SMS and Podcasting: A Match for Audience Engagement?

0:00 Ask the podcast coach for April 13, 2024. There it is. It's that music that means it is Saturday morning. It is time for ask the podcast coach where you get your podcast questions answered live. I'm Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting.com, and joining me right over there is the one and only Jim Jim Collison from the average guy dot tv. Jim, how's it going, buddy? Greetings, Dave. Happy Saturday morning to you. Always good to be back on a beautiful Saturday morning on Ask the Podcast Code. It is a beautiful day. It's, we got the old, hey, it's spring. We're just kidding. We were still doing that in Ohio. And I'm like, really?

0:42 False all spring. Do not be, yeah, do not be fooled by false. Like, what the heck? But, good morning to everyone in the chat room. So, I'm glad to see everybody is here, which means, if we're gonna take kick into stuff, we're just gonna jump in. It's time to get you some coffee, my friend. Let's do it. Alright. And of course, that coffee is brought to you by our good friend, Mark, over at podcastbranding.co. Here's the thing when you think about it. If, you wanna get some let's say you're gonna do Fiverr. Right? Well, here's the thing. You have to tell the guy at Fiverr what kind of artwork to make, and there's only one problem with that. You're not a graphic artist. So the you you end up getting your idea, which is kinda good, but kinda not. Because, again, you're not a graphic artist. And so when you go to Mark and you tell him about your show, right, and you can meet with him 1 on 1, then the graphic artist comes up with the idea and the brand that matches your show. Because if you were a graphic artist, you'd be designing your own artwork. Let Mark do that part for you.

1:50 And the other thing is, he does so much more than artwork. Anything, again, lead magnets. If you need a whole website, if you need a PDF, if you need a logo, everything is in one place. Podcastbranding.co. Pick his brain, not yours. Let him do it for you. And, of course, big thanks to our good friend a good friend? He's our friend. I like Dan. He's my friend. Friend. Good friend, Dan LeFebvre, over there based on a true story, based on a true story podcast.com.

2:32 This week, they're looking at Lincoln, Apollo 13, which is a great movie. I can that's a movie I can come into at any point in the, you know, one of those that you find where you're like, Yeah, half of it's over. I'm gonna watch the rest of it. So Apollo 13, and then the conspirator available now. If you need something to listen to this week, try something new based on a true story podcast.com. Dan, thanks for your sponsorship. And the the beauty of Apollo 13, of course, is you got Tom Hanks as an actor, and you've got, Ron Howard as a director. And that's that's a pretty winning combination right there. It's got Kevin Bacon. How can it, like Right. How how can you go wrong with Tom Hanks and Kevin Bacon? Like, those are and what's his name? The, Lieutenant Dan is in there too. I always forget.

3:22 That's, that's what he calls him. Lieutenant Dan in another movie, right? But, but, it's a, yeah, it's a good, it's a good one. It is a good, and they, I think they tried to Dan would know, but I think they tried to stay as close to the, to the story as possible on that movie. So it was a good one. It was a good one. Well, I, last night, I was like, you know what? I really I have started my taxes, but I have not finished it. Oh, my. Oh, my God. Yeah. Tax. Yeah. And I have a lot of things on my plate today. So I know what I'm doing Sunday, but Sunday is usually podcast day. But I swear my brain did this on purpose. Because I heard I interviewed Alban from Buzzsprout.

4:07 Right? And I thought this will be fun. I'll interview, more or less, my competition at Libsyn, but I've always said the school of podcasting is Switzerland. I tried to I really am friends with everybody. I know Alvin. I know Jordan over there. I know Tom and Kevin and the whole crew. I know, you know, Todd at Buzzsprout. I know Mark at Captivate. And I wanted to interview because Buzzsprout came out with some stuff. Todd's come out with a ton of stuff, and I'm like and one of the things that really I thought back to the early days, the early days of podcasting, where Adam Curry had a show called The Daily Source Code. And he would talk about everything in podcasting. And then Adam launched a podcast company called Podshow, which later turned into Mevio, which later burned through $36,000,000 and went out of business. Hence, when when Adam says you can't monetize the network, he knows of what he speaks.

4:58 But when Adam started his own show, his own network, he quit talking about all things podcasting. And I'm like, I don't wanna fall into that trap. So I am interviewing Alban. And one of the things they're doing at Buzzsprout in this it's a long way to get to the topic is they started using text messaging to interact with their audience. Mhmm. And so on one hand, being that we're all listening on one of these little devices called a phone, that seems to make sense. But how much do you think it costs to have a service where you can say, hey, send us a message. Just text your thoughts to, you know, blah blah, some 7 digit number. It's not free.

5:43 I know that. I haven't I haven't priced one of those in a while. I know it's weird to think. I mean, text messaging has been around the longest of all of these protocols. And you'd think, ah, that there's probably, but I think it does. How much is it? I don't know. Did you price it? Yeah. I looked at Textly, Slick Text, Project Broadcast, Easy Texting, Text p2p, Simple Texting, Norby, which sounds some like, some sort of Disney character. You know what I mean? Remember he had the guy yeah. And his little his little side, you know, person would come along, little Norby, TextMagic, forever fan, which was made for musicians, because that's what I started doing. I'm like, who else would be using this? I'm like, SMS for authors, SMS for musicians, click send, and text signal, anywhere I'm gonna the one for musicians was was $11, but it was only one way. Like, you could blast basically people saying, hey. We're gonna be in, you know, Detroit. And so it was anywhere from 21 to $39 a month.

6:46 And I was like, that's actually more than most email, you know, host things. And so I then went down the rabbit hole. So there's my spreadsheet as I was doing this. I found this on AppSumo, easy text marketing. It's an agency platform. So if I wanted to sell my own, you know, texting service, I could. And I basically, the guy's like, hey. Everybody's getting confused on this stuff. You just need to watch these tutorials. Because you basically all it is, it's a front end to, a back end of this thing, either called Twilio, or you can use I think I went with another service that was even cheaper. But I was laughing because, you know, as the saying goes, more gear, more problems.

7:34 So I have yet to really set this up, but it turns out, and this is kind of a good thing, that if you are, going to be sending text messages to people, the company you're using to actually, you know, use the technology behind the scenes, the technology kinda wants to know who you are. And so, I had to go through this whole thing, which made me a little nervous. I I hate when you have to do this. You have to give them a picture of your driver's license. And I was like, this makes me nervous, but I really so it was quite the rabbit hole of this. So I'm trying it. I'm gonna see, and this is where you always have to figure out, like, is it worth like, the amount of time it's gonna take this to actually work and cross the t and then verify that and get your number and do the thing and the hokey pokey, turn yourself around. Is it probably in the end, am I gonna go, I should have just spent the $23 a month. And so what are your thoughts at all? Just do you think this is something because on one hand, it seems like a no brainer. Hey. This should. I tried this, by the way, about 5 years ago. I used Slick Text, and I was just getting nothing. And all I was doing was saying, like, text yada yada yada to this number, and it would auto text then and say, hey. Thanks so much for doing this. Here's a link if you're on Android to follow. Here's a link on iOS if you wanna follow over here. So I was using it to build subscribers, and I'm gonna say, maybe 11 people, you know, did

9:06 it, and I was paying, like, $30 a month. And I was like, yeah, this is not but that again was pre pandemic. Like, that was a while ago. Whenever it's like, hey. This is gonna be the new thing. Do you yeah. Uncle Marv is saying $23 a month or $23 an hour. No. It was it was a month. And for 500 messages, that was the other one, that when you get into the $40 a month, that's the 1,000 a 1,000 messages a month. So, and I was like, And I was just, the whole time, I'm like, is this even a good idea? Well, I have noticed an uptick in SMS advertising now. So when you sign up for people's newsletters, like Solo Stove, you know, the, the, you know, Solo, they were the first that I saw that really started to, to do heavy, full scale SMS based marketing. I'm not saying they were the first it was just the first one I noticed. And then in the last, and I think it's been a year or 2 I've had them, I've subscribed to them, but I've noticed more and more of these services that I'm signing up for BarrelTap is another one they send me, you know, whiskey recommendations and things like that where, where SMS is an option when you sign up for their newsletter. And it's annoying.

10:30 Like, I mean, it's the, I get a lot. And my text messaging went from almost none to dozens a day signing up for these services. And you can stop them and block them and all the stuff that you do in email. But I have noticed, so it must be working if they're using it. I don't SMS has been around forever. I mean, the backbone of pagers was SMS. So even before cell phones. So we, I think if your audience, if you've got a way to do it, if you've I mean, I think there's some who probably even prefer that to a newsletter, to be honest, to get short SMS reminders. They don't like it. They'll just block you, I imagine.

11:14 But Yeah. Because I I thought, like, for those picked up. Yeah. Just to, you know, hey, new episode. As much as I hate saying on social media saying, hey, a new episode is out, That might be use of that, you know. Well, it's like it's like anything. Like, so, you know, you you you say you purchase one of these services text to them. The chances of any of them doing anything based on your text, I mean, it's still a very small percentage. I don't, I rarely Solo Stove has been sending me texts for 2 years. I still haven't bought one of those things yet. Well, here's the here's the question. Do you open the text though?

