Curating Podcasting Viewpoints To Make Your Show More Effective With This Seasoned Podcaster Mark Graban Of My Favorite Mistake

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 Hazard 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.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Binge Factor. I'm Tracy Hazzard and I have Mark Graben on today and he is an OG podcaster, started in 2006. So he really has started before. I mean, I think even some of us really came into the podcasting world. He has a podcast now and he's got multiples of them and we'll talk about that in a minute. But he has a podcast now called My Favorite Mistake. And I love that title, I love everything that it implies. And he's going to tell us a little bit about the genesis of that. So today you're definitely not going to want to miss this podcast. Mark Graben is the author of the award winning book Lean Improving Quality, Patient Safety and Employee Engagement and his most recent book, Measure of Success. React Less, Lead Better, Improve More. He serves as a consultant through his company, Constancy, Inc. That's hard to say, Constancy, Inc. And is also a senior advisor for the technology company Kinexus. Mark hosts podcasts including Lean Blog Interviews and My Favorite Mistake, and he is currently finishing a new book about learning from mistakes. Mark is just, I mean, Lean Podcasts, Lean Blog Interviews, Lean Whiskey, Kynexis. He's got all these podcasts mixing it up and yet he's merged into something that's a little bit, I'm going to call it niche and narrow in its topic, but broad in terms of the different types of people that it can reach. And he's been finding some great success here and that's why he's been invited on the Binge Factor. So let's talk to Mark Graman. Mark, so glad to talk with such a seasoned podcaster. 2006.

Yeah.

What made you think in 2006 this podcasting thing was going to be worthwhile? Now? You were a blogger first, right?

I started blogging in 2005. Yeah. And I had one of my mentors from my field, Norman Bodak, who passed away about 18 months ago. I mean, he was well into his late 70s and it was actually sort of his idea. So we had Done some kind of text email interviews back and forth that I had published as blog posts. And Norman Bodak gave me the gift one day, he said with the confidence and the somewhat pushiness that he always had, he said, mark, you know what you should do? You need to do a radio interview of me. And I kind of chuckled at him, like, well, Norman, I don't own a radio station. I don't have a radio show. But I had just started hearing about podcasts, so I kind of did took his idea and turned that into, okay, I'll try a podcast. And so Norman was my first guest. And, yeah, I don't know, without that push, I don't know if I would have gotten into it eventually or what would have happened.

That's so interesting that you kind of figured that out at that stage. So, 2006, like, for those of you starting a show now, that was hard. Like, it was even hard a decade after that, but it is not hard today compared to that. Right. So you've now started out multiple shows. So that first one was what I assume became Lean Interview, just. Or your Lean Blog interviews, your Lean Podcast. Right?

Yeah. And if I could go back and do it again, it's a bad name, right? Because I had Lean Blog and then I sort of called it the Lean Blog Podcast. It's just clunky, Right. I should have just called it something more like the Lean Cast or something like that.

You would have cleaned it up now. Yeah, but back then, you had to work the name podcast in, right? Because nowadays I've, like, people who don't understand podcasting, and it's usually like a big red flag sign, like you call your new show my favorite mistake. Like, it doesn't have the word podcast in the name of it because it's on a podcast player. It's redundant. And so, yeah, so you just don't do that now. But back then, you really kind of had to. Because when you were promoting it or sharing it in newsletters or wherever you were doing it, they didn't know what it was.

And it was harder as a podcaster. It was harder as a listener. I remember. I mean, if you didn't download it through your browser or. I'm trying to remember at what point there was a streaming player. And I would do this. You would have to download the file, load it to your MP3 player. Oh, the MP3 player is out of room. Like it was.

It was right about, I think, 2013 14, where you could stream it on Apple. Like, that was where the tipping point happened. I think it's right about that time someone will send us a message and correct that if I'm off by a year. But it was right around that decade that we got into that shift of it. But back when you were doing it, you're right. You had to go to the desktop itunes browser, download it probably onto your little ipod player.

Or even before that. Like these other. I forget the brands. Like these MP3 dedicated MP3 player.

That's right. That's how long ago that was. But you then had to tackle everything yourself. And we were talking about that before we started recording. Here is that you started figuring out how to edit, figuring out how to distribute. But you had to figure it all out then.

I did my best.

Yeah. What do you still do yourself today? That all the stuff that you dropped off. I'm sure the distribution got easier and other things happened. So.

Yeah, I mean technology has changed. Distribution has gotten easier. For better or for worse. I still do it myself. And I've thought through the trade offs of. I think I have things down to a pretty good routine either. Efficiency and laziness are two sides of the same coin. I don't agonize over editing. I do a little editing.

But you have a show. Just let's say this. My favorite mistake is allowed to make mistakes. Right. Like you gave yourself like the opportunity where you go, like, I don't need to edit.

