451. Most Podcasts Don’t Fail, Their Schedule Does

0:05 Good morning podcasting Morning Chat. Today is Tuesday, February 10th, 2026, and today mailbag Q&A with seasoned podcasters answering your question on finding the right release frequency, seasonal listening peaks and dips, and simple routines to break avoidance and hit record. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom left hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're catching us via podcast, YouTube, LinkedIn, etcetera, please share this with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here.

1:20 Good morning again, podcasting, Morning Chat. Thanks so much for being here. I am your host Mark Ronick and currently on stage with me we have producer Ashley Feller, Ralphie Step, Jonathan Howard, Sid Meadows, Dr. Fey, BC Babbles and Nick Nolback and also from the audience. Tide Tutoring has joined us on stage again as well. Tide, you are always welcome to join us in this conversation. Feel free to chime in anytime. I think you've been with us long enough to know how we chime in, so just use that emoji and we will get to you ASAP. And by the way, you can learn more about all of those people minus Tide.

2:02 Sorry, Tide. Tide's not on our website, but you can go to podcastingmorningchat.com. Go to the about section and learn about all of these different people, all the different services, skills, talents, etcetera over at Podcasting Morning chat.com. So go check them out and welcome to our live audience here on Clubhouse, Jessica, Tim, Susie, Austin. Welcome. Susie, A past podcast evaluation E I'm going to call you. I don't know if that's really a word, but that's what I'm going to call you. Welcome, Susie. And I got to see Susie at Pod Fest last month in person, which was very cool. Sid, did you have something? I did have a question, sure.

2:45 I noticed just as I was looking that the live stream is posted and happened to see it on a LinkedIn as well just a second ago. And I just wondered has there been any challenge issued to the live stream? Because I noticed that everyone has hair and makeup done and I wonder if it's a trend that Ralph started because he was talking about hair and makeup for the live stream. So I'm specifically inquiring about Dr. because normally she's in a baseball cap. So that's right, hair and makeup time set aside, now she's. She's put on the baseball cap. Go ahead, Dr. I washed my hair last night. So it wasn't necessarily for the show, it was just time to wash your hair. Call a girl out.

3:29 Sit. And no, I didn't do anything new or different myself. Yes, I usually fix my hair beforehand and definitely needed to fix my hair today. It was all over the place. I think I must have done a lot of tossing and turning. Ralph, you have the makeup on today. You know, I do have a nice foundation on today because I had this weird Sheen when I sat down. So I ran down to the the restroom there and I put a little foundation on, just a little clear foundation breakdown the Sheen a little bit. I'm not reflecting back into the camera this morning. You know, Ralph, you don't even need like a liquid foundation, just a powder foundation would take that Sheen off and it might not feel so makeupy.

4:10 That's exactly what I use. It's a thing called I'm not that I'm promoting a product, but I think it's called Elf. After my boys swore that they were going to Take Me Out back and beat me, You know, I said it's really not that big of a deal. And I learned these little these little sponge squares. Just. Because if you rob, you get these weird streaks Dr. and and nobody wants Ralph to be streaking. Well, there you go. We have some breaking news that we wanted to get to before tomorrow's news and comment. By the way, Matt Bliss has joined us over on Riverside as well. So if you're watching YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook as we stream live, you'll get to see that lovely mug as well. Welcome, Matt.

4:56 All right, so the breaking news. This came out yesterday, and it's from Pod Match founder Alex Sanfilippo. Well, he shared a blunt reminder this week after Meta permanently deleted and banned his Facebook account, and it was over a post he thinks about being a quote frontline founder. Close quote with no warning, no meaningful appeal process, and the added insult of Meta continuing to bill him for his verified account that he can't even access. What do we mean by that? I guess that word, which I won't keep repeating just in case, but that that title he gave himself in front of founder, I guess that must have triggered an algorithm from Facebook. It must not have liked that word and it just shut him down. And what's interesting, I know Alex is also verified on Facebook, so you'd think they'd give him a little more customer service and help him revive that account. His post was very well written.

6:05 He seemed very grounded. And I know that, at least for me, if I were behind the scenes, I would be a little flustered about all this. So, Ralph, did you want to comment? I did because something that a lot of people might not know about Alex is Alex writes all his own content. There is nothing AI about Alex. He just does. And the other thing about Alex, which I really, really salute is he's not. He just speaks his mind like he's who he is. And the thing it brought to me and and actually I saw that yesterday night about drought. You know, I was, wow, this is amazing. But this is the problem when you play on somebody else's platform, and I've talked about this many times on the show here, you've got to play on your platform. You've got to make sure you're driving your audience to your platform because these platforms are great. The the Facebooks, the Instagrams, the Tik Toks, the Youtubes, but you don't own them, they own you. Make sure you're bringing people back to your playground because this is what happens.

