Creating Space: Building Podcasting Communities That Last With Craig Constantine Of The Podcaster Community

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Hey everyone. Welcome to the Binge Factor. I'm Tracy Hazzard and this is my last official interview in the current format of the Binge Factor. We're coming back next year. Do not worry, we will be here for you. But we are refresh formatting everything. And so this is the very last interview that's going to air in the old format in the original Binge Factor model. So we're going to do some things and I'm going to my very next episode will be a solo episode and I'm going to tell you about what's going to happen. So these are what is ending what is now, right now, 2024. I've rarely anchor any of my episodes in time, but I wanted everyone to understand when it's happening. So it's the very end of 2024 and I'm ending the binge factor show model the way that it is and I'm flipping the show. I'm making lots of change what we're doing and things are coming. And some of it was inspired by the conversation that I'm having today with Craig Constantine. He is the head of the and brains behind the Podcasters Community Forum. The Podcasters community, like his podcom, whatever you want to call it, they are just absolutely amazing. I was lucky enough to be invited to talk to one of their community meetings and to just have this kind of POD talk with them. It's just been so fabulous. I've enjoyed every minute of interacting with them. I joined the community. It has just been such a great idea. So they have an idea club, they have meetings and memberships and they have different things that happen throughout the month. Plus they have a really robust discussion board. What I really love about their discussion board is that Craig is injecting it with lots of great ideas. He's injecting with his own thoughts. And so when he came on here and you're going to hear it in the interview when he came on here, he did just that, he was ejecting our conversation with his ideas, his thoughts. It was just so Wonderful. I got to say, it was so wonderful to get to interact with someone this kind of thought level. And it was kind of funny because he got me thinking and I got him thinking, and so we both had that same conversation. So let me tell you a little bit more about Craig. So Craig has been in the industry for quite a long time. He has. This would not be his first podcast. He's got little box of quotes, Pod talk, movers mindset series. He's done a few different ones. He's kind of on hiatus as we were doing this, and he was going to be coming back from some things. He had some challenges and a lot going on, and the podcaster's community was taking a lot of his time as well. So he wants to actively create better conversations. Simply letting conversations sometimes is not good enough. It needs that stirring that he does on the. In the blogging forum. And his mission is to create better conversations and spread understanding and compassion. So that's why he started the podcasters community. And I know you're gonna hear a lot from kind of this, the genesis of it and some other about it, but I'm going to be back on the other side to talk a little bit about what he inspired me to think about.

Craig, I am so glad to have you here. I've been dying to have a conversation with you. One on one, we got to interact in your great. I don't want to call it a webinar because that's not what it was. It was like a great conversation and talk.

That's a whole bunch of cool people who started their own cool thing, like, next to my cool thing. And I was like, this is exactly what I want. More of these cool things that I didn't do. Yeah, that's called the idea club. And they had a great conversation. And I just kind of sat there like, this is awesome.

Anyway, I love the idea of though it being an idea club, because you're right. It's like sometimes that's what we need to continue. That's what we need to keep getting energized about our show. Right? A new. Just one little new idea that gets it kicked off and moving forward.

Yeah, There's a lot to be said for being able to hold up something and go, I think this is cool. Please don't yell at me. Is this as cool as I think? And then people go, yeah, or no or maybe or what if you turned it around and that's what they're doing in that group, the they call the idea club and they get Together once a month on a Tuesday for half hour. It goes by real fast. And we had a blast. The time they invited you, I forget who you know was on your show. And it was like this. We had to bring Tracy into the Idea Club. I'm like, okay, because I don't run the Idea Club. I just lurk. But it was really fun.

Yeah. So it was just absolutely fabulous. And I cannot say thank Suzanne Mueller enough. The Iron Woman, right? Take it from the Iron Woman. She is the one who introduced me to you guys and insisted that I come on the Idea Club. And so it was really fun. But you've got a bigger community and forum, so the podcaster community is ripe with conversation, and you do a lot to spur them.

Thank you. Yeah, so it started a bunch of the people who were the original, like, the DNA of it all came from a podcasting course, and that course was run by. It was called the Mothership. And the Mothership had a community platform. And we were in there for years, and there were hundreds of podcasters in the. Then one day the Mothership said, yeah, we're turning this off. And I was like, well, first of all, we were all kind of like, what? But we're like, okay, we're not going to tell them how to do their thing. And then I'm a nerd at heart. That's what I. You know, keyboards, computers. And I thought, well, I used to play with this community software for one of my projects, but I don't do it anymore. But I could just click this button and put my credit card in over here, and then I could spend three weeks. And that's all these things, all this stuff. And that's where the community came from. And I literally said to those other podcasters that we had been hanging out with for years, hey, guys, I made this. And like, like in the first week, 50 of them just, you know, went over and logged in and made an account. Now there are hundreds of people, many of whom. I have no idea who they are or where they come from. A lot of people, such as yourself, who either I had on one of my shows or somebody else had on one of their shows, and they just. Just kind of get like, sucked into the orbit and suddenly they're all. All these people. It is a very quiet place. But, yeah, go ahead.