Where I'll violate that rule is if like right in the very first 10 seconds I just choke on a word or something. Then I'll go back and restart it. But during the middle, no. But I try to avoid the major mistakes like double checking the pronunciation of people's names. Even if I feel 98% certain how to pronounce it. I don't want to be tripped up on that and have the person the whole time wondering should I correct him? Or that I don't want.

That's right.

But anyway. But back to the question of like, do I keep doing it myself? Or what's the setup time involved in getting someone else set up to take these handoffs? And I've just kind of fallen back into I'll do it myself. I grew up with computers. I love playing with the technology. So that part of it is sort of interesting to me. Even if I don't know economically. It's not always the best use of my time.

Yeah. But I think that there's something about the curation process and what you're doing. And look, we're talking at this tipping point where all I've talked about this week has been. AI right. That's all I've had discussions about. Everybody wants to talk about it. Everybody's asked me my view on it. And so this has been kind of this area of it. And as we head into that, I think that people who curate like you do, we couldn't write blogs. I was writing blogs back in 2005 like you were, and we couldn't write blogs without a viewpoint. And curating that viewpoint is what you do really well on your show. This is your binge factor. It's why I come and listen to my favorite mistake and listen to all the episodes. I'm doing it because we. When you pull that clip out, you've honed in on what you think is the different mistake this week from the one we heard last week and the one before that. You're narrowing in on that in a way and curating all of that together. Which is why I can't wait for your book, because I think that. That it's, again, a curation process of what you took away from it.

Yeah. After a while, you start seeing patterns. I mean, every guest is unique and it's been almost 200 episodes now. And my favorite mistake, but you start seeing some patterns and some themes and trying to draw that out in a way that's helped me think through it and process it. And then there's still a lot of people who don't listen to podcasts. I hate to say that there still.

Are a lot, but it's growing.

I think a book will reach different audience in different way, and maybe it'll inspire them to come hear the longer version of the stories directly from the guests in the podcast.

Well, I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that process from podcast to book. What's that flow been like for you? Were you pre planning it? Were you thinking about the guests you wanted to have? Like, did you plan out the book first and then do that, or which way did it go?

Well, so this is a question again of efficiency or laziness or serendipity.

We're going to call it serendipity here.

It was not designed from the beginning of here's the guests and the mix of guests. I need to lead to a book. I was really thinking first of just having a diversity of guests and all sorts of different dimensions, including people from different professions that I wouldn't have normally interviewed in my earlier existing podcasts. I need to go back and find out who it was. It was one of my first 10 guests, and I could narrow it down a little bit after we recorded, I think it was a she, so it narrows it down more. I'm going to go back and ask some people because this is part of the origin story for the book. I got asked directly, not in a accusatory way of like, well, are you doing this podcast? Because you're writing a book about learning from mistakes? And I hadn't thought of that yet.

So they were like, that's what we think you're doing. We're going to plant that in your head.

But that idea simmered for a while, and I had published my last book back in 2018, and that can take a lot out of you or you're still promoting that book. I wasn't ready to do another book, and a lot of people during the pandemic, they wrote a book. Well, I started a couple new podcasts. But then it got to the point about nine months ago where I started thinking, okay, I think I'm seeing themes, I'm seeing patterns. I want to explore this. Okay, I'm going to do a book.

I'm really glad you did. And I think that we learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes sometimes, and we learn from other people's mistakes really well. And so that's also that kind of model. So. So I really think it's a great model for a podcast and a book. I think that you're right about that. And it should be really exciting to see the differences and how they lead to each other.

Yeah.

Because I think that you can only put so much in the book. But if I could come back and listen to the whole story and learn more about that person and have those tie ins go back and forth, I think you're going to see this really nice flow through, and I look forward to seeing the results from that.

Yeah, well, thank you. It's still coming together and going back and forth with the editor that I hired to work with me. So I've kind of thrown a 95% written manuscript, which doesn't mean 95% good, but like, okay, he's got the manuscript.

90% done, and then he's going through it.

And part of why I hired him is I know some of the business books he's done. We're having questions about the high level organization of the book and make sure that if the arc of the book flows smoothly and then figure out how to tighten it up. And like you said, I can't include everybody's story or it would Be a really long book after almost 200 guests.

But and this is kind of really nice because podcasting's so flexible, right? If he says, you know what, you really need another story in the healthcare industry or something like that, you can fill in the gap and do that right away.

Yeah, yeah, it's a good point. So it'd be interesting to see how the book and the podcast coexist going forward. I'm taking a bit of a pause. I'm going to relaunch the podcast more to help promote the book when the book is ready to come out. And then there's still a question. So I think my favorite mistake. I've agonized over whether that name was a mistake. Right. It's inspired by the Sheryl Crow song and I think it's a great flick.

