76. How Jerry Dugan turned his stagnant show into a Top 1% podcast

00:00:00
It. Everyone here knows just how hard it is to grow something, anything, and to keep that growth going. For example, growing a business so hard. And even if you happen to have one of those unicorn businesses that just took off suddenly, it's still hard to continue to keep that growth going. Or community.

00:00:19
It is so hard to grow a community and continue to keep it engaged and thriving and mean. Personally, let's talk about one of the most important types of growth plants. Yep, I've had to say goodbye to a couple of my indoor plants because I've really struggled to nurture and grow them. But on a serious note, you know what I found to be one of the hardest things to grow in my journey? Yep.

00:00:42
My podcast. That's kind of why I've dedicated this whole podcast to growing a podcast. And on this podcast, you've heard a lot of the strategies that I've used in the past and I'm currently using and exploring now to grow this podcast. But I also get such a kick out of speaking to other experts, and especially Capsovians who are kicking butt, growing their own podcasts and seeing what is working for them. What is it that they are doing?

00:01:10
So on this episode, I have one such capchovian, Jerry Dugan. Join me to share his secrets about how he has been able to get into the top 1% of podcasts on Listen Notes. And his story is a classic example of how slow and steady wins the race. So if you've been publishing and publishing and publishing episodes on your podcast with very little to no growth in downloads, then you have to hear Jerry's podcasting story. It spans eight years and his tips on how he's been able to get all his metrics going up.

00:01:45
My name is Deirdre Tshien, CEO and co founder of Capsho, the fastest way to repurpose and market your expert content. And this is the Grow My podcast shown. I am the host of beyond the Rut with Jerry Dugan, a podcast that's been around since August 2015, aiming to help people create a life worth living in their faith, family, and career. Wow. So beyond the rut has been going for eight years.

00:02:20
That's pretty incredible. It's hard to keep anything going for that long, especially a podcast. We hear a lot about how easy it is to podfade. And let's be honest, I bet stopping your podcast has probably crossed your mind at some point. It's certainly crossed mine, especially when we don't see the growth we'd like.

00:02:39
And yet Jerry has been in exactly the same boat. He's now had his podcast for eight years, but as you'll soon hear, seven of those, he saw almost no growth. So I was curious to hear about how Jerry got into podcasting and what has kept him going for this long. 15 is how long I've been on beyond the Rut. I had another show prior to that called Family time Q and A that started in January 2014, and that was a byproduct of I've always had a dream to be like an inspirational or motivational speaker, but I didn't really have a platform to showcase.

00:03:14
This is how I sound, this is what I talk about, this is what I believe in. Here's some things I'm trying as a father, and I don't know. It was New Year's Day, so like everybody else, I was wearing my brand new running shoes. Thought I could be a runner instantaneously. And so I was about half a mile into a three mile run, and it just hit me, hey, I'm listening to a podcast right now.

00:03:36
I think it was like Cliff Ravenscraft, the podcast answer man. And prior to that, I'd listened to a family show, and it just sounded kind of fake, like the kids were kind of prompted to answer a certain way. And I was like, what if somebody was dumb enough to let their kids ask anything? And I wasn't ready for it? And whatever I answered, that was the answer, and I had to roll with it.

00:03:55
So that's what started the whole podcasting journey for me. I went home excited, told my son he was like eleven at the time, maybe 13, somewhere in that window. I'll do the math later. But I went up to him. He was playing video games.

00:04:09
I told him my idea. I pitched my podcast to him. Probably the first and only podcast pitch I'd ever done. And his response was to look at my wife and ask, Do I have to? And I was like, oh my gosh, there's a knife in my chest.

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So as I'm taking that out, my daughter, who's like, ten, leaves out and I don't know where, and she says, dad, I'm your person. Let's go. Let's hit record. Now, it could be a father daughter show, and that's it. Within ten minutes, we're pulling out my cell phone, which was like a Samsung Galaxy S Five.

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Just to give you some context of how long ago this was, some of you are like, oh, what? Yeah. And there we are recording. And she asked me a question, and I answered it. And then she asked me to ask her a question, which was, what could I do to be a better dad?

