thank youso much Jeff and Greg and Tanner and

(01:03:43):
everyone for having me. It's agreat group of folks and this is a
lot of fun. So looking forwardto tuning in in the future for as
a listener. So thank you forhaving me. Well, thank you for
joining. I really do appree.All right, we'll get back Dave to
you. Did you get a chanceto review on Controlled Chaos post? I

(01:04:08):
did, and I guess Uncontrolled Chaoshas left the room. Yeah, it
didn't make me want to click onit. I guess that's it. It
was very yeah, very promotional,and it's a lot of posting of links
of the show and not interacting withpeople or the uh, the type of

(01:04:31):
audience. You know, it's notit's not audience interactions, say what it's
about necessarily, Look this this roomis actually a perfect example of this.
Like Jeff and Greg and Fuzz andme all have podcasts Jeff and Greg and
myself have podcasts about podcasting. Arewe posting on You'll never see me share
a fucking link to my to myshow. Well, that's not true.

(01:04:56):
I use Zapier once a day tweetout, hey, case you missed it,
here's today's episode. But that's automated. I don't actually do that.
What we're really doing is showing upto this space to interact with the community.
And if you're gonna be on Twitter, I mean that's pretty big for
Twitter. Especially if you're gonna beon Twitter, you should be interacting with
the community, providing value almost inlike a whole nother place. This is

(01:05:17):
one of the biggest problems that podcastershave is that they think, like,
oh, I'm a podcaster. That'sit, motherfucker. That's the product.
I'm gonna tweet about it, I'mgonna share it, You're gonna love it.
I don't have to do anything else. Is I already make a fucking
podcast? That's not really how itworks. Any thoughts on that that are
less vulgar, perhaps, well,And like this, like Fatima said,

(01:05:41):
it's not a case of which oneis the best one. The best one
is the one where your audience is, so my audience is somewhat older.
So I'm doing Facebook and Twitter.I'm not going to be doing much on
TikTok, although I still think maybeI should. But I know, oh
my god, please please uh,the Chinese know enough about me. But

(01:06:11):
and I'm not dancing. So ifthat's what you're thinking, that's not it.
Yeah, sorry, we'll have tofigure Michelle what you got. I
have a slightly different take on searchabilityand where people should be. I was

(01:06:34):
look, I looked at the post. I have no idea what it's about.
And when I'm sharing my content,I share it in the way that
people would be searching for it.I think seo is a skill. I
think that podcasters way underestimate how importantit is to make it simple for their

(01:06:55):
audience to discover them. And soif I were into your topic, I
wouldn't know based on this tweet atall. And so what I would say
is make it super freaking easy forus to understand what you're doing in your
tweets so that we Because I geta lot of traffic referrals from Twitter to

(01:07:17):
be candid, I'm very active onTwitter. I make money off of Twitter
from projects people refer people to mycontent. So I do think that social
media it can be leveraged to getpeople to your content. But I also
have a website, I have otherpeople who are directing people to my content.

(01:07:41):
But I also really use search engineoptimization. So even in a show
about chaos, there should be atheme or underlying conversation for each episode.
So what would I type in inorder to find that episode? So,
for example, I'm a huge VeronicaMars fan. No, I'm gonna use

(01:08:03):
a different one. I'm a hugeStar Trek fan. And if I were
doing a whole season about Star TrekStrange New Worlds, I would have very
specific things like an episode about Spock. Spock is hot, he is in
this season anyway. My point isother people are probably typing that in,

(01:08:26):
and then I would have an episodespecifically about house Bok is hot, Like,
don't make it hard for us tofigure out what you're talking about and
to find you. And I thinka lot of podcasters way underestimate searchability in
their show titles, in the URLsthey're using. If they have a website
like I do, and like youhave to use SEO so that search engines

(01:08:50):
can can't so that humans can typein the search and find you when you
favorite person. Guys, I wasthinking the same thing. And you know,
we got some spicy content from Spockin these recent star treks. Yeah,
Rock favorite Scissors. Spock is hot, and I don't know what you're

