Creating An Authentic Personal Podcast? Learn To Thrive And Grow Like Podcaster Jayme Tener, Blonde Haired Girl To Go

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your.

Every word, consume all your content, buy.

Everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazzard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the binge factor.

Jamie, thanks so much for joining us. I'm so glad to talk about blonde Haired girl to go. I love that you have the to go at the end yours, but you're the blonde haired girl. It makes such sense. And you know, this is a really different style show than some people are comfortable with and we don't get to talk about it a lot here where it's, you know, I'm going to jump right in and give you what your binge factor is. And your binge factor may be actually the reason why some people don't like it as much as the people who love it love it. Right. And it is the fact that you have a brutal personal sharing style show. And when I say that by brutal I mean you're brutal on yourself. That you are very self critical in the process and in exposing and raw in what you're exposing out to your audience. And it doesn't feel like a lecture, but there's learning happening.

Yes. And I appreciate you actually noticing that. So I personally don't really like necessarily being told what to do generally. I mean, I, I really don't.

So that's why you don't have a lecture style show. Makes sense. Right.

I kind of don't really like being told what to do. And so I'm sharing my own process of discovering and learning and the obstacles and the ups and downs of the process of my content. And so I do appreciate you, you noticing that. And it is kind of my style. Yeah. I would say, I think.

Right. And I think it's what people love. Right. I mean it's probably why you get a lot of feedback saying that they love your show, that they're appreciating it, that they've listened to it. It's that reason. And that's why I say to people that your binge factor can be very different and your binge factor doesn't mean it's for everyone. It's for the right kind of people for your show.

Yeah. That was another thing that I. Oh, this is the other thing is I find that A lot of people who are putting out content that's even similar to mine, a lot of times they just really present as having it all together. Like they just got it all together. And every day is a perfect day, and it's all just perfect all the time, and they're just in bliss all the time. And I sitting there and it's like, it has not been like that at all. And so I do get very much into the process and how it really is, at least for me. And I feel like that can be relatable to other people, because I think it's not a straight road for anyone, actually.

I always say if it's all hunky dory and amazingly beautiful and life looks like, you know, those choreographed pictures were on Instagram where everybody's, like, wearing matching clothes in your family and they're all actually smiling, I go, this is a lie. I have my aunt in Connecticut. She's got these beautiful pictures of her family, and I guarantee you, every single one, there's at least one kid not smiling in, even though they're beautiful pictures. Right? That's how it works in our lives. So, anyway, well, thank you for showing that we appreciate that, and it's a great contribution to the podcasting community from that. But today, I thought, because you've got this show that has been growing since July 2019, so you've been growing it for a couple of years now. And, you know, I think that you're probably stumbling with some technical things and some growth issues for your show. So, you know, it might have gotten out of the gate really well, and I want to talk about that, but it might be stumbling along the way. And I thought this might be a great opportunity for you to sort of present this in that rawness way that you do already allow the audience to also come along and take a good look and analyze their own shows in that same way that we're going to do with yours today. So tell me a little bit about why you started the show. I got the fact that you were doing YouTube before, because I listened to one of your very first episodes. So you had YouTube and you've been doing that, and you decided to start the podcast, at least from what you said there is, because you thought this would also be really convenient for your audience to have it in the car. But why do it?

I can delve a little bit more deeply into the subject matter.

You thought you could do that better on. On a podcast?

Absolutely. This sounds so crazy, but I tried to make my youtubes under 10 minutes.

Okay.

Yeah, every single YouTube under 10 minutes. So it was like this 10 minute blurb. 10 minute blurb. 10 minute Blurb. But my podcasts are. I go into depth with the subject matter. That's number one. Number two is I found that when I'm on video, I can't be as honest as I can in a podcast.

That's so interesting that you say that.

Yeah. So I am a little bit. Well, I'm a lot more honest and a lot more in depth on my podcasting than I am on my videos, my YouTube station.

So really your purpose was for having a longer format that felt more authentic and being able to be more. More honest, which felt more authentic.

Oh, yeah.

So this. So it just fits it better. Did you have a business purpose for it? Was there a business reason that you have a show to begin with, the YouTube and everything? Did you have a business purpose, a marketing, any kind of plan for that?

So I started everything that I have been doing because I had an experience. So I have this experience and I start chronicling it on YouTube. And then after a year of my YouTubes, I started to do podcasts. I was still doing my YouTubes, but I started to do podcasts. And everything that I do has to do with this experience that I had. And so, yeah, so do you want.

To tell the audience a little bit about that? Because they haven't heard your show yet. They're going to go check it out. That usually happens after this. Right? You're going to have to go check out Blonde Haired girl to go. Right. Because now we want to know. But why don't you give us a little hint about what that is?