What I like about your community is that it. It is. It's no drama, like, and it's no sales, right? Like, so it's not encumbered. Like, I can't even. Im always feel like the Ones that are adjacent to the courses get a little ugly because they are like always selling them the next thing and pushing on them. And that's not here.

Well, yeah, there's. So there's. I'm. I love technology. I'm not like a techno optimist. Like technology will solve everything. But, but in the idea of technology as just tools, I'm. I'm really optimistic about. People build things and people are good, so they tend to build good things. But one of the problems you have is if you build something that's a triangle where you have the people who create the value, which are the users, and then you have the entity and then you have the advertisers. Now you got people like the wr. Yeah. Who's serving you here. So when I started the podcaster community, I already knew that lesson from elsewhere. But when I started that community, I said, well, how do I make a thing that's like just this thing? And I took the time, I have business partners and we wrote it, like, what do we want it to be and what are we trying to do? And we came up with a clear idea and there is a small group of people who we actually refer to as the members who choose to pay. And if you don't choose to pay, it's okay, you can read everything. It's just, you can't click the reply button. You can't make new posts and get everybody's attention. But there are hundreds of people, and if you count the web crawlers, there's thousands and thousands of page views a month who are looking at the things that are basically just kind of like it's like a giant social gathering and people slide up and they listen over your shoulder and then somebody says, oh, that's interesting. And then off they go. And that's really what we wanted. Those of us who really jumped first, we really were like, how do we have this space where we were doing that continue so that some of these conversations that would normally be private, like in a private mastermind group or in a private one on one coaching session, how do we have some of that wind up being public so other people can get value from it when they find it later?

Ah, well, you know, and that's what I, I was so excited about when I found it because it too much of like the Facebook groups and some of the ones that are public are so repetitive. Like they're the same five things over and over again. And you know, it's like, you know, they're not challenging in terms of thoughts and Ideas and conversations. But I know when I come into yours, these are a lot of movers. And so if somebody's going to reply to me, they're going to reply to me because they care about the response.

Yeah, there's a lot of. So, like, the culture of a space is. Is not. No one person makes that. It's like all the people together. There's this extra thing which is all the connections between them and that makes the culture. And there's just something about the people that came together that they're the kind of people who take a little more time before they hit reply. A lot of them, maybe not a lot these days, I have no clue. Actually, people like from India and China, I'm like, what's going on here? How can you even read this? It must auto translate. But they take time. I guess they take the time and they write back like two days later. Just when you think nobody's going to respond to my question, I'm all by myself. You get like a wall of text response with circles and arrows and you're like, oh, that was really well thought. Thank you so much. You know, whoever that was. And that's what we wanted was aside from no drama, which, you know, there's trauma, but a lot of it's caught automatically or a handle as an admin in the back end. We wanted a place that wasn't noisy, where if you didn't show up every day, it didn't matter. Like, you could just show up. Like, I think I have a piece of text somewhere that says something like, you know, we'll be here when your podcasting passion bubbles up. It's really for indie podcasters. If it's your day job, there are some people who are there. If it's your day job, yeah, okay, you can hang out here, but we're all just going to be in awe and bowing because you get paid. But it's for really the people who are by themselves who are wondering, how should I do this? Or what's the latest, what's which dimensions on my artwork? Or should I be. What about this new toy that I see? Or so and so software platform has this new feature. Do I need that? And it just gives us a place to like, oh, I know where to go ask that question.

Yes. Well, now you all listening out there know where to go to ask that question. And so there'll be links in the blog post for this episode to the podcaster community. And you are going to want to go check it out, even if you're Just sitting back and observing at first, although I have to say I couldn't wait to hit the reply button. And it took me a few minutes to figure out I had to pay to do it. And then I was all in once I got running. Now I reply all the time, so I hope, I hope nobody minds, but I can't help but not want to respond. And I think there's a lot of people out there, especially if you've been doing it as long as you and I have. So how long have you been podcasting, Craig? So it was a little hard for me to trace the first.

Yeah, it's because I keep tearing things down. I started in the very beginning of 2017, so I'm late to the party.

That's not that late.

