We Asked Podcast Listeners Why They Stopped Listening (And They Didn’t Hold Back)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jeremy (00:02):
I was

Justin (00:02):
just at Podcast Movement Evolutions. A podcast listener
came up to me. We had a greatconversation. And then he said,
can I give you some feedback onthe show? And I said,
absolutely.
And he said, one thing thatkinda turns me off is

Jeremy (00:15):
I wish the episodes were shorter.

Justin (00:16):
It feels like work.

Jeremy (00:18):
The clips at the beginning feel manipulative and
unnecessarily slick.

Justin (00:21):
I listen to podcasts to get away from work. This is a
work topic for me.

Jeremy (00:26):
The thing feels more like a science experiment than
true connection.

Justin (00:29):
I choose the most interesting topics in my feed.
Yeah. Sometimes I choose yourpodcast. Sometimes I choose
other podcasts.

Jeremy (00:35):
I want it to be shorter and more actionable and more
concise.

Justin (00:38):
The other danger here is that you listen to one
complainer, and then there's asilent majority who actually
loves that thing. And then youremove it and then they're like,
what happened? So Jeremy, I'vegot a question for you. When I
decided to team up with you, oneof the thoughts in my head was
Jeremy has this big email listspecifically focused on

(01:01):
podcasting. I think you've got,like, 9,000 subscribers or
something like that, and you've,like, regularly emailed people
about our episodes.
But when I look at ourpodcasting stats, we're only
getting, like, 350 downloads perepisode.

Jeremy (01:16):
It's funny you mentioned this because, I actually had the
same idea when I signed up. I Idon't know how many people are
on Transistor's email list, but,I imagine it's more than 9,000
actually. But, you know, this issomething that I've actually
been curious about myself, andthis show is about podcast
marketing and podcast growth. Mynewsletter is about podcast
marketing and podcast growth. SoI kind of assumed, okay.
We've got 9,000 people here whowant this topic. They have

(01:36):
already kind of indicated thatthey like my take on it by
staying subscribed. So, youknow, I was kinda thinking it
would be pretty easy movingeverybody or and it hasn't
really worked out that way sofar. So I got curious the other
week, and I ran a bit of anexperiment to try and get to the
bottom of this mystery

Justin (01:53):
Okay.

Jeremy (01:54):
To see why haven't you listened to podcast yet. And I
had a few hypotheses, a fewideas about why that might be.
And we actually were able to getabout a 100 people responded to
my little ad hoc survey and gotsome interesting data that I
think is going to shine a lighton, you know, this this
phenomenon exists for everyonein in a lot of cases where maybe

(02:14):
you built up an audience onsocial media or your newsletter
or on YouTube, and you're tryingto get people to back the
podcast and you're like, why areyou not doing the thing? So
we're gonna dig into that datatoday and try and get to the
bottom of this kind offrustration that I know a lot of
us as creators have. Now beforewe get into it, I am just
curious about you.
Are there creators who you arepersonally putting through this

(02:37):
agony by engaging with theircontent somewhere but not
listening to their podcast ormaybe vice versa.

Justin (02:43):
Carmen, give me a break. It's like every creator has a
newsletter and a YouTube channeland a podcast and a Twitter and
a Instagram, and I can'tsubscribe to everybody's
everything. Yeah. I mean,there's definitely there's some
people it's like, I like theirpodcast and I listen to their
podcast, but I'm sure they havea newsletter, and I'm not on it.

(03:04):
There's people I've tried aswell where I really dig their
newsletter, and they've got apodcast, and I'm like, okay.
I'm gonna, like, try this out,but it's just not the same.
Like, for whatever reason, itdoesn't fit into my life in the
same way. And so as a consumer,I kinda have to make a choice.

Jeremy (03:21):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm the same way, and I find myself there
have been seasons in my lifewhere I will listen to a show
for years at a time, and thensometimes it just drops off
entirely. And I'm still a fan.At heart, I know I I think of it
as still one of my favoriteshows, and it's almost like I'll
have this reality check momentwhere I'm like, wait.
I haven't actually listened in 3years, and yet I still think of

(03:42):
this as one of my favoriteshows. And, 20,000 Hertz is one
of these shows for me. I thinkof, 99% Invisible. That's a show
I still listen to a couple timesa year, but in my mind, it's
like I'm like, this is one ofthe best podcasts ever. And yet
it's there in my feed everyweek.
I get the new notifications forit and I don't listen even
though I'm interested in thetopic and it's kind of just
fallen out of this bubble oflike, I have maybe 2 shows that

(04:05):
I listen to every single week.And it's like, these are my must
listen shows. And a lot of timesI'll discover a show and I'll go
back and binge through the wholeback catalog. Then I get to the
end and there's nothing new andthat slot gets lost. So now
maybe I do listen to that everyweek, but now something new
slots in there or sometimes likethe, the most recent one for me
was the show I will teach you tobe rich by Ramit Sethi.
And I've binged through all, Idon't know, a 150 episodes or

(04:28):
something like that about 3months ago. And within a month
or 2, I listened to all theepisodes because I was like in
the mindset. We're like, okay.I'm like focused on personal
finances and, my partner Kellyand I, we, got engaged and so
we're gonna be married. And theshow is all about, like, couples
finances.
So I'm like, okay. I'm, like,doing the the research and,
like, looking for all thepotential pitfalls and so I
wanted to just soak in that. Andthen I got caught up, and I

(04:50):
haven't listened to a singleepisode since.

Justin (04:52):
See, one of the questions in our outline is what
are the creators doing tofacilitate more connection?

Jeremy (04:58):
Mhmm.

Justin (04:59):
But there's this other side of the equation, which is
what is the job to be done ofthe listener? Yeah. And as I was
listening to you, I was I wasthinking, like, you know, when
Jeremy is listening to thispersonal finance podcast, and
I'm not sure if people heardthat, but you just got engaged.
Yep. We all need to celebratethat.
Congrats. Confetti everywhere.So happy for you and Kelly. But

(05:21):
there's a job to be done there.It's like, I'm about to take
this giant step, one of thebiggest financial steps you can
take too.
So you had this job to be done,which pulled you into the Ramit
Sethi ecosystem. And the job tobe done here was I need to
figure this out because this bigthing's happening.

Jeremy (05:40):
Yep.

Justin (05:41):
And it was triggered by an event in your life.

Jeremy (05:44):
Mhmm.

Justin (05:45):
And I think this is how a lot of people listen to
podcast. I think when you viewit through that lens, this job
to be done lens, andunderstanding that listeners
aren't just showing up toappease you and give you more
downloads so that you can behappy. Listeners have jobs that
they need done in their lives,and they are looking for ways to

(06:08):
get those jobs done. And thatmight mean they're gonna be with
you for a set amount of time.And in the case of this show,
you know, we know that peoplewho are listening to the show,
and it's reflected in the datawe're gonna go through, they are
trying to achieve something.

Jeremy (06:23):
Yep.

Justin (06:24):
And they've got x number of hours per week to invest in
research and learning, and theycould give that to us. They
could give that to a blog. Theycould give that to your
newsletter. They could give thatto a course. There's all sorts
of ways they can invest thattime.
And once they're done that job,they may move on and be like,

(06:46):
you know what? I only needed 3episodes of that podcast. I'm
good. Now I'm moving on to thenext thing.