11:57 Sometimes. Yeah. Because that was look. Yeah. It as I went to all these different things, they all have the same, like, stats. Like, 95% of texts are opened where, you know, 38% of emails are open and, you know, x amount, and they track they you can track the click and all sorts of fun stuff you can do. It's basically email on your phone. Okay. Okay. But let you just said, you made a key point. It's basically email. So here's gonna be the problem. Sounds cool today. Like, Oh, let's go back to SMS. Why? Because most people had abandoned SMS. Like, seriously, we all moved to Messenger, or we all moved to LinkedIn Messenger, or we all moved to Discord or we Slack. We got our own things, right? For a while, SMS was abandoned from, from marketing and some of those kinds of things.

12:48 Well, I mean, email worked too for a while, but then everybody figured out you could spam to it. What's gonna happen to SMS? Because you know, this is why we can't have nice things, Jake Jackson. Marketers ruin everything. They ruin everything. And you just kind of wonder, like, what's gonna happen when that gets to be, all of a sudden, you know, people figure things out, and they start spamming you? And then when you're, when you're getting 100 texts a day, are you gonna pay attention to them? So I think we could be in that same boat where this thing really does go. I mean, it works now, because we're still, maybe for some people, we're still on the edge of not getting a lot of notifications that way. Yeah. I have, had a few like, I don't know where I but, Jeff mentioned that a lot of places when you sign up for an email now or a webinar, you have to give them a phone number. And I'm always like, why? But somehow, I had my I always use my, whatever you call it, g it's not Gmail, Google Voice. I use that number because I can receive texts on that. And but I've had already a couple political stuff where it's like, we have to move now. They're taking the country, blah blah blah. Support so and I'm like, I already know. And that's a funny thing. They're tie I don't even know what the candidate is. Like, it's not like Biden or Trump or it's just like, you need to do this now. The world is going to end. And I'm like, so in to their credit, if you text stop, they stop. But I had,

14:21 like, 3, and the I remember there was one I text stop, and the other 2 I didn't, and it was like 2 days later, it's like, the world is still coming to an end. You have to donate. And I was like, and stop to you. So I don't know how they got my my number, but I was like, oh, here we go again. It it does seem like stop in SMS works better than Unsubscribe and email. I unsubscribe to dozens of things that still continue, you know, to keep coming. Both the Democrats and the Republicans send me email on a regular basis. I'm like, Stop, stop, stop. And they just don't seem to want to stop. So I'm not sure those, the, it seems like maybe the mechanisms on SMS are better for that than they are in email. It is, I mean, we have a neighborhood, you know, there's a neighborhood app, right? You can go to that app and get everybody in the neighborhood. But I got a bunch of old guys in my neighborhood who we get together on a regular I mean, I'm the youngest, so if that tells you anything about how old the neighborhood is, but they all, they've all figured out SMS. And that's how we, we communicate with each other in the neighborhood.

15:29 We've just got a group text feature that we use. I imagine in podcasting that could work well, if, for some the key, Dave, is this, I think, in podcasting: It's never about one channel. You have to have a newsletter. You've got to have if you're gonna go SMS, you got to have that. You got to have the ability to come for people to connect with you on Facebook. You should be available on LinkedIn in some kind of way. You should have some kind of presence on the other social sites, if you want to. I think sometimes we think, I just, as a podcaster, I just want one thing to check: Sorry. I mean, you can, you can limit it to 1. You're gonna, you're gonna exclude part of your audience if you don't.

16:10 We continue it's funny in business, we think sometimes we, the process, we need to make the process easy for us. And oftentimes, that makes it difficult for the customer. And difficult, right? Right? Difficult equals disappearing. That's just the way it works. If it's difficult, they're gonna disappear. You have to make it easy for your customer, regardless of how hard it is for you. It that doesn't mean it has to be hard for you. It's just sometimes, you need to carry the load for your customer. So, so it's just we Oh, I don't want 15 things to check. Well, okay, that's okay. But guess what? Your audit you might be missing people that could have been part of your audience. Yeah. Here's what the chat room has to, to say on that. Goo Randy Black, Google Voice would be an easy choice for this, and I know I can send texts on that. I don't know about I guess if you had people in your contacts, you could send I don't know about sending group text, but, he says, he'd been using it for years as a means to contact parents in my role working in IT for school districts to keep my own number secret. Yeah. That's the biggest reason I have a Google number. There's there are those people, like, I need to be on the phone with you, and I'm like, I'm not giving you my number.

17:26 So, coach Dave said I tried YepText several years ago. So that's one I never heard of. Target market was, b to c parents, put it on banners, marched in parades, and he got very little response on that. Rich says, Rich Graham, our v our voice over IP service has a SMS built in, and I turned it off because of spam. Yeah. Where, coach Dave says I stood in front of 800 people and put up a Google number on the screen during my presentation, got hundreds of replies and subscribers to one speech. So that would be I think that would just be scary to give out my phone number. But on the other hand, if it's a way to block it, why not? And keep in mind, unsolicited text from political candidates and groups. Yeah. That's an FCC violation. And last but not least, Jim, you just need to talk to Jeff because he says, I love my solo stove. Oh, yeah. It's totally worth it. He says, this episode was brought to you by.

18:30 I I influenced on Home gadget geeks. I influenced quite a few guys to pick up a solo stove, and I never did. I still might. I don't know. I'm kinda torn between them. There's a there's a couple other options. So This is the one I could not remember. Thank you, Jeff. He said I used community SMS for a couple years. Didn't move the needle much, but that was pre COVID too because I knew there was one, and I think that's it. That might have even been free. Like, it was made for schools, and I'm like, well, I'm a school in quotation marks. And I just remember the whole time thinking, this can't be right because if I remember right, that's the one that was free. And I and my worry is, especially with phone numbers, you know, the old saying, if it's free, well, then you're the you're the product. And I was like, I yeah. I don't want my audience being, you know, spammed because they signed up for my SMS tools.

19:20 So I don't know. I will let you know how it because in theory, it should be it's like literally a half of a half of a cent to send a a text message. And then did you do you know what, not SMS, but MMS is? I did not. MMS is I probably do, but It's multimedia. So now I can send pictures, and I could send a voice mail, I guess. And I was like, alright. Well, we'll see. But, that was, I I again, I was just laughing because about 15 it's funny because I look at that, and I've done all this research, and I'm like, well, they say all you need to do is set up Twilio or I forget the other one that I actually went with, and then you just copy and paste and copy and paste. You do your number, and you register your number, and you're good to go. And I was, like, excellent. And I got through about 2 steps of those, and that's when you they're, like, oh, before we give you a number, we have to make sure who you are. And I was like, I am in the rabbit hole, and then I started, you know, just going down the the the total even deeper and the whole time going, I should be doing my taxes. So that was fun.

20:34 Jeff says community m SMS is the one Gary v uses. So which also makes me wonder, this is what I always love about Gary v stuff. How much of that company does he own? Because I have I forget there was I think he I think at one point, he owned part of community not community. The other thing that was gonna kill podcasting. Oh, crap. It was that thing, Clubhouse. It it's like a I remember when he was all about clubhouse, and then I think it came out that he had a chunk of that, and I was like, oh, there we go. That's always fun. Well well, speaking of owning chunks, let's do this, Jeff. Jeff. Jim. Different different than blowing chunks? Is that Yes.

21:17 Definitely. Okay. Oh, good. Okay. Alright. Just So here we go. We're gonna do, what is this website about? And, Jim, you get to figure it out. So here it is. Oh, awesome. It is, it's called Flight Story, and there it is. And if you're like me, you're like, oh, I know that guy, And you kinda look at it right now, and it's got all these flashy things. It looks like a gaming site. You've got, you know, interviewing people. You got cartoons. Lots of jump cuts. Any idea what this is, Jim? It looks like a service that takes your brand and gets it everywhere or makes commercials for you, maybe. That is a very good guess. It is a flight story. The fun thing is that I have never heard of this guy. And his name is do I not have this up on the other page? He was he was all look like VR stuff. Is that all VR stuff? Well, it's, first of all, this guy's name, he does diary of a CEO on, YouTube. And so he's going to and I promise I'm not gonna fall down. The YouTube is not a podcast thing. I I promise. But he's going to help you promote your YouTube slash podcast thing. Steven Bartlett. And Steven Bartlett, apparently, is a big deal in the UK because he's on

22:49 the Shark Tank version in the UK. It's called Dragon's Den, and, apparently, he's one of the guys on there, And he is yeah. Chris, Chris Stone is saying, yeah, diary of a CEO. And so, Doctor says, I watched a lot of UK TV. He's on the UK version of Shark Tank. Yeah. So, apparently, he is the Mark Cuban of the UK ish, but I've seen him because he's interviewed really, like you're like, wow. That's like an a list celebrity. I'm like, who is this YouTuber that got Bono to come on a show or whatever, or Lady Gaga, a couple other people? I was like, wow. And he does really good interviews. He is kinda one of those guys that, like, wow. This guy did his research, and he it's just really well researched interviews. And so the fun thing is his whole thing is about taking your podcast to the next level. And so we're all trying to figure out so we go over, and it's all video. And we're like, oh, we're we're back to the the whole okay.