Well, yeah, but I mean, a lot of people really started in the 2000, in the 19 and 20. There was a huge explosion in the number of shows. I think I kind of. I would say I fell backwards into it. I started having really cool conversations because I was really into something called parkour. So as I was turning 40, I got really into running and jumping and playing and going outside. And people know what parkour is. Just went, what? And I was having cool conversations with people. I was literally just going places and talking to people who had the same passion. And there were people who would sit down next to us and then go, ooh, you should have recorded that. I would have listened to that podcast. And I went, all right, podcasts. I never got into podcast. I've been on the Internet since the days and I've followed rss, but I never got into podcasting as a listener. And it was just a rabbit hole of. I have friends who are in the audio industry and I'm like, what mic should I use? And they just do this, do that. And then off I went. Because that's just the kind of person I am. I poke at things and I ask questions.

So that's exactly how I got started too. My partner and I, somebody said to us, it's like, you guys have the most weird conversations together. And Pete, you should just turn a mic on and do this. That guy is now my son in law, you know, and he was my first audio editor. And, you know, it's so funny that that's how you kind of dive into it is people are like, I want to, I want in on that. And I love podcasts that are like.

That, that are like that. I went on a long journey from 2017, continuing today of like looking at my work and talking to people and saying, what did you think? And going, oh, that's. That's horrible. I got to do that differently. But I. I don't delete the shows. I just, you know, make more episodes, make changes, make a new one.

Okay, so you've got little box of quotes which are like, under 60 seconds, and they have. You have, like, over 650 episodes there. And so that was fun and interesting. And, I mean, you started it way before TikTok, but they would be great.

Right now, except they're only audio. Yeah, that was a fun project. At the time, I was assisting coaching in a course, and they used to do this practice called 60 seconds a day, which is if you're a new podcaster and you're listening to the show and you haven't started yet, this is the way to get started. Just do something every day. Press record, talk to your mic for 60 seconds, and then listen to it back and publish it somewhere. And that was the. And I'm like, yeah, I've done a whole bunch of shows. But I said, what happens if I do a daily show that's sub 60 seconds and I don't tell anybody? So that's what I did. Which is, like, the dumbest strategy ever, right? So I started this whole show. I started it. I think it was early 2020. And it. Eventually I did 1400 episodes of the thing. And then I realized, you start crashing platforms, that's too many episodes. So I had to, like, go back and chop off hundreds and hundreds. But it became this quest for me to, like, well, how do I make this? How do I make this easy? It's like, well, your mic has to be on a boom arm because you're going to do this every day. How do you. Well, you just. Just buy the software. Stop messing around with the free version of the cheapo one that crashes because I need to be done in two seconds after I finish recording. How do I. And I just kept going around and around until I eventually got to the point where you can't do this every day. It doesn't work. Some days I need to be somewhere else. So then I figured out, how do I batch them, how do I line up the quotes? Because I do read them off little cards. I happen to collect quotes as a completely unrelated thing, but how do I pick the next seven or 14 that I want to do in the batch? And it became this wonderful experiment in, like, optimizing the process, and now I love them. I actually want to start it back up, but I keep refraining from Doing it because it's one more thing I'd be doing.

Yeah. Well, I mean, and that brings to mind the quote, invention is the mother of necessity. Right. Like, that's exactly right. As usual, as these became. As these things become necessary, you figure them out as you go. And that is one of my favorite parts about podcasting is like, it doesn't have to be perfect. From day one, you can get to these models, and you hear about somebody who batches, and you join in and you figure out how to do that. I love that about it.

Yeah. And people. You know, I've seen thousands of people literally start podcasting, and not all, like, a small percentage of them actually successfully launch, but every single person, including myself, is super fixated on that perfect launch. I have to have all the pieces line up and. And then what's the perfect day? Have to launch on a Tuesday. Do I do that at 9am they want to line everything up. And I'm like, oh, I got bad news for you. Because when you hit the ship button, it's just like nothing. Nobody cares because it's your first episode.

Right.

It's. It's only after you do the work. And it doesn't have to be a hundred. 100 is really cool, but it doesn't have to be a hundred. It can be two or seven or 17 or seven seasons, whatever. You, too. You'll find people who are interested in the work that you're creating. And then when you launch the new thing, those seven people go, that's awesome. But you don't. Don't focus. Don't fixate on. I have to coordinate my Facebook ad at the same time that my TikTok goes live. It's like, just. Just make the work. Just make the thing and ship it.

I know. I. It's one of the hardest things that I have when we talk to our clients, that. It's like, I want to get you to chill. Like, I want to get you to chill about this launch date. I want you to just get momentum going and. Because you're gonna find something you love, and you mentioned this to me before we got started here, is that this is like your third guesting interview that you've done in a little while, and you somewhat pod faded on some of the shows we're gonna talk about in a minute. Right. Cause a lot of life, it happens to everybody, especially those of us who've been there doing it a really long time.

I think it's more dangerous. Yeah.

Yeah. But getting back on the bike was as you Start to guess. You get your microphone out, it starts to feel like. Right. It starts to get you back in.