So I went to bed one night. This is the truth. And it's very far out of the norm. My story is incredibly far out of the norm. And I'm just. I'm just gonna say that that's the.

Fun of what we get to hear here. So go for it. Okay.

Okay. This is the truth. Okay. So I go to bed one night and I'm absolutely in despair. I'm like, I'm just so upset. I get. My life had completely fallen apart. If you watch my first YouTube, I was a mess. And I wake up in the middle of the night surrounded in the most amazing love that you could ever imagine. I mean, it. It actually felt like I was levitating in my bed. And I don't remember exactly how long I was in this state, but I fell back to sleep and I woke up different. So before this, this event, I had been Having these really weird things happening. Like I would see the numbers like 1111. Like I was like, go to this cafe that I love to go to and the total would be 1111. I mean, that is so weird.

And yesterday that before we're recording this was 11:11. So. Yeah, yeah.

And so I started to see that and then I had all these other really weird things happen. So in 2016, I started to notice this shift. But this happened in the summer of 2018, that it was like I like to do my demonstrations with my hands. So it was like they went. And it was like this dial was turned up and I was having these. And it was like this constant stream of information that was coming at me that was incredibly challenging to sift through. And then I had some events that you would have to read in my book.

Right. So there's a book, Blonde Haired Girl, Mystical Summer. So that outlines this whole story. So you're going to want to check that out. So it's this incredible shift that happens and you decide that you have to share and you have to let others come along and experience that with you. And that's what you started with the YouTube, but it just didn't. The format. Why did you think it had to be 10 minutes? Is this just some prevailing advice you had heard?

No. Oh, no, no, no, no.

I'm just curious because sometimes, sometimes it's that like, you know, I hear that it's sometimes it's that or sometimes it's, I can't stand to personally watch a YouTube video for longer than 10 minutes. It might be your own personal view of it. So what was it for you that made you say this needs to be 10 minutes?

That was it.

It was you. It was the way you consume video.

Okay, yes, I didn't have time. If somebody rambled on like longer than 10 minutes, I couldn't do. I don't have time for this.

Yeah, I can't do video either. It's my. I totally agree with you. Yeah, I was actually reviewing before our call today a video that we're putting out as a company and it's not even a five minute video. And I realized I had tuned out like one minute and a half into it and I didn't really listen to it. So now I had to go back. And so it took way more time than it should have because I can't even concentrate that long on a video personally. So everyone's different. But, you know, this is really typical. Jamie. This is not a criticism of you or anyone else who thinks this Way. When I first got into podcasting, the prevailing opinion was it shouldn't be longer than 20 minutes. But I knew it couldn't possibly be true because even people like Joe Rogan were doing their show at the time, and theirs was over an hour, so. So it didn't make sense. And when I looked around and I said, why is this? And some entrepreneur somewhere would say, probably John Lee Dumas would say that, you know, oh, it's because the average commute time is 20 minutes. And I know because of where I live that there is no average commute time because some of us never leave the house. Some of us never, you know, our office is here. Right. So that didn't make any sense to me. And that was where I quickly abandoned that as advice. But when it's our own viewpoint, that makes it harder.

Right?

Cause we have nothing to go against. And so were you a podcast listener at the time or at the time you started podcasting?

I'm gonna say no.

Are you a podcast listener now?

I'm gonna say not really.

Don't worry. Okay, so there's no wrong answer here. Right. This is really common. If I surveyed all of the podcasters that I've interviewed and all of my clients, 90% of them are not podcast listeners. So they're participating in a media type, just like you were on YouTube. They don't even don't have a personal experiences viewing or listening to. Right. They don't love it as a media type.

But I will tell you that I did before.

Okay, good.

That I did before. And I. I had listened to, for example, I listened to Wayne Dyer, who is somebody that has deep meaning for me personally. And I had listened to him quite a bit in different times in my life when I wasn't doing well. And so he was somebody that, if it's somebody that I really value what they have to say, and then it has deep meaning for me. And I do. And so I've learned so much. I mean, I had learned a lot from YouTube before I started doing YouTube. I learned a lot. And so I would say that I had listened to a lot. But now there's so much out there.

I mean, there's a lot of content out there.

Yeah, it seemed like in 2019, and then Covid hit, and then everybody started making podcasts.

For those of you who aren't aware, there's been a significant drop off since June of 2021 in terms of podcasters sticking with it. We went through a year in 2020 without as many people quitting as we had had in prior years. But we're back now to the high rates that were happening in 2019. So we're seeing probably like 75 to 80% of people quit their shows this year. And that is because they're going back about their business lives. It wasn't a really right fit. They don't have as much time as they thought. There's a whole bunch of reasons why that's happening, but it's happening slightly higher pace than it had happened prior. And so we think it's probably going to continue at that pace. So, yeah, so the marketplace is going to shrink and you might be this, the sole blonde standing, right? Like, you know, so it could be awesome for you.

