LIVE from Independent Podcast Conference 2023 in Philly

If I had known there was a bell, I would have structured my presentation entirely differently. I'll just throw it in there to get my, uh, to get my bell moving. But, um, my name is Kate. Gonna be talking a little bit— oh, thank you so much— about, uh, building value beyond the microphone. I feel like there's so much emphasis on the actual recording of episodes and structuring your episodes, and those are all really important things, but at the end of the day, to be a successful podcaster, it takes so much more than that. So we're going to go through some of those things. But first, typical biographical slide about me here. I knew I wanted to be in broadcasting when I was 14 years old. I was obsessed, still am, with the New York Yankees. Painful season for me this year, but I really wanted to get into the broadcast booth. I appreciate you being nice and Philly about me being a Yankee fan. But I knew it, uh, then I went to Seton Hall University and I joined WSOU. They're a top 10 college radio station. They were also my foray into punk and metal music, so it was a very surprising summer for my parents when I went away listening to a bunch of indie folk music and came home blaring Tool and a bunch of other bands. Uh, on average I do 7 podcasts a week, but I can always say there's not really an average week for what I do anymore. I did 12 this week Um, and I skipped past my slide. Oh, I got into wrestling because of an ex. I hate to admit it, uh, but I did at the end of the day. Oh no, did I— there we go. Um, I got into it actually when I was 21 years old, which is later than most wrestling fans, but I'm glad I did. And if you told me 3 years ago I'd be talking about wrestling and getting paid for it pretty much every night of the week, I wouldn't have believed you, but here we are. So I think there's a lot of people that have this down, but one thing that I keep finding about monetization in podcasting is people really skip out on the basics and it drives me mad 'cause everybody rolls their eyes when slides like this come up. But the amount of people I see that don't have these things figured out before recording an episode is a lot. And if you skip over it, people aren't gonna pay you to do what you wanna do, whether you're trying to monetize independently or work in a higher-gun context. We're going to cover both of those in this presentation. So the first thing within identity is asserting your standards. And by that, I mean kind of what values do you want to bring to the podcasting space? And I know when I'm talking about wrestling, that seems kind of silly, right? How seriously are we taking those things? But it's incredible how many times the most rewarding part of my job has nothing to do with wrestling, right? It's people that are having a hard time and say they watch our post shows for a certain type of relief, or that they feel heard or seen in some way. So Fightful is for everyone is something that's really important to me. I think every podcast I do should be for everyone, but the idea that there's people trying to gatekeep wrestling in any way, shape, or form and use it as a way to bully people is something that I'm not a fan of. Um, I take my work very seriously, but I don't take myself too seriously. I also— but I— commitment to bits. You cannot be covering wrestling and not having fun. I take the quality of my work very seriously in that I come prepared with notes. I have my sponsored reads ready to go. I know what I'm doing up there. But if you're taking yourself too seriously, this is not going to be any fun. And believe it or not, the pro wrestling space is extremely oversaturated with podcasts. I find that most people tune in for people with personalities and just general likability more than they tune in for wrestling knowledge. I'm usually the less knowledgeable person. On the podcasts I do, but I'm out here getting paid to do it pretty much every night of the week. Whenever possible, criticize creative, not wrestlers. That might translate to normal people and not wrestling fans as not making personal attacks on air, right? This case we're looking at storylines and things, but, you know, keep in mind what you're actually saying and being critical of. And we talked about this actually in the presentation before a little bit. How do you handle weirdo trolls? Or in other words, what is the offline behavior that you're still reflecting in your brand, right? So those are all things that I try to take into account. If you're looking to be a hired gun, kind of making sure that those beliefs are shared and where you're working. My boss and I just happen to kind of have the same line of if someone's being weird or trolling, you know, we don't care if it's a wrestling opinion, that's wrestling, who cares? But if someone's out there bullying, being racist, misogynistic, whatever. We'll call those people out, we'll block them, whatever you gotta do. But that's kind of the line that I feel comfortable with. That also happens to be the line that my boss feels comfortable with. And then this part I find is really important to people who are trying to work in a hired gun context. Do you look hireable when people look at your stuff? It's a very underrated thing that people aren't taking into account. Twitter circles are the devil's playground, I wrote, because I find anytime people have a Twitter circle and I'm a part of it, I'm usually in a group of professionals and people have closed it to that circle to post their most unprofessional thing. I see people shit-talking wrestlers in those circles. If I need a co-host and I can't trust you to just be nice, I'm not going to be asking you to come on my show. And this is the most hireable piece of it, I think. Is there something that you are great at that they are missing on their channel? So Um, I get to work for Fightful. They're the biggest media entity in the wrestling space, and believe it or not, there are still voids there. There's usually about 3 to 4 streams a day, um, and we try to maintain that for the algorithm. We also have a playground that we call Fightful Overbooked. That's the ESPN APO show for anybody who remembers that reference. There you go, there's my bell moment. It's a playground for kind of off-base content. But if you're doing something that is missing from someone's platform, you're automatically adding value in that way. So just knowing where you're at is a really good way to kind of take a temperature in that regard. Goals and objectives. So if you don't know what you're chasing, how is anybody gonna know how to pay you for it? This is one of the most clarifying sentences just like in life, I find. The intention of this podcast is to what? Mine is pretty basic. I'm analyzing wrestling I just watched, right? Usually I watch about 2 hours of wrestling and then I go on and talk about it. But for people who are doing things on a higher level that aren't out there every single night, that are maybe doing it once a week, it's a really, really important thing. And then your objectives are kind of the measurables of that, your specific, measurable, and time-bound supporting objectives. It's very important, I find, to Keep these things in mind not to drive yourself crazy, right? Making sure results are within your control. So some things that are out of your control, I feel like, are the most used measure of success, right? I want to have X thousand listeners by this date isn't something that you can control, but you can say, I want to put out X thousand— or I don't think you want to put out X thousand episodes, but I want to put out, you know, I wanna put out a piece of content every month on a social media platform, or I wanna record 2 episodes a week for 3 months or whatever. So make sure it's stuff that's in your control because if it's things that are out of your control, you'll drive yourself crazy. You don't have control over the results. Also keeping in mind that they're indicative of the direction that you're heading. So you haven't failed if you said, I wanna put out 30 pieces of content in a month, if you've put out 29, that's a whole heck of a lot more than zero, right? Keep in mind that those are supposed to be indicative of the direction that you're heading. And then evaluating and following up. Who here has lost 10 pounds and then put it back on because they hit their mark? Yeah, there's a lot of hands that go up. Hey, look at that! That happens because you weren't a slave to the habit, you were a slave to the end results, all right? I accomplished it, great, let's go eat some cookies that are on the back door. So happens all the time. Make sure you're furthering your progress instead of checking it off and ending. So some things on the goals and objectives side, if you're trying to be a hired gun, is keeping in mind that the place you're trying to get hired from, you need them more than they need you, right? By, by nature of the fact that they can pay you to do it, they have more value than you do in the space. So what value are you actually providing? Um, and that kind of goes with this next point of learn who they are and what they are doing. So I mentioned the Fightful Overbook before. I get messages, I am not Fightful HR, I am not in charge of hiring, but I get messages all the time of, hey, I wanna work at Fightful. Great, so do a lot of people. Learn the ecosystem you're trying to enter and enter with a value proposition. So I always say, have you thought about Fightful Overbook? It's kind of our playground. It's an unpaid place to start, but it's a foot in the door. And they say, what's Fightful Overbook? Now I can't recommend you for anything. You didn't even bother to learn who the heck we are in the process. So be specific in how you can support them, acknowledging that the ecosystem is bigger than your on-air possible reporting, right? So not only where in the ecosystem you fall, but what you're doing. We're going to talk about that in a little bit more. And show your work. Kind of an obvious one of bringing samples into the picture. Your logistics. We'll speed through this, but How often do you record? When do you release episodes? Are you releasing in season? Who's responsible for what if you have a co-host? Having that all mapped out is really important, 'cause if you don't know how you're doing something, chances are no one's paying you to do it. And also if you're trying to get hired, trying to be aware of how often they're doing these things, right? This one's really important, I find. There's really great ways to break in that aren't being on air. Can you help moderate? Can you help with the sound quality of what they're doing? Can you help with video content? Finding ways that acknowledge where you're trying to get hired at is something that's really, really big. And let them know if you're around in an emergency. There's a million times where I've had a co-host that had to call out last minute. I have a Thursday night co-host who famously forgets to tell me all the time if he can't make it. I have a short list of people I go to. Try and get on those. And then your habits and self-awareness, right? Consistency has been talked about a lot today. Some other reasons that consistency is important: it sets expectations in the listener's mind. That famous tale of growth, right? Uh, nobody's listening, nobody's listening, nobody's listening, people are starting to listen, people are starting to listen. You don't get there without any sort of consistency. And other people noticing your efforts. People will notice If you're continually putting out content, people will also notice if you stop putting out content. They will view you as someone who's not committed to the end goal, which is really important. So this one is important too, diversify but like specifically. What I mean by that is finding your niche and what sets you out in your specific industry is really, really important, but you might wanna diversify platforms in the way that you do that. So for example, In wrestling world, if you're doing a watch-along, that might hit differently on Twitch than it does on YouTube, right? If I'm doing a post-show, that might hit differently on YouTube than it does in audio. So keeping in mind that your format and platform might have a dating process to go through, they might have to go on a matchmaking excursion. And being proactive, recording is like 17% of the process of what it takes to make money. There's so much more value in building relationships than there is in recording and putting up an episode. So this I've kind of said is offense and defense, but all the defense requires a little bit of offense. I'll explain what this kind of means, but defense is stuff that you can kind of set and forget as ways to monetize, right? As we talked about before, YouTube, if you can get Super Chats, if you're to the point where you have enough subscribers and hours, Merch is something that you can set and forget once you've put up the design. Affiliate links were talked about before, right? These things on the offense side I find are the more high-value things, but they require a lot more of your effort. So this is kind of an example of an ecosystem that you can create, and we're gonna talk about more later, but doing live events is something I think is extremely underrated in this space. Sponsors, you gotta go out and get 'em. Isabella was talking about it before. Relationships and brand building, I'm gonna expand on in a second. And a Patreon where you can kind of keep that consistent content going and more importantly, if someone is bought into you, the what's next piece of it is right there, right? Like, hey, I wanna support you. If someone's trying to throw money at you, don't make it hard for them. So relationships and brand building, events where you can record live episodes, sponsors, relationships and brand building, cross-promoting the hell outta your podcast is something that's been talked about a lot today. And Patreon, exactly what I was kind of saying, but the real beauty of this is that the money is in the ecosystem. So the bad news is podcast episodes alone don't usually make you a lot of money, right? I think we've all hit that glass ceiling at some point. Um, so finding an ecosystem that works for you and you can create is something that is the most valuable to me. So if you do a live event, you can get that live event sponsored and you can sell merch there. You can build relationships with that, right? If you're a history podcast and there's a museum and it's something awareness day, right, you can set up a live event around that and you can get those live events sponsored because it's a specialty thing and you can sell your merch at that. So creating an ecosystem or disrupting another one is a great way to go about business. Strongly recommend riding someone else's coattails.

