5 Simple Fixes That Instantly Upgrade Your Podcast

0:05 Good morning podcasting, Morning Chat. Today is Thursday, December 4th, 2025, and today it's our indie podcast Spotlight. And we're looking at an episode structure, branding, clarity, and pacing with Wander Water School showing exactly where creators can tighten, simplify and better guide new listeners. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button top right hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're catching us via podcast chatter, YouTube, please share this with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds. We'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here.

1:21 Good morning again podcasting morning chat. Thank you so much for being here. I am your host Mark Ronick and currently on stage with me. My Co hosts we have Jonathan Howard, Ralphie Step, Dr. Fay, Matt Bliss, Nick Naulback, Cliff Ravenscraft and also BC Babbles that joined us yesterday. He's on stage with us as well today. Good morning to all of you. Thank you for being here for our Thursday evaluation episode. Or what did I call it in the intro? I think I had said, what was that? I said the Indies podcast spotlight. I don't know. We haven't really landed on a name yet, an official name yet, but that one. I like that. I like the word indie in there.

2:03 Yes, I do like that. Yes, because we do evaluate other podcasts, right? Like earlier this week and Monday, Jonathan helped Co host a show all about new heights, which we would not call an indie podcast. So yeah, that that might be a good way to differentiate the different types of evaluations that we do. So today, before we get into it, and I'm going to make this short and sweet before we get into the meat of it all, because normally these episodes take us a little longer. But I did want, if you haven't noticed or maybe you've seen some people sharing on social media already, Spotify for Creators Rapt is here. And I hinted at that yesterday if you were following along during our news and comment episode, I had mentioned that Spotify had recently put out a blog. And one of the things in that blog was it was encouraging you to update your Spotify apps because they were hinting that Rapt was coming.

3:01 And then lo and behold, it came out just a couple hours after we talked about it. And it is really fun. I really enjoy it. Now, this is different than your typical Spotify Wrapped. This is not about how you use Spotify. This is about how your community is using your podcast on Spotify. And in the big thing I wanted to mention, if you don't have your podcast hosted on Spotify for Creators, you can still access this as long as your podcast is available on Spotify. I will quickly tell you how to do it. Go to creators.spotify.com, login with your Spotify account or create one if you don't have one, it's free.

3:44 Claim your podcast again, if you haven't done this login process before, you got to claim your podcast and it'll walk you through that. And basically you do that by entering your RSS feed. Then Spotify will send you a verification e-mail to to the address in the RSS feed. And then once it's verified, your show's going to just appear in your Spotify for Creators dashboard and that. And then when you're in that dashboard, boom, you'll see a little banner on the left hand side, I believe if you're using a desktop that says Spotify Wrapped. If you do that and want to share, I think tomorrow will take a little time. On Friday, we will take a little time to share some of our favorite Wrapped moments that it shared with us. It's really fun.

4:29 It tells you things like your most listened to episodes. It tells you it actually even shows you some comparisons. In other words, it will tell you if your show, it has been shared more than a certain percentage of the rest of the Spotify podcasts. There's all sorts of cool stuff. So check that out if you haven't already. And if there you spot something that you're proud of, you'll share. I'd love for you to share it tomorrow and go and share it on social media. Be proud wear that proudly whatever those different badges are that it gives you all right so we are going to move into today's indie spotlight indie podcast spotlight the podcast we are evaluating today Wander water school and slow family podcast. Is that what it is?

5:15 Slow family or did did my? Can I tell you my journey with this please Idle. Well, I, you know, I don't have any children, so a lot of this was lost on me at the beginning. So I had to dive a little deeper And I thought SLO family. What is that? Is that like maybe that's her family name. Maybe SLO is her like the Jones family, the the SLO the, the Jones family, the Smith family, the SLO family. That's what I thought. And I thought, you know, that sounds that's not quite right. So I went to Google and I put in what is the SLO family and I put that in quotation mark SLO family. And apparently there is a lifestyle.

5:59 This is a lifestyle that exists that I had no idea about. But I mean, it makes perfect sense to me. I remember several years ago reading about a family that got on a yacht and just travelled the world and there were kids and they would be homeschooling them and when they go into all these different ports, they would learn all about the cultures and the foods. And I mean, I thought what an amazing, amazing lifestyle for people who have that kind of oh God. I don't know what it what it takes dedication I guess. But but from the and I listen to like 5 different episodes from the episodes that I heard, she does all of her traveling through airlines.

6:52 So and that's a whole other thing. I mean, I listen to an episode with kids. She did it. She did an episode with these random kids who have this lifestyle and they talked about traveling with animals and I thought, Oh my. This. Is really dedication. So, yeah, this opened up this. I really learned a lot from these episodes as someone who hates to travel and doesn't have any kids. So this this podcast was really not, you know, I wasn't the target audience. Yeah, but I really learned a lot. Well, that's awesome and thank you and I appreciate you going the extra mile and listening to other episodes as well.

