What Does Advanced Podcasting Mean?

Dave Jackson:
Ask the podcast coach for 05/24/2025. Let's get ready to podcast. There it is. It's that music that means it is Saturday morning. It's time for ask the podcast coach where you get your podcast questions answered live. I'm Dave Jackson from the schoolofpodcasting.com, and joining me right over there is the one and only Jim Collison from theaverageguy.tv. Jim, how's it going, buddy?

Jim Collison:
Greetings, Dave. Happy Saturday morning to you. Welcome back. We had a unexpected power outage on your end last week. I was ready to go. I had the generator up and running. Apparently, an extension cord from Omaha to Ohio.

Dave Jackson:
Not gonna work. It just doesn't work that way.

Jim Collison:
This doesn't work.

Dave Jackson:
Good day. I was really surprised. I went to bed with no power. Luckily, I had a ton of those, like, you know, charging bricks so I could keep my phone charged. But I was really surprised when I woke up and was like, oh, we still have no power. And, yeah, it wasn't a tornado. I guess it was severe thunderstorms, but it sure looked like a tornado because there were trees down. I woke up.

Dave Jackson:
There was, like, a branch, like, three feet from my tree. And what's weird is when you see a branch on the ground, you look up to see kinda, hey. What tree did that come from? And I have no idea because there were no broken I was like, oh, okay. So that was that was kind of fun. But, yeah, it's good to be back. But I I went to all the plan b's, like, I'll just, you know, gleam some Wi Fi off the library. And it was like, nope. Sorry.

Dave Jackson:
They don't have any power. I'll just go to McDonald's. I'll just go to the other McDonald's. And it was like, okay. Nobody had power. And I was like, alright. We're I guess we're not doing a show this week, but, you know, you make it through. And one of the ways you make it through, of course, is with a nice piping height hot cup of java there.

Dave Jackson:
And that coffee pour is brought to you by the one and only Mark over at podcastbranding.co. And the beautiful thing about Mark, besides his beautiful artwork that he makes for you, he's made over 500 pieces of artwork for people, is the fact that Mark is a podcaster himself. He's been doing graphics since he was a wee lad probably at this point. And he's gonna sit down with you one on one, and it's not just artwork. He can make a whole website for you. If you're doing a lead magnet, if you're gonna be presenting at a conference and you need a PowerPoint that needs a little jazz to it, Mark is the guy you wanna talk to. He's just amazing guy. And the beauty of it is instead of you coming up with the ideas, he'll go over, check out your show, let him do the marketing, then you just kind of give him an idea if he's headed in the right direction.

Dave Jackson:
And that's the beautiful thing, and that's why I've used him for a lot of my artwork. So when it comes time to make a good first impression because, you know, they see you before they hear you, there's only one place to go, and that is podcastbranding.co. And of

Jim Collison:
course, big thanks to our good friend over there, Dan Lefebvre, over there, based on a true story, basedonatruestorypodcast.com. This week, Not a Real Enemy. What he's looking at, he says, Go behind the true stories shown in Holocaust movies through the experiences of Robert Wolf's family. Since we'll be talking about the Holocaust, listener discretion is advised. So if you're into that, the, those kinds of stories, those kinds of movies, that is featured this week based on a True Story podcast. And based, it's, you can find it basedonatruestorypodcast.com. As always, Dan, thanks for your sponsorship. And I have upgraded the mug a little bit.

Jim Collison:
My granddaughter gave me this sticker that I put on the back of the you like that? Yeah, so that's

Dave Jackson:
It looks like she's like shooting out of the cup.

Jim Collison:
Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. She That last weekend, she was over last weekend, and she was handing out stickers over her face. And I was like, oh, I've got the perfect I've got the perfect spot for it. There you go. There you go.

Dave Jackson:
It's beautiful. And holy cow, starting off with a super chat. Oh, look. We got super chat anime anime now, which is great fun. From Chris Stone from castahead.net. Thank you so much for that. Always fun. And, yeah, it is nice to be back.

Dave Jackson:
A little rusty. I was I got up early this morning. I'd spent a lot of time last night making sure everything would work. And even this morning, I was I hit a button and nothing happened. And I was like, why? Why does that happen? But we if you have a question, of course, you can go to schoolofpodcasting.com/question. If you're listening to this later, go to schoolofpodcast did I say schoolofpodcasting? How about is it really see, I do need more coffee. Go to askthepodcastcoach.com/question, and you can jump into the video while we're live. And if you're listening to this later, go to askthepodcastcoach.com/voicemail, and you can jump right in.

Dave Jackson:
But I I saw this, and I wanted to share this one. It's interesting. It's for those people who do interviews. He's this is from Rich Pfeiffer. I'm pretty sure that's just Pfeiffer, maybe or Pfeiffer. I don't know. But, anyway, since I've interviewed about 12 artists for 12 episodes, my podcast so far. So I've a list of questions to use as conversation starters, and it works well.

Dave Jackson:
However, after the recording is done, I often have a conversation with them, and we often will come up things we should have talked about on the recording. Does anyone have any advice how to handle this? A few ideas I have. Leave the microphone recording. It's a better process for a pre interview. Wait. I I think this is like a, b, and c. One is leave the microphone recording. B, have a better process for a pre interview.

Dave Jackson:
C, better prep for the guest when we arrive at the studio before hitting record, and turn the mic back on when we think of something interesting. So I would say all of those. You said I sometimes feel like the excitement starts after I turn the mic off. And the thing is, you want to we always hear about people talking about making the guest feel relaxed, and that's one of the things that happens because the red light comes on, you're on the record, and now answer this question. That's why you don't wanna make it feel like an interrogation. So when you're like, alright. Thank you so much, And you hit the you or in my case, I forgot to hit the record button. Oh, nope.

Dave Jackson:
I'm using an old SD card that won't let me record. Great fun. And, but you hit stop, and now the red light's not in their face even though there isn't really a red light, and they relax. So somebody said in Facebook or wherever this was, Reddit, and they said, oh, just let it roll, and then later just edit it. And I was like, that's kind of not cool because if you say, alright. Thank you so much. You are it is assumed that you are off the record and that you are no longer recording. And if they then spill the beans and or I guess the kids are now saying if they spill the tea I don't know.

Dave Jackson:
We've moved from there's more protein in beans, kids, but if you want to spill the tea, that's fine. You've spilled the tea, and now you're like, hey. Like, I remember once I was on a show and was talking a little smack, and I'm like, hey, when are we gonna start the show? And they're like, oh, we're rolling. And I'm like, oh, well, guess what? You don't have my permission to use the first six minutes of this conversation. I go, that's not cool, kids. So but I would just say pre interview because it sounds like he's got his checklist of questions. And I don't know. He says, I have a list of questions to use as a conversation starter.

Dave Jackson:
My guess is, are those the same questions for every guest? Because if so, I mean, there are icebreakers and such. But I was just thinking, shouldn't you have questions for each guest? Because I don't know. It just the the to me, sounds like he's having fun, probably doing a good job. But for me, it it just sounds like maybe you didn't do quite enough homework. And the problem is your interview is now your homework, and then you found all these cool things to talk about. But maybe and, again, I'm completely guessing here. Maybe now he's like, okay. Well, I gotta stop here because it's twenty seven minutes.

Dave Jackson:
I don't know. Thoughts, Jim?

Jim Collison:
You know, I like the idea of scripting out, you know, the first couple questions. That doesn't mean you need to stick to them or you need to read them. But I do like having some questions that are available to you. You get in, you know, inevitably, especially if you're doing it live, like we do here, inevitably, something will go wrong and will throw you off a little bit. And if you are, you know, even a veteran podcaster is kind of thinking, Yeah, I've done this a thousand times I'll be good. I just had a situation this week where I got thrown off in the beginning of a live call, and I didn't have it as tightly scripted in my head as I wanted it to be. And I kind of tripped over my words, and it wasn't great. Now nobody noticed.

Jim Collison:
But I did. And so it, I think it's a good idea to have the first, you know, five or ten minutes fairly scripted out. Doesn't mean it needs to be word for word. It can be bullet points or an outline or something along those lines. Just something to go to in case you get rattled. I'm not listen, I'm not worried about you. You're like, Oh, I've done this a lot. I get it.

Jim Collison:
I know how to do it. Well, I'm not worried about those situations. It's when you're in those situations and something happens, you know, the buttons don't work, or the animations don't happen, or the music doesn't play right away or whatever, right? Just to kind of keep you on track. You can always go around it or avoid it or not use it. But I think the over preparation for it saves your bacon more often than it doesn't. Some folks see that overprep it's like, Oh, it's wasted time. No, it actually prepares you for the interview. Even if you don't use it, it gets remember back in the days when Bill Walsh for the San Francisco 49ers started scripting the first fifteen plays of every football game.

