Add More to Your Podcast? Remember to Subtract!

You know, if you want to be successful in podcasting, you got to do this, you got to do that, and then don't forget to do this and the hokey pokey and turn yourself around because, you know, that's what it's all about.

And it seems a little overwhelming sometimes.

And so one of the great things about doing a live show is people can ask me questions and doctor asks like, how do you guys handle all this stuff?

And so today I'm going to remind you that when you say, all right, I'm going to start doing this or I'm going to add this, well, if you add something, that means you're subtracting something as well.

Start the show.

The school of podcasting with Dave Jackson.

Podcasting since 2005, I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson.

Thanking you so much for tuning in.

If you're new to the show, welcome aboard.

We talk about planning, launching, growing, and if you want to, monetizing your podcast.

And today we're going to talk about keeping your sanity, which is helpful when you're trying to do a podcast.

My website, schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code listener when you sign up for either a monthly or yearly subscription and that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.

I'm doing my show.

Ask the podcast coach and a regular, what would you call it?

A regular audience member.

She's almost always in the chat and she's very nice.

She sends us super chats, which are nice.

Doctor from Mouthy Broad Media said, hey, you and Jim both have full time jobs and yet you have multiple podcasts.

How do you guys do that?

And so I've talked in the past about time management a little bit and I kind of went back and looked and I was like, you know, I have new insights on this.

And I'll be the first to say it is kind of duh, but it's not.

Because what happens is when something new comes along, it engages us very much on an emotional level.

Right?

We are sitting here and we're like, ooh, this is that one thing I need.

And if I do this and I have this tool, this is the missing piece.

If I just had this, now I'm gonna get it and everything's going to be amazing.

And we see other people and this could be everything from YouTube shorts to back in the day.

Back in the day audiograms.

Remember when audiograms came on, we're all like, oh, it's lines that blink.

Yes, this is what my audience has been asking me, dave, I like your show, but can you give me lines that blink and jump around with your voice?

And we said, yes, here are audiograms.

And then we all did audiograms.

And we went from looking like something different to looking like everyone else.

Very much like, what is it?

Cap, cut, or, you know, one of these short, you know, upload five hours of video and we will make 4.6 million shorts that you can use after you spend 10 hours figuring out the two that are usable.

And we all look like everybody else.

And so this is kind of a.

Again, it's one of those words of wisdom that is so simple and yet we forget about it because we see something and we go, ooh, if you want to add something, you have to subtract something.

I know.

Wise words from Sage, Dave.

What do you mean, old man?

I mean, if I go, you know, I've always known that I should be doing more on LinkedIn.

I should.

I'm going to start doing more.

I'm going to add LinkedIn to my marketing efforts.

Sounds like a great idea.

If you're a business and you're doing a podcast about your business, yeah, probably a good idea to go hang out where the other business people are.

Although when I logged into LinkedIn, I was like, did I accidentally type in Facebook?

But nonetheless, if I want to add LinkedIn to my marketing efforts, I have to subtract something if you're 100% busy.

And so, yes, today we're kind of talking time management, but I want to hinge on this.

To add something, you must subtract something.

And so Dr.

Was like, how do you guys find the time to do this?

I have, I don't know, four or five 15 something podcasts.

It's crazy, right?

And it's a joke, but it's not a joke.

I have no children, I have no pets, and I have no spouse.

So I have a lot of free time.

Probably more than you.

If you have a minivan, four kids, soccer practice, and a spouse.

And that's you live you, I live me, we're all happy, right?

But that's true.

I do have more time.

But even with that, There are only 24 hours in a day.

And I'm here to tell you a, we talked about this on the show.

You're probably not as busy as you think.

And I'll give you an example.

There are days when I always record it Sunday, as I record this right now.

And there are days when I get home from church, I eat lunch, I sit on my couch.

And if I heaven, heaven help me.

If I put my foot up on a footstool, I'm gone.

I'm taking a nap, and I will wake up, turn on the TV to see how many points the Browns are losing by, and there will be a voice in my head that says, you should go do your podcast stuff.

Because, you know, I haven't missed a Monday.

And I'm like, no, no, I got it.

I'm just going to watch one more series of this sports game or whatever and eventually I will get up to do it.

And there's some principle that whatever time is left for you to do it, that's how much time it takes.

It's actually called Parkinson's Law.

And being a person in his middle aged, I don't want anything to do with the word Parkinson's.

But the adage is work expands so as to fill the time which available for completion.