I say it all the time.

To the head of Fightful. Um, even if you're doing something independently, the exposure of working somewhere else you will inevitably learn from. There's so much to be learned by working for other people, and you can kind of piggyback off of the exposure you get there, which is something that's trickled down into my independent podcasts when working somewhere else. So, um, it's very effective to disrupt someone else's ecosystem even if you're kind of creating your own in my experience. So a couple of other ways here. We've got networks, right? The sum is greater than the whole of the parts. If you have 10 podcasts that get 2,000 listeners, that's greater than one that gets 5,000. So if you have a sponsorship proposal and you have a greater network, you're diluting things a little bit financially 'cause you have to share that, but you have a higher value proposition to go in with. Events and festivals, an official voice is so valuable. I was a publicist for years. I can't tell you how helpful it is to have somebody that wants to advocate on your behalf. If you wanna go and be the official voice of something, they will be so happy to send you out on interviews as long as you sound like you know what you're talking about. Media outlets, they wanna add to their content, right? I'm working at Fightful. The main moneymaker off of that is a service that is called Fightful Select, and that is where The wrestling scoops happen. Believe it or not, wrestling is treated like pretty much every other sport. Contract news, backstage drama. There's all of these things. And my boss happens to be really good at finding out that information. That's a subscription service, but the podcasts add faces to that dimension and to the brand. So that's where the podcast starts. Not so much as a moneymaker, but as an expander in a way. And then organizations and institutions. I'm not gonna talk about influencers that much because Isabel covered it perfectly, but also communities and fandoms, right? Like offshoot of wrestling, I see cosplay fandoms all the time. Like being able to tap into communities that are already growing and thriving and existing is really important. So kind of in summary, establishing who you are, what you're doing and how you're doing it and why is really important if you're an independent brand and if you're trying to get hired. Being aware of yourself and your personality and aligning yourself with platforms and partners who share your vision, also super important. There's a lot of successful wrestling outlets that I don't wanna work for because I don't like the way that they operate and go about business. And kind of within that, establishing your own and disrupting other ecosystems is where the real money is made. Unfortunately, can't really monetize off of just singular episodes specifically. So build those relationships, be proactive, get out there as much as you can. That's about it. There's my contact information, but I know I kind of zipped through that because we're on a time crunch, but we'd be happy to take any questions that might have come in. Any questions? Sure.

Live events, you're talking about in-person gatherings, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, live streams, so that's a good question because so much has gone virtual, I feel like, and it makes sense. But as people are trying to reestablish themselves' lives, I feel like concerts and music festivals and wrestling worlds, there's all these live events that you could do, post shows out of pay-per-views and things. But aligning your brand with something that has a live event or an institution that might be interested in putting on a live event is a really great way to kind of just have that human connection again, that face-to-face thing. I think there's something that's so like beautiful and intimate about podcasting that it is a conversation-based thing, even when it's not necessarily interactive as kind of radio is, like the vocal aspect of it was so a direct connection. And then being able to do that live, I think is something that's really valuable and underrated. And I find that sponsors too, are willing to buy into a one-time event more than longer-lasting relationships as a starting point, as an entryway.

Quick follow-up. Do you do your shows live?

I do. So every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I watch wrestling and then I talk about it right after. So I'm furiously note-taking and then we go live about 10 minutes after an episode ends. Any other questions?

No?

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, uh, give it up for Super Kate. Okay, so I know we're, we're like definitely about 40 minutes late. I, uh, I blame Amy for not being here, and they can— maybe they can— in fact, I texted her Just a reminder that we need her because, you know, we're behind. So, uh, without further ado, I'm gonna bring up our next speaker who has been here— this is your third one? Second one. Second one. Uh, and knows all about live streaming, has written books about it, and done a whole bunch of stuff. Everybody give it up for Super Ross over here. There's a thing. Oh man, you were doing it all, Dave. I mean Dave. Yeah, Dave. I feel like I just said the wrong name. I don't know why.

Just clip it on. Just clip it. Yeah, it's a little pivoting clip there.

I'll go get your slides up.

Yeah.

But if you can pull it out a little higher.

What did my speech do? What is happening?

Well, I guess there's no golfing now.

Oh, it's indoors.

It's all good.

I thought it was like pouring rain.

Oh, I thought it was indoors.

Well, I mean, you're out—

you're outside but you're in the cage type thing.

All right, here we go.

That's just a good part.

I'm working on it. Okay.

I'll start with that.

Oh, there we go.

Okay, so we've talked a lot about things to learn, we've talked a lot about inspiring, and, um, now we're going to talk about some things to look out for, uh, in your journey. Because whether you're starting out You get to a point where you want to take it to the next level. And there's a lot of people out there who offer services, consulting, coaching, things that are really great. But there's also a lot of people out there who are selling something that you really don't want to be getting involved with. So We're going to talk about a special species that really in the digital media space, whether you're live streaming, you're podcasting, or you're doing YouTube, they really are all over the place. And I've been in this space for— doesn't seem to be advancing. Come on, mouse. There we go. All right, so they seem to be in the space in large numbers, and I'm going to talk about some of the different species of digital media guru that you want to look out for. Okay, number 1 is what we call the universalizer. That's somebody you can recognize based on their ads and how they pitch themselves. And they usually start out with a story about how it took them a long time to learn about how to grow an audience or, you know, develop a really good podcast. But now that they've figured out what it takes, they can teach you how they went about developing their audience and building their podcast. Unfortunately, that only works if we're all exactly the same, but we all have different skills, we all have different audiences, we all have different types of content, niche, so forth. Uh, the universalizer can only tell you one way, so unless you're exactly the same as they are, um, you're not going to probably benefit that much from following somebody else's path. All the people I know here found success a different way, following a different path, doing different types of content, having different backgrounds. The second, and one of the more, um, predatory, uh, species of guru that you find online is what I call the secret formula marketer. This is the person who puts in the least effort. And what they're— you'll notice them because what they like to do is they like to say that, here are the 3 words that if you include in your podcast title, you'll be sure to get lots of listeners, or here's what you need to say. They're close relative to the person that will tell you like, Here's 3 things if you say you can make anybody fall in love with you, or here's 1 thing that a millionaire knows that you don't know, and they will talk about how they have big clients and they, you know, they work with million, billion dollar businesses and whatever, but somehow if you give them $29.99 or $49.97, they're going to give you that secret phrase or that secret formula that you can put together that will make your podcast or livestream or YouTube channel blow up. So they really don't have it because there is no secret formula. Okay, so the secret formula marketer promises simple generic solutions that anyone can use to achieve massive success. Okay, here is a wholesome character that hangs out a lot in YouTube Spaces, although the podcasting world isn't immune from them either. This is the hide-the-ball trickster. Now, their, their main thing isn't to solve a problem, it's to keep you hanging around hoping that one day they'll share with you that little bit of wisdom. Maybe they'll work with you, maybe they'll help you, maybe they'll look at your podcast or livestream show or YouTube channel and give you a few pointers that just, you know, even though you watch their stuff, you take their course, and, and yet you, you're not getting any results, but they're getting great results. Their career is taking off, their channel's blowing up, their downloads are off the charts, and so they're not helping you or solving a problem. They're keeping you hanging on. And what happens is you take their course and they go, yeah, you know, you take the next course, you're going to get, you're going to get a little more attention. You don't really get any more attention. It's just a smaller group and costs more. And then there's another course, and that's the one where you're supposed to get like real mentoring, but the mentoring comes from some acolyte who, you know, took the course last time or whatever. The truth is, the hack-a-mole trickster has no interest in helping you. And I don't even know if they know how to help you anyway. Because in order to help the people, they actually— you actually have to do what people like Rob Greenlee and people like Joe, and, you know, I've seen Dave do it. And that's actually listen to what the people are trying to achieve and customize a solution for the client, for the individual that you're coaching, not how— okay, well, if you look at the analytics and it's 90 days and it's this, then that means you need to switch around with this and you need to change your thumbnails. And if the thumbnail looks like this, well, again, it doesn't really work that way. So how do ball tricksters keep their time and attention, a customized solution, or key information just out of reach unless you're a really big company or you're paying them, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then if they can do something for you, they might. Now this one's somebody I call the minimizer. This is somebody who kind of knows how the game's played and they're doing really well, but they've decided that their sales pitch to you, their solution for you is one simple aspect or two simple aspects. If they're in the YouTube world, it's titles and thumbnails. You gotta change the titles, you gotta change the thumbnails, and if you do those well, you're going to succeed. They're not going to waste time making you good at actually creating video and actually hosting shows, conducting interviews. Nah, why waste time with that? It's all your titles and thumbnails. It's all it comes down to. My favorite in the podcast field, my favorite minimizer in the podcast field, is the one who tells you it's all about reviews. It's all about if you get more reviews, and I can teach you how to get those reviews if you, you know, take my course, join my mastermind, and get a lot of reviews, that's going to blow up your podcast. As Dave and I were joking last night, or new and noteworthy. I'll get you into new and noteworthy because that's all it takes to succeed. The minimizer's focus, their advice primarily on a few elements rather than a more holistic approach to create a success. And the fifth one, which we fortunately have not had here at all today, which is phenomenal, and that's the greatest hits artist. The greatest hits artists, a lot of them started, you know, they started in blab in 2015, 2016, and they got some popularity. They built an audience. They got to speak at events like Social Media Marketing World and so forth. And, you know, at that time they were kind of on it, right? They were new with live streaming. They were going to, you know, they were, they maybe had a YouTube show. Perhaps their podcast was getting big. And now it's 2023. And because their name was big in 2015, and they made some connections, they're still speaking. But they're still rolling out the same advice. They haven't moved forward. And they're basically living off their name and what they did at one point. And I just— it's kind of funny, because if you go to enough conferences or watch enough Virtual events, you can pretty much sing along as they go along, you know what's coming. So the greatest hits artists keep giving the same speeches and advice in a medium that is constantly changing. So you have all these gurus, you're looking for something to trigger you to get to the next level, and you end up kind of confused. When you hear this advice. You want to trust your own instincts, but at the same time, you're like, well, you know, everything I'm doing just hasn't gotten me to that next level. Maybe I should listen to the guru. So here's what you can do instead that won't cost you any money. It won't take away your self-esteem from dealing with gurus who are out to mislead, not really help you. Number 1 is the fundamentals never fail. We had people give talks on interviewing. We had people give talks on booking guests. You can look at how you do your podcast open, how you light your room if you're doing video, all these fundamentals, how you talk about your business. If you talk about your business in the podcast, in your podcast, all these things you can continue to improve. If you're doing an interview show and you're doing interviews every week, perhaps you want to do a solo show now and then because perhaps you want to work a solo element in the future and get some experience at it.

