How to Make Your Podcast A Medium Article - The Podcast Report

I've heard people say that you should spend like 10% of your time building something and 90% of your time learning how to sell it. I'm more in tune with the philosophy of Cal Newport, which is to be so good you can't be ignored.

You are listening to the Podcast Report with Paul Colligan.

Here's Paul. Here's Paul.

I have said for a long time, and you've heard me chat about it here on the podcast Podcast Report, that making them come to your blog or making them come to your website these days in the world of syndication and publication and subscription and podcasting is, gosh darn it, a little bit arrogant. I've always talked about repurposing your content. We've chatted in past episodes about taking a podcast and making it an article. Medium, at least as of today, is an interesting website, medium.com it is an aggregation of written word content. Now, some people are just putting their blog there. Some people are taking their blog content from there. Different people are doing different things. If you don't know Medium, take a look. Medium is doing really incredible numbers. Medium is doing really incredible findability, searchability. It's something to take a look at. Now, I wouldn't make an entire article, I wouldn't do an entire episode about Medium because who knows where Medium's going to go. But putting your spoken word content, your written word content in a place where people already are makes a ton of sense. And on this episode, I have the number one writer at Medium. The number one writer at Medium with a Bullet. The really smart number one writer at Medium with a Bullet, Benjamin Hardy, is on this show and we chat about how one produces a great Medium article in the framework of doing a article from a podcast episode. So this is the podcast report, episode 141. You can get all of this information@thepodcastreport.com 141. But one of the things we're doing here is we are practicing what we preach. We're doing the whole call to action thing. We've chatted about opt in pages. We've done different things for this one. I am trying a text in opt in. If you text the word medium, Medium, like the platform that we're chatting about to 503-966-8066. I will get you the Medium article we're going to make from this episode. Now, I haven't done it yet because, well, we're just recording it, but we're going to take the article that we got from here. We're going to take the giveaway that we're going to produce from here, which will make more sense in the interview you're about to listen to. We will get that all that to you and then we're going to do some follow up and some testing and we will get that to you as well. And that's only going to happen to those of you who opt in. And if you opt in, the day this comes out, you might have to wait a little bit. Obviously, if you opt in after this has happened and all the work has been done, we will get that information right to you. 503-966-8066 if you are listening to this because you found this as a result of the Medium article, don't worry, nothing new has been added. If you've already opted in, you've got all of that information. So that was big. Lead in Benjamin is a great guy.

Ben.

Ben is a great guy. Can't wait to introduce him to you. But before we do that, the tip of the week. You want to know what is better than a podcast episode that your audience immediately downloads, streams and enjoys A podcast episode that you created two, three, four years ago that new people are getting every day. Unfortunately, a lot of podcasters tend to think of the oh, it's Wednesday, February X. Time to get an episode out related to this week. And they don't think about the long term. I run millions of downloads through my company and I can tell you that every week more stuff from the back catalog is being downloaded than stuff from the new catalog. People are going into the history of podcasts and pulling out episodes with the right keywords, the right ideas, the right concepts. Right now I've got a client with one episode completely almost unrelated to what it is that he's doing, but with a star interview that gets 100 plus downloads a day. And the recording happened three and a half years ago. I have episodes of the podcast report from the first 10 that people are still downloading on a regular basis. When you plan a podcast, don't plan the podcast for today. Don't plan the podcast for this week, don't even plan the podcast for this month or year. Make a podcast episode that will be more valuable in two or three years and you'll see even more success. I have Benjamin Hardy on the Skype line. Benjamin is one of the more approachable gurus I have met in a long time. He's one of the more unassuming gurus I've met a long time and I'll be honest with you. And I don't mean this in any way other than good. If you see him, meet him for the first time, you're not going to believe what I'm going to tell you. I met him because of Joe. Polish, Genius Network, the I Love marketing series, all that stuff Joe says, hey, Paul, you're going to meet the number one Medium writer. If you don't know what Medium is, hit pause. Go to medium.com right now. And it is basically different. People call it different things, but it's a repository of articles. People want to watch video, they go to YouTube, people want to listen to audio, they go to a couple different places. Of course, podcasting is one of them. And if people want to read stuff now, they're going to Medium. And Medium is getting bigger and bigger. And Medium is getting more and more strategic. And more and more people are, are forgetting about their blog or making their blog almost a cache of what they put at Medium. It's an interesting place. So Joe introduces Benjamin as being the number one writer at Medium. And what does that mean? How is that possible? How do you even trigger that? And lo and behold, Joe is right. Benjamin's awesome. And I got him on the Skype line. How are you doing, Benjamin?