(01:09:14):
gonna say, but we'll give ita shot. Well, I'm just looking
at this post that Spud posted into me. The way it reads is
that it's reading specifically to people whoalready know about the show and listen to
it. For me, who doesn'tknow the show at all. I don't
know who s Bud's eighty two is. I don't know what Uncontrolled Chaos is.
And then I see, you know, hot titty sweat on the on

(01:09:38):
the picture, and that doesn't makeme want to try it out. How
the fuck is it possible that all? I mean, at least me,
I looked at that, didn't evensee hot titty sweat. I think I
might be gay, Guys, Ithink something's happening. Don't tell your wife.
Oh no, But I'm just sayingis that, you know, if
you look at Tanner's post, youlook at my post, you look at

(01:10:00):
Pixie's posts, We're not just postingto the people we already have, we're
trying to reach out to those whohaven't discovered us. So you need to
get out of the mindset of promotingyourself specifically. Or you know, what
is this episode about about hot tittysweat? What do you mean by hot
titty sweat? And you're not youknow what is the show about? And

(01:10:21):
that's where I think you have Yourbiggest problem is that your description doesn't tell
us what your show is about.Your your post doesn't tell us what your
episode is about. And that's maybewhy you're having trouble finding new listeners.
I mean, at least use thehashtag hot titty sweat. Make a community,
man. I mean, if youput that in the text hot titty

(01:10:43):
sweat, you'd have much better interactionthan we think too much Kevin, is
everyone coming off Mike just to saythat, Okay, we all hear what
we all hear? What do youmean? HTS that's it? Yes,
that's a new boy band out ofKorea. Heather, go ahead. I

(01:11:08):
just I wanted to say there's somebalance there though, right. So Tanner's
point like where he said like henever pushes a podcast episode out, but
then by the same token, likeyou're talking about, you know, you
want to engage with your audience andstuff like that, Like how if they
aren't subscribed and you are trying totarget those new people, how do they

(01:11:29):
find you? Like? How dothey discover? Oh? Like there's a
podcast there, you know, LikeI'm trying to understand when you guys are
talking about those happy mediums between thoseLike what does that even look like for
you? Yeah? If I canhop on real quick, Tama, go
ahead. The best engagement I've gottenso far this month off of Twitter was

(01:11:49):
posting a hashtag. It just said, hey, filmed Hey hashtag film Twitter.
I'm planning my next series of episodesabout directors in the eighties, who
do you feel were the most influential? And I got more reactions and more
responses to that question with only onehashtag than I've gotten in a very long

(01:12:15):
time because I kept it simple,I kept it clean, and I didn't
overload it with too much information,and I also sought engagement from the people
who I were hoping will respond tome. That's how you do it.
It's just you keep it simple,you keep it direct, and you practically
beg for engagement. But in arespectful way to get people to talk to

(01:12:43):
you. Okay, So my nextfollow up to that ed is how did
you convert those to people going andactually listening to your podcast? You got
to engage on the hashtag. Howdid you then translate that into actual listens
and outloads on your ship? Well, I haven't yet because that's the next
that's my next series. That seriesis not coming for a couple of months.
But how I get people to listento my show now is participating in

(01:13:06):
these very spaces with Jeff, withTanner, with Pixie, with the Fuzz,
with Greg, with all these people, and just getting myself out there
and being an articulate person who hasstrong reactions to things, but is also
trying to be as helpful as possibleand not be as mean as possible,

(01:13:26):
being a positive person in these spaces, and being someone that people can say,
Hey, that person gave good advice. Maybe I'll give their show a
chance. I can tell you thatmy audience has gone up fairly well in
the past nine to ten months sinceI started doing spaces and started meeting people
like Jeff and Tanner and Fuzz andPixie. So you just have to be

(01:13:48):
there for the community, not justbe in the community, but be there
for the community. And now Ican get you know, every time I
practically send out a tweet, aslong as is related to the show,
I've got three or four people whowill retweet it and like it and get
the word out about it. AndI can see my numbers grow when certain

(01:14:09):
people are engaging with me. AndI can even tell you the most downloaded
episode that I had in twenty twentyone was specifically because of Jeff who a
suggested the topic of a specific episode, and then when I posted the episode,
he put a call of action outto his his supporters, to his