23:51 Really, what he's doing is he's going to take your YouTube channel to the next level, is what it amounts to. And so I'll be interested to see here's here's the, I don't know if this is ready for a power rant, but let me play you a clip of something here. This does drive me nuts in in terms of accountability. So what I'm gonna do is, if you go to weekly.podnews.net, they interviewed some people. So this is James and, Sam Sethi, James Cridlin, and one of the companies is called Media Disco, James Allen, and you're going to hear him. And, Jim, let's see if you can spot the part that drives me nuts. So this is we're just gonna roll the whole intro because he has all their guests introduce themselves. So here we go. It's Friday, 12th April 2024. The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Crittlin and Sam Sethi.

24:52 I'm James Crittlin, the editor of Pod News. And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of Trufans. In the chapters today, Steven Bartlett launches Flight Studio. Acast is the number one publisher globally. And Hi there. It's James Allen here, CEO and cofounder of Media Disco, and I will be here later to talk to you about our new platform, Media Disco, and how it can help mid market advertisers everywhere. Hi. This is Anu Bhardwaj. I'm the founder and CEO of Sheconomy, and I'll be on a little later to talk about how Sheconomy is disrupting the world of women, web 3, and podcasting. Hi. I'm Christiana. Hi. I'm Georgie. And we'll be coming out later. I'd love to better.

25:34 Christiana and Georgie goes, okay. One of these things doesn't belong here. Right? How hard is it to get a good microphone? I was like, what? I'm like, so the guy from media disco, I I am appalled at, like, people that work in the industry. Like, there's a show about it's called the I think it's the media round table, And these are people that work in the advertising space. And James is on that show, and somebody else will be there. And there's always that one person thought it was a Zoom meeting and they're using their build. And I'm like, you work in this space. You know how and again, you don't have to spend $1,000,000. But holy cow, that guy sounded like absolute, you know, cockapoo poo. Get a get a headset, for God's sakes. Like, get a headset. They think and the, the, the more authority they have, they think the farther they need to be away from their microphone.

26:31 I mean, you're like, you do realize that you're trying to I hear this, I hear this, unfortunately, in where I work too is we have people trying to get across points that are very important. And you, they're a 1000 miles away, and you're like, I can't even hear you. When did it, when did it become so unfashionable just to put a headset on? Or You don't have to have a microphone just throw the headset on so the microphone's right there. I just, it's crazy to me for people to think that's below them or above them, depending on how you see that. You're like, I just put a headset on at every, every meeting. I don't care who it is. You shouldn't be, you know, so inconvenienced to have because you sound like garbage.

27:24 And I tell them that all the time. I'm like, Where are you? Like, they'll come on, and I'm like, So where's that mic can you bring that microphone closer to you? And they're like, Oh, I can't even reach it. It's in the other room. Oh, thanks. Not the problem. Do I sound? But nobody ever tells me. I I'm like, No, no, no. You sound awful. Like, I can't, I can barely hear you. And I've, you know, I've got headphones on. So I don't know, you know, it doesn't mean you need to I listen, I've got a studio at work, and I got a microphone, and it intimidates people when I come to regular meetings from the studio, right? They're like, Oh, ho, yeah. So I set up a little side area where it's a headset, just a regular headset, and it's kind of, you can kind of see the side of the studio, right? It's not quite as intimidating, but it's a headset. In, I have a upstairs office that's got a standing desk. It's got a headset. People, put your headsets on. We want to hear you. And I just, again, the higher up you get, it, during the pandemic, I convinced a bunch of our executive team to do it. And then as they, as soon as the pandemic was over, you could see them smashing their headsets like, I'm never gonna wear this again. What's the deal? Just put the thing on. You sound a 1000000 times better with it. I don't know. It messes up my hair. And what's the hair? Pridlin. I still don't know who this James Pridlin guy. Well, here's here's the thing. Let's do this. This is here's if you ever wonder what's a good example of an intro.

28:48 Right? We're gonna start off. It's Friday, 12th April 2024. It's a new show. That's handy to know how outdated is this. The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod News Weekly Review. Okay. I have a pretty good under idea of what the show is about. The last word in podcasting news. With James Cridland and Sam Sethi. So to answer that question, who are these people? I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News. And I'm So the editor of Pod News. Okay. Sam Sethi, the CEO of Trufans. In the chapters today, Stephen We just heard this. Then they go, here's what we're gonna talk about. That is a good show. I know what the show's about. I know what's coming on. So if they said, today, we're interviewing somebody about brand safety and somebody else about YouTube, and I would be like, you know what? There's nothing in here for me.

29:39 And, like, there are when a brand safety is another word that just makes me throw up in my mouth just a little bit. I'm like, oh, geez. No. It's it's important. The, well, the thing, that's both a good and a bad thing in some ways, that you give, you give away everything, you know, because you may have some listeners, like you just said, who are like, yeah, there's nothing in here for me. But I would I would love that because then you just save me 20 minutes. Yeah. For sure. No. For sure. Yeah. For sure. It's it's well done. If I just know who James Cridland was, though. There you go. But Jeff brings up a great point, the amazing Jeff See. The more famous and rich podcasting guest is, the worse their tech.

30:20 Yeah. It that does seem to be there is a a and it's not fair, dog on it. Double standards drive me nuts. When I was a teenager, nothing else would make me go ballistic, and I would start screaming, it's not fair. And my dad would let me know the world does not revolve around Dave Jackson. But the fact that celebrities, a, you know, if we go back to the Kelsey brothers, you know, they can start off with, you know, advertisement followed by promotion. It's not an ad followed by ad, which then talks about in, like, are we ever gonna talk about football or whatever you guys talk about on this show? And so, you know, but they can do that. And that's the thing that worries me. They can get away with that because they're celebrities. So then when They have good content too. They have really good content. Sometimes, not all the time. Larry King was pretty awful. But, Well, but I mean, for the audience that they have Yeah. For who they were talking to. And by the way, they were good before Taylor Swift. I'm just gonna say that publicly. Before Taylor, they were a good podcast. For the audience they're trying to reach and the folks that are listening, they were doing the right I think they were doing the right thing. What I I mean, that's just crazy. Yeah.

31:35 What I love about that is that, like, I remember, when John Domingo was in the chat room. He's like, I still listen to the Kelsey brothers, and I agree with everything you said that their intro is a little bit of a train wreck. But Yeah. Consider John a huge Philly, Philadelphia Eagles fan. But even if you're not a Philadelphia Eagles fan, you are getting something you can't get. I don't know what it's like to be a football player. I don't know what goes on in the locker room. I don't know what it's like to date Taylor Swift. You know, you're getting information. You can't get any place else. So, Chris 30. 30. 30. 30. I mean, like You know what, listen, you know it's coming. If you don't want to listen to that stuff I mean, I listen to Windows Weekly, Leo Laporte.

32:20 He's got 3 minutes of stuff in the front, you know, this and this and that and this and that. And I just go, I go 30, 30, 30. And I listen, or still on an ad 30, still on an ad 30. So I think we can, you know, I think most podcasters, if they didn't want to listen to it, we have the tools it's not like we can't skip the ads. So anyways, I interrupted you. You Well, no, I just, on, when I use Podurama, one of the things I like about it is you can set it to start an insane amount of time into the show. So on Conan O'Brien, I haven't skipped the first 9 minutes because first there will be ads, and then he will make fun of his, staff. And I don't I don't find that funny. It's very you know, I guess if I listen to the show on a regular basis, I would find that funny, but I'm just like, look. It says you interviewed Carol Burnett. I would like to hear Carol Burnett. It's like I just listened to look, I'm from Akron, Ohio. Lebron James is a very cool guy. He does a lot for Akron, Ohio. And the minute he came out with a a podcast again, which turns out it's just video on YouTube, but it's a podcast. And 10 minutes in, I had not heard the voice of LeBron James. It was somebody talking about LeBron, and I'm like, yeah. That's not really like, you lied to me. You said this was a LeBron James podcast. And from what I understand, if you are a person that plays basketball, it's amazing. Again, information you can't get any place else

33:52 from a definite respected person in the industry of or, you know, what I guess there's a basketball industry, sports, etcetera. And, you know, but, I was just like I was ready to hear it, and it was you know, they did a cool thing at the very beginning where, Jim, do you remember any great army jargon? Like a Yeah. Let's see. Well, FUBAR is one of those you would say, you know, effed up upon all of But like a is was there a gun or anything or a part number or form number, you know, where they're like, well, you had to fill out to be 27865, you know? Yeah. When when you get out, it's a DD 214. Yeah. There you go. So There you go.