00:04:53
She threw me under the bus. She laughed her heart out. And that was the start of 86 episodes of Family Time. Q and a year and a half later, my friend Brandon comes along. He has a heart to have a show that's geared towards men in their thirty s and forty s to help them live their best life.

00:05:09
And he needs somebody who knows the technical stuff, who knows how to get that show up and running, how to get it published every week, all those things. And that's where I came in, in Corpus Christi, Texas, I was pretty much the only podcaster at least the only one I knew of. And so we brought in a third guy, and that was it. Nine months of arguing we had a baby. That baby was beyond the Rut podcast, and it really was January of 2014 when we started the arguments.

00:05:36
Yeah, close to August is when we soft launched, because that's how we got it past Sean, and there was never an intent to pull the show in case we had to redo the whole thing. I pretty much was burning the ships behind us because my wife had told me if we didn't launch that show, I had to stop playing with my friends because it was taking up one to two nights every week. We were pretty much stuck at the same spot. Who is our audience? What's our message?

00:05:59
How are we going to help them change their lives? All important things. Because we kind of rolled out without answering, really, any of the shows. Not really. Well, anyway, not in any sort of unity.

00:06:09
And so that was August 2015 when we launched. By then, I was the background guy doing just the recording. Not even that they would send me the recording, and then I would have to make it sound good. So Sean and Brandon were the hosts, and within 16 episodes, Sean had quit. Said, we're never going to take off with this thing.

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It's going to just fade out. This is before the term pod. Fade was a term. And my answer to that was, Well, I'll take a spot. And, yeah, 2015 on.

00:06:37
Well, 2016 on. I was the co host until about 2021. Brandon decided he needed to hang it up, and I wasn't done. So I took it over, dusted off all the cobwebs from all of our foundational documents that we had, and realized we'd gotten away from our purpose of the show, our target audience, our niche. And I've just spent the last two years really honing that back in.

00:06:58
Like, what does it look like? What does it sound like? What is it that our target market really needs? Is it still the same target market? All those answers had to be found right away while also trying to get guests.

00:07:09
And it's just been a wild ride, a fun ride. And we met Gosh just a few months back at Podcast Movement 2022, and by then, I was starting to get back in my groove, and now I'm feeling like the show is finally a lot of people want to have their show take off right away. Here I am on year number eight, finally saying, I feel like the show's starting to take off. Want to know what has kept Jerry going through all of can? I can speak better than I can write, and it's easier to edit a podcast than it is to edit video, and especially to make there's such a high bar to make video look good, whereas audio, you can make it look good, you can't make it look good.

00:07:47
And so that's a big reason why I love doing the podcasting space, because longer form, it's easier to digest. When somebody's driving to work, driving home, maybe they're on a walk or a run, and I'm there with them side by side, having this conversation that they get to listen in on and at the same time sharing insights I'm gleaning from other people to make my life better, hopefully to help them make their lives better. And first seven years, we did not monetize this show. It's only in the last eight to ten months that I've done any sort of monetization of the show. So I got a track record.

00:08:21
I'm willing to pour money into this thing and not make any money off of it. Because the message for me is what's most important. Isn't it incredible what we will go through when we believe so much in what it is that we're doing and the message that we're sharing? And so now let's talk about the growth of Jerry's podcast. What did that look like and what were some of the factors that went into it?

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This is probably when you really want to start taking some notes. When you look at where is the show after seven years, it was pretty much in the same spot. We didn't have seven years of growth. We had one year, seven times, and the highest. For what it's worth, listen notes is kind of cool to look at.

00:09:00
It doesn't give you the whole picture, but we pretty much stayed at the top 3% for about half the life of the show. By the time you and I met in August 2022, that's where the show still was. Downloads were pretty much the same number for years. It hit a plateau and it stayed there. It even took a dip during the pandemic when everybody started a show, or it felt like everybody started a show.

00:09:26
And so seeing it stay at that new normal was also more painful. And so that was sort of the before picture. It was pretty much stagnant. It was at the same spot we were putting out. As my friend Brandon said before he left the show, we were pretty much doing the same interview over and over and over with a different voice as the guest.