I'm good, man.

Now, Benjamin or Ben, what do you prefer?

You can call me Ben.

Okay, Ben. So Ben, give us, just before we talk about podcasting, just give us some numbers about what you're doing on Medium so people can get an idea what's going on here.

Yeah, so on a typical month, I get about 1 million clicks on my Medium account. But the cool part about Medium is that they track both clicks and reads. And so you can optimize your articles for not just people clicking, but people actually going through the content. And then what those million clicks translates into is about 25,000 new email opt ins a month with no paid traffic. So in the last two and a half years since I've been publishing on Medium, it's almost coming up on three actually. But I've gone from zero email subscribers to now 320,000. And again, no paid traffic. So that's what's going on. That led to me getting my book contract for Willpower doesn't work, which was $220,000 for my first book and now a seven figure income just with, again, all from medium.com.

Perfect. A million clicks. How many reads does that translate to?

Probably, you know, about 350,000.

350,000 gets you a million clicks.

Well, so a million clicks gets 350,000 reads.

Oh, gotcha. They clicked into the article.

Basically, they track how long a person's on the article.

Gotcha. Okay, well, really, it's the number of 25,000 emails a month. That's really the number here.

That's the one that matters. Yeah, yeah.

All done from Medium. All done by creating content that your audience is looking for and doing a call to action. Now, I would be an incredibly hypocritical teacher here if I didn't have a call to action of myself. Everybody, you can tell where this is going. If you text the word medium to 503-966-8066, we will get you the article that's going to come out of this episode. Oh, yes, Foreshadowing. And we're going to get you a quick outline of how to do this based on what Ben teaches. And you can also go to the podcastreport.com forward/14,1. So you're getting 25,000 emails a month. You've got a mailing list of 320,000, and you've got the influence to pick up a book contract. And not just somebody specking out a concept here for willpower doesn't work. How do you write Medium articles, Ben? Like, what are you doing different than everybody else?

Yeah, so I have, number one, I've learned how to write viral headlines. I took an online course from John Morrow. It was a guest blogging course, taught me how to write headlines. And then really, I just have written so many now that you got to get really good at headlines and you've got to get good at structuring your articles. So headlines are, you know, a lot of my articles are framed as, like, lists. Like, numbers always work. Being very bold and direct, focused on results. So, like, one of my articles, for example, is called Want to Become a Multimillionaire Question mark. Do these 15 things immediately, like, those kind of headlines really work well? Or like, you know, why, why very few people become successful? Or like, if you don't do these five things, your life is more off course than you think. 8 things every person should do before 8am There are headlines that are very clickable. But then why the reads really matter is that then the article is structured in a way. So the first thing that someone does when they open an article is they look at the structure. They don't start reading. They scan it and they say, is this something that looks readable? Is this something that looks doable and interesting? If there's big, clunky paragraphs, people are probably not going to read it. So you need to have short sentences and short paragraphs and lots of subheadings. And the subheadings need to be interesting. And so if the article looks interesting, if the subheadings are interesting and powerful, people are likely to read it. And then I have what I call kind of like my three keys to good writing. And I think most people are lucky if they have two of these three. So the first one of the three is that you have to be a very clear and intentional communicator. Very. So in psychology and in science, we talk about parsimony, meaning, like, don't say more than you have to say. And so like, the. The writing itself needs to be very clear and. And intentional. Number two, it needs to be actually very emotional. So the. Where the emotion comes in, and that's where I call it, like your heart knowledge. You have to have an understanding and a conviction of what you're writing about, especially if it's like, self help or if it's like, how to. Or if it's nonfiction of sorts. You want to be very emotional because that's what hits people. Like, you know, that's what makes it compelling. But what makes it convincing is if it also is hitting people at the head. So if you're. Someone's just writing a bunch of stuff from an emotional level and it just feels like their opinion, then it's compelling, but it's not convincing. But if you're writing it in a really emotional tone because you actually believe what you're saying, you know, you've experienced it, or you're really hitting people, like, at their pain or at their aspirations. You're just. You're being very emotional in the writing, but at the same time, you're, like, continually, like, citing the most, you know, epic experts or research to back up what you're saying, then not only is it hitting people at the heart, but it's hitting people in the head. So I think that those three things have allowed me to write what I do. I'm writing very clearly, I'm writing very emotionally, and I'm backing up everything I'm saying with science and with experts. And so it's emotional, but it doesn't feel like it's my opinion. It feels like, holy cow, this stuff is true because it's hitting people at the heart. But then it's like it feels real because I'm backing it up. So those are kind of the. To me, that's what makes good writing. You got to know the structure. You got to get People in and then you've got to write it powerfully.