34:38 If if Jane if if James wow. Now I'm very informal with you. James. But James, hello. Hello. Hello. Hello, Dave. Yeah. Right. Do I do I sound do I sound like James Cleveland y'all? But when you say stuff like that so they did that in that LeBron James show. They were talking about, you know, you always block on the route out with the slant this. And I was like, well, again, unless you're playing basketball, you have no idea what they were doing. So they started off really good. I'm like, great. Now bring on LeBron, and it was like, nope. We're just gonna talk about x's and o's some more. And I was like, alright. Well, what are you gonna do? Yeah.

35:19 Jeff, they're talking about ads in the chat room. I think organic host read ads are way more effective. A show about the best type of podcast ads would be an interesting one. There is one. It is and here's again. So they it's a show I'm I'm looking it up behind the scenes here, and it's where they listen to an ad and say it's kinda like the podcast rodeo show for advertising. And here's the other thing. When you let AI make your artwork and other people have let your, you know, done AI, Everybody's artwork is really starting to look alike. Here's here's, the show.

36:04 It's called Ad infinitum, and Ad infinitum is the only podcast solely focused on audit on audio ads. The creatives who make them and or the latest thinking that informs them how the space is evolving and a round of and a round up of recent audio ads and analysis by Steve Redwine, VP creative of Oxford Road. I need to add each episode guest at infinitum is presented by, of course, Oxford Road, and then a lot of links that don't go to anything. So it's always great in the description that you're trying to send people away from the app that you were telling them over and over to come to. But the here's the thing, I listened to, like, one of their first episodes, they just have a few out. And they did the whole it'd be like, hey, we're bringing Jim on. Jim has this amazing background to talk about audio ads because he's done ads and stuff and he's very well done. Great. Jim, tell us a little bit about your story. And I was like, no. Let's hear some ads and some critiques. Let's go, boys. And I was like, why?

37:08 If the guy is on the show, all you have to do is say, Jim's worked in the advertising space for 30 years. He's got a a Webby award and a blah blah blah and yada yada. He's worked for this and Disney and Netflix, and here's his credentials. I don't need to hear his story. I really do not. I'm so tired of hearing people's stories. So, so there is one. It's just you know, I've listened to one episode. It's I did not unsubscribe, but that may be another one that I start, like, 15 minutes in because that part was really entertaining. And I'm like, all they need to do is take their content, in my opinion, and swap it. Let's start off with the with the ad stuff, and let's hear about it. And now that this guy's given me some value, hey, thanks so much for your opinion on those 3 ads.

37:55 How did you even get into the advertising space? There you go. Because if I wanna know who this guy is, I can. But I it says right there, we solely focused on audio ads. No. You're solely focused on your guest. I don't care about your guest. So, yeah, it's always fun. Let's see. Yes. Was that a mini rant? I I believe it was. So Does does that mean you have to play the music? I do have to do that. Now, it's time for a power rat. That was a power rat. Yeah. Glad we glad we got that figured out. Well, and Elsie brought this up on the feed that you have to be careful with AI. Again, AI will always get you 80% there.

38:40 But don't just put something out. So what's happening is we're uploading files to and I'll just say cast magic. I don't know. You know, insert AI tool here. And she goes, it it reads it and blah blah blah. She goes, but it's trying to make, you know, kind of clickable titles. And in some cases, is making clickable titles that are not entirely accurate. And so she said she was listening to a show, and it was like it given something very specific, you know, whatever it was, something something specific. And then she listened to the episode, and the whole time she's like, I'm waiting. You promised me this. And she goes, and it never came. And she she really and I would too get upset because as much as podcasts are free, you are paying with your time. And I listened to, the latest episode of the podcast rodeo show, is this show called something about being pissed off, whatever it was. And I made about 14 seconds into the show because the guy announced now the good news, I forget what it was. It was, like, asking question to somebody. But he started off, and he they were like, hey. And here's Mike, and he's like, yeah. I'd say something funny here, but I just don't give a you know? And I was like, well, that's a good way to so if you don't care about the show, why do you want me to listen?

40:05 So but the whole, like, make make sure whatever your title is, I always say, is kind of a promise to your audience. It's it's hard on this show because we have 37 topics by the time we blow through 90 minutes. But somewhere in there, we're gonna talk about that subject. And then, you know, if you can get to that subject, the quicker the better. But people are paying with their time, and, you know, and then, yeah, Craig from Live Well and Flourish, and AI Goes TO College. So he knows the thing about AI, says, you need a human in the loop if you're going to use AI for anything important. And then, Randy brought up I just heard about this. The FTC has some new guidelines. There's a, a bill or something going through Congress from some guy, and he basically just wants disclosure. I know I've heard YouTube, and I forget the other company, that you basically have to disclose if you're using AI in anything. Basically, they're they're really especially with I can only imagine come November when the the elections in the US, and I know their elections in Europe as well, they're it's just gonna be nuts with AI because it it's usually just, hey. Jim Jones is a poopy butt.

41:19 He's, you know, he he actually tore the, you know, tag off his mattress. You know, all these really horrible things about people and then the The next steps on ants and kills mosquitoes. That's right. As a child, Jim Jones burned ants with a magnifying glass. You know, don't vote for Jim. He hates ants. Yeah. So I I'm so glad. I really do you watch TV anymore? I don't know. I really I Not at all. You know, Rich Rich, wait a minute. We'll switch to gears here. Jim, Rich wants to know what's your sports opinion about cold opens? Your hot sports opinion on cold opens. Will you take a chunk of audio from the episode and use that as the intro? Here's the thing. That's that is something that everybody did because everybody did, and nobody stopped to say, wait. What's the point of an open? And so my favorite is, like, here's the cold open, and they're like, today on the, you know, we love coffee show. And then it's, like, probably a sound effect. And it's, like, I don't know. I walked in, and I was, like, maybe. And that's I'm, like, okay.

42:30 Did did that make me wanna hear more? Like, it's or it's like, you know, yeah. And my dad walked in with a red shirt. And I'm like, I don't care about your dad or his shirt. And most and here's the thing that got me is people would listen because they think they're Joe Rogan. They listen to 2 and a half hours of this rambling nonsense. Wait. Hold on. And now, it's time for a power rant. So you've just tried to be Joe Rogan. So you have a 2 and a half hour podcast. You've just listened to a 150 minutes looking for the golden chunk, and you finally find this thing where it's like, yeah. And my bicycle tire was totally weird.

43:12 Okay. Here's the show. You're like, wait, what? I guess I'm supposed to wonder how weird was it. But when all you so you and they're like, man, podcasting takes a lot of time. Yeah. You just wasted a 180 minutes looking for a 10 second thing when all you have to do is say, on the show today, I'm talking to Jim Collison. He makes a living with free software. Wait till you hear about it. Here's the show. Like, you can do some most cold opens are horrible. I let me take that back. Not a cold open because to me a cold open, go listen to the Geologic podcast. That's my buddy, George Robb. It's a it has nothing to do with geology. His name is George. People call him Geo, so it's geologic. And George is a a heartfelt atheist. So he likes to talk about science. He has the religious moron of the week, but he often starts off with a story. And he'll be like, so I'm at the grocery store, and, you know, I thought about this and that. So it's always he sucks you in, and he kinda is a decent storyteller. So I did that for a while. I was doing cold opens where I'd be like, so I went to a bar and blah blah blah, and then eventually, I would tie it into podcasting. That's what I consider a cold open. The whole, I'm gonna pull a clip because, well, you know, Kathie Lee Gifford did on her show, so that's what I must be doing. Most of the time, they don't accomplish what they want.

44:30 What their goal is to get you to wanna hear more. And in my opinion, they're just, so, when you could easily just say what's on the show because the audience trusts you. You're the host bringing people on. So does that, Jim, have you ever heard anything of those? Oh, for sure. No, for sure. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. I understand the intent. Right? The intent is to get some kind of juicy, like, Oh, I want to hear more, kind of thing. In podcasting, I am not sure that we need that solid of a hook all the time, because you subscribe to it. It's not in a lot of cases, people haven't found it on accident, you know. It's not, I, you know, if you, if you had a situation where your podcast was showing up in a bunch of random spots, and, you know, people, you had 15 seconds to hook somebody, and you want to make sure that first 15 seconds is the best. Okay. But in, in a lot of cases, those are your listeners. They're already hooked. They, they're, they pushed Play because they want to hear you. So can you do Absolutely. Because in podcasting, you can do anything you want. So that's fine if you want to do that. Will anybody unsubscribe or stop listening to you because of it? Maybe Dave. But everybody else, probably you're fine. Well, and again, this is where skip, skip, skip, skip. You know? So I don't, and I don't skip past. I've listened to a few podcasts where they do that. And you just go, Oh, Okay,

46:02 well, I'll listen for that, you know, I'll listen for that in the show or whatever. Where I think, unfortunately, I've heard it go wrong is not in the content it's in the volume. Right? They bring it in, and then they don't level it with the intro. So you get this really loud clip to begin with. And then all of a sudden, the intro kicks in, and that's all real smooth and, you know, at a different level. And so that's where I've heard it go wrong is that first clip didn't get leveled properly. And it's like, you know, it just comes blasting through your speakers. So that, I'd be more concerned about that if you're gonna, if you're gonna Guys, level your stuff.