Jim Collison:
And that was revolutionary when he started doing it. And it, and I remember people thinking, Oh, but doesn't that limit you? I mean, can't what if you want to adjust, like, after the third play? And he'd be like, No, like, the first fifteen is about right. And then we'll, then we'll start, like, in each one of those plays had a reason. They were trying to check the defense they were trying to do some things with it, right? I think we could get smart with our podcast too, and have maybe the first fifteen minutes kind of figured out. Again, depends how long your pod if you're doing a seven minute live show every day, then, okay, you're right. Do it accordingly. But, yeah, I don't think it's a bad idea.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. Jody says, I asked the same question of every guest at the beginning of my episodes, but then chat about their expertise. Yeah. I remember Rob Walsh used to start off every interview for podcast four one one with what was your first computer, and it just led to a story and, you know, that whole nine yards. But, yeah, it's I always have I always come up with questions for the guest, and I have them on a sheet here to my left. And then I have some sort of pad, and I have some sort of I don't have any now, but usually I have pens that don't click. Because if I'm holding a pen that clicks, I'm gonna sit here and do this and drive the audience nuts.

Jim Collison:
Yeah. Oh, I've done that. I have done that before.

Dave Jackson:
And then I'm listening for if they say something and I wanna ask a follow-up question, I just write down a word that will trigger the follow-up question. Because if I have to sit there and remember the follow-up question, don't forget to ask him about the coffee. Don't forget to ask him about the coffee. And then they say something else. And I'm like, oh, I gotta ask him about the generator. Oh, generator in the coffee. Meanwhile, I'm trying to listen. And so if I can just write down a word, then when they're done listening or when they're done talking, I can go to my follow-up question.

Dave Jackson:
But, yeah, a lot of and a lot of times, it's funny. I'll get done with an interview, and I've asked two of my, you know, six questions. But those are kinda like you said, the football. That's my game plan. That's where I think I'm gonna go. But if the guest leads me in some direction that I didn't plan on but still works, I just was on speak out. I forgot to put his face on the screen. That's not heard of.

Dave Jackson:
But Chris from castahead.net does the show Dealcasters with Jim. With Jim. Yeah. Why am I saying that? Because I called him Jeff like three times in the show. I was like, oh, that's that doesn't look good. Ouch. And the reason for that is his last name begins with f. And for some reason in my brain, I saw the f in his last name and said, oh, that's easy.

Dave Jackson:
Remember? Because his name is Jeff, and Jeff with an f. And, yeah, his name is Jim. That's not embarrassing at all. But, you know, I was on Dealcasters, and they have this monster guitar riff in their intro. And I'm sitting there. I'm in the green room waiting to to come on because it's a live show, and I couldn't help it. I was like because Chris said, hey. You've we're gonna play the intro, and then we'll introduce you.

Dave Jackson:
And I'm like, wait. I got thirty seconds. And I'm like, I just need to know what key is this in. So I grabbed my guitar and picked it up real quick. I was like, okay. It's in c. I have to play. There's just it's a guitar player thing.

Dave Jackson:
And so Chris saw that, and then we started talking about theme songs or whatever. We got into how, podcasters, a little bit like a musician in the fact that, in theory, there's a lot of planning involved. Like, I don't learn the chord c and go brring and then immediately go out to the street and go, hey. Who wants to pay me to hear me play the key of c? Brring. You know? No. It doesn't work that way. And so we're talking about woodshedding. And so there are times it's a really long way to go.

Dave Jackson:
Sometimes your guest goes in a direction you didn't plan, and Chris and I and Jim, not Jeff. Jim were having fun just riffing there at the beginning of the show. So that's the fun of an interview. You either you know? Now Chris could easily said, well, that's really cool. Great. Now getting back to podcasting, you know, he could have done one of those to hey. Can we get back to why you're actually here? But we are having fun, and I eventually pulled it into podcasting, and it was fun filled and exciting. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes.

Dave Jackson:
So when we're done here, And let me make sure yeah. Speaking of Chris, he says everyone, you know, every everyone has a podcast interview plan until they get punched in the face. Yes. The famous Mike Tyson quote, slightly altered for podcasting. That's always fun. But, yeah, interviews are a lot of people think, oh, it's just as easy. Am I saying the wrong name? It's Jim. Jeff.

Dave Jackson:
Because uncle Marv is saying it's Jeff. No. I called him Jeff. His name is you know what? I'm gonna have to go over to DealCast. I'm pretty sure it's Jim because I was very embarrassed. Yeah. And then Chris says, seeing Dave Jackson figure out our guitar riff changed the trajectory of the entire interview, and it made it way better, and it was fun. It was we were having a blast on that show, and I'm pretty sure that's gonna come through.

Dave Jackson:
And, you know, that's kind of, speaking of that, having fun on your show because we're just gonna transition to that. If you I consider him a friend, Kevin Kevin Schmidlin, because it's fun just to say Schmidlin, is rebranding his show. It used to be called Grow the Show, which I thought was a great brand. It is a great brand, and he is rebranding it. And what's funny is he told me what the new brand was, and I can't remember exactly. But what I'm looking for behind the scenes is if I go to that episode and I pull up my thing. Yeah. He has an episode called why I'm changing the name, and here's why.

Dave Jackson:
Because we were just talking about podcasting being fun and hanging out with Chris and Jim. Of course, not Jeff. We're hanging out with Jim. And this is what Kevin said.

Kevin Chemidlin:
If you're gonna create content, if you're gonna build an audience, you gotta be interested in it. Let's not let's

Dave Jackson:
not listen to Kevin. Let's not listen to Kevin at one point seven, shall we? Holy cow. That's talk about needing some coffee. Let's try that again.

Kevin Chemidlin:
If you're gonna create content, if you're gonna build an audience, you gotta be interested in it. You have to keep it interesting for yourself. I'm gonna be frank. I'm a little burned out on talking about podcast intros. I'm a little burned out answering beginner questions on podcasting. And if you think back to realization number one, audience churn, it's kind of exhausting to every six months have new people who all have the same new questions and are making the same new mistakes.

Dave Jackson:
So why is he rebranding? He's not having fun anymore. Like, he's just like, I've you know, time to make the donuts kind of thing. And on the show with Chris, we started off just in fact, the whole thing was just kinda having a blast. I know those guys. I actually met them in person. Good guys. And yeah. So it was when I heard that because I was like, why? It's like when back in the day when the Cliff Ravenscraft left being the podcast answer man because everybody knew him as the podcast answer man, and I think he changed to the attitude man or something.

Dave Jackson:
But we're all like, why would you spend eight years building a brand and go, yeah. I don't wanna be that anymore because everybody still knows him as the podcast answer man. But I heard he came and everybody said, Cliff, you're crazy for leaving that brand. And after so many years, he came back. The problem was, like, everybody's like, oh, he's still around? Like, that boat sailed. And I'm if I was Kevin, I get it. I hate doing a show that you don't want to do. But, man, that was a strong brand.

Dave Jackson:
He still has it's still going to be called the Grow the Show Accelerator and a couple other things. And I don't think he has the new name in his show notes. No. But I just heard that. I was like, well, that's why. It's got to be fun. And so when you're starting a podcast, you should have a topic that you wanna talk about for years for free. Because when you first start out, you know, you may not have an audience, and it's gonna take a while to grow one, and you may grow the wrong one and things like that.

Dave Jackson:
There's no there are no guarantees. As much as people say, I will guarantee you money from day one, or I will guarantee you downloads. Well, guess what? Two two is downloads. You know, they're not lying when they say two, but if it's not fun, I'm all the shows that I have ever quit, the reason I quit is because it wasn't fun anymore. Thank you, daily sports history podcast. Kevin's new show name is chief audience officer. I'm not sure that rings audience officer. Are people searching for audience officer? See, I just was like, I love that guy, man.

Dave Jackson:
He's a good guy. I've hung out with him in conferences, and he says, I think he shifted from beginner podcasting to more business minded podcast, which he's always done. He's always like, hey. If you need a podcast for your business, creating grooming dogs, Chrissy says, I burned out my podcast for a while. I got my mojo back by making some changes, and, of course, she joined the school of podcasting, and that can help. Here's what's interesting. Just a little behind the scenes, I mean, I start off my show every everyone because my business coach told me, right, I'm your award winning hall of fame podcaster. I'm going I'm looking through my feedback now because I've been doing a survey, and, apparently, that's not enough street cred.

Dave Jackson:
And I'm like, really? Like, that's because they're like, well, can you show us somebody who's been successful? And I'm like, besides, you know, Glenn the Geek or, I don't know, Darren Dake who's making 6 figures. Like, not everybody. I can't make everybody 6 figures, but I was like, okay. So that's the thing. That's here's a fun question. We'll throw this out. Because this came up in the School of Podcasting, and it came up in my well, actually, it came up in the School of Podcasting because I was talking about my survey. Jim, if somebody said, I want you to teach a class on advanced podcasting, what would those topics be?

Jim Collison:
That's good. That's a good question. Advanced podcasting. Yeah. I don't I don't have to think about this a little bit. Let's dialogue. Let's workshop it, Dave. Yeah.