That's why I like it, actually.

It's a great open ended question. What's your favorite mistake? I stumbled into a great question there. But then if you go to search my favorite mistake, the Sheryl Crow song dominates the search results. And it occurred to me way too late, which is what makes a mistake. But this one's not keeping me up at night. If I had called it our favorite mistakes, that would have had a different searchability. And then for the book, we've ended up deciding to call the book something different. The mistakes that make us. And then it's sort of like by the host of my favorite Mistake.

I don't think I want to just say to the audience here and listen to what Mark is. This is a conundrum. Right. This is the challenge that we have as hosts. Do we name our books and our podcast the same thing? Our programs and our podcast the same thing? Our blog and our podcast the same thing. And I think that there's power in differentiation. And so I think what you've done here is kind of a nice mix of it all. And it actually may work even better once the book comes out. You may work to promote the podcast name even better.

It might. And I mean, I could rebrand, rename the podcast. That would require more work and I'm not opposed to work. But is that worth it to rename, rebrand, Maybe not over time.

And I think because you're probably hitting at the tipping point being over 200 episodes, and then with the book coming out is over time. So there's a Tracy Hazard who I get emails for every so often. Yeah, usually publicity emails asking for something. She's a musician, so theoretically she should dominate Spotify. She should dominate Apple.

Yeah.

But I dominate Google, and so people find me more often than they find her. And it should be very, very clear because we are not the same cultural background. Like, it should be really clear that we are not the same person. But people don't look. So. But I get emails for her about once a week at least.

Yeah.

And so that's kind of an interesting dynamic that I think could happen. I mean, Sheryl Crow's pretty famous, so that is gonna be hard. But I do think current, relevant, interesting topics around that should still rank up there with her. And at least it's a search term people are using.

Well, or. And then here's the other thing that made me think move back from the side where I thought then the podcast name was a big mistake. I don't think people are necessarily searching for that phrase. My favorite mistake. If they search for things like business mistakes, my podcast does very well.

That's right.

So there's art of even a subtitle for your podcast. Correct me if I'm wrong in this, but I read something that said the Apple podcast search is actually pretty bad.

Oh, I say it all the time here, so definitely you are on it. It's so bad, it's tough. Title, author name, and the 4000 character description. That's it.

Okay. Oh, I've heard it doesn't even really use the description.

No, it doesn't use the episode description.

Episode.

The show description. It does.

Oh, good. Okay. But I think that's where I'm doing pretty well on phrases people might put into podcast search.

I think you're right. And I think at the end of the day, when I'm looking for advice, lessons learned, like all of those things you're going to show up for, and I think that's really powerful. So let's talk about this. You dropped this kind of casually in our conversation already, which is that the pandemic happens and you double down and do more podcasts where lots of people wrote a book. So why.

I mean, there's a couple of factors. I mean, normally I would be on the road pre pandemic at least half the time, consulting and speaking and doing that because I'm working in healthcare especially, that just got shut down. I was working with a client up until, like, okay, we knew this was coming more so than general public, because word was kind of spreading within healthcare circles of this virus coming and we might be shut down. But even then I thought, okay, well, we'll see in two or three months. Well, it turned out to be a lot longer than that it was two years almost before I really got back out on the road consistently. So I was working from home. And I enjoy podcasting for a lot of reasons, for learning and for networking. That's kind of marketing for myself, for some exposure. And so first, this consulting firm that I do a lot of work with called Value Capture, I was trying to help support some of their marketing initiatives, or at least trying to think of, let's do some things to get set up for a recovery back to normal. And so there was some website work that I did. And then one idea was, let's start a podcast. We can interview clients and consultants on the team and others. So they said, okay, well, sure. That was the first time I was directly being paid to do a podcast where it was part of my contractor work for that firm. And then a couple of months later, came across the opportunity to start my favorite mistake. And I'll tell you, that was serendipity, too, because this probably happens with you. You get pitched guests all the time. And with that Lean podcast, it's very niche. I think it's very popular in its niche, but it's still not a general public interest podcast. But then one of those PR people pitched Kevin Harrington, who is one of the sharks, right?

Kevin and I, I've had him on my show, and we're friends, so. Yeah.

And normally I would have said, oh, it's not a fit.

Yeah.

And then there's that old this expression or this idea of finding a way to say yes instead of just no. And so I brainstormed with a couple of the guest bookers, PR people who had reached out, including Kevin Harrington's team. And they said, kevin, yeah, he'll come on. He'll share a mistake. And so that was part of the experiment, right? And he came on.