7:05 Fortunately, the good thing about this Mark is that Alex has a community. So Alex was able to reach out and that's how I actually saw it. He was able to reach out to his community and say, hey, this is what happened to me. But imagine if that was your only community. What would you do? Yes, I mean he has pod match, he has a way to connect with his audience regardless of social media. And that's why I put out a newsletter every week is in in hope that more people will sign up for it. And it's still a growing list. So it that I have something I can lean back on as well should something like that. Knock on wood happened to me BC did you want to chime in? You know, I didn't even hear about this in the fact that I'm hearing about it now and worse off that they're still billing him for a verified account that he can't access to me.

7:52 I'm surprised because I would not expect that to happen to somebody like Alex, but at the same time, I'm not surprised that Meta is doing something like that. Meta has always had one of the worst customer service functions, if you can call it that, ever aside from Max. I used to have my original Facebook account, which goes back to like 2011. I got locked out of two years ago because I got a new phone number and it wouldn't let me switch the number before I got it and I lost eventually. It just shut the page down. And this is after dozens and dozens of requests. Be like, hey, I put this number in there. It wouldn't let me take the old number out. Help me get back into this account that I have, you know, over a decade's worth of life on nothing. Now it's just gone.

8:37 It just disappeared into the ether. So I hate that for Alex, Absolutely. But this does not surprise me that this is a meta issue whatsoever. I am racking my brains trying to figure out what is offensive about that phrase that he used. And we're not saying it on purpose because we don't want to get yeah, right booted. But if you just go back a little bit, we did say it one time. I know that that was a common term used during COVID times, and again, I don't want to go too far into it right now just because I don't want to risk anything either, which is really annoying by the way.

9:18 There's a glitch going on, and it affected you and me. We were establishing a Facebook page for some of my producer friends that were in a group, and that group is kind of sundowning. And so we established another and it glitched. It invited. It invited all thousands of. Yeah, all of my Facebook friends. I think I have over 4000 Facebook friends. And for a week it wasn't, it didn't do that. I had that feature turned off and all of a sudden it Facebook just decided, you know what, we're going to invite all of Mark's friends. And it totally ruined the whole privacy thing that we were going for with your group there. And it's not that we're not going to. We're we're we plan on growing the group, but after all of the people move from the sundowning group over to this one. But definitely Facebook is glitching. Yeah.

10:11 Or just really screwed up. Or. Just really screwed. Up. Yes, Matt, you wanted to chime in, go for it. There's so much stuff rolling around here, and I'm not sure if you're jumping off the back of my comment, Mark, on Alex's post 'cause I think I was the one who said that term was yeah, one that's. That's I did see you comment on that and I and I think Alex also said that in his post as well. I think he had gotten to the bottom of it and put that in his post as well. I thought immediately like there's some AI moderation stuff there that's not being supervised, that that is doing the thing. It's a tired issue I think these days to talk about. Don't be on platforms you don't own. Not to say that it's not still relevant, we absolutely need to keep it in mind, but the thing that I think about a lot too is how it has an effect on culture because there's terms that people don't say anymore on any platform just because of what algorithmically was decided on. One, the term that I would consider there is I'm alive, which is on TikTok.

11:17 There would be a time where accounts were flagged if they said die or death or, you know, something like that. So instead of saying that term, they'd say I'm alive. And unfortunately that's made it into the common zeitgeist. I don't know if it's in Merriam, Webster's or anything, but it being commonly used on all platforms presumed to be a moderation mistake. It means that everybody is doing the same thing and being having the same concern. But when it happens in a time like this, the thing that I think about a step further from considering the platform that you're on, that you don't own it, that you can't necessarily say all the things that you'd want to say all the time.

11:57 I think the next stage is understanding where you are and what you should and shouldn't say, regardless of the intent. And I think that's largely the biggest problem that is raised in America at least, because the whole freedom of platforms, freedom of speech. Do we have moderation? Do we not? Does the FTC step in? I don't know if there's gonna be acronyms I throw out there that I've no idea. FCC. FCC. FTCI think is flowers. We're the Federal Trade. Commission. Federal Trade Commission OK FTC. By the way, you're dealing with money. There are things that people share in common. But anyway, you can see what I'm getting at, that we kind of have to go in understanding that we're not a slave to what's going on, but just reading the room that you're in and, you know, unfortunate discoveries like this are unfortunate. Those work around words, that's what I'm going to call it the UN alive Pew Pew for.

12:55 You know, they have seeped into my everyday language just as I'm talking to people when I go out and is one of the reasons why when I converse with AI that I'm still polite. I'm still saying thank you. I'm still saying please because I'm so scared that because I use AIA lot and I'm so scared that the unpolite Dr. will seep into my normal colloquial way of life. Do you know what I'm saying? I totally know what you're saying. Matt. Did you want to comment anymore? I just want to make sure you got to say.