Yeah. I think, actually, it's even more dangerous to fall off the bicycle when you've done a bunch. When I fell off the bike, I actually dismounted the bicycle intentionally. I got sick, and one of the first things that happens, I lost my voice, which is like, oh, game over. Right? So I was losing my voice, and I was like, oh, I'm just gonna punt. And, you know, when. As a host, Tracy, you know, the hard part is getting the guests to schedule in. And there's a lot of effort we put into the hosting side. And I had, like, I. I think I had seven, five at least lined up. Like, I had dates. They weren't all in the coming week, but I basically had to push the cancel button because I couldn't tell when I was going to be able. I was like, oh, I'm so sorry.

No, you were in a really hard place of, when you can't do that schedule, what do you do? Right? But I.

But I did what you said. I relaxed, I went, you know what? I've started. This is. Okay, I'm going to step off the bicycle. And I canceled without ghosting people. I'm like, I'm sorry. I have to, you know, And I. I stepped off the bike knowing I can get back on anytime. And that was April, May, June. I was like, now I'm like, I feel like I sort of lulled myself into, like, this false sense of security around. Oh, it's easy to get started again. Yet it's October, so, yeah, I have worked.

It's not easy to get started again, and we lose our. Our passion for it in the same format, and we want to revise it, like. And that's where it ends up. Right. So let's talk about a couple of the other podcasts that you've had. Pod Talk Movers Mindset series. So, like, you've got some of these other ones in there. Which one do you feel like, like, compelled to come back to?

I was afraid you're going to ask that. I feel compelled to come to this new show that I'm trying to start.

See, not one of those at home. See, this is what I wanted everybody to actually hear, not what I love.

About those two shows. So Movers Mindset is at, I think 100. One of them is at, like, 140, and one of them is at 170.

I forget which of them I looked online. I think it's a 180, maybe okay. Farther along than you think.

Take your word for it. The two shows are very similar format. They're basically, I get on a call with people and I only publish the audio, and we do about 40 minutes of show. And it's just an off the cuff kind of thing. And that's kind of like my style. So the two shows are very similar, and the starting them up again is really the thing that pulls me is the people. Like, there are specific people who I want. Like, I wanted to talk to that person, and I've been waiting. And that's what will pull me back for those two shows. I know exactly. I mean, I could do them. I could do them five minutes from now if you said somebody wants to, like, without even looking at my notes. I know how to do the intros. Everything's in my head. But this other show that I have rattling around in my head, I have another project called Open and Curious, which is all about. My actual mission is about creating better conversations to spread understanding and compassion. And I didn't know that until I did a whole bunch of podcasting and then a whole bunch of writing. And I realized that's actually what I'm trying to do. So I'm trying to build a new show, which is about that, but I also want it to not be me, which is really tricky because I'm the kind of person will just dive in. And I'll tell you, Tracy, here's where the conversation is going to start. I'm going to ask you this question. We're going to have this thing on the end, and I'm going to do 100 episodes of it, and all of a sudden it feels like these other shows that I've already done. So I'm really like, you know, mad scientists. Like, okay, how do I build a thing that doesn't always work exactly the same way? I want each guest to take us, myself and the listener on some journ. I want people to see me go, wait, what? Huh? Like, that's the purpose of the show. And it's going to be a little meta because it's about conversation. So that's the thing that's really, like, that's drawing back in.

I'm so excited. I'm all in. I can't wait. Because I feel the same way. Like, I as. So I haven't told you all this. I was going to tell you all in the close, but now all of you listeners out there are going to hear. This may be my very last interview for the Binge Factor that I recorded this way, in this style. And what you know, it may be very different by next year, which means I'll take it down for a little while. So Craig will be the last one, and then I will, of course, start another one right on top of it. So you'll see the rebrand, so it won't look like the last one when we're done with it, but maybe the last one for a little while. And it's because I feel the same way. I, I, it's not that I'm bored, because I love this conversation with you. Right. Like, I love that. It's not that I. But I feel like the format and some of what it's doing is become systematic and not fulfilling. And that's. I think what you're saying is, like, you want it to transform and go somewhere else, do something else.

There's joy in that. Like, as a, hi, fellow creative. And everybody else out there, fellow creatives. There's joy. When you find that tension, any tension, you're like, oh, how do I figure out whatever that is, whatever medium you work in? And then, of course, what do you do? Well, you try and figure that out. You try and solve that. You try and, oh, I need a step stool because I'm too short or I need more paint, whatever. And then what does that do? That removes the tension. So there's always this constant cyclical, oh, let's make this harder. Let's add. Like, the idea of the best kind of play is we add rules and we make it harder so that we keep playing. If somebody wins the game, we screwed up. It should have been harder because we want to play more. So that's. I took me a long time to realize that that's what I'm doing is I, I constantly, I went from, like, four to 140 episodes without even paying attention. I was like, turn the crank, do the thing. Send the emails. And it was. And I love all of them. All the episodes are awesome, and the guests enjoy them and the listeners enjoy them. But then I'm like, yeah, but I processified the tension out of it. I made it so I don't even get nervous anymore. And I'm like, I feel like I should have a new rule. I have to stand on one leg, you know, like, while I do the whole show or something.

