From Listeners to Advocates: The Magic of True Fans

Dave Jackson:
What if the reason your podcast hasn't exploded is also the reason it could last? What if a thousand people's favorite show is actually a better business, a better brand, and a better creative life than being known by 20,000 casual listeners? That's just one of the topics we're going to talk about today on something I'm calling Podcast Stew. Hit it, ladies. The school of podcasting with Dave Jackson. Podcasting since 2005, I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson. Thanking you so much for tuning in. If you're new to the show, this is why I help you plan, launch and grow your podcast. Today. I'm going to help you grow your mindset a bit.

Dave Jackson:
And I'm going to start off with a little story. When I was probably 6 years old, realize I was the youngest of my family, and almost everything I got was a hand me down from my brother who was seven years older than I was. And I finally got a winter coat that was mine. It was all mine and it was brand new. And my brother loved to ice skate and he was going ice skating, skating. And unfortunately my mom said, well, you got to take your brother with you, which was always met with ugh, because I was 6 and he was, I don't know, 13. And my mom said, whatever you do, don't stand too close to the heater because they had this big, like, metal tube that they would somehow put a fire in the middle of it and it would heat up and it would get very hot. And my coat was made out of nylon.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. And I didn't understand because I was six and I got a little too close to the heater and yeah, it melted my coat. I had sleeves and sides, but the back was completely gone. And I just remember my brother saying, mom's gonna kill you. And I was happy that I didn't catch on fire. That was the other good news. But today, these things that I found, it's like me going, hey, don't stand too close to the heater or you'll melt your coat. And so that's the purpose of this show.

Dave Jackson:
A couple things I found out, some of them are new, and then some of them have reinforced things that I've always said. And so one of the things I first want to get into here is I heard this on a show called Pod Biz. And there's a guy named Rocks Codes, and he is the co owner along with Stephen Bartlett of Flightcast. And I always say, you know, YouTube? If you want to do YouTube, do YouTube. It's free. You don't have to spend thousands of dollars on equipment. But if you really want to compete. Now, here's the thing about this clip.

Dave Jackson:
We often try to compete with people who are just crushing it. Of course, Right. Aim at the top. But then we better know what the people at the top are doing. Well, this is what they're doing. I think that first step for a lot of video people is just, like, getting that understanding of, like, what we say on the YouTube world. We say you should spend as long as much time on the thumbnail and title as you did on the entire episode. So 50% of your total production time.

Rox Codes:
So if you spent four hours editing and three hours recording and setting up, then theoretically you should be sending seven hours on your thumbnail and title, which sounds insane to a lot of people who are new.

Norma Jean Belenky:
It does sound insane. But when you talk about the amount of resource, the amount of time, the amount of budget that you put into these things, you know, I tell my clients, sometimes what you spend on production is what you should spend on marketing. That's real. And that could be labor.

Dave Jackson:
Absolutely.

Norma Jean Belenky:
Like, that can be. That can be labor, that can be time, that can be budget, whatever it is. But I think it's. It's one of those things where obviously, when you do it right, it looks like magic secret sauce. Right. Everyone's looking at Stephen Barton. They're like, how? And it's labor. It's saying, hey, I don't know the right answer.

Norma Jean Belenky:
Let's figure it out together. I don't have an ego about this. I'm not going to make an assumption. I want to figure this out. Right. And so I think it's. It's really important to. To come into it with that curiosity and humbleness of, like, I don't actually know the right answer.

Norma Jean Belenky:
And also, it may take me an inordinate amount of time to figure this out that no one else may want to dedicate to their content. And that's why I'm gonna succeed.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. So when I say, if you're gonna be going to YouTube, you need to learn the algorithm, because the algorithm is all about the thumbnail and the title. And we can see there where Rox is saying, yeah, you should need to spend about 50% of your time on the thumbnail and the title. And there is a part of me that still gets slightly offended, like, wait, you won't even hear my content. You won't see it unless I have a picture of me looking shocked and big, bold font. Yeah, that's the way it works. And as the host said there, the fact that the people that are really succeeding at this have that determination. If you look at Mr.

