490. Why Your Podcast Isn’t Growing

0:05 Good morning Podcasting Morning Chat. Today is Tuesday, April 7th, 2026. And today, Audience growth, why it matters when it matters, and the honest conversation every podcaster needs when a show feels stuck and you're not sure what to fix first. 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, please share this with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here.

0:52 Podcasting Morning Chat is powered by Ironic Media, helping podcasters launch, Polish and grow great shows, and by content Creators Accountant, helping creators build real business behind their content. Good morning again podcasting morning chat. Thank you so much for being here. I am your host Mark Ronik and currently on stage with me my Co hosts we have Dr. Fay, Ralph Estep, Jonathan Howard, Alex Baelish, Nick Nalback, Sid Meadows and BC Babbles. Thank you all for being here today. And if you want to learn more about those fine people, just go to podcastingmorningchat.com/people. And yeah, while you're at podcastingmorningchat.com, if a road caster duo is on your podcast gear list, pay attention.

1:59 You could win Ralph E steps lightly used duo not about nine months old. Plus a free monetization strategy session to help you make smarter moves with your show. What I personally love about the Duo is that it helps you sound great. It handles a real podcast workflow with multiple audio sources, and it gives you live production control for things like intros, music, sound effects all in one box. Plus it's smaller, lightweight. Because of that, it makes that on the go recording actually possible. It's certainly not something you can put in your pocket, but it is something lightweight, small enough that you could probably put in your luggage, for example.

2:45 And Ralph, I want to take just a quick moment. Do you want to share about the free strategy session that you're thrown in there? Absolutely. Good morning, everybody. So yes, I'm going to throw in a free strategy session where I'll sit down with you. We'll do a Zoom call. I'll look at your current content, we'll look at systems, we'll look at monetization strategy. So all of that, you get to pick my brain for an hour. So make sure you go check that out. Yeah, check it out at Podcasting Morning chat.com/duo DUO. You can enter to win and there are multiple options, multiple ways that you can enter to win. So it's not just sign in and boom, you're in.

3:26 That's one entry, but there are lots of different ways you can get more entries, increase your odds of winning Ralph's Duo and that monetization session. So check that out. Again, Podcasting Morning chat.com/duo for the four details. All right, so today's topic, let's dive right in. It is inspired by a new consulting client that I've met with now a couple of times, including yesterday. And their main goal is audience growth. They're not focused on bringing in clients for the podcast right now.

4:07 That's not their strategy. It's not to get. And I'll just give you a little background. They are marriage consultants and they talk all about making your marriage better on their podcast. They said they're not doing this to try to get new clients for their therapy sessions, for lack of better term. They're not in it for the money. They've told me straight up, you know, we're doing fine with money. This is not a cash grab. This podcast, even making their money back right now as far as what they put into the podcast isn't a top priority for them. What they keep telling me that matters the most is reaching as many people as possible.

4:50 So this client has been in it for about two years. They've built an audience, but not at the level that they had hoped. And actually, lately they've seen some decline, which is why they brought me in the 1st place. I'll admit that this topic has challenged me a little bit because I often say, and many of us say here on the podcast Morning Chat, that podcasting isn't all about big numbers. And I think that's true in a lot of cases, but a small audience, because I should say, a small audience can absolutely lead to big opportunities. But it would also be silly to pretend audience growth doesn't matter. It can matter a lot, especially if your goal is more reach, more impact, maybe more momentum, more opportunities, or a stronger community around what you're building. So today I want to unpack that a bit. Why does audience growth matter?

5:44 When does it matter? And if your podcast audience isn't growing, why? What may actually be getting in the way? So I'm going to start here. When podcasters talk about growth, what do you think they usually mean when they say they want to grow? DRI saw you raised your pepper. Go for it. So a question implies that it's all about downloads, and I think that. Is, Miss Lee, what if you had an episode that just sparked A tremendous amount of energy, maybe someone commented and that caused someone else to comment and now they're debating back and forth and it there's just like a spark just about an episode that you did that is as important as, you know, 10 more downloads.

6:39 Yeah, yeah, thank you. DRI saw some other people. Let's get a bunch of opinions here. And I think BC were you one of the people that yeah, you were. So when podcasters talk about growth, what do you think they usually mean? BCI. Think a lot of times, and this is where we have to as consultants step in and really kind of quote UN quote reality check them is I think a lot of assumptions about growth is making money and making so much money within an unreasonable expected time frame. Then you can like depart from a full time job and just be a podcaster. So and I think that's when we have to step in and be like, let's look at how this works. Let's look at the magnitude that is the size of podcasting and how monetization actually in theory works and what kind of actual time frame you should put down as a reasonable expectation before you see any kind of monetizable opportunities come your way.

7:42 So I would just put that in this to say, sometimes the growth is very understandable, community growth, that's great. But also we have the not so great assumptions about growth that have to be checked and then kind of redirected into reality. Yeah, yeah, I hear that BC and again, keeping it moving. Nick, I saw you put something in the comments and then we'll check in with Ralph. But Nick, did you want to share? Yeah. Hey, good morning everybody. Good morning. I just said in the chats, I think like growth, when they say growth, they want more listeners. But to DRS point, a lot of times that in the podcasters mind means more downloads equals more listeners. And that's like the main metric that is analyzed. So if they're not seeing more downloads and they're assuming they're not getting more listeners, or even if they are getting more downloads, they're assuming that they're getting more listeners.