13:35 Simply to say that people should look up Roke's Basilisk if you're being polite to the machines just to hedge your bets in the AI future when they remember what you said to them back in 2026, then I mean, you can. You can operate that way, absolutely. I think that's what a lot of people have in mind after the Skynet stuff. But anyway, irrelevant. Nick, you said something in the chat and I just thought that was something we should probably hear out loud in here. Did you want to share? Good morning, everybody. Unfortunately, it's their platforms. They make the rules, even if they aren't necessarily fair. Like if they want to kick you off, it's theirs to kick you off of. Just kind of the the nature of the beast. That is why it's so important to be getting your list together or creating a space for people to gather, because then it's your platform, you make the rules.

14:24 And if someone's coming into your community and saying stuff you don't like, you can kick them out. But it's kind of just where we are. I think too many people look at these platforms and think, OK, it's my content. I'm creating all this stuff and putting it on it. But just because it's your content doesn't mean it's your place to post the content. They're letting you post the content there for free. Again, I'm unfortunate, but it's the reality of it. That's just it. Especially when we talk about free platforms, you really have no say whatsoever. You know, if it's a paid platform, that's sometimes that's one thing. But look, Alex pays to be verified on Meta and that didn't get him anywhere except maybe a conversation with somebody at Meta, but they didn't change change anything about it there. He is still banned as of now anyway. Ralph, did you want to chime in before we get to the mailbag? I do because I want to give everybody a little context because I actually, I don't know how many people read the original post because I was actually a commenter on the original post.

15:20 And I'm going to, and I'm not speaking for Alex, but I want to say something that needs to be said here. One of the things in his original post was he talked about his faith, and I would certainly hope that this wasn't an issue because of his faith. But I'm going to be honest with you, Mark, it feels like it because he leaned into his faith about how, And I won't use the terms you guys are worried about. I'm really sick and tired of having to sidestep words. I think it's outrageous that we have to live like that, that that's just the stupidest thing ever. But anyway, I he was really leaning into what makes him strong and sustains him. And I hate to think that. And I have no reason to say this other than personally, I've had the same situation on YouTube where things that I've said that were faith related were banned as being against community standards.

16:07 I'm sorry, but it's not against community standards to love somebody. It's not against community standards to want to have hope for somebody. It's not against community standards to treat people fairly, and Alex is one of the people that I know that treats people the most fair of any human being that I've ever met. I hate to think that's the case, but for him to be able to not be able to defend himself is outrageous. Sorry, Mark, I had to get that in because I read the original post. That original post was not objection, had no objections to it at all. He was just leaning into how being on the front line of this, he puts himself out there. He's the person that's involved with his business. And I'm sorry, but you know what? He's just being real.

16:48 And if we can't be real, then why are we doing it? If you can't be real, if you got to make your words match some kind of stupid frigging algorithm, sorry. Some kind of ridiculous algorithm that to fit in with the machines, I'm sorry. We're all done. We're done at this. Point Yeah, I hear you. And I, yeah, I too hope it has nothing to do with faith. I really do believe it has everything to do with that particular term he used. But yeah, that would be, putting it lightly, a shame if that's really what it was about, Ralph. All right, let's pull out the mailbag. And we wish, of course, Alex Sanfilippo all the best and hope that that all works out. Like we've said, thankfully, he has a way to connect with his community.

17:30 He's on other platforms. I've shared the the same post that he's posted about his situation that he posted to LinkedIn. So you can get that in the show notes as well if you want to read and follow along. OK, so our first question comes actually from one of the crew here on stage, Jonathan Howard. Did you want to ask your mailbag question? Yeah. Do I have to jump out of the mailbag or anything? Yes, please. Please, it's like a birthday cake. My question was actually should I change my show frequency based on you know, I'm doing interviews now and stuff or do I stay the same? And how do I know what the best frequency is for my show?

18:11 I'll let BC start, but I do want to find a little, find out a little bit more after BC about the the reason behind that, like what's making you feel that way that maybe it's time to change the frequency. So we'll get to that. But let me first go to BC. Actually that's my follow up question. So let's do that first and then I'll I'll come back up. Right on. So, Jonathan, yeah, what's what's the purpose behind that question? So I've been doing solo episodes for quite some time and I'm still doing every other episode of solo with it being every other week. Some of my interviews are other than Ralph who actually got published really quickly are like 3 months out some of them now. So I'm wondering if I should change it to be a weekly. It scares me, but yeah.

18:54 So it's really a matter of your, in your case, changing the frequency to more often instead of less often, and that's making you feel a little uneasy about the commitment and the responsibility. Yes, Sir. OK yes I am biting my tongue because I am struggling with this myself and I'll explain after we answer. Jonathan, BC do you want to chime in? I'll say this, it doesn't really matter if I would say enough to downplay it at all, but if you're it's OK if your guests are going to be a couple months out, what what it comes down to my in my opinion is whether or not you are so comfortable handling your current pace of production.