Dave Jackson:
Beast, this is a guy that, when he was an embryo, basically started making a video. And for years as a teenager, he would study almost frame by frame, and he tried to get better with every video. So now that he's whatever, 20 something, 30 something, however long he's been doing it, he's got a head start. So I say this, if you've heard me on the show many times say, do not compare yourself to other people because it will rob you of your joy. Instead, be on YouTube because you want to be on YouTube and because you like making videos. And sure, spend more time on your thumbnail and your title, but realize that if you can't do exactly what the big people are, do what you can with what you got. And realize then you're not going to get the same results. But because you're having fun, because you like making videos, and because you want to be on YouTube, you'll be fine.

Dave Jackson:
If you don't want to make videos and you don't want to spend time on thumbnails and such, you're not going to get those results. That is not the first person I've heard say that. And again, I'm just here to let you know ahead of time what to expect so you don't come home with a melted jacket. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll take YouTube for 200. Alex. Doug Downs was on Matt Kundal's show. Love Matt.

Dave Jackson:
Great show. Sound off podcast. And he also had some tips for those thinking about YouTube.

Doug Downs:
YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world, right? Google's number one. They're both the same company. So your podcast will be found more readily on YouTube. And there's studies. The Canadian podcast listener study that Matt Hurd puts together constantly identifies that most people listen to podcasts on YouTube. 100% correct. Except if the result was what app do people spend the most time listening to Podcasts? Totally different question. The result would be Apple.

Doug Downs:
The second result would be Spotify, and maybe the third result would be YouTube. So YouTube and putting together video is for discovery. And my suggestion to a new podcaster is don't jump into that part too heavily at the beginning, because at the end of the day, podcasting shouldn't be about how many downloads or even viewers did I get. It's not about how many. It's about how deeply, how much time did each one of them spend with you. And if they're listening to about 70% of your episode. That's when they're going to bring it up over dinner and say, that Matt guy podcast that I listened to. So he had this guy on and he was talking about Kirkland Lake.

Doug Downs:
You lived in Kirkland Lake, Right. That's when they start listening to your episode at length. And that's audio. So use video for Discovery. Don't overspend on fancy, fancy video.

Dave Jackson:
And you can go to podcast connect.apple.com as well as creators.Spotify.com to see how far people are listening to, to your show. I know for me, if we kind of round up here, the worst, the worst I've ever had on Ask the Podcast Coach, or at least the last time I checked, it was 80%. And the best I've ever had on the video was 40%. So where would you spend your time? You want to spend your time where people are actually consuming your content. And again, as Doug pointed out, Maybe we just YouTube for discovery and you don't have to have a $5,000 video studio to get discovered. You just need a really good name for your episode. And a thumbnail. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jackson:
Next up, we're going to go slightly adjacent from YouTube. We're going to talk. Well, this is a clip of Marques Brownlee, who has 20.9 million subscribers to his YouTube channel. He does a tech review channel and he was on this show. I'll put a link to all this stuff in the show notes so you can watch the whole video. But somebody asked him, have you been approached by Netflix? And this is what he said. I have not been, but don't bother.

Marques Brownlee:
I wouldn't, I'm not interested. I kind of maybe have this also

Marques Brownlee:
maybe naive view of the creator landscape,

Marques Brownlee:
which is that they're, they're, they need

Marques Brownlee:
you like they need the eyeballs.

Marques Brownlee:
And the only, only way to reach these people who are just watching YouTube is to be on YouTube.

Marques Brownlee:
They're trying to bring the YouTuber to

Marques Brownlee:
their platform to hopefully take some of the eyeballs with them.

Dave Jackson:
But we're having a really good time

Marques Brownlee:
here making videos that we really like.

Dave Jackson:
And going to make a show on Netflix would not accomplish anything like that. We can't do here. I love that line. I've been saying this for, man, decades. It's your show. You have the power. Advertisers need you because you have the influence. And yes, sure, you might want to get paid and again, go more for partnerships than this crappy CPM stuff, but I love the Fact, he's like, what are they going to do for me? They're just trying to get my audience to go to Netflix.