So let's talk about. So when you and I, we met at a 25k meeting, we chatted a little bit follow up at the big annual event. And then at another meeting, we chatted about doing an episode of the podcast report about taking podcasts, making them a Medium article. You lit up like a Christmas tree. You were like a kid in a candy shop.

He was like, yes, this is exactly.

What people should be doing. So I'm going to get a little bit of free coaching from you here, which is one of the reasons why a lot of people podcast. So. Oh, well, let's talk about an article about making your podcast a Medium article. So we're going to go very meta here. So clear, intentional communicator. Don't say more than you need. I don't need to delve into the history of Medium. I don't need to talk about Medium versus blogs. I don't need to talk about the future of text, the numbers of audio versus video. I basically just need to make an article about making your podcast a Medium article. But I need to go in emotionally and I need to hit people on the head. And this is great because if anybody's emotional, it's podcasters. We love our content. We want to reach more people. So if the article is about, hey, you've created this fantastic content, you've done these amazing ideas, you're ready to reach the world. And you know that not everybody has got earbuds plugged in their ear listening to you. You know that some people read and the place where they're reading the most right now happens to be Medium. So take this baby that you've given birth to and share it with more people by putting it out there as a post. And then when it comes to hitting it on the head, just speak to the numbers of. Go to the science, hey, this many people on a podcast each week, these many people on the web each week, and maybe even have a researcher do a little bit of information on how many people are on Medium every week and talk about that. Is that a very Reader's Digest of Reg version, but a version of what we'd be doing?

Pretty much, yeah. I mean, it's like, what's the purpose of the article? It sounds like the purpose of the article is to inspire people to take podcast articles and translate them or podcast episodes and translate them into Medium articles. I would say purpose number two is probably that you're wanting people to subscribe to your email List. But that should be just taken care of in the call to action, the nbf. The direct purpose of the article is that you want to compel people, you know, the five or five or top ten reasons why they're missing out huge if they're not turning podcasts into medium articles. Yeah, that makes sense. Then, you know, obviously those top five or ten reasons are going to be very compelling. They're going to highlight to people the huge opportunity cost and gain if they do it, you know, and. And then you're just going to back it up with metric stats, interesting things to make it compelling. So, yeah.

So are you saying instead of an article called how to make your podcast a medium article, change it to an article on 5 things you're missing out on by not making your podcast a.

Medium article, which one would you rather click on?

Good point.

I would actually say this rather than saying how to turn a podcast into a medium article, because there's no emotion there, right? The headline needs to be extremely emotional, you know, so it's like if you. If you read an article called like, six simple ways to like, lose, you know, to like, to like, lose belly fat or to like, gain a six pack, like, that triggers a bunch of emotion for people. But, like, in this case, what we're talking about is, you know, what I would say is, I don't even know if I'd even use the word medium. I would almost say, like, yeah, it could be something like top five. It would almost be like, here's how most podcasters are missing out on tens of thousands of email subscribers a month. You know what I mean? Or something like that. Like this one simple thing, you know, or you could just say, here's five. Five reasons why podcasters need to start turning their. Turning their podcasts into medium articles. But even still, that's the people. It doesn't hit the why hard enough. Like, what do podcasters want? Do they want more viewers? Do they want more subscribers? What do they actually want?

Well, obviously, different podcasters want different things, but I think at the heart of all podcasters, it's impact. You know, they've got a message they get in front of a microphone, they share it with the world. They want impact. And some measure impact by download. Some people measure impact by email addresses, social media, followers. But at the end, it's all impact.