00:09:44
And it was because we were asking the same two or three questions. Tell us about yourself, what was the rut you got yourself out of? And so there wasn't anything new being added for our long term listeners. Great if you were just popping in for the first time. And a lot of our listeners were first time and maybe second time listeners.

00:10:02
So that was August 2022, where we were we met. And that's because Jared Easley, founder, one of the founders of Podcast Movement, has known one of my biggest pain points in the podcasting journey is writing the show notes. I wasn't supposed to be the guy somebody else that the third guy on the team was the show notes writer. He was the writer, and he quit in 16 episodes. So it fell to me to write because I've seen Brandon's writing, and I had to be the writer.

00:10:30
I love you, Brandon. So, yeah, it would take me about an hour and a half to write those show notes. It was probably the most gut wrenching part of it. I would just kind of throw stuff together that I was like, I think this is what the episode's about. And all right, now, how do I make it sound coherent?

00:10:43
It just wasn't the greatest. And so along comes Capsho. Well, lessons learned from podcast movement as well. Not just that one, but that podcast movement in 2022 reminded me of the lessons I learned in 20 21. 20 20 20 19.

00:10:58
It was the same message over and over. The big three that grow your show are word of mouth, so people that listen to you already telling other people to listen to your show being a guest on other shows. So much so that, like, John Lee Dumas, as busy as he is, still finds time to be a guest on 20 shows every month. And he's got a sweet process around that that I will one day get down pat, but I'm not there yet. Still try it.

00:11:24
So guest appearances on other shows because it's easier to get podcast listeners to listen to new podcasts than to get somebody like my friend Jerry to understand what a podcast even is. Sorry, Jerry, but I know you're not going to listen to this episode because you're still figuring out podcast. So that was the second one. The third one was your website's, SEO, and people discovering you by searching the Internet for the answer that you have in your episode. So those are, like, the big three.

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And when I was looking at what am I doing to grow beyond the rut, the answer was like, none of the above, because I didn't put much effort into the show notes. I was hardly guesting on anybody's show, and I just felt pretentious asking people to share the show with others. And so August was the month of I got to change all that. So Dave Jackson had some advice around. Just simply ask at the end of your show if you liked what you heard.

00:12:13
Hit the share button, send somebody you know. I was like, I could do that. So I started doing that, and I think that helps. I don't think everybody listens all the way through because well, I know because when people talk to me about my show, they're not referencing anything at the end where I'm acting like a goofball. It's all the stuff at the front end.

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I'm like, okay, you got 15 minutes in, which is normal. So I got to find a way, maybe to ask sooner and then with Pod Pros Alex Sanfilippo. He has a platform called Pod Match, which is like a podcast directory and a dating site combined. And this is their baby. So I've been on about ten shows per month since October, but those shows are just now starting to air mid 2023.

00:12:53
So what's been the biggest game changer has been the ability to use Capsho to improve my show notes, to repurpose the episodes into content like blog content, LinkedIn articles, social media threads, posts, and all those things which would take me forever to figure out. Now I just go into Capsho and say, I want to talk about that episode. I go into there, I'm like, all right, I want something LinkedIn, something or other, and boom, it's right there. I'm like, great copy. I paste it on a document and I just read through it.

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So instead of writing it from scratch, it's like I'm proofreading somebody else's work. I'm doing air quotes, but that's somebody else's work is kind of my work. With the help of AI, it's like, it's my audio that got transcribed, and then from there got converted into this content. And so now I can clean it up, make it sound more like me, add some extra stories in that haven't been told before, and so within minutes, I have this fresh piece of content that I didn't have before, and I can add some hyperlinks to some noteworthy credible sources, and then boom, it's done. The written content is done in about 1015 minutes.

00:13:58
So those are the big three I worked on to grow the show. So now at the time we're talking, I'm in the top 1% on listen notes. I just have to interject here because, I mean, come on now, how cool is that? Anyway, let's keep going, because it gets even better. Now, in just the last eight to ten months, I've seen a 28% increase in in the downloads per episode in the first 30 days.