So there are times when I don't take a nap involuntary, in many cases, when I just get up and I do it and it will still take me, let's say it takes me eight hours to do the podcast.

But if I happen to fall on the couch and take an involuntary nap and I wake up and I'm like, oh, now I've only got five hours, oddly enough, I can still do the exact same job.

I just saw the movie Saturday night about Saturday Night Live and there's a great quote, it says, we don't start the show because we're ready.

We start the show because it's 11:30.

And sometimes it's just, well, I've done as much research as I could.

This is as good as I'm going to get.

And this is what I give.

So sometimes you do what you can with what you got where you are.

So I say this as I record this and I look to my right, there is a football game on screen number two that I'm ignoring.

But nonetheless, if I really wanted to focus right now, I would turn that off.

So some tips on this.

Number one, I have this football game on, but I'm not really watching it because I'm going to watch it later where I can fast forward.

I use YouTube TV and I can just actually go in and just hit, skip, skip, skip, watch a play.

Watch the guy fall down, he stands up, skip, skip, skip, watch.

And I can buzz through a football game very, very quickly.

And I think right now many different services have a button.

It's like, watch the key plays.

And I can watch a football game in about Five minutes.

The other thing I have to realize, can I.

I don't want to, like, poop all over sports, but in the end, it's billionaires with a team of millionaires, and no matter what you say or do, you have no effect on the outcome of the game.

Now, on the bright side of sports, you don't know what's going to happen, and that's great storytelling, but in my case, I do.

The Browns are going to lose.

It's just kind of a thing they're really, really good at.

So keep that in mind.

If you're going to add something, you have to subtract something.

So at Pod Page this week, my boss and I, Brendan, had said, you know, we should look into using LinkedIn a bit more for marketing.

And so the first thing we did was we put it on the schedule.

So when you add something again, what are you taking off?

Or when you add something to the schedule, like, I don't know, LinkedIn, you also need to put down on the schedule time to learn this platform.

So if you're like, hey, I'm going to stop using Audacity, I'm going to switch to Hindenburg.

Okay, then put on the schedule time to learn Hindenburg, because otherwise, what's the point?

And so right now.

So let me stick with Brendan Brennan, and I went to this LinkedIn school from Josh somebody.

I'll put a link in the show notes.

It wasn't bad.

Some really things I'll be talking about here in this show that apply to podcasting, that he applied it to LinkedIn, but I'm like, that's actually really true when it just comes to content creation.

But we also put on the schedule, okay, here's when we're gonna learn it, and here's when we're gonna talk about it and how we can implement some of this stuff.

So it's not enough to say, I'm going to do this.

You have to put on the calendar.

Here's where I'm going to learn how to do this.

And then put on the calendar.

Here is where I will do what I learned.

Because so many times we go to podfest or Podcast Movement or some sort of summit and we learn a bunch of stuff and then we never put it into play.

I just started using a tool called Site Behavior, and it's kind of a Google Analytics type of replacement.

It also makes little videos.

This is kind of creepy.

Of people that come to your website.

So if for some reason I'm not getting people to click on the follow button, I can see maybe they're confused.

Maybe they don't understand what page to go to or whatever it is.

And right now, it's on AppSumo for, I think, 49 bucks.

But one of the things that kind of bummed me out about it is I sent a thing to their email, and I'm like, hey, actually, yeah, roll the jingle.

And now it's time for a power rant.

And this drives me nuts.

I mean, this drives me 100% nuts.

If I buy a software program and you do not have a video, said the teacher, that explains how to use this, I want to lovingly and caringly punch you in the face just a little, because, you know, this doesn't do me any good if I don't know how to use it.

Ugh.

Finally, back to the show.

So to add something, you have to subtract something.

One more quick example that I'm going through, like, just a second ago.

Mark Lawley and Crystal Lawley, they do practical prepping.

Find it at practicalpreping.info no bunkers, no zombies.

It's just about, you know, surviving things like hurricanes.

And he, as you might imagine, has seen a surge in his Facebook group.

I think he said he's over a hundred and something thousand now in his Facebook group, and his episodes are going up.

But Mark uses this thing called motion.

And of course, it has AI in it.

But here's the thing that I was like, ooh, I can tie in more than one calendar.

So I could tie in my pod page calendar and my school of podcasting calendar and all my tasks, et cetera, et cetera.

So I said, hey, I think I'm gonna add this to help organize me.

And I just went through the first day of, like, four little lessons, I guess you could say.

