TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

Speaking with TJ Walker, the show where we dissect how and what world class leaders communicate.

Folks, there are a lot of charlatans out there holding out their shingle calling themselves a podcast expert. Happy to take your money. Our guest today is not one of them. He is the real deal. He's been in podcasting on every side of the mic since 2004 and been coaching and training people on how to communicate through the medium of podcasting and online for 20 years. This is a fantastic show for you today.

I know.

I learned a lot. For example, what are these time codes about that people are constantly putting in their podcast notes? How do you access. I never knew how to access that quickly and easily with one touch. You're going to learn that in the interview today. What's the best way of building confidence when you are first starting out? How do you frame your thought patterns to be comfortable and relaxed when you're podcasting and speaking in front of a microphone? You hope to millions, but it might just be to five people. That's still enough to make you nervous sometimes. So great tips on that. And for those of you in big organizations, you're going to get, I think, a different perspective on how podcasting can save you a lot of time and essentially time shift your meetings for employees, clients, customers, investors all over the world. Our guest today is Dave Jackson. He is with the School of Podcasting. It's a great website. I use it myself. I've purchased products and services from there. No, I'm not getting any commissions. I'm not an affiliate. I pay for his expertise and I'm happy to share his expertise with you today at absolutely no charge. Now, please join me for my conversation with Dave Jackson. Dave Jackson, thanks for joining us today.

TJ thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to this.

You have been around the block a time or two when it comes to podcasting. You are one of the originals. You have been in the audio field, Internet, radio, whatever you want to call it, for two decades. And people come to you all the time and say, oh, that sounds like fun. I'm going to start a show. But it's not that easy. Most who start don't get past the sixth or seventh episode. What's the checklist in an individual's mind or an organization's mind that they should go through before deciding to start a podcast?

Well, the first thing you have to figure out is why are you doing this? You know, maybe you want to be seen as an expert. Maybe you're trying to reach A global audience. Maybe you're trying to promote a product, something. Maybe you're just doing it for fun, but you need to know, why are you doing this? Because if you don't know the why, you're never gonna make it through the how. There is a bit of a learning curve. Not a tremendous one, but there is a learning curve depending on what you're doing. If you're doing a bunch of things with different co hosts and they're scattered all over the world, that makes things a little trickier. But if it's just a solo person, that could be fairly easy. So you need to know the why, and then you need to figure out who your target audience is. A lot of people that don't make it past episode seven never really figured out who their target audience is. And I kind of jokingly call it the. The Three Guys, One Brain show. And this is where they think they're funny because they have all this inside joke kind of stuff that they've known each other. And, boy, you know, the. The time about the Orange Gatorade story, and they all bust into laughing and, oh, this is hilarious. Well, they don't realize that I don't know the Orange Gatorade story. So to the outside world, you're really not that funny. And. And so you need to kind of know who your target audience is and what do they want? And I always use the analogy of, you know, Secret Santa at Christmas time, and you get somebody's name who works in a completely different department. You'd have to figure out, what does that person want? Because there's a rule, no gift card. So you'd have to go ask somebody in that department. Hey, what is. I got Carol in the Secret Santa. What does Carol want for Christmas? What is she into? And they go, oh, well, she's. She's into crocheting. So maybe if you got her some yarn and some. Some needles and this and that, and so you give her that gift, and she's like, oh, wow, this is awesome. I love this stuff. And she's like, boy, I hope you know, I get Dave next year in Secret Santa. He gives great gifts. Well, your podcast is a gift. So if you know what your audience wants when they hear it, they're going to go tell their friends. Wait, you got to go hear this podcast. It's really cool. They talk about exactly what I need, and they tell two friends, and they tell two friends and things like that. So you need to know why you're getting into it, who are your audiences? And that's really just the start of it to get going. And then from there you get into how are you going to do it? And that's where you go into 8 million different ways with technology and things of that nature. But a lot of people think you have to be this uber geek. And in some ways, you do have the skills already. If you've ever been in the car and you're listening to some music and the phone rings, well, you're probably going to turn the radio down so you can turn talk on the phone. Well, then you know how to adjust audio. And if you've ever uploaded a picture to Facebook, well, then you can upload a file to a media host. And if you've ever used Microsoft Word, then you can probably use WordPress. So a lot of things in there are very much similar to that. If you've ever pressed record on, for those of us that remember the vcr, well, then you can press record on Audacity. So a lot of the same skills are in there. They're just kind of jumbled around in a whole new way. But those are some things to think about. And maybe the last thing would be, how are you going to know if it's successful? Because for some people especially, there are some people that are just crushing it with podcasting. And that's great, in the same way that there are people that are just crushing it in the music business and they put out an album and it just sells millions. But for that one person that's selling gold and platinum records, there are hundreds, if not thousands of people that put out an album and it goes nowhere because, well, maybe that's just not impacting with people. So you have to realize, how am I going to know if this is successful? Is it a number of downloads? Is it the amount of people that comment on a show? Is it the amount of times I get asked to be a speaker at an event? Or is it the number of input I get from my audience on making a new product? You know, how am I going to know if it's a success? Because otherwise, you know, how do you know if you're doing it right now?