7:33 I think it'll give us a more balanced overall evaluation. And yeah, I, I, what I was thinking about this podcast is, yes, it has a very specific target audience. And I could see the, the casual traveler or even the more frequent traveler that doesn't necessarily lead the, the family travel lifestyle. But I could see this being a valuable podcast for anybody who likes to travel to learn some money saving tips. I mean, she is truly an authority. She's like a walking travel cyclopaedia. She's her knowledge is amazing. Yeah. So this show, yes, it her target audience is for slow and long term traveling families, world school leaders and families exploring world schooling.

8:23 Let's see here. What else can I tell you about it? The episode that we're evaluating is episode 24, Save money on booking flights. And the title continues and says October recap plus Taiwan tips plus call for voice memos. We'll talk about the title too. And the episode description. This episode offers a recap of months earlier episodes 20 through 23 world schooling tips for Taiwan and a deep dive into strategies for finding the most affordable flights from using deal alert tools to leveraging budget airlines and multi city or stopover tickets. And this is hosted by the way, by Susie May.

9:04 And as I've teased or shared over the course of the week, a newer listener of the podcasting morning chat heard about it through I believe what she had said was a networking event in Denver. Somebody told her about it and she said, quote, I'm obsessed with your show. We want to do her justice. And before we dive in, I know we got DRS. Some of DRS take on her overall impressions, but what about the overall impressions of our host? Before we'll play clips for everybody today, we're going to talk about other things. But first, just your first impressions of Susie's tone, her delivery. I have thoughts, but I just wanted to open the floor first for anybody. If they wanted to share, go ahead, Ralph. I thought her tongue was great.

9:48 I thought she was very engaging. I thought she was perky and friendly and certainly was passionate about her topic. I agree. I agree. I found her voice warm and inviting. Go ahead. Dear OK, yeah, she spoke with authority. She certainly has that. One of the things that I noticed, especially in the specific eval episode, was her pacing. Her pace was just very, very, very quick. She spoke very quick. And I, yeah, I think there's an opportunity there for maybe to slow down a little bit. You know the beauty of the pause is so important.

10:32 And I wonder also if some of that had to do with editing, because I noticed a little bit I don't want to. There was some, yeah, there was some hard cut. There were a few hard cuts in there, just it needed to be a little smoother. It was, I'm, I'm not trying to criticize it. It wasn't a big deal. But you know, that's just if we're looking to Polish our podcasts and if people are asking us to evaluate the podcasts, these are the kinds of things that we'll point out. Right. It felt it had a taste of TikTok where you're very conscious of getting all the information in very, very quickly. Some of you had shared that you thought maybe she was reading from a script. And I admit, like, I didn't think that way at first, right?

11:14 I, I, so where I'm going with that is I personally think she did a good job reading from the script. It didn't feel robotic like a lot of times I notice. Yeah, it didn't. Bother me. Bother me at all. There was a lot of information, so for her to not have a script would have been amazing. Yes, yes. But that didn't bother me. It was. And the word bother is not right, but I just think that there's an opportunity just to slow down a tinge. OK. And I see Cliff has something as well. Good morning to you, Cliff. What do you got for us? Good morning. Well, I was going to say about the pacing, definitely. I think that she went so fast that sometimes being that as an outsider, I'm not familiar with all of her terminology. And so there are sometimes I had to go back several times to actually cure the word that she just said because it was just not something that I was prepared as a part of like what her show is about.

12:11 So there might have been a little bit of that, but her speed of talking kind of rushed through some words. And I'm like, I didn't quite hear what she just said and what you talked about. Just the pacing overall in the editing, this, that. But the word that I would use is choppy. And I wrote one major thing. I said my only major feedback is I have no room to breathe in this episode. I felt like she was there at one point. She's actually cutting to prior interviews and as soon as she sets up the next thing it, it's like there's not even a second to breathe before that next clip. And then when that clip stops, she's instantly in and it almost seems as though she's cut out all silence in between any thought that she prerecorded.

13:06 And so I just feel like I, I haven't from the beginning of the episode to the end of the episode, I can't breathe. Yeah, yeah, I felt that. Yes, this this technique is probably going to do her well in Tik Toks in those shorts for promotion 'cause she has to get a lot of information in. But yeah, she might have to do like a separate edit, I'm thinking. But just I just want to point out the irony that the word slows in the title. Good point. Listen, I see a lot of people want to chime in here and I want to keep things moving as well, but I I also want to hear from some of you.