I had to say, this is a big draw for your show from a guest standpoint, is that we matched each other through PodMatch. That's how you got served up to me. And we got connected through that. And I mean, normally I'm pretty picky. Like, I will really screen through the shows and everything. And I saw my favorite mistake, and I was like, please, please let him be a good podcaster. Like, you know, like, it was like, I was like, the show sounds so cool. I want to talk about that. And I was so thrilled to find out how many hundreds of episodes you'd done. It was like, phew, okay, great, I can do that. But it was like that kind of thing was the name of the show, was an easy yes, for a guest.

For a lot of guests. Right.

So, I mean, there are some that won't talk about it.

Well, there are some who won't do it. Right. And I give Kevin Harrington and others so much credit for being willing to share their mistake stories. Now, here's the one fear, and I'm exploring this in the book then, of, like, knowing that you're right versus having an idea that I'm willing to go test. Right. So I didn't know at the beginning that I could attract more than a couple of guests who would be willing to come and talk about mistakes. So Kevin Harrington said yes. Then I kind of feared that people would come on and give me a version of the classic job interview question.

Of, like, that's what I was going to say.

Probably your biggest fault. And you'd say something like, I just put in too many hours or something. Right. And I was afraid that people might come on and do the whole thing of like, well, my favorite mistake is that I've just been too successful. But he didn't do that. Right. There was just no bs, like, here's a mistake I made that almost put my company out of business. But. But thank God I made the mistake early and I learned from it, and I made some changes to make sure that wouldn't happen again. That's gold. That was so brilliant. I'm paraphrasing his story, but people have been very generous, and I think it's this weird combination of confidence and humility that it takes to be able to share a story like that on the podcast. So I think the people who've been willing to come on and share are a really cool group of people, and.

You have a really diverse group. So let's dive into kind of our three questions section where we're talking about this. I mean, on your Lean podcast, you've got, like, Tom Peters, like, a pretty recent episode with Tom Peters, and I was fascinated. He's one of my favorite writers. I came from product development, so I have a background in Lean as you do. So, like, I understand this model. And Tom Peters is just like a rock star still. So to have an interview with him. So how do you get these great guests for both shows?

So it's a mix of things. Now, the first time I had Tom Peters on my Lean podcast, that was a bit of a stretch, right? But so what we're talking about leadership and people, and. Okay, those are things that this Lean management methodology is at least connected to. How did I get Tom that first time? Gosh, I'M trying to remember. So I've had him on the Lean podcast and then I asked him to come back and do my favorite mistake. And then with his most great.

That you built a relationship that he so willingly come back too. Right.

And then his most recent book, his team actually reached out to me and asked, you know, if he could come back on. I'm like, of course, course, sure. But it's killing me that I'm trying to remember how I stumbled into Tom. Some of it is my own networking and reaching out to people like Daniel Pink, who I think is another very well known author.

Really well known, yeah.

He's been on both podcasts. I had met him briefly. He was coming around doing a book tour for his book drive and he was giving a talk. And so I went and then I had the gumption to go up and say hi afterwards. And we both are graduates of Northwestern University. So like, oh, okay, you find that connection point. And then I had reached out to him and invited him and yeah, he said that he would.

I just gave a lecture for Northwestern this past year on innovation and it was so much fun. What a great school. So you've got a connection point that you're making with people, and I think that that really helps. Right?

Yeah. And there's times where I've reached out to people through my network or otherwise. There are times when I've been pitched guests and I'm fairly selective or I'm looking at like, that's a different thing. If it's just a generic pitch, I almost always hit delete. But if someone has tailored the pitch to be something about the show, then, okay, they're more. Yeah, it's the difference between, like, I've got my talking points and I want to come on yet another podcast and say these same talking points and answer these same questions. I'm like, no, my show's different. People have said it's a good experience for them because they've enjoyed having a different type of conversation. But then I've used PodMatch and Matchmaker FM to find guests. And then sometimes it doesn't take much effort to try. So I had seen some sort of quote by William Shatner about mistakes. And so I reached out over the holidays through his website and made a short but sort of direct. I saw this quote, Love Mr. Shatner. If he would come on and elaborate on that quote about learning from mistakes. So, well, maybe he's got time on his hands over the holidays. Or you never know.

You never know, right? Or maybe he's going to start promoting a new book. You might just be tapped into a promotion period. They're about to go on, maybe.

And I got a very polite response back from somebody on his team. It was, like, exceedingly gracious. It was probably a bit of a form response, but it was kind like, I felt acknowledged. And if they had just deleted my message, okay, fine, I get it. But if he had said yes, it would have been amazing if they had said, as long as they didn't say no in some sort of how dare you for even asking kind of way.