Dave, you've worked with hundreds, if not more podcasters who are experts, authors, individuals, commentators, musicians. But I'm wondering about your advice for organizations. There are a lot of businesses, governments, UN agencies out there, many of my clients who are already communicating with the world. They've got websites, newsletters, sometimes print newsletters, emails, blogs, video. And they know that a podcast should be something they're considering. But they're still. And they already have an audience, their own customers, their own stakeholders. They're not after advertising money. But what do you think they should be doing as they're planning a podcast? And who, what organization should or should not do a podcast?

Well, I'd have to think hard about what shouldn't because really, anything to me. One of my first jobs, I was a copier repairman and we would pull in all the salespeople from all over the state. And so that's time in the car, that's mileage that the company's paying for, things like that. And all the salesmen would get together and they would say, here's the sales for the month. Way to go, Ed. Ed's our number one sales guy. Now get out there and sell something. And the guys would drive back to their territory. More time lost, more mileage that the company had to pay for. And there we go. And I was like, that would be a great podcast because you can do podcasts that aren't open to the public. You can make them private and you could just put that out, read the sales numbers and go. Way to go, Ed. Ed's our number one guy. And they can have that automatically downloaded to their phone. Think of the time you would save and the fact that it's, it's. People can listen to it whenever they want. They don't have to get up early because they got to go to that 8 o' clock meeting in the middle of nowhere. So there's that. One of my favorite. It was.

So it's essentially just a way of time shifting meetings.

Oh, absolutely. Podcasting. Podcasting in itself is a time shifted conversation. That's what I always tell people. I had, I've had listeners of mine that say, dave, I talk to you more than my best friend and he lives right down the street because I'll put out a episode, they'll send me a voicemail or an email or whatever they're going to do to contact me. I'll reply to their reply. And all of a sudden we're having this time shifted conversation where their friend down the street they might talk to twice a month. And so it's, it's a time shifted conversation. That's the beauty of it. Because as it is a global platform, you know, I might put something out at, at 8:00 clock at night. Well, it's whatever, five in the morning in Australia or something like that, so they can find that whenever they get it, reply whenever they can, and I can just listen to it later. It's kind of that whole Netflix society. We're used to being able to consume what we want, where we want it, when we want it, and podcasting just ties into that. So. But as a. In a. You talked about organizations having blogs and things of that nature. Well, right there you have the content, the beauty of it. And I always contact people that have great blogs and they go, why isn't this a podcast? And because I really love this article. It was awesome. I would love to read it on the way to work, but I can't read and drive at the same time. But I could listen to it if it was a podcast. So if you're already putting out content, it's not that. It's not. The battle of finding content is over. You just have to read that into a microphone in such a way that it doesn't sound so much that you're reading it unless you're doing news. You can get away with news and things like that, but try to make it so it's not completely boring and monotone.

You mentioned reading. That's a hard thing for most people to do without sounding boring and monotone. I mean, I know my main job is public speaking training and media training, and a lot of times I'll have clients try to read a speech, and all I have to do is force them to watch their own speech and they never want to read it again because they've put themselves to sleep now. I mean, you don't. I've heard many of your podcasts, and you're fantastic. You certainly don't sound like you're reading. Are you saying you do recommend it for others?