Jeremy (06:51):
Yeah. And I think that that correlates with one of my
personal experiences as aconsumer where I think of
somebody like our mutual friend,Jay Clouse, where I was a binge
listener of his show
and I listened through everysingle episode of that
show for the first 30 or 40 orsomething like that. And now I
am a occasional selectivelistener where the topic really

(07:12):
needs to grab me. But what wasactually the moment of
transition was when I actuallysigned up to Jay's paid
community. And now that job isbeing done in a higher
resolution by actually gettingdirect access to Jay. And so I
don't really need the podcastanymore.
And I think that one of theinteresting issues with
educational podcasts, and Ithink Jay's actually a good
example of this, is his premiseof the show is to help creators

(07:35):
become professional creatorsessentially. And so he covers a
variety of topics. He'll talkabout LinkedIn and podcasting
and YouTube and all of theseother things. We're running live
events, all these things thatmight be relevant to different
creators. And when you get to acertain level of advancement,
any audience reaches this levelwhere they kind of know what
path they're on and theyactually wanna tune out all the

(07:57):
noise.
And so I think that this is kindof one of the pitfalls of being
successful is when you help youraudience achieve the goal, it's
likely that they are actuallynot going to engage with your
show as much anymore, especiallyif you're doing a breadth of
content. And I think that thereare interesting ways around this
to some extent. I think you canif you think about the job to be
done of the different assets inyour content ecosystem, that

(08:18):
sometimes the podcast can reallycomplement other areas. And so
one of the things that, one ofmy new site or subscribers in
this experiment we're gonna talkabout mentioned was that they're
actually a member of my paidcommunity and work with me as a
client, but the podcast offers adifferent thing than they get
from the 1 to 1 and especiallythe roasts. And so I think that
you can design certain types ofshows depending on what your

(08:38):
business is, depending on yourgoals are, that it can still be
relevant longer term.
Whereas I think if you're justtrying to, like, teach somebody
the things so they can besuccessful, oftentimes, like,
that has a very limited shelflife, and we almost need to
expect us as creators.

Justin (08:51):
Yeah. And maybe just to to kinda wrap that up, there's
also a question of what job isthis podcast doing for you as a
creator. Yep. And so if it's inservice of getting people to a
certain point so that they thenneed the next step, which might
be your course or yourmembership or becoming a
customer or becoming a client.That could be that, oh, the

(09:14):
podcast is just stage 1, andthen people graduate from the
podcast and go to the nextthing.
And as long as that graduationis happening, the podcast is
doing its job. It might meanthat your downloads per episode
doesn't grow over time. But aslong as you're getting new
listeners who come through theprogram and then graduate to

(09:35):
something else that you'reoffering, then the podcast is
doing its job. You don't need a100,000 listeners per episode.

Jeremy (09:42):
Yeah. The and the other thing that's interesting, I
think, with that, like, what'sthe job of the podcast for you?
Like, I think about this with mynewsletter where this was
totally unintentional but hasbeen this great happy accident
where I treat that newsletter asmy workshop for new ideas. And
so before anything ever getstaught in a course, a very
structured format, it comes outas a newsletter idea. And so one

(10:04):
of the great things is thatwhenever we do our, like, weekly
office hours calls, my favoritething is when one of my clients
or or members of the communitywill say, hey.
You wrote about this thing inthe newsletter. Can we talk
about that in more depth? AndI'm like, oh, yeah. Because I've
been thinking about that and Ijust published it. And now
there's this opportunity to,like, okay.
I put this out there. Now Iactually get to have a
conversation about it and goeven deeper. And so the

(10:24):
newsletter really serves thecommunity. It makes the
community better as well asserving the the broader
audience. And I think thatpodcast can do that as well.
And I know I've worked with a acouple of clients in the past
who were kind of very nichecoaches. And one client in
particular, her podcast, thewhole basic premise was to
answer questions from her paidmembership. And it was open to
the public because they wererelevant to her audience. But

(10:46):
really, she was like, okay. Iknow more people than just this
one client in my community havethis question.
So I'm just gonna address it onthe podcast, and I'm gonna make
it public. And so that was thisway where the podcast could keep
serving the community as well asboth attracting people to it in
the

Justin (11:00):
first place. Yeah. Absolutely. I think podcasts can
do all sorts of jobs forcreators. And so thinking about
both sides, I think, isimportant.
But I think what you've donewith your audience in actually
running this survey is sobrilliant, and more creators,
more brands, more companiesshould be doing this, where if

(11:20):
you have a big newsletter list,send your newsletter, survey and
say, hey, How come you arelistening or aren't listening to
this podcast we have going?Yeah. So, yeah, do you wanna
talk about that? What did youdiscover in there?

Jeremy (11:34):
Yeah. So I'll give the the setup, first. And so,
essentially, what inspired thiswas if for anybody who's done a
course or product launch orsomething like that, a why
didn't you buy survey. And soafter your launch wraps up, you
send out an email to everybodywho didn't buy and you say, hey,
why didn't you buy? And youasked, you know, know, it might
be multiple choice.
It might be open ended. But youmight say, like, was the the

(11:54):
price was too expensive or thetiming wasn't right or there
might be other reasons thatpeople didn't buy. And a lot of
times what happens is that yousurface all these objections and
you realize, oh, I didn'tcommunicate this really core
thing that people didn'tconsider this because I didn't
include something in mymessaging. And so I was kind of
thinking every so often it wouldbe worthwhile to do this to your

(12:15):
email newsletter and set it upthe same way. And so essentially
what I did, I send out adedicated email and I said, you
signed up for this newsletterbecause you want this.
I also have a podcast that doesa version of this. So
essentially click the link whichone best describes you. And the
first link was I've listened tonearly every episode of the
podcast. The second one is I'veclicked play on 1 episode but
haven't listened to mostepisodes. And the third one was

(12:36):
I've never clicked play on asingle episode.
And after they clicked one ofthose links, they got redirected
to a different kind ofsupplemental survey that each
had a follow-up 2 or 3 questionsjust to get some more kind of
long form data based on whetherthey were regular listeners,
casual or samplers, I kind ofdefine them or, non listeners.
And so we got a 100 people whoclicked through the link and, we

(12:57):
got a bunch of reallyinteresting data back from
people. A lot of it was what Isuspected or had some hypotheses
around, but there was also somereally interesting kind of
anecdotal long form answers thatthat came out of it. And, I
wanna highlight a few of thosethings. But first, I'll just
kinda quickly run through thenumbers here from a high level
perspective.

Justin (13:17):
Okay.

Jeremy (13:18):
So we had 94 people respond in total. 30 of those
people, so 32%, were regularlisteners to to the show. So
they listen to most episodes. 42people, so that was 45%, had
click play on 1 episode buthadn't listened to the majority.
And then, 22 people had neverlistened to an episode at all.