8:40 And that may not always be the case. Yep, Yep. Fair enough. And Ralph, do you want to chime in as well? I do and you would expect me to say something about money here, but I'm not. I actually think that growth could be defined in what your why is from the beginning of why you started doing this. I will tell you personally, growth for me was growth of influence, growth of getting on stages, growth of doing other things because of my podcast. So the idea of growing numbers, yeah, sure, that's part of the growth thing. But I think a lot of people miss an opportunity because it could be personal development, it could be growth as the ability to speak.

9:21 So I think you really have to narrow down what is your why and then define what that looks like to where you find success because that could be the defined matrix of what you're trying to go with. I know for me, at first I got so caught up in the downloads, man, I was checking that like 5-6, seven times a day, and that will drive you crazy if you keep doing that. But then all of a sudden I started to notice people were mentioning my name, people were putting me in different locations. I was seeing myself all around. And to me, that is really the definition of growth that is outside the whole normal monetization bubble. Thank you, Ralph. And clearly a, an important area to focus on when you're thinking about growth isn't understanding that your purpose, your why behind the podcast. And I think maybe I could have done a better job rephrasing that question because I, I think where it's coming from from me is the idea that a lot of people, a lot of podcasters say they want to grow, but I don't think they, they have that connection to their why a lot of times. Or maybe they know their why, but they've kind of lost sight of it.

10:30 And they just say, I want to grow. I want to grow. And I want to understand what that really means to them in those instances too, if that makes any sense. I think that makes sense, Mark, because I think that's the struggle. I think there's a disconnect of like, what does growth look like? And I know maybe I'm rephrasing your question, but I think that's the struggle because I think you need to define what that looks like at the front end 'cause I think a lot of content creators don't define what that looks like. Yeah. Thank you, Ralph. Appreciate that. And I know Alex, you want to chime in, let me just go to Billy real quick since he's joining us from the audience and came up while Ralph was sharing. So I'm curious, Billy, good morning to you. Did you want to chime in on what Ralph is talking about or just chime in general?

11:12 Yeah. I mean, I think it's kind of maybe like a general thing here, but and I think I started when I started podcasting, it was all about the numbers, the downloads, the views. And then I realized like, who cares if I get a million people watching my content or listening to my content for five seconds? And that's when I really started paying attention to the longevity of the viewer or well, my case, it was viewer, but then, you know, listener as well. And then that's when I really started to because it's attention that we all want, but it's like depth of the attention is the real value. And I think what we do is content creators. And so that's what I started to kind of pivot to is like, OK, I don't care if I only have 100 people listening to my episode.

11:57 I just want 100 people listening to 85% of my episode because I know I'm building a real deep connection with those 100 people. And then when I can create fans out of 100 people, then I can go to them with the ask of, hey, I know you know one other person who you can tell them about my show, my podcasts, whatever. And then we can go from there and start to really grow the downloads and grow the community. Yeah. Thank you, Billy. Appreciate that. And yeah, I think that's the whole guerrilla marketing approach at that one that I am a firm believer in as far as, yeah, knowing who your diehards are, knowing who those regulars are that show up and connecting with them, asking them for help.

12:43 You know, here's a great example. And I'm not proud of this moment because this happened to me just recently last week when we launched our first Empowered Podcasting Live series. The whole thing was we didn't really do a great job of promoting it leading up to it. And on that day, I was sitting there thinking, oh man, what? What have we done? We've screwed up here, especially as professional podcasters. It's like, shouldn't we have planned this a little bit better, a little more smart? And what I ended up doing was reaching out to, I can't even tell you how many people that I know that regularly listen and or support the things that I do.

13:30 And I reached out to them, I gave them a link. It's had to be have been at least a couple of dozen of people, maybe more. And so many of them responded, so many of them showed up. We had a better turn out than I expected. And you know, when you do have, even if it is a quote UN quote smaller audience, those people will also help you promote like Billy was talking about. And that's what happened. I didn't even ask a lot of those people, but they went ahead and started promoting the show anyway. And we had a great turn out because of it. So I that definitely works. I'm with you there. I see that Jessica in the chat was agreeing. I think this was while Ralph was sharing. She said, oh, I agree.

14:16 True exponential growth begins with one change, one life and you after the trajectory of generations. Sorry about that. I butchered that Jessica, but thank you for your response here. OK, so there could be lots of reasons why people talk about growth. At what point does a lack of audience growth become something worth paying closer attention to? Think about that for a minute, right? Because at some point, maybe, you know, like my clients who I just shared, they actually saw their numbers going in the opposite direction.

14:56 It wasn't even a matter of we're not growing that we're starting to lose listeners. Is that the point where you need to pay closer attention to when to to getting your audience growth up? All right, let's check in with BC and then we'll go back to Ralph. Go ahead BC. Yeah, this is an interesting question. And my initial thoughts are if you're looking and really kind of delving into what of your content seems to move the needle and if you have at least someone on your team looking at your content, let's see you doing like a weekly show, looking at it monthly and you can determine OK, what seems to not be working versus what is working.