46:48 Just make sure it's getting leveled. K? I I yeah. It's it's amazing because I did this thing this morning, and then I listened to it after I had published it and was like, wow. That's crap, Dave. What are you doing? And in Hindenburg, I use a tool called he said trying to bring it up. I have a mastering track. So in Hindenburg, you have your tracks, and then you have one that's a master that says, look. Everything's going through here. And so I just use a plug in called WLM plus, and I don't know oh, hold on. I'm like, why is it not popping up? Yeah. WOM plus, and I have a a setting to basically do it at minus 16. And so it it's like a pretty hard limiter. And because Hindenburg kind of adjust things when you bring it in, it does the whole little usually, everything is fine. And so I just did the rodeo show, but the rodeo show has a dynamic part in the middle where I go, we'll listen to the episode right after this. And then in this case, it was a 15 second about my newsletter. And the newsletter one was way louder than everything else.

47:51 And I'm like, oh, you just did, like, you know, you you just broke the rules, buddy. So I went back in and kinda adjusted all the volumes up, but I also need to double check. Is it just that I didn't check the volume of I think the ad just might be too loud, but that's one of those things. That's when you're doing dynamic stuff, It's and the bad news is then it's on every episode if your ad is too loud. And that's why almost every ad I ever do, I run it with that thing on so that everything's leveled at minus 16 laughs. And, it's one of those things I say it all the time. Every time I publish an episode without listening to it, I always regret it. And that was this morning. I was like, oh, wow. This is a really short show. I can publish this now. I got time before Ask the Podcast Coach, and then I went to the website to make it make sure it listened. Well, that ad comes in pretty quick, and this episode is only, like, 6 minutes long. And I was like, wow. That's that, like, blew my head off with headphones on.

48:44 So, yeah, that's level your stuff. So, also, I I just to, because I mentioned him, that's my buddy George Hrab, and it's h r a b. What's cool is his family, now he was born in the US, but his parents were from Ukraine. And so George is hilarious because, a, he does so many voices. And he used to bring his mom on and then have her read Jay z lyrics. So he's just, he's just an entertaining dude. And and just to just to have us all hold hands and sing Kumbaya. So, obviously, George and I differ on religious stance as he his is no and mine is yes. But we're both musicians. We're both extremely sarcastic and fun and like to talk in odd voices. So when we get together, we talk about all the stuff we love, and he knows that I know that he knows that I know that I know that he knows that. Yeah. We're just not gonna go there because you're not changing my mind, and I'm not changing his, but we can still have fun and focus on the things that we do agree on, and I wish more people would do that. So, yeah, Chris said, loves are your friends.

49:52 Yes. Don't ask me what that stands for besides loud, under freaking sound. I don't know what it Yeah, but yeah. Universal's gotta be in there somewhere. Yeah. But I know there's, you know, there's alphonic, there's all sorts of things you can use to to do that. How are we doing on time? Okay. So, speaking of celebrities and such Hold on. Before we go, it stands for loudness units relative to full scale. You know, that's what I was gonna guess. You never, like never in a 1000000 years would anyone guess that it's loudness units. What are loudness units? That's pretty cool. Relative to full scale. A musician titled that for sure. Or an engineer, one of the 2. Oh, yeah. Yeah. An audio engineer. Yeah.

50:42 Alright. So this this came up, and just when I hear this, I just do you do you twitch when you hear people that are trying to podcast like Joe Rogan? No. Because I don't listen I don't listen to those kinds of podcasts. Yeah. I don't. I don't. I don't. I only listen to Joe if I know who the guest is, and even that, I still get triggered because I'm not sure I've listened to Joe Rogan. Like I've seen his clips. I've never my kids are always like, God, you gotta listen to him. I'm like, Nah, I think I'm good. I, it's just, it's, it's, it's just opinion blabber, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And if you like that kind of blah, blah, blah, that's fine. If you like it, I don't, that's not, that kind of blah, blah, blah is not my favorite blah, blah, blah. Such a great short right there. But it's funny you say that because I've I think I've watched maybe 4 episodes of Joe, and 3 of them were Adam Curry. 1 was, who was the old guy that was running for president? Of course, that's that doesn't really nail it down, does it? Ross Perot. Ross Perot.

51:45 No. It was the the guy from Jersey and socialism and blah, Bernie something. Bernie Bernie Sanders? Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders was on there and really, again, gave you the behind the scenes look at congress because they were getting ready to do the presidential debates. And he's like, oh, this is a total waste of time. He goes, it's just whoever has the size the best sound bite wins. You're not really learning anything. And I was like, I like this guy. He was very honest. But I say this about Joe Rogan is somebody says, how does Joe Rogan record such long episodes? And he says, we record with the Sony ZV 1, and we shoot in 4 k. Where I right there, I'm like, really? Do we need 4 k? Then we can usually get around 45 minutes of footage before our battery dies or gets exhausted. In HD, we might get an hour and a half, so we tried using iPhones. And, again, we either run out of storage or phones or battery drains or whatever. So, I think my answer to this would be, a, please realize it doesn't have to be, you know, 3 hours long. Like, maybe, you know, but Joe Rogan uses real equipment, not Yeah.

52:50 Phones or or, or $600 cameras that, I mean, his, his equipment is pretty I mean, listen, he came from TV. He knows how to do video. So yeah, if you want to go longer, you got to buy better equipment. There's, there are other ways to do it. Everybody's, all of a sudden, chat is going, Jim, but Jim, don't you know, you can use a $79 webcam, whatever, right? Jo has got a production team. They have real equipment. They're, I'm sure they're running it through TV, you know, stuff they would do in the industry type stuff. I'm sure he's not out there buying $79 webcams and $100 microwave. So Well, and be really clear about that. And Randy's got the answer. You can buy, basically, corded It looks like a battery, but out of the bottom of the battery is this thing called an electrical cord, and you plug it in. Or if he I think he said it's the z v one, which I've got one sitting right here. You can open the side panel and power it via USB.

53:56 Yeah. You know? And then plug the other one into an HDMI, which is what I should do, but I'm not. I I just like it on the shelf because it makes me look cool. But, you know, I'm still using my, Ecamm Pro something, Facecam Pro. So, and then Dan says, from based on a true story podcast.com, dummy batteries as well as an external recorder, so it's not recording on the camera itself. Yeah. So, Ecamm will record hours of content, of course. Thank you, Rich Graham. And, so, yeah, dummy batteries. There are all sorts of ways around that. Coach Dave says Joe Rogan is curious. He is. He explores interesting subjects with expert guests and deep dives in different his whole thing is just getting different perspectives. And, yeah, so that's that's kinda Joe. The thing that drives me nuts about Joe is when he when he'll like, hey, Jeremy or whatever his name is, like, we'll look that up. And then they'll they'll, like, oh, look at it there. Look what's going on. I'm like, okay. You know? I get it that you're a video in Spotify, but I'm like, I I you know, if I was gonna listen to Joe, I'd be listening to it, not watching it. But, but most of the time most of the time I see Joe stuff, it's not the pie it's shorts. I see a lot of Joe in shorts, but most of the time, I'm that's how I consume it. So interesting. Jeff's we already talked about that.

55:26 Here's another fun question. So gang alright. So we're we're now a gang. As a result of very useful advice in this form, in this case being Reddit, I postponed my, first full my first full episode and opted first for a 2 minute trailer to test the waters and also give time for the likes of Apple to approve and load my podcast. My first full episode will be up next Thursday. In fact, the trailer appeared on Apple within a day. Goody, he says, but it's now been a week.

56:06 It's been but now it's been up for a week. And unless I type the name of the show directly, it is not discoverable by keywords. I've emailed Apple support, and the best way they can off the best thing they can offer is to wait until the show builds up a bit. Does this make sense? So I I bring this up because you've heard this guy say Dave, you know, Dave Jackson mentions from time to time that search in podcast app is not stellar. So that's where he could go into podcast connect. Grab your click on your show and in the bottom right hand corner, there is the link to your show in Apple. And so I keep saying, please is your podcast lost? Why are you saying find my podcast? You should just say, go to, you know, ask the podcast coach.com/follow. And, a, it reinforces your brand. You get to say your website, and it's easy for your your audience. Just, you know, so I I bring this up just to say, I give you exhibit k that search and apps is not really as stellar as, as you think about. So keep that in mind. I don't think it's wrong to necessarily expect Apple search to work. I think this is where new people coming in, they haven't heard all the things, the, the things we've repeated a 1000 times on this stuff. I don't think it's wrong for them to expect that. And they're just asking, right? They're just like, Hey, shouldn't this work? And you kind of have to go, No, sorry, it's not, it's not what I have to answer these. I get these kinds of questions all

57:40 the time from, from folks at work, like, Shouldn't it be this way? And you're like, Well, it should, but it's not. So, and they're like, Well, can't you report that to Support? Well, you can. I'm not, I'm sure 1,000 of people already have. So it's just, it's, you know, it was there a place that isn't there a place we can go and see what's, what's being worked on? In theory, that would be nice. But no, it doesn't exist. So you just, you know, it cracks me up when folks come to that conclusion, and you're like, It's like download stats. You know, I, our, our download stats took a pretty good beating in January when Apple made the changes and did some other things to it, right. And we also slowed down our, our published, our publishing schedule. I went from kind of weekly to every other week, all on purpose. And things slowed down. And I was meeting with one of our social media folks, and she said, Aren't you worried about that? Should I be?