(01:14:30):
followers and said, hey, youshould check out this episode. So to
me, that's how I've gotten myengagement. It's just by being here for
this community. So there's two thingshere that we're glossing over, Heather and
Ed. The thing that I aman incompetent hobbyist. Don't forget to get

(01:14:50):
out of here. That the thingthat Ed did was that he made he
made the call to action, ifwe want to even call it that,
he made it about the opinion ofsome of anyone who would see it.
People love to talk about what theythink. I mean, I do it
all the fucking time. People loveto talk about what they think, They
love to talk about themselves, andso it doesn't surprise me that that tweet

(01:15:13):
in particular said what do you thinkis the most influential producer or whatever it
was of the you know, ofthe nineteen eighties or whatever it was.
That's probably why that post had somuch engagement, because it wasn't look at
me, look at me, itwas Hey, what do you think about
this thing under this particular community hashtagthat I know you're going to have an
opinion about because you wouldn't be followingthis hashtag if you didn't. And the
other thing, Heather, is thatAnd I think I've said this in the

(01:15:38):
last couple of spaces. So Ihate to sound like a broken record,
but we podcasters seem to think ourpodcast is the product, and we miss
the fact that it is in factwe the individual the hosts, who are
the product. And this is especiallytrue if you're trying to monetize your podcast,
because if you have one hundred followerson your podcast and you have six
hundred followers on Twitter, and youhave a thousand followers on your blog,

(01:15:59):
and you have eight hundred on yourI don't know your fucking TikTok, and
none of that crosses over. Yourscope of influence is not just one hundred
followers that you have on your fuckingpodcast. It's all of those places.
And it goes against I think whatFatima said earlier about not being on every
platform, or maybe not completely against, but you need to be on more
than one platform. Uh not forand really not for any other reason.

(01:16:24):
Then there some people are never goingto listen to podcasts. I mean in
the grand scheme of podcasts, likeyou look at YouTube videos are a people
who consume blog content. You lookat people who look at fucking memes,
and like, the people who arespending time on podcasts is the smallest,
most irrelevant, least consume style ofmedia on the Internet. And we're all
like, that's all we're gonna do, and why are we having a hard

(01:16:45):
time growing? Well, because nobodyin the grand scheme of thing, nobody
gives a shit about podcasts. Theycare more about YouTube videos, they care
more about tiktoks, they care moreabout blog posts, they care more about
ridiculous memes. And so if youwant to have influence out there, in
the world, in your niche,whatever it is, whatever it's about for
me, it's about podcasting. Thenyou've got to show up in those different
places to serve the people who areon those platforms. You got to do

(01:17:09):
that. You're not just a podcaster. You are a multimedia powerhouse. And
you have to think of yourself thatway. And I mean, you got
to be in more than one place, and you've got to be okay with
your audience being split up across differentplaces and having influence not just at one
home base. I think the ideaof a home base just isn't relevant anymore
other than your own website for SEOpurposes, which China Mischell will appreciate.

(01:17:30):
Yeah, to summ that up toYou're a brand, right, so when
you're doing this, everything that youput out is your brand. It all
falls out under the brand of youknow, what listeners expect on your show
is the you know that same voicevalues, you know that you know humor,

(01:17:53):
if you're using humor, all thatstuff needs to come through on all
those channels that you do that theway that you are on your show needs
through. And it's not about postinga link and saying listen to my show.
It's about interacting with and engaging withthe audience that you want to have
in the way that you that youraudience is accustomed to experiencing them. Yeah.

(01:18:16):
The conversion, Heather, isn't subscribingto your podcast. The conversion is
the connection to you and respecting youand wanting to have more content from you.
That's the conversion you want. Itdoesn't matter if they become a listener.
Those people we interacted with Ed onthat hashtag may never listen to his
podcast, but they may really respecthis opinion on Twitter, and you know,

(01:18:39):
six and one, a half dozenthe other it's all good. Yeah.
So I've made this challenge in thein this space before and I'll make
it again for anybody who has apodcast and you're posting things like we saw
on Twitter, audiograms, whatever itis. You know, I take take

(01:19:00):
my advice and take the next monthand don't post a single thing about your
podcast, not one thing, notwhen your episodes are coming out, not
whose guests you're being on, nota single thing, not even one,
And instead make posts to curate yoursubject matter expertise, so to engage with