19:35 If it's going to over current burden you to try to elevate your frequency so that your guests feel like they're being seen more quickly, I would say that's going to be counterproductive in the long run. Let your guests know this is the frequency of the show. You will likely be seen out on the streaming platforms X amount of weeks or X amount of months from now, but I'll keep you updated on the process so that they can at least enjoy that moment when it comes out. So it all comes down to what you want to handle, what you can handle. Don't push yourself too far just to make your guests feel like they're seen within a certain time frame. Just keep them up. Keep them up, keep them up to date. I have not had enough caffeine this morning, I'm sorry. Keep them up to date and everything should be good. Yeah, so I want to take this from a different angle. I'm the money guy here.

20:23 That's what I do on the show. I think we need to look at this differently. I think we need to look at this differently from the standpoint of what is your purpose of your show. If your purpose is a hobbyist, then I think you have as much right to do it as however you want. Doesn't really matter to me. If you're a hobbyist, then you put your shows out whenever you want. If you're doing this because it's your general, your first level of income, your side hustle, whatever those things are, I think you've got to put that in mind first. What is the expectation of your audience? What is that lead, what that lead generation that you're getting to? Because if you're not in a cadence where people are able to see you and be involved. And again, like I said, there's, I am not disputing that there is a place for hobbyist podcast.

21:06 I'll give you a great example of that. My Daily Show that comes out every single day. I'm not doing that as a revenue generator. For me, it's a mission field. My other show, my weekly show, the content creators accountant is definitely to generate business. Oi have that purpose in mind. So I know I want to be on a cadence weekly so that people can say, well, every Tuesday Ralh DROs his episode. Here's what he's going to talk about because I want to generate those leads. So I think you've got to ask the question differently. It's not what you want to do. It's not what feels comfortable. It's not what works for you. It's what what is your audience expecting and what is your desired outcome of that? I go back to the why because why are you doing this? Thank you, Mark.

21:46 Thank you, Ralph. A lot of people want to chime in. I'm going to skip the line for a second and go to Tide, who's a guest on stage here. Tide, good morning to you. What did you want to add to this? Yes, I was just going to add that it may be a good idea to consider doing some pre work before the podcast. So one idea that I'm playing around with is I have opened a Facebook community. A little nervous, but that's OK. But I have opened a Facebook community for the guests that come on the Gentle Year and also for parents who listen to it. And I'm thinking that instead of always bringing the guests into the Facebook group after the podcast is filmed, I could do it beforehand.

22:32 And so if there is some space and time before the podcast is actually filmed, I could have that person engage in the Facebook community to keep their ideas fresh, to engage the audience, get people excited and pumped up about the episode. And also do some sort of pre question, some warm up questions and things of that nature. And so that way, when the person comes on the show, we've already established A rapport with the audience. I've built a rapport with them as well. So that's just kind of an idea that I'm playing with right now. I love that idea. I saw some head nods here on our live stream. Very cool. Thank you, Tide. I'm going to go to Matt, who's one of the people nodding their head when you were sharing Tide. Go ahead, Matt.

23:18 I'm. Not sure what the allegory for that is, but anyway, yeah, I mean, that's that. Would we call that a podcast hack? I'd say get your guest into your audience before recording and you'll you know they'll start engaging and teasing for you. Love that. Yeah, me too. I also love what Ralph. Said because the thing what he was driving at was moving between the external and the internal, and that external impetus for how you structure your podcast can be incredibly strong. The idea that you have to do exactly what someone tells you is the most efficient and effective way for the show to be impactful on the listener. But that completely ignores you.

24:07 Your internal process is important. Your purpose, your reasoning is important. So having that, having the things that you need from the show, gauging that need based on what the audience needs and having data in the middle to play with. Because none of these questions, the reason it depends is the most common answer in podcasting is because I think not because it does depend on whatever. It depends on data. It depends on your experience, what you can gather about the show. So if it is a hobby podcast and it doesn't matter how consistently you release to affect your bottom line and how you make a living, then yeah, you can be a bit more loosey goosey with it.

24:50 But if it's about getting the money for the show, you know, sustaining a business that allows you to create this thing that you want to make, or the entire purpose is to build income so that you can do what you want to do, then that data becomes more important. This is something I'm going to explore with my own stuff going forward this year. I think the internal is the foundation you need to look at before you look at the external. But the external informs. The internal doesn't guide, it doesn't direct it, it informs it. Bring that all together and I'm essentially like a footnote to whatever Ralph said. Sorry, Ralph. Thank you, Matt. Yeah, a good deeper dive into what Ralph was saying. I I feel you. There's also to me, yes, like as far as technically speaking, as far as you know, understanding the data, understanding our audience, I am fully on board with that. And I also, I feel for Jonathan in the sense that changing it to more frequently feels overwhelming. And, and I think that to me, that's a signal. Look, I know Jonathan well enough to know that he when he commits some to something, he follows through. And I'm in that situation right now, right? I've committed to this showed five days a week. And Full disclosure, I am feeling burnt out. It's not that I don't love getting together with everybody every day.