58:44 Like, there's nothing I can do. You know, it is what it is. Apple changed some things we slowed down some things. I'm not concerned if the download numbers are just like, they're just an indication of the I already know 2 things that are against me right now: Apple and that I slowed down the schedule. I could pick up those numbers if I would just publish more content on a regular basis. It's just not what we're doing right now. So it's just one of those, it's one of those things where, you know, it's, people jump in, and they're like, I need one thing, or, Why isn't this working? Well, we need to kind of see the, you know, they're stuck on a tree. And they really need to kind of look, look through for the forest for all the things.

59:29 But I don't blame them, Dave, because they don't know. There's so many things in the industry That are wacky. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, it's still young in a lot of ways. And there's still a lot of battles going on over, over standards and what are we going to do? I mean, this whole podcasting 2.0 thing, most people are just confused. Oh, I We do I don't know. We do have a cool update. I mentioned True Fans. That's Sam's thing, true fans dot f m. Very cool now that I can go to true fans because his is not an app. It's a web app, and it's there's a subtle it looks like an app, smells like an app, but it's actually not an app. It's it's basically a little baby website that when you put it on your phone, it looks and smells just like an app. And because it's not an app, he doesn't have to go through all the hassle of working with Apple and Google. And I filled up my wallet yesterday and can actually put just a good old fashioned whatever I wanted to card on it and filled up my wallet and kept on streaming satoshis. Now the the bad news is there are things in true fans. It's Sam likes to experiment a lot, and so I I saw him at podcast movement evolution. So I'm like, hey. I'm trying to to do this thing with your playlist. And he's like, oh, yeah. It's not finished yet.

1:00:43 And I was like, oh, well, that explains why I can't get it to work. So it's but it in terms of, like, potential, True Fans could be a monster of an, in quotation mark, app. It's got every feature under the sun over there. So that's, that was exciting in terms of podcasting 2.0. I'm like, oh, that's a much easier way than you have to do this and, you know, double authentication. And who is what was your dog's name when you were in the 2nd grade on the 3rd Tuesday of the month under a full moon kind of question just to, like, make a transition, which as you might imagine, makes people a little little worried. Randy has a great point. Wait a minute. Reddit is a useful forum? Yeah. And then coach Dave brings up a great point. The guy from hot wings tends to pull out surprising thoughts and insights from guests. We would not expect. People I thought were dummies, you know, like a surface impression, turned out to be pretty interesting. Yeah. If you haven't watched hot ones on YouTube, that guy is Sean something. I wanna say Evans.

1:01:46 Phenomenal interviewer. So many times people like, woah. Wow. Where did you? You did your homework. Holy cow. Oh, I hear that all the time on that show. And And that seems sometimes, though, doesn't that seem a little disingenuous? I've watched those. The way he asked those questions sometimes, I'm like, That seems a little too dramatic. You know, like, or it was like, you know, like he did too much research to find that one obscure thing from their past, like, you know, and you're like, That seems a little odd that you would be bringing that up, kinda, you know. I wonder where it's like, look at how much research I did, people. I'm, just to find out that his dog's name was Tippy. You know, like Yeah. Even in the way he asked the questions, it feels disingenuous to me. It feels like he's being dramatic on purpose. You know, I'm gonna take a second. It's the Captain Kirk effect. I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a second and leave long pauses, you know. And you're, you're, I love the premise of the show. I do. I've, we've, I've watched those. But every once in a while, you know, you ask a question, you're like, You guys are eating frickin' hot wings.

1:03:02 Like, let's not, you know, I don't know. I, you know, I get it. I just, every once in a while, I went uncomfortable with his style. It's a little too dramatic for me in the way in the way he does it. Well, he does something, and because it's video, it'd be hard to chop out. I do this occasionally. It'd be like, well, I know you did this, and in your first book, you said this and da da da. Yeah. All background, background, background question. And when I edit that in audio, I just do the question because the audience doesn't need to hear the background. I just gave the background to the guests so they knew kinda where I was going. And so but he he he when I was watching 1, and it really was like, here's all the research I did, yada yada yada yada blah blah blah blah.

1:03:45 Do you think this is why you're such and such? And I was like, wow. That's a Dave Jackson question because he gave a ton of background to the person. And I'm like, if that was me, I would have cut that out. But, yeah, the if you haven't seen I almost thought it was fake. I think it was Rich that said Conan O'Brien was just on that show and explained, yeah, that he he grew up with no spices. So he's like, I'm I'm this is gonna be horrible. And then chop through them like his mouth had no feeling at all. It was very bizarre and was very there are times when I think Conan I I have a weird love hate relationship with Conan. He was on The Tonight Show, and he always ends up yelling or something, like, dramatic or something. And I'm like, oh, here he goes again. He's gonna wiggle his hair around, but I like his interviews. That it drives yeah. So, here's something that we need to bring out. Go ahead. But that's Conan. Like, I think that's authentic Conan. We've known him for so long. And that's kind of what he does. And so you kind of, it's not like he's making that up for the show, you know, or that's all of a sudden there's this new thing that pops in. So I, yeah, I saw that on, I saw his, I saw the picture of it. They have a good thumbnail image. Oh, yeah. And he he's smearing the sauce off of his face. He's going crazy. He's so funny. He is funny dude. Coach Dave says about Sean Evans, like it or hate it? How does he find those nuggets? Yeah. That would be he's got a team somewhere

1:05:19 that's, you know I remember when I was talking to Jordan Harbinger, and he said a lot of times when he's doing research, yes, he'll go listen to other interviews, but he always goes to their social and then goes way back. Because he goes, in some cases, you'll find out that they were skiing in Aspen. And he goes, he'll use that not as the interview, but that might be the thing he talks about before they press record. So now they've got something in common. Yeah, I think he asks them. I think it's, this is all preplanned. There's, listen, you don't, you don't bring a celebrity on and then pop a surprise. You don't that, that's not, in a lot of those cases, that's not happening. So I kind of wonder if it Yeah, we're saying research. And maybe there's some of that. I don't, I don't want to disregard it. But I think he has, he has a pretty good form, and they work through the PR of those, those guests to say, Hey, we'd like something unique. We don't want to, we don't want to surprise the guest. We don't want to make, we don't, I don't, you know, you've got hot sauce Yeah, to Jeff's point, I'd be dramatic too if my mouth was shooting flames out of it. Listen, they're in a vulnerable moment. And the last thing you want to do is like, Yeah, tell me about how when your dad died.

1:06:31 And that's a super sore subject. So you know, that's not happening. So I'm pretty sure yeah, Okay, I'm sure a little bit of research. I think it's probably mostly done between the PR firms to say, Hey, we're looking for some unique oops, sorry. We're looking I know. I gave the, I gave the peace sign, and the balloons came up. I think it's done between and not that we can't do this, but I think the PR firms are working saying, Hey, what are some stories we could bring up that would be Okay with the guest? And, and then, you know, and you, listen, you can do that too. I was just on Jeff C.

1:07:12 Show on Friday, and he sent me a form. And there was like, I think, Jeff, I think I remember a question on there of things to, you know, you asked me some things we could and couldn't talk about. And you can do that too. You could say with your guest, Hey, I don't want to do everything everybody else does. I'm looking for some, something you'd like to talk about that you'd a question you don't get asked very often. Ask your guest that. And let them provide that information for you. So you don't have to go find things. Don't, for all, for the love of God, do not surprise your guest with, with information they, or something that happened to them that's sensitive. Like, don't do that. Like, don't think you're doing research on that.

1:08:03 And if you think it's gonna, if you found something in their background, ask them beforehand, Is it Okay to talk about this? Do not, you know, don't do the you're not an investigative journalist, unless you are. If you are, then do those kinds of things. Yeah. Day daily sports history says it helps. His questions are great and deep, but they are also most always positive. The other thing is if as I think about that show, because they switch from camera to camera, it would be fairly easy to edit out bad questions and bad answers. Yeah. Yeah. And and not know it. But, yeah, speaking of of Jim on, Jeff's show, he said stuff like this. And our differences.