13:50 So let's try to keep these tight these this feedback that everybody wants to give. I know Matt, I said in the chat, I'm coming to you, but I see BC has been flashing his hot pepper multiple times here. So I feel like he's got a hot take or something he wants to say. So BC good morning. Go for it. Well, the pepper never really lasts long, so I don't know how many times like it, but this goes along with what Dr. was saying earlier, you know, and kind of going back to a couple days ago, talking about being on the podcast. You know, it's not about trying to sound like a DJ. You know, you don't want to come on to a podcast. It's not about you trying to sound like you belong on the mic. It's about slowing down, finding a way for your personality to shine through and really slowing down your pace. If you give yourself the chance and remind yourself that you're on the mic, it's your time, you don't have to be supercharged and fly through a story, then that allows your personality and your voice more comfortably and naturally to really shine through.

14:47 So just kind of going along with what everyone else was talking about. Thank you, BC and coming from a guy who I know also has some radio background as well. Yeah, that's a really important point that I think especially newer podcasters, and I don't know how new of a podcaster she is, but I think sometimes we put this pressure on ourselves that we have to sound like a radio professional because that's the point of reference maybe that that we originally have, right? Like that's what we think is a professional sound when we're in front of a microphone. And so we try to replicate it instead of pausing when we can and just focusing on speaking clearly slowly at a pace that your audience can appreciate.

15:31 Yeah, I saw, I saw Nick put in the chat that he usually listens to podcasts at 1.3 speed and had to slow it back down to one point O in this instance. Yeah. OK, so there you go. There's some feedback for Susie. May maybe work a little bit on slowing things down and smoothing some edits out. Yes, Dr., go ahead. I would be in the miss if I didn't mention the fact that she has other episodes and some of those are interviews and she does indeed slow down significantly during those interview. See, I think Dr. thank you for saying that. And I think that this is a result of reading from a script, right?

16:20 Because that's tells me she's doing an interview. It's more organic, so she's probably speaking more organically and then when she's got a script in front of her, she's probably racing through that script. It's a natural thing that a lot of us can do sometimes. And I actually was just having this conversation in our empowered podcasting Facebook with Facebook group with somebody. He was saying what he does, and I do this often too. When I, when I script, he, he puts in cues for himself to pause. He'll, he'll make it clear to himself. So when he sees that pause or however he puts it in his script, he knows to do that and just take to take a breath.

17:01 I go even further sometimes and I emphasize, I'll bold words, I'll use all caps, I'll italicize, I'll do different things to also help me with the inflictions that I'm using. If I'm reading from a script, I don't do that often. I don't try. I, I just don't like doing scripting too much, but it's definitely a technique that a lot of people use and one that I encourage my clients to do if they are insisting on scripting. So let's talk a little bit about the branding, right? And then we'll play some clips from the episode. So how do we feel about the cover art? The overall, not the episode 'cause I know she does individual episode images as well. And for our listening audience, you will be able to see a link and be able to check out the the cover art through the show notes.

17:56 Ralph, kick us off. Yeah, and I mean this in a nice way. I'd like the feel of the cover art and it's inviting, but I just feel like there's too much going on and it's confusing as to what is the show name, What is the episode name? I, I, I feel cool. I mean, it feels nice. It feels warm and inviting, but and I love the the pictures and I, you know, all those things are great, but there's just so much going on it just I get lost in it. Yeah, and I think so. Let me try to paint the picture for everybody. They the IT is, it's a picture of a what looks like a family. And I'm looking at it really small, by the way, which this is something to think about because a lot of people will see it much smaller on their phone screens. But Wander is the big focal point and it's written in big letters in blue.

18:46 It's very clear. You can see it it it kind of draws your eyes right to it. I agree with Ralph. The whole overall image is inviting. Then there's a lot of other text underneath the Big Blue letters Wander that you can't read, at least not on some screens because of the size. If you blow it up, sure, you can read it and it's just giving you the full title there. Find like the three or 4 words, blow those up and make that the focal point so we can really see and and understand what the title is of this show. Dr. What did you have? I think she should have a globe on there because she really is a world traveler. I mean, I just can't get past her knowledge that she has about this.

19:30 I'm not really crazy about the font of the main title because I think the main title is just Wander. The font looks. Almost like. Handwriting. Yeah, it looks like Comic Sans or something really close to that. And then the subtitle, it looks like World School and Slow Family Travel podcast. I'm not even sure that this is a photograph. It kind of looks like an illustration of a family, but they even had to kind of write that subtitle around. The family. Yeah, yeah. They're trying to squeeze a lot in there. Yeah, I think there's some opportunity there. Agreed. And Kathy in the chat says here that it's it's cute, but needs to be more minimal and possibly a social logo.

20:15 It looks like a children's book. Yeah, it the the, but I agree. And, and and I don't necessarily take that as a negative that it's got a little bit of a children's book feel. Maybe I'm not sure I'd fully agree, but I I kind of get what you're saying with that. And I do agree that maybe we make it a little more minimal, make it make the imagery feel a little bit more like a world travelling podcast, Right. But yeah, I'm with you there. Let BC had something. Go ahead BC. But also with with what Dr. was saying about doing a globe, you know, World Travel and thinking about like compass rose using something that's more of a seraphim that's more sophisticated. But I do get that. If this is family focus, then having that kind of children's book, and I think Kathy mentioned that in the comments as well, kind of makes sense, but it it may be a bit too much. I love the idea of the compass.