(13:39):
And that was, 23%. And so thisis a little bit of an
interesting dataset because byvirtue of them actually
responding, they're already moreengaged subscribers or audience
members than typical. And sothis is not representative of my
total email newsletter. Like,obviously, the vast majority of
people have not listened. And II kinda did some really, really,

(14:02):
really rough math to try andunderstand like, okay, what
would I guess?
If I was to look at my totalaudience here, I kind of
extrapolated some of this outbased on what I know. And
basically what we can see fromsome of our data here is that we
probably have around 200 peopleare probably regular listeners,
I would say. I think some of thepeople who fall into the sampler

(14:23):
category, it's probably around25100 people. And then non
listeners on my email list areprobably around 58100. And so
that would be almost 70% ofpeople have never listened to an
episode.
30% of people have probablysampled an episode and 2.4% of
people are regular listeners. Sothat's the kind of breakdown
here based on this, like,really, really impossible to get

(14:44):
100% accurate math, from thesurvey.

Justin (14:47):
One thought I just had while you were talking through
those numbers is that it showsyou actually that a podcast
listener is generally at the endof a funnel.

Jeremy (15:00):
Mhmm. And

Justin (15:01):
so at the top of your funnel is your entire blog and
social media presence andLinkedIn Yep. Posts and all
that. And then that filters downto your mailing list.

Jeremy (15:12):
Mhmm.

Justin (15:12):
And then your mailing list filters down to podcast
listeners. Yep. And, generally,what's true is the bigger the
top of that funnel, the morepeople you're getting in at the
top of that funnel, the morepeople you'll get at the bottom.
You're only gonna convert xpercentage to, in our case, a
podcast listener. Yep.

(15:32):
And in our case, there's aceiling to the total addressable
market. Yeah. So the totalnumber of people who are
interested in what we're talkingabout is limited. Yeah. It's
been estimated that even thoughthere's, like, 5,000,000 or 4a
half 1000000 podcasts, onlyabout a 150,000 to 200,000 of

(15:57):
those are active shows.
That's across every type ofshow. Yeah. That's actually a
very small market. It's, like,maybe 200,000 people. Yeah.
Well, if that's true, how manyof those people across all
shows, across all types ofcreators, across all stage of

(16:18):
life are interested in podcastmarketing just in general.

Jeremy (16:24):
Mhmm.

Justin (16:24):
And then we are have been focused on a specific type
of podcast marketing. Yep. Wedon't focus that much on, for
example, fictional shows Yep.Or, limited run series or
documentary shows. And so thetotal addressable market's even
smaller.
And then it's like, how many ofthat group wanna hear from us
specifically? And it's even asmaller number. So it's gonna

(16:45):
change depending on what yourmarket is. If your market is
first time homebuyers, thatmight be massive. Right?
There might be many more people.If it's people who have ever
watched an episode of Seinfeld,well, that's millions, maybe
even in the 100 of millions ofpeople.

Jeremy (17:03):
Yeah. And I think the other thing that that makes me
think of when we're thinkingabout, okay, we've got this
limited supply of people. Thesad reality, which is true for
every podcast, is that, oh, man.Let's just say that 25100 people
have listened to an episode, butonly 200 of them actually stuck
around. That to me says like,oh, k.

(17:24):
We can do more. We got theimpressions. It wasn't exposure
isn't the sole problem here.Like, we've got this group of
people that we have convinced toclick play on an episode, and
the vast majority of thosedidn't come back or only listen
to 1 or 2 episodes. And so Ithink that this is where, you
know, if your show is not if ithas a low retention rate, you're
gonna have to work so hard andget so much exposure.

(17:45):
It's gonna be just this tinytiny trickle down at the bottom
of people who actually stickaround that this is why actually
focusing on the quality of theproduct and the show is so
important because it's moreefficient the exposure that you
do get in the long run.

Justin (17:58):
Absolutely. I I I think that's the other side of the
coin is now okay. We had 25100people try this us out. What
could we have done to actuallyretain those as regular
listeners? And what can we stilldo to convince them to, give the
show another shot?

Jeremy (18:16):
And I think that, actually, we're gonna go through
these 3 different categories,the regular listeners, the
samplers, and the non listeners,in more depth here. But I think
that there are some clues thatthey have actually told us
potentially what we could do orwhy they are not coming back.
So, we're gonna get to those, ina second here but let's start
off with the the regularlisteners. And so these are the
people who listen to most if notall episodes. And, so this was

(18:39):
30 people who responded to thesurvey and they listened to to
most of the episodes.
And there was a bunch ofinteresting kind of responses
that they had. And so one of thethings that I asked was once
they click that link, the firstquestion was like, okay. Out of
curiosity, like, what actuallyattracted you to the show in the
first place? And one of thethings that really came up again
and again, and we've seen thisin our Apple Podcasts reviews as

(19:02):
well, is the data drivenapproach which

Justin (19:05):
Mhmm.

Jeremy (19:05):
Was a natural premise and concept for us because this
was kind of a show that wasconceived on the back of the
actual podcast marketing trendsreport. And so, of course, it
was always going to be kind oftied to data, but I was kind of
surprised at how resonant that'sbeen for people and how many
people in their reviews havesaid like, unlike other shows
which just feel too wishy washyor too based on feel, this feels

(19:28):
like real and concrete andsolid. And that really stood out
to me because that came up in anumber of responses of what
attracted people in the firstplace.

Justin (19:35):
I think what's also interesting is as we get to the
data of, like, samplers and nonlisteners, sometimes what
attracts people and keeps themlistening is what other people
don't like. Yeah. And so as acreator, this is, like,
sometimes maddening. Yeah. Whichis, like, what do I do with this
information?
And in some ways, you want tolisten more to the people who

(19:57):
are engaged than the people whohaven't taken any action. And so
of all the data you collected,this is actually the one I'm
thinking about the most. Mhmm.What could we amplify? What
could we augment?
What could we tighten up thatthese people appreciate? Because
we kinda wanna find more peoplelike this. Yeah. People willing

(20:18):
to put in the effort to listento an episode and stay committed
week after week.

Jeremy (20:23):
Yeah. I think the other thing that really stood out to
me from there's so the thequestions I asked were, you
know, what attracted you to theshow in the first place? What
keeps you coming back? And thenwhat do you get from this show
that you don't get elsewhere?And in this one, that data
driven approach showed up inanswers to all of those
questions so that was kind ofinteresting.
But one of the other reallycommon responses here, first of
all, is about me because thiswas my newsletter. And so people

(20:46):
said, oh, I've, like, subscribedto your newsletter and I really
like your thoughts on things. Sowhen you had the podcast, it was
a natural thing. But then whatkeeps people coming back is now
people may have not been awareof you but the co host dynamic
came up a lot of times. I'mlike, I really like Jeremy and
Justin's vibe.
I really like the co hostdynamic. And so that was another
interesting kind of thread whereI know we've talked about this
before too where people willcheck out a show for the topic a

(21:07):
lot of times, but they keepcoming back because they like
the host dynamic. And I knowthat this is something we we
talk about relationships a lothere, but, you know, both of us
had the advantage with this showof having been in podcasting for
a while, having built up areputation and an audience that
was then able to, move them overinto the show when it launched.
So that was a an easier sell tothose people.

Justin (21:27):
Yeah. I think this is the relationship factor is
underrated. The truth is is thatoften, someone becoming a
podcast listener is like theculmination of a relationship
that's been building with thehost over time. And so that
could mean your activity in anindustry, your profile in a

(21:49):
certain culture, your blogging,your newsletter, your tweets,
your LinkedIn posts, people kindof begin to date you somewhere
else.