You don't even—

if you're doing a podcast, you don't have to publish everything you do, but you need to continually grow and improve. And one of the best ways is making sure you have the fundamentals. That it takes to be good as a broadcaster, a podcaster, a live streamer, YouTuber. The next one is relevant research. A lot of the gurus will talk to you about analytics and things, and there's certainly importance in understanding and knowing analytics, but there's also doing relevant research, which is looking at people in your niche, looking at people with similar size audiences, and seeing what you can take away from what they're doing as it relates to what you're trying to do. Am I missing on a topic that I should be talking about that I know about and other people in my niche are having success with, but I'm not doing? Is there a guest that's making the rounds that has a great book out or something that can be of value to my audience? Who, what are, where are they appearing? Not saying that you should have all of the same people that everybody else has, but you should be aware of what's going on in the space. Know who your competitors are. Another thing that's important is to stay current on technology and platforms because when there's a new feature, I believe somebody mentioned it with, you know, when they're pushing Reels or they're pushing Shorts. Okay, here's a great opportunity to promote your podcast. It's a great opportunity to promote your channel, your live stream show. Know what the features are that the platforms are pushing, because that's where opportunity lies, either directly or to promote yourself. Improve or outsource. What I'm talking about here is all the things related to doing your show. So you're, you're very good as a host, you're very good at getting guests, you're very good at a lot of the aspects of but perhaps you're not great at editing. Perhaps you're not great at doing social media, doing graphics. Either work to get better at it or outsource it if you can afford to. Anything you— that you're not competing on and you can accept industry standard on, if you can afford to outsource it, outsource it, because your competitive advantage is really the content that you're creating and how you go about doing what you do. That's the one thing you cannot outsource. And the last thing pretty much I want to mention here is forget the celebrity case studies. I hate when people come on and go, well, MrBeast is now doing his thumbnails like this, or, you know, Will Smith just started a podcast and he— what does that have to do with me? I mean, MrBeast has 70 million followers. What, he doesn't have to use a thumbnail at all and he's going to get more views on one video than I've gotten in my entire life. People who are famous don't have to build an audience from scratch. They already have an audience. People who are on big media channels, whether they're on TV or radio, they already have a built-in audience. One of the hardest things to do as a podcaster, live streamer, YouTuber, you have to build as an independent creator, you have to build your own audience. What celebrities and people with massive audiences do really doesn't relate that much to most people. And finally, it's all about you. No matter what any guru says, no matter what advice is out there, The people come back for you, the host. That's the most important person. Part of what they may come back for, the way you interview, they may come back for the guests you have, but ultimately they come back for you. Anybody can get an audience one time with a big guest or one time with that going viral. But when people are interested in who you are and what you have to say, how you say it, what you talk about, you relate to them, what you bring to the table, that's where your audience is going to come back. And so it's really all about you. You're the star of your show. You're the most important person. And I believe in you. And I'm Ross Brand. My podcast that I'm currently doing is Screen Leader Report Live. It's a live panel show. Rob Greenlee appears with 2 of our other colleagues, and the recordings podcast has everything else pretty much other than the Stream Leader Report that I've done over the years. I also do an annual book called Live Streaming and Digital Media Predictions, and anybody who's here who would like to be a contributor to the book, let me know. I'd love to have— all you guys are wonderful. I'd love to have all of you as contributors this year, and it's, uh, it's not a big lift. It's, uh, he's a promoter. There it is. There it is. That is, that is volume 2.

Volume 2.

Oh, there's 3, and, uh, Dave's got volume 3, uh, somewhere. Rob maybe has volume 3. Yeah, well, so anyway, thank you very much. Any, any questions?

Yeah, when it comes to the research component I was also looking at like opportunities that are kind of adjacent that people aren't doing in the space. How do you kind of like strike that balance of things that are related to your niche and might be worth bringing in specifically, but maybe inspired from areas outside?

Well, I think if you can identify what people aren't doing something, that's, as you mentioned in your talk, that's the greatest opportunity. If there's a need for something. But when I'm talking about research, I'm talking about rather than, you know, going wide and looking at everything and getting overwhelmed with, okay, your statistics and your watch time and all this, especially as you're trying to grow in the beginning. Yes, these, these analytics, downloads, all these things can give you some indication, but if you want to create better content that's going to resonate with people, look, look at what's going on on a level like, no, no, who else is sort of on a similar trajectory and see if you can't take away something from them rather than say a guru who talks about working with Pepsi and Coke. But, you know, hey, I've got a formula that I use for them and that's going to make sense for you. The one thing the gurus consistently don't do is make anybody better at podcasting or live. Like, they know— they may know how to play the algorithm in the short form. They may know how to use social media or different tricks, but they don't know really how to get you to have a good show. And ultimately, if the show isn't good, what does it matter if you win the clicks? Because nobody's coming back. You're getting no watch time. You're getting no subscribers and downloads. And so I think you can learn more from what people who are doing it around your level and a step above, and they're doing it well, if you look to other, if you look to other people. And that's, that's what I meant by relevant research. Any other questions?

That's great.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Most of the people that you think are doing it are, but might not actually be doing it. I think Dave put it best. You made a— you equated podcasting to being in high school. I guess that was too long ago to remember.

Yeah.

Well, it's like everybody that talks about being like, no, I got this.

Yeah, podcasting's like— podcasting's like sex in high school. Everybody says they're doing it, nobody's doing it, and nobody's doing it right.

Something like that.

Yes, it is something to that effect.

And you wouldn't go to a class, so you bring your books with you. So yeah, so I don't have any more. One more time, give it up for Ross Greenlee. Thank you.

So, um, yeah.

Oh, oh, oh, that's your phone.

Time's up.

You did beat the clock. You did beat the clock. All right, uh, so we have 2 speakers left, back-to-back Hall of Fame podcasters, uh, everybody put your hands together for— or for somebody that, um, while the other person came at the first ever, uh, ICON event, somebody that came to the second ever ICON event and came— did you come back to it?

I, I think it only been once.

Yes, and that was our second one. And then here we are at the 8th, uh, 8th event. Uh, everybody, I need you to put some super hands together for Super Rob Greenlee. Thank you very much.