Yeah. So, I mean, I would say, you know, one simple tweak that would allow your podcast to impact thousands more people a month or something like that. You know what I mean? Or just five. I Don't know if I'd say five reasons, but yeah, I would. If it's a. It's about impact. So either you want to focus on. Either you want to focus on their aspiration or their pain, you know, and so it's like on the aspiration side, it's like this one simple thing, you know, if you do this one thing, you'll impact, or you'll reach tens of thousands more people per month. Or here are the five ways you're missing out if you're not turning your podcast into Medium articles.

Now, you, Ben, in your presentations about this topic, have talked about republishing articles, taking a new headline, maybe a different intro, to make it continuity with the headline. Because I think what you said about structure, I've somehow missed that in all that we've chatted about this before. And you're right. You look at it and go, is this something I can take right now, or is this something I have to put away in that perpetual folder that never gets answered? So you speak to doing different headlines, republishing. Would you recommend maybe in an article like this, doing it twice? I mean, the same content, basically, but the headline for action?

Yeah, I'd try it. So if you publish an article, for example, and it doesn't do well, why wouldn't you just try republishing it again with a different title? You know, it's like sometimes that's all you need, you know, and why not try republishing it again the next day or like a week later? Like, it's not like you have to wait eight months. It's not like you have to rewrite the thing. Maybe the article was really good. Maybe that wasn't the problem. Maybe it was just that people didn't get inside and look at it. And if you look at the metrics, if there was less than a thousand views, you're not going to offend those thousand people by republishing it. They may not even notice it. Because the thing about the Internet is that it's like the ocean, you never see the same. Or like a river, you never see the same water twice. I don't know if you've heard that phrase when you're looking at a river. And so you never see the same group of fish. If you're in an ocean twice in the same spot, it's always a different group of people. And so if you republish an article even a week later, the same 1,000 people aren't going to see it. You know, maybe a Handful of them will. But yeah, so that's what I've done. I've republished my articles over and over and over again, not on a weekly basis, but on like a, you know, quarterly basis and turned it into tons of email subscribers because the ocean's always changing and on Medium there's, you know, hundreds of millions of people that view the website monthly. And so I'm not even hitting a hundredth of that. And so of course, when I stick an article out there, it's going to be viewed by different groups of people. And so, yeah, I'm going to go.

A little south for a second. I'm not going to put this in the article, but I think the audience would be interested in this because what you just said, I know where my audience is. They're thinking to themselves, hmm, I only publish my podcast episodes once. Any thoughts on republishing a podcast episode based on kind of your.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah. I forgot who I was even thinking about with this recently. But yeah, why wouldn't you republish podcast episodes? So, like, let's. Yeah, 100%. So I'm not sure exactly how podcasts work relative to Medium, but let's just. I don't. So, like, if you stick a podcast out in the world, how do people see it unless they're subscribed to the podcast?

Just like in Medium. I mean, basically, Medium has, you can follow someone and, you know, podcasting has. You can subscribe to someone and different people have different levels of following or subscribes. But the fact of the matter is both are becoming more and more a one off, a la carte, cafeteria plan kind of content piece. There is one episode of I Love Marketing that has been seeing, you know, 100 plus downloads a day for the last three years that barely mentions Joe in it at all, funny enough. And you know, these obviously aren't coming from subscribers. These are coming from people looking at the topic, listening to the episode and going from there. So I don't know, republishing new titles, I might have to, I might have to re examine that. But so someone takes the content of an episode and to get that content, to get that idea, to get that call to action out, and you can see where I'm transitioning to here. You build it emotionally, but specifically focused on results. Now the thing you do, Ben, that I, I love so much, you know, I, I meet these people at events, you know, I got a million Facebook views and, or, you know, a million YouTube views or a million podcast downloads, but they're sleeping in the car at the event because they haven't figured out how to monetize it. And of course the funny thing is, is a million views, A million. Anything not monetized, you can buy that for about $6 offshore anyway. So, like, why go through the effort of it? But you are big on the call to action and as a result, you've got, you know, 320,000 people on your mailing list so far. You've got, you know, one book, one book contract. I'm sure there are more coming. You go to the call to Action. Now. At the beginning of this, I offered anyone listening play along with us. Text medium to 503-966-8066. I'll get you the link to the article when it gets up and I will get you the notes that we put together specifically for writing a Medium article from this interview with Ben. And we've got that for you. So I did a call to action here and I'll probably close again with the call to action. But Ben, what are the best calls to action in a Medium article?