But the first one took me 28 minutes.

Okay, I got three more to go.

And it doesn't do any good to buy software if you're not going to use it.

So I put it on my calendar, which is now in motion.

You know, learn motion.

So otherwise you're just wasting your money.

Now, one other thing I want to say about wasting your money is just because it's bright and shiny doesn't mean it's something that you need, because you're like, yep, Dave, totally agree.

I bought this new thing, and now I'm going to put the time on the calendar to learn it.

And then in the end, you don't use it because, well, it was bright and shiny.

It wasn't really useful.

But when I Looked at motion, I was like, okay, yeah, because I've used todoist in the past.

But here's the other thing.

There is no one way, like what works for you may not work for me.

What works for Mark and Krista may not work for me.

But I knew that.

I'm a huge fan of todoist, but the one thing I needed to put on my todoist was look at todoist.

Yeah, I know, sad.

So I was like, you know, let's try this motion thing.

It slices, it dices, it even juliennes.

But nonetheless, I said, hey, I think I'm gonna add this to organizing my show.

So what am I taking out?

Well, probably exercise, which is bad.

You know, maybe I'm gonna sleep is sometimes things that are bad, you don't want to do that.

But I know I've made this point for nauseum now, but when you add something, you have to take something away.

Otherwise you just burn out and end up crispy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I get it.

You're going, but how do we know what to do?

The old joke, 50% of my marketing is working.

I just don't know which 50%.

Well, I use a tool and if you haven't figured this out, I'm somewhat addicted to appsumo and I think it's still on appsumo.

It's called switchy.

And what I do is I can go in and say, hey, go here to learn.school of podcasting.com but make the link.

I have a domain for this.

Supportthis show.com maybe I put YouTube and then I take that link supporttheshow.com YouTube and I use that link every time I put the word YouTube on YouTube.

And consequently I can then see how many clicks are coming from, you guessed it, YouTube and Twitter and threads.

If you do this.

Now, to be completely transparent, I don't always use that stuff.

I'm like, and it's so stupid because it takes, I don't know, four seconds to make a link.

But there's times I'm like, I'm just gonna put the link.

But if I want to really know where my traffic is coming from.

And this is a replacement for things like bitly and etc, etc.

And again, why do I use this one?

Because it's a one time payment and it's a great tool.

It also does things like it'll make like a LinkedIn tree.

If you want to see this in action, go toPower of Podcasting dot com.

It does a lot of stuff.

It also Shows you how many clicks came from, where, and what were they using.

Was this on a computer or a phone, Android or iOS?

It's actually a really cool tool.

So if you're like, I don't know what's working, you have to be disciplined, but you can actually then do that.

And so what I'm doing now is I'm tracking where is my, you know, traffic coming from.

And also then what are they doing when they land on my website.

And I'm doing that with site behavior.

So for less than 100 bucks, I got a pretty idea, a good idea of where my traffic is coming from.

And what do they do when they get here?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so what do I do?

What have I subtracted?

I don't watch multiple shows anymore.

Like, right now I watch Murders in the Building, and that's about it.

And then maybe I'll watch Reacher on Amazon.

And the other thing is, I never just watch TV.

And 95% of the time, I will be watching this on a computer.

Why?

Because I have a chrome extension that enables me just like a podcast to watch it.

1.25, 1.5, 1.7 if I want to.

And when it comes to the commercials, if I'm watching something I taped, I can blow through those at 4x.

So that's, you know, pennies make dollars, seconds make minutes.

So anything I can do to speed this up, I do.

And I no longer watch Friends, even though I love that show and Seinfeld and some of the other ones that, oh, I love this show.

No, I don't.

Then what am I doing instead is because I used to watch those on, I don't know, my lunch or whatever.

Now I'm watching YouTube videos on storytelling, on marketing, on tools, etc.

And that's the only few times I actually watch.

I have a giant TV in my living room, and it's very dusty.

But I will watch YouTube now, as I'm doing kind of research in my living room, I'm not watching old reruns of stuff that I've already seen five times.

And those shows that I really like, like Murders in the Building, I'm not watching that on my lunch.

I'm using that as a carrot.

And I can only watch Murders in the Building.

Right now I'm really into Reacher.

And I just found this show with Sylvester Stallone in it.

His voice is so deep when he talks, he cuts about Tulsa, and that's really got me roped in.

And so shows that I really like that would take me away from doing things that I want to do.