You're welcome very much. Yeah, just let you know, if you didn't know, I've been live streaming all day, so you'll be able to see a lot of these sessions on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. So my, my little laptop's been doing some work over there. But anyway, it's great to be back at the Independent Podcast Conference. I know the last time I did this event, I actually lived in Seattle, and but now I live in Connecticut on the East Coast, so it was just a drive down for me versus a flight all across the country. So it's great to be here, and I've really— I've been involved in podcasting since it started in 2004. And have worked, spent like the last 8 or 9 years working for podcast hosting companies like Libsyn and Podbean and Spreaker, which is now owned by iHeartRadio. So I've been in the medium a long time. Yeah, I used to work for Microsoft too. I ran the Zoom podcasting platform for Microsoft for 7 years. So I've been on the kind of the consumption side, listening side, the hosting side, the content creator side. And now I've kind of shifted over to working with the creation tool side. So I'm working with StreamYard and Numano. I'm actually streaming this on StreamYard as well as using the Numano device to record the audio. So, so it's actually, you know, this is all a test bed for me to create content and have a great time podcasting. So, and being at events like this and meeting podcasters and technology platforms. But what I'm really here to talk about is building audience connection, and, and there's a strong connection to trust on that path as well. I'm actually doing a podcast, actually, it's a convergence show is the term that I'm using, where it's, uh, doing video on YouTube as well as an audio podcast. So what I'm doing is I'm trying to create the video version and then just taking the audio and putting that out as a podcast. So trying to walk those lines is kind of a little bit of a challenge. But one of the things that I have learned a lot over the years, over the various podcasts that I've done for either Microsoft or Spreaker or whatever, I've done live shows for Spreaker too. I did like 180 episodes for Spreaker on their platform and then did the Zoom Insider Podcast and did my own. Nationally syndicated radio show for 7 years as well and learned a lot about audiences and learned a lot about kind of just from, I guess, the school of hard knocks, I guess, on building connections with audiences. And then my recent passion with my own show called The Trust Factor now is— it's all kind of coming together for me in some ways. So So that's why I wanted to do this presentation. I've got a new company now called Spoken Life Media and just doing a bunch of stuff. So I'm just gonna jump into it here and kind of just take you quick through, you know, an early journey of where I started. I started in a little radio station in the Seattle market. You can see that that was the crew there and picture there. So I started out, you know, not being a very strong kind of show host. I had to bring in a bunch of other folks to kind of prop me up a little bit, and each one of them kind of played a role in the show itself. A little bit like a morning show type of a format where each of the parties played a role on the show that brought some humor and some entertainment and and education. And that was the idea behind it. And I just, I was basically the orchestrator that just handed it off to all those folks. But I was streaming online, this was all back in 1999, and started making my show available as a streaming show with the RealReal platform and making my episodes available for download. But anyway, I'll jump ahead on this, and then the show started to evolve and improve grew, and I got a, you know, my own office studio in Tacoma, Washington, which is a little bit south of Seattle. And I started working with some, uh, I got some venture investment and got a bunch of radio music recording equipment and built a little studio and all this kind of stuff and started getting more professional at it. And then, uh, started working with a small company called Microsoft and was streaming my shows. You can see there, Internet Topics from WebTalk Radio, or WebTalk Guys Radio at the time. So that's where I got most of my audience back in, in that time frame, 2002. And Microsoft actually had the early precursor podcasting platform. It was actually— I'll show you, that's in the next slide. But this is, this is the time frame from like 2004 to 2006. There was a Podcast Pioneers Dinner in Seattle in 2005, and the folks that sit around this table were the folks that were either kind of pioneers of podcasting, or they were— the reason for this dinner is there was planning for the first podcast conference that was going to start. It was the New Media Expo. So that's me sitting right there on the left, and And then there's the, the radio show that I did that then became a podcast in 2004. And then this is the, this is, this is the Microsoft platform. It's called Sync and Go, and it worked with Windows XP to Pocket PC devices. You can, you can totally look at it from the perspective of the Pocket PC was like the, uh, the iPod. At the time. So they, they had their own software. They only had 13 content providers, but I got paid 25 cents per transfer from Windows XP to Pocket PC devices. I got to be 25 cents per transfer. Um, so that, that equated to about $5,000 a month in revenue to me back in the 2003 platform. So I was only one of 3 audio programs on the platform, so, so it was really kind of an interesting time. And then coincidentally, Microsoft killed this when podcasting started in 2005 in that time frame. So it's like, I tried to convince them to expand the catalog, but I don't think they really wanted to continue paying 25 cents per transfer. So that was the problem. And then this is another platform that I worked worked on. It's called— I guess it's playing. This was the— I worked with this company on mobile podcasting back in 2005 to 2007, and it was really the first mobile podcast consumption platform to ever exist. So it was very early in the times, but I, I got some experience working there, and then I went to Microsoft to work on the Zune platform, and that, that was something that took me up to about 2014 or so. That was a great time, and it was really sad to see that platform fade away along with Windows Phone, but such as it is. And I just wanted to share too, because nobody shared at the event here, kind of what the total number of podcasts are by Podcast Index. There's, there's some debate in the industry about how accurate this number is, um, as compared to maybe like what Apple has, which is like maybe 2.5 million. But what's really interesting is the shows' episodes published, um, how many shows are actually publishing episodes in the last 3 days. There's about 116 1,000 shows have published an episode in the last 3 days out of 4.2 million. So it kind of gives you an idea a little bit. 10 days and then 30 days, about 300, you know, 300,000 or so. That's a debated— yeah, I think that's pretty close to probably, probably what it is. But anyway, as far as elements of building audience, And trust. I think the big thing about trust is if your audience believes in you and trusts in you and what you say and what you do, they're more likely to stick with you. And I think you as a podcaster, there's basically 7 elements of it. There's, it's like a respect for your audience that you need to go into the program with a respect for your audience, and then also really attempt to unite your audience in some ways. I've seen just a lot of power in, especially when you do live, you can see a lot of this dynamic that happens of the audience kind of coming together and becoming friends with each other. There's an opportunity for that. So oftentimes audience will come back to a live program, not so much for you, the host, but they'll come back because they have other friends that also were joining that program. They'll communicate in chat platforms, and then as a host, you need to kind of show you care about your audience. I mean, as you talk to folks and how you talk to your audience, it's really, really important to express ways that you can help them and also just listen to what they have to say is very important as well. And I'll go into greater detail on this, but, you know, and show your passion. Show that you're excited about this topic that you're talking about. Show your energy, show your enthusiasm, and be genuine because people can see through people that are not genuine. So you have to really work at that. And authenticity— now I know that's a, that's probably an overused word in the medium today, but that means being real, that means being truthful as much as you can. I think people, especially women, have to be careful about this area to some degree, but there's a lot of power in being able to walk that line. Authenticity and show lighthearted joy and humor. And I know Dave talks about this a lot too, you can't be boring. And I think that is, that's a skill that you have to develop over time. And I oftentimes recommend to people that maybe if there's a local kind of class you can take about stand-up comedy, or you can take some sort of a a class on how to do kind of like off-the-cuff humor. I think it can really, really help you as a podcaster. But like I said earlier, especially about women, safe transparency is the path. So you just have to think about that before you start talking about your personal life too much. So I wanted to show you two examples of shows that were like, one is very strongly trusted by its audience and one that turned out to be not very trusted by its audience. And the first one is Rob Cesternino. Um, Dave knows Rob and I don't know who else knows him here, but he's been very successful, uh, podcaster. He does a a show, um, basically about, um, the Survivor TV series. Um, so I don't know, Joe is— do you know Rob Sesternino?

I know of him.

Uh, my wife's more of a Survivor fan than I am.

I always watch the show, but she does.