It really depends on the person. Some people that have just no confidence in their ability to speak, the ability to. Because I don't like people to wing it. You have to know what your point is before you hit record. Because I've tried numerous times. When I go, oh, I know it's all in my head. I'm just gonna hit record and just. I'm just gonna spew what's in my brain. And at least for me, I've learned that that just doesn't work. I have bullet points. Many times I'm like, here's the main points of this topic. And I just kind of flow through that. Now some people go, I'm not that good. I'm gonna go off topic or this and that. Fine, you can do that and go ahead and write out what you want to say. But here's the thing. We don't write like we talk and we don't talk like we write. So when you write that out, write it exactly the same way you would say it, because otherwise it's gonna. Your tongue trips up and just. Things get, like you said, they get a little boring. And that way you can read it just like the way, you know, you talk because you wrote it that way. That would be something I've done. And I know some people. I was really surprised. I. There was a podcast I was listening to, and I was. I got to meet them, and we were talking about this, and they said, oh, yeah, I script everything out. And I said, really? I said, I never would have guessed that. Then they. They said, well, that's why I. I write like I talk. They say, I don't. I don't worry about punctuation and commas and things. I just. I hear what's in my head and I type it out, and that way I don't have to think about it. It's already been thought out. And they say they actually liked it because the act of writing it out helps them kind of hammer out their main point. And there's something about seeing it on the screen or if they're actually writing it out by hand, that it will flush out other ideas, and they're like, oh, that's a good idea. But you know what? I could say this and that. So it really depends. And this is the beauty of podcasting, is the only way you're gonna put out something where you sound stupid is if you record it and put it out. So you could try it one way with just bullet points, and then listen to that and say, okay, I kind of like that. And then if you wanted to type up the whole script and record that and then listen to the both of them and say, you know, I kind of like the way I sounded when I was just doing the bullet points. I did kind of sound like I was reading. There are things that happen when you're reading something that's been typed out because you'll miss a word and you'll correct it. And a lot of times that doesn't happen in natural speech. You're. It might, but I.

It just sounds weird. You've gone off. They've gone off the tracks, and you've called attention to the fact that you're reading. I don't want to sound dogmatic. Some people can do it. Malcolm Gladwell's podcast, he's reading for the most part, and it's a tremendous success with tens of gazillions of people downloading it. And listening to it. So I don't want to make it sound like it's impossible. From an organizational standpoint, though, I find for most people, if you give them the assignment of having to write everything out out, that's an excuse to never do the second podcast. It just seems like too much work. You mentioned confidence a moment ago. As much as people like to complain about the technology, and I've certainly had my share of technology problems, I think the far bigger stumbling block is people getting confident enough to speak into that microphone, even though they know they can hit edit, even though they know they can hit delete. And the world is filled with organizations and websites to give you information on the technology. Not as much about great coaching to be confident when you speak. How did you gain your confidence to speak so smoothly and comfortably behind the mic?

Instead of thinking about, you know, the hundreds, the thousands, you know, we get these delusions of grandeur of, you know, the world is listening to me. I don't think about that. I don't talk to a group. I talk to my best friend, who I'm really excited to talk about this subject. I'm thinking about the person sitting across the table from me. And so I hit record, and I'm like, all right, today we're going to talk about this new tool. It's called hotjar. Com. Wait till you hear about this. It does a heat map. It does this and that, and here's what's cool about it, and I'm excited about it and blah, blah, blah. And I'm talking to one person, because if I think about all those people, then you start to get a little nervous and you start to stammer more and things of that nature. So I always talk like I'm talking to one person, because if you think about it, it's not like the. The golden days of radio where the family would sit around the big Victrola. You know, you're talking to somebody more or less probably in a set of earbuds or they're in the car. It's not like there's a family listening to this. So you are really talking to one person.

Although I do threaten to force my family to watch my podcast on the TV screen from the YouTube feed. I asked my daughter that tonight. She's three. Hey, do you want to watch that Disney movie or do you want to watch daddy podcasts? I just wanted to get a reaction.

Well, the other thing is, and I understand this, one of my hobbies is music, and I played in bands when I was younger, and If I ever went to a jam night or something like that, and I'm playing somebody else's gear and I hit a couple chords on the guitar and I don't really the way the guitar sounds, I don't play as well. So I get that. And one of the biggest hurdles is you are going, there's no way around this. You're going to hate the sound of your own voice. And there's a scientific reason for this. When you listen to yourself talk, if you put your, your fingertips on your forehead or on the, on your jaw, you will feel that when you talk, there's vibrations going on. So actually it's weird. You're listening through your ears and. But it's almost like having a subwoofer. There's a lot of bass to your voice in your head because you're listening through your skull. That sounds really weird, but there are parts of your skull that are vibrating that add this bass frequency. Well, the problem is you record your voice and when it comes out through the speakers, the only thing you're now listening to your voice with is your ears. So it'd be like having a, you know, you have this big surround sound with the big subwoofer and the bass is just rattling the windows and somebody goes over and unplugs the subwoofer and all sudden you're like, ooh, it's all tinty and, and thin sounding. And you're like, is that the way I really sound? And some, I know some people that just can't get over that. I'm like, yeah, that's the way you sound. And there are ways that you can boost that up and things of that nature. But in the end you sound okay. I can understand every word you're saying. And yes, you sound different, but you don't sound awful. But it's one of those things that everybody goes when they hear their, their voice the first time. They're like, ugh, I don't like the way that sounds. And it's like, trust me, you sound fine.