Dave Jackson:
And then Jordan Harbinger was talking about YouTube with Rob Greenlee.

Jordan Harbinger:
So as soon as your Netflix deal is over, you're essentially starting over on YouTube, right? You're just going to suddenly start uploading videos on your old dead ass channel on YouTube. And what, the algorithm is maybe going to say, hey, welcome back. Or is the algorithm going to say, you're dead to me, I don't care about you anymore. We've moved on and now your business is done.

Rob Greenlee:
You're a traitor to YouTube now.

Jordan Harbinger:
Yeah, I mean, you just don't know. I know a lot of big YouTubers that don't. Not podcaster people. This is a different. I know a lot of podcaster folks too. They go, I can't take a week off and go home and visit my family for Thanksgiving because the YouTube algorithm will punish me. Right? They won't be featured as much. Even my own YouTube team is like, we got to release two or three things a week.

Jordan Harbinger:
We just gotta. If you do one and it's a massive hit, maybe we'll wait a few extra days. If you do one and it's a stinker, I gotta release another one. If that's a stinker, I gotta release another one. Right? You want to keep the algorithm happy and fed. So what do you do if you take a year off because you got a Netflix deal and you come back and then what? You gotta really massage that algorithm again. And there's, there's just no guarantees that you're going to be able to regain that flywheel of momentum. So if, if I can't, if Netflix came in and offered me 110, 120% of what I'm making on YouTube, I just, I don't know if I would take that deal.

Jordan Harbinger:
What other. What else are you promising me? Because I'm basically shooting my business momentum in the foot and reloading and doing it again by taking that deal just to make a couple of extra bucks. Not worth it.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mentioned Dan Granger from Oxford Road. I like this dude. He really respects independent podcasters. And I listened to a show, the Media Roundtable, to keep up on what's going on with advertising. I also listen to sounds profitable for things like that. But he had the. I mentioned her before the Tala.

Dave Jackson:
I always mess up her name. Hala taha. And really two brothers that make up 2/3 of the Midas Touch podcast. And Both those or all those people are independent. They now they've actually started their own network, but they're not owned by Amazon or any other big groups. And here's what they said about being independent.

Hala Taha:
I think I'll always make more money being independent because I.

Dan Granger:
So you're.

Dan Granger:
You're in it for life?

Hala Taha:
Yeah, I'm going to be. I've. I mean, one day it might be old and profiting, but, yeah, I'm going to be podcasting, I think, till I retire.

Dave Jackson:
And that's because her network is called Young and Profiting, so hence the joke.

Brett and Jordy Meiselas:
Yeah, you know, I think we definitely couldn't get to where we were without the independence. There would be way too much in the way. And I think, you know, what a lot of people often forget about kind of our origin story is in the beginning, we were just. People would invite us to be guests on their podcast because of the videos we would do on social media. And then some folks from Sirius XM had hit us up at the time, I'm talking this is back like 2020. And they said, do you want to show on our Sirius XM progress station? And we did it. We got paid a $0. My wife thought I was nuts.

Brett and Jordy Meiselas:
I asked her, do you think you could support us for a little bit? She reluctantly said, I guess. And the issue with that is we had zero idea about anything that was going on. The numbers were opaque. We had no idea if one person was listening to us or a billion people were listening to us. We had no sense of money or economics or anything. And so when we did that for a few months, Sirius had spoke and they were great. I'm not saying anything bad about them at all, but they wanted us to continue with them. And at that point we realized we're not going to be able to do this if we don't have a feel for what the audience is thinking, what the numbers are, how this all works.

Brett and Jordy Meiselas:
We need to do it ourselves or this isn't going to work. And so we all took it in house, and that was the best decision, you know, we ever made. I don't. I don't think we would ever, you know, be part of, like, you know, a podcast network or something, because we are the podcast network.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I totally understand what they're talking about because on one hand I went with a publisher, and I know that I had many people send me pictures of my book in, like, FedEx stores and other places that I couldn't have gotten it in. But if somebody asked you know, put a gun to my head and said, dave, how many books have you sold? I can't tell you. I can't tell you when my next check is coming for royalties. And I got paid up front. That's true. But I kind of like knowing those numbers. And I think if I ever write another book and I'm thinking about it, that it's not going to be through a publisher.