I gotta make this harder.

Yeah. So, yeah, that's the tension that I really enjoy that part of it. So I can't not do this well.

So I have seven shows, and I always say this. I've started seven Shows, I don't have them all active at this time. There's only two active. But I did it because I wanted to start a brand new one to see how hard it was for my clients to start one.

Yeah, that's important too.

Yeah. But in doing so, I also needed to make it worth my while, and that's where I started. In the last couple of years, I've reformatted, rather than start a new one and sort of relaunched a show. Right. That's actually just as challenging. So. Because as you're right, hitting submit to Apple for the first time is after that. Nothing. Like there's nothing.

Especially these days. Because it works.

It works. Yeah. Like, it didn't used to work. You're absolutely right. Back in 2014-2017, it didn't always work. And so those years. Yeah. So, you know, that's where I'm. I'm coming from as well. So I want to talk about a couple of things because we have this in common. And we were both bloggers first and it's a different world. Like, I really do feel some of our early podcasters, especially the people we may have both looked up to, they were all bloggers first. They came out of that digital marketing and blogging world and moved into podcasting next. And. And too often I get a lot of people are coming from video first into and they are very dissatisfied with podcasting model because it's slow, but it's faster than blogging.

Yeah. Blogging, I think, has seen its day. I. I'm. I'm hoping it'll come back, but I disagree.

And we'll have to chat about that because we're not seeing that. We're seeing blogging being the one sustainable part of. Because we always do video, audio and blog in everything that we do.

Yeah, like just blogging. I. I have completely unrelated all the podcasting. I happen to have a blog just like a blogger off in your own corner. I think that's kind of. That's over. But I think having. You're right. I actually go to a lot of trouble to build, I'm going to say reasonable websites that go with the shows that I'm doing. And I put the show notes in places. One of my pet peeves with podcasters is when I can't find the URL. Where is the one actual definitive place that the creator says this is the show? Sometimes I can't find that. And I understand why podcasts just don't want to also have to become web masters and Internet nerds. Like, I Get it? Technology is annoying, but there are some really big shows where I'm like, I'm trying to share your stupid episode and I can't find the page, you know, or like, or they talk about a book and I can't find the book. I'm like, don't make me. Fine, I'll download your MP3 file, I'll drop it in Otter AI. I will get the transcript back. I will search. But, yeah, so having them together. Yeah. Having a blog, having a web page, having. I don't do it. The short format, video type of content as well. But it makes sense to me to take the thing that you put so much effort into creating. Like, I'm talking to the podcast creators. You put so much effort into making the thing. It's not that much harder to also have the written word, to also have, you know, a reasonable transcript to also have. And I don't do this sometimes, but cover art to also have quotes that you've pulled out of the conversation.

But it's not that hard to make sure that it's located in one place and easy to find. Because if somebody's going to take the effort to click through your episode webpage or your show website and go to it and have them not find you is such a crime. Like, to me, I was like, you just lost somebody who was willing to click through to find you, and they can't.

Yeah, I've had some where you can't. I go to. I'm like, all right, fine, I'm going to the search engine. Like, multiple search engines, and I'm like typing the exact name of the episode and I can't find it.

And I'm like, oh, I'm so missing out. Yeah, I agree with you. But so blogging, though, what made you come from blogging to podcasting? What was that? That shift that happened in 2017?

I didn't really think of it that way. I started blogging in 94. I was on the Internet kind of early, working in that industry as, like, where I come from. And so I've had multiple instances where I've literally, like, burned down my whole website and built a whole new one. And so I've. I've always just thought of that as, like, I don't know, I type a lot on the keyboard and sometimes I want other people to read it. And that's just kind of like what I was doing. That's like traditional blogging, I guess. Oh, no. When I started podcasting, I really. I missed that whole window where you basically had to fiddle with your RSS feed and kind of do it yourself to make the podcast go. I got on the bandwagon when it was, oh, like, I often do them with WordPress plugins, but it's like, click, I'm a podcaster. You know, like, you don't have to do anything.

It wasn't as hard. Yeah, right.