But yeah, I've known Rob for a, for a very long time, and, and he just— there's just a genuineness to him, and I He actually, you actually remind me a lot of, of Rob and how you, how you think about what you're doing and the authentic conversations that you have and how you approach a lot of, um, thinking positively about your audiences is a big thing, as opposed to Larry King, who I worked with at PodcastOne, where I used to work at PodcastOne. He had this show with his, um, his wife. Um, it was very short-lived, but that show only reached about 2,000 downloads, um, because I called it kind of a bicker cast. Uh, it was like, you know, an older man and a younger woman fighting with each other on the podcast. So, so just because you're a celebrity doesn't mean that you're automatically going to be and this was an interesting, you know, thinking about the popularity and awareness of a Larry King and what I saw happen to this program is it's just a really poor indication of doing the wrong kind of audience connection type of a program. So anyway, so I'm So I think that when you think about respecting your audience, the duration of the podcast is something that you need to think about too, to some degree. And does it add value to the audience's life? I do think that there is a perspective that you do earn your duration to some degree over time. You should never do too much content that's beyond what we perceive to be the value of that content to your audience. Now, sometimes that's hard to know, and I've always done shows that I was fascinated by the content, but I was also always keeping in mind what my audience might be looking for. But the passion really has to come from you. But, you know, what's— but the show always has to deliver something to the host, the creator, and the audience. So you have to walk that line. It's not always an easy line to walk. I don't really firmly believe that anybody should do a show that's just, you know, I'm gonna do a show because I know that's what the audience wants, but I don't care about it. That's not going to work in the long run, in my opinion. You know, be open to taking serious audience input, but don't take it too, too deeply, right? As we saw with Joe today talking about the criticism that he gets. But listen to your feedback and look for trends Don't make a big change to your program just because one person says they don't like the show or they don't like one little part of the show or whatever. Look at it as an aggregate, like a research study of sorts, and look for feedback to give you ideas on what you can do. But at the end of the day, it's your choice as the host because you're the one that has to look out for the majority of your audience, not just one. Listener who gave you a particular negative feedback and promote and create participation and input into the, into the program. And you need to feed that back to your audience, and that shows a level of respect for them as well, that you acknowledge their existence, you're acknowledging their importance, and that, you know, do some surveys, get some feedback. There's platforms like SurveyMonkey or whatever, and just put out a quarterly survey and just ask people for feedback and ask for who they are. Are they male, female, what their age range is? And then also, you know, you might be able to use that data to help better target any kind of sponsorship or anything like that you can do with your podcast as well. And then work on the elements to, you know, Unite your audience. And this is what I was talking about earlier about live streaming, building community communications, not so much, you know, host to audience communication, but foster community connections, right? Where members of the community can build friendships across the listener base of the podcast itself and create topical groups. Areas where your community can talk among themselves about these topics and share ideas, and you can use that as a host, as a resource that can drive topics and things you can do in your program as well. So it's, it's a powerful connection once you deeply connect. And I really saw this a lot on Spreaker when I worked at Spreaker too. I saw a lot of really, really big shows that would just do live. And it's really funny, like, my experience has been is that there are a lot of very successful live-only shows, you know, just like in commercial radio. And some of these shows I saw had like 6,000 to 10,000 comments in an hour-long show. It's just, there was just something about that show that did disconnected with people and they just wanted to share and wanted to participate and talk to other people in the community. I mean, there's, there's been times when I've seen this, this happen where lifelong friends come out of these, these communities, and that's why it's so powerful. And I know Rob, uh, Cestronino has, uh, actually conferences that he now puts on where his audience comes as well as the survivor, you know, winners or the participants on the program will attend as well. It's almost like a Comic-Con of sorts. But that's the kind of community connections that are extremely powerful. And really be sure to talk about the comments that you get in the program that you do so it acknowledges to that community that you're listening to them. And really be a leader in your community. Lead, not just, you know, take the community on a journey per se is really— and then you need to be the most passionate one in the community that makes connections to others and leads discussion and leads that topic. And then create exposure opportunities for your listeners in your program as much as you can. And like I said, encourage members to talk to each other. And then like I said earlier about show you care, right? You know, identify and share high-value resources to your community that you know will be helpful to them. Give audience direct access to you as much as you can. I, though, I think that's becoming a little more challenging these days because there's a lot of crazy people out there. But, but share— you do the show and do show your— that the show is important to you and it's an important passion of yours. You know, say you want a relationship with your audience member too. I mean, speak to your audience as an individual, as a person, as a singular reference, not a, you know, a huge group of people. Don't speak to your audience as a group. Speak to them as an individual because that's typically how they're listening to you. They're listening to you with an earbud. So this is a personal medium. And then also share that you need, you need to be supported from your community and give them avenues to support you. Offer freebies, some incentives to participate, and do in-person events as much as you can. I think in live on stage events, like I've been doing that with my new media show, I do that live on stage. Podcast movement, as many conferences as I can get that done, and live, live events I think is really, really powerful. And then passion has to be shown. It has to really speak with enthusiasm, speak with energy, be genuine about your desire to share and help others, have a strong level of interest and curiosity and everything about your topic and about your audience too. And take advantage of a converged strategy, audio and video together. I'm definitely playing around with that myself, trying to take advantage of that too, because I do have a strong, strong thought that people are becoming more attracted to video. Audio is— it has its own power powerful characteristics too, but a converged strategy, I think, as we look forward is what, is what's really going to work out there. And authenticity, obviously, it's definitely an overused word at this point, but being who you are is the only thing you can do. I think trying to portray something that you're not is gonna wind up failing. And but be safe about that though. So yeah, and show some humor, but it's hard to do consistently. You know, I'm not, I'm not known or have any kind of confidence in humor myself. You can probably tell that from my presentation. I'm not a joke teller, but that is certainly a skill that I need to develop. But it— some people it comes naturally to, you know. Dave has got a humor bone, Dave Jackson, and I know many other podcasters does that kind of— I don't know how hard you try, Dave, to be funny, but you are.

Looks aren't everything.

See, you just demonstrated it right there. But yeah, get some comedy training if you can. Stand-up or some improv or something like that. I think it will help you a lot. It depends on how serious you are about it. If you're, you know, if you want to have that kind of a podcast as well too, because it just may not be, you know, who you are, and that's okay too. And ask Alexa for a few jokes. Maybe that would give you something to work with. So anyway, and then save transparency. You know, that, that's always important. But I just wanted to mention this little piece here is indie podcast productions tend to be, I guess, more trusted than larger media production companies. So I think it's, it's a, it's a potential advantage being an indie producer. That if we can foster this— big media companies have a hard time with this. I mean, I've worked for a lot of big corporations before, and being genuine, being real, it's not one of their strengths. So if you can do that, that'll help you stand out. And any questions anybody has? Yes, Mr. Greenlee.

Yes, Mr. Greenlee, you talked about live got 6,000 to 10,000 views. That was live audio on Spreaker.

It was.

Can you give some examples of the type of content that did well?

Yeah, it was usually very kind of like that group show type concept. You can think like a Howard Stern type shows, ones where you had a variety of different personalities on the program, and that was a lot like my my web talk radio show that I had. That show got a lot of audience engagement, good and bad. But anytime you can bring in really diverse personalities, and I think that's the key, you trigger different people in connection. And I think it's not easy to replicate. I mean, a lot of podcasting is about chemistry and it's about the co-hosts or the hosts really being able to connect with each other. I'm a big believer in co-host podcasts, ones that have, you know, I know Dave does this too, he's got a co-host, but all the shows that I've done primarily have been co-host podcasts, especially the ones that have been popular. I'm dabbling around with the solo show right now, but that's not my— that's like stretching myself because I'm not really that great of a solo host. I always like to have someone around, but it's definitely in the co-host type format versus interview format, I think, is kind of where the world is right now. I don't know, Dave, do you ever thought about that?

In terms of co-hosts? Yeah, yeah. What's worse is, hey, so today we're talking about this movie, I really liked it, what about you, Shannon?

I loved it too.

Okay, next movie, hey, I hated it, Shannon, how about you?

I hated it too.

Well, if Shannon's going to do the exact same thing you are, we don't really need two people.

Yeah, it's the contrast is what's important, you know. The stripper live show that I did You know, I'm a— oh man, I'm kind of a laid-back guy myself, so— but my co-host was rather bombastic. Yeah, I think Dave knows what I'm talking about. But having that contrast in personalities is really powerful, especially if it creates a chemistry that connects with certain types of audience personalities too. And yeah, so I'm just a big believer. But go ahead, did you have a question?

Oh yeah, since you've been kind of around since the infancy of podcasting conceptualization, are there any trends that you see coming down the pike? Like, I feel like you have history on that side. Anything you see?

Yeah, I'm always keeping an eye on trends and the direction, and that's really always my kind of my guiding light of what I'm trying to do. Trying to see where we're heading. It's not always easy to kind of flesh out the details on that, but it does feel like we are moving more towards kind of this convergence approach, more and more emphasis on video, but yet somehow there's a disconnect there too because audio has characteristics to it that are, um, that are somewhat beyond video too. So it's, it's, it's a difficult balance, but, but I do think that video is becoming very important. I do think that we're seeing the development of proprietary platforms start to really kind of take over. If we look at what Spotify is doing right now, and we're looking at YouTube, so, you know, there's a lot of folks in the industry that are feeling very threatened by what's happening around keeping the open RSS a strong kind of fabric of podcasting. And I think that there's also tension around people's perception of what a podcast is right now. You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of people in the industry right now that are saying that podcasts are anything that's on YouTube, it's anything on TikTok, it's anything, you know, it's really any content that looks like a podcast and the audience thinks is a podcast must be a podcast. And that's got a lot of people concerned, but it's also— I kind of look at it as maybe an opportunity, but it's also— I think that there's some reason to be concerned about the platform podcasting moving towards being dominated by these big huge media, social media platforms. And with content moderation, I think is the other big worry that I have about what's happening in the medium right now. Brand safety and suitability, so it's coming in via the advertising models more and more. I don't think that we necessarily want content moderation in podcasting, but I think maybe it's kind of inevitable. Does anybody else have any questions? Yeah, go ahead. Um, we're talking about a converging strategy where you take audio, not the audio footage, podcasting video. Are you editing those the same?

Way.

I know myself, I'm using Descript. Yeah, I'm using Descript too.

You're okay?

Yeah. And I'm noticing that, like, with Descript, you can have the ums and the ahs and the filler words removed, which is great, but it's also not great because it's not quite there yet to make it a seamless transition. Well, I think if you're doing videos, yeah, I'm doing it with video too, so it edits the video as well. Yeah, so you do create this kind of this, you know, jerky cutty kind of look to the video as well. So if you're doing that with your video, you kind of need to sit a little stiller on your video.

I leave it, I leave that stuff in the video, but the audio So it doesn't understand.

Okay, yeah, I don't know if I'm doing that right or wrong, but what I'm doing—

well, you can go in and edit the, the, um, the list of the edited words in Descript, so you can uncheck certain words. So I've done that. I probably, I probably only checked like maybe 20 out of the 40 or whatever, but so it doesn't chop it up as much. But I think it, you know, I've seen a lot of very successful YouTube shows that are using Descript because it does cut down the length a little bit, and that's what you kind of want on YouTube. So anyway, anybody else have any questions? All right, thank you very much.

So just a small question. Since you've seen this fracturing that's taking place between people putting podcasts up as things on YouTube and then some things being on the RSS feed, and then certain people also going on to Clubhouse, etc., putting that podcast, all analytics, etc., are completely different. So how are you finding that brand are looking at these very divergent analytics? I mean, there must be pandemonium and confusion across brands for what's happening.