26:10 If anything, that's why I keep coming back. But it's starting to feel really heavy on me. And I'm afraid if I don't do something about that, that this whole thing is going to eventually just fizzle out. And I don't want that to happen. We have to consider our own mental health when we're thinking about frequency as well. I'm going to go to Sid who wants to chime in. I know Dr. wants to chime in as well. Sid, go for it. Yes, so I just did this and I switched from one interview show every other week with the occasional solo show mixed in to a once a week publishing schedule. So every Monday at 5:00 AM Central time, we post an episode. Every other week it's an interview. And then every other week it's a different types of shows. So I have a Hot take show which published on Monday, which is a really fun show.

27:04 And I did it because I wanted to make sure that my sponsors felt like they were getting their money's worth with the show by having an episode every other every week where they are mentioned and their company is mentioned. So that was really my driver there with it. I enjoy it. I mean, it's a heavy lift, Jonathan, no doubt doing a weekly schedule. It's a lot of stuff to go. And I will tell you that we are ahead in recordings and like I don't have an interview spot available until June, but we're headed. We're not recording all the way through there, but we are ahead with most everything except the marketing aspect.

27:44 We're getting there. We're figuring out something. So I understand the lift. I also understand maybe the desire to want to do it. For me, in addition to the supporting the sponsors, it also makes my voice out there more. It puts me out there more, gives me more content to talk about and not just to come up with random things. So for me right now, I think it's a really good thing. But somebody said it earlier, we're watching the numbers. We're looking to see are we getting more audience with this? Are we losing people with this? We're paying attention to this to see if this was that was, if this was the right decision. But we are committed for the next nine months because our show, the show runs for a 10 month series, February through November. We're committed to that.

28:26 And then we're just going to watch the numbers and see what happens with it. So it's a tough decision to make, buddy. And you know, do what feels right to you. And I mean, all the points being made are very valid, but just do what feels right with you. There's nothing wrong with testing it and see what happens with it, and then if you like it, keep going. If not, go back to the other every other week. Thank you, Sid. And listen, a big thing here is that in when we're comparing Jonathan to Sid, this is not apples to apples, right, because Sid has a small team that's helping him do this, right. So it's a potentially A heavier lift for Jonathan to have to add another week in or go to a week to week schedule. Something to think about too.

29:07 And I want to say, Mark, the only reason I have the team, I'm not my editor. I've had her for a long time and she ain't going anywhere. But the reason I have a small team is because my sponsors, without my sponsors, I would have never been able to hire my marketing person. And so it's, you know, they kind of all intertwined together. Yeah, good point. Good point. Thank you, Sid. All right, I'm going to go to Dr. and then Jinnade, who's on stage. So Dr. Take it away. So in Jonathan's case, I think a lot of it has to do with setting up expectation. I was interviewed about a year ago. I was interviewed on a podcast. And after the show I had asked, so when is this, you know, when are you planning to air this? And he looked at me and he said, oh, you know what?

29:49 I have no idea. We'd batch, we'd do. He says we are real good batchers. And I said, oh, OK. I mean, that's you're preaching to the that's perfect. I love that answer so but he made sure to keep me apprised he would e-mail me. I think a lot has to do with setting up expectations. Agreed. I am a big proponent for doing the batching thing. However, that's only part of the process, right? Like, yeah, sure, we can have a bunch of recording, and I know Janae is going to chime in here in a second. Janae has a huge backlog of recordings that haven't published yet.

30:30 Right. And that does help. But then again, if it's somebody like Jonathan, I believe Jonathan's doing the editing. Jonathan's doing the promotion. He's doing the social media. Yeah, he's he's doing all the other things. And that's harder to batch. You can only go so far with with batching. It helps to a degree. Janae, do you want to chime in on this? I would love to chime in. And yes, that is a bigger left because you have to switch out from the production hat to the marketing hat to now the creative hat, right? So that is a lot of left for sure. And Jonathan, I kudos to you, man. I've been trying to do a show like this or I do the thing, but I just haven't been able to pull that together because I don't have the system in this place to be able to do a solo show like the one that you've done.

31:21 So kudos to you and where how far you've come. It's it's really amazing to see because again, right, it's a lot of work. And what we got to pat on our back is, you know, we get to do this for not just for ourselves, but also for our audience, right? Who's the who's benefiting from it? It's just me totally right. When when I first started with my podcast my first year, I didn't market, I didn't do nothing right? I just talked to myself. I was like, Hey, am I feeling comfortable? Some weeks I'll just skip. I'm like, I'm not just doing it this week because again, it was going through the process. So something that Ralph mentioned, you know, get having the systems in place really helps. And I'm sure you already have an amazing system in place, but every once in a while you'll be like, you know what?