I love that.

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, this is the thing that, you know, I always love to look at a marketplace of any kind. You know, whether it's a personal marketplace, a professional one, doesn't really matter. But I look at it as a market, right? You have choices that you're making just like we make at the store, store or anytime we go to a shopping bazaar, right? We're making choices about what we're going to consume. And the choices that are available to them are getting very polarized right now. So we have lots of choices that are highly cultivated, highly curated by a network. And their sole purpose is to run ads, right? That's why they're created. It's like I'm going to hire this celebrity and pay them so. So that I can run ads from, you know, Pepsi, you know, and Amazon and I don't know, Microsoft, whatever it might be, it's purpose for the show being developed. That's what networks do. And then there's the indie podcasters, right, like you are. There's the indie podcasters developing them for their own personal reasons, their own business reasons, their own community reasons, their own mission reasons, right? They're a different place. They come from a different place. And what we see right now is that it's still a tremendously large portion of independents. They quit their show at a faster pace because it's harder, right? You don't have money, support, network support, you don't have that. But they quit their show at a faster pace for their own personal reasons. But the network shows fail faster. So they fail because their purpose isn't aligned. The purpose of the show and what you get out of it don't always feel right to you. So they succeed less often in achieving their goals. You can succeed more often because you're authentically doing this, right? This Matters to you. It's personal to you. And the people who are attracted to that get that from you. So if you can keep going and it's working for you, you should. But sometimes there's things that aren't aligned. Like you said, the videos weren't really aligned for you. They didn't feel completely right. You shifted into podcasting. So what things aren't feeling aligned for you with your podcast? Where are you feeling like it's not quite gelling, it's not quite working for you?

I wanted to say. Just really quick, before I answer that question. I just love ideas, and so that's why I do what I do. Absolutely love these ideas. I just love it. I love doing this. I love podcasts.

Makes it easier to keep going, doesn't it?

Yeah, it does. So, I mean, I don't see myself, you know, leaving any tenant. It's just not going to happen. But one of the things that I have to admit gets my goat.

Perfect. Let's see if we can. Let's see if we can come up with some ideas to make that not get your goat anymore. I love that.

Okay, this is what gets my goat, is my most popular because I pay a lot of attention to my. I can't remember the name of it right now. My demographics or whatever it is.

The stats in general.

My stats.

That's right. Yeah.

Thank you. So I pay attention to my stats, and actually my show started out really, really small, and then it has, like. Then it just has been pretty steady in the same, like, been steady ever since. It just kind of took off a little bit. I mean, it's not like millions of people are listening to my podcast, but, you know, I'm happy with where I'm at.

You're seeing growth over time, which feels good because that means people are joining, people are sharing, people are coming.

I have a pretty steady, very small, but pretty steady audience that is very, very faithful to my content on YouTube and on my podcasting. What really gets me is that the most popular ones are not necessarily my subject matter. It's like they want me to talk about.

What do you mean by that? Which ones are more popular?

They want me to talk about politics. Ah. They want me to talk about politics. They want me to talk about the election, about Trump, about Biden, about the COVID about vaccines.

And they want the subject matter controversy seem, you know.

Yeah.

So why do you think that they want you to. Are they actually emailing you, messaging you, or is it happening over social media?

No, I know that because there's more people who listen to that one.

Ah, so you see a listener spike in those episodes. Interesting. So I'm going to hit on something technical, Jamie, for you right now. And this may actually explain it without saying that it's the controversy of it. Okay. You have a really common. I don't want to say it's a problem, but it's a common methodology for titling your episodes.

Okay.

