Tales Of A Bad Podcast Producer - The Podcast Report Episode #154

Help from someone in the podcasting industry doesn't mean that they understand your industry. It's the podcast report, episode 154, Tales of a Bad Podcast Producer Show. Notes, links, conversation and more@the podcastreport.com 154 so I was overworked. The podcast partnership is doing pretty crazy business right now. Thrilled about it, I decided to a relieve some of the work in front of me and B hand the podcast report previous season over to a organization, a company, a service that manages podcasts, that produces podcasts. This show has always been one great big test lab. So I thought what I'd do is I thought I would take some of the work that I was overworked with, hand that over to someone else, get at the very least, an interesting story. So I gave it to them and I said, run with it now. This is not a story of who I gave it to. This is a story about what was learned in the process I dropped in their lap. I said, do your magic. I gave them no direction. And and as a result, I can't really complain about what was done or what wasn't done. It's back to the quotable I did at the end of this episode. Hope from someone in the industry doesn't necessarily mean that they understand my industry. What we do at the Podcast Report, what we do at the Podcast Partnership, what we do here@calligan.com is very different than what many of the other podcasting organizations do. So this isn't about who I gave this to. This is about what happened. This is about what I learned. And hopefully you can learn from this as well. I'm pretty old school. Stephen Covey 7 Habits Highly effective people begin with the end in mind. I didn't do that when I handed the podcast over. My bad. Handing something over without an in game in mind, handing something over without a knowledge of what it is that you want to happen. Never a good idea. I'm going to guess that the organization worked from a checklist. They did everything that they said they would. There were a few stylistic problems, but that wasn't the big issue. I don't know if this checklist was specific. I don't know if this checklist was felt, if it was conscious, it was subconscious. But everything was done every week. Many people do that. But if we take a look at this, the season five stuff, a it didn't make me look good to any of my audience who looked now, a lot of you didn't look. That's one of the things about podcasting the simple fact that most of you are consuming this on the audio platform of your choice and not visiting my website because you, the podcaster, have better things to do. But the work didn't really make me look better to my audience who might have looked at the website. The work didn't really bring me any new audience because there really wasn't any impact being done. Which leads to the question, and this is the question that everybody should be asking, was what exactly was I paying for price? Was, quote, unquote, reasonable. But what did I want? Why was I doing this? I didn't figure it out. Here at the Podcast Partnership, we have a really important concept of impact versus downloads. I've chatted about this in previous episodes. Many times when I presented events, we chat about this idea. I don't want downloads. I don't worry about downloads. I certainly track them. I certainly look at them. But the question is, what kind of impact are we making? We have our mindset scorecard at the Podcast Partnership. It's a product of the whole strategic coach thing I chatted about. And we want us. We want our clients, we want anyone we're working with to look at their podcast in terms of impact, not downloads. And here's the thing. The consultant I hired wasn't there to help my impact. The consultant I hired was there to make sure that things were edited and pictures were chosen and words were written and blog posts were published, but they weren't there to help my impact. I think that's a big thing. If you hire anyone, if you work with anyone, what are they actually there to do? The show didn't grow during this time. The impact certainly didn't go up. There were a few changes this season, but the focus was impact. And those tiny changes, although the blog was less, although the production of the podcast stylistically is less, these changes examining impact have resulted in a pretty big jump for the show. And by the way, after this episode, we're instituting some new stuff that I think is going to bring a significant impact to the show. There's a little tease. The big issue here that is bigger than what Paul experienced and what you can learn from and what we need to think about here is that many people, people who have jumped into the podcasting industry who've grabbed a consultant, who grabbed someone to help them, who've grabbed a who versus a how. Like I chatted about two episodes, they don't see results because the effort was not about impact. It was about editing, it was about the website, it was about the pictures and Then they don't see results, they don't see impact. And then they go, well, I don't know if podcasting is for me. I don't know if podcasting is for my industry. So they blow it off, they leave with a bad taste in their mouth. It was an expense they're frustrated with. Don't let them happen to you. Sometimes it's a focus issue, sometimes it's a money issue. But there is usually no cheap path to excellence in focus. What are you trying to do? That was my problem. So the now what to all of this? Obviously took it back for season six. Looked at the effort and the time that I was spending. You know, this is my baby, I have to be careful with it. Turning it over