Upload the file and you're done. Or you can go to SimpleCaster or wherever you want to go. So I never really did the side where I had to do a lot of the heavy lifting. So to me, they've always felt so different. But it was always really obvious to me that there should be a link. Like, you know, yes, I'm reading, I'm reading this in my podcast player or I'm listening in my where's the webpage so I can go out on the public Internet and look at the thing. So I never really saw them as the same, although they really kind of are. You're basically publishing some kind of content.

But I think that what the interesting part about and why I've always treated my blog separately, like you have, right. That it's, it's. It's a shorter article than my podcast. Right. My podcast has a webpage and it's. We call it verbal SEO blogs. Right. But they're like the long form of our show notes and they're the blog version of our show notes. They're prettier. Right. Like so. Because people still want it to look good. And so we do that. But the blog side of it, I always treated it more like articles because I was a writer for INC Magazine and it came out of my podcast. So I always treat them like their article and their one thought where the podcast might meander and be longer. So I want to pull one thought out and make that the blog. And sometimes it's a thought provoking conversation, which is what I think your blogs are much more like. They're provoking the conversation and then having Also maybe one though, if you want to know how to do this, I want my blog, my article blog to be more complete so that you can just follow that really quickly. So it's more tip like if you want to think of it like that. So that's the way I've always approached it is like they're the short form that helps you. And then if you really want to listen to the whole thing, go listen to the podcast.

Yeah, it's just to me it feels like, like refining or sifting for, you know, panning for gold. You Know, you do the conversation. And the conversation that we record and that we publish audio or video is an experience. And people who want the experience, maybe they only want a half listen to it, but they want the experience, then they can come along and it. It's the full size thing. And then whether or not you speed it up when you play it back. But then what are the show notes? Well, the show notes are the host trying to convey some. Here's what's in this thing. Here's this journey that we went on in that experience. And that both might help convince a listener to actually pick the dive and press play. But it also helps them understand, you know, where are we going to go? Or what? You know, what do I want to do this at my desk? What I want to do is while I'm driving. And then you're talking about the thing that I really hardly ever do, which is to go the step further and to try and draw like a, A lesson or a takeaway or just a big juicy question out of the experience that you had when you went on the journey. And every time as creators that we do one of those refining steps that's like, precious and a gift of the world. I mean, hopefully people get paid too, somehow. But you're really. It feels really hard, right? You're like, oh, I got this hour and a half thing. It was awesome. And you're like 17 pages of transcription and how am I going to make a post out of this? That's actually the really good tension. That means you're doing the right thing. I don't have a lot of success with that. I often, I just do too many shows and I'm just like, I. I do good show notes the best I can using AI assistance, and then I send them on the merry way. And one day I have dreams of, oh, one day I hope I could employ people to help me pull all the nuggets.

Well, you know, let's talk about that, because one of the things that I'm testing out right now is taking all of my Ink articles, my ink magazine articles, and turning them into AI podcasts with. I want it to sound like my voice. So I'm working on that, like, making it so that it does still sound like me. I know it won't sound like me me. Like, that's what I. I know in my head, I'm like. Because I know there's a totally different energy to me doing the show than writing about it.

Yeah, they're. They're different, but I think they can be Close enough that people can get maybe 80% of what they would have gotten if they read it.

That's what I was thinking. It's so. It's like it always bugged me when I would go to. I use the flipboard a lot. I don't know, you know, other people use medium and other different, you know, I'm going to call it consolidators of different articles and things because I'm a reader first. And so it always bugged me when they would up the video and there would be no transcript, no written version. And so this is the opposite way of thinking about it. It's like I've got the written version, but there are people who just want to listen. How can I help them? Just listen.

That's really important. And it's another one of those like yours. That's to me my opinion. You're going back to the first work, what I would call the original piece. And you're going, you know, if I put a little more work into this, I could make this completely different. Different type of thing which was pretty much the same thing. And there's people like over there. If people are listening, I wave my hands a lot. Sorry. There's people over here who could get value if I could just get my original thing into this other format. So I totally feel I know exactly what you're talking about. I don't go that way because I don't write a lot of longer form sane stuff.

But that's what I think. It's kind of. I think this idea. I'm not a fan of scripting. Right. I am not a fan of scripting our shows. It's the one thing I say would will try to break my podcasters out from. It's one thing to script a little intro and another thing to script the entire show. And I think it loses something. And I always say this to people who I interview. I can clearly tell when you've scripted your show. I know the difference.

Yes, there's a U. You know, the U shaped curve. Like very little of something is great. And then there's like this big valley in the middle where it's like. Yeah. And then you get over on the far end and it gets great again. Take a screenplay for your favorite movie movie and look at it. And like this. This became that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Do you know why? Because the people who I'm air quoting read the script are really good actors. And it's that magical actor part plus director plus cinematographer and all these other things that gets it across The Valley. So when people start scripting stuff, I'll script stuff when I have to remember to say all seven things or, you know, make sure I hit these things or I can't remember URLs, like, yes, the scripts are my crib notes. But unless you're going to really, really practice, you're not going to be able to deliver that professional quality experience while staring at the paper like, that's not going to work.