Yeah, you keep going. Well, I love that you're doing what I think a lot of podcasters do. Once you hit over 100 episodes, 200 episodes, and you start to get more selective because it's got to be interesting for you. So, yeah, now thinking about that, I mean, in the early days of your show, your first show, and now you had to grow a second show, which is hard. Right. It's one thing to take your show and then shift it and keep the audience you have, but you had to grow a whole new one. How was the difference between growing an audience back in 2006 to growing an audience in 2020?

It's a good question. And there was less competition at the time in 2006, both in my niche and maybe in general. So the audience numbers probably grew faster. For that Lean podcast, there just wasn't as much for people to find. Now more people have started more podcasts in that field, and that's great. And I'm part of a networking group that I helped organize for some of those podcasters who've been at it a long time and people who are just starting over the pandemic. Right. Just to be helpful and collegial instead of being competitive, you know, with my favorite mistake and with that podcast for the firm value capture, which we call habitual excellence, audiences grow slowly. And that's one piece of advice I would give the podcasters, is unless you're already famous, you're probably not going to have an overnight success. So make sure you've got a topic or a theme or a focus that you're really committed to, because it's kind of a slog or a grind, unless you're. I mean, I've experimented with a little bit of paid promotion, but otherwise I'm trying to grow it organically, and it takes time. And I look at the charts, I try not to obsess over them.

Please don't.

And I try not to get too excited or too discouraged. And again, I'M not doing it for just that count of downloads or listens. I'm doing it, like I said, for learning, for networking, for exposure. I don't need it to be the next Crime Junkie, which is one podcast my wife listens to.

Right.

All the time.

It's not in that entertainment model. It's in a different model, and so be it.

But trying to grow it. There's that challenge, too. And maybe I should try to get more professional marketing help. Back to that question of should I edit it myself? Should I upload it myself? Should I market it myself?

So now you're doing some really good things on the marketing side that I can see because you put them right into your blog, which I think is really great. And you have a short blog with a little description, lots of bullet points about what the takeaways are. You've got a short video clip, which is like under two minutes. You've got quote graphics that you created for your guests. And sometimes there's three to five. I mean, I've seen a few that had more because they were so quotable. Right. And so you must be also using them out on social media, which is. So that's a part. I mean, you're putting a lot of work into your show, which has to come back to. Also, the way is you're showing respect for those great guests you're getting because you're putting that work in. And it easier for me to say yes as a guest.

Yeah, I mean, I try to get the exposure for the guests. And it's funny, when you finish recording, quite often a guest will say something like, they'll thank me, and then they'll ask, what can they do for me? And I'm thinking you've done a lot. Like, you've given your time, you've given your stories, you've given your insights. That's a lot. Please help share and promote the episode when it's available.

Right.

But here's the other thing I've found. Back to the question of finding guests. When I've had guests that were really good, I mean, they're all good, but there's some guests where I can tell they have a network of people. So, like one of my guests who works sort of as a publisher and a coach for other authors, he has been very reliable in terms of referring other people to me. And I'll ask guests actually now to think about it. More often than not, if you can think of somebody else who you think would kind of fit the vibe of the show, of being Willing to be a little bit vulnerable and share a story and please refer them over to me. And that's worked out pretty well, too.

That's so good. So you talked before about, I'm going to say, the return on investment. So you talk about having a lot of speaking engagements and other things. Did a lot of that come from that early podcast? And you got asked again and so you were really on the road for a while. And is that picking back up again or what is the current return on investment from the shows for you?

Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is very indirect. And it's hard to trace sometimes the connection between blogs and books and podcasts in terms of the source. I can think of a couple of instances where a hospital executive read a blog post and they almost immediately reached out and said, that was really insightful. Would you come in and talk about that theme with my team and let's do a session. So there was like a credibility builder to that. I don't know if that's happened directly from a podcast, but when things started picking up last year, again, the opportunity to do, actually, even in person, speaking engagements again, sometimes people would reach out and invite me to speak and then we'd have the conversation of, well, you know, here's some themes and topics that I normally speak on. But I'm developing this new talk kind of on the theme of my favorite mistake. And the take rate on that has actually been very high, which is even then more encouraging because once the book is out, I think that will lead to more invitations because right or wrong, like, people will make an assumption, somebody wrote a book, therefore we should invite them to speak. And I hope I'm good enough at both of those things. But I would caution people, you can't assume, like, it's very different skill sets. You can't assume an author's also going to be a great.

Yeah, you definitely can't assume that. That's so, so true.

It is a big credibility booster, though, to be a published author. And that's a different discussion for someone else's podcast.

That's right. That's for the book shows. We'll have to send you over to Promote Profit, Publish or one of the other shows to talk about that when your book is launched and do the difference there. But I want to talk about the blogging side because I was a blogger first, too, and I can see a distinctive difference in terms of the longevity of a show. Like, they seem to last longer and they seem to have some better practices built in when they Were bloggers first. And so I'm curious, what did you take from blogging that you kind of do in your podcasting or you do with your podcast back into your blog?