And if you do enough podcast or listen to yourself enough. What I found over time is how you hear in your own, how you sound to yourself in your own head versus how you sound coming out of speakers. Gradually, over time, they blend together and you can't really tell any difference. It's no longer jarring. You get one self image of your voice.

Yeah. And I think we're all our worst critics because to me, I just sound like me. And I hear other people go, oh, you have Such a cool radio voice. And I go, really? Because I don't. It just sounds like me talking. They're like, oh, no, it's awesome. So we're all our worst critic. I know a bunch of people who still, you know, just hate their own voice. And that's. That's something else. You're going to get better at this as you go along. And you can ask any podcaster when you get to episode 10, when they go back to episode one, no matter how much time they spend on their launch and getting that first episode absolutely perfect, you. You're gonna listen back to that and go, ugh. Cause you're just, you know, the first time you tie your shoe, the first time you shoot a basketball, whatever you do, you're going to get better at it as you go along. So don't.

I'm gonna disagree. Not everybody thinks their voice sounds bad. Donald Trump thinks his voice sounds fantastic. It's fabulous. This is not a political podcast, so we won't get into that. But I bring him up because. Interesting. At least to me, it was interesting. The Hillary Clinton campaign started a podcast about six weeks ago, and when it came out, I gave it great reviews. I thought it was interesting. I thought it was well done. The audio production sounded fantastic. Since then, I've been disappointed because it only comes out, like, once every two weeks, and Hillary's only been on it once, as far as I can tell. I don't know why a political campaign wouldn't just have audio rolling on a candidate or at least, you know, 10 minutes a day where they could speak directly to their voters, their volunteers, their supporters in an unfiltered way. But really, neither campaign is doing that well.

It's what gets me that there's something here that they could really be doing to get people to really tune in is anytime you can give behind the scenes looks of anything. So it could be, what is it like getting ready to go on Good Morning America? Or, you know, what's it like? You know, what are you tracking? Are you on a train? Are you on a bus? You know, where are you eating any of that stuff? I would like to know that, because you just see them on the podium talking and this and that. Anytime you can give a behind the scenes, that will. Because you can't get that anyplace else. That's the thing. It's content. You can't get anyplace else. You've now given people a reason. As long as it's not your favorite French toast recipe, it's something that'd be somewhat interesting. But, yes, I'm with you. Why? They're not recording every single speech. And granted, it's probably the same speech over and over and over, but you can then take different bits and pieces.

I'm not even thinking of speeches. I'm just thinking of every candidate. And I've worked in a lot of political campaigns. When you're campaigning, you spend a tremendous amount of time sitting on planes and cars and limos and buses going to the next venue. It would be so easy to have a staffer just put a mic in your face and say, what do you really want our supporters to know about today? And as you mentioned, give that behind the scenes. Let's practice what we preach here. Let's go behind the scenes. Now. I've been a big advocate during the last year of podcasting, but I want to be transparent with folks. There are technical problems. I've had massive technical problems today. In fact, before we started this show, I had massive technical problems and my speaker was fading out. Dave was trying to help me. And there are technical problems. You don't have to have a Master's or a PhD in electrical engineering, but it's not as simple as typing a blog. It is a little more complicated. It can be overcome. And I want to thank Dave. And by the way, Dave is a great consultant for this sort of thing. So he's not just a great guest today. He's someone whose opinion value enough to pay him for his time as a podcast consultant. So if you, if you're worried about some of the technology sides, check out the link in the show notes and you can figure out how to contact him directly for consulting or going into some of his online courses that I've gone through and recommend as well. How's that, Dave, for behind the scenes? Seamless promotion that is organic to the show. We didn't plan right out, but it was genuine.

Well, one of the things I always tell people is there isn't really a one size fits all. I know there are some consultants out there that will be happy to sell you almost $2,000 worth of equipment when all you need is an $80 microphone. So be, you know, be careful, do some research. I know in your case, tj, you did a lot of research and it's. It's kind of tricky sometimes. And anybody that works with computers on a regular basis knows that every now and then they're going to throw you a curve ball. And, and I know we've been kind of scratching our head together trying to figure out. And I'm looking forward to cracking what's going on with your computer because there's some interesting things going on there that I haven't seen before. But that's one of the things I like about being as a consultant. Every now and then you go, hmm, this isn't the old, you know, do this reboot, retry, reload the driver kind of thing. You have a special fun filled thing going on on your computer and we'll get it figured out.