15:40 So and doubling down on what kind of content or at least what the format of the working content is, then I would believe you shouldn't see too much of A dip or a plateau. But I think if you still do, it could be that you are either hitting your the scope of your show too broadly. You're not really niching and and finding those really kind of cool, not cookie cutter topics, but like those really cool topics that people don't hate a lot. And they're my train of thought. There it is. Yeah, I hear you. I hear. Yeah, yeah. Here we go. That happens to me at least once a show. I'm with you there and good points and that I think Nick wanted to chime in as well. And by the way, my apologies to Alex, totally forgot to go to you at the last question.

16:27 And if you have something big you want to add to that, by all means, flash that Pepper. I will go back to you. And again, please forgive me, Nick, I saw you wanted to chime in as well. Go for it. Yes, I think it comes seeing your listener base and decrease. I can look at that a couple different ways. One is maybe those listeners aren't actually in your tribe and your tribe is starting to kind of weed itself out into the core people of your community. But you also can't ignore and say, OK, is this something with the content that is not resonating? Like maybe this is my tribe and the content just isn't landing with the audience anymore and maybe I need to make some adjustments or fit it in the content that I'm putting out there.

17:20 So one, I'm not the first example that I mentioned that could be a positive because you you don't want people in the community that don't want to be in the community and that don't want to engage and be a part of it and contribute and share and do all that kind of stuff. Like. It's just taking up space and giving you false information because they're not going to listen anyway. But if it is content driven and you're seeing a lot of numbers drop down, then I would say maybe experiment, Maybe some tweets still make massive changes to what you're doing, but make little tweaks and see if those little adjustments change the numbers or change what is happening with your show. But that those are just my two thoughts. Yeah, I think that can be.

18:00 That's certainly a smart way to look at it that, you know, maybe these people that are dropping off, they aren't really part of this community. They aren't the fit, they aren't part of my target audience. And I mean, I think that holds some weight. And I think that if you are consistently starting to lose listeners, I think that there may be an issue. And to Nick's point, I think, yeah, making tweaks to try to figure out what's going on, I think that's important. And you could make small tweaks like Nick is saying, or you could make just one big change at. But the whole thing is whichever way you go, small little tweaks, one big tweak, I think you got to make sure that you're giving it time.

18:42 And that's the challenge for a lot of us is that we want to make those changes, but we want them to yield some fruit right away. And it just doesn't work that way. We've got to watch and pay attention to what happens after that. And sometimes that could take a few months to really see because you people have to find, you have to find the revision, right, the newer content, if you will. And then we they got to decide whether they like it or not. Ralph, did you want to chime in? Yeah, I think this all points to having a strategic plan. An I think that's where a lot of content creators sort of have a shortcoming is I think at the front end of this, I see so many content creators that sort of just go by seat of the pants, like here's what I'm going to try that, I'm going to try this, that I'm going to try that.

19:34 I think that having a coherent strategic plan with measurement into what your expectations are is a better way to go because I think that's where we run into a problem. If we don't have a plan of here's what we're going to do from the front end, I think then you flail around, you make changes. There's sort of a Willy nilly approach to podcasting and I think that can really give you some struggles. So I think one of the first things you can do if you're feeling like your growth is not happening or you feel like you're going in the wrong direction, then you've got to go back and say, what is my plan here? What is my strategy? What are the main components of what I'm trying to develop here?

20:15 That's what I work with a lot of people, not even in content creation but just building strategy systems. Because then you know what to do next. You know what your plans are. Thank you, Ralph. I think that's a big one for sure. I think a lot of us go in with a light plan and particularly I should say around when we're launching the podcast and then the plan can for many of us, not everyone, but for a lot of us then there is no plan after the launch other than I'm going to put out weekly content and it's going to come out every Wednesday. I'm going to promote it with 1-2 or three clips or other pieces of social media and I'm done hands clean next episode. But that's not really much of A strategy. That's a process.

20:59 That's what I was getting at, Mark, is I think you need to have a strategy because for every minute that you have in podcasting, I think the argument could be made. You need to have that same minute in marketing at same minute in developing your audience. And if you're focusing only on creating the content, I think you're missing out on the strategy. That's important to grow the content. Absolutely. Thank you, Ralph. Let's go to Alex. Alex, please forgive me for forgetting you on the last question. It's OK. Go for it. You know, Ralph makes a good point. You know, the figure it out method never really works, but you know, you have to create your own block and and you have to look at yourself. And one thing Billy said in the past that, you know, that really kind of I always think about is, you know, this isn't easy. I purposely paused.

21:48 Podcasting's not easy, meaning the marketing end. There's a whole marketing end to it. And I'm not saying you have to have 1000 clips and all this other stuff, but are you trying to set yourself up for success in the sense of are you networking? Are you trying to guest? Are you trying to do the other things to create the opportunity for people to listen? And I think that's the biggest thing that people kind of forget. I know a lot of people on the stage do talk about it and some of them don't. I mean, in this room, you know, we've got people that are business people, meaning entrepreneurs to people that work for other people. And when you work for somebody else, that's a different mindset than when you're working for yourself. I'm not saying that's good or bad, it's just a different mindset.

22:43 And I think when you have a podcast, you are an entrepreneur and I don't care if you want to make money or not. You know, with my daughter's podcast, although it's kind of been sale lately, we've gone to bookstores, we've talked to people, we did the things to create that opportunity. And I'm really sad to hear that your client is having this these type of problems because you want to be that thought leader in that space. And maybe, and I'm not saying they're not doing the work because they probably are, because they have to find that other group that can start speaking for them so that when they have that issue, they go to them for an answer. And I just think that that's one thing that not dismissed from this, but it's something that, you know, you have to create your own luck and you can't just say I have a podcast, everybody listened because I know a lot of people, first time podcasters, OK, I'm out there Internet.