Jeremy (21:58):
Mhmm.

Justin (21:59):
And then, eventually, the relationship gets serious
enough that they're willing tocommit to having you in their
earbuds every week. And sothat's notable. You know, a lot
of people mentioned specificallythey love your newsletter, so it
made sense that they might likeyour podcast. A lot of people
like your approach, so it makessense that they would like your

(22:22):
podcast. And sometimes I thinkfolks have not yet earned the
right to have a regularlistener.

Jeremy (22:33):
Mhmm.

Justin (22:34):
It just takes time. Like, let's say, you have an
industry podcast, but you'rebrand new to that industry, you
need to earn the right to beheard. Yep. And that might take
some time. And And you can getthere different ways, you know,
maybe you can get there throughinterview podcast and and
building rapport through otherpeople's profile in an industry.

(22:55):
But I think if folks do thissurvey themselves, they will see
some of this reflected.

Jeremy (23:02):
Yeah. And that that's really interesting. In the
question of what keeps youcoming back, my favorite
response here was, you keepbeing interesting. And I thought
like, at first, I was like,that's a really funny, like,
terse response. But I saw moreresponses that were similar to
this.
Somebody else said, I keeplearning something new. And that
was this kind of idea that cameup a number of times in this

(23:22):
question, what keeps you comingback? And so there's this idea
of earning the right to have anongoing listener but there's
also the idea that you can'tcoast on that. That every
episode out, you need to re earnthat trust to get them to come
back to the next episode. And soto me, these responses here are
saying like, they're not justgonna keep coming back
indefinitely.
It's the fact that they keeplistening to the show and more

(23:43):
often than not, when they do,they walk away with something
interesting to them. And whenthat stops to happen, they're
just gonna stop listening whichis what any of us would do for
any product subscription that wesubscribe to. Netflix stops
coming out with interestingshows, that's being cut from our
bill. And the same thing is withpre podcast, newsletters, blog
posts, social media follows, allof this.

Justin (24:02):
Yeah. It's easy to almost, like, rest and get
complacent. Like Yep. You know,these people are gonna listen to
me no matter what I put out.And, I mean, podcasts can
sometimes feel like this.
Like, I gotta put out anotherepisode this week. What can I
wrangle together to, you know,just get out on the feed? Mhmm.
And it's, you know, we areserving the listener

Jeremy (24:24):
Yep.

Justin (24:24):
With something. And, again, going back to that job to
be done, what's the job to bedone here?

Jeremy (24:30):
To your point about, you know, that feeling that we all
have of, like, I you know, theguest canceled or whatever. Do I
just cobble something togetherthis week? I am increasingly
skeptical of that form ofconsistency. I think Mhmm.
Consistency is important ofrelease schedule but I think the
consistency and outcome orlistener experience has to be
high as well.

(24:51):
And I think that when you startputting out something that
doesn't meet the bar, I thinkthat that has a subtle but very
real negative impact onsomebody's perception of the
show. And it's, you know, we'reall gonna have an off episode
here and there, But I think whenthat starts to happen too often,
it doesn't really take long forpeople to start dropping off.
And I think that this issomething that I think more

(25:12):
people probably, if you're in afunk that week or a guest
cancels, I might even put out a1 minute episode just as a a
note saying, hey guys, thishappened. I'm gonna be skipping
an episode this week, but don'tworry, I'll be back with a brand
new one next week. I thinkthat's actually a preferable
listener experience where you'renot getting this like, where's
the episode?
Where's the episode? Why isn'tit in my feed? You've actually
communicated with them. You cantake that episode down later but

(25:33):
you've also said, I didn't haveanything that was worth
publishing this week and so I'mgonna save it until I have
something that is. And I thinkthat that preserves your
reputation as somebody who has ahigh bar for quality and what
you share with listeners, whichis more important than just
being there every single week.

Justin (25:48):
I've had a hard time with this too, especially with
guest driven shows of caring somuch about the listener's time
and attention that if the guestis not good, having the guts to
say, I'm sorry. I'm not gonnarelease this episode. It's just
doesn't meet our bar for, youknow, what our listeners expect,

(26:09):
and that's hard to do. But Yep.I think it's worth doing.
And we've done this with thisshow. We've recorded an entire
episode, and then you and I arekinda sitting there going, I
just don't think that hit thebar. And then we re we've
rerecorded it, which is painful,but worth doing if you really
value the listener's time andattention.

Jeremy (26:31):
Alright. So let's move on to the, samplers here next
and dig into some of theresponses from them. And so
again, this was, 42 out of the94 respondents. So 45% of
people, this was the biggestgroup. So from the people who
responded the survey, thelargest number of people had
listened to at least oneepisode, but were not regular
listeners.
And I actually asked as afollow-up question, you know,

(26:51):
how many episodes had youactually listened to? What was
your experience with the show?And so out of these 42 people,
43% and so those 18 people hadlistened to a few episodes. So
they'd maybe listened to 2 or 3or 4 episodes, but not the, you
know, 15 that we'd published atthat time. 31%.
So that was 13 people hadfinished 1 episode, but not come
back for a second. And then 11people that was 26% had started

(27:14):
one episode, but not evenfinished it. So 26% started, but
not finished. 31% had finished 1episode. 43% had finished,
multiple episodes.
So that was was interesting tome that the the largest group
actually was had listened to afew episodes. So these were kind
of this, they straddle the linebetween being regular listeners,
but they weren't quite. And thenthere were people who listened

(27:36):
to 1 episode or not even 1episode and it just didn't grab
them. And so there's a spectrumwithin a spectrum here within
just this segment of listeners,which was the first kind of
interesting thing here.

Justin (27:46):
Yeah. I'm I'm just looking at these responses. Some
of this is even a little bitspicy, but I kinda like love it.
I Yeah. I I think you need tostart to love critical feedback.
Yep. And there's something inhere that really kind of
inspires me and gives me ideason how, you know, we can make

(28:07):
this show better or do adifferent show that targets some
of these pain points. So Yeah.Yeah. I wanna I

Jeremy (28:12):
wanna get to what stood out to you in a second, but
there's one other kind of,quantitative question that I
asked. And so for this group ofpeople who had listened to Click
Play on at least 1 episode butnot listened regularly, I asked,
you know, what's keeping youfrom listening more? And what
was just the overwhelmingmajority here was 55% of people
said lack of time. And then thenext closest was 10% of people

(28:34):
said it just wasn't specificallyrelevant to me. And then 7% of
people said it just didn't grabme for whatever.
It is relevant to me, but, youknow, something the delivery,
the host, whatever, it didn'tgrab me. So time Yeah. Was the
big one. And we're gonna seethat again in the non listeners,
and that with the people who arenot regular listeners, time was
the biggest factor, which wasinteresting. And there's

(28:54):
actually some interestinganecdotal, spins on that in
elaborations.
But you mentioned some spicykinda takes in this samplers
category. What kinda stood outto you here as you're reading
through this?