So just one last real quick thought and then I'll jump right back to that. As far as republishing, I think that people should republish their podcasts and try retitling the podcast episode. That's just the only idea because maybe they would get a ton more conversions on each episode. Anyways, back to the whole calls to action. So I. I've already talked a little bit about this, and I know you've heard this, but I guess the listeners wouldn't have heard this probably. So for the first year and a half I was publishing on Medium. My call to action was to go to go to a website and get my free ebook. And when I was doing that, I was getting about 1500 emails per month. 1500. And then I started sending people to a landing page, not my website. So websites are really distraction heavy. And so when you stop sending people to a website and you start sending people directly to a landing page, where it's just a place where they see a picture of a book or something and they see a place where they can put their email in and put a button in, that shifted. So I went from about 1500 emails a month to 5000 with the same amount of traffic, same call to action at the end of the articles, just send them to a different place rather than to a website. I sent them to a landing page and that was giving away a free ebook. Then I decided to switch over to a very simple checklist style thing that's very results oriented. Like here's a checklist that will teach you the best morning activities. With that switch, I changed up the landing page so that it was obviously focused on a check morning routine checklist. And with the same amount of traffic, I went from 5,000 emails a month to 20,000 emails a month. And so what I have found, and I've since changed my, my giveaway, you know, from. But basically the idea is the best giveaways are very small, simple, action oriented things. Things like checklists or cheat sheets. Things that feel interesting, doable, secretive, that are totally results focused. Like, you know, you know, your cheat sheet for the ultimate productive day, you know, that'll help you save four hours a day. Or you know, it could be just like the checklist on, or the, you know, the cheat sheet about how to get famous people on your podcast, you know, like here's, like, here's, you know, get my cheat sheet about how to get, you know, famous people on your podcast, you know, or the checklist. Are you doing the 10 things that will help get you bigger and more interesting people on your podcast? I mean, really, you want to just think in terms of small, easy, condensed results focused and then send people to a landing page. Never send people to a website.

Fantastic. So let's talk about a cheat sheet that a podcaster could take a look at. Here to go again, internally meta. How about the, you know, the podcast medium article checklist?

Again, not results focused yet. Good. So like, what are the results people would get if they did that? Because again, they don't know why or they don't. There's nothing compelling them to go to medium if they don't know what they're going to get out of it. That's why the results matter. So it's like maybe it would be like here's a checklist about how to, about how to turn your podcast episodes into articles and, and turn those articles into tens of thousands of email subscribers or something like that. Or here's a way to repurpose your podcast episodes so that you can get an additional 10 to 50,000 views a month or something like that. I don't know. But basically you want to focus on the result they're looking for. And if it's just here's a checklist about how to turn your podcast into medium articles that probably wouldn't be compelling to a lot of people.

Oh, good, good. Thank you. Thank you. How did you get to where you think like this? This come naturally to you. You've Been studying. What have you been doing?

I don't know. I mean, I study mostly psychology and self improvement, but at the same time, you know, it's one of the reasons why I joined Genius Network, where I could be around people like you, is that I also wanted to be successful as a business person. So a lot of my favorite writers, for example, and it's great, goes exactly with what you said. They, they're good artists, but they're not good business people. And I cared enough about my art to get, you know, at least to somewhat learn the business side of it so that I could succeed in both worlds so that I could succeed with my art, you know, and so I don't know, I just, I just studied, I learn it, I enjoy succeeding. So, you know, to me, it's not fun if I'm not. If I'm not succeeding, succeeding. And so I just like pushing myself to figure out how to do things. For me, it's not just about writing articles. It's about writing articles that get read. And so if I write like 20 articles or 30 articles and something and it's just not getting results, I'm either going to quit or I'm going to figure out how to get a bunch of eyeballs on it. That's just, to me, that's just kind of how I think about things. And then you kind of just figure out like, well, why get eyeballs? Well, because you want to get subscribers. Well, why do you want subscribers? Because you want to get. It depends on what you want. It's kind of thinking about the end. First, for me, it was all about getting big book deals. And so it's like, well, how do I get big book deals? Well, I have to have an email list. Well, how do I get an email list? And then I just kind of figured out the best way I could think of to get that big email list.

So are you saying it's more about strategy than anything else and just pure old willpower doesn't work?