I say, all right, if you want to watch that show, Davey, then you got to be riding an exercise bike.

You got to be riding your elliptical because, you know, all sitting in a chair all day makes Dave fat, fatter than he's ever been.

And while we're kind of on that subject, I do my best to avoid fast food because A, it's not that fast and B, it's not that cheap.

If you time yourself from the time you leave to go to McDonald's, wait in the drive thru lane, come home, find out that they, you know, messed up your order, you probably could have cooked something that was cheaper and better for you.

I know today not only is it podcast day, but normally about 7 o'clock I go out, fire up the grill and cook a family size thing of chicken thighs that I then eat all week.

So I batch cook as opposed to batch record.

But that saves me time.

When it's time to make a meal, it's here it is, microwave for two minutes, throw some broccoli in there and you're good to go.

So that's another way to save time.

And speaking of doing research and saving time, I mentioned how I now watch YouTube on my lunch.

And I also when I walk around the neighborhood or if I'm grocery shopping, there are shows that I listen to about podcasting because sometimes I'll learn something that I didn't realize that was going on.

But there are times when I will listen to.

I think for me about if I get three episodes that either a deliver no value or be like almost negative value.

I was listening to a podcast about podcasting and they legitimately and look, you do you right but they were saying here's how you can make money with your podcast.

Put so many ads into your show that is obnoxious and then sell a version that has no ads.

And I went, well, that's a thing.

But I was like, I'm not listening to these guys anymore.

Swipe, left, delete.

And by that I mean if shows don't deliver value, maybe it's time to put them out to pasture.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Some tools.

Free toggle T O G G G L.com you can simply click on it, start your project and I'm here to tell you if you've never done this, it is eye opening.

And then I just went to, I think it was Walmart.com or Amazon.

I bought a little kitchen timer and you can either click a button and it will count up or you could set it for like 25 minutes, press a button and it will count down.

I do that when I do coaching.

Because if somebody, you know, bought 30 minutes worth of coaching when we start, I will set that bad boy for 25 minutes and at that point I'll like, hey, we're almost up.

Any questions you need answered before we leave?

Because if you're like me, when the creative juices get flowing, there are times when it's amazing, but also it will help you see that there are times when you should be doing the creative stuff.

And you are now looking at shorts again or reels or whatever, and you're like, wait, why am I watching Ted nugent videos from 77 California Jam at 2:30 in the morning?

So by kind of having that clock in front of you, it is a little pressure.

Not going to lie.

It's a little bit, but it's a good kind of pressure to go, hey, hey, hey.

Stay focused.

You can do this, keep doing that.

But there's one more thing we need to talk about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm not talking about becoming part of the hustle generation or movement or whatever you want to call it.

That's insane.

I'm not talking about sleeping when you're dead.

You know, and if you're not, you know, if you're getting more than four hours sleep, then you don't want it bad enough.

No, that's bs.

Get some sleep.

In fact, you might actually find if you get more sleep, you will be able to focus more and you'll be more productive.

I also doesn't mean, hey, you know what?

I'm going to cut out time with my kids.

Don't do that.

They're only little for a very small amount of time and they need you.

Okay, well, then I'll just cut out time with my spouse.

No.

Remember, there are three things every podcaster needs, and this does have nothing to do with bandwidth downloads, microphones.

You need your health.

You need to be able to physically do it.

You need your attitude so that you want to do it.

And you need the support of those around you because if you ignore your kids and you ignore your spouse, they're going to complain and that will ruin your attitude.

Right?

If you decide to sleep when I'm dead, that's going to kill your physical thing and probably your attitude because you're like, oh, I just want to sleep.

I don't want to talk about.

So that's not going to work.

You need your health, your attitude and the support of those around you.

If you don't have all three of those.

You can do it, but it's a lot harder and you will burn out.

So keep that in mind.

Let's not get stupid.

Let's not become part of the hustle, part of the like, hey, man, you don't want it bad enough.

You know, that's stupid.

And that's the last thing I think I will throw in here.

You often can't do everything.

What?

What?

What?

Wait, what?

Yeah, it turns out you're not Superman or woman.

And you do need to sleep and eat, which means if you're going to eat and sleep and you're truly 100% booked, which I'm kind of going.

Are we?

Are we really?

But if you are, then that's it.

You're doing all you can.

It doesn't make any sense to put your physical health in jeopardy or your relationships in jeopardy.

This is all you can do at this time.

And that doesn't mean you can't do this in the future.

Just means you can't do it now.