Justin (29:03):
What keeps you from listening more? It feels like
work sometimes. Yep. That andthen here's another one. I
listen to podcasts to get awayfrom work.
This is a work topic for me.Yep. So there's something about

(29:24):
that in particular that I justfind so interesting. Yep.
Because remember, podcasts dodifferent jobs for people in
their lives.
And so if someone's normalpodcast listening time is when
they get home and they've, like,thrown off all their work
clothes and they finally get towalk the dog, do they wanna get

(29:45):
back into work mode? Yep. Like,do they want us to stress them
out with all the things theycould be doing about their
podcast? It's like, no. I don'twant something that feels like
work in that mode.
And so that's interesting. Butit also makes me think like, I
wonder how we could shape theshow to address that. Is there

(30:06):
creative ways we could reach thepeople to make the show feel
less like work or to startanother show that doesn't feel
as much like work. Right? Yeah.
And, again, this show has a lotof data in it. And a lot of the
people that listen to the showlike the data. But maybe by

(30:28):
including all this data and thenthe discussion around it, it
just makes the show longer,

Jeremy (30:32):
Mhmm.

Justin (30:32):
Makes it feel more like work. Maybe these audiences are
mutually exclusive, and sothat's interesting too, just to
look at this stuff and go,

Jeremy (30:43):
Yeah. I think that one was really interesting, and I
know that I've experienced thiswith different shows and
different content where when thetopic at hand is part of your
job and I think this can bedone, but I think it's hard to
do well to have a casual lowstakes conversation that doesn't
feel worky but is about work.That to me too, it feels like,
do people want that? If they'rejust gonna get something casual,

(31:05):
do they wanna just tune out ofwork entirely? But then Mhmm.
I think we also have all had theexperience where it is nice to
go out with people in yourindustry for drinks or like a
happy hour in your industry withpeople who get the context that
you live in, but you're notreally talking deep about that.
So I think there is value there,but you kinda have to pick a
lane. And where we are goingmore for the actionable, like

(31:26):
explaining the data, like thisis we want this to be really
useful to people in that way.And so that's the job to be
done, which actually ironicallyin the non listener group so
they don't even know what theshow is about necessarily. But
also here in the sampler, a lotof people started to say I want
it to be shorter and moreactionable and more concise.
And so Yeah. In our mind, we'rekinda giving an actionable show,
but it's not actionable enoughfor some people, which is

(31:47):
fascinating.

Justin (31:48):
Yeah. And what I like about this feedback is it
inspires new ideas. So it doesmake me think, Like, we could do
another feed where we get, youknow, Chris, our editor, to
just, like, pull out, like, theactionable tips, and it's just
like, here's the feed with justthe 10, 15 minutes of tips, if
that's all you want. That wouldbe an interesting experiment and

(32:10):
wouldn't cost us that much morebecause we've already, you know,
edited the content once. Wecould just grab it and try
another experiment there.
It also makes me think aboutthere are some universal kind of
human truths that I think aremore compelling more of the
time. So telling a story orinvolving your listeners on a

(32:35):
journey is a much differentformat than doing kind of a data
driven show or an advice drivenshow or a tips driven show.
We've talked about doing acompletely different show where
we try to make a show popular.So, like Yeah. Pick a podcast
that we think has potential, youknow, and it's like, hey,

(32:57):
everybody.
This is Justin Jeremy, and weare trying to get Alison's
podcast to 10,000 downloads permonth. Join us every week as we
give her actionable feedback.Well, that's a journey, and that
might be more interesting andfeel less like work. Because in
that case, it's like, oh, wow.Like, I wonder what happens
next.
Did, like, you know, they weretrying this crazy experiment.

(33:18):
How did it go? So I like theinspirational stuff that comes
out of this kind of feedback.And, again, you're not gonna be
able to do every idea, but it'sit's like a nice time to
consider other opportunitieseither for the show you're doing
right now or a spin off thatmight be even more compelling to
a bigger audience.

Jeremy (33:39):
Yeah. I think the other thing that stood out to me here
is that at this stage, one oneof the questions that I asked
was, is there anything we coulddo with the show that would get
you to listen more? And so we'reessentially asking for advice.
And I knew going in that this isa untrustworthy response. And so
you get this a lot of times withpricing and things like that.

(34:00):
People go down rabbit holeswhere they're like, you know,
what would you pay for this? Andthis is actually a terrible
question to ask people to sussout, pricing. And there's all
kinds of actual more rigorouspricing methodologies out there.
But we started getting peoplesaying like, I wish the episodes
were shorter. But Mhmm.
Then there was this fascinatingresponse here where somebody
said, I loved your longer orshorter episode experiment. And
so this was the experiment weran previously where for a

(34:22):
couple episodes, we did like anhour long version and a 40
minute version or 35 minuteversion and basically said,
listen to whichever one you wantand kinda tried to measure the
results. And this person said,so I I love that experiment. I
picked the longer episode tolisten to because I didn't wanna
miss any useful content. But sofar, I've only listened to it
for about 30% because mybusiness podcast listening time
is limited.
Not sure whether that's a votein favor of the longer or

(34:44):
shorter episodes. Maybe a votein favor of shorter but just as
meaty. And so there's thistension here where people say
they want shorter but the showmight just not be enough of a
priority for them to listen atany length. And so I've seen
this a lot with a lot of showswhere people see that their,
episode consumption is too lowfor their taste or they're
getting feedback that theypeople wish it was shorter, you

(35:05):
make the change and it doesn'tchange anything. And it's
because for those people,they're trying to convince
themselves to listen.
Like, they act they do want tolisten, but it's just not enough
of a priority to actually getthemselves to do it. And so
they're kind of verbal feedbackto you. You can't really take
that face value, and you kindahave to do your own experiments
and then measure the results andsee what the people actually
take action on.

Justin (35:26):
I still think some of those insights are interesting.
Like this person said, I choosethe most interesting topics in
my feed when I set off on my dogwalk commute. Yeah. Sometimes I
choose your podcast. Sometimes Ichoose other podcasts.
That's just true. That is anobservable truth about how I

(35:46):
consume podcast episodes, howyou consume podcast episodes.
Regular podcast listeners, youwake up in the morning. It's
like, I'll I'm walking down tothe office. What grabs my
attention?
Mhmm. And I've got 30, 40episodes I could choose from.

Jeremy (36:03):
Yep.

Justin (36:03):
So if that's true, then there are some things you could
do. Right? Like, make sure thatyou're releasing the most
compelling topic, episode title,episode cover art, episode
description, first 30 secondsthat you can so that you

(36:25):
increase the chances that whensomeone's skimming through
episodes to listen to, theymight choose yours. I also just
think I like having that inmind, like, as a background.
Sometimes as creators, it'slike, man, how come no one's
listening to my show?
Like, come on. I'm doing allthis work. And it's like, yeah.

(36:45):
But let's actually look at howpeople choose episodes to listen
to. And if you're not regularlyfitting into that slot, then
you're gonna have a hit rate.
That's like maybe 15% of thetime they choose you. Yep. If
you wanna increase the hit rate,you're gonna have to do some
things. Or maybe your topic,maybe your concept, that's just

(37:09):
what you're gonna get.