But enough of my petty little problems that most people don't care about. But it does lead me to a question I've been dying to ask. Because as I've immersed myself in the podcast world in really just the last year, I'm consuming dozens and dozens of podcasts each week. A wide range your podcast, a lot of other people in the podcasting space, but people in every sort of niche, whether it's presidential candidates, whether it's Tim Ferriss, whether it is Malcolm Glazer, you name it. I'm sampling a lot of different things. And one of the things I noticed that's to me a little confusing is this constant reference to this is my podcast and you're listening to podcast 309. And the reason I'm confused by that is if you look at someone like Bill O'Reilly, who's been the number one, and I'm not really a fan of his, but he's been the number one newscast on all of cable news for about 15 years. He he doesn't start his show by saying welcome to my cable News program, episode 4032. He just starts with the topic, the news that's of interest to the audience. He doesn't call attention to his format. One of the things I always teach my public speaking clients is don't start off by talking about your speech or what you're going to say in your speech or you're planning for your speech or what you're going to say in your speech. Just speak and say something interesting to the audience. And the prevailing wisdom among the poobahs in the podcasting community is that I'm wrong and that you really do need to call it a podcast and identify it by number. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, the number is for blind people. Blind people, granted they have screen readers and things of this nature. But if you start every show with a ba ba da ba ba ba ba it's the Bob show and then the next episode goes ba b it's the Bob show and then the next episode goes Ba ba ba da ba ba ba ba. It's the Bob. They go, is this the same episode? Is it the what? So by identifying what episode number it is, they know, oh, I've already listened to this one. I already listened to 352. So it's one of those things. And that goes. You're right. That does go back years ago, when the ipod nano came out, there was no screen on it. So there's no way to tell if you. Because even you could say, well, they can read it. It's right on the screen. The ipod nano had no screen. So it's an old habit that hasn't died. Do you need to put a number? No, not really. But like I say, old habits die hard. And it just makes it easy to go, oh, yeah, I've heard this one before. Because most of us have the same intro. And that is something. I get your point of. Just do your speech. But realize that only about 35% of America right now is actually listen to a podcast. So there's a huge pool of people who have no idea what it is, and they're coming here for the first time. And that's why most of us have some sort of intro that explains what our show is, what you can expect from it, and who I am and why you should listen to me. Because. And you have to do that fairly quickly. Don't drag it out. Because people have the attention span of a gnat. So you have about anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds. And 30 seconds is probably stretching it to really grab somebody by the throat to go, oh, my gosh, that. This is what I'm hoping to hear. So I usually start off with a teaser. On today's show, I'm going to explain how I got a sponsor on my podcast. And then I roll the intro. I'm Dave Jackson. I've been doing this for 20 years. I help you massage your message. I help you tackle the technology, face your fears, and flatten a learning curve. My website is this and that, and then bam, I'm right into the content. I don't want to drag that out, but I have to realize that as much as there are thousands of people every week that go, yep, he's saying the exact same thing he did last week, but they'll suffer through that for 15 seconds because everybody knows there's. It might be a brand new person that's doing that. And, I mean, Dave Ramsey does that every day of his show. It starts off, and, you know, we're whatever dead is king and blah, blah, Blah, you know, and he does his little spiel. Rush Limbaugh from the, whatever his studio is, you know, this is the EIB network. And so the, the thing that's nice about a podcast is where you will hear somebody in radio do what's called a reset. And they'll say, if you just joined us, you're listening to the Dave Show. But we don't have to do that because nobody's joining a podcast in the middle of it. We all heard it at the beginning. And that's one of the advantages that podcasting has over radio is everybody's going to hear that intro. Everyone is. Nobody's going to skip it. So you can. For me, being a trainer, that's my background is half the success of a class is the setup and setting expectations. And you can do that within the first minute of your show to where people can either A, go, I want to listen to this. You really have my attention, or B, I have no intention of listening to this. I don't care about this topic. And some people go, well, I don't want to do that. And like, no, you actually, you do. You don't want to waste their time. So if you can give people, hey, today we're going to talk about, you know, combining cinnamon and green beans. Well, half the people are going to go, I don't like cinnamon or green beans. I'm done. Done. Well, okay, you just save them time and they might actually come back next week. Because next week you're talking about something that you might like. And if you say, okay, this week we're going to talk about how to turn $5 into 5,000, you do. Those people might stay tuned, but by giving them a little tease. It's a radio bit, but it keeps them tuned in and lets you get through your intro. And then you're right, you got to get to the content. Do not spend 15 minutes talking about your, I always say the French roast recipe or my dog threw up on the carpet or whatever. You get to the content, you can throw that stuff in later.