Dave Jackson:
But, Dave, without a big network of something or the algorithm, how am I going to grow my show? And there was a conversation. I'm not a big fan of super poppy music, but I can totally respect when I see insane musical talent. And I saw Charlie Puth, who's kind of a pop singer and. And he was on a channel on YouTube by a guy named Rick Beato, who is another huge. Just insane music knowledge. And those two got together and nerded out. And I want to play this clip from Charlie where Rick asked him, like, how do you. How do you get a hit song today? Because it's not like it was in the past.

Charlie Pruth:
Oh, I have. I do what I want now. There's no rules now. They said, do you want to come here? And I was like, absolutely, I want to come here.

Rick Beato:
But how do you do? Like, what is a strategy? Like, how do records get broken now? I mean, there's certainly no.

Charlie Pruth:
There's no more button you can just push because there's no more gatekeepers anymore. The audience decides if it's going to be a song that resonates with millions of people or hundreds and thousands of people.

Dave Jackson:
Is that good or bad?

Charlie Pruth:
I think it's great.

Dave Jackson:
So we can blame all the big networks and stuff, but in the end, I wish they hadn't kind of talked over each other. Who decides if your podcast is a hit? The audience decides one more time.

Charlie Pruth:
The audience decides it.

Dave Jackson:
And so Rick had asked, is that good or bad?

Charlie Pruth:
I think it's great. I love makes us all work a lot harder. And I would rather have a song that did pretty good and 10,000 people are showing up to Madison Square Garden versus having a number one song. And everyone knows the song, but people might not be familiar with who's singing it.

Dave Jackson:
Hence the theme kind of part of this show is, would you rather have a smaller audience that really connected with you, or would you rather have a ginormous audience who maybe might remember your name?

Charlie Pruth:
I've had that happen before.

Charlie Pruth:
And people like, I didn't know that was you.

Charlie Pruth:
No, I mean, I'm on. I'm about to go on my best selling tour that I've ever gone on and we don't have a number one song yet. Maybe we will, but that's not like needed. It's, it's connection with your, your core fan base. Now like I, I care more about that. Of course, who's gonna want to hit we'll have those. I've, I've had plenty of those. I want to make, I want, I set out to make this album to learn more about my, myself and have my fans know more about me because I've never really let them in to this extent before.

Dave Jackson:
And this is something I've been preaching since I came on the scene. Do something to connect with your audience. At PodPage, we're now doing monthly meetups to in many cases just hang with our audience and build that relationship and get that connection and find out what they want and then give it to them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're a regular listener to the show. You know, I hate this statist, but that is that when you go to monetize, about 3% of your audience is going to take action. And I've got not one but two examples of that. So if you ever wonder why I say around 3%, this is why.

Dave Jackson:
We're going to go back to Dan Granger and the Media Roundtable and his discussion with Hala Taha and here's her answer.

Hala Taha:
So the first two years I made $0, but by the third year we started really monetizing the show and then it's just been kind of growing super fast ever since then.

Dave Jackson:
And then I was listening to Sounds Profitable and they were talking about Goal Hanger and I've not yet listened to a Goal Hanger show. But all I know is every time I hear about any award show, Goal Hanger is taking home a couple. And here's that stat again from Sounds Profitable. Talking about Goal Hanger and their premium membership. UK podcast production company Goal Hanger announced this January that it has reached 250,000

Gavin Gaddis:
subscribers across its network, generating an estimated

Gavin Gaddis:
subscription subscription revenue of 15 million pounds per year. Memberships are live for eight of the

Gavin Gaddis:
14 shows, with the average subscriber paying

Gavin Gaddis:
60 pounds split between monthly and annual payments. That's about $80 US granting access to ad, free listening, early access to shows and bonus content. Despite the rise of paying subscribers, advertising remains the business's biggest revenue stream. The majority of listeners consume content for