Yeah, I think that the medium of podcasting is a little behind on that. There's no question. And I'm not really clear what the pathway is for the medium to get clear on it, because a lot of— as we move towards proprietary platforms, the access to that data becomes a little more restricted, right? So, you know, having everything aggregated under one hosting platform right now is, is, as we move into this next phase, is going to be challenging unless the hosting platform is able to work out an API deal with the, you know, case in point, YouTube or something like that, to be able to get data out of there into the podcast hosting kind of metrics area of their site or out of TikTok or out of Spotify or whatever. And I mean, it's not out of the realm of possibility that we'll get some visibility in there, but I know that Apple's been a little slow in sharing their data. Um, and who knows what Apple has in store for us? Um, they may move aggressively back into video more. I mean, they still support video podcasts, the RSS version of it, but they really kind of buried the discovery of it. Um, to some degree. But that may come back as they see Spotify adding video and then calling it a podcast. So, so we'll see how that evolves over time. And then obviously what we're seeing with YouTube, um, really be all in on podcasts, um, that's going to put pressure on all those companies. So, well, thank you.

Give it up for Rob.

Yeah, you know, I personally, when, um, when watching YouTube videos that are quote-unquote podcasts, like they're sitting, you know, sitting down facing each other, it's an interview or whatever, a lot of times if there's a video, I won't— I don't listen to it in the podcast form because they, they know there's a camera and they know that they're shooting it for YouTube and they're trying to be animate, or they're showing screens of whatever they're doing or things of that nature. And then I'm like, oh, I, I need to watch it because I don't want to miss something, because then I'll be talking about something that's like, I, I can't even see. And they're not even usually describing what you're seeing for the podcast because the podcast is the afterthought. You know, for 4 or 5 days after the fact. So, um, it stinks too because there's some content that I would consume through the podcast format because I'm running, you know, for an hour to 2 hours a day. Well, like, I don't want to listen to it if I'm going to miss something because they're not describing it and it's being shown on the screen. So anyway, one more time, we're super Rob Greenlee.

Thank you so much.

—and given some great insight and history there as well. So finally today, thank you all for hanging in there with us. I actually was making some notes while Rob was talking about things that I have rattling around in my head for next year's event and how maybe for ICON9 we should, you know, maybe try different kind of thing to, you know, bring people together but also get everybody's voice heard, which I think is really important. And that's why, like, you know, for people who don't know, we used to have spotlight speakers that would speak for like 8— was it 8? Was it before that? I think it was like 6 minutes or 7 minutes. And I think I expanded it to 8 minutes as the final. So you would up, and it was your first year speaking, you would come up and you'd have 8 minutes, and then 8 minutes, that's it. So if you want to answer questions, you better stop at like 6 minutes so you have 2 minutes to answer questions based upon what you're bringing to the table. And, uh, and then the following year they could be featured speakers. Well, the first year, for those who haven't seen any of the pictures, we were in a school gymnasium, not actually in West Effort, um, well, Westville, New Jersey. So like Westville/West Dufferin, New Jersey, just down the street here at a school gymnasium. And there was like 35, 40 of us that all gathered together, people from Florida all the way up to, I want to say, New York, and as far west as Ohio. Two people actually from Ohio. One is now living just outside Disneyland. The other one is Akron? Yeah, yeah, um, just outside the factory of sadness. That's it. Yeah, that's the factory of sadness out there. Um, yeah, Cleveland Browns, for anybody who don't know. So anyway, uh, this, this gentleman I got introduced, uh, by Kathleen. I haven't talked to Kathleen in a while. Have you talked to Kathleen in a while?

It's been a long time.

It has been a while. I went to a con, um, I forgot what it's called. Like, it was like a horror fest or something up like in North Central Jersey, uh, where they have like all these B-list, uh, celebrities come to like to get paid for autographs and things like that. And we went, uh, you know, I drove up there and was, uh, hanging out with her there. But anyway, she introduced me to this guy who had been podcasting for a long time and and we, you know, we hit it off and here we are 9 years later. And I'm super honored to be able to introduce Super Dave Jackson.

Give it up for him, please.

Dave, how many podcasts do you currently have or have had?

I've had over 32, I think, at this point. Right now I think I have 6. I know I definitely have 4, but it's a sickness. If you stand next to me long enough, I will start a new podcast. All right, so 6 reasons why your show isn't growing. Some of this we've already hit on, which will be great. We can kind of skip through. This is the boring slide. I did start in 2005. I launched the School of Podcasting, 3.4 million downloads of just that show. I'm the head of podcaster education at Libsyn. I've won Best Technology a couple times. I got a book deal. I have those here if you want one. I'll be happy to sell you one, uh, profit from your podcast. And 2018, that happened, and I was inducted, uh, just like Mr. Greenlee, uh, who was— you were in the first class, right? Uh, 2017. Yeah, okay, of, uh, the Hall of Fame. So your first episode, you know, it's, uh, it's hard. You're going through The learning curve, you just want it out of there. I get that. I just did a video for the School of Podcasting and I sent it to my newsletter. 15 revisions later, I'm just like, I just want it out there. I'm tired of watching this thing. So I get when you're like, I just want it out there, but you're like this, right?

Just please, right?

But on the other hand, you just spent 10 hours working on this episode, and the last thing you want to do— because I always say that first one, just throw it away. Like, it's not good. Just trust me, it's not good. Just— and get somebody— we'll talk about this, um, throw it away. Why? Because authors have rough drafts, actors have dress rehearsals, uh, you know, athletes have preseason. And as a musician myself, you spend a lot of time in the basement before you go out. Like, I didn't learn how to play the C chord and then immediately go out front and go, okay, who's going to give me money to watch me play the C chord. It just doesn't work that way. So you need truth tellers. That's one of the reasons. And this happened sadly, this happened last month. Kim Newlove, everybody needs Kim Newlove, the pharmacist voice. So Dave, you know I love you, so I have to do this. Monetize is misspelled in your podcast description. And I was like, there's no way. Now I'm somewhat known for typos, but not in my— come on, it's the School of Podcasting. After all. Oh no, we forgot an I in monetize. You've got to be kidding me, right? So, and everybody needs a Steve Stewart. Uh, Steve Stewart is a guy I've known forever, and this is why I love Steve Stewart, is because, um, I think it was Podcast Movement and he bought me lunch. So that's one reason why I needed Steve Stewart. But he said, can I give you some tips? And I go, sure, what's What's going on? He's like, well, look, I know you answer the same questions all the time. That's got to be really trying. And for your patience, he goes, but there are times when, when the curmudgeon is coming out a little more than he used to. And I was like, really? He goes, yeah. I was like, dude, I said, if I leave Podcast Movement right now— it hadn't even started yet— I said, I've got more out of the— out of this conference. Because you need somebody to go, hey, I don't know if you know this, but— because I can't fix what I don't know is broken. And so Steve's just a great guy, was very gracious about it, but he's just like, I just want to let you know, you know, I'm starting to hear the curmudgeon come out. Um, Ron Howard, of course, uh, Opie Cunningham. Um, he's a guy that obviously has won a gazillion different, you know, awards. He sits in the audience and they do a pre-screening because he knows when they're supposed to laugh, when they're supposed to cry. And if they don't do those things when they're supposed to do them, he goes back to the editing room because there's no sense spending a gazillion dollars on movie promotion if the movie's no good. And so he understands that. He says it's really, uh, important to understand how a movie is communicating with an audience. And that's what entertainment is, is something communicated to you and you enjoy it. Simple. So, uh, quick example. On the left we have The Lone Ranger. They spent close to $250 million just on a movie. And on the right— anybody here not seen The Sixth Sense? Oh, you gotta— Ross, I'm telling you, go home, watch The Sixth Sense. It's awesome. Um, so way big, you know, difference in budgets and in promotion. But in the end, if you do the math on this, you'll see it's not pretty. By the way, that's a Disney movie. On the left. We're talking, uh, Happy Meals, action figures, posters, the whole nine yards. And it made $261 million. And if you do the math there, when you add $150 million in promotion, that's not pretty. Meanwhile, The Sixth Sense, $20 million every week for 5 weeks in a row, made $294 million. And Disney said, well, hey, uh, it would go on to lose $160 to $190 million, give or take $30 mil. Uh, as heavy promotion failed to sell tickets. They just kept thinking, well, people don't know about this movie, we just need to get more— like, more commercials, come on. I saw that movie, it's horrendous. It's really— I mean, this is Johnny Depp at the height of his pirate stuff, and they thought you could just throw Johnny Depp in anything. It was horribly bad. So I say this to say, because once we get it out there, we're like, okay, how can I make money? I got to grow my audience. You start going, you start looking at Facebook ads and what there's, you know, promotion will not fix bad content. It just isn't. So, so why is your show not growing? Because you ask mom and mom said, oh, look at you, you're so professional. Look at you. Oh my goodness. And you go, well, mom, what was your biggest takeaway? Oh, what are you, an interviewer now, Mr. Podcaster? Mom's not talking about your content. She's talking about your equipment. You ever seen that episode of Friends where they're all like, what are we going to do?

Joey's going to ask us what we thought about his TV show.

It's like, and they can't trick— like, no, I had great lighting last time. You can't take that, right? Nobody's talking. Nobody's going to tell him you really stink as an actor. Steve Martin, I love this. People are asking about how do I get a manager? How do I get headshots? He's like, shouldn't the first thing be, how do I get good? Like, that really should be the first thing. So what are the ingredients of good podcast, Dave? Well, it's going to make you— you've heard me say this a million times— it's going to make you laugh, cry, think, groan. Yes, groan. Anybody here hate watch or hate listen anything?