Dave Jackson:
Because I know part of it is because part of it I'm confused. I get it. It's not a bad question. But if there's a guy, and he's got a shovel, and he's been digging for a while, and he's in a hole that goes down to about his knee, and he looks at me and says, hey. How do I dig a hole? I need advanced hole digging. Well, part of me would go, what? Is your shovel dull? Oh, no. Watch. Here.

Dave Jackson:
Here's another there you go. Look at all that dirt that came out of it. Like, okay. You got blisters on your hands? No? Okay. So if you keep digging, it'll get deeper. Right? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, the answer is the good news is you're making progress. You're in a hole now.

Dave Jackson:
It's about two feet deep. Keep digging. Now there are other things. Right? There are you could go get a you know, if you've got the budget, go buy, one of them claw looking things that digs holes. You know, there are things like backhoe. There's all sorts of stuff. Yeah.

Jim Collison:
Or something like that. But it's our tools this is gonna cause some arguments in the chat room. Are using more tools advanced? Like, is that a mark of advancement? Is, Oh, now I, you know, I'm using the latest, you know, the latest DAW, or I've got the most expensive equipment. It, if I'm using ATR 2,100, and I move to an SM7B, does that mean I went from beginning podcasting to advanced, right? Or is tech, is Mike technique a more advanced topic? In other words, what you do? Can you get better with your technique and with your content and with the layout? I actually, you know, just having tools doesn't make you better, Right? You need to know how to use those tools. So I think as I'm workshopping this with you, I think the advanced level of it is taking advantage and getting more mileage, more ROI out of whatever you have. Doesn't matter. Like you can do I mean, I'm on a 2,100 here. It sounds just fine.

Jim Collison:
In fact, I think it's the best microphone for my voice. Or it's what most people are used to and what I'm used to, so I like it, right? It's one of those kinds of things. But I think maybe those advanced topics come in creating content and having good skill in making the content. Now, listen, there, there can be people who like the chaos of a show that's not necessarily 100% scripted, where it has problems. Sounds a lot like our show sometimes here, right? And you guys keep coming back on Saturday mornings, or you're listening to it in the podcast feed or you're watching it on YouTube. So I'd be the idea of advanced, right, that also may be an idea, Dave, where you don't get to say that. Somebody needs to say that about you type deal, right? You know, they're at an advanced level. I don't know.

Jim Collison:
It's a good, it's a good, it's, it's certainly a place to boast. Right? It's one of those areas I'm an advanced podcaster. I know some, and I don't do the beginning things anymore. So I don't know. It's a good, it's a good question.

Dave Jackson:
I don't know if

Jim Collison:
there's subscribed levels. Right? Go ahead.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. The chat room's going they got lots of ideas here. Where did it go? Craig says, advanced hole digging is telling other people where to dig the hole, which I you know, that's why I always say, like, hey. Instead of spending money on postcards to send in the mail or advertising in an app that where people listen to podcasts, I would do the second one because, you know, postcards. Yeah. You might get somebody that knows how to use a QR code, but we don't even know if those people listen to podcasts where if you're advertising Spotify or Overcast or Buzzsprout ads or whatever, at least those people we know listen to podcasts. Here's one. Audio says audio.

Dave Jackson:
Jody says maybe making your audio make sure it's top notch and your video background is professional. You know how to monetize, whatever that means, how to get the best guest, how to grow your show. That could be advanced. They kinda depends on your show and how helpful you think it will be. I love this one. Chris says using more tools is not advanced. They think so, but it's like, in the end, people aren't going, hey. Have you listened to this guy's show? It's like butter for your ears.

Dave Jackson:
No. It's the content. John Jamango. Advanced podcasting topics for me would be introducing and teaching new technologies that are available like Cast Magic, CatJet, GPT, Riverside, or something on the Edge. So that would be new. If it's advanced see, advanced is the tricky part. Jody says also a lot of advanced podcasters have a team. It's not just them, so maybe how to pick a team.

Dave Jackson:
Craig says again, in my opinion, an advanced podcasting skill is speaking effectively with very few filler words and hesitations. Also, intonation to engage the audience. Yeah. Here's the thing. Wait a minute. Do we have to do one of these just for a second? And now it's time for a power rant. If I have someone else in a monotone voice read someone's LinkedIn bio to me, I'm gonna jump out the window. I cannot that I mean, it's nothing will make me hit stop, swipe, delete faster than on today's show.

Dave Jackson:
We're talking with doctor Jim Jim Fuze from Duh. He's he's he's a graduate of Cordell, a top in his class. His dog's name is Tippy. He's been married for four like, I don't care. Just ugh. So please quit reading me. Find the part of the bio that is relevant. That's my new favorite word, relevant.

Dave Jackson:
Relevant to the audience. So if doctor Jim has a podcast with a hundred thousand listeners, that's the part that we wanna key on. Even my last episode, I interviewed Tracy Johnson who's been in radio forever, and I was like I went to read his bio and I'm like, I'm not reading that. That's way too long. Guy's been in radio. I'm like, you're a big shot smarty pants. I told him. I said, hey.

Dave Jackson:
In my world, that's a high praise. And I go, my audience knows what that means. It means too long. Don't wanna read it. You're here because you wrote a book about interviewing people because that's what applied. So please quit doing that.

Jim Collison:
But I think, Dave, we need to be careful, though, to separate skill and style. Right? Because some of the things you're talking about are style, and some of them are skill. I let's Mitch Hedberg, I think is a great example as a comedian who had terrible technique, right? If you think about how to do stand up comedy, you would he went against all the conventions. And he, it's not because he necessarily thought that would be great he just wanted to do stand up. He was always high. And he would get up there and just say words, right? And he was very, I mean, very successful, creating almost a new genre of comedy. And so if someone had said, Oh, no, you've got to do, if you're gonna do comedy, you got to sound like Jerry Seinfeld. You know, well, do you ever wonder why we went down so, you know, the Jerry Seinfeld thing, right?

Dave Jackson:
What's wrong with these people?

Jim Collison:
If that was the only style that was out there, it would, everything would be boring. So I think we need to, as we think about podcasting, we need to separate technique or skill and then style. Because there's just some styles you don't prefer. You don't, I'm, I'm, by the way, I'm with you on the LinkedIn profile or the LinkedIn bio reading. I tell my guests all the time, We're not gonna read your bio, because people leave in droves when bios start getting read, right? But that's a style, right? That's not necessarily a skill. And so when we think about this and then the other thing I would say on advanced versus beginning, what the question I would ask is, Why does it matter? Like, if we're trying to, if we're trying to put ourselves ahead of someone else for some reason, that, then advanced versus beginning doesn't matter. If we're trying to help people, right, if we're trying to say, Hey, here's some things to think about in the way you do your podcast that may help you get better, that may be an advanced technique. But you being advanced in that is helping them, not you necessarily promoting yourself in a way that is, you know, is maybe not valuable to the community.

Jim Collison:
So I want to separate I just, I want to separate those two out. I think sometimes because you never know on a style type thing, you never know when maybe a lack of skill is gonna create a new style. You may not have the right voice to do, you know, to do the most perfect podcast. Another example from our, from when we were kids is Paul Harvey, right?

Kevin Chemidlin:
Paul

Jim Collison:
Harvey? Yeah, he did a whole different style. His style now we think of it as being normal now. But in the day, that was a new for radio, that was kind of a new, you know, Hello, Americans! You know, and Paul's style was different. And so I don't, I don't want to get into a podcast echo chamber, where we have advanced pod I'm using quote, air quotes now where we have advanced podcasters telling people their style has to be a certain way. Oh, no, you got to do it this way. Although we just did that. We told people, Don't read LinkedIn bios. That's a, that's an example of telling someone how to do a style, right, type deal.

Jim Collison:
So I want to be careful because there's a lot of creativity in style, that if it, if we start making recommendations on that, and all of a sudden, we all sound the same, we're all doing the same thing. Right? You know, let's be sensitive to that. Because there's some new styles out there we haven't seen yet. Let's not crush those styles by thinking we're advanced podcasters, I guess is what I'm saying. And

Dave Jackson:
when you're reading a bio, though, from LinkedIn, you're breaking rule number one, which of course is

Jim Collison:
Don't be boring.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. Don't be boring. And most people would agree

Jim Collison:
You and I agree. You and I agree.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. It's and a lot of people in the chat room are now we're into pet peeves. But here's some other things. Let's see. Oh, we have a question. We'll go back to Ralph about the email list. Dan says Dan Lefebvre from based on a true story podcast dot com. When I worked in adult education, advanced means something different to everyone.

Dave Jackson:
So we based it on a level of prereqs, which is needed. Chris says advanced storytelling. That's a good one. Read the book story worthy if you haven't already. That is advanced storytelling, and that's that's interesting because I've talked about that in the past on the school of podcasting, but it's that's one where you get imposter syndrome. You're like, well, I can just tell you to go read the book. Like, why who am I to talk about storytelling? But there are some things I've learned a lot of things I've learned from that book.