Gavin Gaddis:
free, with only 1 to 2% of

Dave Jackson:
each show's audience converting to paid membership. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you ever see me on Spotify and somebody asks about Media Host, I always kind of have almost a hashtag, anybody but Spotify. I'll give you an example. I work for PodPage and we can't import your transcripts from Spotify because they're a walled garden and they keep everything in Spotify, but they also majorly exaggerate headlines and. And apparently I'm not the only one that noticed because they just rolled out some sort of carousel ads. And here's what James Gridland, hall of Fame podcaster from podnews.net this is from pod News Weekly with James and Sam Sethi. And here's what James had to say about Spotify and their announcements.

James Cridland:
It's a new feature rolling out soon in beta to eligible markets in Spotify Ads Manager. I should say whenever Spotify say rolling out soon in beta, then this is. This essentially means that Spotify will never actually launch this. We're still waiting for Spotify to do transcripts properly for a start, let alone half of the other things that Spotify rolling out in beta. But. But yeah, I think it's interesting, I think it's probably telling that the Spotify team haven't PR'd this to me because I think that that probably tells you that this may just be a music thing rather than a podcasting thing.

Dave Jackson:
So again, Walled Garden not reaching out to the number one source for podcast news, James Kridlin. That's kind of stupid. And so if you ever wonder that's I'm not the only person thinking that. The other thing, since we brought up transcripts, if your podcast is on a media host that doesn't supply them or you're not using them now, PodPage will have transcripts. I'll put a link to that press release. But that is something that PodPage is now doing it. If you're not familiar with PodPage, we build websites for podcasters that don't want to learn how to code. And I'm the head of podcasting there.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I always feel weird when I say this, but I'm just going to read this. This is from Reddit. So again, we're talking about setting podcast expectations. And so this person says, I recorded my first show where I read non political news stories in under 10 minutes. I chose a shorter podcast because I don't want to bore people by talking forever, especially since I'm starting solo. Well, the very easy way to not bore people is, I don't know, don't be boring. Right? Right, Glenn, don't be boring.

Dave Jackson:
Thank you, Glenn. And he said, I figured less words is better because then you don't run out of things to talk about as fast. Or you could do prep. The first episode is three minutes, but will be cut to do. My question is, let's just get to that. When would be a good time to implement ads into my podcast to become monetized? He the first set. I just recorded my first show. And so if you're only doing two minutes, it's hard to monetize that because if you do a one minute ad, your podcast is 50% ads.

Dave Jackson:
And it's not that you shouldn't think about monetization. I feel, in my opinion that focusing on monetization when you just finished your first episode might lead to you being someone who hangs it up early. Why? Because when you first start out, you're still finding your voice. I would bet the farm that this person did not get any feedback before launching his podcast. I don't know why people don't do that, but they don't. And so you're trying to grow something that is meh, okay. And then when you see your downloads and they're not as high as you had hoped, and then on top of it, you go, and I'm spending all this time and I'm not making money, that's a problem. And it leads you to quit.

Dave Jackson:
So that's why I'm worried about people that try to make money. From day one on an episode with no audience, I'm just worried. Again, I don't want you to melt your jacket. I want you to go in with an attitude of having fun. Which leads me to this clip from my fellow Akron, Ohio neighbor. Yeah, I wish, I wish I lived in his neighborhood. You may have heard of him, LeBron James. And somebody asked at the beginning of the game, before the game started, he was out having fun with his teammates.

Dave Jackson:
He was dancing and things like that. And this is what LeBron James said about that. Where did that joy come from tonight? That's always me. I don't, I don't know. I mean, it's always. I'm a goofy ass 41 year old kid. I mean, that's. I think people should know that by now, right? I think that's.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah, that's just me. I'm. I'm just a goofy. I just, I get to play basketball like they pay me to play basketball. Like, why wouldn't I be happy about that? I get to be with my son and my teammates and people, all these unbelievable fans. They've watched me throughout my career. And they give me all the support and love, and it's like. Like, I enjoyed.

Dave Jackson:
I enjoyed my. I don't. Is it work? It's not even. I enjoy. I enjoy when I do. So have fun. You see. See me on the court.