21:06 Yes, me too. Yeah. Nick, do you want to share what you just shared in the chat? Yeah, I said given that the show is like centered around family and family focus, basically exactly what I think BC just said. I think the image is fine. I like the image it it is you need to grab my attention going back to the other side. I just think that there's too much text going on and you tighten that up a little bit. I I personally like it. Yeah, thank you, Nick. Yeah. And I think this speaks to the title of her show. I hate telling people, you know, I'm not and I'm not. I'm not saying you should change the name. And it's a really long name, right? We part of this here, I believe, part of the strategy. We want it short and sweet a because it's easy to remember, it's easy to quickly scan and read, and it fits better on your logo, on your cover images.

21:58 So I'm just going to say that's something to think about. OK, let's see here. And I thought that the show notes were formatted really well, easy to kind of scan through and gives actionable tips. I would, one thing I'll say about that is she gives a list of what looks like maybe 6 to 8 different actionable tips from the episode. I would actually just tease some of that and not give it all away in the show notes because I want people to hear, I want people to sit and take the time to listen to this 30 minute episode. So maybe just tease what they'll learn if they listen. Go ahead, clip. Yeah, I was wondering if she would be open to considering the title of the show being Wonder World School and then having the tagline a slow family travel podcast.

22:49 Yeah, I like that. And then what I would do is I would reduce the font size of Wonder and I would have a equal font size for Wonder World School Wonder on top, World School right underneath in a decent thick font. I agree. I the the font choice isn't stellar in my opinion, but it it it does give that whimsical family kind of feel. So I'm not opposed to it, but certainly wonder world school at the top and big bold print. And then you could put that tagline in a little bit more bold font than what they currently have there.

23:30 But I think I think to having the a slow family travel podcast as the subtitle on the artwork. And then all that would need to change in the name of the podcast is you. You could just put like a, what do you call that a pipe there? And then put a slow family instead of an slow family. Thank you, Cliff. Great suggestions. I hope Susie at least considers some of that. That's awesome. Thank you, Cliff. All right, here's where I want to go with this. Let's get into the episode itself. And I think the best place to start is probably the what I'll call the cold open. So that means that when we hit play on this episode, it immediately starts with a clip, which I believe is from the episode.

24:20 Let me play it and then we will talk it through here. Another unique option is to look for those error and mistake fares. Often human or technological errors lead to a temporary and steep reduction in pricing. So if you see these, jump on them quickly. Going or secret flying websites can help you identify these mistake fares. That is just one of the many hot takes I'm sharing in today's deep dive on all the ways to save money on flights. Let's get started. OK, And I see people want to chime in. I want to start and say first, I like the cold open strategy. I like when we hit play and we get a little tease. But I also think that this in this case, it really needs to be made clear that we're jumping in to to a clip mid thought.

25:07 It confused me and I am a fan and often include those little teasers, those cold opens in the in my clients podcasts. But I think like if if we could do something like a simple coming up on wander world school with some music maybe playing to just something to indicate to the listener. No, there, there's no mistake here. You're not like jumping into the middle of the episode. OK, I'm going to go to Ralph and then I'm going to check in with BC. Go ahead, Ralph. Well, thank you. I felt like the whole episode was sort of like listening to headline news and the beginning of it really took me there because I was like, where are we starting here? Because when I went to listen to it, actually I got an advertisement when I went to listen to it the first time for something else where she was doing like a pre roll or something, which even confused me more. But then I got into that.

25:59 I'm like, did I skip something? I thought I hit the button on my phone or something and I went forward. It just it needed a little lead up. Mark, I agree with you. Yeah. And I think what she's using it's I know she's using Buzz Sprout. That's her hosting platform. And I think she's taking advantage of dynamic ads, the feature that Buzz Sprout offers. So yeah, that's why that's why you heard that. OK. And BC did you want to add something? Yeah. And I agree with your sentiment of a little bit ago where you said that I wish I would have opened up with a kind of on today's episode kind of thing. And funny enough, I didn't even think about when I heard it begin, I didn't think about it actually being a part of this episode. I thought this may be a continuation of last episode. So my initial thoughts were, do I have to hop back an episode to get the beginning of this thought and then catch up and then hop back to this episode?

26:48 Like how? Like where does like where do I go? Yeah. Thank you. BC And that actually, I don't know why that triggered something for me. Just to mention again, you know, I talked at the top that I thought that the title was a little long because basically what it looks like is she's trying to squeeze in all of the topics that she covers in the episode within the title itself. I'm personally of the school. Let's keep it to 1 main focus for the title. You can get to all the other things that you're talking about in the show notes, but I think it's really important to be strategic with your title. All right, since we're talking about the intro, this plays immediately after the clip that we played you a moment ago.