32:07 It's no out. I don't want to do nothing, and that's totally fine because that shows through how human we are with our contest. So hopefully that's helps. Again, keep on. Keep it on, man. Thank you, Janae. I'm going to go to Yvonne and then I'm going to wrap up this part of the conversation and go to our next mailbag question. But first, Yvonne, good morning. What did you want to add? I also do all the things, Jonathan, I'm a one woman show and I am weekly and it is a lot. But your show is shorter. So there's that. And the other thing is that there is something about doing it weekly that keeps me in the rhythm of doing it weekly and oddly makes that a lighter lift because I don't have to think, oh, where was I when I come back to it in two weeks or anything like that. So whenever I take a break from the podcast, I have noticed that when I come back, it's like, oh, OK, what? What's my system here?

33:13 Just something to think about. Yep, thank you, Yvonne. By the way, Yvonne, I sent you a text last night, so check that. I gave you the access. You did this morning early and I hadn't seen it yet, so I asked Yvonne for a copy of out the episode I did on her show with her because I want to play with it. I think there's a lot of good content on there, so I wanted to play with it. So I asked her for that. That's what that's all about for me. I think that when we're talking about frequency, there's a couple a few things to think about, right? It mainly effects, in my opinion, these three things. One, it's consistency and trust, right? Your listeners build a habit around you. They and so that predictability matters. And then there's growth speed, more episodes. Definitely, you can make a case that they create more entry points for Discovery.

34:07 So that can certainly help accelerate growth. And then the burnout risk, which we've been talking about, too much frequency might kill. Well, it does kill, in my opinion, more podcasts than too little frequency ever has. I really think that, yes, it's a factor of all of these different things we're talking about. You want to both cater to your audience, your community, but you got to also think about yourself too. What can you handle? And you know, I know a week ago or so we talked about quality versus quantity. So if you're feeling like it's a heavy lift, if you're feeling like it's daunting to do it every week or in my case, every day, that's a sign to me.

34:53 That's a signal to me. And it's something that you got to really factor in before you jump in and commit to it. But lastly, like Sid said, you can always try it. And I would just encourage you then to tell your audience you're trying it. Let them know you're not sure yet if this is going to be a permanent thing, but you're going to test it out for however long you feel it needs before you can make your decision. Just be open and honest with your audience. And I think it goes a long way, Ralph. I just wanted to add one more thing because I think there's something we're missing here. Also examine your systems because all of us can learn to do things maybe a little differently, little thing, little things to help us with that lift sometimes.

35:36 And I think a lot of people stop doing something because they they feel overwhelmed, they feel burned out, but they haven't really examined their systems. There are definitely easier ways. There's more productive ways to do things and that's where get yourself spend a little money. Listen, if you're a hobby podcast, I get it. If you're not a hobby podcast, spend a little money, find somebody to help you examine your systems, your why of your show, how you put things together, who contributes to it, what goes into the process. Because I think what you might find is that there's a couple of pieces in that that are causing you that burnout, that are causing you that overwhelm. And if you can get past those, because there was a reason you decided on a cadence at the front end, it wasn't just happenstance. There was a reason.

36:21 And something has happened in that reason. Something has happened in that system that's changed that. Sit down with somebody who isn't in the system from the outside and take a look at it. Help, you know, ask a friend, talk to somebody that you that you trust and just say, hey, can you take a look at how I do things? I've had to do that in my own show. Now I am fortunate. I have a team that does a lot of stuff for me. I basically record, I do some, I put the production side of it together from the idea and generating the script. But then once I do that, I have a team that takes it off and I'm fortunate enough to be able to do that. But even in that I've had to refine my systems from time to time. This is working. This isn't working. IA 100% agree with you. You've got to worry about yourself. But also don't think it's all about yourself because it could be just that the system you're operating in needs to be tweaked or changed a little bit.

37:08 Thank you for letting me comment on that. Yeah, you're welcome. And Matt, I saw agreed with you in the chat saying growth mindset all times. He agrees with you, Ralph. And I think to wrap this part of the conversation up, let's go to Jonathan and just hear from Jonathan now that he's gotten and a lot of different pieces of feedback. Go ahead, Jonathan. I just put it in the chat, but you all scared the crap out of me going to once a week. It's not going to happen. Who's showing up five times a week on social audio as it is? That's, you know, creating content for that, plus my other stuff and my memberships. Yeah, I'm sticking every other week for now. Yeah. And you know what? That's such a great point that I don't even think we addressed anyway, Jonathan, which is, you know, you're doing a lot of other things, creatively speaking. You're on chatter five days a week, you're doing newsletters, you're putting out social media content. Is it really necessary for him to now also do a once a week show instead of every other week? I don't think it is necessary for Jonathan. He's not short on content.

38:08 He's serving his audience in lots of different ways. All right, let me dig in back into the mailbag and what do we got here? What are the annual peaks and valleys for podcast list listenership? This actually comes from Reddit question on Reddit. And I'll throw on another question. Does it matter? Does it even matter for us to to think and think? We have to worry about that sort of thing. Doesn't matter, and it does matter. I know that's not what people want to hear. Well, we say it all the time. First off, I did a show that only had 10 episodes a year. 10 to 12 episodes a year. Why?