If you're just joining us, our guest is Dave Jackson, who has a fantastic website, schoolofpodcasting.com which you're going to want to check out. Now obviously I didn't need to say that because people are not just joining us, but that does go right to the next question that I've wanted to ask you and someone like you. You see in Tim Ferriss show notes a lot of the higher end podcasts, these detailed, explicit, you know, 27 seconds, 0.2 seconds, this is talked about. And in 3 minutes and 22 seconds, this is talked about. How many people are fast forwarding to all these micro units of a show? And how important is that for podcasters to have that explicit a detail of every single subject at every second? Because I certainly haven't figured out how to allocate the time to put something like that together.

That's the fun part. The. The more detailed you get, the more time it takes, and it kind of depends on the show. The beauty of it is it's your show. If you. I know Jay Moore is a famous actor, comedian, has a sports show on AM radio here. And he types up maybe a sentence and a half, which kind of drives me nuts. Like, he'll just say, sam, so. And so is a director of a film. Put your name on it, blah, blah, blah. That's it. And I'm like, well, director of what? Why do I want to. Who. I've never heard of this person. And so I either have to listen or I. In many cases, I go, never heard of that person. Next. And I don't even start it. So you can type as little or as much as you want. The.

Well, I get the. I mean, I get the idea of 3, 4 sentences to whet your appetite that I get.

Now. The. The advantage of putting timestamps is not all apps, but I know I use the Overcast app on. On iOS. It's a beautiful app. It's so much better than Apple's app. And if somebody puts in time codes, you can click right on that number and it will jump right to that point in the podcast. So I'll give you a classic example. Libsyn is a. A media. A podcast media host, and they do a show about podcasting. And the first, probably 10 minutes, they're spotlighting other podcasts. They play little promos and things like that. And then they get to podcasting news, and they get into podcasting stats. I don't really care about the first part of the show. Not that those aren't valuable, but for me, I want to go right to the part that I want. And so I pull it up, I click on the artwork, I see the little time stamp, I go right to the news. So I use that a lot. And it's a great way to, you know, if you can give those people, if you can give your audience options. Now, if I was only covering one topic, then maybe I don't need to do that, but. And it's really, you know, up to the host. If You've got the time. You know you can do that. And when in doubt, ask your audience. There are all sorts of free tools that you could say, hey, I've been doing the show notes this way for three months. Do you actually use the little time stamps? And that could be a quick survey for people to do. And if you see that only 15% are actually using it, maybe you don't spend the extra 20 minutes to put that in.

Mystery solved. Now, I get it because we didn't talk about this in advance, but I had the exact same issue. First of all, I use Lipsyn. I do recommend them. Second of all, I listen to the feed. Third of all, I also am trying to figure out how not to listen to the first 10 minutes of the show, because it's not that I don't care about other podcasters, but it's just not as much of an interest. Now, I just opened up in my podcast app, the feed, and I see the time codes, but if I click, it doesn't do anything. Do I have to be in overcast for it to work?

It's an overcast thing and some other apps. I'm not sure which ones, but I know Overcast does, and that's where I'm cut. I mean, the podcast app used to be really, really cool from Apple, and it's. It's one of the things where you kind of don't want to just go, well, it went downhill when Steve, you know, died, but when Steve Jobs died, it went downhill. In fact, there is. Until you subscribe to a show, click play, go to the bottom, and click on the player again, you will not see the formatted show notes where you can actually click on links and. And in my world, that is very unapple. It's supposed to be very intuitive and very obvious, and it's just not. And I don't believe the timestamps work at all in the podcast app. And that's one of the reasons I like the Overcast app. I also love the fact it has a feature which is kind of weird. It takes a little getting used to, but it will look for empty spaces in a podcast. So if you have somebody who talks really slow, it will truncate the spaces and speed up the podcast without making them sound like chipmunks.

Better not put the old Paul Harvey podcast show on that. For those of you who remember old timers, who remember Paul Harvey, he famously, I think, was running short one day and ended his broadcast by saying, paul Harvey, good day. And it became such a signature way of identifying himself. But to me, he's to this day, he's still a classic example of the fewer words per minute, the more pausing, often the more effective you are as a speaker.

Absolutely. Pauses can add all sorts of hidden meanings to any kind of sentence.

And you mentioned Rush Limbaugh a few moments ago. And I am, I guess, ashamed to say this, but I was hosting a daily political talk radio show on one of his original 66 stations when he went national. Now he went national at 88. This was early 89. I was hosting a daily political talk radio show in Tallahassee, Florida. And it looks like his radio career turned out a little better than mine, because I have and I want to hear about your history and how you first got behind a mic. But I mean, I first got behind a mic when I was 12, doing my junior high school newscast in 1975, started doing student commentaries for my student radio station at duke in probably 83, then started doing guest commentaries in Florida, mid-80s, and went on to hosting in 89. And I'm either proud or ashamed to say I'm probably the most unsuccessful talk show host in America. I've been on probably a dozen stations and seven different networks, and pretty much every network went out of business. So I don't have quite the storied radio history of Rush Limbaugh, although it's almost as long. How did you get into this whole thing?