27:31 Welcome to the Wonder World School and so Family Travel podcast. I'm Susie, a travel loving money nerd, mom of two energetic boys, and our family lives between Spain and Colorado. On this show we discuss the stories, logistics and finances of long term traveling families and the multitude of ways to learn and educate along the way. This end of the month episode is our chance to look back on the must listen insightful episodes from this month. It was a joy to chat with Susie, Melissa, Kate and Bennett and Trisha this month. And then we'll head into our deep dive into one specific aspect of long term or slow travel or moving abroad. This is your actionable advice and resources to make your family travel journey even easier and more fun. Today's topic is all things saving money on flights. I also appreciate, Susie, the fact the use of the swooshes or whooshes, whatever you want to call them, I do like that a lot. I think that that helps separate things. I think I did notice also when we talked about some of those misfires with some of the edits, I noticed sometimes that those whooshes were a little bit misplaced. There wasn't, they didn't occur between segments, I'll I'll call it, it sometimes would actually step over you speaking when you moved into the next segment.

28:54 So just, you know, that might again, not a deal breaker by any stretch, but it could get a little distracting because I did hear it happened that way a few times. Just could be a little bit of a distraction for your audience. But again, this is an evaluation episode, so we're going to point out some of these kinds of things to help you make even little improvements like that. Oh, and Matt, you've done a, you did a cover art image for us or for Susie, really. I see that you put it in the chat. We will share a link to this and I am with you there. What you've created looks much more clean. It keeps intact the overall feel of the image and it keeps the keeps the fonts basically the same, but it just simplifies it down to Wander World School. We get to still see the family.

29:45 It still has that little whimsical look and feel. Awesome job there, Matt. Matt's been our resident cover art fixer upper as we've been doing this series. Thank you for doing that, Matt. And I'm going to play the well, I will say I liked that intro. I liked the fact that she really set the table. She told us all the things that she's going to do. I'm sure we'll get to, in a moment, all of the things that she did on that episode. But I did like the setup. I thought that's very needed. And let's see where she goes from here. Before we jump in, how has your October been treating you? We've had a wonderful month. October, especially fall in Colorado, is my favorite. It's one of the reasons that we do spend the fall in Colorado. We ended last month with an awesome Denver World Scores meet up at the park with many fun travel loving families and had a great virtual meet up as well.

30:42 We spent the month dog sitting some sweet dogs from Rover and made almost $700 in the process. If you're interested in this, reach out to me and use my link in the show notes. But this was a wonderful addition to our travel funds. We also went to Almost every fall fest and Halloween event we could find because like I said, I love fall. The leaves changing, the cooler weather. I'm here for it. We celebrated our exchange students birthday with a delicious meal at the local Brazilian restaurant and got her some ski gear to get ready for winter. We met up with Bjorn Boy and his family for a wonderful hike in a State Park. He was the 1st guest on my podcast Back in episode #3 so it was so fun to see him living out the travel plans that we discussed back in May. I'm also on the Linkies app now that is on Android. This app lets me meet up with other traveling families so. I'm going to stop it there.

31:34 It goes on for probably another 20 seconds or so. And here's what I want to say about this part of the segment. I actually, and I know this may go against the grain for some, we'll call it podcast professionals, but I actually appreciate the early recap of what's going on in her life. This helps, in my opinion. This can help her and her audience connect, bond. They get to learn about her as a person. Here's my advice. I think we if if you're going to do something like that, we probably want to limit it to like one story 11 recap since your last episode and make it a story. Don't just give us the skeleton, the overview.

32:16 If you're going to take what was that? That was about to the the whole clip is probably about two minutes. If you're going to take two minutes to do that, tell us a little story. Pick one of those stories and and bring us into that story. Help us go through that with you. That will create a big bond or bigger bond between you and your audience. Dr. Did you want to say something? I do and I wanted to get in before Jonathan does because I think this is taking a page out of Jonathan's book, not only about, you know, getting personal with what she's going through, but also it also gives that little chit chatty kind of thing that Jonathan talks about that he used to do with his former Co host.

33:03 Sorry, there's a little bit of that, but that is her brand. Her brand is her lifestyle. And I I think that this is right In Sync with what her brand is. I agree. I just want to sink my teeth into one of those stories I found myself wanting to hear. Like I thought she was going to start to tell me something more about it, but it was just a surface level recap. So I just that's why I personally was suggesting pick one or two and get a little more detailed. Tell us a story about that. Not just I did this, I did that, but like get give us some of the details what happened. And that's why I'm saying maybe pick one or two because it, you know, like I said, she probably gave us four or five different recaps, you know, take the time and limit it to just one or two of them.