Jim Collison:
There's two levels on this too of learning. There's acquiring the knowledge. You can read and take classes and, you know, get more information. Then there's applying it, right, actually using it. This is where the skill part comes back in, where, Yeah, I can no good mic technique. I can study the best people who do it. I can talk about it and read and go to classes and even get some coaching. But then at the end of the day, I've got, I've actually have to apply it.

Jim Collison:
Right? I've got to be able to do it and not just the faith. Right?

Dave Jackson:
Bingo! This is the thing. I kind of want to go when people like, I'm ready for a level two, because I do this. I I had a meeting with my coach this week, and they said, okay. And I'm like, yeah. What am I supposed to be working on? And am I supposed to be doing this? Am I supposed to be doing this? And then he goes, well, did you do, like, step three yet? He goes, you're asking about step six and seven. Did you do step three? And I'm like, oh, yeah. Yeah. That's, you know, sometimes I think we're in fact, Ralph says this here.

Dave Jackson:
Advanced to me means for those who are solid in foundation but need to take a little further and get deeper, better speaking techniques, better content ideas. Is that's something I can tell you what to do, but I can't go, here they are, because it's, you know, it's your audience. So, like, I'll give you an example of why I know my next episode, if I don't completely just drop the ball, should get some feedback. Because when I tell and here I'll tell you, my next episode is gonna be how to create or what is the characteristics of a good hook and how I have sucked at these for nineteen years. And when I tell people that I'm working on that, like, I talked about it yesterday at the lunch with Dave and a few people like, oh, cool. Like, when you see your audience go, oh, when is that coming out? That's when you know you're doing something right. And that for me comes about from a listening to my audience and I had enough people say how do you keep them like listening how do you keep them listening and I'm like well first things first don't read their LinkedIn bio that's not to keep them listening but okay but what's the opposite of that And what's weird is a good hook has probably more a deeper level of selling that you're not comfortable with. Like, there's a little bit of like, hey, did you know, like, I'm going to start off with a big stat.

Dave Jackson:
Did you know that blah, blah, blah can do such and such? But wait, there's did you know that so and so? And today I'm going to show you why that's a lie. And you're like, wait, what? You just gave me this great big thing. And then you're saying that's not true? Because that's amazing. So first, you know, big amazing fact, blah blah blah blah blah. And the audience is like, what? And then they're like, when this is why the thing and so there's always a left turn somewhere in there or, you know, are you doing this wrong? You know, are you swallowing saliva in small amounts of small amounts or a long period of time? Let me explain to you why that's gonna kill you. You know, whatever. So when I saw it, I'm like, oh, I see why people don't do these. They're very salesy.

Dave Jackson:
But, yeah, but if they're relevant, again, my new keyword, and it really goes back. And if you're on YouTube, have fun because there's another four layers of that because now you got to throw a bunch of things on the screen to get them to visually grab them. So why do you think every and I mean every. And I'm not saying this because I'm a perv. I'm saying this because it's like so smack in your face. Every and I'm okay. 99% of any female YouTube short playing the guitar, the guitar is up a little high, and the girls are getting pushed up and out. It's just cleavage all over the place.

Dave Jackson:
And I'm like, okay. I'm it's like you cannot it's the only thing to look at. And I'm like, wait a minute. What? But it gets people to click. And so that visual thing is a whole other thing. But I I wonder sometimes, because I'm guilty of this. Can you think anything, Jim, where you're, like, you're you think you're ready for part two and you haven't really finished part one yet? Like, have you gone into Apple Podcasts? And Courtney I love Courtney. She's insider secrets to a top 100 podcast.

Dave Jackson:
She's been on my show, and she just talked about this, how she went into her show, grabbed the last 10 episodes, and said, what's the average length? You can download this into a CSV. And then she took the the completion percentage, added them up, divided it by 10. Why 10? Because she's looking at the last 10 episodes. So take that data, the last 10 episodes, and find out what the average is. And then, you know, if it's below 70%, maybe we need to change the length of her show. And it didn't dawn on me, but I've really been enjoying her show. Well, you know why? It's now fifteen minutes. It is to the point.

Dave Jackson:
Here it is. Here's the tip. Here's how it worked. Here's how you do it. Hit it. Quit it. And we're done. And it's also, like, now almost my favorite shower show because it's fifteen minutes.

Dave Jackson:
And she's and when she does an interview, she often breaks it into two spots. Now that doesn't mean everybody needs to do a fifteen minute show. It means her audience likes a fifteen minute show. And so yeah, have you done that yet? Have you gone and look at your completion percentage? And you're like, well, I need it to be thirty minutes, Dave, because I've gotta cover these broad topics. Okay. Well, where are you losing them? You know? And we're always gonna lose a few at the beginning because those are your subscribers, and they've heard you say, you know, it's Saturday morning. It's that music, gym, coffee pour. They're like, no.

Dave Jackson:
We're gonna skip everything and go right to about the four minute mark. We know that. And so but have you done that yet? And I know a lot of people when I go, well, what are your Apple stats? And they go, oh, it's about, you know, my host says it's about 42% of my downloads. I'm like, no. How far have are people listening? They're like, what do you mean? And I'm like, okay. It's not nothing wrong with that. You don't know what you don't know. But then when they go in, they look at their completion percentage, and it's, you know, 39%.

Dave Jackson:
I'm like, oh, that's not good. And they're like, oh, yeah. I'm like, yeah, because I'm an old teacher. So have you done that yet? So that would be that to me, that's it sounds advanced, but I'm like, that's, you know, that's the basic stuff before you start promoting your show. You know, have some people eat your food before you open your restaurant. Does that make any sense?

Jim Collison:
Yeah. I actually, I disagree with the industry on this one. I know, yeah, I know we, you go in and you check your stats, and okay, if after twenty minutes, people are dropping off, and you think let's say, let's just say it's like 40% or 50% are dropping off after twenty minutes. And we think, Oh, that tells me I should do shorter shows. Actually, it doesn't. It tells you there are still people engaged after fifteen minutes. Now, it's only half, but there's still listeners, right? There's still people listening to it. You can always make a long show shorter.

Jim Collison:
In other words, they can stop maybe that's their commute. Maybe that's all they have on the treadmill. Maybe that's all they have the time for. Maybe they're commit, they're listening to your best fifteen minutes. But you have a whole nother group of people who are still listening. And you just cut them off. You can't make a short show longer. So my advice on this, my I don't want anyone I hesitate to even call it advice.

Jim Collison:
My thought on this, and it's always been this way, is to make them as long as you've got time to make them. And let the audience decide how long they're going to listen for. You're gonna have some super engaged listeners who want more. And when you cut it off artificially because of some silly stat that you looked at and didn't completely understand, you know, you're like, Oh, this is telling me I need everybody's, you know, listen, we don't, we have this idea that everybody has short attention spans. And it's just a lie.

Dave Jackson:
That is a lie.

Jim Collison:
We binge on, we binge on stuff. Right? I had no problem going and watching you and I both watched the last, allegedly, Mission Impossible movie that came out last night. We sat through, what, three hours, is that thing? I mean

Dave Jackson:
I just know I had to pee really bad, man. When that movie was over

Jim Collison:
This, listen, this ADHD short attention span thing that we're going through I'm not saying we, there are people who, there are people absolutely suffer from it. But I think we've got the, we've, we've collectively come down on this, Oh, everybody's we gotta catch them short. No, that's not the truth. I think we actually have the capacity now for longer content when it's good, right? When it's interesting. And let me decide how much I listen. Not, I'm, as a podcaster, I shouldn't be deciding for my audience how long they listen. If you've got good content, and you got an hour's worth of good content, give them an hour. Let them decide if they got fifteen minutes.

Jim Collison:
Let them decide if they got thirty minutes. Now, what I like to think is load your podcast, put your best stuff up front. Give your best stuff as soon as possible for those folks that only have a few minutes. And then if you want to chitchat and jabber and throw it on the end, listen, there's folks who love that stuff. And if you take it away from them, you are, you're robbing them of their joy. So don't do that. If you want to go seven minutes, that's fine. If you want to go fifteen minutes, that's fine.

Jim Collison:
You do what you want to do. But don't go artificially short because you think people have short attention spans, or they won't listen longer. Nope, there will be people who find that longer stuff interesting. The other side of that, Dave, is when I, you know, we used to make these shows that were 90 or were sixty minutes long. And I had a, you know, I had some folks come in and say, Oh, when they see the timestamp, and it's an hour, they automatically decommit. Well, maybe. But I, we do courses, you know, at Gallup, where I work, we do courses. And overwhelmingly, the feedback we get from those courses is, I wish we'd had more time for this theme content that's very specific to what we do.

Jim Collison:
They're wanting more of that, not less. And I shortened up those episodes to fifteen minutes because of some philosophy, like, Oh, yeah, no, people can't listen. I fought that battle and lost it. I was like, Okay, enough. I'll just do fifteen minute episodes. You know what gets the most plays? The longer ones. So it's I think we got to, we have to stop thinking that way. And because 50% or even if it's 10% of your audience that wants a little bit more, if you're willing to make it for them, give it to them.