23:36 So everybody should just listen. No, they got to find you and you have to, you know, be a little pushy and. Thank you, Alex. I'm with you there and I will get back to one of your points here in a second because I saw Ralph says he disagrees, which surprises me a little bit. And I fully agree about the whole create your luck line that you shared, and I'll share a little bit about that in a moment. And yeah, Tide is appreciating Alex's passion there. And I saw Nick wanted to chime in. Go for it, Nick. I think, and I've mentioned this many times in the past, but the marketing piece of it for a vast majority of broadcasters tends to be the the breaking point to the failure point in the whole system. Because it it's one thing to put out the content, create the episodes out of the episodes, publish the episodes. But then when it comes to actually promoting and getting the show visibility, I think that piece of it always kind of falls flat.

24:39 Because so much effort has gone in on the front end of producing the show that by the time you're done with it, you're looking at the next episode and not putting enough effort into actually getting it out in front of more people. That said, there are multiple different ways for marketing the show. 1 of them being the what most people think about. Like with social media, more clips, more posts, more visibility online, which I think is great, but it takes a completely different skill set and mindset to do that. Where and I I put this one in the chat. I think one solid strategy and approach is find, like really try hard to find and connect with this one listeners that are constantly coming back. Maybe they're commenting on Spotify or maybe they're dropping you a comment in Instagram every time you post. Find those one or two people and see if you can bring them on a call once a month or whatever it is and bounce content off them. Ask them questions about their struggles, what they're dealing with, how they would like to see some of those episodes shaped up because they're going to be the ones that keep coming back. And then you can slowly add more people into that to where you are now building a community, building more people. But not only that, they're now giving you feedback directly and telling you, hey, like this is something that I've struggled with.

26:02 Boom content idea. Hey, this is something that I was thinking about. Boom another podcast episode idea. Hey, I think it would be really cool if you did this Boom, another content podcast episode idea. Like you're getting that direct feedback and you are speaking directly to the audience that you want to speak to. And I think that in itself is going to, one, get them to start sharing it with other people. And then two, increasing that listenership as opposed to having that massive decline or consistent decline in listeners. Because to me, if it's a consistent thing, that means that the podcast isn't delivering what the listener expected or wanted. And I'll get off my soapbox. Hey, Mark, I know Stid wants to go, but I did want to address what Ralph said. I think we're saying the same thing, just in a different way. Creating your own luck doesn't mean that you just do anything Willy nilly.

26:51 You have to put the work in and those opportunities come by chance. You know, like for instance, Ralph, you went to Empower Podcasting with a podcast already. You took it to the next level because you went to Empower Podcasting from that. You're on stage and we're doing what you're doing now. So you created your own luck in that sense. So you did the work. And I think that's the difference. I mean, yeah, it is about systems. I'm absolutely with you, but I know Sid was the head of me. Sorry. Yeah. And I'll just throw in, yeah, this is where I totally agree with you, Alex. I think that, yeah, when we say, at least when I say creating our own luck, it's taking action toward the things that you want and a lot. And when you do, new opportunities present themselves, sometimes opportunities you were never even expecting.

27:44 And that is by definition the luck that I'm talking about. When we take action, we create our own reality. I'll let Ralph respond and then let's go to Sid. Yeah, And I think it's just a choice of words. So when I hear the word luck, I think lottery, that's just me. That's what I bring to it. That's my bias in that thing. I think it comes down to exactly what all of you are saying. I just the word luck just rubs me the wrong way. But I think it's a coherent strategy, a plan. And I'll address what Alex said. When I went to EPC two, it was all part of the strategy, the strategy to get myself in front of other people, to get myself around other people in the industry. And that had been scoped out a year in advance. I had already thought about what events do I want to attend, who are the people I want to go and get myself in front of? Because to me, that's a coherent strategy that's intentional in every single action that I take.

28:45 Now, again, I'm a type A personality. I am super into systems, to be blunt with you. I've got my content already laid out for the next 6 months ahead of time and I do a Daily Show 'cause you can imagine what that looks like. But that's what works for me. I'm not saying that works for everybody, but I have a strategy and that's the way my mind works. So Alex, I don't disagree with the way you've rephrase that, and so I apologize if it came off a little strong there. I just look at luck as a lottery and I think it's just more intentional. But let me ask you, and this will be I promised it. I'm sorry. I know we've been jumping. Did something happen in that plan that was unexpectedly positive?

29:26 And that's where the, even though you have that plan, another opportunity might have come along and it's because you had it was behind all the stuff that you did. That was all I was saying. You know, it just comes out. We're saying the same thing. I agree, and I think that I'll use the word opportunities instead of luck. I'll say the word opportunities arise when you're following a strategy that is trying to get you from point A to point B. If I want to drive from Delaware to New York City, I've got to have a map of how to get there. If I just get in the car and start driving, I'm not going to end up there. But I agree with you, Alex. There are opportunities that present themselves because of having a strategy. You may get there if you already knew how to get there in the first place. That's fair, Mark.