33:54 Jonathan wants to. Go ahead, Jonathan, our our storyteller. Go ahead, Jonathan. What do you have to say? So So what I wanted to say is this kind of started the entire where I felt like I was drinking from a fire hose the entire episode. And I think that she wants to, she has so much information. She is clearly an expert in her field. And I, I, I understand because I used to do this like I would give you all the information instead of just taking, like you said, one story and explain and going through that story and later on in the episode going through a story about the plane tickets and how she found, you know, one strategy that she used for her family and the story that kind of takes us through it. I would have much appreciated.

34:44 She's got all the information. She can create 25 episodes from this one episode. It's just giving us a little bit more bite size and a little bit easier for us to devour by giving some more details and more storytelling, less of here's the fact, here's the fact, here's the fact, here's the fact. Yeah, that's, and I felt like that was the whole episode was a lot of facts. And that's great. She knows her stuff, but giving it, letting us devour it and be able to actually know the stuff that she's giving us, not feel overwhelmed by it. Yeah, I'm with you there, Jonathan. Thank you for elaborating on that. And Susie knows her stuff. She made that very clear. She is certainly an expert in this area and I appreciate that about her. And I think that it's now just a matter of learning a little bit of restraint.

35:34 And you know, one thing I did want to point out, since we just mentioned it a moment ago when I was speaking with Dr. the recap of the three prior episodes, I actually don't think you need them. I think if you want to give a brief summary share, you know, a line or two about them, maybe because I get the strategy in the sense that sure, we're going to share what's happened this month because we, as we have shared recently, we'll always have new listeners. So it's a good thing to tease a little bit about, hey, here's what you've missed if you're just joining us for the first time. But I thought that this she spent way too much time breaking down those past episodes.

36:22 You have a catalog that your audience can always go back to there. This isn't like this isn't a live show and you're not doing live shows. And once they're gone, they're gone and you can't go back to them. So instead, just encourage people to go back and listen. In episode 21, I spoke with I'll make this up. I spoke with Mark Ronick and we talked about how to save money when you're on a road trip. I know that she flies. I'm just giving you an example and and just leave it there. But I I thought that this took up way too much of the episode and we didn't get to the deep dive. We didn't get to all of the money saving tips until at least I think it was like 15 minutes into the episode. And I feel like that's, that could create a problem for you because especially with new listeners who don't know your format, don't understand it yet, it could get them a little frustrated.

37:19 Like, come on, let's get to it. So I that's just something to think about. Yes, Jonathan. Yeah. And I would have led with the new information and had the recaps at the end. 5 minutes at the end just give the recaps. Or even if you want, yeah, lead with the with the value, lead with the main topic. And if you want, I'm OK with it personally. If you took a moment, paused and then said, hey, we'll, I'll continue these tips in just a second. First, I wanted to invite you to check out earlier episodes from this month, episodes 21/22/23, where we discussed XY and Z. So join us on previous episodes. Now here's some more of those money saving tips and then just get right back to it.

38:03 I suggest that because if sometimes if we wait till the end with all of the quote UN quote housekeeping items, that might just be the signal for somebody in your audience to say, OK, she's done. She's giving me all the tips. They were awesome. I'm going to move on. And then that hurts your retention rate. And if your retention rate is low, the algorithms aren't going to do you any favors. Any other thoughts on that? OK, let me see. Oh, and by the way, she another positive. Loved the listener shout out. Shout out to Courtney who sent me Adm on Instagram with the following rave review of the podcast she writes.

38:45 I love your podcast. We're New Zealand and USA family but spend 6 winters in Queensland, Australia raising our kids on A10 acre ranchero learning holistic horse wisdom with A10 horse herd. Wow that's amazing Courtney, I'd love to learn more about this. Thanks for sharing this wonderful review. Cool. Awesome job. Like awesome. I have no critique there. It was tight, you know, she didn't spend too much time on it. She actually read it. She called the listener out by name. Sorry that my voice is going out on me. I thought it was perfect. Dr. Go ahead. There's something that we talked about earlier in the week or maybe it was last week about sections. She utilizes the whole sections format where she, because I heard like 5 different episodes.

39:36 So she gives shout outs, she gives recap, she get, you know, all of these different sections. I I just think that maybe a a bigger, more transparent, I don't know, transition between the sections would be good for my ears. Fair enough. Yeah, Thank you. All right, so the deep dive tips, I'm going to just looking at the time, I'm not going to play all of the tips that she gives or I, I. Cut out a little bit for you, but I'll just say that's the area where she really shined. I think that's what Dr. was talking about too. The the wealth of knowledge Susie has is awesome and she gives some fantastic money saving tips if you are traveling via airplane. Really great job.

40:25 So I loved that. And like Jonathan said, I just would have started that a little bit, well a lot bit earlier. I would have led with that. So good job there as far as delivering lots of value during that segment. Let's go into her wrap up and talk about how she wraps up the show. So this is she's given all of her tips. Let's hear how this starts to wrap up. What are your thoughts? Do you have a big win when it comes to booking airline flights? Share with me in the send us a text link and a reminder. If you do decide to sign up for Rover or the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, please use the links in the show notes to support the show.