And the problem is, is sometimes those titles don't necessarily make sense to the outside world as much as they make sense to you. So, like, you have an episode pretty recently named Blind Faith. You have another one two days ago named Smoking Hot. Right. But the problem with that title, there's nothing wrong with it. It kind of was like, okay, kind of intriguing, but I have no idea what I'm going to get when I listen to that. So maybe a little bit of expansion on that. You know, how blind faith can change your life. See what I did there? Like, and I don't know what that episode. I didn't listen to that one in particular. I listened to three of your episodes. That one didn't happen to be one of them. But you know, how Blind Faith, you know, changes your life. Smoking hot Body image and mindset mean everything. You know, it could be. So you're expanding, expanding on that title a little bit more so that I understand what's in it for me to listen the others when I say January 4th Covid mandate, when you've got that as a title, or COVID Testing and rightness, I get what that's about because it's so in the news, it's so in what's going on in general, I think. Okay, I want to hear now Jamie's viewpoint. I probably wanted to hear your viewpoint on fiscal responsibility, too, but maybe I didn't get what that was going to mean by adding COVID testing and rightness to it. You gave me the direction that I might want to hear. Okay, so that's something we can all do better in our titling, is give people an indication of what's in it for them to listen. Doesn't mean we have to, like, list out everything we talk about on the episode, but give them a gist of where it's going to go. And you might see an increase in listenership across more episodes where they get it because the others, they are getting it because it's an obviously topic like, oh, I know that person, or I know what that means. Right. So it's more obvious to them that may be simply the reason if I'm busy and I don't have time to listen to every single one of your episodes. That's what I'm going to do is skip around to the one that resonates with me or something I'm struggling with or dealing with. And we may not have the same commonality. And so until you align that, you really help. So that's one of the things that I think would really change your listener base. It's, it's a. Because here's the other thing is someone's gonna find you brand new in the app that is podcast app. Right. So in other words, a friend who listened to the show didn't share it with me. Right. So someone who already listens to your show said, oh, you have to listen to Jamie show. It's really great. Here it is. That happens. But when it's blind, meaning they're coming into an app and they're looking for a show that can help them deal with things, the only things that they have to go on are the title of your show, your name, and I wouldn't know either of those things if I didn't already know you, the description of your show, the titles of your episode, and the descriptions within those episodes. Because it'll also not just pop up shows to me when I search for something, but it'll pop up titles and episodes as options as well. Right. So those are the only things that are searchable, which is so small, they're not searching for what you're saying on the episode. Apple's not giving that up to people. So if we want to be found by more people who are already podcast listeners, you know, I call it the 2am principle. So if you're up at 2am and you needed help, just like you were talking about Wayne Dwyer being your go to guy, because you knew you could get what you were looking for, you knew you could get the support. But when I don't know what that support looks like, my go to thing to do is to go to wherever I consume content the most. That's personal to me. And for podcast listeners, that's personal to them. Right. The podcast ecosystem, they go there and they search for something new. They're out there desperately searching. And what a shame if they can't find someone like you to help them when you're there, just because something technical is preventing that. So that's why I raised this to you and to the, to the community that's listening, that we want to make sure we get found.

So would you recommend me going back and Renaming old podcast or just starting from here on out?

I would start from here on out. And if you feel like it's becoming more even and successful as you start to have a couple of your controversial ones in there too, but you still feel like it's evening out better, then go back and do that. Because, you know, this is the thing. If someone's finding you, they're going to go to the beginning and listen to all your episodes, but they're also going to skip around because they don't have time to consume everything. Because you have a lot of episodes since you've been publishing since 2019, right? So, like, you know, that's a lot of episodes.

There's a lot, right?

So then they can consume better. They can, you know, and do a better job of being able to skip around and helping themselves in their biggest point of need. If you do eventually retitle them, but don't do it immediately, see how it feels, get into the rhythm of it, and then work your way backwards as you want. You know, I would. What I would do is title the ones as you go back through the back that you feel are really strong and helpful to people and skip the ones that you're just sort of like, yeah, not as important anymore. Just do the ones that you feel like people should have consumed more of. That one. That one was a really good one. It could help more people, you know what they are. So do it that way because you don't need more work. Right. So the other side of that is, is that, as I mentioned this briefly is the other thing I would love for you to have beefed up is your show description. So your show description is so short. This is the most common thing I see on every single show that's out there that I don't know this. I would say 99.9% of shows have this problem.

Okay, I'm writing this down.

I saw this one. Well, you're gonna have the recording here, so don't worry. Right.

Okay. I'll write notes later.

You have a single paragraph, but the show description section is the most searchable thing from all the podcast apps. And you have a single paragraph, but yet you actually have 4,000 characters to work with.

Okay.

And so writing more in there is essential in the process. And I usually do this as a separate coaching, but I'm going to do it right here real quickly because I think it will help everyone. Is that if you're going to rewrite that, simply sit down and talk into your mic and then transcribe it, it'll help you write it better. It'll be easier. And answer three questions for yourself. And if I'm finding blonde haired girl to go for the first time as a listener, what do I want to know? What is this show going to bring me in terms of change in my life benefits to me. What is it for me, the listener? So we want to put that first and foremost. So if we answer the question what's in it for my listener? But we answer it from as if we're talking to the listener, because that's the best way to write that, then we're going to do a better job of getting that across. Talk for about five minutes on that. That'll give you enough content to pull pieces from to build probably your first two paragraphs. The next question is about you. Why is Jamie uniquely suited to bring this podcast to the world? What am I bringing to this? This is not your resume. This is not that you don't want a little piece of that. The bestselling author and you know, in the title of your book should be in there. Absolutely. But beyond that, if you're going to build a whole paragraph about it, it's like it's really, why am I doing this and why am I uniquely suited to help you through whatever it is that was in the previous portion? Right. Bring you those. And then the last piece is because you already have the benefit of having your show for those that haven't built one yet. It's like imagining what this would look like, but you already know. Here's what you're going to get by listening to the podcast. Here's the kind of episodes, here's the kind of topics I've talked about. Maybe highlight some of your top topics that you think they should listen to. Because if they actually read it, they'd go and they'd pick those episodes. Now, keep in mind, almost nobody reads more than the first paragraph. So you didn't do anything wrong by only writing a single paragraph. But the bot, that is Apple, Spotify, Google, all of the listening apps, the bot reads the whole 4,000 characters. So the purpose is if somebody types in that phrase or types in something, they want the bot to scroll through the 4,000 characters and find you as a match for that. We want you to come up as a match more often. That's its purpose. So it doesn't have to be amazing journalism.