Jim Collison:
Right? You do what you have enough interesting content for, and stop worrying about the timestamps. That's my, that's my tip.

Dave Jackson:
Well, I totally agree. Because I'm like, if we really had the short attention spans and they're getting shorter and shorter, we hear that all the time, you know, the goldfish thing, which has been debunked so many times. I get people talk about it all the time. It's not that we have a shorter attention span. We have a greater ability to smell b s and go, oh, this guy's gonna waste my time. Like, it's just, you know, it's I think that's the big thing is but that Mark had a point let me go back. I the chat room's going bonkers today.

Jim Collison:
You better not listen. You in the first five minutes, you better bring your best. Like that's for sure, right? Have your best stuff up front. And so it because you will lose them. Like if it's uncomfortable, or it's slow, or it's not there yeah, you do have a you do run the risk of them dropping off. So So make sure your best content's

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. But just to bring up Mission Impossible, very consistent franchise. Like, I knew what that movie was before I even bought my popcorn. I also knew that Tom Cruise didn't die doing the stunts because I saw him on Jimmy Kimmel.

Jim Collison:
Don't spoil it.

Dave Jackson:
It just came out last night. But, you know, well, you know No spoilers. No. I'm not telling him, you know, we've all know what the stunts are, but I'm just saying it's

Jim Collison:
like yeah.

Dave Jackson:
But Mark says, okay. I've done that. But what comes next? How do I take relevant data from that? So if it's less than 70% and people like your show, great. Proof of concept then. We know that works. That what's there now, it's a matter of where's your call to action? And that's really to to why Courtney did that. She made her main point was if you're waiting to do your call to action till the end of your show and nobody's making it to the end of your show, that's probably why nobody's buying stuff. So when a lot of times, the next step is how do I monetize this? And that's where, let's say, you're selling courses.

Dave Jackson:
Okay. When you go to your sales page, are you using the pastor? Are you doing copywriting? Right? Here's my problem. If you don't fix this problem, it's only going to get worse. And I have the solution, p a s t. And here is the I forget what the t stands for. But somewhere in there, it's like, you know, are you making is it easy to buy? And is it one click? Like, oh, click here. Because I've talked to Mark about this. It's click and then you got to click and then you got to go to the click.

Dave Jackson:
I'm like, that's too many clicks. So try to and sometimes, like, I have more clicks than I want on the school of podcasting, but that's kind of the system I'm using. And so the choice is, do you switch systems or do you just kind of go, well, I've got to really explain the value then to that. And then from there to kind of go to Ralph's point a lot is like, hey. I wanna advertise. Right? Since we're talking movies, the whoever made it, Paramount maybe or whoever. Right? They spent a lot of money. Tom did a lot of promotion.

Dave Jackson:
And then I went last night because I was like, hey. It's this weekend. So I went and saw it, and it worked. We're talking about that movie now. And if you like Mission Impossible movies, you will like this movie. It's very Mission Impossible. So and that's what that's the movie industry. You spend lots of money on well, first of all, you spend lots of money making the product.

Dave Jackson:
You edit the crap out of that. You let people see it before you launch the movie to get feedback, and then once you know it resonates with your audience, then you put it out there and then you ask people to share it with their friends. And when while you're doing that, you also spend more money to let people know that, you know, here's the movie. And that's the fun part is spending the money is, well, what works? And that that's why we always that's why the answer is always it depends. Because I could spend money in the right place in front of the right people. And if they land on your website and they don't know what to do, okay. Well, I could have the best website spend boatloads of money on the wrong people. That's not good.

Dave Jackson:
I mean, there's so many pieces parts. And it's interesting because I'm studying Facebook ads right now, and it's the copy. Is the copyright getting people to push their triggers and their buttons to even click the button? So there's that. And then there's the actual landing page, and then the landing page is it easy to buy. But if you've got proof of concept, it's a matter of okay. And that's where, like, Mark does practicalprepping.info. And it's kinda and he's got a bazillion people in his Facebook. The one thing I would do, Mark, to test is write a post or something that you think should resonate with that group.

Dave Jackson:
And let I honestly don't know. I let's say he has 10,000 people. It's a lot of people in his group. So let's say he has 10,000 people, and he says something that's so like, everybody should thumbs up and attaboy and whatever, and he gets, I don't know, 92 people out of 10,000, that group isn't as big as you think it is. So look at the because that's the thing I as much as I love Facebook and it's free, I've seen other groups that I'm in where people will post and you're like, wait. There's a 30,000 people in here, and there were seven comments on this. It's like, well and if you wanna really check, go into Facebook, look at your groups, and see all the groups you're subscribed to or YouTube, look at your subscriptions. There are a lot of people we subscribe to that we're not really interactive with.

Dave Jackson:
So that's the other tricky part is sometimes we have an audience, but we don't have the right audience. But it's a matter of, I don't know if, like, there is there some sort of prepping con to go to? You know? That's what's kinda tricky. And I know Mark's gone the smart route. He's got courses to help you be prepared for hurricanes and, you know, all the nasty things that come along or, you know, you get snowed out or, you know, all that. He always kind of jokes. It's not it's not zombies. It's not aliens. It's not Bigfoot.

Dave Jackson:
You know, it's what to do when really bad things happen. Like, I don't know. The power goes out, and and you can't do your podcast. You know? See, if I've been listening to a show, I would've had a I don't think it would've helped if I'd had a generator because I think my Internet was out. I think AT and T went down in the area as well.

Jim Collison:
Oh, yeah. That would've been that'd've been bad. Is yes. It's not like your podcast with a guy who obsesses about having power backups available in his home. You and I talked about that via text. I was like, didn't go out on me. I'm already

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. Mark asked, analyzing is how do we determine if our content is resonating? I'm an old teacher. I say if I get below 70%, I got a problem in listening. Yeah. Because I know

Jim Collison:
depends on your audience. Yeah. Like, if you're in a model trains, that audience is super small. That's I don't mean to make that sound like they're

Dave Jackson:
gonna lie. Ray's gonna come hunt you down!

Jim Collison:
I know. Sorry, Ray. It's just, but it's not it's like stamp collecting. Like, it's a very niche. I should have used the word niche. That would have been a better sorry, Ray, for that. But it's a very niche. How do you know, like, in those scenarios, how do you know it's working for your audience? You're getting some feedback from them.

Jim Collison:
They're opening dialogue with you. Some of the best YouTubers that I watch, they're really good at interacting with their audience. They're, they know how to manage the comments and those things that come in. You know, they're and listen, interesting is more I think today, in today's world, interesting is more than just having a, is having a lot of numbers. I think it's, it, you know, because your topic may limit you. I watched this YouTuber, this guy. His name is Nick. He's a geologist out of Washington state.

Jim Collison:
And he does these, he puts stuff, you know, he's got really well made stuff. And he's got stuff that's just from his classroom, right? He's a college professor. And he's kind of quirky, and he's not, but he doesn't have the best technique, and he's kind of all over the place. But he's kind of like a comedy teacher. You know, he gets up there he says funny things at least they're funny to me. That's gonna, no matter what he does he teaches the geology of the state of Washington here in The United States, right? He focuses on the geology listen to this the geology of the state of Washington. No matter what he does, not gonna have big numbers. He's gonna have to really get audience feedback to see and he asks for a lot, and he mentions it a lot, and he's got a lot of friends in the space that do it.

Jim Collison:
But his number is gonna be small. He's got me. He has me, though. I'm very interested in that. Why would I be interested in the geology of Washington State? I do not know. I've just gotten fascinated with it over the last couple years. So depending on that, right, it really depends on that topic. Then the broader topics are even harder in some ways, because now you're in a much bigger pool, and you're in a much bigger space.

Jim Collison:
You're competing, you know, because the money in advertising gravitates towards the more generic content. Let's just be honest. They want the ability to grab a larger audience. They want the ability to, you know, in Ralph's case, you know, say you're doing financial planning or financial analysis. Well, now you're competing. I mean, there's a lot of big names in this space, including one, Ramsey, Right? Right. So you, now you're playing in a bigger space with a lot, with people who have a lot more money and a lot more influence and a lot more connections. You know, that's and by the way, that's another area you should think about in your podcast.

Jim Collison:
Are you connected to all the other influencers in that space? Have you spent some time reaching out, making sure you're friends with them? You know? And so I just think there's some opportunities there to kind of learn and grow in that way.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. Mark says we got about a 2% response, which is about normal for a survey. He says we made some, did some, got some good points, did some tweaking. So that's how you get better. You know, you kinda ask them. I am right now. I joined. I saw her.

Dave Jackson:
I'm a big heartbeat fan, and she I think she kinda works for heartbeat, but she's a community person. And it's Amber, and Amber is e m b e r as in, like, a fire. Amber consulting dot co. I'll give her a shout out here. But she has a course about growing a group. And it was it's funny when people tell you to do stuff and you're like, oh, what? And she was like, accept the challenge. Get 10 people on the phone with you. She goes, call 10 different people.