Dave Jackson:
See me in the back. I just. I just love what I do, so it's pretty cool. Yeah. And, you know, I'm a billionaire. That helps. I would want to dance a little bit if I was a billionaire. But he is a guy that loves the game of basketball.

Dave Jackson:
Circling back to Charlie Puth and Rick Beato. Charlie Puth loves music, and he would talk about music for free because he loves music. And so he was doing this interview. And I'll try to pump up the volume here, but you hear probably Charlie's manager or Rick's manager go, hey, you only got 10 minutes left. And listen to how Charlie talks about this interview. Yeah, Okay.

Charlie Pruth:
I am really enjoying this. This is the.

Rick Beato:
Charlie, you're awesome, man.

Charlie Pruth:
You're awesome.

Dave Jackson:
This is great. You know, I like that you go with anything.

Charlie Pruth:
I go with it because it's just. It's not really even about me. It's just about the. It's about music. It's about chords.

Rick Beato:
It is.

Charlie Pruth:
Makes me so happy.

Dave Jackson:
And I better cut that off before Spotify kicks me off for playing three notes of a Charlie Puth song. But it was interesting. They both just lit up and Charlie kept throwing in those jazz chords, and it was obvious he loves what he does. And I am here to tell you, it shows. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every Friday, I do group coaching. We jokingly call it Lunch with Dave because it's at noon. And we were talking about how to engage our audience, how do we get them to interact with us.

Dave Jackson:
And it's not something that's easy to do. But I also shared how there are many times you're reaching people and you never hear from them. If you listen to the episode with Jana Marie from Big Lash Energy, she said at the end, hey, I gotta thank you, because I'm one of those people that listened to your show for years and never wrote in to say thank you. And so when I heard Lisa Kudrow, better known as Phoebe from Friends, she was talking about this on how she didn't realize if she was reaching anybody when she was on that show. After 9 11, I understood how important entertainment really is and how important comedies are and how important Friends was to people because we do need that escape. I would drive home from the set, you know, from Friends, and, you know, people, you're At a stoplight and the car next to you, someone would look over and go, ah. After 9, 11, it still gets me a little emotional, I have to say. Someone would look over and just go, thank you.

Dave Jackson:
Like, about to cry and just say thank you. And I fully understood what they meant. And that's when I think I really took it in, you know, what these shows do mean to us. And so we're going to talk about the power of entertainment right after this. The school of podcasting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The school of podcasting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jackson:
So I do a number of podcasts, and I'm also involved with my church. And as I record this, Easter is Tomorrow, that's kind of the super bowl for Christianity. And every night I was making content for either church or my podcast. It was. Everything was outbound. It's a new episode, it's a new sermon, it's a new this, it's a new that. I gotta learn some music. Whatever it is.

Dave Jackson:
Everything was going outbound. And this is something I think you learn over time. I don't know if I can teach you this, but you have to pay attention to your stress level. And this is something I've learned from being in support. There are days when people will push your buttons, and for me, I know when somebody's pushing my button, and that's when I grab my guitar that's sitting right next to me. I play some jazz chords, and I'm like, ah. Because I don't want to let people get to me. They're frustrated.

Dave Jackson:
There's no sense in me getting frustrated with the fact that they're frustrated. And so I was getting a little crispy, and I just said, I need to have somebody entertain me instead of me entertaining them or educating or whatever I'm doing. And so this sounds weird because I'm going to kind of do a movie review, but here's the thing. We talk a lot about word of mouth. And the movie I saw was Project Hail Mary. And if you've seen that movie, you probably just went, oh, great movie. You know why? Because, oh, great movie. And I wanted to point out a couple things here.

Dave Jackson:
Number one, why did I go see it? Because I had three people say, hey, I went and saw this movie. And oh, man, great movie. And so when my brain was like, dave, you should probably take a break tonight, I was like, oh, I know what I could do. So there was that and then the kind of picking it apart without any spoiler alerts, because I always watch things through two lenses. One, I like to look through it through the human lens of being a human being. And I'm sad that the local movie theater that's closest to me has closed. I've talked about that in the past, how it was really bad movies and really bad just service and a bad experience. Why they showed 20 minutes of ads before the movie.