00:14:22
Website visits have gone up 72% in just the last six months. So those two things alone are like, okay, we're trending up. I finally feel like we're having momentum. I'm now attracting new listeners, new subscribers. My email list has even grown.

00:14:39
Gosh, I think about 30 ish percent, give or take a few points on my email list. So people are finding me on social media. And the weird thing with social media is I went the other way. A lot of people like to get on a lot of different platforms. I Pruned.

00:14:55
So instead of focusing on three or four platforms, I really focus on two. And that's LinkedIn and Facebook. And part of that's, because I don't know if you heard of somebody named Deirdre Tshien, partnered with somebody named Ariel Nissenblatt, and they came out with a report on what are the top earning podcasters doing that the low podcast earners or non earners are not doing. And it was know the low income earners were spending a lot of time on TikTok and Instagram because of all this buz. You gotta be on video, you gotta have short form video.

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And your data shows you that if you're an entrepreneurial podcast, a lot of your time know you have a presence on these other platforms, but more of your focus goes into Facebook and LinkedIn. And I was like, I'm a one person show. I'm going to go where the return is. And so I pruned on social media and I'm still seeing this climb happen. How amazing is this?

00:15:50
How amazing that Jerry stuck with his vision for the last eight years, never wavering from what he believes in. And with just putting his head down, focusing on a few things and making a few tweaks, he's now on this growth trajectory. By the way, if you're curious about the report Jerry mentioned, it's called the State of Podcast Marketing Report. And we'll leave the link to that report in this episode's website page so you can grab yourself a copy. Okay?

00:16:15
So if you've been listening closely to Jerry and you've been taking those notes, you already have an idea what some of his top tips are for you to get your podcast discovered and to start driving those downloads and all your other growth metrics up. And now we're going to dive even deeper into each and Jerry is going to systematically teach us how he exactly is implementing those tips so that he, and therefore you can achieve these phenomenal growth results. Let's dive into Jerry's first tip. Tip number one, which is all about leveraging SEO, the abbreviation for search engine optimization. And by the way, you don't need to be an expert in SEO to start getting results from this.

00:16:57
In fact, when Jerry started, SEO was. Pretty much non existent. I didn't put a lot into the written content. I would do some keyword research through keywords everywhere, so I would find good keyword phrases. The problem was none of that's talked about in my episodes.

00:17:14
So I got this write up that to me felt like kind of lying to people. The write up says these things and draws you in, but when you listen to the show, it's going to be like this false advertising switcheroo thingy. Even though I still delivered on more content, deep down inside, that's how I felt. Plus, the time commitment to write show notes for one episode was about 90 minutes. With Capsho uploading, that file getting all the content pieces created, just the show notes alone are done in about ten minutes or less.

00:17:46
And we're talking like with title. That's catchy. I get like four or five titles to choose from. And if anybody knows me when it comes to writing titles, I was a science major in college, so the titles are boring. They tell you exactly what's going on, but there's no fire to it.

00:18:01
There's no honey trap, there's nothing that's going to draw you in and say, okay, you've piqued my interest. And so that was a weak area for me. But with Capsho, I have five of those to choose from. And then I just pick the title that fits my personality the most, make some tweaks to it. But now I've got also some key phrases to look at, and I'll run those phrases through keywords everywhere.

00:18:24
And then I'm like, oh, these are the actual keywords for this specific episode. Let's stick with those. So then I just make some minor adjustments to the show notes to fit that. So now my show notes are much more aligned with the actual audio and also aligned with what people are searching for on the Internet. So talk about shaving.

00:18:44
80 minutes per episode per week. What am I doing with that time? I added a second episode per week. Why not? So I'm able to do a second, shorter solo episode.

00:18:57
Gets more of me out there. It's now showcasing what I know, and it's helped people see, oh, Jerry knows this stuff around leadership development. Oh, Jerry understands things around goal setting and journaling and living your best life, the things that are in his book. This freed up time, gave me time to focus on a book. One of the things that the beyond the Rhett team had said we were going to do way back in 2015 was after a year, we're going to pull together our lessons learned and write a book.

00:19:25
It was like, year seven, still no book. And it was like, when am I going to find the time for this? So that was another big thing that happened. So the time saved allowed me to now focus on a second episode per week. It allowed me to spend more time writing on my book.