I'm going to tune in to see if this guy's still an idiot.

Oh, he is such an idiot.

All right, go, go.

So again, uh, laugh, cry, think, groan, educate, or entertain. Uh, when I was at Podcast Movement, I went into a session about comedy podcasts, and they explained how that this— the, the listener said, I love your show because I don't have to use my brain, it just entertains me. I just needed something to decompress from work for 20 minutes. So when you can do more than one of these at a time, you're, you're on to something. Now you're starting to make good content. Um, I love John Oliver on HBO because he makes me laugh, he makes me groan at times when I hear what the government's doing. And I, the whole time I'm like, why isn't this— why am I getting all the good news from a comedian? That drives me crazy. Right now, what if I'm not making you laugh, cry, think, grow, educate, or entertain? There's a word for that. It's called boring. Yeah, so it's a simple rule: don't be boring. It really boils down to two things: content and delivery. And a great example of this is the Star-Spangled Banner, right? Really cool tool— or tool— really great tune. But I know last night, I forget who sang it at the first football game, and half the people said, did you hear? That was a great rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner, because it's a different delivery. And then other people are like, I can't believe what she did to the Star-Spangled Banner. So upfront, realize half the audience may not like you, but it is content and delivery. So the biggest thing I hear over and over in terms of what drives people nuts is not getting to the point. I don't know about you, how many people have just tons of free time? Yeah, nobody.

Exactly. The 14-year-old.

Yes, exactly.

So at least you recognize when the title says, you know, how to make money selling, you know, whatever on Etsy, and then you tune in and it's, you know, 15 minutes about Mr. Whiskers with so crazy this week. I hate that cat. And they're like, what does this have to do with the topic, right? Get to the point. And then we want them to find us. That's the first thing, they have to find us. And so what I see a lot is, what is the— what is the audience going to type in to find you? And people do all these things. I'm like, really? Uh, so they'll put all the words together, then they think they're prints from the '80s, they'll put in some numbers in there, and it's all like Nobody's typing that in to find you. They're going to type this, and if they type this, they're not going to find that, and they have to find you first. Or they'll do this, hashtag try and spell this, and they think this is somehow going to work on social. And I'm like, yeah, but Apple's not a social app. It's like, okay, so because your audience is going to do that and it's not going to show up in search, because search especially— Apple's better than they used to be, but it is still not good. And Spotify and some of the other apps are— it's like horrible, like really, really bad. Um, this one, DCBN, I was like, okay, like DC, so it's a politics show maybe, something like that. They got a really great show, it was called Don't Cook Bacon Naked. I'm like, it's a phenomenal name, don't bury the lead, you're crazy. So Think about this. This one drives me nuts. Somebody would go, hey, I'm trying to grow my audience, and I'll go in and they'll have their show on Apple and maybe Spotify. Well, there are all these other apps, right? There's iHeart in Ghana and Geo7 and, you know, Amazon. Everybody heard of that one. And it'd be like having your little 9-year-old Spider-Man, right? He's ready to go out Halloween. And he'd come out and go, well, I see all these lights are on, and that means they have candy. I get that. But, uh, maybe that one. No to that one. No, a kid's gonna go, I want candy! I'm going to every single house. So these apps have thousands of people. Why aren't you going to every single house? Because it takes all of 5 minutes to list your show in all of them. So that's always kind of a head scratcher. I'm trying to grow my audience but you're not in all the apps. Now realize that's not the 10,000 download switch, because for those of us that remember phone books when they're really, really thick— now they're like a pamphlet— being in the phone book didn't make you famous, it just made it easier to find you. And so as much as their search is not great, being in those apps makes it easier to be found. So you have all these different places that have candy, better known as downloads, that you could have your show in. And again, it takes all of 10 minutes to do that. So, uh, you want them to click. So first they gotta find you, then they're gonna click you. Well, remember, they're gonna see you before they hear you. So on the left was the original logo for the Podcast Rodeo Show. By the way, horrible name, because if you go, what do you think the Podcast Rodeo Show is about? People go, I don't know, the rodeo. And that's why I had to add a tagline First Impression Podcast Reviews. I was going to change the name, and my audience was like, no, it's— we've known it as The Rodeo Show forever, don't, don't rebrand it. But it's a horrible name. But I finally had, uh, an actual graphic designer who knew I hated the blue Yeti and put that together. But don't put— there's no need, like, to put your name down here. Remember, this is going to get shrunk down to about 175 pixels, so you don't really need that. And unless you're a podcast about podcasting, you really I don't need a microphone. So hopefully your artwork is going to make it— make them stop the scroll. Uh, keep in mind that if it looks like you did your artwork in crayon, if they go, wait, he took, wait, 4 seconds to make the artwork, how much time did they spend on the audio? You know, so keep that in mind. Uh, so we want them to click. So which one would you click on? This one, Episode 16, Dave Jackson, or Dave Jackson helps you grow your podcast. And I see so many people want the name of the show, so whatever, Dave Jackson Power Hour, and then Episode 16. And I'm like, you do realize that in an app, if you can see the title of the episode, the name of the show is like a half inch up the screen. There's no reason to put the name of the show. And I don't know about you, I don't know anybody that woke up and started Googling Episode 16., right? So make a title that makes you want to click.

And if you're—

if you have a couple episode titles, which one do you want to click more? Use that. We want them to be able to find us. And then if you think about it, when they type in the name of your show or they type in a topic and they see your title and your artwork— it's going to be the artwork that grabs them— and then they're going to look at your episode titles along with the name of your show.. And those 3 things are going to help them decide, do I want to click? So, um, and just the fact that, again, you can see here where sometimes your artwork shows up, sometimes it doesn't, but this is again what gets people to click. So then we want them to follow. This is where the magic really is. If you're old school, we used to call it subscribe. I still call it subscribe. The kids today are calling it follow. And this is another one. When I was a grocery bagger, if somebody came in and said, where are the green beans at? I didn't look at them and say, find them wherever you find all your fine vegetables over in aisle 3. No, I got off my knees and said, oh, it's over here, follow me. And I would go over and say, oh, did you want Del Monte fresh cut? Great, here you go. And I put it in the basket because if it was in the basket, that meant that basket was going to eventually end up in my paycheck. And when we get people to follow, that ends up in our downloads. Now we can all argue about, well, not everything's listened to, but nonetheless, it's gonna make it a lot easier. And so what people do when they send them to someplace else, like, oh yeah, just go to Apple Podcasts and search for tryandspelltis.com hashtag Z underscore, right? That's not going to work. Send them to your website. So if you go to schoolofpodcasting.com/subscribe This is what that page looks like. And there's our good friends Apple, Google, Spotify, Amazon. I use a plugin that's Social Subscribe and Follow, and that puts a little button at the top where if you're on a mobile phone and you click on that, it'll go, oh look, you're on an iPhone, here, here's a bunch of Apple stuff that you can subscribe with. But what did I just say? schoolofpodcasting.com/subscribe. I'm reinforcing my brand. So, and if people go, oh, this is such a good show, I'm going to share this with my friend, now I've got backlinks pointing at my website, not Apple's. Uh, you know, it's going to help boost your SEO. But make it easy to follow you, because that's what we want. We want them to find us, we want them to click us, and then we want them to follow us. Um, and then we want people to share your show. So So many people are like, man, I wish I was like one of those big shows that had, you know, a whole team. We've heard the NPR ones where at the end they're like, Bruce Smith is the, you know, storyboard designer, and, you know, Janice Ian is the music director, and, you know, Charles Schwab is the associate music director of the storyboard. There's 27 people that made this podcast. Wish I had a team. You do have a team. It's called your audience. And I interviewed, uh, Jack from the Darknet Diaries, and the guy was getting like 300,000 downloads an episode. This was a couple years ago. And I go, what's your magic? Well, number one, he asked a bunch of people, you know, to listen to a show and give him feedback. But he said, I slowly, I, uh, concisely and confidently ask people to share my show. Now this is again not a 10,000 download switch, but it helps because 70% of podcasts according to Jacobs Media are discovered via word of mouth. And so I started listening to people and they'd say things like, hey, uh, you know, uh, kind of like if you— I mean, you don't have to unless you want to. I mean, it doesn't matter, like whatever. I mean, but like if you, you know, you could share. Okay, fine. Our website's root.com. Like, that was the pitch to share your show? Where Jack goes, hey, I see we're at the, uh, the 28-minute mark, and today we're talking about this guy that packed an Xbox into the Pentagon. If you know somebody else that plays Xbox, you— it'd be kind of cool if you could share that with that person, because number one, they're going to think it's cool because they love that kind of stuff. And hey, I'm going to grow my audience, so it's going to actually benefit us both. Or you could just tell them to go to Darknet diaries.com. Slowly, specifically, confidently. And I asked somebody once, I go, Mike, what's the deal? And they're like, I feel salesy. I go, like a 1970s used car salesman? And she's like, yes. And I go, the guy that's selling you a bucket of bolts? And she goes, exactly. And I go, so your podcast is a bucket of bolts? No, I spent about 9 hours on it. I go, so you're helping people then, right? Yeah. So then why are you stopping yourself from helping other people. It's all up here, a lot of podcasting issues. But, uh, ask them. Promotion— when you think about it, don't preach to the choir. They already know the message. And what I mean by that is on social media, if this is your, your follower, right, this guy already knows that episode 16 is out. And again, on social media, don't put episode 16 is out. Give them something to click. You want to think in your social like a— you're giving them sales material to tell the person that's— like, if this is you, this is your follower, what kind of material are you going to give to have this person go, oh, that sounds cool, I want to go follow this person? To grow your audience, you have to get in front of people that don't know who you are. And again, you've got a team to do that, but when all you give them is, hey, episode 2, new episodes out, But if you said, hey, do you know anybody that likes the Beatles? We talk about them in this episode. They might then share it with their people that like the Beatles. Or did you watch the latest wrestling match? We talk about it in the next episode. If you are doing interviews, it has to be different than the last 5 the person did. We're talking about interviews earlier. If I have another person ask me, hey, what was podcasting like in 2005? I'm like, I'll answer that question, but I'm not going to share that with my audience because they've heard me talk about 2005 8 million times. So you gotta ask the questions that they haven't been asked but are still going to deliver value to your audience. Like, somebody can ask me what my favorite pizza is and, you know, what was my first girlfriend's name. My audience doesn't care. They're trying to grow their audience. They don't care about my pizza choice. So it's got to be a different question but still delivers value to your audience. And that's really it in a nutshell with 2 minutes to spare. Awesome. I was trying to blow through that because I realized a lot of that we'd already heard. But the biggest thing in that is Jack asked his truth tellers, is what I call them. And he said, listen to an episode. Like, great. Then answer these few questions. And it was, did you listen to the whole thing? And if the answer was no, when did you stop and why did you stop? And, uh, because the alarm set. That's it. And why did, why did you stop? So that was always good to know. And then the question that he really worked on is, on a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 is I'm telling everyone I know, how likely are you to share this podcast with your friends? And if he got a 7 Because a 7 is a C, and what does C mean? It's average. And his goal was not to make an average podcast. He said he was looking for 9s and 10s. If you got an 8, he'd be like, eh, 8, okay, it's above average. Because you don't want to be liked. I mean, we all want to be liked, but if you really want your audience to share it, if you really want your podcast to grow, you want to be loved. Like, oh man, another new episode. 'Excellent, can't wait to do it.' Because then if you go, 'Hey, would you mind sharing the show?' Um, they're going to be more than happy to. Um, I am— how can I say this politely? I, I will just throw everybody under the bus. I go to a church right now and our pastor is horrible. I love the guy to death. It's like making fun of Santa Claus. Hi. And, uh, but he knows it. Um, he actually admitted this one week. And the reason that church isn't growing is because it's not any good. Like, nobody's gonna go, oh, you gotta come hear my pastor, he will put you to sleep and he's completely disorganized. Come watch the train wreck, it's awesome. Um, you know, so, and your friends, especially in the Christian world, by the time it gets to God's ears, it's great, right? It's perfect by the time it gets to God's ears. Yeah, one problem: God is not the target audience in a Christian podcast that's trying to reach the unsaved, right? So So think about who your audience is, and I'm over time and I will now shut up. So thank you very much. Any—