Dave Jackson:
And now when I go about 10 minutes further north, it's. We're all kind of crammed into a theater, so there was actually people in the theater. I have seen many movies where I was the only person in the theater, which was sad. And this movie had great storytelling. So, number one, stakes. What happens if this doesn't happen in your story and in this case? And again, this is not a spoiler alert. It's the plot of the movie. If the people in the movie don't achieve their accomplishment, everyone dies.

Dave Jackson:
So no pressure, right? Just, if you don't do it, we're all going to die. So there are stakes and that can help your story. What happens if I don't do this? Well, then blah, blah, blah happens and we don't. Here's why you should care. And then the other thing is. Whatever you want to call it, tension and release. This is something that when Your movie is 2 hours and 15 minutes long, you probably need a little tension and release. So you've got your stakes.

Dave Jackson:
Oh, my gosh. What's going to happen if this doesn't happen? And then the tension is. Oh, it's close. Are they going to make it? I don't. Are they going to make it under the door as it's closing? Oh, my gosh. They did. Ah. And then it's like, okay, now we're outside the door.

Dave Jackson:
What are we gonna do? Oh, no, here comes some more tension. And are we going to. Oh, my gosh. Tension and release. It's a great thing of storytelling. And if you want to go see a movie, I would highly recommend that the other thing. Now, I always look through the lens of a storyteller, which often ruins movies for me, because I go, oh, you know how at the beginning that movie, that guy was walking out to his car because he just got fired? I already know by the end of the movie, he's gonna own the company. That's just the way it is.

Dave Jackson:
But there was something else that happened at this movie, and it made sense about 10 minutes after this happened. But I always go early so I can see the trailers and things like that, and. Which is always kind of weird because then I end up eating all my popcorn before the movie has even started. But they had a commercial that was. Worked really well. And it said, look, this movie is based on a really popular book and you can get that popular book on Audible. And it was such a. And that's again, pay attention to when you have a commercial that makes you want to go buy something.

Dave Jackson:
Go, why did that make me want to buy it? And what it was is, he said, after you watch this movie, if you want to go deeper into the story, you can get the full, you know, unabridged audiobook on Audible. Also link in the show notes. I have an affiliate program with them. And it got to the point where there were more previews and such after that. And I actually opened my Audible app. I was like, you know what? I, I might do this, but I didn't know if the movie was any good. So I didn't. And after the movie I actually considered it.

Dave Jackson:
And I'm really kind of picky when it comes to audiobooks. I spend my credits like very, I'm very picky about that, which is why I have six credits probably right now. But the other thing was that I finally put two and two together at the beginning of the movie. It shows that this movie, like the, whatever the production, the studio, whatever you would call it, was Amazon. This was an Amazon movie. Who, I don't know if you've ever heard of Amazon. They really like to sell books along with a bunch of other stuff. And they owned Audible.

Dave Jackson:
And I was like, that was a really. It almost worked because most people will not change from one platform to another. So getting back to setting expectations, yes, you can post on Facebook and Threads and X and any Instagram, wherever you want to, but mostly people will not leave that platform because, doggone it, I'm doom scrolling right now. Don't send me your podcast about sex trafficking in Ubakistan. I know, I'm. I'm busy doom scrolling. And so most of the time that doesn't work. But here I was very close to switching platforms from a movie to an audiobook because of a well timed, well placed commercial.

Dave Jackson:
And so what we've done at the school of podcasting is what was the pitch there? If you'd like to go deeper? So if you're trying to get people on your email list, you could say, hey, today we talked about topic A. If you'd like to go deeper into this topic, I have a handy cheat sheet. I have something of that nature. And there will be those people that do want to go deeper. For the record, all of my lead Magnets now are in the free version of the School of Podcasting. So the podcast checklist, all those things, those are now in the free version of the School of Podcasting. So when you sign up, you can go to the resource section. So if you want to go deeper, he said, doing his own call to action, sign up for the free version.