00:19:42
It allowed me to think strategically. I started a business in the last eight or nine months that focuses on leadership development for others. And I don't have to scramble and think, what are my show notes going to be about? Are my show notes even good? It's there.

00:19:56
Let's tighten it up. It's up. And I even did that this morning. Decided not to edit over the weekend or post over the weekend, and I just uploaded the file within 20 minutes. I had not just the show notes, I had my artwork.

00:20:09
It was all there. Hyperlinks. Everything was done in 20 minutes. I'm like, I love this platform. It caters to my ADHD in some ways.

00:20:16
So as far as tools, that was probably the most biggest game changing tool for me. I know this isn't meant to be a Capsho advertising session, but it is for me because it was one of the many tools that I use to make a change. But it's the one that's given me the most tangible, quantifiable changes in the outcomes that I wanted to have. It just always makes my heart sing when unprompted, a captrovian expresses just how much Capsho has helped him or her. And in Jerry's case, it's been able to do two really important things.

00:20:52
The first is that it has been able to increase the quality of his written content so that by design, it gets him discovered through search. If you've been following me long enough, you've probably heard me bang on about how we built our human marketing intelligence into capture's artificial intelligence. And part of that is in creating written copy designed to help get you and your podcast discovered through SEO. The second is how much time Captcho helped Jerry Dugan. And with that time, Jerry's been able to achieve so much, he's been able to meaningfully start his business.

00:21:29
What? He's written a book. Double what? And he's even started releasing a second episode a week for his podcast. Absolutely phenomenal.

00:21:39
And by the way, if you're curious about the strategy behind why and how he does these second episodes on his podcast, hint positioning himself as the expert, then grab the bonus clip we have created for you. Just click on the link in the show notes and you'll find that bonus clip on this episode's web page. And now, with all of the time capture is saving Jerry, you know what else he now has more time for? His second growth tip podcast guesting. Last year, 2022.

00:22:09
I think I was on maybe ten shows total. The year before that, about five or six. And it's just so weird. I can get behind a microphone and interview people all day long and love it. But if I'm a guest on somebody else's show, it's like, I got to bring my A game.

00:22:22
What if I say something stupid? I'm at their mercy to edit that out. Whereas I can edit myself out all day long. And I do but for the volume I needed. And I got the number from John Lee Dumas.

00:22:33
I saw him the last time I saw him, I forget when it was he had shared that for him to hit the numbers he wants, he has to be on 20 shows per month. I was like, oh, I don't have that. I had a full time job at the time, so I don't have the time for that. But I could get on five shows a month, and then I didn't know. But within a couple of weeks, I was going to quit my job and have all the time in the world.

00:22:55
So I was like, okay, well, I'll do ten, and now I need a vehicle to get me in there. And that's where Alex and Alicia Sanfilippo come in. They created a platform called oh, shoot. I keep want to say Pod lottery, but that's the other thing that they do for Pod batch. Thank you.

00:23:10
And I'd forgotten all about it, but he had done a post where he had just cleaned the community. He reduced the number of people who were paying customers. He wanted higher quality. He didn't want just a bunch of people who weren't responding to the messages and so on. And I was like, pod match.

00:23:24
Pod Match. I had an account, and I have not touched it in years. And sure enough, I'd been cut. I was one of the guys who didn't utilize it, and I got cut, which woke me up, and I'm like, no, I want back in. Let me in, Alex.

00:23:34
And so he got me back in and made me pay for it. So he didn't make me pay for it, but I mean, I saw the value right away, like, the way it linked me up to potential hosts, and it just makes it so much easier. I get, like, three matches every 12 hours, so I'd really just check it once a day, and I could tell right away this show is totally not a fit. And I'll just hit pass or hey, this might be a good fit. And I've got all the buttons I need right there to listen to their show, to look at their website, look at their social media presence and just get a feel for if they're going to be around versus and if they're going to put some effort in.

00:24:07
And if we're a match topically, then I hit the message button and I tell them my pitch, like, hey, I understand your show is about this. Here's some value I want to bring to your audience on this topic. And it was that he has tutorials that help you hone in. How do you pitch to people? Because I get them all the time as a host, but that has really helped me.