to someone internally just feels weird. And this project, this big science experiment that is the podcast report, took it back, thinned it out a little bit. As you can tell, production is not as fancy as it used to be. Not that it was really that much fancy at all. Took it back, less words at the website, less imagery, that kind of thing. Running the podcast myself, much smaller level this season, but we're running some interesting stats. We're seeing some interesting things. If you've noticed. This season we've gone to twice a week. There might even be a three time a week test coming soon. We're getting interesting stats. Our clients were running some of these tests against as well. I'll be able to share some of these at the end. So went thinner in production, actually in the grand scheme of things, spending a little bit less time than I was previously. But we're looking at the impact. I am trying to build a generic checklist and here's why I'm trying to build the generic checklist because if I can pull that off, we can give. Maybe 50% of the work is the same for everybody. Maybe 40% of the work, maybe 80% of the work. If I can get a generic checklist that will result in us being more purposeful and give us more time to look at impact. Don't know. If that checklist happens, I will probably share it with you. We'll see. But I don't know how much it'll help. But if it happens, we'll let you know. Two things we're doing internally outside of the generic formula, the generic checklist. Two big things. The mindset scorecard. I chatted about that earlier. We have eight mindsets here at the Podcast partnership that everything gets built around, everything gets checked up against the mindsets and the mindset is not Things like interview podcast versus monologue podcast or how many times a week or that type of thing. It's are you matching the eight mindsets of where we find value in podcasting? Every client's going through it, every client's looking at it. And I would encourage you, what are the mindsets that you're looking at? It's another way to kind of where is your brain at for the impact that you're trying to have? The other thing we've done is we've defined all the different team members that belong in a podcast and not necessarily face A, face B, face C, face D. But what are the members and who should they be? One person can be maybe one or two of the members, but not all of them. None of us are good at all of it. We've always at the partnership told people we do what your team doesn't. The question that's come out is, well, what is the team? So now we have this worksheet and which person's expected to be assigned to what it's working. Well, I would recommend you grab a team worksheet as well. I'll share again if we get a generic process that works, but I don't think it's gonna. Not a pitch, but if there's a generic program, we can serve people for less. I can have you take a look at it, review it, see if it works for you. But being boutique, I don't see generic being able to come out of us. But who knows, maybe it will. Now, with that said and done, this is not entirely about the money by any sense of the imagination. So what I thought would be fun is let's take a look at, you know, if you're not spending the money on a producer, where do you spend the money? Where do you save the money? How do you bring it all together? How do you remain thinking about impact? That's what I want to do. Remain thinking about impact. That's what I want to do in the last minutes of the show. So there are two areas you, the podcaster can save some real money. Number one, do the numbers and look at how many people actually visit your website. We chatted about this on previous episodes, but if you get a thousand downloads to your podcast and four people visit your website, for goodness sakes, the website's just not that necessary. You might really be surprised. We are now running, at least at the time of this recording, we're running some pre roll ads and some pre roll tests here at the podcast report. This might direct people to other places doesn't need to direct people to a traditional podcast site. We'll probably have one for at least a little while longer here at the podcast report we're testing. But does that need to happen? You might really be surprised. One thing I'd suggest, considerably easier than a traditional podcast website. There's going to be another thing that we're testing right now that I'll chat about in a future episode. But maybe you just need landing pages. If you're familiar with the world of landing pages, great. If you're not, Russell Brunson runs an organization called ClickFunnels. I've had him on a previous episode. If you go to the podcastreport.com expertsecrets, it's a link out to Russell's book about being an expert, which of course many of you podcasters are trying to do. It's one of these free books with shipping and handling thing and the whole concept is the software that he's built for experts. Even if you don't use clickfunnels, that process of just individual pages and not entire websites and all the drama that goes into managing WordPress and all that stuff. So way to save money. Number one might be do you really need a complex website for people to visit? Many of the podcast hosts will do a generic site for you. Is that enough? The second place that you save some money is by looking at your stats. And we're going to do a whole episode on stats a little bit easier this season. What we can track, what we can't track and what's important, what's unimportant, but the right data, collecting that right data, looking at that right data. And by the way, it's free. The