30:09 I'm not like I can follow this song. I'm not being a smart aleck, Mark. No, you're right. I'm just saying like I think you're more strategic and you get there quicker when you use your GPS and you have a map. Unless you've been going there all the time for your entire life and you know every route and every way to go. OK, again, I'm being the smart aleck, not you, Ralph. I'm just playing around. Sid. We are finally coming to you, Sir. What would you like to add? Good morning, everybody and it's all good. And Mark, I appreciate the smart as to read very much so. So to answer your original question that started this really great dialogue, I think and I don't even remember exactly what the question was, but my answer to your question is you got to look at your content.

30:53 Yeah, look at your content and what is your content telling you that's resonating with your audience? What's the consumption rate? How many plays that specific content type get? And when you see the signals of growth content, then do more of that content. When you see the signals of content that's not resonating, do less of that content. It may mean reorienting your show and changing things around, but you got to pay attention to what the content is telling you. That's your audience way of telling you whether or not they really liked the topic or they're really going to engage with the topic. And that could even mean simple things like tweaks in the titles. But you got to change the title of the show to get people to click play, right? So you got to really look at that content.

31:34 But I did want to. And Nicks already gone. I wanted to add into something that Nick said about marketing. That's really the hard part. Marketing your show is really the hard part. Yesterday I looked at the my follow feed on Apple and I came across a show that I haven't listened to in a while. And I'm thinking my behavior is my listeners behavior too, right? So, and I thought, oh God, I haven't missed this in a while. Let me listen to this and some of you may know her. It's Amy Joe Martin, and I think I got introduced to her by somebody in this room. Yeah, her name sounds very familiar. So I clicked play and I was freaking blown away by that podcast episode. I stopped up in my notes app and chatting down notes and having to pause and write things down because some of the stuff was so good. So I went on to LinkedIn and I went over to her LinkedIn page. So I'm going to post about that episode today as a thank you because how great the conversation was. And I saw she posted a reel about I'm connected to her. I don't know how I got connected to her. But anyways, I saw supposed to read all about that episode and that title.

32:37 They were talking about a book called the AI Driven Leader. I have since downloaded the book and started listening to the book. That's action, right? And I hope that's the action that my listeners are taking because those are actions that I took. I texted that episode to a couple of different people saying listen to this. I downloaded the book. She doesn't know I took any of those actions. She's going to know because I'm going to post about it later today, right? But my point being is she has 21,000 followers on LinkedIn, which is a really big number on LinkedIn. And her reel had six likes. Marketing is hard. She's a keynote speaker. She's got a business like she is.

33:19 She knows her, she knows her stuff, right? And she posted a reel that had six likes. Marketing is hard, yeah. And you can't give up. You got to keep going. You got to keep pushing through it. You got to keep talking about it. And I put this in the chat. Who did you tell about your show today, every day? Do you tell somebody about your show to that is organic guerrilla marketing, grassroots marketing, and you got to tell people about your show. And then it's. There's another question and I'll get off my soapbox. The other question that you asked earlier that made me or somebody said new listeners coming in and it may not be your tribe that may not, but how do you get them to click that follow button? That's a really great measurement. How many people are following your show versus how many people are listening to your show.

34:05 I have a 600 person delta between followers and listeners. I got to figure out how to get those listeners to click the follow button. Thank you Sid, I'm sorry I'm giggling because Billy's comment his marketing is hard or LinkedIn sucks lol. And Billy is perfect. Everything Billy does is perfect. Let's be clear. I mean, I think both statements are true if I'm being honest. And LinkedIn, I don't necessarily think it sucks, but I'll tell you what, any videos that I put on there, it is hard to get any kind of reach with videos for me on LinkedIn. But yes, I'm with you, Sid. As a matter of fact, a guy who joined us at Empowered Podcasting too, who was the speaker there.

34:50 And an older friend of mine in the social media world, Danny Del Vecchio, he just posted a real similar to what you're talking about as far as marketing is hard, but also really putting it in perspective when you get those videos that only get 6 likes, for example. And I'm going to actually try to play it for you guys right here. I'll play you a piece of it here. Let me hold on. Video and I'm all mad because it only gets 96 views and I almost deleted it. And then two days ago sales meeting pops up on my calendar. I'm on the call with the guy today and he's like, hey, I saw the video that you did on the beach about content systems. He's like, it's exactly what I need for my business. So that 96 view video turned into a client. And so it's basically like worth more than every viral video that I've ever posted.

35:39 There you go. So sometimes that's the marketing doing its work, right? Yeah. You look at it from the surface and say, oh, this didn't work, 6 people saw it and Danny was about to delete the video, which I'm shocked to hear he was going to delete. That makes me angry and I'm glad he didn't because there you go. He got business out of it. Now, unfortunately, this goes back to my client again, that inspired this conversation, right? Because all they want is reach. All they want is growth. And that's going to be really challenging for them without investing money, I think, into getting more reach. Yes, Ralph, go ahead.

36:20 Yeah, I just wanted to trumpet something that sits and it's going to go a long lines where you're at. I wonder if it's a content issue. And the reason I say that is a lot of content creators don't want to talk about their content. And I think sometimes we have to make sure that our content is solving a problem for someone. When your content solves a problem for someone, that's when you will grow your audience. In my view. There's a lot of people out there talking things. You get a lot of people, a lot of options and things you want to hear. But what I see, people who are successful are people who solve the audience's problem. So you got to go back and look at your content and say, what problem am I solving?