00:24:27
This is the one topic I want to offer your audience. Let me know if that topic works for you or not. If that one doesn't work, check out my guest page and let me know if there's anything else I could cover for you and help you. So from there, I've averaged about ten guest appearances per month. That one platform makes it so much easier for me because I probably get about eight of my appearances just from that platform.

00:24:47
The other two are from people I take onto my show as a guest, and I realize this person is me, but not me. Like, their show is similar and different at the same time. Maybe they're open to a guest swap, and I'll just propose that, like, hey, I'd love to have you on my show. How open are you to a guest swap? And I can bring this topic to your audience.

00:25:06
Here's an episode. And the cool thing is, once you've done one or two of these interviews, you have proof of concept you can share with people like, hey, here's an interview I did with Mike Simmons on Find Your Catalyst or the show. It's like, especially when they're like a show that's got some popularity behind it. It's like, hey, I. Was on this one, they're like, no way.

00:25:28
How'd you get that guy or how'd you get on that guy? I'm like, I ran into him at Podcast Movement. You should know it. Being able to swap also helps it boosts my confidence because now I'm on a platform that I see as maybe bigger than my own, and then I get a guest on who's great. So that's been the guesting journey.

00:25:46
Pod Match is the biggest part of it. And then if there's a show that I normally wouldn't get on, offering a pod swap, so they benefit from their exposure to my audience as well, has been a big help. And so it becomes much more collaborative that way too. Gosh, I hope you're still taking notes because there are so many awesome hacks Jerry is sharing right now, and he's got even more to share. So hold on tight because these are now going to relate to his third podcast, growth Tip, word of mouth.

00:26:14
Now, Jerry has already shared earlier in this episode the one way he gets word of mouth referral is just by asking for it. Pretty simple, right? But there are a couple of other things he's been really leaning into, which is helping with this. One is through building and nurturing a community to help spread the word. And he's doing this with emails.

00:26:33
And listen to how Jerry approaches his emails in a novel, unique and authentic way. My emails have gotten better. Captcho being one of those tools, I now have content I could pull. And then it's not just captcho the platform, you got this community, you built the Capchovians, like from Capchoville or something, whoville something. But that community also helped see how people are applying this.

00:26:58
Marketing has been a weak area for me. And thinking like a marketer, thinking like, how do people get through my barriers with stuff I know I need? But then I say no to it because I'm just, who are you? And so learning over time, even with my own subscribers, this is something I'm sharing with you. I'm not just sending you email that you can just easily delete, but here's something of value.

00:27:21
So Capshos allowed me to start writing better subject lines and then in the body of it, giving you enough information from your perspective, like what's in it for you, the reader or the listener, and then enough enticement to say, yes, I will click that button. I'll listen to that show on my phone or on my computer and so on. And in that, asking people to share this email with somebody they know, like forward this email. So that goes into my email body. If there's somebody you know who would also love this content, hit the forward button and send it to them.

00:27:53
And I see that in the metrics. It's like it gets clicked on, it gets shared. My open rate before all this was around 20% to 25%. My open rate now is around 40 and the actual click rate will used to be zero every single email and now there are clicks. And it's not just me and my wife clicking on stuff, it's other people clicking on stuff.

00:28:12
I'm like, yes, it's working. And Jake Klaus has sent out a lot of tips as well, like how do you improve your email formatting? And so I've been doing that and I've just been paying attention to the emails I actually open. What makes me open them? Subject headline, obviously, because if it's something that interests me, then I'll open it, if not, I don't open it.

00:28:30
And then I skim it. So it's like, okay, I got to have scannable pieces like bold and headings and things like that. Pictures. And one of my favorite things about the Capsho newsletter is the jiffy, the, you know, the moving pictures from Hogwarts. And I finally started inserting those into my own emails as well.

00:28:50
And then I put other recommendations like Dan Cockerel likes to add books that he's reading and he recommends other articles. So I've started to do that. And as promised for the people who get me on their show, I even include my guest appearance as a spotlight at the end, like where am I? I'm on this show, this show and this show. And here are the topics we cover.