And it's going to come across to the audience. And so that's where I think that, I think this idea, like, people are like, oh, podcasters are going to be out of business because AI is just going to, like, translate it. I was like, no, podcasters would have to be writers first. And I know that they're not, so it's never going to happen. But is there a case? And that's what I want to see. I want to see. Does the version of my coming from the podcast, the energy of that, turning that into an article and then turning it back into the short form podcast, is there some kind of energy arc that still embeds itself in the AI? I was like, there has to be.

I think it's just a question of the consumers of all this. And not like consumers, like you destroyed it, but the consumers, the listeners, readers, the watchers, they're looking for connection, they're looking for experiences, and they don't, at least at first, brush actually care where it came from. They're interested in, does it land?

Is it my people? Is it my language? That kind of stuff. They're not going to be, oh, this has got AI in it. And then they're going to like, no, I think it's, it's a tool. I said before, I'm not like a big techno optimist, but it's just a tool. And if it works for you and if you have the time, like Tracy specifically, you have the time to work with those tools, well, you're only going to make better things to make the world better. That's awesome. Please do that. Like, I'm not. That stuff doesn't work.

Use it as a creation piece. Right, exactly.

Force multiplier.

Yeah, you've mentioned multiple times, like, and kind of gave this look, like, yeah, Very few people monetize their podcasts. And I, I know that you're right. Right. Because I see it every single day. It's like monetization of it.

Podcasters don't do it, though.

Yes, exactly. Like, it's very hard to get paid to do this for a Living right. And why do you think that is? Is it the system? Is it, you know, what's, what do you think's going on there?

Well, I think it's because, to be honest, most podcasters are not that good. Really. If you were Ira Glass or Terry Gross, they'd knock your door down and be like, you need to come work for. And then here's your six figure salary. Like the. I don't want to say, that's awesome. Let's all go in the shark feeding frenzy tank and fight. Or it's like, no, no, but the people that when you look at someone and you go, that person makes. That's their full time job and they're on NPR and they're doing these things and they're getting paid, it's like, yeah, that's what Seth Godman called the tall head. Like, yes, there are people, people, you know, like Tim Ferriss, who will be the first person to tell you that he's basically lucky, put in a ton of work and still doesn't understand how it worked. That, like, don't compare yourself to those people. Compare yourself to yourself. What are you trying to accomplish? Why did you press record in the first place? I started making podcasts because I was having cool conversations. I wanted to share them with people. The definition of success for me is if a listener hears the show and then when they bump into my guest in person, they can skip over the parts of the conversation that my guest would hate and go right to the good part. That's success. They got up that like, so basically I'm connecting people. It's like my. If I can connect two people on that success. So anytime I find myself going, I wish I got paid for this, I'm like, no, Craig, that's not what I said I wanted to do. So which is it if you want to get paid? I don't think that's actually that hard to do. Like, I think you just go find a coach like Tracy Hazard or you go find a company like Putt Sanitized and you go and you go, please teach me how to do that. Because it's not like it's a black art. It's not magic. It's just different.

It's not magic. But here's the thing. When I try to teach people to do that, they won't do it well, because it's all.

That's not your fault.

Because, yeah, because you're not Terry Gross. Right. You're not at that level. You didn't start there. And because of that you have to figure out how to get from from here to there. It's a lot of work, and I think that's great.

Like, the. The work is great. Like, I nerd binge on, like, journalists, you know, people who have got just like all these shows that are all about journalism. And I don't do journalism. I'm not a journalist. I don't want to. But every once in a while I wind up talking to someone I like, did some work for somebody that wanted an episode. They wanted a bunch of episodes that were little mini interviews of the presenters at a workshop. So I'm like, running around with my headphones and my, you know, pointing microphone at people, and that's basically journalism. And, like, I'm like, this is really hard. It's not the way I normally do conversations. This is a whole different beast. I think I did a solidly C average job of the whole thing. And they, you know, everybody loved it. We all had fun, but it was really hard, exactly as I knew it was going to be because I've looked at enough and listened and read enough of the journal journalism world to go, this is not just press record and point the mic. So I think if people feel like, I don't know dearly about getting paid to podcast, but if people feel like they know what they're doing, then just like, remember that. Don't suddenly feel like, and I want to do this other thing, get paid. It's like, no, which is it? If you want to get paid, then you have a producer and you have people who. You have executive producers who tell you what the show is. I mean, if you're lucky, maybe you get to be involved in that. But if they tell you we're doing X, then you need to do X. And if you don't do X up to spec, then, gee, I wonder why you didn't get paid.