Or marketing messaging. Right. It just has to get the point across and get the words of what you're really talking about and what is in it for the listener in the end of the day, and you're going to do great. So just do it that way. Like, that's kind of a simple way to do it. And because you're much better on the mic, you feel like you can go in depth. It's a better way than sitting down and writing it.

Okay.

Those things, I think, are going to change the visibility of your show, and you'll actually see more steady growth over time because the listener base on podcast apps is growing. They're growing at a really fast pace. As I told you before, there's lots of people quitting their show. So I don't know about the way you consume entertainment, but the way that I consume Netflix, for instance, I go to Netflix and I look for shows, and if a show only has one season, I actually don't listen to it. I don't watch it, because I'm not sure they're not going to leave me hanging at the end of the season. Frustrate me. And I don't know if they're coming back. Right.

No, I hate that.

Don't we all hate that?

Like, fleabag, right?

Exactly.

She left two seasons. Like, how could she leave us?

Exactly. It does. It frustrates us. Right? So when people, Podcast listeners are very smart about this, they go and they look, when your last most recent episode was. And if it's the. If it was 2019, they're like, done with that. If it was 2020, they're done with that. Unless maybe you had a hundred episodes and it seemed like it was complete. So they didn't find anyone else currently podcasting on this, and they were like, this seems like a series that more completed more than 100 episodes. They will then consume that because they give that credit for having completed something. Right. And they expect you not to have left them hanging at the end there, right?

I hope not.

I hope not. But some people do. That's what we. Why we call it pod fading. Because you just kind of quit and forget to tell your audience why you quit. Right. Whoops. Yeah, that was it. Yeah, exactly. I always don't understand why it doesn't take that much effort to, like, make a closing episode that says, I'm done with this. Right. Like, so I just don't. I don't understand that. It seems like it shouldn't take much effort. Five minutes on the mic to thank everybody and just close it out for them. People like closure, right?

We like a beginning, we like a middle, and we really like the end. But I think you've got A lot of episodes here, and you're constantly posting. That's a good thing. So they're going to be more likely to choose you as that competitive audience decrease. They don't have a place to go. They need to find something new, and we want them to find you because they are out there looking. So that's where I think you're gonna see a boost coming up, especially as so many shows are pod fading. So. Yeah, so those are just some of the basic things that I had for you. Do you have any kind of thought process about how you're thinking you might shift the show next? Is there something you've wanted to try out but maybe aren't sure it's gonna go over well?

Well, I wanted to because I had done this silly advertisement. That's.

Okay. You know what? I'm sorry.

I'm laughing because I did it and it was kind of terrible. But anyway, okay, this is just the truth. I know it sucked bad.

Some people, and I can say this from having listened to your show, is that I think the word advertising is what you didn't like about it to begin with. That's why it didn't resonate with you.

Okay, so. Because I do go back and listen. I go back and listen. And I had mistakenly. I made a mistake, and I had put the advertising, like, say I put it on a meditation that I have just a few. I think I have in all of the podcasts that I have, I have, like, three meditations that I have recorded. And then you have this, like, horrible advertisement. And then. So then I just decided. I think I took the advertisement out of almost every single one of them. And I decided that I didn't want to necessarily monetized my podcast because it's not that I don't want any monetary gain from my content. I do. But I decided to focus more on, like, book sales or a different avenue rather than my podcasting. And so I don't know. I don't really know exactly, because I've heard other people who. But see, even then, I have to admit, like, I. And I said I don't listen to podcasts, but I do. I can't believe I said that. I absolutely love coast to Coast. I love that show. Coast to coast is, like, up there, you know, with my favorite. And he does all of his advertising. And frankly, I find it incredibly distracting because, you know, it's kind of why I'm sitting there. It's like, I don't have time to, like, sit there and listen to this. And it Seemed like they're long too. And sometimes it's even more than one advertisement. It's like three advertisements. And sometimes they actually break up the podcast with an advertisement and then come back. And so I guess I just wanted to.