37:02 If you're just getting on and pontificating about a topic that's of interest to you, that's great. That might be a great hobby podcast. But if you really want to grow your audience, you've got to solve a problem for them and you've got to go back and look at your content. Sometimes it's easier to throw money at it. It's easier to throw marketing dollars. It's easy to do all those organic goods. Go go talk to people about it. But do you really want to go back and say, is my content any good? That's a hard question. Yeah, I'm with you there. And we talked about that too with the client. I talked to them about that and you know, we noticed that the retention rate is lower than we'd like it to be. I encourage a goal for anybody to try to get at least 80% retention rate.

37:47 In other words, 80% of your episodes on average are being consumed, 80% of the minutes of an episode are being consumed, and theirs is a little lower. And the funny part is, is that they're hesitating to maybe consider doing a shorter show. Maybe the answer here is that the audience just wants it more of a quick to the point type of show. So I've been working with them, starting to work with them, encouraging them to consider experimenting with shorter shows. And again, that's the key, right? That's what we were talking about earlier. This is an experiment, it is a test. It's something that we have to do over time and be patient because if we try it for a month, maybe put a couple of episodes out in a month that are shorter and it doesn't really translate yet, That's not the time to give up. But that is where I see a lot of podcasters grow, where I see a lot of podcasters give up.

38:46 How long is the show like episode wise? It depends. So when it's just the two of the Co hosts themselves, they try to keep it around 30 minutes. When they have guests it's usually around 60. Oh, so it's not very. I mean, 30 minutes isn't that long, I mean. No, it's not terribly long. And since they've cut that down to more like 30 minutes, they have seen a bit of a rise in their retention rate as of late. Have they asked our audience? Have they done a survey? Have they asked our audience what their audience wants? Well, and that's part of the trouble is that they're not getting a lot of response from their audience. And one of the things that I noticed and suggested to them is that they're waiting to ask their audience for feedback or giving their audience a call to action.

39:29 They're waiting until the very end and if people aren't finishing the episodes, they're never hearing those calls to action. So one of the strategies we're going to take is to do this at the first half of their episode to share, Hey, give us your feedback and asking specific for specific types of feedback, not just hey, how we doing, let us know, but asking for specific things about specific episodes so that we can get more direction, more feedback that actually. Mean something to the hosts? Yes, Sid, go ahead. Actually I want to go to Jonathan first. Actually Dr. First, then Jonathan, me. There you go, please.

40:09 So I wanted to know how long should the experiment before you say, OK, let's pivot again and try something else? Yeah. I think that that's something that you have to determine going in because again, that goes back to setting intentions, goals, expectations from the get go. And I personally, so let's say that this is a once a week podcast that yeah, they produce 1 episode a week for their audience. I would actually consider one of the things we're talking about is doing a shorter episode, maybe sprinkling it in once or twice a month. And honestly, I think you've got to do that for at least three months with that kind of repetition, right?

40:53 I mean, if you're moving to all together, like, OK, for the next two months, every episode's going to be significantly shorter. It's going to be 15 minutes. Well, then, you know, I think, yeah, one to two months might be enough. But the more time you can give it, the more data you have to work with and the better educated decisions you can make. OK. Yeah. Jonathan, go for it. So I was just going to give them a really simple thing they can do, which is open the slot on their calendar for a listener once a month and talk to that listener and see what that listener has. That might be interesting feedback for them. A little something we learned at Podcast Movement a couple years ago.

41:34 OK, Yeah. And of course, the key has to be they need to put this in front of their audience earlier on in the episode itself. I think that is the best place to ask your audience because you have their captured attention. So just making sure that they are actually there to hear it. That's important. And then, yeah, I would follow that up with social media posts to encourage your audience who may not have heard that part of your episode yet, that request, put it out there on social media for them. Thank you, Jonathan, for that. Sid, go for it. So I think we all have to think about the listener behavior when we're asking for feedback. And the listener, we know they're driving, they're walking, they're exercising, they're doing housework. And we say, hey, we dropped a link in the notes, Please go to show notes, clean that, click that link and fill out that survey for us because we really value your feedback. Like you're asking them to take action and they're either going to say to themselves, which what I typically do is all go back to that show and I will, I'll go and grab that link and I'll do the feedback and then I forget I get busy because they're likely not going to stop in the middle of their workout, stop the show, quit listening, click the link and take 5 minutes to fill out a survey.

42:51 So to me, a better way to do it, which is what I did when I was trying to say I did put the, I did ask for surveys in my show. I did put a calendar link out there and I had a few people do it, but I got better feedback when I reached out to them directly. Most of them were either on e-mail or through LinkedIn messaging. I reached out to them directly, said, hey, this is what I'm doing. I'd love for you to either complete this survey, here's the link, or schedule time with me and I can ask you these five questions that I have. I think you just got it. You got to remember what they're doing when they're listening and you're asking them to take action. If you're asking them to stop what they're doing, stop listening to the show and go take action. And I think that's just something to be mindful of. And if you're a podcaster, you should be a podcast listener and take clues from how you listen.