Dave Jackson:
Wanna find out what your audience wants? Get them on the phone. I challenge you to go she goes, it doesn't if you have to give out your phone number, make it a Zoom call. And she goes, and make it for an hour, at least a half hour, not fifteen minutes. It's gotta be a decent conversation and find out what they want. And I always go back to the time I did that by accident and send out it was supposed to go out to 10 people on my email list. And I was like, hey. I'm doing some what do you call it when you do research for, I guess, product research or whatever. But I was basically like, hey.

Dave Jackson:
I'm trying to find out what's working and what's not. And it was supposed to go to 10 people. I had a filter to where it was only supposed to go to 10 people on my email list and went out to the whole thing. And so for a solid week, if not two, I just had back to back to back to back to back Zoom calls. And it was one of the best things I ever did because I got to physically see my audience and find out what was working and what wasn't and that whole nine yards. So that's, you know now is that advanced? It's advanced on your calendar because your calendar just went poof, and now you know what you're doing. But that is something that that's kinda tricky. You know, Brad says, I agree with Jim on this one.

Dave Jackson:
Super fans will listen to all of it. Yeah. John said that too. John Jamango was like, the core hard listeners will listen to you read the phone book. So that's something else to keep in mind. We got there Mark says there are prepper shows. I would definitely go to one, and have a booth if you can. Boosts are expensive.

Dave Jackson:
I don't care what kinda show it is. Man, that's a lot of money. Plus, you're gonna sneeze at least $2 getting there. It's kinda kinda tricky. But or Dan from, again, based on a true story podcast. In my honest opinion, beginner equals no prerequisites to learn the topic. Intermediate, some prerequisites. In advanced, you must already know the basic and intermittent before understanding this part of the topic.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. That's a good definition. It's just hard to throw that into to podcasting. Ralph says just heard there's a college in England that offers a degree. There's one in New York City. There are people, if you want to spend a thousand dollars, you can pay somebody to be a podcast consultant or you can just come here and I will look at you for free and go. I dub thee a podcast consultant. It's, you know, if you've because trust me, there are a lot of podcast consultants that, in my opinion, are on the basic level, but that's just me.

Dave Jackson:
We're talking pet peeves. Jody says, oh, yeah. That's my pet peeve when I'm on a podcast and they asked me to introduce myself. I'm like, you invited me on your podcast. I had someone last night sent a guest form. What is the title of the episode you would like to do? I'm like, I don't know. Like, what do you you asked me. Like, why am I doing your homework? So and then, of course, the discussion of AI has come up, and there are ways that it's good.

Dave Jackson:
And then there are people like Chris that say it's kinda lazy, especially now with AI to assist you in creating a more succinct framework for your intros. Yep. Here's the thing. I'm not making this up.

Jim Collison:
I disagree.

Kevin Chemidlin:
I

Jim Collison:
disagree, by the way. I do.

Dave Jackson:
Well well but here's the thing I'm seeing, and I'm not making this up. I was in a group, and they were talking about AI, and I am of AI is great to take what you've written and enhance it. I'm not a big fan of, like, hey. Write me a paragraph, and I'll read it in my show. But the thing I've and I saw all these people chiming in. So I saw people saying, I want AI to come up with the topics, and I saw other people that said, I want AI to write it for me. And then I say other people saying, I want AI to publish it for me and promote it. To me, I just wanna go if you don't wanna do a podcast, don't do a podcast.

Dave Jackson:
Like, if you want it to come up with the topics, write it, promote it, all you do is talk into a mic. I'm like, who doesn't want that? And while you're at it, make lots of money doing that. But it just seems like there there's I smell. I'm like, it kind of smells like you don't wanna do anything. You just want AI to to and all these ideas are gonna be brilliant and great and write the latest technology. So I get a little worried when I hear that, but you're Jim, you disagree with AI is making us lazy.

Jim Collison:
No, no, I'm sorry. I wasn't clear. What I disagree with we, going back to Jodi's comment about the introducing people and the comments about, Hey, take a second to introduce yourself or tell us some things. I think this is an area you need to ask your guest what they prefer. Because there are, in, in, in, both in my world on the tech side, in my world in the strengths or the Gallup side of things, There are individuals who want you to actually read their bio. As much as we hate it, Dave, that's a, there's a moment when you need to say Doctor. There's a moment when you need to explain what those initials mean. There's a moment when they've done a lot of work to get to where they are.

Jim Collison:
They want someone else to read that bio. And even though your best practice is people don't want to hear that, they want that. They're there, and they're asking for that respect. And I think it's appropriate at that point to, to respect them and say, Okay, if that's what if you want me to read your bio, you could say to them, Hey, typically on this show, we don't do that. I find our listeners don't like it when I read it. Would you be Okay if we have a short converse you know, I'll do a few things about you, and then you fill in the best parts of you. Now, there's some people that's not comfortable with that. They don't like talking about themselves.

Jim Collison:
And you kind of need to usher that thing along. This is a mistake I've made a lot, and I need to ask that question more is, How do you prefer her to be introduced? Like, what is, what, what style do you want me to conform to to make sure you're comfortable? Because I just did the most recent interview I did last week. We just got right into it. And he was perfectly fine talking. He likes talking about himself, likes, you know, likes saying those kinds of things. They liked it. It's somebody who does that very often. I'm very comfortable with that, with somebody saying, Hey, I've got Jim Collison here.

Jim Collison:
You know, he works for Gallup, does this blah, blah, blah. Jim, you know, Welcome to the show. Let's get to know you a little bit. You know, Tell me the best about you. That's not what the question I would use. But that's the whole idea, right? I'm very comfortable giving two minutes on the best of me based on the audience they have. But I'm a podcaster. Like, I do this all the time.

Jim Collison:
So I think it might, I think it might be wise to not say, We read it all the time, or We don't read it at all, or It's a bad idea. It may be a better idea to just say, to consult with the person and say, Hey, I've got a time to inter I've got some time for us to get to know you. What are you most comfortable with? Or what would you like me to do for you to make you the most comfortable? Right? I think that's probably not a bad question to add. Maybe that's advanced podcasting. I hate that word, by the way. But maybe that's advanced. Right? Break your style and make it fit the guest so that they have the best experience possible.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. Because the one thing, and I now that you've said this, you had me worried because you're like, well, some people don't like to talk about themselves. And I'm like, well, then they shouldn't be on the podcast. But I can give it to me.

Jim Collison:
Subject. Right?

Dave Jackson:
Not themselves. Yes.

Jim Collison:
They might be a they might be a rocket scientist, and they're really good at talking about rockets, but they're uncomfortable talking about themselves. Or they just have their, you know, they listen, there's a lot of people who've worked really hard to get maybe this is where the advanced degrees come in, right? This is where maybe advanced is appropriate. They've worked really hard to get advanced degrees, or they've worked really hard to get some kind of industry recognition that's super important. And, you know, you're like, Hey, Bob, it's Doctor. Jones. Like, you know, that we should probably, in some cases, make sure we're, you know, back to your Jim and Jeff thing, right? We should probably make sure we're again, this is experience talking here. I've failed in this area several times. Should probably ask some questions.

Jim Collison:
What do you prefer to be called? What, you know, some of those some of you are really good at this, by the way. But for me, you know, What do you want me to call you during the podcast? What's appropriate? Do you want me to read the bio? How do because those first five minutes, I've done it where I've, I could tell I threw somebody off in the first five minutes. Then the rest of it was kind of, it was just Okay. So that's, that may not be a bad thing to think about in your, the way you introduce guests. If AI listen, you can do all the AI stuff you want. But if you haven't cleared it with the guest, like if you AI them, and then say, you know, you're reading these things and listen, I've had people grab old bios of me, like from, like, things I hadn't updated somewhere. And then they're like, Jim is this and that and these kinds of things. And then you're like, Actually, none of that's true.

Jim Collison:
Like it's all, that's all, that's a 10 year old bio. Sorry we didn't cover this in advance.

Dave Jackson:
When my headshot has Dave without a beard, like, Come on, where did you, like, did you dig that out of Myspace? Like

Jim Collison:
Oh, no.

Dave Jackson:
I know.

Jim Collison:
Or my

Dave Jackson:
I I did and you make a great point because I've been introduced many times at conferences before I speak. I don't remember the ones, but I remember the guy that really blew it. You know? There's like because he said, I need to know one thing about you that most people don't know. And I go, I used to play in a band called the Sugar Daddies, and that was the one thing he brought up. And I was like, yeah. But I'm also School of Podcast. Can you please say School of Podcasting? Can you? Nope, just sugar daddies. Thank you so much.

Dave Jackson:
I was like, Oh. So, but, you know who I'm not

Jim Collison:
When you're oh, one more thing, and then we'll go to Austin. When you're not, when you're interviewing experts or you're interviewing people who you get an exclusive and they're not on podcasts all the time, they're not all good at this. Like we think they are, or they think they should be. Hey, you're an expert in your field. You should be Well, maybe this is their first podcast. Maybe this is a time they, you know, that maybe this is a medium they're not good at. The goal for you is not to make them conform to you, but you conform to them to get the best content out of them possible. So make sure you're doing a little bit of homework.