So that's a common thing with a highly produced show. Independent shows don't have to run like that. Right. So, you know, you don't have to run in that format. It also depends clearly on a host. So in other words, if you're recording the advertisement in your show as you do it, or you're editing it in later yourself, there are podcast hosting platforms that allow you to put the ads in and on. Very typically, they're in all the wrong places. Like Anchor puts them at the beginning, Spotify puts them at the beginning. Megaphone does allow you to put them in a couple of places, but it just is like it cuts people off if you didn't plan for it. And so, you know, it can sound like too much commercial. That's what it is. It's too much interruption. It's like when we watch it on TV and we're like, that's that many commercials. Like, you know, crazy. Right? So it can be like that with some of them. When we developed our Potatoes platform, I purposefully developed it so that we could block episodes from having them on it at all in case they were sensitive subjects like your meditations. We put it so that it was never streaming onto the front and back because then you don't get to your content. So a person who hears an ad before they ever hear from you and brand new to you is already in a bad mindset. So like, I never like that. So. And I wanted you to be able to take them in and take them out so that you would have the ability to say, I have a brand new book that's launching. I'd love to promote that opportunity right at this moment, but in a month from now, it may not be I want to offer or an event. I want to have a private live event and I'd like to offer that opportunity to my audience. So I like to look at them as relevance. Right, That's. And so if we are putting some relevant opportunity in front of our audience, then it's a good thing. If we're push advertising to our audience, then maybe that feels like a bad thing. So that's what. Thinking about how we look at them and. And what they are is as important as how we actually technically execute them. Right too. Right. And so what the model that coast to coast is following and I know it because they follow Joe Rogan's model and a whole bunch of other people model who have that network support system. And in the network support system they know that host red ads do better that if the host tells a story and makes it sound like it's integrating in, they think they're fooling the audience into that. This is just an ad hoc. I've decided to just offer this. I wasn't really paid to do it, I'm doing it anyway. But it doesn't come across that way. Your signals were already on. Right. You know that. And so I think that it becomes disingenuous over time if you follow the model like you're doing it on purpose. And you know it's. Have you ever taken one of those webinars where they're giving shout outs to an audience but it's a pre recorded webinar and it feels weird and you know, it feels weird like you sense it's off. You've experienced that. Yeah, that's what happens to me. That's what happens in the host recorded ads when they go in that style where it's a forced style of conversation. And so I never like them. That's not how we ever do them here. If it's a ad, we're going to be straightforward about it. Like that's how we've always done it. So we're going to be straightforward. This is an ad, there's a little bumper music on it. You know, this is distinctive and we're going to keep it really short. Now, if it's something where I'm saying, so I did a 3D print podcast with Hewlett Packard as a sponsor, but we did a partnership in our sponsorship. So they gave me access to great people who'd never been interviewed on a podcast before. So I got to bring my audience something new and unusual. And so what happened is, naturally, when I was introducing that guest coming on, I would rave about Hewlett Packard's openness. So that wasn't a commercial, but they did pay me to sponsor the whole series. So in a sense it was. But it was an honest appraisal of how it felt in the sponsorship model and how I felt about them as a company that would come across naturally in the conversation. But that was bonus. They didn't pay me to say that it wasn't purposeful. They didn't give me a script for that ad. You know, we did it that way. And then there were a couple ads. Right. You know, and that's how that worked. So there are ways to do that, to reward the people who you feel are giving great opportunities that your audience can benefit from and do it in a more opportunity and relevant way. So monetization, let's talk about this because this is a big deal. There are lots of alternative ways to monetize the show.

Okay.

Okay. And I'm going to be straightforward and honest that most people cannot monetize with ads anyway and make it worth the while. So I just saw the statistics from Advertisecast a week ago, really recently. And you know, there are about 300,000 podcasts on your average hosting platform. And in those 300,000 podcasts, they only had 3,000 of them that qualified for advertising. So that's a really small percentage of shows that even qualified for the advertising. And then they were saying that the average, they call it like per mil. Right. So the per thousand. So whether you want to say it like, you know, we call it a cpm, right? Clicks. Per thousand is what we do online. Right. But it's per play. Right. Per download. So it's, it's that per thousand downloads that you're being paid on, the rate was like average rate. The average across those 3,000 shows was only $21. And for the most part, most people who have an advertising company help them place those ads, split that with the advertising company. So that means you were making $10.

Oh, no.

To sell your hard earned audience. For every thousand listeners you have, you made $10 to give away your audience. So to me, I look at that and go, that's not monetization. That's not what I think podcasters intended when they want to make money off of it. But what would we like? We might like clients, we might like ticket sales for our next event. We might like to sell more books. Those are real opportunities for monetization that don't have to be a direct result of an ad on my show for the book sales. Right. It can just simply be because someone's consuming me. They absolutely want my book.