I had a newsletter for musicians that was, you know, how to get more gigs and get more fans and more CD sales. And at the time I was a musician, and it had a pretty decent email list. And a tool came out that you could put audio on a website and it would put a little button that you could click in and listen to it. And so I started doing that. I basically, again, started just basically reading my newsletter, putting it on the website. And when I would send out the newsletter, I might click here to listen to it because at that point it was an MP3 file. And the first thing I noticed is I would put out this newsletter, I would send it out, and I would occasionally get an email back that said, hey, I really like this article. This is what we do, blah, blah, blah. Just by turning it into audio, I started getting more feedback. And I think a lot of that is with audio you can add tone of voice. You can be sarcastic if you want to now, and you just can't. There are ways you can try to do that in print, but this was just another way of communicating. And so I had been putting, quote, audio on a webpage that's not really a podcast. And a friend of mine was a big Internet guy, and he came back and said, hey, you know, and this tells you how long ago it was. He says, you know how you miss the MySpace boat? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I kind of missed the MySpace boat. He goes, I just came back from this thing. He goes, the next thing's going to be podcasting. And I go, what's a podcasting? And I remember I Googled it, and there was literally, I think, a page and a half of results. There just wasn't anything. This is back in early 2005, and when I finally kind of pieces parted one together and actually uploaded a file and saw it come down in a very archaic RSS tool to bring it down, I was like, ooh, this has potential. And my background, I mean, I'm with you. I was, I think my very first. One of my first public appearances, I was in fifth grade, and I sang in a choir in. The minute we were done, I ran off stage and threw up. So that was fun. I was actually a painfully shy person going all the way through school. In high school, I was a. I was a grocery bagger, and I got fired because I was just painfully shy, and I wouldn't talk to customers, and they're like, oh, no. Yeah. And I went to a teacher of mine, and he said, who helped me get the job? And he's like, here's the deal.

You.

You got to come out of that shell of yours. And I said, how do you do that? And my best friend was just Mr. Monkey Hour. He was Mr. Outgoing. And he said, see your friend Scott? And I'm like, yeah. He goes, you need to be like him. Well, that might as well have been like telling me to grow a third arm. And he says, here's what you got to do. He goes, if you act the way you want to be, someday you will be the way you act, which is basically fake it till you make it. And so I started doing that, and it did. The more I started talking, the more I found out I could make people laugh. I have a decent sense of humor, and it just slowly built on to where now you can't shut me up. And then being a musician, occasionally I would be singing backup or I would talk to the crowd. So I was kind of. I already knew the audio equipment side. So when this came on board, it was just a matter of recording some audio and grabbing some old dented microphones from my musician days and putting it out as a podcast. And I think the. The thing that really hooked me in is I remember I did. I think it was my second podcast. And I'm literally, I'm in the middle of Cowtown, Ohio. I'm in a little city called Mogador, next to the water heater in the basement, waiting for the dryer to quit so I can record. And I put out this episode, and the next day I got feedback from my guy in Germany. And that's when I went, oh, wait a minute. I am. I'm officially hooked now because there's some guy on the other side of the planet, and not only is he listening to my show, but he likes it. And that's when the. That was it. I was hooked from that point forward.

Meaningful feedback. Dave, where are we in the life cycle of podcasting? I'm old enough to remember it was probably the summer of 78, and everybody I knew had to have a CB radio, and that was a big deal. And a year or two later, you couldn't find a CB radio. Fifteen years ago, everybody's hopping on the. The blog, the blogging bandwagon nowadays. I can't even remember the last time I heard someone say they have started a blog. I mean, I know a lot of people who sort of begrudgingly, well, let's update this month's blog. But you don't really read that much about people starting a blog on their button collection. And now they have 10 million new followers every week and are getting rich. We've gone through this life cycle with podcasting where it was obscure, it was just for techies, slow growth. Then you got the app, the native app on the phone. Other ways of making it a little easier for people to. To hear it. Now we're in a situation where really famous people. You've got David Axelrod, former chief media guru to Obama, starting a podcast. You have Obama speech writers starting them. You have Hollywood celebrities. Hillary Clinton has one. Is there still a lot more upside, or is this a bubble about to burst and we're going to see 80% of the podcasts flake away, or is that always the case and most podcasts die?