Jim Collison:
If you're gonna do any homework, study that guest and their style and ask them some good questions so that you know how am

Dave Jackson:
I gonna

Jim Collison:
get the best out of you? Right? How am I gonna get the best out of you? They may not be good and to Ralph's point there, they may not be good about talking about themselves. They may not be comfortable with that. Read their bio. Get that out of the way. Let the audience know why they're there for that stuff. And then move on to the content that matters. But if they're not good at doing that, or they're uncomfortable doing that, doesn't mean they're bad it just means they don't, maybe they haven't got a chance to do it very often. But you won't know unless you ask the questions.

Jim Collison:
So anyways, sorry. I wanted to wrap that up. Let's thank our awesome supporters.

Dave Jackson:
Let's do that. They you can be an awesome supporter. And by the way, we have a new one coming next week. I will we'll talk about that next week. We'll give them a big shout out. But you can be an awesome supporter by going to askthepodcastcoach.com/awesome. We're also brought to you by the School of Podcasting where you have courses, coaching, and community. It's all there and a thirty day money back guarantee.

Dave Jackson:
So if you're like, not sure if that's for me, you got thirty days to figure it out. And if on day 29, you're like, yeah. No. Thanks. I'll give you your money back. Use the coupon code coach when you sign up, and we're using PodPage when you go over to askthepodcastcoach.com. If you wanna try PodPage, go to try podpage.com. That is my affiliate link.

Dave Jackson:
And right now, we're using Ecamm. You can find Ecamm by going to askthepodcastcoach.com/ecamm. And cam has two m's because, it's good. And if you need more Jim Collison, and, hey, who doesn't? Look at him there. So awesome. You can see more of Jim over at theaverageguy.tv and check out his show Home Gadget Geeks. And it is time for us to go and see the featured or the not the featured, but the awesome supporter of the week. And speaking of Ralph, we do have he has can you guys see this comment box? No.

Dave Jackson:
You can't. That's good. I was like, how much of this is being shown? But actually, we've got two on here. I'm gonna do a big shout out on Ralph next week about his new show, but it's on the wheel. It's growth and grit business, but he's rebranded Ask Ralph to a new brand, which is it's now used to be Ask Ralph. It was a show about finance for Christians. Now it's financially confident Christians. So you can find that.

Dave Jackson:
We'll put a link in the show notes or all things Ralph are out at askralph.com. And who's gonna be the awesome supporter? Well, we're gonna spin the wheel and see who we end up with, and I will not call it early. Last week, I thought I we were done, and this week, it was looking like Ed, but no. It's Greg over at indiedropin.com. If you have a scary show, if you have a comedy show, there are a bunch of audiences over there that Greg has already lined up, and you can basically reach out to Greg. He will put you on that website and help you find more audiences, more audiences, more people's, more listeners. There we go. More well, you know what I'm talking about.

Dave Jackson:
Likewise, as we move on here, if you want to be an awesome supporter because you're sitting there thinking, you know, this show saves me time. It saves me headaches. Maybe it saves you some money. Maybe we're keeping you educated. Maybe we made you think today. Well, if you're not a member of the school of podcasting, that's one way to be an awesome supporter. But if you just wanna support this show, go over to askthepodcastcoach.com/awesome, and, you know, you can join for as little as $5. So thank you to all of our awesome supporters.

Dave Jackson:
We deeply appreciate that, and congrats to Greg over at Indie Drop In. And I this is I stall here every week because I'm clicking on Ecamm because I'm trying to get the what you call it back? The chat box, and I'm clicking on you know what? I have to get rid of that's it. I had to get rid of the the screen with Greg. The wheel of names is waiting for me to go, I'm done spinning. I'm like, how what am I doing? Where's the stupid box with everything that I need? So because Ralph had a question unless Jim, you were saying that we needed to go.

Jim Collison:
No. I was gonna say we can go to Ralph's question. I think it's a good one about this about buying email lists.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. It's so the question is let me go to the top and then we had a couple of questions here. I'm thinking about doing some email marketing and I've been exploring buying email lists, but they are super expensive and I wonder if they're really valid thoughts and opinions and to which Dan already answered. I've never bought an email list, but I would be highly skeptical of anyone selling them since it's easy to fake them. My general response to buying email lists is just I don't know. Jim, do they do that at Galp? I just anytime I know anybody that's done them, they're like, well, just realize that a large percent of it is never gonna be delivered.

Jim Collison:
And Well, it depends. Right? Depends on the company that you're buying them from. Right? Depends where they got them from. It depends how new they are. You know, during the Great Resignation, right, we saw our customer database. My and I, when I say customer, I mean the, you know, the coaches in my community. Were changing a third every year. A third of the database was changing every year.

Jim Collison:
And that happened for like three years in a row. Lots of folks were changing jobs. Lots of folks were changing email addresses. I've also noticed, because I do this on a daily basis, I noticed that a lot of our customers are even changing their Gmail accounts on a regular basis. So, you know, they're like, Oh, no, I don't use that Gmail account anymore. I use this Gmail account. So, you know, the, then, of course, because of the, just the onslaught of spam and, you know, just the amount, sheer amount of emails that are being blocked, the chances are you could, if you're sending them on your behalf, they could be going to someone's spam folder, depending upon how you're doing the sending, right? Some folks automatically say you're using a service to do, to send those emails. Is that service you're using, have they been blacklisted because of sending so many advertising emails? Have they been blacklisted by a lot of services? And if you're say you're going, if you're buying a lot of organizational or workplace emails, you know, folks that work at Apple or folks that work at, you know, the actual workplace emails, right? Lots of times, those email providers, right, those companies are blocking a whole host of email.

Jim Collison:
So if it's, if it's 1,000, and it's expensive, you need to ask those questions of, When were they last validated? How do you know that they're good email addresses? Now, in some cases, you know, and it could be they're, you know, events do a lot of this, where they have an event for a specific genre of something, whatever. Let's say Comic Con, right? And that event was last month, and they harvested 20,000 emails from that event. And you're buying them that was in November, and you're buying them in December. Chances are, those emails are pretty good, right? There, you got and if that's the niche you're trying to reach for that, you got a good shot at that. If it's been a year, right? You know, some of those, you know, some of those. So, Ralph, I think there's a lot of questions you have to ask to who you're buying the list from. And, you know, if it's a dark web company, well, it's probably not, they're probably not very good. But, you know, I know that's not what you I know that's not what you're doing.

Jim Collison:
I'm just joking. But you gotta ask those questions.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. He says, They tell me they have a list by denomination. He says, I want to reach out to churches to share my daily devotional show. But they want $185 for 1,000 email per 1,000 emails. And it's like, Yeesh. Well, listen, if

Jim Collison:
they're good, if they're good, like if they're actually good and valid, you know, that's, you know, that's not actually and if it's your niche, like, and you're really getting to the right people, that $185 may be super valuable, depending upon what you're sending them. Right? Depend, depending upon what you're sending them. You know, I did a direct mailing one time, and I put it, I spent a few extra dollars to put it in a more important looking envelope from the U. S. Postal Service, so that when people got it, they'd be like, Oh, I need to open this. Like, you know, it wasn't just a letter it was a registered letter, whatever I forget what I used for that. So you, in this case, if they have, if it's, these email addresses are correct, are collected correctly, and it's the right target audience, and you're sending them the right thing, right, from an ROI perspective, $185 may actually be cheap.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. It's and the hard part, because part of me goes, Well, just reach out to local churches and offer to do a free financial thing. And I've had I remember there was a guy once that joined my church for about two weeks. And when he said he basically just came in. I barely knew him and just started spamming people in the congregation with like, I can help you with it. It's like, okay. And when I kind of politely said, hey, like, you know, people are complaining that you're because he was very aggressive on trying to get people. I think he was in real estate or something.

Dave Jackson:
So again, go to where your audience is, make friends with them, and then tell them. But if you knew somebody in another church and you said, hey, if they ever wanna do a free ask Ralph financial consulting thing to a group of people, and then at the top, in the end of it, instead of promoting your accounting, you promote your podcast, which your podcast would then promote your accounting or whatever it is, your books that are going on there. That might be a thing. It's tricky. It's I just know, man, it's been probably thirty years since I played with email lists. I worked for a company that was really briefly that they were they were kind of spammy, and they were we were out just going to anybody's email address and just harvesting their email. And I was like, I need a shower when I go home. I'm like, because I know what you're gonna do with that.