Right, okay.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah. They're going to tell a friend or give a friend a book instead of trying to get a friend to listen to your show, which sometimes isn't always the easiest. Right. I might, you know, my sister, your book, something like that. So that might be something that I do to help out. And you know, I'm rewarding you for giving me such great free content because I bought one of your books and gave it as a gift. But I'm also helping other people by getting them exposed to You. So that's what we want to, I think, ask for on our show more often is, is ask for a give back. If you're benefiting from this, please tell someone else. Please share with someone else. You know, the best thing you can do is tell people about my book, right? You're not, you know, you're not saying, buy my book. You're saying, tell people about my book. And in that moment, you're reminding them you have a book. And as they write and as they go to buy it, they look at it and they go, oh, wow, I could really benefit. Let's buy one, get one, you know, like, let's do it. Let's do both, right? So, you know, by asking them to pay it forward for the contribution, you've earned that, right, Jamie. You've really earned it. You've done a lot of wonderful episodes with a lot of give back. So you've earned the right to ask for that opportunity from them.

I appreciate that.

If you don't tell them what you know, this happens all the time, right? We don't tell people. How can you help me?

You know, I appreciate that. Thank you.

Yeah. Well, good. I'm glad you're receiving that well, because sometimes that one, you know, doesn't go over well with people. So. So anyway, the other thing I would like to say to you, Jamie, is don't pay attention to your stats, okay? This is like weighing yourself on the scale every single day. Right? There are anomalies you know nothing about. Right. You're laughing with this, but I'm so this is my, like, nitpick thing that I like. I want my clients, I want my listeners, I want you all to stop looking at your stats on a daily basis, even a weekly basis. Let's look at them once a month.

One time a month, One time a month.

And let's look at the growth rate. So I'm at least glad you're paying attention to the growth rate, Jamie, because so people don't they get caught up in, like, why did I have enough listeners when I launched that episode? Well, it could have been that it was something happened in the world. It was voting day, you know, like, and people were too busy to listen to their thing or it was actually a holiday and there were, you know, people were having barbecues with their family. You don't know what happened there. You got to give them a chance to catch up on your show. But if you feel like I dropped a show and it didn't happen, that's going to get to you. Over time, and it can get discouraging quickly. But if we're watching the trend over time and we're seeing it continually grow, we're not falling into that. So In June of 2021, we saw a gigantic drop in listenership, and there were lots of people who decided at that moment to quit their show without understanding where it came from and what we found out from exploration in it. It was solely an Apple thing, and it was because Apple's platform does the largest amount of listenership. So typically, about 60 to 70% of most podcasters listeners come from the. An Apple device of some kind. Right. Usually the mobile phone, the Apple app. And the app and the podcasting system, that is, Apple had gotten an update to it, and it crashed, and it took them almost two and a half weeks to get it up and running in full speed. So Apple was not serving out podcasts at the pace and rate that it was. So if you saw a dip in June, everybody saw a dip in June. Now, I can say that because I can look at a thousand shows stats and see it happened to every single person at the same percentage, not the same number of listeners, but the same percentage of drop happened. So when we look at that, we think, aha, industry thing was going on. This is typical. We typically see a rise in September, the case every single year. We call it the Fall boost. People are getting back into the swing of things, realizing they're headed into the end of the year. They need to make some business progress, some personal growth progress. They're feeling like they need to crunch down before the holidays start. Right. And so they want to do that. And so though, they concentrate on themselves in September and October a lot more than they do at any other time of the year except for January. Right. Like, because we always have our January resolution time too. So, like these ones, we see the growth there. So if you were looking at that in September, you're thinking, and then in November, you go, what did I do wrong? It's not you. So that's why we want to watch the growth pattern over time. We want to even out the way we look at it and say, look, I am making progress. I am gaining listeners, gaining weight is probably not the way we want to go. But you know, the idea, maybe some people do so, you know, but I'm holding steady in that growth, and it is not trending over time. And then what we do want to do is, though, do that analysis you are doing is looking at the episodes and saying which ones are resonating and why. Are they resonating? And let's just do an analysis of it for ourselves and say, what was I doing there? Was it simply the topic? Was it simply the subject? Or was it perhaps some other factor in those shows of what I did different and analyze those for ourselves and replicate them. And what I can see clearly is there's not much difference between your topic, you know, your more controversial topics and your other topics, like, because you're raw in everything that you do and you come across very honest in what you do. So, like, I don't think there's a difference in there. I think it's simply the title. So as we talked about before, so kind of like it's. Yeah, so lay off the scale.

Okay, okay. All right.

Yeah. Well, you know, and keep in mind that our metrics are vanity. These are vanity metrics, right? They, I mean, not that they're not expressing real listeners, but we could have a listener who joined our show over a weekend and binge listened to a hundred episodes. That skews our results, and that's just one single listener, but they listen to a lot of episodes. So that's another reason why we want to watch it over time. Because then it says, hey, I'm getting five to six new binge listeners every month. Look at that growth factor for me. So, you know, that's a good thing because that involves residual, over time growth.