That is a really good question. I mean, I think some of it might be a recognition of trying to mix things up in terms of maybe more so with blog posts, like, so different formats of posts or different topics. And so I think that's sort of informed a little bit with the podcasting.

And that's that sort of like long tail keywording kind of model is what you're saying is that you want to see that you're touching around that big topic and you're not just saying lean, lean manufacturing, lean product management. You're not just lean, lean, lean all the time. You're talking about all the topics around it.

Yes. And you're giving me much more credit than I deserve for an intentional SEO strategy.

Well, but your titles reflect that. The titles of your episodes reflect that blogging model. I can see it in it that's different from what other people do because it would be so easy for someone to go, my favorite mistake, guessing. My favorite mistake, guess name again and again and again. And you don't do that. You kind of give what type of mistake it is and the person.

So it's probably a good practice there around trying to write good titles.

Yeah.

That draw people in without seeming clickbaity or misleading. That's going to turn people off. But I think one other thing that I've reflected on this is not what you asked, but thinking of like a diversity of topics. And when I started my favorite mistake, I made a much stronger commitment to diversity of guests, of setting out to have half of my guests be women and sort of having a goal of at least 20% people of color as guests. You know, I look back at the Lean podcast and in that field, a lot of it comes from engineering and kind of traditionally male, white male dominated industries. And it's been easier. I still find, like PR firms are pitching maybe 70% men. I don't know how and why that is. So I'll make an effort to go find more great women to be great guests. But then it's also made me rethink and say, okay, well, don't make excuses with the other podcast and say, well, it's a traditionally white male field. I'm like, no, I need to work harder to go find guests that provide greater representation and greater diversity and sort of breaking some of the cycle of people feeling not included because they don't see people like themselves on stage.

Right.

Or as a guest on the podcast. So I've tried to shift in a better direction that way with the Lean podcast as well.

Yeah. And I think it shows because with that comes new perspectives, new topics, new ideas, and you're definitely covering that in a great way. But I do see some blogging things, which is this, like having headers, having image. Like, you have some of those things built into the pages that you've created behind the scenes. And it creates a great resource for your community, whoever they may be, which is going to help you sell the book, it's going to help you sell your services, help you get more speaking engagement. So I really think that those blogging tactics lend themselves well to podcasting, and not many of us podcasters do it, unfortunately. Yeah.

Well, thanks. Maybe one other lesson from blogging. There's certain search engine principles where you don't want to write bloated blog posts that are longer than they should be. But it's sad. My understanding is that the Google algorithms reward longer blog posts are seen as more authoritative. And then with podcasts, of course, Google can't yet search audio. So getting a transcript done and putting that on the blog page, I think is a great advantage from a search perspective.

Yeah. Our research and what we do on our end says that 3,000 to 6,000 words is kind of a sweet spot there. And most people will never write a blog over a thousand words. Like, that's too much. That's too much work to write it. But you can certainly speak that. And so being able to do that. But I do think that you're using some of these tools that put the transcript in. That tool is blocking the Google algorithm from a technical standpoint. Just so on an aside that if you copy it out of there and actually put that in, you'll be in a better place. And I did see you used to do that on the Lean, so it's funny.

So I asked the company that does that service, and they say the way the code is working actually does have the text. And I've actually tested it and it will actually come through. I don't understand the technical magic of how that works, because you're right. My fear is that having some sort of embedded transcript wouldn't give that benefit. But actually it seems to work well. I don't want to name them by name because there are some bugs and there are some glitches, and that's why sometimes I just.

Well, and that's why I'm not out promoting it yet. We've been testing it too, but we don't see consistency in it. We see that if you already had a decent website, it doesn't hurt you. But if you are trying to grow a new one, it doesn't work for you.

Yeah.

And so it's harder to start a website.

Yeah. I mean, I want to use their embedded player because there are some features and I want to try to help them. They're a startup. At the same time I'm paying them. And if I want to just export the text and put it in the blog post as more plain text, then that's my right to do so.

Yeah, it should be interesting to see what happens in this sort of AI future and these auto transcripts and these auto models. But you're right, today still, nobody can track what's being said on that podcast. That's why searchability and discoverability is so bad on Apple and Spotify. But I think it's going to change and you'll have so much content. So I think with as many shows as you have comes a new problem, and that's that you have too much information. So I saw that on your Lean podcast side, you're starting to collect do collections. And back when you started your podcast, back when I started my podcast, they didn't even let us go beyond a few hundred episodes. So like Apple used to cap it out at 300 and when you hit 301, it would start dropping your first ones off. So you had to start a new collection. But now what are you doing to help? If somebody comes to it and really wants to dive into your Lean Management model, how do you help them search through all that content?