Well, willpower doesn't work for a lot of different reasons. But in this case, what I'm saying is it's twofold. So a lot of people on the Internet and a lot of people in the marketing spaces that you and I are involved in are very focused on marketing and selling. A lot of people are really, really good at getting paid traffic and doing affiliate marketing. In other words, what I've heard from a lot of people who are quote unquote, gurus and stuff, that even people who are closely associated in groups that you And I are talking about. I've heard people say that you should spend like 10% of your time building something and 90% of your time learning how to sell it or something like that. I'm more in tune with the philosophy of Cal Newport, which is to be so good you can't be ignored, which is that you develop rare and valuable skills. You get really, really good at what you do so that your work stands out. Your work sells itself. And that's why I'm more interested in organic traffic. However, organic traffic isn't enough. If you actually want to be a business person, you actually still need to learn how to sell. But if you can. And so I think that rather than spending a quarter of your time building a product and 75% of your time learning how to sell it and then spending all of your energy learning how to sell stuff, because then at the end of the day then you're just a salesman rather than a craftsman. And so I think that it's better to be brilliant at what you do, but then to spend the energy becoming a good salesman. But don't neglect the craft because then you're just selling crap like almost everyone else. And so it's kind of a special place. There's people on the side who are only focused on craft and don't learn how to sell. And those are the starving artists we're talking about. And then there's people who are only focused on selling and they're selling a bunch of crap and they've got bad reputations. And I think that it's way more important to spend time becoming a master, but then spending a good chunk of time, whether it's 10 or 20%, becoming really good at selling. And you sell because you really believe in what you're doing, but you don't stop getting good at what you do. So I mean, that's kind of how I look at it.

And your book Willpower Doesn't Work, does it cover some of these topics?

Not really, no. Not really.

Okay, well then don't buy the. No, tell us about the book. You've been so much value. Tell us what's in the book.

Of course, yeah. No, thank you. So Willpower Doesn't Work is a self improvement book. So I'm a psychologist by study. The work I write on medium.com is not marketing concepts. I'm sharing all these ideas. This is the 20% that I'm talking about, the 10 or 20%. For me, my big interest is in self improvement and self transformation. And so I've spent the last 10 years. You know, I'm almost done with my PhD in psychology and I've been studying self improvement like a, like I'm one of those self help aholics or you know, like I just binge out on self help books. But basically what, what I came up with was this. When. When my wife and I became foster parents of three kids, it changed our lives. This was in 2015. And as soon as we became foster parents, something changed in me and it led me to start writing online. And I had wanted to be a writer since 2010. So from 2010 to 2015, I didn't really do anything to get any closer to becoming a professional writer, which is what I wanted to do. That was my dream. Since 2010, when we became foster parents, all of a sudden there was all this pressure on my situation. You know, I felt all this external pressure. I now had three young kids relying on me and that forced me to think really hard. And it led me to urgency to start writing. I realized my time would be a lot shorter and that led me to start writing. And there's a quote from William Durant or Will Durant, he's a famous historian, and he said that the ability of the average person could be doubled if their situation demanded it. And really what that means is just that if your situation doesn't demand much of you, then you're not going to show up. You rise or fall to the demands of your situation. And in psychology, there's a concept called the fundamental attribution error. And I don't want to lose people. I'm not trying to go too much in the weeds. But basically it's the idea that in Western culture we're very individualistic. We focus on ourselves, we put all the pressure on ourselves. That's why most self help books are talking about things like willpower, grit, mindset, goal setting. It's all about what you can do for yourself. What most of these books ignore is that the environment shapes the individual, you know, and so that's what I'm talking about. When I became a foster parent, it was a new situation. I all of a sudden had these new superpowers. I could actually do things with greater urgency. And why? Because my situation demanded me to do it. And so what the book is all about is it's all about how to shape situations and environments that allow you to succeed or that force you to succeed. And really that's where the research in psychology is all about. It's all about how. So one of my favorite quotes is from a Harvard psychologist. She says that basically who you are is determined by the environment or the situation you're in. And the more mindful you are as a person, the more you realize that you can create the situations you're in. And when you create your situations or your environments or your context, then you can transform yourself into whoever you want to be. And obviously you and I believe in this because we put ourselves into interesting environments, interesting situations around millionaires and billionaires and stuff like, you know, you put yourself around these people and then you adapt to those environments and you, you can succeed very quick. And it's a very different approach than most books because most books, again, are very individualistic. And the reason most people fail is because their environment is pushing against them. It's like trying to swim upstream. But if you put yourself in an environment that's pulling you forward, that's demanding you to succeed, and where everyone around you is expecting you to succeed, and the expectations are high, then all of a sudden you do what psychologists say. You outsource your motivation and your willpower to your environment. You just, you outsource. You don't even need to think about it. It becomes subconscious. You just do what you need to do. And that's what Jim Rohn said. He said, never surround yourself with an easy crowd because you won't grow. Put yourself around people where the expectations and the demands are high. So taking all of that jumble I just threw at you, the book is about, it can be condensed in one quote. It's from Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. He said, if you do not create and control your environment, your environment creates and controls you. And most people are failing at life. They're addicted. You know, you could look at a person's life and basically it's the product of their environment. Their environment's holding them together. And again, most western thinkers totally ignore that. And they commit what psychologists call the fundamental attribution error. They think that it's about them, when really it's about their situation. So the book is all about how do you shape the environments that make willpower irrelevant, and how do you create environments that allow you to evolve into the person you want to become? And, you know, from my very biased perspective, I think it's probably one of the more compelling self improvement books that's been written in a long time that presents a very truthful, honest, and powerful thesis on how to actually change your life. And mostly the book's a strategy guide. It's not a theory or philosophy piece. It's very strategic you know, how do you put yourself in the right situations? Or how do you, you know, how do you do this? How do you do that?

