009: Why I Decided To Run Ads

Hi, this is Charles Michael Davis. Toyotathon is on. So stop by your local Toyota dealer for incredible year end deals on the cars, trucks and SUVs known for their legendary reliability like the stylish and efficient Camry. The Ready for anything RAV4 or check out a rough and rugged Tacoma or Tundra. All with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit buyatoyota.com to find out more. Toyota let's go places.

This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host, Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors with Venmo. Stash a taco on one hand and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back with Venmostache. Get up to 5% cash back when you pick a bundle of your favorite brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash. Venmo Stash terms exclusions apply. Max $100 cash back per month. See terms of venmo.me stash terms friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Hello my friends. In my very first episode, the kickoff to this new podcast 001, I shared with you some of the quirky challenges of trying to record here in New York City and even at home with a husband and a dog in the background. Okay, well, I just couldn't help but tell you this story. The very next day. I was 10 minutes away from interviewing my friend Dave Crenshaw, and I thought, you know, just for today, I'll do this one at home. I won't get a studio or go to a hotel. It'll be fine, right? No. 10 minutes prior to hitting record, a plumbing team shows up. They had rescheduled. It was three guys. We had this issue. Our shower wasn't draining, it was a problem. And here are these three guys. I told them, you know, I'm supposed to record a podcast, but they're like, oh, should we come back? Meanwhile, I have not had a clean, good shower in over a week. So I'm looking at them, they're at our house. We better just do this now. I email my friend Dave and I'm like, I'm so sorry, we're gonna have to reschedule. Next thing I know, this is the soundscape in my house.

See you coupling. See the coupling on the other side. You can get to it. Okay.