I'm a big fan of getting paid to do what you are in business for. Right? Like, what. What's your mission? What's your business? And let's make that podcast work within that for you so that you can then do make connections and still make your business grow. Right? Like, do those two things together. Let's see if we can find a strategy for that. I'm a bigger fan of that because I think that it gives you an excuse to podcast. Right?

There's. I read a, you know, a book. I forget the title. It's not super important, but the basic idea of the book was, you know, you could make a podcast and then you could Wind up with all the people that you have as guests, could be your customers, which is a really obvious idea. Now, I forget when I read the book, but it was like, all right, well, how would you do that? Well, first you have to be good at podcasting and conversation. Not good at sales, not good at. And if you can do that, well, of course you deserve to have more customers because you figured out. Out how to engage with them and you know who to serve. And so I feel like podcasting may be a little less these days than 2017, but I still feel like it's a magical. It's a magical medium. I do not have a multimillion dollar sound studio. You can do this out of your car with a little suitcase full of stuff. You can, oh, it's $5 to edit this or you can outsource that. Like, there's so many tools that are available. You can make the thing really easy. It's very thin to make the thing, which means if it's something you're passionate about, you can just go do it. Just don't think that you're going to do like, oh, I'm going to make $7 million. Like, no, no, that's a different thing.

That's right. It's a totally different world. Well, Craig, I am so glad we've been able to finally facilitate this conversation between the two of us. And I look forward to figuring out what the new version of my show is and having you back on again.

Yeah, thanks for bringing the training wheels and putting me back on the bicycle and say, pedal, go, go. You can do it.

Please do it, because your community is so beautiful. So all the links again will be in the blog post for this episode. So you will be able to connect up with the podcaster community and check out the forum and have a conversation, perhaps in chat with Craig yourself.

Cool. I'm around. It's great to see you. Nice to have a chance to talk for, like an hour. Look forward to seeing what you create.

One of the things I've loved about doing this show for as long as I have, and I honestly, it's just. It's always been energizing to do the binge factor because I'm always getting ideas that I'm filing away and sometimes knowing what I don't want to do. But Craig Constantine really inspired me to do some new things, and I love this because we come from writing as our first starting point. We're more comfortable with writing. The two of us are that way. Podcasting came secondary, but we felt really at home there too. And then video. I do it all the time. You guys see it, it's here. But not my first love either. And I. And so I have a harder time embracing the environment that is video because it's not my first love. But I keep coming back to trying to figure out how to make logging work. It is the engine underneath podcasters united.org there's an engine underneath everything that we do in all of our websites and our podcasts that has a. Its legs, its foundation in writing. And so when Craig was talking about the AI and we were talking about Notebook LM and all of those models about that, that is something that I absolutely have put on my to do list. Like it is at the top of my list after all my daily duties. Right. So I may, it may take me a little bit of time to get to it, but I want to try that because I have some amazing articles that are no longer getting the circulation that they should. They're not outdated, their advice is really good, but they're not circulating the way that they should anymore because they're not as current. So what if, if they were turned into podcasts and audio only versions of them. And what if I didn't have to do all that work because I already did all the work writing it. It already is my voice, it already has my feelings and it already has my opinion and it has my viewpoint in it. What if I could take that and turn that into a podcast? That would be valuable. I know Craig is thinking the same thing because he wrote it in right after our call. About a week or so later he starts posting about our conversation and thinking about how am I gonna handle this? What am I gonna do? And so we're starting to think through the me of it. I love that that's taking it to a new level. It says when you get mind share with someone, you're onto something. Right. And that's why I can't totally let go of the show and some of the format. I have had to think about how am I going to reformat this show and make sure that I keep these top level conversations that I want to have. So I got some thoughts to, to formulate and that led all this conversation with Craig digest so that I can figure out where I'm going to take this next. But something new is coming. My next episode is going to give you a sneak peek at what's coming in 2025. Or if you're listening in a serial way and you're binge listening to it. What's coming up in your next hundred or so episodes, however many we continue to go about doing, we'll definitely committing to a year of it no matter what happens. So you will, at least at minimum in the new format, get 52 episodes. And I am committed to staying a member of the Podcasters Community Forum. Podcasters Community. I'm going to stay a member of that for the next year as well because I just joined up and paid my membership fee and for the next year. And I am looking forward to having more conversations with Craig. I've made a new friend and I love that about the podcasting industry as well. So I want you to connect to the podcasters community. I want you to find them by going to podcasters united.org finding the community on there, finding the blog post for this episode. You'll go straight there, click through and join. Join in the conversation that Craig has worked so hard to create. Thanks everyone for listening to so many interviews here on the Binge Factor. I look forward to coming back with something completely new for you and I'll be back next week to tell you what that is. Thanks everyone.

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