(01:19:23):
the people who you're trying to influence, put your link, put the link
to your podcast or whatever, orprobably your website or your bio or something
your hopefully your website in your Twitterbio. You could put a nested link
to your podcast if you want.But what I'll promise you is that you

(01:19:45):
will not see your downloads go down. There are not people who are using
Twitter as a notification that you've putout a podcast. Twitter is shit for
that. Those posts that aren't interactedwith are not seen by anyone. They
are not seen by anyone, soTwitter doesn't show it to people. So

(01:20:10):
post subject matter expertise like the exampleEd provided, interact on other people's posts,
and stop talking about your podcast onsocial media for a short time,
and what you'll see is is you'llget some listeners because you contributed like a
human and a great person to followto see. Examples of this is Greg.

(01:20:33):
He's not going to say that Greg'sa good example. But another really
good example is Ariel This and Black, who has a podcast about podcasting herself
and almost never fucking talks about it. She also works at squadcasts and almost
never fucking talks about it. Andshe has I mean her I think she's
probably at thirteen thousand or so followersnow, and she hasn't been on Twitter

(01:20:54):
for that long. It's because sheshows up and she says funny things that
people find funny have nothing to dowith promoting our show. Where she comes
in with stats about podcasting, havenothing to do with promoting her show,
and she's held up as one ofI think more people in the podcasting community
think highly of Ariel than they thinkof me. Uh and I think she's
fucking great. I think you shouldfollow her. If you follow me,

(01:21:15):
definitely follow her. I agree withyou on that one. Peter, Thanks,
Jeff, I appreciate that. I'msorry interapaticquick question. Why are we
supposed to be hearing a pitch fromsomebody tonight? Yes? He the No
Call Nos show. We'll see nextweek. Anyways. Uh yeah, it
was that hour went by super fastfor me. I don't know about everybody

(01:21:38):
else. It went by slow becauseit was an hour and twenty minutes.
You're so you're so stoic. Itfelt like an hour and twenty minutes.
All right. So we did haveone person that we didn't get to.
They had to drop off. Itwas a Forius Nightmare podcast. They just
wanted to mention that seasons have beengood for them because they are new.

(01:21:59):
They started out unorganized and it wasa fresh start each time they had a
new season. They're on season threeand everything about our pod is changing with
massive improvements. Love to be ableto shut out yourself picksy, Greg and
Tanner. Since they have been theones who have dropped good tidbits of advice,
it has been positive for us.So that's another example of how that
some of the things we've talked aboutthis evening have helped a new podcaster.

(01:22:25):
Good sweaty tidbits, good sweaty tip. That's my I will leave that as
my closing thoughts to be good toyou, Greg, hot titties come on,
Ed. I thank you everybody forcoming to the space. I thought
it was really fun, you know, especially if this is your first time

(01:22:45):
here. We do this every weekand you never know who might show up,
and sometimes you might hope that peopledon't show up but end up showing
up. So you know, sorryfor that, and you can I wasn't
talking about to you, Dave,about Tanner clearly for sure, just kidding,

(01:23:05):
just kidding, g Yeah, justavailable on podcast form too. I
was yeah, I was getting there. So, uh, the website is
podcasting power hour dot com. Uh, we're still waiting on a couple of
logos, but I went ahead andpublished it in its non finished form for
today because we're all podcasters and weknow how it goes. Uh, but

(01:23:27):
this is available via podcast and Ieven put some of our uh extracurricular conversations
that don't make it in the houron the end in the beginning. Obviously
I cut out anything sensitive, butuh, if you don't, if you
drop early or you came in late, podcasting power hour dot com or any

(01:23:50):
podcast app. So a great wayto check out all the previous episodes.
For sure, Thank you great mayorMCOs thoughts on this season. No,
I thought this was a great conversation. And to be honest, I'm coming
up on my fifty second weekly episodeof my hyper local show and I've been

(01:24:17):
dreading whether to take a break ornot because I'm a little bit burnt out.
But I was just interviewed on aon a local show and I was
about to take a break. Gotinterviewed on a local show and I'm like,
oh shit, I can't take abreak now because people are expecting contents
and I don't want to squander thethe pr so, but this has been