The good news, after all that commotion, both showers in our house were fixed. The bad news, we had these huge, like I said, four foot by four foot gaping holes, one in the ceiling, one in another wall. And I looked at Michael and I go, this is it. This is all I needed to know. That I have to figure out a solution for recording this podcast somewhere else. I mean, talk about unprofessional and just these crazy curveballs. And it was always something. That's what's so funny about signals and signs like this. I really believe in reading the energy of a situation. And there have been part of me, you know, as I said in episode one, my intention is to go pro with this podcast. I want to take it seriously. I want to do a great job. I want to grow the audience. And that's all of you. Thank you for being here early. And one of the factors to do that is good sound. It is an honor. It is a privilege to be in your earbuds or coming through your car or wherever you're listening to this. Who knows, Maybe Alexa's playing this episode. It's an honor to be coming through your end on the audio. And I want that audio to be clear and clean and not jarring. As I say in the intro, I kind of joke that I want this to feel like Free time Cafe. Although it's cute if Ryder is knocking on the door or barking, too much of that just becomes stressful and chaotic. At least here in New York, there's so much noise everywhere that although I sometimes appreciate podcasts that have background noise, my. My goal is that it's clear and we can focus on the conversation. But in order to do that, renting a studio or a hotel room seemed a little frivolous to me. To the previous prior to going pro, my more frugal side, and the one that is genuinely trying to manage my cash flow, of which there is none, coming from this new show right now, that felt a little bit over the top. Couldn't I just make it work from home? And week after week, I kept trying, and then crazy, random things would happen. You know, maybe Ryder's losing his mind, or three plumbers show up and start carving a hole in the ceiling. And so after enough of these, it's like, okay, universe, I get the hint you're giving me the okay. I look at Michael, I say, I gotta go. I cannot record these in the house. I. At least I have to give myself a pilot where I try recording. Now, what will I do if I go to a hotel or a studio and. And it still kind of falls apart, I don't know. But it gave me the confidence and the sort of rationale to, to go pro and to try to find a quiet space. So I'll keep you posted on these adventures, of course. Why am I telling you this? Long story. One, it was just so funny because I had just recorded episode one saying oh, perfectly imperfect. And two, it's important to me to let you in on the business logic that's happening behind the scenes. In my Free Up Founder Time mini course, there is a lesson on batching and time blocking. You can learn more about that@itsfreetime.com foundertime in that lesson, I talk about batching content. So this is nothing new. And if you're managing a complex project, something as complicated as podcasting, where every single episode is a mini project in and of itself, which with 30 moving parts, if not 50 little details that you need to pay attention to for in order for me to make this hotel staycation pilot work, I'll need to batch my interviews. So part one of my experiment is actually consolidating how many days a month that I do interviews. You'll hear about this in the episode with John Lee Dumas. He is the master at this. So JLD batches only 2 days a month of recording and he does I think eight episodes each day. So he gets 16 out of that two day batch. I'm not gonna go that crazy crazy in a good way for him. But my energy, I don't know if I can sustain it for that many conversations. But I am gonna batch record two max three days a month and see how that goes. And I'm already finding myself emailing potential guests saying, being totally transparent, hey, I have a dog, he barks all the time. And so I'm batching, recording. And this. You're only seeing these two days of availability or these three? Will it work? I don't know, but you're the first to know. Well, you and Michael here on the Free Time podcast, so I will keep you posted. I know we're all working on workarounds in one way or another for these wild times that we're in of working from home and remote distributed everything. Before we get into the actual topic of today's show, why I decided to allow advertising on my two podcasts, there's one more thing I wanted to point out about the Plumbers. I shared this in the Pivot Insider community. So this is my private monthly Q&A call for those who support the podcast. By the way, I would love for you to join us if you want to be part of that crew. We're going to have even a private feed that will go out for anyone who signs up. You can learn more@itsfreetime.com BFF I shared in our most recent live call the relationship of time to pricing. So it was really interesting because these three guys came, these three plumbers, and we didn't know. Michael and I didn't know, is this going to cost $500, $5,000 more? We weren't sure. Three guys, they were here three hours, and as they were leaving, and they did a great job. They did a great job. As they were leaving, the guy in charge says, okay, it'll be 1,500. I immediately found myself calculating, okay, 1,500 divided by three, that's 500 for each guy divided by three for three hours. And then I stopped myself. I realized that the more skilled this team was, the less time it would take them to do the job. And so often as business owners, especially if you are providing a service of any kind, as much as we try to decouple time from our pricing, you know, there's this whole principle of value based pricing that instead of charging for your time, charge for the value of. Of what it is that you're delivering. And sometimes it can get confusing and you're too close to it. As the saying goes, you can't read the label from inside the jar. But it was so clear with these plumbers. I realized if they were not as skilled as they were, they could have been here all day. That doesn't mean we should pay them more. In fact, it was the least disruptive. And they were good. They were not afraid to just carve this big old hole in the wall. They were literally going into the bowels of the house, the innards of our piping. And they even called out that the piping was not set up correctly. So they had to do these crazy workarounds. The point is, the more skilled, the more courageous these guys were, the more effective, the quicker they got the job done. That in fact, then the house, we weren't disrupted all day. It was three hours that morning. And sorry again, Dave, for my last minute rescheduling. So let this be a reminder that whatever it is you are charging for, people are paying you for the product. They're paying you for your expertise to be skilled. There's a story about Marshall Goldsmith, who a president of a company, was hiring him to coach one of the VPs, and let's just say it's the VP of Sales. Okay? And Marshall, he does this kind of crazy, innovative thing with pricing, where he pays only upon delivery. But he might charge 250,000 for a year of coaching with a sales professional. And let's say that sales professional is earning $10 million a year. So it actually the ROI is there if Marshall helps him improve his performance amount. So the president asked Marshall, well, how much time are you going to spend with him? And Marshall's response was, as little time as possible. And the president couldn't understand. He said, what do you mean? What am I paying you all this money for? What do you mean, as little time as possible? Marshall said, well, you have this guy on a $10 million salary. How much of that time do you want me to take up to get the results that you're looking for? So the next time you are creating a proposal or pricing or having a conversation about your services, think of those plumbers and thank you, Justin, who led the crew that he brought over that day. And just think about the fact that the more skilled you are, the quicker you'll work and the faster you'll get the desired outcome. We were not hiring this team to come here and hang out at our house all day. We needed a functional shower. We needed a shower that drained. We needed someone to go deep down, deep into the piping of the house and pull out random stuff that had been there for years prior to us ever getting here. And that's what they delivered. Okay, those two intro riffs aside, let's get into today's conversation why