Wouldn't be prudent, not at this juncture.

And why do we want to add things?

Because we're comparing ourselves to other.

Well, that guy seems to be.

He just said he got a million downloads and he's probably lying.

In fact, I'm sure of it.

And I want to be famous and I want people to.

I want to be.

Okay, quit comparing yourself to others because it makes you anxious and you feel like you got to do something.

And so that's fine.

Just remember, if you're going to add something, you got to subtract something because they're only 24 hours in a day.

So use Switchy.

Figure out what's working so you can do more of the stuff that is working.

Stop doing the stuff that's not.

I know Gary Arendt from Everything Everywhere Daily quit doing social media and it did nothing to his numbers, so he quit doing it.

So find out what's working, find out what's not working.

Do more of the stuff that's working.

Doing it more focused and efficient will give you more time to spend time with your spouse and kids.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've got an idea.

Being that we're.

Did you smell it?

Yeah.

It's 20.

25 is.

Man, I swear, it's getting closer as we.

We think here.

And I have an idea where we spend Friday night, Saturday, and maybe a little bit of Sunday to get you up and going with your podcast.

Just as for the person that just.

I just want to get it done.

And so we're going to go through planning, launching equipment, things like that all in one weekend.

And I'm thinking about it, if this sounds like something like, oh, man, I would do that right now.

Go over to school of podcasting.com contact and let me know if this is something you'd be interested in.

You'd also get a year of the school of podcasting.

Yeah, yeah.

A couple quick news blurbs.

As of October 14, 2024, new legislation from the FTC regarding fake endorsements.

But here's the one that applies to podcasting.

And undisclosed influencer partnerships has gone into effect.

And the new rules focusing on endorsements and partnerships carries a fine up to $43,792.

So that whole.

Maybe I'll charge my guest to come on the show.

Yeah, you need to disclose that.

Because when you're like, yeah, Jill is the best.

Jill is like butter.

I love Jill.

You should do everything Jill says.

And you find out later that Jill gave you $300, that needs to be disclosed.

So keep that in mind for everyone's like, I know.

I'll sell spots to come on my show.

Never been a fan of that strategy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hey, I should say this as well.

If you're listening to this the day it comes out, vote if you're in America, vote.

If whatever country you're in and you get a chance to vote, for the love of God, vote.

Now.

I'm kind of bummed that.

I swear, like, the last three elections, it's been like, well, which one do I hate less?

Yeah, that's always fun.

But I wanted to point this out, because mainstream media is losing a lot of its trust.

And what was listed as one of the most trustworthy resources was podcasting.

But that's not going to last long if people like this newspaper in Spain called, sure, let's try to pronounce this.

Hoya Nelpeus, I don't know.

But anyway, they artificially inflated their numbers.

Oopsie.

So that, like, every time you went to their website, it would load the file.

Now, the thing I do not understand is I thought via IP tracking, that the IAB guidelines would somehow go, hey, that's on the same website, but we're talking millions of downloads.

And the media host was Triton Digital, who also, it had advertising on it.

So that's just bad all the way around.

They're not the first to do this.

Good old iheartradio did it back in 2018.

And anytime you introduce this thing that allegedly is called fraud, it hurts the whole industry.

Kudos to James Kridlin from podnews.net for discovering it.

And what's interesting is he looked at a POD track ranker or one of these rankers and noticed that, wow, this newspaper came out of nowhere and is like zooming up the charts.

And what's kind of sad is he said it really didn't take a whole lot of sleuthing to figure this out.

So it does make you wonder sometimes about the people behind these ranking trackers.

But the bottom line is if you're trying to pull the wall over somebody's eyes, whether it's, hey, I'm a top five, you know, listen notes podcast, which I've talked about PR nauseam, that's a bunch of hooey, as my mom used to say.

And anytime you inflate your numbers and then use those numbers for sponsors, I don't know, how do you spell douchebag?

And so this episode was based on a question I got from a listener.

So when I say, hey, if you ever have any ideas for something you'd like me to talk about, feel free.

Schoolofpodcasting.com contact I do this show for you next week.

I believe we will be talking about a survey that I'm doing and some new tools I'm using to do that.

Now, if you're new to the show, go over to schoolofpodcasting.com follow and you can follow in your favorite app and never miss an episode.

Thanks so much for listening.

Until next week.

Take care.

God bless.

Class is dismissed.

Like what you hear, then don't tell somebody.

If you like what you hear, go tell someone.