1:08:46 Like, what do you do better? Hold on a second. I'll use Dave Jackson as an example. Dave and I have been podcasting a long time together. There are definitely some things that Dave does better than me and some things I do better than Dave. We talk about them all the time. Those could be a point of contention in our relationship, But because we know them, have identified them, we talk about them, then all of a sudden, it doesn't cause, it doesn't cause conflict. Conflict in team relationships often leads to sabotage or, or, you know, you think, Hey, we're doing this thing together. We both want to be successful. Well, when you have conflict, what we have found in our data at Gallup is that that conflict will actually cause self sabotage. There you go. And, I will put a link to that. I did not give you permission to play my voice. Neither did Jeff. So sue me. I'm promoting your show. Yeah. We're over Dave Jackson. We're over. But, let's see. We'll we'll hit this one. No. Actually, we'll do this, and then we'll we'll talk about Apple. Doctor had a question. So the first thing we need to do is, of course, thank our awesome supporters. We do thank everyone. You can be an awesome supporter by going to ask the podcast coach.com/awesome. And the show is brought to you by the school of podcasting.com. We have everything you need over there. We've got step by step courses. You got unlimited 1 on 1 coaching and absolutely kick butt community. We just had a couple people sign up this week. I'm really excited

1:10:18 to see what they're gonna pull together there, and you can save by using the coupon code coach when you sign up, and that'll save on either a monthly or yearly subscription. And as the podcast coach runs on PodPage, speaking of AI, Brendan's getting ready to roll out a feature that you can basically point it at your episode, and it will write a blog post. And so it's not duplicate content because it's not your show notes, but it's gonna be a blog post that then points at your episode. And based on some SEO guys he had on a webinar, that helps boost your your SEO. So that's coming. If you wanna check out PodPage, check out try podpage.com. That's my affiliate link. And if you oh, I forgot about this. We're using Ecamm right now. I love ECAM. If you go to ask the podcast coach.com/ecamm, and that is e c a m m because is it good?

1:11:12 If you need if you need more Jim Collison, then go over to the average guy dot tv. I did find out if I go back, I might go to this thing. They're doing a thing in somewhere near Boston where people park the car, some sort of like Ecamm camp thing, creator camp, I think it is. And I'm like, I might have to go to that. That would be fun just to to hang out. It's a it's an intimate gathering. So I'm I've had my eye on that. I need to figure out exactly just because anytime you go to an event, you're you're blowing away at least a grand. And I'm like, that could be interesting. But if you want more Jim Collison, and you're like, look, I blew through Jeff's episode with Jim. I need more Jim. There's tons of it over at the average guy dot tv, and it is time for our awesome Wheel O' Names, where we pick the awesome supporter. You can have your your name could be right here on the wheel o names by simply becoming a $20 supporter. So you could be like Glenn Hiebert. You could be like, oh, all sorts of people here. Felix, you got Ralph from ask ralphpodcast.com, Ross Brand, Craig from livewellandflourish.com. So we'll hit shuffle. We will hit, spin. I think that's this thing.

1:12:26 It's been a while. I'm rusty at the wheel of names. There we go. And round and round it goes, and it is going to land on the same guy from last week, 2 weeks in a row. Oh. It's rigged, I tell you. Radio Free Pro Wrestling. So if you're into pro wrestling and, you know, you wanna snap into a Slim Jim or if you wanna know what The Rock is cooking, that's about as much as I know about pro wrestling. And if I wanted to know more, I would go over in Hulkamania. Man, that's way back there. I would wanna tune into Radio Free Pro Wrestling. Thank you so much for being an awesome supporter. And I wanna go back to this screen so we can wrap this up. And, then we're gonna talk about Apple. Hey. Does this show save you time, save you money, save you headaches? Does it keep you educated? Are you using the knowledge that you use right now with your clients? Well, then maybe you should give some of that back by going to ask the podcast coach.com/awesome.

1:13:26 So thanks to all of our awesome supporters. And Doctor had a question. She says, Apple as well as YouTube are such enigmas. You never see them on stage at any of the live meetups like Evolutions. Well, YouTube was on the stage at Evolutions. So we're always trying workarounds to make things work, and Apple actually had at least 4 people there. I talked to 1 guy, and he was an engineer. And they're trying to figure out how to record and produce a podcast on an iPad. Like, we're talking about all the different things and things you would have to do. And then, Ted is the guy from kind of the podcast team. And so, like, he came up to Lipson and said, hey. You know how you guys use 64 bit something something something when we let people add images to their show description? Once things have changed, he kinda said, you guys need to come up with a new way of letting images. I guess there's a better way, because occasionally that will break feeds. So Apple is there. They're usually there. You just gotta know who they are. They they're not hiding. They have Apple right on their their tags. So Apple is one of the ones. The thing that's weird is at at times, you would get a a hint of something, but as is always the case with Apple, they're pretty tight lipped.

1:14:51 But, the one thing that, Rainey just put out is they are now adding. So, Jim, we talked about Taylor Swift. Right? Have you ever heard of Taylor Swift? Taylor Swift? Yeah. I think she's a singer. Never. She had a really productive tour. I I think it was I know Travis Kelce, but I is that Yeah. Okay. Well, they are now transcribe they are searching your transcriptions. So don't say things like, I don't know, Pamela Anderson naked, because, you know, that you could, in theory, spam your transcript. I I give it a minute before some people just keep saying whatever the top show is on Netflix or you know? So that'll be interesting. But it's because Rob did a test at Libsyn to prove that they're not searching your description, and that apparently is still true. So if you're spamming your description, but Ted was like, you might wanna go back and check. And he searched because he put in some sort of, like, just weird code that nobody like, it wasn't even a word. And he searched for it, and it came up, and it was something he had said. He actually said the code. It was like, oh, bx9275hdoublepound sign, whatever. And he did a search for that, and it came up because he had said that code in the feed or whatever show he was doing, some sort of test show, and it proved that Apple is now searching transcripts.

1:16:15 So I'm like, it's only a matter of time till Why wouldn't they? I mean, they spent all that money to to make them. They, listen, they didn't make them for us. They made them so they can find things in them to target things with. Google is the same way. Like, this is to Doctor. They're not there to make podcasting better. They are there to make their ad services or the things they sell. You know, why do they want podcasts to work on an iPad? Not so you can do it on a cheaper device so they can sell more iPads, right? I mean, that iPad market has gotten super stale in the last couple years. And they're like, Hey, here's a, here's a market we can sell. Just so, just be I'm feeling pretty negative today.

1:17:04 Just be clear that these organizations don't really care about podcasting. Google cares about selling more ads. Apple cares about selling more equipment. So that's why they're, they're doing, they do what they do to sell more of their devices, not to help you out podcasting. Right? They're not there for that. They're there to sell their stuff. Well, that and I think they do, in some cases, they're there to see how people are, you know, interacting with their stuff and maybe get ideas for future stuff. But I I always get the feeling that Apple is working on something now that they started 2 years ago. Like, I they do not you know, they're they don't do things, quick or whatever. I forgot to say this. Yes. Jeff Show is social media news live. And according to Chris, it's the best show on the inter interwebs.

1:17:53 Has really good interviews and a lot of fun. See, I should be doing more of this. I keep forgetting that, he's the master. This is one of the things I wanted to do was I wanted Oh, yeah. I have to figure out how to put little lower third thingies on because he is the king of the lower third. And I'm sure it's just a button, and then he's got it on a Stream Deck thing. And I was like, oh, I should do that. But For sure. No. He's really good. It threw me off. Like Oh, yeah. It was the funny thing. We talked about it on the show. I'm like, Jim hates it when you do this. Don't do that to Jim. Jim Collison: I do. I do. And I put up with it. Right? I faked it, because I'm not very good at it. But, but I admit it on the show. Maybe, maybe, Jeff, there's just a little sound bite you can use at the, for the cold open.

1:18:35 I admit it on the show. I need to see faces. I, when I'm talking here, I'm getting, I'm seeing both the responses from the chat room, which are delayed, so that's hard. But I'm looking at your face, Dave. And I know I've hit that, like, when I, when you come back to the mic or you pay attention to what I'm saying, I know, like, Okay, Dave Jackson's paying attention, or That was funny, or whatever. They, he kept switching, and I couldn't, I couldn't see him work on her. And I was like, Ah, this is putting me at a disadvantage. You know, because I just, I, it's, it was, I kind of knew this, but as a podcaster, seeing faces is super important to me for my guests. I need to know, am I landing with them? There you go. Speaking of, big companies, we had a YouTube question come in. Actually, we had a podcast question come in. I'm trying to start a video podcast, and I'm trying to understand my options. So far, I came across Spotify's podcast platform and Podbean.

1:19:38 I saw Libsyn, but the limits seem impractical for high res reels. Ideally, what I would love is unlimited or generous hosting storage for video podcast, distribution to the top podcast platforms, such as Spotify, Apple Music, Google Podcasts, which, of course, doesn't exist anymore. By the way, I did have somebody this week, like, hey. I can't I can't log in to podcast.google.com. I'm like, yes. It's dead. So that we still need to kind of remind people. The ability to socially schedule posts to social media, a player to embed in my personal website. Don't know if I missed anything. And I just this where normally I'm like, oh, Dave must hate YouTube. I'm like, no. There's this thing called YouTube. Like, you might wanna look into it. It's free. And that's why YouTube one of the reasons why YouTube is so popular is if you do, especially 4 k, do we need am I missing something?