Well, the. The beauty of it is going back to 2004 when. When podcasting kind of was born, the numbers have gone up every single year. So it seems like there's waves of it coming and going. What comes and goes is the media coverage. So about every three years, you'll. You'll get, you know, oh, podcasting. It's back and it's. But it Never went anywhere. And the numbers have gone up. Every, every single year, the numbers of listeners go up. It just that the media goes like, when Serial came out, there was a bot of, oh, podcasting is great. And then it's, oh, podcasting is awful because nobody's making a living at it. No, wait, no, here's somebody who's doing it. It's back. So the media coverage comes and goes, but we've got a ways to go. I mean, it's. We're a long way away. I mean, from 2005 to 2007, all I did was explain to people, no, you don't need an ipod to listen to a podcast. You can listen to it on your computer, etc. Etc. So that was, that was fun for the first couple of years. And we're up to about 30% of the US has listened to at least a single podcast. So that means we have 70% of people who haven't listened to their first podcast yet. And some people get depressed. They're like, oh, it's only 30% to me, I'm like, this is awesome. That means we're like, you know, we're like a small child. We're approaching teenage years. We're getting ready to run and really go crazy because we have a whole lot of people who haven't discovered it yet. And the research shows that once people find podcasting, they don't go back to radio. Why would I listen? I have. A friend of mine was in the car with his 12 year old who's been born and raised with an ipod, where she picks the music that she wants to listen to when she wants to listen to it. And the one day they were in the car and they didn't have a phone and they didn't have an ipod, and dad said, well, we'll just listen to the radio. And she literally said, what's radio? And he goes, oh, you tune in and they play music for you in between advertisements and things like that. And she says, well, how do you pick the songs? And they go, well, they pick the songs for you. And she goes, why would you listen to that? To her, that was just such a foreign concept. So once we get to these people who haven't heard it and what happens is when you create a podcast that is really, again, it delivers value. I hear it time and time again. I found your podcast. I downloaded the last 40, I drove to Michigan. I listened to you for three hours straight. When people find you, they have this like, oh my gosh, I thought I was the Only one who thought this, I thought I was the only one that was interested in this. And they download your back catalog. That builds that connection with the host, and then from there they start telling their friends. So if you're trying to make a lot of money quickly, podcasting is not the way to go. But if you're looking to build a bond and a trust with a group of community who later you can, then if you want to monetize your show, by all means. You know, the best time to start a podcast was in 2004. The second best time is right now.

You just brought up the subject of money and monetization. I don't want to keep you much longer. Your time is valuable. But my last question for you. I want to paint a scenario and you can talk as long or as short as you want on it. Let's say it's somebody who is a facilitator, professional facilitator, a solo practitioner. It's not what I do, but we have some in the audience. They've written a few books. They have a corporate practice. Let's say they have a decent income. They make quarter million a year or so. They have consulting practice, speeches, books, a website. They want to do a podcast. They want to do it right. They're not in it just to promote their business, they want to make money from it, but they're in it for the long haul. They don't make a penny for two years. They're happy with that. But what advice, single page advice would you give to them with the idea that, say, three years down the road, they're at least making 100,000 a year directly from revenue associated with their podcast.

Well, number one, you rarely make money from the actual MP3 file. You, you make money by again, developing that, that know, like and trust factor by getting, speaking, by getting opportunities. I mean, I've, I've had jobs handed to me because of my podcast. And then if you do have products to sell, that will work as well. But you might be, you might get opportunities to speak, opportunity, all sorts of other opportunities. And it's hard to put a dollar sign on those because it depends on what the opportunity is. But you're right, the one thing that people do not tune into on purpose is an infomercial. So I think one of my favorite examples, I don't know if it's still going, but at one point Maytag had a podcast and instead of making it about washers and dryers, they said, who's our target audience? Who has a lot of laundry. And their target audience was families, because they have a lot of laundry. And so their episodes were like, how to get your kids to brush their teeth longer. There's all these little tips on, you know, family stuff and then brought to you by your friends at Maytag. And I was like, that's kind of a cool way. It was just. It was a branding thing. There wasn't a call to action. There wasn't a go to podcast.com maytag and get $50 off. It was just a branding thing. So sometimes it's that. But you can deliver if you're a company and you have the same questions over and over and over and over and over. If people are asking those questions, put them out as a podcast. And now you've got. If somebody says, hey, Dave, can I change the name of my podcast after I've already launched it, I can say, actually, yes, you can. And if you listen to this episode, boom, here you go. Now your FAQ page is now it can be an audio format that is more personal, has a better connection, and gives them something to subscribe to. And now all the questions that they had are now getting answered in their podcast. So it can be used as a customer service tool, all the while building that know like and trust factor that you can then lead to whatever opportunities, whatever selling propositions you have and go from there.

Dave Jackson, School of Podcasting. Thank you so much for being our guest today, tj.

Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for listening to speaking with T.J. walker.