Dave Jackson:
But that is something. It's a strategy that I was like, hmm, because it almost worked for me. And if I wasn't an avid listener of a podcast where when I listen to an audiobook, when I get done, because it takes me two or three days to get through a book, I look up and I've got 37 episodes waiting for me to listen to in podcasts. So maybe I just need to listen faster or something like that. But it was just a strategy that I wanted to pass along. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All the things I talked about today, if you want to go check out the interviews and stuff, those are going to be@schoolofpodcasting.com 1,030. And something else you might want to go to is Pod News is doing their report card, where these are things where they.

Dave Jackson:
You basically get to rate Apple and Amazon and YouTube and Spotify and all that fun stuff. And James needs your input on this report card by April 30, and then they're going to share it at the pod show in London, which is in May, and I need to figure out how to get there. That's all there is to that. Anybody have tips on how to do that on the cheap, let me know. But that is something I definitely want to go to now. And it's something that together as podcasters, we've given feedback to James and he's given that to companies. And for example, it used to be a little more steps needed to get your show into Apple. That's not the case anymore.

Dave Jackson:
There are other changes because we give feedback to James. James organizes it and feeds it to these companies. So if you get a chance, go to podnews.netreport card. I'll have a link in the show notes again out@schoolofpodcasting.com 1,030. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, quick update. I started off whatever it was the second I got this in my inbox. Dear.

Dave Jackson:
No name, just dear. I specialize in creating content around and then in brackets, your niche. And I'd like to contribute a guest post to in brackets podpage. I have a topic that would fit well with your audience. Of course, they're not going to say what that is happy to share more details if you're interested. Best regards, comma and then in brackets yahoo as in yahu. If you get things like this, go over to pitchapodcast.com I will actually. Let's play the theme song.

Dave Jackson:
This is getting ready to launch and I'm going to be doing something new. I've never done seasons before. I technically don't believe in seasons, but on the other hand, I don't have any of my own data to back up why I don't like seasons. I think you lose some of your audience and I'm out to prove it. So it's super simple. Leave your story and explain why it's not a good fit for your show and then also explain who would be your perfect type of guest because you never know, they might be listening. And here's a quick sample of the intro music and what happens is the music start and I would announce who's on. This week it's Ken Newlove.

How to Pitch a Podcast how to pitch a podcast is where bad pitches get called out and better ones get made. Real examples, real feedback and smarter ways to get booked. Pitchapodcast.com how to pitch a Podcast There we go. So again I'm gonna be going over to podcastbranding Co and ordering some artwork from my buddy Mark and then we'll be just about ready to go. So if you got a story, pitch a podcast.com story and get some exposure for your show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Couple quick updates from PodPage. If you are not using PodPage voicemail, it's built in.

Dave Jackson:
You just go to your like if you want to leave me voicemail, go to schoolofpodcasting.com voicemail and that gives you two minutes to leave me a message. And now as of April 2, that is now going to be transcribed, which will make it much easier to leave in your show notes. And then also we've added where before it always showed the time of your media host and I think it actually got filtered through Pacific time or whatever. Long story short, your time zone, you can now set your time zone and your time zone will be displayed on your website. So we got more things coming from PodPage, but thanks so much for tuning in. If you need help with your podcast, whether it's planning, launching, growing, monetizing, you get one on one consulting with myself. You get group coaching, you get live events, you get replays. You get an amazing community with tons of forms.

Dave Jackson:
It's all there, everything you need. Schoolofpodcasting.com start and don't forget, that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. I'm Dave Jackson. I help podcasters. It's what I do. Can't wait to see what we're gonna do together. And until next week, take care. God bless.

Dave Jackson:
Class is dismissed. If you like the show, please share it with a friend. If you like the show, pretty, pretty please share it with a friend. Right? And it's the super bowl of Christianity, and we had a revival the week before. Man, I gotta shorten this up. Holy cow. They don't need this much detail. Is her name.

Dave Jackson:
And she said my favorite phrase. My favorite phrase. My savorite one. Yep, it's my savorite, yeah.