41:07 Until next time, stay curious and keep exploring. I'm letting this this there's more. I'm letting this play homo. That's a wrap on today's episode. If you enjoyed it, please do me a huge favor and tell a friend or travelling family about the show. And hey, don't miss out on bonus content behind the scenes and more on Instagram, Facebook or Sub Stack. Thanks for tuning in. Go send this episode to a friend. See you next time. Overall, good job on the wrap up call to action there was nice. I my small critique. Again, not a deal breaker. I didn't love the long music play at the end once she finished talking.

41:52 I think that that could be two seconds at the most of music and then go back into that final call to action. From there it just dragged a little bit. And again, you're just, in my opinion, that's cueing your audience that the show's over and if you want them to hear that call to action, you want to keep it tight so that they don't run off. Jonathan, go ahead. There was about 5 calls to action at the end there, and there were previously in the episode about 3 calls to action. I got to slim it down a little bit because when you tell people to do too many things, they're not going to do anything. So really one or two in my opinion. Yeah, I wrote that note down as well.

42:33 I although good point. Like we, we got multiple calls to action throughout the episode and then even more at the end. And yeah, I'm with you. That too many often times causes an audience to just freeze and not do anything. Anyone else want to chime in on that? Go ahead, Ralph. I was just going to say one of the things that I thought could have been done at the end was a recap of what she covered today. I didn't really hear that. I apologize if I missed it, but I thought that would have been pretty effective. Yeah, having some overall takeaways that you want to call out so that it really sticks with your audience, I think that can be really helpful. I agree with you and Dr. earlier in today's show you mentioned monetization and that you and I were talking about monetization and right there she had, she shared one way that she monetized her, monetizes her show and that is through affiliate links, which you know, kudos to her for mentioning it.

43:25 Kudos for her for saying this is a way you can support my show. I think that's a that's a great strategy. What were some of your other thoughts about her as far as monetization goes? Well, number one, I see a whole series of books in her future. She would she would clean up if you know, every place that she visits that there would be some kind of a book, maybe a section of where kids are taking pictures with their phones, you know, from the kids point of view, maybe even a section where it's like journaling from week to week, getting ready for to go to the next destination, things like that. But on some other episodes she did mention, you know, if you'd like to set up a coaching call, please, you know, go to the show notes or something like that.

44:16 So she does have some kind of a coaching monetization thing going on. I think she needs to capitalize on that. That needs to be that needs to be front and center. Also, Gosh, what about a newsletter? I didn't hear anything about a newsletter. I didn't hear anything about like a Patreon or a paid community. I think that this kind of me was just right for all of that. Yeah, yeah. Great suggestions, Dr. Thank you. I'm going to go to BC and then I'm going to check in with Matt. Go ahead BC. I did notice that she mentioned a sub stack and I just started using that myself so I'm wondering if that's where she will have. There's a newsletter section on sub stacks, she might have those there and you can also do private content on there. So I wonder if that's another Ave. for her to continue monetizing for her show.

45:05 Yeah, Thank you BC. And by the way, BC has a private podcast, so I that reminded me when he mentioned that. And BC that also reminds me, we've been wanting to do an episode here at at PMC all about private podcasting. Would you be open to maybe being our guest host and sharing strategies and tips and why? It's why it's an effective strategy. I would be more than happy to. I will be very transparent. I'm newer to the private podcast and so I will do my best. If not, I can find a more elite person to bring in the forecast on that, but I'm happy to help where I can. Right on. Thank you. We'll talk about that.

45:45 Thanks BC Matt, you had something. Yeah, talking about monetization and community and all those things, I would look to not start from the ground up and look at Rory's Travel Club, which is a very popular Irish based. I think it's ���1010.00 a year, probably 10 American, 12 American something, and they provide an e-mail list maybe once a week with a bunch of travel deals that are very exclusive. They are making so much money off that. And I can see something similar here being very useful where Susie can niche down a little bit and have deals from providers as a way to kind of bundle all these Ctas together into a place where instead of going.

46:30 Bop. Bop. Bop Bop bop bop. She says go to Wonder World School, sub, Substack, whatever, and, you know, pay 10, whatever a month or something. Yeah, basically I'm, I'm, I'm blabbing, but Rory's travel club, look at that and use that as a baseline to try and figure out how that works. Great tip. Thank you, Matt. Appreciate that. And I'm going to ask just I'm going to open the floor as we wrap up here. Any final thoughts, anything we want to share? What did she do? Do well? What? What could she work on? Overall feedback? Matt, you have something else. Go for it. Just very quickly on the audio side. I know we've mentioned that the rapid cuts are a bit of a thing, but doing my usual detailed deep dive into the audio file, it looks like it hasn't been leveled to what is usually considered the standard between -18 and everything -14 luffs for the loudness upload.