1:20:30 Do we need 4 k? I guess I know a lot of YouTubers now. They're the the YouTube's people who, by the way, did my favorite pet peeve, and that is, Jim, it was very important that you do this. And I just was like, there's a t in the word important. And both of them lovely ladies, probably under 30, and it's like, it's real important. And I'm like, it's important. Not and I almost over, but it was important. And I'm like, okay. But, yeah. It's Tees have been have been starting to quickly get eliminated from English in a lot of ways. Yeah. I'm like, did you go to the Lita Ford School of Addiction? Boy, nobody knows who Lita Ford is. That's a oh, that's an eighties callback. Go listen to the song, kiss me deadly, because she goes, I went to a party last Saturday night. I didn't get leh. I got in a fight.

1:21:21 Uh-huh. And I was like, do you have something against tease, Lita? But, anyway, back to video podcast. There is this thing called YouTube, and it's free. And you can upload really high res stuff, and they will somehow, you know, compress it down to look decent and blah blah blah. So but, if you wanna do a video podcast, Podbean has a $29 deal. That would be if you really wanna do a video podcast, said the Libsyn guy, go with Podbean. So I don't know, what are your thoughts? 4 ks may, you know, there may be some content that's, you know, people are watching YouTube on bigger and bigger screens. So there may be some content where that's appropriate 4 ks, right? You know, talking heads, you and I in 4 ks? We're bad, we're bad in 10:80 p. Let's just be really clear about that.

1:22:10 We go down to 720? You can just blur my face. I could. I know in, just on a Mac, I can go into my camera and do all sorts of fun things to make me smooth and shiny. And I'm like, I I got enough smooth and shiny. I I noticed that my my my hairline, which used to be going up my forehead, is, like, I ran out of 4. Like, my my my hairline now starts on my head, and I'm like, come on. It it happens to us, Dave. Yeah. It's, but, yeah, I just I've been gifted with with a little bit better. It's still creeping its way backwards. Yeah.

1:22:51 But it's, like, still got a pretty good Well, I was I was worried not to make it the bald show. But if you look at celebrities that are kind of our age, there are a lot of them where the hairline is, you know, and I'm like, alright. You know? But I have one You can pay to have that fixed. Yeah. I have a grandpa, and my dad kept their hair, and I'm like, yay, dad's genes. And then my mom's side of the family, you live forever, but you go bald. And I'm like, can I not get a mix of the 2 of them? So, not that. And then we'll we'll wrap up with this one. Not that you guys can read this, but, normally, I shoot for episodes that are about 30 minutes each. I run a history podcast, so all the episodes are usually scripted with a bit of wiggle room, if some lines prove to be awkward when spoken or if I just keep struggling and need to reword it. For some of these, I end up around my goal, which again was 30 minutes. But some topics, I've got the side topics that expand on what I'm talking about, but I don't have enough to make a full episode from. So I've got this little bite sized thing. In the past, I've just tied these into the end of the episodes. But sometimes, they're just not long enough to make a full episode but would be kind of awkward, stuck at the end of another episode. It's like sticking a full book chapter at the end of another with no breaks. Sometimes when I hit these situations, I just save it for the end where I'll talk about it. Sometimes that works, but for others, it doesn't really work. The long short of it is, when you have a shorter than ideal episode, how do you usually handle that?

1:24:21 For all I know, I may be overthinking this. And that, my friends, I think is where he's at. Because my last episode, I think clocked in at 30 minutes, and usually they're around 40. I don't really have a goal. I talk about a subject until I'm done. And when I look at it, I go, oh, we're at, you know, 28 minutes. I can do one more little baby one. I look up, and I'm like, oh, we're 34 minutes. That's good. And so that's what I did last week. I'm like, hey. If you're a regular listener of the show, you're gonna go, hey. This was about 10 minutes shorter this week, and I go, I'm out of content. I'm like, I I can sit here and ramble on for a while, but I don't have anything else to say. And so I don't I for me, because the stuff I listen to is often weeks old because I've got this giant, you know, pile of podcasts. So I could I don't even look at the length. It just it's the one that came on after the one I hit play on. I don't know.

1:25:12 Do you do you care about how long a show is or anything? No. Not generally. I mean, there was we've talked about this when, what's his name? Dirty Jobs guy? Mike Rowe? Mike Rowe, yeah. When he went from 7 minutes to an hour 7 minutes, you know, it was like, Oh, ah, oh. Well, Okay, I just didn't like the content. I was not looking for, I liked his produced short for the, you know, a podcast for the short attention span. I liked that content, and I like his stories. I just didn't, I didn't get connected to his producer, who he was bringing in his buddy he was bringing in. That just didn't work for me. But I mean, just this week, I did a shorter show.

1:25:58 And I think it's Okay. You know, just do, do, do it. Do it. You have content for. Yeah. And and his yeah. Because that was an extreme. He went from, like, 9 minutes to 90. And I'm like, yeah. I'm I'm and he even said, you know, for people in a short attention span. Yeah, it started that way. Right? Dan says in chat, How long should a book be? I mean, how long should a movie be? Well, I mean, that question, Dan, like, you know, there probably is a limit on the movie side of things. At some point, theater would play a 5 hour movie. Lord of the Rings got close with some 3 and 3 and some change, 4 and some change. I can't remember how long those were. But I, you know, I don't know. It's, it's a, it's a good point, right? There, there isn't necessarily a set length. Do what you feel is do which field works is best. I'm trying to find it in my book. Wait. You wrote a book? I wrote a book. That happen? Profit from your podcast. Oh, awesome. That's a perfect book. That before. Right now, if you go over to, profit from your podcast.com/book, you can actually get the audio book even though it's not officially done yet.

1:27:13 And as a new kind of preorder kind of thing, because you get right now, in fact, I'm hoping to record chapter 4 today. Like, the there's over an hour of stuff there already, but you can then ask questions, which will then be used in the the bonus stuff. But I just see at the end membership site tools on page 156 as part of the appendix. But that was the problem with the book. I had to provide x amount of words. So that was one that I was like, if I if it was an indie book, that part of the appendix would not be there because I knew the minute we published it, that section of the book was gonna get outdated. And I was like, really? Like and they're like, well, we need more stuff. And I'm like, but it's done. And they're like, nope. We need more words. And I'm like, words, words, more words. So that was, one of the downsides of being, well, you know, officially published. So, also, one last thing in, in the news, the StreamYard, which we all know and love, which was bought by Hopin.

1:28:16 A while ago. Yeah. Not recently. Hopin has been bought by Bending Spoons is the name of the company, and they are the owners. And then I was like, oh, okay. Because sometimes when companies get bought, you go, oh, is that a good thing or a bad thing? They are the owners of Evernote and Meetup. And when I first heard that, I was like, not really companies I'm a fan of anymore. I hope they don't I hope they don't ruin the stream yard because I really like the guys at StreamYard. It's a great product. And hopefully but, yeah, Hopin was was, bought by Bending Spoons. So which I thought was just a folk group in the sixties.

1:29:00 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the stage. Bending spoons. And then this blonde with long hair would come out and a guy with a headband singing about peace and love and making balloons fly up in the air. Anyway, with that said, Jim, what is coming up on, the average guy dot tv? Yeah. You know, I'm getting a little more comfortable with solo podcasts. I took 3 weeks off and came back solo. And it was kind of fun. So, you know what? I didn't say sorry once either. I never apologize. I took 3 weeks off. It's just great to be back. Boom. That episode is published and available homegadgetgeeks.com. There you go. On the School of Podcasting a couple months ago, one of the questions of the month was, you know, what are what are the things you're gonna continuing in 2024? And what are those things that, yeah, you're probably gonna put on the side? And the, like, number one answer to, like, here's something that doesn't work was social media.

1:30:01 So I went out and found Katie Brinkley, who is a social media strategist. It was kinda like, alright. We know social media can work because otherwise, why would everybody be on it? And I'm like, so what are we doing wrong? And she's got a kind of a 4 tiered approach that we're gonna go through. So that is coming up on the school of podcasting. Remember, we are here every Saturday morning, 10:30 EST till noon. Ask the podcast coach.com/live. If you like the show, hey. How about sharing it with a friend? And, also, if you hate the show, can you do us a favor and share it with a friend? We'll take anybody. It doesn't really matter. Thanks to, Mark over at podcastbrandingdot co, and Dan at based on a true story podcast. Check out Jim at, home gadgetgeeks.com. Check me out, school of podcasting dot com.

1:30:49 Don't forget to use the coupon code coach when you sign up for a 30 day or yearly subscription. And as Jim is pointing out, like, subscribe, and smash the bell because, you know, it's there. It's taunting you saying smash me. And, we will see you next week with another episode of That's the Podcast Coach. It's balloons everywhere. And years later.