38:52 Because that's when the the show was released. For context, Alex does a podcast that reviews ATV show. And they have a 10 week run and it's a grind, but there is there other content out there? Yes. Could we could we do a weekly show? Absolutely. But we're still getting over 100 and something downloads and we haven't even done anything. Now it's going to start ramping up in the next couple in March because the new seasons coming in April. It's just about how good the content is. If your content is valuable, people will listen. And if you've built that audience, I do believe that there are ebbs and flows in podcasts depending on what genre you have now. A lot of people in this room have certain podcasts that are geared for certain people that are looking for the ever and I quote, I use quote UN quote everyday kind of content. the Super Bowl just happened.

39:51 So obviously sports type podcasts may have just gone to the highest point and then it'll drop a little bit, but then it's going to come back because it's got March Madness, if they even do that. So it just depends on what you do and the ebbs and flows of that content, if that makes sense. But at the end of the day. People want to listen to content at any time, any place, anything else, so just keep putting it out. I think if the economy, whenever a question like this comes up, and I think economists still have jobs because there is so much uncertainty in this kind of stuff. Podcasting is no different. And I think looking internally again to looking at stats to see where the peaks and troughs are is the important bit. I don't think there's a blanket rule for, you know, peaks and valleys.

40:41 We all like to, around Christmas time, talk about this is prime time because no one's posting. They all think everybody's on a break. But if you post your episodes, you'll get banned bombs and numbers because everybody hates Christmas and doesn't want to talk to their family. They'd rather listen to you on a podcast. But invariably, that's the prediction. What happens afterward when January rolls round about whether that was effective or not, That's never part of the discussion. And that historic trend stuff is what economists look at to be able to look at what's going to happen in the future. What I think the picks and troughs that you need to look at are based on what you anticipate for your audience and what you have seen from your audience.

41:26 A very interesting and very marketed version of this is with a client I've had for years. They do a tax podcast in Ireland specifically for expats. So people coming to the country, it's very relevant for people living in the country as well. But it's kind of about around tax. And funnily enough, in I think it was 2024 in the tax period, September kind of bled into January a little bit. But those three or four months, they saw about 6070% of their overall annual download numbers occur in that period.

42:07 And we reflected on it and realized, well, look, everyone's searching tax stuff in Ireland because it's the the tax period there. The declaration stuff is early November for businesses. That might kind of gel around that a little bit. But there's more individuals looking at it than businesses. And it's a podcast that directs people to them as a tax firm. So there's a benefit to that contact. They started wanting to look at ads. And so we looked at that period and said, well, look, we need to increase the cost of sponsorship in that time because we can predict that during that lead up to the tax declaration time, that's when we're going to see a bigger audience push because people don't like to think about taxes when they don't have to do them.

42:52 And then they hit the panic button and all of a sudden all the Google searches become Irish tax. How do I save tons of money or what's the advice for my property, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, that's a peak and a through at a very specific period for a very niche yet successful podcast. That's the stuff you have to look at. Not like the industry, despite all the stuff we talk about, doesn't really meet what the person refers to in the post as like the the summer period for television in America. Sometimes you get shows Christmas, they push shows a couple of weeks because people are willing to watch. They're hunting audience that way. But the industry operates in that particular way too.

43:33 Podcasts are very different. It's all a very specific experience, I think. Yeah. Thank you, Matt. I think that that is important. Again, it goes back to the question we raised earlier. It's really understanding your audience, right? So that in that case, it's, you know, tax season for a podcast that talks about taxes, that makes sense that, yeah, that that's where you're going to see a big rush of listeners for sure. Speaking of taxes, let's go to our finance guy, Ralph, who's been waiting patiently. Go ahead, Ralph. So I think that we have to recognize that there are peaks and valleys, but I'm going to take a different angle on this because I think you have to be intentional in your content planning, understanding those things with your audience. So when I'm looking at my content calendar, I look at what are people's emotions going to be at certain periods of time? What are they going to be thinking about? I'll give you a great example of this. So when I was planning my Daily Show last summer and early fall, I said people in October, November are going to be doing Christmas shopping and for a money show that's going to create stress and all those type of things. So I launched a 30 day series intentionally during the month of November to be how to break the stress, how to get past the holidays.

44:50 Now I could have just assumed that that wouldn't be a great time for my listeners. But if I can use the data that's out there and know, hey, this is going to be impactful. Just like for my show, my Daily Show about finances, I know there's going to be a lot of people make New Year's resolutions. So leading up to the first of the year, leading past the first of the year, I intentionally want to build content. So whether you want to get into the discussion of peaks and valleys, I think the bigger take away for the content creator listening or watching right now is how do you use that information to generate content, to plan your content strategically and intentionally. Because I think that's the beauty to this whole thing.