Jeremy (37:10):
Yeah. The other thing on the picking the most interesting
episode in the feed, we actuallyhad a number of people who
mentioned this. And so the finalquestion here for this group was
anything else you'd like toshare about the show that might
help us improve? And a lot ofpeople didn't actually offer
constructive advice. Theyactually offered praise.
And so there was a number ofpeople here who said, I
appreciate how clear the episodetitles are that so it helps me
choose whether this is relevantto me. And this is something

(37:32):
that you know we talk a lotabout in the roast of having
like not just a hook but justclarity in the title. What are
you gonna get out of If you havethis question in your mind and
this was actually something elsethat people mentioned a lot in
the previous category of regularlisteners. This idea of I keep
coming back because I'm glad tohear that Jeremy and Justin are
asking the same questions thatI'm asking myself and I didn't
know if other people werethinking about these things. And
so, I think that this withepisode titling and

(37:55):
descriptions, this came up a lotfor people too which is is
really affirming to me that I'mlike, okay.
I haven't been entirely missingthe mark with the titles here
and, you know, I spent a decentamount of time workshopping a
few different titles andoftentimes, I'll actually the
day we publish, I'm like, that'snot quite right. And then 2 days
later, I'm like, that's thetitle, and I'll go back and
change it because everybody elsewho comes through later, like,
they'll now benefit from that.And so Yeah. I think, like,

(38:18):
you're not you might not get itright the first time, but
improving the overall clarityand kinda legibility of your
feed so that somebody who's newcan quickly find something that
is relevant to them. That'sgonna increase both new listener
acquisition, but also this kindof sampler group help them get
more touch points with the showby finding something regular and
starting to build the habitaround that.

Justin (38:37):
I also wanna point out one thing talking about episode
titles. This person says, Ihaven't had the mental space for
more information. I'm feelingquite overloaded with business
and personal stuff.

Jeremy (38:49):
Mhmm.

Justin (38:50):
As soon as I read that, I instantly was like, that would
be an amazing episode title andconcept for show. Feeling
overloaded with business andpersonal stuff, listen to this.
And these surveys are so good atsurfacing those kind of topics.

Jeremy (39:06):
Yeah. There was a spin on that that came up a number of
times in this segment as well,where there was a lot of people
who had listened to one episode,and I think there were some
people in the non listenersegment as well where they
basically told us, like, this isin my queue, but I've got other
stuff. I'm feeling toooverloaded right now but I wanna
listen. It's on my queue. I'mgonna come back.
Mhmm.
And I think we have our existing audiences who are
interested in the topic andthere's this kind of slow

(39:29):
permeation of a show throughoutthat audience where people like
I mentioned before with my ownconsumption habits where it's
like, I'll go through a feed andthen now there's a slot 3 months
later. It's like, okay. Whathave I been waiting to listen to
to binge through that now isgonna fill that slot? And I
think that a lot of people whenyou give up too early, you don't
actually like, your podcastwould grow to saturate more of
your existing audience but it'sgonna take months or years to

(39:51):
like fully propagate andobviously there's always new
people coming in who are kindastarting afresh. And so I think
people are here telling us like,the show is interesting to me.
It's not the top priority rightnow but I do wanna listen. I
like what you're doing. I likethe newsletter and I wanna
listen to this and it's just thetiming's not right. And so that
exists for everyone as well witheverybody's audience. Like, you
have people who like your show.

(40:11):
They're they've already made thethe purchase so to speak in
their mind, and it's just likethey're waiting for the right
time, the right offer, the rightepisode to come along.

Justin (40:18):
Yeah. They're they're waiting for a big road trip, or
they're waiting for a airplaneride or something. Sometimes you
you just need to wait for theright time to come up for that
listener.

Jeremy (40:28):
Alright. The the last one that I wanted to mention
before we move on to the nonlistener segment is this one
that, said the clips at thebeginning feel manipulative and
unnecessarily slick. The thingfeels more like a science
experiment than true connection.And I thought this was such a
fascinating differing of tasteswhere I think we've got a lot of
feedback from listeners whoreally feel connected to us and
like the experiments. And as youmentioned before, you can't

(40:50):
satisfy every audience.
And this person, it feels tooover the top, too much, and
there's always gonna be that.And I think that you can go get
yourself into trouble by takingall advice as equal. And so you
kinda mentioned that beforeabout having some discernment
about who are you actuallylistening to.

Justin (41:05):
Yeah. I mean, because the other the other danger here
is that you listen to onecomplainer, and then there's a
silent majority who actuallyloves that thing. And then you
remove it, and then they'relike, what happened? Like, I
loved that section of your show.And you're like, well, one
person complained.
It's like, well, no. Just Yeah.Contextualize all of this stuff.

(41:25):
And, eventually, you're gonnahave to develop your own sense
of taste about what is good orwhat you feel is good, and then
stick to your guns. I'm sure IraGlass gets people, giving him
advice all the time on how tomake a show better.
But he has the confidence in histaste to go, okay, that's nice.
I I understand you want me toput more air horns in my intros,

(41:50):
but I'm not gonna do that.

Jeremy (41:52):
Alright. So let's move on to the last segment here
which was the non listeners.This was 22 people who were non
listeners and I asked them whyhadn't you listened to the show
yet? And here, again, the mostcommon response, 45% of this
group was lack of time. And sothis again kind of signifies
like, oh, I'm interested in theshow.
I'm interested in the topic. Ijust don't have time to do it,
which is a good a good sign tosome extent. The next highest

(42:15):
group was that they didn't knowit existed. And this to me is a
fascinating insight that 32% ofpeople who had not listened
didn't even know the showexisted. They're engaged enough
with the newsletter to take thissurvey, but they didn't know the
podcast existed.
And I suspect that everybody'saudience has a similar group of
people and you hear this. I'veheard this anecdotally from so

(42:35):
many people who you do a post onsocial media or you talk to an
audience member on a phone calland you mentioned the podcast
and they're like, oh, I didn'tknow you had a podcast. And
you're like, I post about itlike 6 times a week. Like, how
can you anybody not know? Andthat group always exists and I
think we as creators tend topull back from promoting
typically as much as we could.
Mhmm. And I feel like I'vepersonally gotten over that

(42:58):
hurdle for the most part,especially because the podcast
is not paid and I'm really proudof it. So I feel happy to
promote it. But reading some ofthese responses and seeing that
number of people who didn't knowit existed, it made me think, I
realized some areas where I'venot made this as clear as it
could be both that the podcastexists and also the links people
mentioned, some links to listeneven though I thought it was

(43:19):
obvious as a as the writer of mynewsletter and people were
saying like link to the audioplayers and I'm like I do link
to the audio players right abovethe YouTube video link and Yeah.
But I don't have the buttons oranything like that.
And so there's some ideas whereI was, like, like, I could be
doing more to make it easier forpeople from a kind of, like,
user interface perspective.

Justin (43:37):
And trying different things out, like, be maybe
trying a newsletter where it'sjust, like, super clear, like,
over the top, like, with pointyarrows saying, please click here
and add this to your podcastplayer. I I think it's worth
trying different approaches.And, also, you know, a lot of
newsletter software, if you'reusing that to promote your

(43:58):
podcast, you can do AB testswhere you send one version to 1
group, what another version toanother group, and see which one
gets the higher click throughrate.