43:40 But how did you know to who to reach out to? Dr. answer that question. Who on this stage would like to answer that question for Dr. Because I've said this 1000 times. I don't remember, I'll be honest. Oh you guys are y'all don't listen. Thank you. I have I have a spreadsheet. Oh yes. So I have a spreadsheet. Every time that somebody engages with my show, I open up my spreadsheet called podcast listeners. I put their name and their LinkedIn profile in the spreadsheet. If I have their e-mail address, I put their e-mail address in the spreadsheet so I know who's listening. And I'm doing that intentionally so that I don't try to remember who's listening to my show. This is anybody that interacts with some content relative to my show, most of which is on LinkedIn, whether they post about it, they leave a thoughtful comment about it or whatever it might be, they tag as they share it, right? I mean, I'm putting, that's how I'm tracking. I'm putting them in a spreadsheet with their LinkedIn profile and e-mail address.

44:36 If I have and I'm connecting with them, like there was a guy yesterday that I was not connected to that made a connection request with me. And so I went and looked at his profile and went, oh, he's a perfect candidate, perfect client for me for our new business. And then I saw a notification that he commented on a post that a brand made about an episode where I in their creative director. And then I, when I accepted his connection request, I send a note to him thanking him for the connection. That's great to meet other furniture friends. And then I said I really appreciate your thoughtful comment about my discussion with Todd. I thought it was a really great conversation. And by the way, I checked out your products. I checked out your website and made me a beautiful products. I'd never heard of this guy or this company before. And so now I've started one step towards building relationship and how this guy is on my spreadsheet. I mean, it's work, it's work.

45:31 And but I'm building something that I'm already proud of, but I'm really intentionally building something that I want to grow. And so connecting with that listener because all I need is him to share that episode with one person and my show grows, right? That's all I need is him to share. If he has a connection with me, hopefully that encourages him. Maybe in this conversation when he responds to my message, maybe I can ask him to share it with somebody, right? And so I want to respond to one thing that Ralph said into the chat and which is 90 days. Why 90 days? Because I made a comment that you should run your tests and the new episodes for 90 days and then take the feedback. I think you have to do the 90 days because if you get 1000 listens on your episode, you're not going to get them all delete to the episode drop. You're just not.

46:11 I mean, I'm looking at my downloads for the quarter, but I shared the other day and 65% of the downloads that I'm getting in, 1/4 are coming from my back catalog. That kind of was there for a reason. People are consuming and listening to. And I don't think that if you did a 30 day test, I don't think that's reaching your audience enough because I'm going to use myself again as an example, Amy Jo Martin, I had not listened to her show properly in three months and I saw her at the top of my feed yesterday. I thought I need to listen to this and the topic grabbed me and I'm like, I need to listen to this. So I think you got to give it more time because they're not listening every day when the show drops. Yeah, thank you, Sid. And I also saw Ralph agreed with everything you were sharing moment ago saying it is work. Well said Sid.

46:54 Yeah, thank you, Sid. Appreciate you breaking that down for us. I want to go to Tide who has been waiting patiently to chime in as well. Go for it Tide. Good morning. Good morning to you too. Yeah, I was just going to say this is kind of piggybacking on what others said. But as I get more immersed into the digital world, I have realized how much I have grown dependent on information that comes in a digital format. So I might be looking on Reddit, I might be looking on Facebook for things that people have searched. And all of that is good. It's not bad information at all. But where I really get the depth of the information? That I need. To hopefully put together a success, successful podcast is when I go out there and I do what you guys have suggested and that is talk to people. So if I'm at the library, cuz I go there a lot, I might just walk up to someone and say, hey, you know, I just had a quick question about this.

47:45 Do you mind if I, you know, pull you on something? Or I might, might not use the word pull because that kind of triggers a lot of different reactions. And but I might just ask them, you know, Hey, can I just ask you a quick question? And I'm not afraid to do those types of things. I'm not afraid to walk up to somebody who I don't know at all from Adam and just say, hey, I've got a quick question. I'm doing this podcast or I've got this project I'm working on. Just looking for some feedback. Would you be able to spare, you know, 10 seconds just to kind of hear me out? And so I've never had someone say no. I've never had someone shoo me away. But. That doesn't mean that they won't, and I'm perfectly fine with rejection too. That's. Doesn't bother me at all, but that the point is that the depth of the information really comes from talking to people, getting a real live person, somebody who has a lived experience.

48:33 And sometimes those conversations, they turn into way more than what I thought. Sometimes people are so willing to share their experiences or their thoughts or their feelings way more than I ever thought that they would be. And it's really, it's really valuable. So I would say definitely for anyone who's looking to grow their show, you know, don't underestimate the power of just putting your ear to the ground and really just getting out there and talking to people. Amen to that tide. Thank you for sharing a real life example that's working for you. And it reminds me that when I was sharing a moment ago about asking for feedback and being specific, I wasn't doing you any service by not sharing any examples of what kind of questions.

49:16 So again, what I was saying earlier was you can't just say, hey, e-mail me and give me feedback. How are you liking the podcasting morning chat? It's too broad, of course. Sure, you'll you might get some people who are excited to heed the call, but overall, you're in my experience, you're not going to get a lot of response that way. So you know, it depends what you're looking for, right? Like if you want to know if this has been valuable, if your episodes are valuable to your audience, ask them for one specific thing that they took away from the episode. That's important, right? If they can't tell you one specific thing, maybe you're you have a value problem. Did this episode give you something useful, memorable, worth sharing?