stats from your host are free. The stats from Apple on consumption are free. The stats from Spotify are free. Taking that data and making decisions will be considerably more important to you than finding the best sound, finding the best editor, licensing the right music and all those things so you can save a little bit of money. Or maybe the website doesn't need to be as fancy as it is. And number two, maybe focus on the data versus the sound so that you can make the decisions. Let's chat about things to spend money on. Definitely. Next. Whoever's producing your podcast, are they doing what they the industry is doing? Not because they heard something at some event and then they decided that this has to be that certain way, but are they actually looking at what's happening in the industry? Are they actually looking at what is working with your audience and what isn't working with your audience, are they really responding to the numbers and to the data? And I said earlier on this, you know, things we don't have to spend money on. The data is free. So if you're person is not looking at the numbers, get rid of them. And a person who knows how to look through the numbers, an organization who responds to that data, it's going to be more expensive. But this is where you want to spend your time. This is what you wear. One more time. This is where you want to spend your money. If you're listening to the show right now, if you've gotten this far into this episode of the podcast report, you know exactly what I'm talking about. This is why I'm doing what I'm doing so that I can look at the numbers so I can look at the data. That takes time, that takes effort. If you've got someone on your team who can do it, great, do it. Pay them well. If you're outsourcing to someone, then make sure that they're looking at those numbers. Those numbers are worth their weight in gold. Far more than a pretty sound, you know, a fun stinger, a that kind of thing. You get the idea at the time of recording this episode, some pretty massive changes have been made in the space. I chatted about it in the previous episode. I want this one to stand alone. Are they communicating with you? Are the people who are working on your show? And again, internal or external, have they realized that what's happening in the industry is not necessarily about podcasting, it's not necessarily about the latest tech. It's about the distribution of audio and the communication of yourself through these independent distributed mechanisms. I chatted a couple episodes in the Pandora episode about how now we have this new space to where it's no longer where you get your fine podcasts, but it's where you get your audio. Is the organization, is your messaging, is your wrangling, is your focus on letting people not know about podcasting, not about the tech, but the actual consumption and what it is that you bring to the table. I've chatted before financial planner client who used to say, hey, if you want to hear me, listen. Saturday mornings at 11am on the local station takes that same show, doesn't change a thing, but moves it to listen to me anytime, anyplace, anywhere. If you spend time and money and effort on making sure your audience can consume you, however, wherever they want without making it about the tech, that's a great place to spend your money. So spend your money on people who know what the industry is doing. Spend your money on people who know how to communicate your benefit versus the tech that will cost you more than an editor, than a pretty picture, than a social media robot? All things might be important, but focus on those things. That's what I wasn't getting from my consultant. That's what many aren't getting from their consultants. And that's where you need to spend the cash. And remember, when I say cash, cash is time that could be internal money spent. That could be a meal that you buy because you don't have time to make dinner because you're focusing on these things yourself. But with that said and done, I'm going to close up this episode. I would love to have a larger conversation with you about where you think the best place to spend your money is. Is it on a consultant? Is it on an inexpensive consultant so that you can spend more money on the microphones? Is it on a really expensive consultant so that you can quickly figure out if it works? You know, should all consultants burn in an evil place next to whatever? I want to know where you think as a podcaster, the best place to spend your money is. This could be a fun thing that we do on social. You can go to the podcastreport.com Facebook, thepodcastreport.com Twitter, thepodcastreport.com Instagram, all those. We'd love to chat about this in the social space. Would you? I'd love to know where you think the best place to spend your money is. I would love to reach out on social. That's said and done. I'd love to have you subscribe to this show. Notice I didn't say podcast. Subscribe to the show wherever you listen to audio. Notice I didn't say podcast area. And get this show on a regular basis. Next week we're turning on some really interesting things and you definitely want to make sure that you get these episodes delivered to you automatically. You can do that@Spotify.thepodcastreport.com Spotify. You can do that at Apple. Thepodcastreport.com Apple if you've got another place that you listen to audio, chances are good that thepodcastreport. Com, that place will have the show. If it doesn't, if the redirect doesn't happen, reach out on social. Let me know and we'll go from there. Next week things are going to get really interesting. Thanks for going this far. Bye.