Well, we will put a link to that in the show notes, definitely. And of course, you know, everybody listening to this is more than smart enough to head out to Amazon and look it up yourself. Willpower doesn't work. But the notes, the links, the quotes we'll put@the podcastreport.com 141 and for the call to action, I'm going to say it again. If you text 503-966-8066 the word medium, we will get you the article. When it comes out, I'll tell you to do it right the first time. I'm not going to be as fast as what Ben does, but the team's going to do it. We're going to send it to you, we're going to show you the results, we're going to republish it with a different title, we're going to share with you the results. And this is going to be a very, very cool project that other podcasters can learn from because podcasters been get emotional here. They want to reach people with their message. And if taking their podcast lets more people understand who they are, what their passions are, what they can do about it, that's exactly what they're going to do. You're a writer, but you went on this podcast because you were able to share your passion for the book and the passion of the topic with the podcasting audience. And us podcasters can learn from you. Take our passion, take our impact and do it to the written word audience. So thank you for that little circle of truth there.

Totally. No, it's always good to be with you, Paul. You're an awesome guy.

You're not so bad yourself. Thank you for joining us and we will chat with you next week. Thanks all. A lot of stuff here and I knew that after Ben gave you what he did, I wanted to give him a chance to look at the book. I have grabbed parts of it. I have not grabbed it in its entirety. I need to. It's right here on my desk. I will be reading it. You'll want to consider doing it as well. We are going to go big with this medium test and if you text 503-966-8066 with the word medium, you'll get everything. We do all the testing along the way. If you get it before we do it, you'll get it as it comes. If you do it after we do it. You'll get it, you know, basically when you text that in. This is exciting. I am thrilled to have Ben. I'm thrilled to give this a test and I'm thrilled, gosh darn it. To help you podcasters reach more because that is exactly what you are looking to do. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast report. We'll chat again next week. We love the social interaction here at the podcast report. ThePodcastReport.com Facebook ThePodcastReport.com Twitter ThePodcastReport.com InsertSocialPlatform of your choice. We'd love to hear from you. Love to give you the chance to interact with other listeners of the show. Another thing we'd love to have you do is simply subscribe to the show if you know what that means.

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Head out to the podcatcher of your choice and and subscribe to the show if you don't know what that means. Basically, all the big programs, itunes, Google, Stitcher, all of these platforms give you the ability to subscribe to the show like you'd subscribe to a magazine or a newspaper. And then the minute a new episode comes out, it comes to you automatically. It comes to you without worries about spam or that type of thing. And you don't have to visit the website. You don't have to go out to these platforms and see if there's something new. It comes to you automatically. Do that by subscribing thepodcastreport.com iTunes the podcastreport.com tuneinthepodcastreport.com Stitcher. You get the idea. Finally, last but not least, we do have an email address. It's the podcastreportoutlook.com Would love to hear from you. Chat with you next week. Bye.