00:29:08
And so I've been doing that with my email. I went from sending one email out every two to three months to consistently getting one out every week, at least one out every week. And part of it again, like, what do I write about? And not just be like, hey, listen to my show. And so again, Capsho allows me to get that content and then very easily within minutes say, I want this one to be less about listening to my show and more about the educational piece, or I want this one to be more engaging, so let me see if I can get an email conversation going.

00:29:37
And so then I remove all the linkages and just say, hey, this is something I struggled with. And I tell my own personal journey. And so sometimes I'll take content from Capsho, paste it and rewrite 100% of it in a matter of minutes. Because that Capsho write up gave me the inspiration for something completely different. And so I'm still getting emails out very quickly, but the inspiration is there.

00:29:58
I'm not having writers block with that. So that's one thing I've been doing consistently is the email and getting valuable emails out there. For my readers, emails are one of. The best ways to build relationships, your community and nurture those word of mouth referrals because your audience really gets to know you and all the value you're providing exactly like what Jerry's experiencing. But it doesn't stop there because Jerry has another hack for you relating to getting those word of mouth referrals.

00:30:25
There's a small handful of folks that not only are friends of mine and they listen to the show regularly, they would text me regularly about what they loved and didn't like about the show. So, like, my friend Scott Green, who used to be with a show called the Llama Lounge, those four Air Force guys that talked about leadership, lifelong learning, and they just hung it up. So he's a podcaster looking for a place to hang his microphone, in a sense, and he sends me feedback on every single episode, and so that's been great. And then I'll just tell him some behind the scenes stuff, and then he'll go and share that with other people. I've got a small group of friends that are just cheering me on to this whole journey, and I'll just say, hey, I just interviewed Lou.

00:31:02
Mangello, this guy's been like a hero of mine. You can ask my wife, and she's in the thread. And she's like, oh, yeah, if I had a dollar for every time Jerry said the name Lou Mongello in my house, I could be retired. Yeah, I'm just making Lou feel as awkward as I can. And so I have a small group of friends, about 20 ish people, and I just tell them, this episode is out.

00:31:22
This is what I talked about. One of the coolest parts of talking to this person was something behind the scenes. So I've kind of built this unofficial community that I haven't turned into anything yet, but they're also out there sharing this with their coworkers, like, oh, hey, a friend of mine just interviewed this guy who is like, a big Disney nut. You ought to check out Jerry's show. And then from there, Lou gets a new subscriber.

00:31:44
You're welcome, Lou. And so that's the other thing. So the word of mouth is this close group of friends that I get to tell every single episode that comes out that I think they'll like, why I like it, what stood out to me in that experience. So they're getting that deeper taste. And that's helped me develop eventually, an actual community for beyond the, you know, an actual rudder nation, in a sense.

00:32:06
That's pretty cool, right? And because Jerry has been able to focus on these three things SEO, guest appearances, and word of mouth, he's seen tremendous growth in his podcast listeners, his email list, website visitors, all the important metrics across the board. And now Jerry has something for you. So I finally did something that I could check off my bucket list, which is to publish a book. It was self published, but I mean, the thing's paperback.

00:32:33
It's an ebook format. It's got an book to it. And so as a thank you to everybody for listening in on this, I want you to have the audiobook for free. And you can get that@beyondherut.com slash audiobook, and it'll ask for your email, of course. But once you get that, you get the full 2 hours.

00:32:49
If you want to speed, listen to it. You can put me on double speed. I'll sound like Alvin from Alvin and the Chipmunks, and you'll be done in an hour. But really good stuff in there about how do you know you're stuck in a rut? How do you get out of that rut?

00:33:01
How do you design a life that you feel good about and succeed in your faith, your family, and your career? So amazing. So go ahead and grab that free audiobook. You can do that if you click the link in the show notes and head over to this episode's webpage. All of the resources like the state of podcast marketing report, the bonus clip on creating that second episode, and Jerry's gift to you are all over there.

00:33:23
Thanks so much for hanging with us. My name is Deirdre Tshien. Stay awesome.