(01:24:44):
very helpful because I think I'm goingto either plan out a way to at
least take a two or four weekbreak and then come back. But it's
been very helpful as always, Jeff, Greg, even you Tanner. Uh,
it's been It's fun. And Jim, I still owe you some stuff
and I've got like three pages ofthings for you and I will get those

(01:25:08):
to you soon. So but thanksfor having me on guys. I appreciate
it, no problem. Fuzz Jim, speaking of which you've been very quiet.
See well, I've been respectful andfuzz whenever you get around to it.
I know you're busy, so Idon't I respect that, but I
will thank you. By we haven'ttalked about the same I see a lot
of people listening, and I knowwe're always short on time because's point an

(01:25:30):
hour. But if you have aquestion, I know Jeff's good about answering
them. You want fucking your inbox, you'd message Tanner and even Greg would
be good to ask the question,or me or anybody around here. We
all love answering questions. You don'thave to wait till the Monday night.
Chum, that's from any time bea direct message. Well said Jim Pixie.

(01:25:50):
I'm going to give you a secondto talk about your space on Wednesday.
It's a little bit more laid backthan this one, I would say
it is. It's every Wednesday attwelve pm Mountain Standard time, which we
call Pixie Time. But I wantto highlight somebody who is starting up women's
spaces in podcasting for those you ladieswho want something even more laid back.

(01:26:15):
Poppy, who is down there inthe listenership. She has opened up her
own spaces, and I think thereshould be more spaces for podcasters. Thanks
Jeff lovely, excellent use of yourtime speaking of somebody that won't use excellent
use of their time, Tanner,go ahead listen. I I'm the host

(01:26:39):
of Good Morning Podcasters and I wasreally lucky enough to have Dan Hughley from
Focus Right send me a model,a working model of their new Vocaster audio
interface device. It allows you toplug your phone in so you can take
phone calls or plug a professional microphoneinto, for example, your next Twitter

(01:27:02):
space. It's pretty cool and Iinterview Dan on tomorrow's episode. So if
you want to tune in and listento that. He gives us like a
twenty minute rundown of the product.It is really cool. He did not
sponsor the episode. There are noaffiliate links, but if you do hear
the episode and decide you want topurchase one of these, email me after

(01:27:23):
you make the purchase, because he'spromised to give special focus right swag bags
to anybody who buys the product throughthe link that I've made for myself to
send people over there. There's nothere's nothing in it for me, there's
something in it for you. Sohope you'll listen, and I hope it'll
help Tanner. I'm surprised you actuallyare able to interview people, giving them

(01:27:44):
time to talk since you enjoy doingit so much. Thanks Jeff, I
appreciate that. Hey, before wego to Dave, I just want to
point out that Tanner, Jeff,Fuzz and I and crew are all very
cordial, kind of the scenes.We're just giving it to Tanner pretty thick
today, So don't think it's allenough. God, Yeah, these guys

(01:28:05):
are always giving it to me thick. Thanks for that, Greg, that
that that one followed me around theinternet. Forever. It's important to mention
that because I have had people,several people ask, hey, do you
hate that Tanner guy? And yougo only see no, Look, listen
everybody. We are We're all whitedudes of a certain age, and the

(01:28:25):
way we show that we love eachother is that we talk shit. That's
what we do. It's Monday night. We got to have the heal on
the rest one Tanner, despite despitethe ship that I give you, I
I you are the only show thatI listened to every single day, and
I also Dave. I also listensometimes in the shower. So it's kind

(01:28:48):
of feeling gross and a little weirdnow, but uh, here we are
for two dudes washing their nether regionstalking to listening to Tanner. I think
some weird. I think you're givingboth of them much credit. I don't
know if they watched not daily,that's all. I watched Kens over and

(01:29:08):
over and over. That's me.I have a very selective shower. We're
all one big, happy family.Do you want to mention Michelle thank you
for joining us. It was nicemeeting you and you had some great input
on this particular episode or evening,So thank you, Michelle, ain't never
come back. Yeah, all right, let's end it. Final thoughts with