50:02 These are the questions that you ask if you want to learn about value, if you want to figure out if your content is connecting with your audience, which I think are two different things, you could ask them. You know what? Was there a moment in this episode that felt most human to you, most relatable? Was there anything that made you feel disconnected from me or the audience? And then, yeah, if you're looking for just, hey, how can I get better at this? If I could, you could say if you could change one thing about the episode, what would it be? What should I do more often? What should I stop doing or do less of? Those are specific enough questions that people can sink their teeth into it and actually provide you with some feedback. So sometimes you might be doing all the right things as far as when you're asking where you're asking for the feedback, but maybe you're not asking the right questions. Anyone else want to chime in at all here? Before we wrap up, I have some some final thoughts. Jonathan, are you saying something in the chat here that maybe is worthwhile sharing on stage? I was typing something so now you got a half a sentence. In the chat because I couldn't unmute with the. While I was typing, but I was just saying sometimes if you're not getting, you're getting too much sometimes to people, which might be why you're not getting things back. And Ralph was saying that's why he's dropping his Daily Show to 10 minutes and a single topic, because if you're giving too much content.

51:29 It overwhelms them and they run away. Yeah, sometimes scared. Yeah, I'm with you. And it's funny because I think it's a hard, a hard transition to make there. What I find when I'm working with podcasters, even the ones that I'm talking about from yesterday, they have a hard time grasping the idea of wait shorter shows. But I feel like I'm not giving enough now. But I think it's really more you're giving a lot. It's just you're being very specific about it. And and just to keep in mind, people don't want more, they want a solution. You don't have to give them a lot if you're giving them a solution. Amen to that.

52:10 Thank you, Jonathan. Janae has joined us on stage. Go ahead, Janae. Good morning. Morning. This is so true. The too much information is a real thing. Yeah. It's information highway, right? And and there was a example of Russell Brunson giving his very first talk and he's like ready to take in all these orders. He had open up a fire hose of information and people get so confused. They're like, wait, which part do I want? All of it, but I don't want all of it. It's so true to limit how much information that they get so that they can take action on. And I'm also very what's that word where you?

52:51 I also do that, right, So. What's the word for that? That you also do that? I feel like you just said it. No, no, There's a specific word. Somebody help me out, Ralph. You may be. Morning. I keep telling you people, words are hard in the morning. I hate words in the morning. Well, we do know Jump. On that train with me, Janae. Yes, we do know what you're talking about. I don't know the the word or phrase you're looking for, but I do not understand what you're talking about. Go ahead, Ralph. I will jump in there because this was a struggle for me and that's why I put in the chat my Daily Show. I actually got feedback from a couple listeners and they said, Ralph, we love how much knowledge you have.

53:31 But dude, give me one thing at a time. Just give me one thing today, show me a solution, and then tomorrow I promise I'll come back and listen for another thing that I can work on. But you're overwhelming us. And I think that's the problem is I think sometimes we overwhelm our audience. And I had the best of intentions, but when I finally listened to the audience, I went from a 30 minute daily episode to between 10:00 and 12:00. And when I did that, my downloads doubled. It took about 90 days, but they did double because I think I was overwhelming people giving him too much. And when I just picked one thing a day and said here's something you can can do to improve your financial well-being, it just took off. Yep.

54:13 Thank you, Ralph. Yeah, I think for many of us, we could take a long, hard look at our content and probably discover that maybe we are just giving too much value. I think a show like this, an hour is appropriate because we have so many different thoughts and opinions and it's more of a round table discussion. So I think there's more room to allow it to breathe. But I do think in general, especially solo shows or even maybe shows with a host and Co host, I think that we try really hard because we are trying to serve our audience right. We want to give them the value we want to. We want them to walk away feeling like wow, that was some powerful information.

54:56 But powerful doesn't mean more. It means giving the right information at the right time in a digestible way. So look, I think today for me, the big take away here is that audience growth does matter depending on what you want your podcast to do for you. And when growth isn't happening, I think we all agree it it's usually not random. A lot of the time it comes back to the show itself. As Ralph was pointing out, a lot, the strategy behind it, or one area we didn't really dig into yet is consistency. The consistency needed to build the momentum, and that can fall into a lot of areas. Not just putting out a show every day or every week, but it's the consistency of promotion, marketing, branding, all those other parts to the podcast. The hard part here, I think, is being honest enough to figure out which one of those things needs your attention. Alex, did you want to say something before I wrapped? Absolutely.

55:54 I think that the take away for me is you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I think if you can do that, whatever tweaks you need to make to make your podcast better will come. And it's not easy when you're used to doing it a certain way and you're comfortable with your tools. You know, Dr. will never use an iPhone, regardless of how awesome it is. You know, we just understand that and we just don't care because we're going to. Touch�� my friend. Touch��. But my point being is it's just really about being comfortable with being uncomfortable and with the technology that's out there and the metrics, you just have to kind of play with it and have fun with it because that's what we're supposed to be doing, right?

56:38 Absolutely, yes. Thank you Alex, and thank you all for a great discussion today. I had a feeling this would be a juicy one. Thank you for all diving in to this discussion. We are back tomorrow, 7:00 AM Eastern talking all things podcasting news. The headlines that we believe are important to you as an independent or DIY podcaster. So come join us. Always lots of good conversation on Wednesdays around those headlines and a reminder you can win Ralph's roadcaster duo by going to podcastingmorningchat.com/duo. And until tomorrow, make it a great day. Everybody take care.