I decided to allow ads on my podcasts. The reason I'm talking about this at all is because if you've been listening to Pivot for any of the last six years, and now here we are on free time. You know that I've been a cranky curmudgeon when it comes to advertising, and I could never really stomach the idea. Authenticity and integrity and truth. These are such big values for me that I was finding it really hard to wrap my head around one of the most common monetization methods for podcasts, which is ads. You can either have host read ads, which I think statistically do twice as well as ads that where the host doesn't read, they're provided by the advertising company or by a marketplace. My hesitation with host red ads, well, for one, the audience was never big enough to make it worth it. I think I would have been earning at a certain point. I would have earned $75 an episode. If I had a few ads that I read and it never seemed worth the trouble of working with the advertiser, recording, sending them a draft, making any revisions, planning the schedule. So the ROI wasn't there for me. But also I was really hesitant to record for something that I don't love. Here I am talking to you about my favorite tips and tools and strategies in my business, and I couldn't imagine that all of a sudden we start an ad break and I'm hawking you some random thing that I don't even know anything about. I also find it a little bit strange that if the tone at least of my show is to be really honest and authentic, but all of a sudden there's these ads and you're not sure, well, does Jenny really believe what she's saying in this ad? And therefore does it call into question the credibility of any of the rest of the show? I was just never felt good about that. Sam Harris talks about this a lot on his podcast and so he went to a listener supportive model and that was really inspiring. And by the way, I've tried everything over the last six years. I've tried advertising, you know, kind of funding the show through selling my own products and courses. I've tried funding the show through Patreon. Then I moved off Patreon and created what was Pivot Insider for the Pivot Podcast. And here at FreeTime, it's called FreeTime BFF. So for now, I'm merging those two things. It's going to be the same one community. We'll do a Q and A call every month with bonuses interspersed. And again, that's. It's freetime.com BFF if you do want to learn more. But the listenership of my shows so far and the number of people who have joined Insider bff, whichever name you want to go with, it hasn't it. It still doesn't break even. The podcast still doesn't break even. Especially now where I'm investing in a more sophisticated hosting platform. Lisa Orkin, our incredible audio engineer via Jonathan and Stephanie Fields. Thank you. Shout outs all around. Just so grateful for all of. So we have more professional audio engineering and really another pair of ears doing a deep listen other than me. Because by the way, although I'm such an amateur, you know, it's kind of satisfying for me to sit and edit audio episodes, but I become the bottleneck and then I get off schedule and then the whole thing kind of cascades and falls apart. So I knew that I needed Someone who was willing to do a deep listen line by line, so to speak, and really help bring the best possible show to your ears. So there's a lot of investment that happens, not just the time and focus and team, but outside software and outside team members. Like in addition to the core team that's serving as project management, shout out to Brenna, who does an incredible job managing all the details. So between selling my own products and courses and promoting Pivot Insider FreeTime BFF, because I don't love constantly promoting things and it's just not my zone of genius, that's for damn sure. Oh my gosh. I don't tend to generate the amount of revenue that I would need to break even, let alone have something really provide a robust income so that I can pour even more of myself, my heart, into it. Why am I telling you all this? Because I have decided to with free time. And that means transitioning Pivot over. I'm using a new hosting platform called Megaphone. You can learn more about them at Megaphone fm. It was really important to me to choose a hosting platform because now there are dozens that exist. When I started there was one that everyone used called Libsyn. And now there are so many choices for so many different levels of investment and types of podcasts. I really wanted one that I could grow into. So in a way I'm. I bought the big pair of shoes. You know, Megaphone starts at, at least at the time of this recording, around $100 a month for hosting. And then as the listenership grows, that number goes up. But I knew that it would allow me to go pro. I knew that one. They have an ads marketplace and I'll tell you more about that in a second. But they also allow for dynamic ad insertion of my own campaigns. So one issue that was happening with Pivot, I have a back catalog of 260 episodes at this point, at the time of this recording. And I would make announcements for products or events, things that we're launching, and they'd be baked into the episode into the actual audio file that gets published. We even ran into an issue at the end of 2020 where I ran a best of. And it was an episode I had done on attending Oprah's 2020 Vision event in Brooklyn pre pandemic, just before the pandemic really started. It was in February of 2020, but there were a lot of gems. It was a fun day. So I reran that episode. Well, I had forgotten that at the beginning there was a plug for an event A masterclass webinar that I was doing in March, that the listeners who were listening in December tried to go register and the event was no longer live. But unless I had gone back in and edited the audio file, re uploaded it and done that whole thing, the quote ad, even for an internal product, was out of date for an internal event. So dynamic ad insertion allows for people like me to create a campaign, even my own campaign. Say, hey, do you want to join us for the, you know, supporters of the podcast? You get a private Q and A call with me, go to itsfreetime.com BFF Great. I can run that promo and it can run on the entire back catalog before the episode starts. Whereas in the past it had to be baked right in. So now if I ever close down that program, I can remove that ad, you won't hear it again. Or I can choose, maybe, maybe you're on a binge, you know, you're like, you get here six months from now and you're going through the archives of this show. Well, at least the ads. If you're hearing promotions for even my own stuff, you're hearing it in real time for events and things that are coming up in that moment, even if you're listening to earlier episodes. The other main functionality and appeal of a platform like Megaphone is their ads marketplace. This is appealing to me, not because, okay, listen, in an ideal world, would you have to hear any ads at all? No. Okay. My preference is no. I'm not bugging you with ads. However, I want to do this show. I want to make it great. I want to bring you incredible interviews. I want to keep paying Lisa and Brenna and anyone else who's involved and even the brand strategy team abundantly. I want to be generous with what I can pay and how we can create this. So is it my dream to have to, you know, not have to, to choose to put ads? No, it's not like the topmost dream. However, when I'm looking at the trade offs, I think that it's compelling enough and hopefully unobtrusive enough. I'm going to try to do it in a classy way. I've already noted what exclusions, what categories, who's not allowed to advertise on this blog, such as beer companies, for example, or explicit content. But the ads marketplace that Megaphone offers allows for a dynamic insertion of non host red ads. So that means that you might hear an ad from a company that I actually don't know exactly which one will be inserted, but I can choose where it will go at the episode and at least I won't be reading ads for just random stuff that I don't know or care about. And then for host red ads, let's talk about that. I will only do those for companies I'm genuinely obsessed with. So let's say Megaphone wanted to ask me and they say, hey, you have a lot of business owners. We'd love for you to do a host read ad talking about Megaphone. Well, I genuinely have been so impressed by them and their new client onboarding. See, there's the doorbell in the background. Boom. And I'm recording from home. I already told you, this is the last signal I need to.