I will do that. I will do it. All right.

Well, Jamie, I can't wait to hear what new ideas, new episodes, new topics you bring. It's so wonderful to see this kind of, I'm going to call it, spontaneous content generation that people like you, podcasters like you do, because it's, you're simply tapping in and driving off of how you feel today, what you thought about, what you might have dreamed about, and you're, you're going with that. And I think that's wonderful because then that's never ending, Right? Not going to lose momentum because I doubt you're going to stop thinking and dreaming tomorrow.

Oh, no, no, no, no. Oh, no, no. I'm not ending anytime soon. Well, not anytime soon.

Well, Jamie, thank you for bringing blonde Haired girl to go to the podcasting world. And I wish you the best of luck as you continue and move forward.

I really appreciate. Thank you.

So I mentioned there was going to be lots of coaching and lots of things woven in here, and Jamie was just such a great subject for this because this, I think this style of show where you're the one talking, you can get so into the personal side of it that you have a hard time looking at it objectively and seeing what you're doing right and seeing what might be able to be improved. It's a little hard for you to do it yourself because it does feel so personal, because you're giving so much of yourself, just like Jamie is every single time you do an episode and so would hate for it to come across as critical in any way, shape or form. But we want more people to have an opportunity to hear you when you're doing that style of show. And that's so critically important because it's harder for you to go out there and promote and market something that is so personal. And so if we can get some of these technical things right and let them do some of the work for us, we're all going to be better off about it. And that's something that we like to do. So I don't know if all of you realize this, so I, I'm going to make a quick little opportunity offer here, as Jamie and I were talking about it, is that at Potties, when we regularly do events. So if we're out there at she podcasts or a local podcasting event, we offer something we call host in the hot seat. And that's an opportunity for you to come and kind of be coached, just like I did with Jamie. Although it's not as big a hot seat when you're on my show because I'm not grilling you and it's not as fast paced as we do it. But what we do is we take a look at your show, we see how it is from a searchability, we give you some outside perspectives on what we see because we know what's successful. We give you also maybe some example podcasts you might want to check out that might be similar to you, but might give you some new ideas. So we can do all of that. We call it a show audit, right? And sometimes we want to do those audits at the beginning or the end of each year. So there's an opportunity to do that. You can go straight to the website@poditize.com and you can insert, write down, set on a calendar, go right to a strategy session and be able to have a host in the hot seat style audit for your show and get an outside perspective. There is absolutely no cost to this. We do this for anyone who has a show that already exists. So, I mean, you want to have a few episodes under your belt so that we can at least hear that before we, you know, so we can take a listen and we can go further when we do it at a trade show or at an event. We can't listen to the show like I do here. And I listen to three of Jamie's episodes of Blonde Haired Girl to go and it gives me an opportunity to like experience the conversational side and find out what's going on in the show in case I have any suggestions there. Jamie's doing all things right there, so there really wasn't anything to suggest on that today, but typically there is. So anyway, that's an opportunity for you and hope that you'll take that up in it so that you can level up your show for the next year. So I also want to mention to you, don't forget to go to Blonde Haired Girl to go. Go to the blog post for this episode as well@thebingefactor.com and check out her show. Check out some of the things, check out her YouTube, check out what she's doing in all of those different places so you can really understand and see the style of show. Plus, team's got some really raw, interesting topics that you might want to consume while you're there and help enlighten yourself as well. Additionally, I don't want you to forget to mention because we did mention it on the show and I don't want to leave you hanging. We don't like any open loops. We want to close that loop that she has some books. Her books are called Blonde Haired Girl Mystical Summer. She also has Blonde Haired Girl Thrival Guide. I love that title. Thrival Guide, the four steps to your ideal life. And there's a companion workbook that goes with it. Get out ahead of it. So those three books are all available and there'll be links to all of those in the blog post for this episode@thebingefactor.com so you can check out some more of the Blonde Haired Girl, Jamie Teener. I'm so glad Jamie came on the show and I'm so glad she reached out to me. Be brave out there. This is what I hear again and again from people. I didn't know that I was successful enough for your show. You know what? There are all levels of success here on this show. Sometimes there are people who have millions of listeners. Sometimes there are people who have hundreds of listeners. That does not matter to me. What matters to me is that you've got to show you're dedicated to keep moving forward on and you have some success factors. Something's working for you. Whether it's just working for how you personally handle the show or how you've marketed and pushed it out there. Either way, we want to hear those success factors. We want to analyze your binge factor, find out what that is, because that can help more and more people out there, but it also gets you great exposure for your show. So come and get some publicity. Apply to the Binge Factor. You can go to the bingefactor.com and you can apply under the Guest section. So thanks everyone for listening. I'll be back next time with more of the Binge Factor.

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