are we taking questions? Questions? I mean, we're— yeah, I mean, at this point it's like, oh, well, we were way over, so okay.

Yes.

Where do you keep up with all the different tools and stuff like that plugin that you mentioned?

Yeah, that's from Daniel J. Lewis, Social Subscribe and Follow. Pod News is one, and this is kind of one of the advantages of after 18 years of doing this. I have lots of people go, have you seen this yet? Yeah. Um, and so, and my problem is like, it's just keeping up. I mean, my background's in teaching, and if you're not keeping up, you're going backwards. So I still know there's some really cool power in ChatGPT, and it's not so much ChatGPT. What I need to learn is how prompt that thing to give it what I want. And every week I'm like, I got it. And what's fun is if you go to Amazon, there are like 4 million books on ChatGPT, all probably written by ChatGPT, right? But I need to find a ChatGPT guru to help me, you know, fight through it. I know with Cast Magic, which is— again, some of this you just kind of go in and kick the tires and go, what's this do? But we did a show, we had like 6 topics in the show. So we made an outline and said, taking the summary, or write a summary based on the transcription using this outline. And it did like, because normally all AI gets you about 80% of the way there. This got us about 95% of the way there. And I was like, oh, that's, that's kind of cool. Todd Cochran, Rob's co-host for the New Media Show said something really cool. It, uh, I think is— I think it's true because we're talking about where do you see the trends. I think I, I'll put it this way: I can see this happening. Is it going to happen? But it's— marketers are looking for the laziest way to make money, some of them. Let's preface that. And Todd said, I can see a lot of people now are going to have some sort of AI thing. Well, they'll get go like, today's episode, you know, give me a, give me a, uh, you know, write an article about this topic. So I type in the topic and hit send. Some AI thing spits it out, hands it over to ElevenLabs, which then reads it for us, which then posts it via Authonic to your videos. And that podcast is going to suck so hard, right? It's just going to be awful because there's no emotion. She's not here. She was talking about that human connection, but it's going to be the new Anchor because Anchor was a media host and everybody's going, test, is this working? I don't know, is it working? I don't know, right? Okay, great. And then it was there forever and there were— it's like it was, uh, if we're gonna throw a pod in front of everything, it was pod litter. It just littered the landscape, which was great because you're like, you should go try podcasts, and they're like, I don't know why I searched. I got some guy going, hey, is the— should we talk about the one The one in the post or the one in the— this horrible stuff. Now the good news is, so we're gonna have a lot of really bad podcasts potentially coming. The good news is if you want something to, uh, sound fast, put it next to something slow. You want something to, you know, look short, put it next to something tall. If you want to look tan, stand next to me. I will, you know, it's great. So the people that are actually doing human-based podcasts are going to sound so much better because there's going to be so many that are bad. So that's the only thing I'm kind of like, I could see that happening. Is it gonna happen? Somebody's gonna— I know there are already podcasts that are 100% AI-generated, and everyone I've heard is like, wow, that's not good.

So, but my understanding is YouTube, uh, knows that and is actively working against that.

I could see that. I hope so, because it's just— and I'm not an anti-AI person. I think it's a great assistant. I don't want it to be an employee that thinks on its own, because every time I've used it, there's always some sort of tweak that I have to do. And it's cool because it sounds like me because it's using my transcript of stuff I said.

But nonetheless, it's, you know, Dave, if it can think on its own, it's going to go on strike like with the writers. That's it.

You know, but, uh, you can find me in School of Podcasting. I— most of my shows are— and this is the only reason why I have that domain, is people like, where can I find all your stuff? It's at powerpodcasting.com, which is your typical, uh— it's a tool I use. Speaking of how do you keep up with fun tools, my favorite one, switchy.io. It, uh, it's a link redirector. So, and that QR code, if you look at it, goes to that website, and I can see how many people use the QR code. It's really— in fact, I think my next episode is going to be using this tool to track what works, because what works for Rob's show may not work for, you know, Joe's show or my show. So how do you know what works? You start tracking the heck out of everything. You're like, wow, I got 7 people from my newsletter.

So, all right, thank you.

Give it up for Dave Jackson, everybody. Thank you so much, Dave. It's always a pleasure having you speak, um, even going back to the Everything Being on Fire shows on 3 hours sleep, even.

Yeah, and the drive, and that drive on top of it.

Uh, so, you know, uh, I, I can't, uh under, over, I don't know, one of those things, because I'm working on only like a couple hours myself. Um, state the fact that how much I appreciate you all being here, uh, stay until the end, uh, and hopefully everybody's had a great time. I hope it's been a great time, it was educational, um, and, and that's, you know, again, it's always about bringing people together. Um, normally this would be the time where I would dish out like a code for, you know, buy your ticket for next year now. But I ain't that dumb, you know, fool me once, 2020. Uh, so, so we're not, I'm not doing that now. But what I will do is, um, I mean, shut down Icon again. I hope not. I sure as hell hope not. But, but, uh, next, when we do release tickets, um, probably in the next 3, 4, 5 months. Um, I will send everybody that attended here a discount code, uh, to, you know, that'll be like a so many days type of thing, uh, to, to purchase your tickets. You know, hopefully we'll have a good view of September come, you know, January, February, uh, of, of next year that we won't be like, ah, you know, I don't know if we're gonna be able to pull this off. So hopefully, fingers crossed, we will make that happen. Um, and like I was saying, I have some ideas that I am really looking forward to workshop— working— shopping with, uh, some of the minds that are in this room right now, um, to make next year even better. Um, so yeah, I— again, I appreciate all of you coming. I would be, uh, honored if we could get like a group photo up front as well as some testimonials. I'll move the the camera over to like here so you get like the backdrop and everything. And, um, and then whoever wants to join us up at Topgolf, uh, would be absolutely awesome to have you with us. It's gonna be at 8:45. Uh, it seems like my wife's coming back to pick up the stuff and bring my golf clubs and shorts and sneakers, so I don't actually have to leave. So I'll be here until we have to leave, and it'll probably take about 20 minutes or so to get up there. But they do have a car, so we could leave whenever, go hang out, uh, hang out up there. Jeanette, and give a shout out to Jeanette. We appreciate her coming all the way down here, 3 hours each way, uh, to work.

Uh, so whoever did not get a headshot before, after we do the group photo, if you would like to get a headshot that you could use for for social media, for whatever, um, just let me know and I'll be taking them.

Thank you for joining us.

Appreciate you watching the live stream. Uh, we're gonna close it up now and we're gonna move on with our evening. And like I said, thank you so much for watching. If you've watched a lot of the live streams today, that's, that's fantastic. So thank you. We'll talk to you later. Bye.