I need to stop saying that because I already know I need to record somewhere else. But I will gladly do a host red ad for the services I love. And then you will know that if you're hearing me talk about something like Megaphone or Kajabi or Riverside fm, the rooms where we're recording, when I do interview a guest, it's because I love them. It's because I'm so impressed by them. It's because they genuinely are helping me in my business. Now, none of those three companies I just mentioned just said that they would pay me. That was favor, guys. Okay, but you know who to call. Um, but I'm happy to do it. And these are. These are the companies that I would likely be talking about Anyway. I also have a full list of all the software I use in my business if you want to see that it's the one I actually use. It's not just some random bonus I created two years ago that I don't update. It is the tracker I use to track all my software. Just go to itsfreetime.com join. If you just subscribe to the newsletter, you'll get instant access to that. So before I close out this episode, let's try a mid roll. Okay. This is going to be a surprise. I'm going to insert when I go publish this episode, I'm going to insert an ad right.

Now.

We'll be right back just after this.

Okay. How'd that go? Was it bad? Was it weird? I don't know either. I'm actually excited to listen and try it out. Thank you, Lisa. I had to ask Lisa, our audio engineer, how the heck do ad transitions work? Like doesn't the music. It needs to build and then fade and then some ad has to go in and then the music comes back. Anyway, I'm just excited. This is a pilot like anything else. And I wanted to share with you my thinking on this and also let you know what to expect. Because if you've been listening to Pivot for a long time, my other podcast, then again, you know that I've been kind of cranky about ads and the trade offs and so I'm evolving. They say that, you know, it's important for all of us to have intellectual humility. And I don't know, I could turn ads back off. I could. For me, Megaphone is worth it just to do dynamic insertion of my own promotions. That alone is a game changer. We'll see. And I just want to say I appreciate your flexibility. I hope that the ads are interesting for you. I hope that they're not totally annoying. The jury is out. I hope that maybe you do get exposed to interesting products and services. And I look forward to the day that the show has a big enough audience that I can do host red ads for services that I absolutely love and adore and want you to know about. And I think in this wild, wild west of podcasting that we're all trying to figure out this. It's such a labor of love and a real passion area of the business because again, it does take tremendous time, team money and focus. But as my friend Jonathan said to me, he's like, if you can't not do it, then you should start a podcast. And that's how I feel about free time. Like, no matter who would try to talk me out of it and I could try to talk myself out of it, knowing how much work it is just from doing the six years of Pivot, I can't not do it. That's why I'm here. I just love this. I love this format. I love connecting with guests. I love all of you for being here listening. I love everyone who's in our insider BFF community. And I love the challenge of this. And I think that's so important that you connect with your voice, your passion, your favorite form of ongoing public original thinking, as I like to call it, and be willing to take some risks. So today I'm here by giving you permission to change your mind and permission to try something new without knowing how it will turn out. Thank you so much for listening everybody. And as always, I look forward to hearing your feedback. And all the goodies I mentioned will be in the show notes@itsfreetime.com youm can also scroll down to the footer or go to itsfreetime.com ask and leave me a voice note for a future listener. Q and A episode. Thanks so much everybody. Have a beautiful rest of your day.

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