45:30 If you know your audience is going to be absent, don't plan content that is going to be impactful during those times because they're not going to be there for it. You're wasting your time if you, but if there are certain periods of time when you know they're going to be there, it all comes down to systems. I hate to be harping about systems, but I still go back to intentionality, understanding your audience, and building your content calendar based around what the expectations are. Thank you, Ralph. I saw Jonathan flash 100% emoji. Jonathan agreeing as as do I Ralph, you make a great point. And I think it's important to also serve the question itself, right? Like yes, I think everybody here has made really good points, systems and strategies and all the things, but there is such a thing as peaks and valleys overall in podcasting.

46:21 So I let's just address that is this is my understanding, my knowledge, right? So the peaks happen generally speaking, January through early June and then again from September through early November. But then you have the valleys which happen obviously mid June through mid August and again from mid-december through December. Both may be very clearly obvious to all of us, right? Those are times of the year that people usually break out of their routines mid November through December. We're talking the holiday season, June through August or mid June through mid August. We're talking about summertime, school's out, people are vacationing more frequently, etcetera.

47:06 I think that it's important to do all of the things that we've shared and I think it's important to address the question itself too. I think that that data in itself is probably helpful in some regard to know. I dare to be the devil's advocate, but I'm going to summarize this into a very small niche that you don't have to respond to. Like this is going to be a little thing. I say that I would argue against that to a degree, and it'll say to what I was talking about and what Ralph was talking about. The audience that you're talking about with those peaks and troughs, it'll be this side of the planet as opposed to the other. Like immediately. I think Australians aren't on summer holidays at around the same period.

47:47 They have a different school year. Their holiday period in December, Jan is a lot shorter than the three months that you guys get over here. Criminal, I must say. But you know, I'm on this side now, so who am I to complain? And the types of activities undertaken in certain types of weather can indicate those things too. So something if you just like flipped the polarity of what you talked about there for Australia, I could tell you that anyone on the East Coast of Australia between late November and late January who lives regionally in Australia is going to have a terrible time.

48:29 For the same reason that California probably sucked for podcast consumption during the fires, because Bush fire season was manic this year and it's manic every year. I'd say that a huge listenership drops during that period specifically because of Bush fire risk and for people not being able to access a phone signal to call their loved ones to be able to say that they're safe like that becomes a priority at that period. My only point is that for every presumed period of peak and through, there is a specificity of answer that you can give based on the data. And that's not to say that you're wrong because you're not. There are definitely like overall broad statements you can make like that that the industry will match.

49:14 But I'm the guy who always has something to say about something. So I just wanted to say that you can always drill down to AY, there's a reason that trend is there. And then you do what Ralph said, measure against your audience and your systems. And if it matches that, then you're golden. But if you're in Antarctica or Iceland and you know your Daylight Time is like 3 hours, then podcast consumption might go up or down. It just depends. There's, there's so much dependence on this stuff. But I understand this is also AUS directed, kind of. Yeah, it is. And we are grateful to have people like you who are not US based to call those things out because I know that we've got an audience that is worldwide.

49:55 So that is important. I don't necessarily hang my hat on this and say we are intentionally AUS focused show, but let's be real, we have mostly US residents here so and. Listen, yeah, you have an abundance of podcast data that no other region would have. There is reason that there's we keep quoting in other countries Edison Research and you know all of these American based audience data collections. It's because you guys have such the a great huge, massive preponderance of a trackable population that is willing to give this data and it just makes sense that it becomes US centric at that point. Thank you, Matt, appreciate that. Well, listen gang, I'm going to first share with you about tomorrow's episode and then tell you real quick about what I got going on today.

50:49 Just it's something interesting. So tomorrow, yes, it's news and common day. It's Wednesday. We do that every Wednesday and we've got a plethora of headlines to share with you. So come join us if you want to be in the know as far as the podcast industry is concerned, come join us and we will talk all about it tomorrow morning, 7:00 AM Eastern live on all the platforms and you can get all that information at Podcasting Morning chat.com. As for me today as of 11/30, I actually was supposed to be an originally in Tennessee speaking at Vanderbilt University. Now I'm doing it virtually because let's just be real, they ain't paying me. So I'm not going to do the whole thing, spend all the money to be there, but I am going to do it virtually. I'm speaking to 4 undergraduate classes, specifically marketing classes, and we're talking all about podcasting, mainly Q&A, but I'm doing it for four different classes all afternoon long.

51:47 Side note, they only hit me with the different topics and questions they want to cover last night at like 6:00 in the evening. So I've been just crash coursing at trying to get myself at least mentally ready. I should know all the answers to the questions and it's overwhelming when I see this big list of questions. I really want to serve this audience today. So wish me luck, break a leg, whatever the the right term is for that and I'll share a little more tomorrow about how that went. So until tomorrow, make it a great day everybody take care.