Jeremy (44:07):
Yeah. So outside of the the lack of time, they didn't
know that the show existed.There were a couple other
reasons people hadn't listenedto the show yet in this non
listener group. 9% of peoplesaid it just didn't grab me. And
so that would be they haven'tlistened yet.
So it's not about the content.It's about the framing of the
show, which I think is anotherimportant. This applies to all
kinds of sales, but it's likethere are different forms of

(44:29):
value that most products orpodcasts might give someone. And
sometimes you need to try outsome of these different angles
to your audience and say to somepeople, like, oh, it's this
really data driven focus or webreak down the numbers and all
this kind of stuff and in adifferent newsletter or a
different social post where youtalk about another benefit that
people can get from the show.And for us, we've got 2 show
types.
So maybe we advertise the roastmore and and you can kinda cycle

(44:50):
through these different ways oftalking about the show, so that
somebody who cares of generallyabout your topic, something's
gonna hit with them potentiallywhere they're like, oh, okay. I
didn't get that that's what theshow did. But now that I
understand that, I am interestedand I'm gonna try it out. And so
that's another reason why ittakes so long to market anything
is that there's not just one wayto market it. There's gonna be
probably hopefully one dominantway where like for, you know,

(45:13):
more than half of your audience,this is the thing that they're
getting this benefit.
It's doing this job for them.But there might be many other
reasons that somebody might getvalue out of the show. And the
more conversations you have withyour audience, the more you're
gonna kinda find that stuff outand you're gonna see that people
from your regular listeners willtell you things that you're
like, oh, I didn't reallyrealize that's what people got
out of this. So another thing tothink about when you're

(45:34):
marketing to that audience thatis interior topic but has not
yet listened to your show.

Justin (45:39):
Yeah. I and I like the idea of maybe just continuing to
experiment with positioning.Like, what are some hooks I
haven't tried yet that might getsome of these folks

Jeremy (45:51):
Yep.

Justin (45:51):
Into the show. You could even do an episode where the
whole framing is. This is a 15minute episode, so it's it's
totally approachable. The lengthis shorter. And this is an
episode specifically designed toget people into the show.
So if you haven't listened,listen to this one here. And

(46:12):
maybe even you could even trysome other things, like some
hooks to say, like, you know,everybody who listens to the
show, at the end, there's acontest or there's some payoff
at the end that is a bigger hookto getting to try it out for the
first time.

Jeremy (46:27):
Yeah. So looking at some of the anecdotal responses here,
a couple of interesting thingshere. We had, again, a couple of
people who said, you know, thisis on my list. I do wanna listen
but it just don't have the timeright now. This was the one of
the most telling, responseswhere it said, sheepishly, I do
have the time to listen becauseI could make the time.
Something just hasn't pushed meto try it out yet which would

(46:48):
probably trigger a habit. And soI love the self awareness of
this person who's like, yeah, Iknow probably once I listen the
first time, I would get a lotout of it. I like your other
content and I would probablylisten. And I think that this
comment almost more thananything highlights probably
where most of our audiences areat where there's like Yeah.
Something needs to break throughAnd once we can kinda open the

(47:08):
floodgates, they're gonna becomea listener.
Not everybody, but there's a lotof people there who, like,
they're just they can't eventell you why they haven't
listened yet, but there's justsomething that we just need to
keep hammering away at it, and,eventually, we're gonna break
through.

Justin (47:19):
And in some ways, to me, this is making me feel like we
need to double down on thesegment we have at the beginning
of the show. Because the segmentat the beginning of each episode
is kind of like the sales pitchfor that episode. Yep. And I
think if anything is going tokind of break through, it's

(47:42):
doubling down on that. Here'sthe promise of the show.
Here's the promise of the show.Here's what you're gonna get out
of this episode. Because it iskinda like chipping through a
wall and then you eventuallybreak through. And and that
doesn't always mean to stopdoing what you're doing.
Sometimes it means to doubledown on what you're doing, and
eventually, as you're chippingaway, you're gonna get break

(48:03):
through that wall and get morelisteners.

Jeremy (48:06):
Yeah. And this is something a couple people did
say this in each of thecategories around. They gave us
some advice saying, like, let meknow who this is relevant to and
what I'm gonna get out of thisat the start of the episode. And
I think that we've been a littlebit guilty maybe of going a
little bit too far in the openloop kind of hook creation.

Justin (48:23):
Yeah. And

Jeremy (48:23):
we've kind of neglected the here's why we've opened this
loop. So we've got someinteresting I think we've done a
good job experimenting with someof our hooks that I think feel
really interesting and pull youin, but there hasn't been that
promise of, like, what you'regonna get out of this. It opens
the question without reallyhinting at the answer to it in
some instances. Yeah. The otherthing that, came up a lot here,
and I think that this issomething with the non listeners

(48:44):
that I'm very pleased with someof the responses here.
So a lot of people said, youknow, I just don't have the
time. I prefer to read innewsletters where it's shorter
and actionable. And same withthe samplers where for me, the
responses around making itshorter and more actionable, to
me, I'm like, I'm fine thatthese people don't listen to
podcast because they already arenewsletter subscribers and
that's the job of thenewsletter. The newsletter is

(49:06):
designed to be a 2 minute read.And so that's meant to satisfy
these people.
I would love if they listened tothe podcast as well, but if they
have the time for this, I'mhappy to engage with them there.
And, you know, other people wantthe more nuance, the more
in-depth stuff. Maybe they don'tlike reading newsletters and
they can come to the podcast.And so I think this is actually
really affirming to me. It'slike, oh, I've actually checked
off both these bases where thereare these 2 different camps but

(49:28):
actually I'm already servingthem with the newsletter and
then with the podcast.
And so it's not about making thepodcast do the same job that the
newsletter is already doing.It's like, yeah. If you want
that, you can get that. Youactually already are getting
that there. And for people whowant more and a more nuanced,
more organic discussion, then,you know, the podcast is for
you.
So to maybe wrap this up here,we've got all this data here and

(49:49):
now it's kind of like, you know,when you do a research project
like this, it's great to getsome information from your
listeners or your potentiallisteners or your non listeners.
And then there's this like,okay, what do we do with this
now? We've got a bunch ofinformation. We've got some
people who listen to showregularly. Some people are
sampling.
Some people who are not. Whenyou look at this, what's your
kind of order of operations of,like, okay. Here's how I'm gonna

(50:09):
start putting this intopractice.

Justin (50:11):
Yeah. There's just a few little tweaks. Maybe changing
the intro, like you mentioned,maybe having better calls to
action in our newsletters. Yep.I think doubling down on some
things that where we haven'tquite broken through the the
glass ceiling yet, but postingclips, posting video, I think

(50:32):
with repetition, we wouldactually kind of break through
that ceiling and maybe get a lotmore listeners.
And maybe finally just realizingthat this is going to take some
time. You know? Yeah. Like, if Iwas gonna start a restaurant,
I'd be like, it's gonna take 5years for us to become known as
the best spaghetti restaurant intown. And you and I are in, you

(50:53):
know, the first 6 months ofthis.
Yeah.

Jeremy (50:56):
So part

Justin (50:57):
of me is like, this is just gonna take time. And if we
really wanted to grow this show,we would be looking on a 2, 3
year horizon instead of justsaying, well, we've done it for
6 months. Where's our listeners?