That's a great question. I mean, I could probably do a little bit more of kind of curating kind of a path through certain episodes for certain types of listeners from certain industries or certain backgrounds. So, yeah, I mean, like you said, I've tried to do at least some thematic collections. Like here are podcasts that are mostly healthcare themed and here are podcasts where CEOs are the guests. But yeah, there's still more to figure out.

When you have that much content, it's hard. That's like my 3D print podcast. It's like way too hard to categorize everything and then you also have to keep up because things outdated. Some of those companies go out of business and it's a management issue. When you have a podcast that goes on as long as yours, there's different.

Factors and then, you know, it's kind of Sad or gloomy. I think people I've interviewed who have passed away right since, and you're like, well, hopefully for some people, it's comforting that that recording is there. And my favorite mistake series, I interviewed a classmate of mine from high school who was a comedian and an actor in Los Angeles you'd probably more likely recognize from commercials. He was on some Disney Channel shows and did some stuff on Comedy Central, and he was an amazing guest. He coughed a couple times, but it's Covid times, and people just cough. And we were excited. I was living in LA at the time, and things are opening up. We're going to get together, let's go hang out. And within about two months, he's telling friends that he got diagnosed with lung cancer.

Oh, my goodness.

And was gone like, three months later.

Wow. Yeah.

So it's sad, if not devastating. But I hope friends and family, if they're searching, there's lots of video of him because again, he was a working actor and comedian. But hopefully that episode, like, I know, to me, in a way, it kind of at the same time gives some comfort, and it's sad to see Michael.

You got to have that connection to him at that point in time and not knowing what was going to happen, but you had that connection point, and that's amazing. At least you met each other young and you got to still connect up before he was gone. And so, yeah, I can see that as being in memoriam. So, you know, you've got some of those as well. Yeah, you're right. It is a challenge. The more you go on, on your show as to what do you do with these things, and do they hold up to the test of time and do they have more value? Because they're the last conversation with someone. So, yeah, you know, lots to think about as you manage the show. So the book is your big challenge coming forward, but I'd love for you to touch on, because, I mean, my favorite mistake. Right. So you had to have made a bunch of mistakes. What's your favorite one in the podcasting world, where you said, oh, my gosh, I learned so much from that mistake that our audience could learn from as well.

So in terms of a favorite, now I'm doing the thing that my guests do. Made a lot of mistakes. Let me think about. So I've kind of touched on, like, okay, maybe a couple naming mistakes or things that could have been a little better. Maybe my favorite mistake wasn't a mistake. Name one mistake that comes to mind, was a time I literally forgot to Click record.

Oh God.

One time out of probably now like 700 different interviews that I've done with people in different platforms, including used to be Skype and then it's Zoom. And I've experimented with some others. I didn't hit record.

And I didn't realize it until the end of the episode and I realized, oh my God, there's no recording. And I tried to practice some of the practices from my guests and talking about like, if you've made a mistake, own it. I didn't try to lie or blame it on a glitch or anything. And that guest was very gracious. And the reaction was something like, well, we'll just call that a rehearsal and we'll go and do it again.

That was nice.

That was very, very nice. And then there was one and I'm trying to remember who that was. There's one other time I interviewed Eric Reese, who's pretty well known, he's the author of the Lean Startup as kind of his claim to fame. And this was back when I was still using a Windows PC recording to a spinning old school hard drive somewhere. That next morning that hard drive crashed and I didn't have a backup of Eric's recording. So again I had to. Not necessarily my fault, but this is probably about 2010. And again, Eric was incredibly gracious and he re recorded. But now in terms of learning from mistakes. Right. So forgetting to record can be addressed. If you use Zoom, you can set a meeting to automatically record and then you can trim away the beginning with the hard drive crash thing. I love my Macs, now they have solid state drives.

Everything's like technology Shift was important here.

Yeah, but suspenders and another belt. Everything is backuping continually to icloud and Time Machine and then I use another online backup service.

So you've got it all covered around here. I know we used to have the issue because so my partner and my husband, we recorded together in the early days. And so it wasn't a matter of having an interview going on. It's like you had to physically like turn on the Zoom devices and then zoom in. Zoom devices are not the same thing. It's like a recording machine. And I think we had back then, it might have been even something different. We had a whole like mixer and invariably he would forget to flip something on. And I'm not good at saying the same thing again. Like, I know I will never say it the same way twice. And there will be this thing where he was like, well, you didn't say this and you didn't say that. He'll say that after me. And I was like, well, you didn't turn on the recording.

There would be this contentiousness between us. So we were like, okay, we have to find a new system.