47:26 And I wouldn't mention it except that the outro seems to be optimized for that, whereas the rest of the episode isn't. Now, this could be a consequence of the way it was edited. I believe the script doesn't output exports to the appropriate level, which is why people tend to bundle it with Orphonic or something similar. But that would be one thing to look at because the last thing you want is for someone to be super engaged in your episode with the volume at like 85, and then for the last section to blow out their dramas and ruin that nice experience. So, yeah, thank you for pointing that out. Cliff, did you want to add on to that? Not necessarily to that, just as a final thought, if you're OK with that.

48:09 Yeah, go for it. Yeah. So just the final thought, I want to say that the host of the show from the very beginning of the episode, it's very clear that she's personable, she's knowledgeable, she's got the experience, the credibility is there from the start. She's clearly got a community, she's engaged with her community. She loves the content that she's creating. And if, if she could just allow a lot more space in between clips and also slow down in the speaking. I, I think she's got a fabulous presence in the podcast and, and I think great things are going to come from it. Thank you, Cliff.

48:49 Cliff, I'm curious, do you agree with what seems to be the majority just as far as it was, It felt a little, I don't want to say scattered. There was a lot of information, you know, from recaps of three different episodes to money saving tips to her October recap of her personal life. Like do you, do you see that as too much? No, I don't think it's too much. I think it was just all too cramped together with no space and no understanding of where you are in this process. Now, if she does this every single month where she does a monthly recap, maybe people get used to it. But a reminder that every episode is someone's first episode.

49:31 And so there's a going to be a lot of people who are even in her niche audience for a target who are going to click play on this episode and think this is all over the place. And to your point, it kind of is all over the place. There's lots of things scattered in there. But some of the things that you could do, and we we haven't done this in talked about this here, but you could create jingles for certain segments and they don't have to be long jingles, but they can say and now the recap of the month are and just just little tiny placers and also leave space in between. That's it. Yeah. Thank you, Cliff. And that's I'm taking that advice as well. And I know I, if anybody's been following us for any period of time, you know, I say I would love to add a sound effect for this segment or do a Jingle for that segment. 2026, we're going to start adding those back or not back. We're going to start adding those in. I appreciate you saying that.

50:30 All right. And you don't, hey, Mark, you don't even have to put to have like a whole Jingle. You could just do this. All right, so in this section we're gonna do. Absolutely, absolutely agreed. I just need to get myself organized and do that. Yeah. Thank you, Cliff. Cliff, can we steal that one? Can we steal that? That's pretty. Cool, actually that is actually custom made for my podcast, so oh shoot. OK. Yeah. So cool, but they're but they're just do a search for audio bumpers. There's tons of them out there. Yeah, totally. And the road caster, which I have, comes with some as well. All right, here's what I want to go ahead. We're short on time. I'll give you the floor and then we'll ask anybody else.

51:11 If they want to quickly share, they can. I wanted to say really fast that she mentions like, please leave a message at SO and so and she has like this long URL to go to. SO there is a I'm trying to remember the name of it, not pitch pipe. What is the name of the thing that I used for my where people left a message? What is the name of that thing? Speak Pipe. Thank you. She could use this is where speak pipe could really, really help her a lot. That's all I got to say. OK. For people to leave voice messages for her. And yeah, OK, cool. Jonathan, final word. I just thought, just like Cliff said, she's an expert, she knows her stuff. She's just got to slow down a little bit and and put some stories in there.

51:52 That's that's all I would say. Yeah, I want to hear more of her personal travel stories and more details BC go for it. Yeah, real quick, just going off of what Cliff was talking about with jingles and whatnot. For those of you who don't, if anyone hasn't done YouTube podcasting yet, YouTube offers a free audio library with music and jingles and sound effects. So if you already have a Google account, you have a YouTube account, go to the YouTube Studio and peruse that. That's where I get all my stuff from. Yep, thank you BC I've definitely used that on occasion as well in my time podcasting. All right gang, so well, I should say. All right Susie, I hope this was helpful to you. Would love to hear back from you and hear if this, if it actually was.

52:35 I think that you will be able to pull out a few Nuggets at the very least, but I think you got a lot of good feedback. So congratulations on your show. Keep going, keep working on improving it because you know that that's what we do here is we're just always looking to improve, even if it's just 1% more every day. That's going to make a huge difference in the long run. So kudos to you, Susie, and thank you to the whole team today for their opinions, their thoughts. I love the I love BC was able to chime in and he hadn't even, he didn't even know what podcast we were we were going to evaluate on him. Think unless he listened yesterday, I guess he may have. But still appreciate everybody chiming in, giving your feedback. We're back tomorrow, 7:00 AM Eastern, and we're going to talk a little bit more about the Spotify for creators Wrapped. And we've got some other things to talk about too. And of course, we'll wrap up tomorrow with our wins from this past week.

53:27 So until tomorrow, make it a great day. Everybody take care.