Jeremy (51:09):
Right. Yeah. I think the the other thing for me, we've
kind of talked a little bitabout this already is knowing
who to pay attention to,essentially. Yeah. And so which
feedback is worthwhile toacknowledge and which isn't.
And I think you look at some ofit like the the one it was
really interesting to me thatone about the clips at the start
being unnecessarily slick and itfeeling like more of an
experiment. And I'm fine withthat feedback because to me, one

(51:29):
of the jobs of the show is to bean experiment and that as Mhmm.
Somebody who teaches podcastmarketing, I need something to
practice on and that requiresexperimenting. And so this is
gonna be the thing. I think thatthere is even more that could be
done there.
And so you could look at thatperson's feedback and say, oh,
we gotta dial back the theslickness or the
experimentation. But to me, I'msaying like, actually, I think
we need to ramp up theexperimentation because I think

(51:50):
that's what a lot of listenersactually appreciate. And a
couple people did say, I reallyappreciated the experiment that
you did elsewhere. And we couldbuild out a whole additional
premise of, like, we runexperiments and share them on
the fly with the show. And soYeah.
There's kind of this, like,knowing who to listen to. And I
think part of that is knowingespecially, this was an
anonymous survey. So I don'tknow who any of these people are
who gave the feedback. I thinkif you can get in touch with

(52:13):
people and you can get a sensefor, oh, this is the person I
want more of. Their feedbackreally matters to me.
Whereas you talk to somebodyelse and you're like, this one's
just somebody who I don't wantan audience of a 1000 of these
people. So I actually should dothe opposite of what they say
almost. And Yeah. Then there'sthis quote by Neil Gaiman. When
people tell you something'swrong, they're almost always
right.

(52:33):
When they tell you exactly whatthey think is wrong and how to
fix it, they're almost alwayswrong. And so this is I think
one of the most important thingsto understand as a creator is
that Mhmm. When somebody says itdoesn't work for them, they're
probably right and they won't beable to explain it. They'll they
might try to explain, but youshould discard everything that
they say their advice what theyshould do but you should fully

(52:55):
acknowledge like if something'snot landing, there's probably
something wrong and then youneed to say, is this the person
that I care about it landingwith? And if so, then you're
like, okay.
Well now I gotta get my creativehat on and I gotta figure out if
if it's not landing for thisperson who I want it to be
landing for, what do I think isthe problem? What are my
hypotheses and what experimentsmight I run to to tweak that? So
I think that that's, you know,this this element of discernment

(53:18):
that I've talked about a numberof times here is like this one
thing to do the data collectionin the survey and then it's
another thing to parse it andtease it apart and try and
figure out what is actuallyrelevant to me, in alignment
both with my audience as well asthe show that I want to make.

Justin (53:31):
And to the point about who do you want to be attracting
normally, unless you've got areal, like, bad listenership
that's super toxic. But,normally, you wanna attract more
of the listeners who are alreadyfans. I was just at podcast
movement evolutions, and MichaelOsborne from, Famous and Gravy,
who we've mentioned a few times,came up to me. We had a great

(53:52):
conversation. And And then hesaid, can I give you some
feedback on the show?
And I said, absolutely. And hesaid, you respond too much that
it depends. So for him, there'sthis thing that kept coming up
where I you would ask mesomething. I'd be like, well, it
depends. He's like, we know itdepends.
Like, just get to the point. AndI take that kind of critical

(54:12):
feedback. Here's a super fan ofthe show. He shared the show.
He's reviewed the show.
I trust him as this is the kindof person we wanna attract more
of. Yep. And so when he says,you know, one thing that kinda
turns me off is you keep sayingit depends. That's awesome
feedback. Yep.
And you'll notice, Michael, Ididn't say it depends once in

(54:34):
this episode. So, I appreciatedthe feedback. But if it was,
like, somebody who's, like,always super negative and
they're like,

Sam Mullins (54:42):
you know, you should eliminate the vocal fry
from your voice, I'd be

Justin (54:46):
like, whatever. Like, I'm I'm not listening to you.
But somebody like Michael, I'm Iperk up. I'm like, oh, yeah. I I
wanna know what folks like youthink because I want more folks
like you.

Jeremy (54:57):
He sent me an email with the same advice and just kinda
recapping the conversation thatyou had, and it made me think of
a shortcoming that we neverreally defined who our audience
was from the start. We both kindof just assumed we have these
audiences of podcasters, andMichael is a very serious
podcaster. He's won awards forhis show, and that's not to say,

(55:17):
like, I only want people whohave achieved this amount, but
he is a savvy guy. And we Ithink the reason we have so many
it depends is because we haven'tactually defined what stage is
our ideal listener at. Are theyjust starting out at which they
do not have the context to knowthat it depends?
Or are they at Michael's levelwhere where they've been doing
this work. He worksprofessionally in podcasting.

(55:38):
He's done a show for many years.He knows, of course, it depends.
Like, you know, you and I,anybody tells us any marketing
advice and we're most likely toignore it because it's like,
yeah.
For somebody that's true but,like, there's so many. Like, it
does depend on so many things.But if you have in mind that
your audience is savvy andsmart, you know that you can cut
to the chase and not caveateverything that you're saying on
the show.

Justin (55:59):
Yeah. I like that idea. Like, maybe if we were gonna
start the show all over again,we would say, okay. What level
of savviness are we targetinghere? And an underrated approach
is targeting the people who aremore serious

Jeremy (56:14):
Yep.

Justin (56:15):
Because they are really willing to dig into a topic

Jeremy (56:18):
Mhmm.

Justin (56:18):
As opposed to folks that are just getting started. It's
like going from 0 to 1. There'shonestly not gonna be that many
survivors. The percentage ofpeople that are gonna make it
through and a lot of shows focuson 0 to 1. Yep.
So yeah. That's interesting.

Jeremy (56:34):
Yeah. And it's always the 0 to 1 is always there's
more content options. Not all ofthem are always good, but it's
the biggest audience so the mostpeople cater to them whereas the
people who are more advancedalmost never have anything
that's actually relevant tothem. And so it's gonna be a
smaller pool but I like what yousaid where they're more bought
into it and they're willing togo more in-depth with you. And
when they find something thatactually speaks to them, like,

(56:55):
they're going to be very quickto become super fans because
there's just not that much onoffer for them.

Justin (57:00):
Yeah.

Jeremy (57:01):
Alright. So that wraps up the the breakdown of this
experiment. I'm actually gonnapublish the full survey results.
They're all anonymized. And soif you wanna go through some of
the feedback that we got, Iwould highly encourage you to do
that and I'm gonna include thelink in the show notes to the
Google Sheet with all of theseresults.
And I think what you will findif you look through this, you
can probably assume that most ofthe reasons that applied for our

(57:23):
listeners either sampling or notlistening to our show or keeping
continuing to come back to ourshow will also apply to your
show. So it's worth lookingthrough some of these responses
and kind of saying like, okay,this is the kind of thing that
probably exists in any audience.What might my listeners be
saying if I were to do a surveythat, asked the same questions
here? And I'll also include avideo walkthrough of how I set

(57:44):
the survey up. So if you wannado something yourself, you can
do that and replicate that.
And, I would really love to hearanybody does this for themselves
and we can kinda compare noteson what you find from your
audience.

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