(01:29:31):
the Hall of Famer David Jackson.I wish I had something like really cool
to like just drop the mic,but it was as always, it's always
fun to hang out with you guys. And if you want to take a
break, take a break. Ifyou don't, don't, it's it's really
I don't know. I don't thinkthe world's going to end if you take

(01:29:54):
a break. So it's your show. Do what you want. I think
that's really that would be my finalthought. Here's what you do as you
go. That's it. I'm gonnatake a break on whatever date and then
see what it feels like, becausethat way you have time to change your
mind before you actually take your break. So it's my final Dave, talk
about your live talk about your livespace. My life space is ask the

(01:30:15):
podcast Coach every Saturday morning at tenthirty Eastern, where much like this,
you can come in and ask questionsand very very similar to this, people
in the chat room all bust oneach other and it's it's a lot of
fun. And because you got questions, we will try to answer them in
some sort of you know, organizedfashion, so ask thepodcast coach dot com.

(01:30:39):
There you go. If you wantto see a bunch of dudes bust
on each other, you can go. Check you out, Tanner, come
on, don't point them out.He also ignores my questions in your live
show. I don't no good ones. Jeff, seriously, thanks for joining

(01:31:00):
us, and thanks everybody. Hopefullyyou come back next week for more Podcasting
Power Hour Mondays at nine pm EasternThank you for listening to the Podcasting Power
Hour. Everyone is free to participateon Twitter spaces every Monday at nine pm
Eastern time. To join, justfollow Jeff at podcast underscore Father or Greg

(01:31:26):
at Indie Droppin'. If you foundthis podcast helpful, go into your podcast
app and write a quick review.Other podcasters will see it and know this
show is worth listening to. Also, I'll put a few links in the
show notes for ways you can supportthe show. I think by now you
know we love our coffee. Havea great week. The ending was the

(01:31:48):
best part, Tanner, don't sayit. Thank you he's gone already.
Oh oh man, that was alot of fun. It was a good
hour. Greg, I enjoyed.I enjoyed your insights on Tanner's show about
the whole you know, Apple andGoogle and all that fun filled all the

(01:32:11):
additional stats. Oh yeah, yeah, it was nice to get a little
uh like we talked about that todayfrom Fatima. So it was nice to
get some validation from a super expert. So all right, gentlemen and ladies,
I'll see you all right, Dave, Jim, what were you saying?

(01:32:31):
Your your mic sounds like it's underwateror you're calling us from the bathroom
or something. What's happening? Whatwas she mentioned? The secondary site she
was she hadasters It's called co hostco host podcasting dot com. And it
looks like it looks like it lookslike hosting that has that focuses on audience

(01:32:57):
analytics and trending and and things likethat, just based on what I've seen.
But I'm gonna look at a littlecloser yep today report back to Jim.
Yeah, I will. Thanks forthat. Jim, please please wait
patiently by your inbox. Yeah,I was gonna say that way. You

(01:33:18):
know your research is valuable somebody.Well, thanks everybody. I'm gonna go
ahead and jump off here. I'vegot to get to the airport at four
a m. To go to Texasfor work. Oh you're gonna catch on
fire. I I am. I'mdebating if I should even go to sleep

(01:33:40):
or not at this point. Sowe'll see what city you're going to,
going to Austin or it's a cityright outside of long View? Oh okay,
Oh yeah, no, I wasjust gonna I'm just gonna tell you
some fun places to go to lunchif you were going somewhere fun, but
you're not, so nope, justwork, damn work all right, See

(01:34:05):
everybody later, See you next Monday. Thank you for checking out this episode
of Anie Podcaster. I really doappreciate it. If you're interested in learning
more about this podcast, you cango to podcastfather dot com. If you're
interested in all the different kind ofwork that I'm doing, you can go
to Jeff Townsend dot media contact formon there various other different podcasts and projects

(01:34:26):
that I'm involved in that I thinkyou will enjoy. But again, thank
you for supporting me, and makesure you support Adie Dropping Network like we
cover to the beginning, get yourpodcast featured on there. Until I see
you next time, take care ofyourself and keep being you and keep being
great. Jeff Townsend media saves yougood night, and the question is do

(01:34:57):
I stay here? Will you bebye? Are you going to come back?
Will you be back? Are youcoming back?