Well, so that's one of the themes that I've explored with some guests and I'm working through in the book, is doing things to try to prevent mistakes. And it's kind of hand in hand of we should expect to make mistakes because we're human. At the same time, try to prevent mistakes, but then realizing sometimes we can't prevent them all. And so when they do happen, at least show yourself some grace, take ownership of it. Think, well, what could I do differently? How could I mistake? Proof that in the future, it's easier said than done. Don't beat yourself up.

I came from the product design and development world, and there's product failure. Right. I mean, it happens. It's a part of the process. You don't know. When you watch somebody's misuse of something, it's an opportunity. And that's where we have to recognize that in ourselves. Right. Be able to say, oh, that's an opportunity for me to do something different, for me to put in a different process, for me to find a new tool. Right. And we don't always think about that about ourselves. We easily recognize it in somebody else, though.

Yeah. So then one other thing I was going to say, when it comes to mistake, there are lots of little mistakes that I do and could make. And so one of the strategies I use is a checklist for each episode. It's in Google Sheets I just go through, and it helps me make sure I don't forget to do a certain thing that they need to do. And then if I discover a new mistake to make, I can add something to the checklist. Not to become a huge burden, but it's just a way of trying to prevent some of that simple human error of forgetting to do something.

Well, and I think the more you go on, sometimes you will skip something. You'll forget something a lot easier because it becomes such second nature that you won't even. I don't even look at the recording thing anymore. I had to make it a part of my process to say, okay, we're going to get started here. That forced me to set that sort of mental shift for me so that I would hit the record button because I would forget.

Yeah, well. And I think Zoom made some changes where there's now that pop up that makes painfully clear you are being Recorded. If you don't like this, leave the meeting.

Yeah.

So, like, if I were a guest here and you went to start and I didn't get that pop up, I might say, hey, wait, Tracy, wait a minute.

Are we recording?

Yeah, double check. Are we recording now? I did.

Guests are smarter now about it, too. Yeah. So they weren't so sophisticated back in 2006.

Yeah. But then I'm not going to name names, but I was a guest on a podcast within the last year where the host forgot to click record and I didn't notice and he didn't know. So I'm like, well, turnabout is fair play. I tried to be as gracious as my one guest had been and be like, we'll do it again.

Well, Mark, I am so glad you are continuing. You've doubled down on your podcast and you're just continuing to push forward in this. Thank you for being a veteran in this industry, but also someone who really has been helping to grow the industry, helping others come up.

Well, thanks, Tracy. I'm going to keep listening to your episodes because, like I said, I don't have it all figured out. I might be stuck in some old ways of doing things. So I'll try to keep learning. And thank you for what you're doing with your podcast.

I'm really excited to see how Mark turns this one into a book because there's such a great conversation that goes on. 30 to 40 minutes of 30 to 50 minutes sometimes of conversation that goes on, and they touch on the mistake, but they do talk about more than the mistake. And I love the idea of having a much more concise model where the chapters really focused on that mistake and what it led to or what impact it had or what shift it had in that person. I'm really interested in seeing what that collection looks like. I do love the collection of podcasts here. I think they're really interesting. They're great stories. He really hones in on that. But in that concise model, it could be just such a great book. And I think it could really be one of those ones you hand out at events and give away to everyone. So he might find a bestseller on his list as well. It reminds me a little bit of John Nastor, Hack, the entrepreneur. You know what? I have to check it. I can't remember if John's still doing it, but I certainly loved being on John's show, and I remember him talking about the idea that you had to come on his show and you absolutely had to make sure that you were willing to talk about this or he wasn't going to let you on. And I just checked and it is absolutely. He's at 522 episodes as I record this. So John Nastar is still up to it as well. So if you want to check out more mistakes everywhere, check out John Nastor's I'll link my episode where I was interviewed on Mark Graben show and I look forward to being on Mark's show. I think it'd be kind of fun. I have to really dive deep and think about what my favorite mistake is. Nobody has ever asked me it that way. And that's one of my favorite parts about Mark. Right? Asking that question that makes me pause and say, hmm, what would I answer? Doesn't that make us all think? Doesn't that make us want to listen to the next person and the next person? This is what makes a truly bingeable podcast. And that's why I absolutely love Mark Graben's show. My favorite mistake. And I think you are too. So be sure to go to the blog post for this episode@thebingefactor.com, check out Mark, connect up with him, listen to the podcast and check out some of our other podcasters we've got in there because you might find some who you want to model and some you don't. I'll be back next time with another bingeable podcaster here on the Binge Factor. Thanks again for listening.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and videocasting success tips and tactics, please go to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feed you'd brand. If you'd like to be interviewed on this show as well as featured in Tracy's column, please go to thebingefactor.com guest and apply.