Jim Collison:
Well Remember an email that way is equivalent to, maybe worse now than a cold call. So, you know, you're, you know that percentage. You know, in that case, right, three percent is high. I would say one percent, right, stowed you down a pretty small number, and then you got to really turn over those 1%. I would, listen, I, it's, it's not, it's probably worth trying once just to see how good the list is, right, with very low expectations. I would prefer the referral networks, in this kind of situation, these referral networks where get to know some influencers in the space, get known by people who will then use your name in some of those areas. And then once the ground's been tilled a little bit with some help in these areas, some influencers saying things, some people who know you in that space, then I think those emails are way more effective after people have heard about you. You know, you've done a seminar in the area, or you've done one at the church.

Jim Collison:
This is where, you know, free loss leader thing to go out and do and speak on in an area may, may till the ground a little bit for that, you know, for those email marketing stuff. People at least have heard your name they've seen you. You're not just showing up for the first time. Those emails get deleted from when they land in my box. You know, I don't care how many I listen, Dave, you and I get peppered and probably everybody listening does too of all these, We want to help you grow your audience or your influence on YouTube or whatever. I read the first sentence, and they're gone. You know, whatever list they got me from, hopefully, they didn't pay very much for it. So I've never heard of them before.

Jim Collison:
But I get an email from Dave Jackson that says, Hey, I've learned this thing. Well, I'm gonna read it, because I know Dave Jackson.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. It's because what he's saying here is, to be clear, I'm looking to market my daily show to my to church pastors, so I'm looking to contact them via email. And that's so think about this. Hi, Jim. I understand you are the head pastor at Church of Life there in Arkansas. You know, I'm Dave. I do a daily podcast. It's a devotional, You know, kind of the stuff that you're doing at your church where you're leading your flock.

Dave Jackson:
I'd like to lead your flock just for every day for seven minutes. Is that cool with you? That guy's gonna be like, wait, what? Like, you want to Yeah. It's aren't gonna

Jim Collison:
have the time.

Dave Jackson:
They're gonna be like, so I would say because they're churches. Oh, you wanna watch me get in trouble? Offer them some money because there are churches that yeah. Maybe. And say, I'd like to send you a flyer that you could hang on a bulletin board that has this and a QR code. And I would be happy to pay because you're basically buying a billboard on their bulletin board. And there are some churches that they're like, oh, man. We're all about the Benjamins. Yeah.

Dave Jackson:
Because, you know, they're not profit. So that might be something.

Jim Collison:
Well, and maybe the in this case, the lead pastor, the head pastor, the whatever senior pastor, depending on the denomination. You might, might be the wrong person. You might need you might need the stewardship or the Director of Finance or the, you know, whatever. And you gotta, you know, you gotta, the value It's a the value proposition in that has to be, what can I do for your church? Like, what, what are, like, so don't, you know and, Rob, I know you know all this. There's others that are listening that

Dave Jackson:
But that's a really good point. Because if you want free stuff for your podcast, you don't talk to the sales team because they're gonna try to sell you one. You talk to the marketing team because they're the ones that are trying to get the word out. So Yeah. You know

Jim Collison:
And again, listen, we're shooting in the dark here on there's a thousand different examples of how this could or shouldn't work. So, you know, I think it's a, I think it's worth looking at, Ralph, from, you know, back to the original question. I think it's worth looking at. The question is a pure ROI question. Out of those thousands, based on the people they're giving you is that we don't know that so based on the people they're giving you and the position they're in and the region it is and the propensity for them to actually follow-up on the email, Is it worth $185 to reach 1,000 people on that? And I think you just got to do some finance well, you're the financial guy. Do find someone else's plan on that thing and say, Is the ROI there to get it done? And this is not just for this situation, but anytime you're getting ready to spend money. You have to make that decision if you're gonna spend. I think I subscribed to Descript this month for I bought the monthly, paying for $35.

Jim Collison:
I was backed into a corner, and I needed their help. Was it worth $35 for me to pay for one month to get out of a jam? Yes, it was. I happily dropped down the $35 and said, Yes, thanks for Descript, thanks for getting me out of a jam, right, on this. So you, you know, that's the there's an ROI question. And that's I know that's what he's asking. So now that we have all that information, you got all that information, Ralph. Take that back. Do an ROI plan based on those things.

Jim Collison:
And if it's worth it to you, spend it. If it's not, don't.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. One other quick question here. Dan has, with the rise of shorter and shorter clips, do you think basically any long form of content will be seen as advanced? Maybe. I could see where everybody's gonna call it a deep dive. That's a good point. Because if I see a clip of one question of an interview, the rest of the interview isn't advanced. It's just more of that stuff. But if it's a how to thing, thing, that's a maybe that's next week's topic is how to dead.

Dave Jackson:
I saw I think it was Kevin Schmidlin brought that up. He's like, look, man. Nobody's gonna listen to a how to podcast because you can just go to perplexity and it'll give you exactly what you need. And I'm like, yeah. But some people read and some people listen. And plus then there's the whole personality thing and that whole nine yards. But, yeah, always fun. One last thing here on AI.

Dave Jackson:
Chrissy from creating great grooming dogs. I want AI to help me see what a less experienced person may think about my topic. It helps me start with more basic parts of a topic before getting techie. All AI is my average Joe. So she's using it as a Sure. You know, a way to kind of critique your content before it goes out. So I've done that. I go ahead.

Dave Jackson:
Sorry. Well, I just I ran an episode of the future of podcasting with myself and Daniel j Lewis, and it pointed out he's like, you guys use a lot of jargon, and you don't really explain what it is. And I was like, good point. But then I looked at my audience, and I'm like, nope. My audience will understand what that jargon is. I understand it's jargon, but the people that we're trying to attract know what that means. So it gave me some good feedback. And I was like, but, again, feedback always comes with, is there a point to that? Do they have a point? Yeah.

Dave Jackson:
And then it's either like, okay. You're right. I'm gonna change the way I deliver my content or whatever it is. Or, yep, that's a point. But for my audience, this is okay kind of thing. Or it's that's a great point, but that doesn't align with the goal of the show. So that's another way I've used AI. Go ahead.

Jim Collison:
It's a good it's a good way. Well, it and to your point, like, we wouldn't have McDonald's if a couple guys didn't think they could do burgers and fries a different way. Right? I mean, so you is it pioneering? Is it cutting edge? I mean, is it, was it, at first, did people go, That's weird? Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of folks like, What is up with this? You know, when McDonald's first started doing the things that we're doing. And a lot of, I mean, a lot of the things that we have today that are standard started out as weird. So don't, like, don't think that you got to fit into that mold all the time and be like, Well, I'm gonna do it the advanced way. No, do it your way. It may be it may not but it may be the next new way that we do things.

Jim Collison:
And we would hate to lose something because you tried to be standard. Or you listen to AI, right? You know, from that standpoint, AI's got a lot of great things to say. But it's just like a person. It, you know, take it with a grain of salt. Do things the way you think it's best and, and let your talent shine, as opposed to trying to fit in the mold. We don't need another back to the original, we don't need another Dave Ramsey. Like Dave Ramsey is Dave Ramsey. Who's the other guy that we talk about all the time? What's his name? The real popular podcaster.

Jim Collison:
Why is his name escaping me?

Dave Jackson:
Jim Collison, Joe Rogan.

Jim Collison:
Joe Rogan. Thank you. Joe Rogan. Thanks for throwing my name on there. Don't be Joe Rogan. You be you. Yeah. You can do it in the style of Joe Rogan, but don't be Joe Rogan.

Jim Collison:
So

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. That doesn't work. Well, Jim, what's coming up on the averageguy.tv over there on HomeGadgetGeeks?

Jim Collison:
Yeah. Doug Milburn joins me from 45. We had some conversations early in the show in the chat room about backups. Right? And so, forty five Drives is doing some very interesting things with their hardware and their services around both enterprise servers, and they have a home lab space as well. Anyways, great interview. This is the one I did it a couple weeks ahead of time and then played the interview in live using Restream. So if you wanna see how that worked and how I managed that conversation, both live and recorded, we did that here at Zoho at home gadget geeks dot com right

Dave Jackson:
now. Nice. And I mentioned it earlier on the school of podcast. I looked at my notes. I have 22 pages of notes on how to write a good opening hook. That's ridiculous. I think I've done a little bit too much research on this.

Jim Collison:
I like it.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. So that's what's coming up. And by the end of this, I should be a master of writing good hooks, I hope. A lot of videos. And the thing that's interesting about YouTube again is it's I'm talking to an audio audience. I will mention the YouTube stuff, but it's as always, when you jump into YouTube, you've added more stuff to the mix. That means you got more things to think about and all. But thanks to everybody in the chat room.

Dave Jackson:
This is a lot of fun today. This could have been easily a two hour show. Holy cow. But we're always happy that you're here. Thanks to Chris from castahead.net for the super cast for the super cast. The super cash, whatever. Click on the little dollar sign button thingy. I appreciate that.

Dave Jackson:
And, of course, Mark over at podcastbranding.co. And, everybody go over to basedonatruestorypodcast.com and check out Dan. We will see you next week, of course, as long as we both have electricity. And thanks so much. We'll see you again real soon with another episode of Ask the Podcast Coach.

Jim Collison:
Blow some cash on the way out. Let's see some cash.