How To Beat The Odds: From Fashion Star To Baseball Podcast Phenom With Dani Cipolla Of Dani's Dugout (Podfaded)

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority Magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazzard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the binge factor.

Following my baseball theme from last week, or sports theme in general, but baseball.

Related my favorite I've got Dani Sapola today.

She is Dani's Dugout and this is.

A fun Yankee Yankees podcast, the story goes.

And the reason she caught my eye and I had to bring her on the show is that I grew up.

In a Yankees family. My dad giant Yankees fan since he was a kid, his mom, my grandmother serious serious Yankees fan. And so I of course then married a Red Sox fan.

So bashing the Yankees and loving the Yankees and doing all of those things is a part of my channel childhood.

And growing up into adulthood. And it is some of the most fun that I've ever had is going to baseball games with my dad and other things. And Danny has that too. She grew up with her dad and.

Her grandfather loving baseball and especially New.

York baseball and that makes a huge difference.

So I had to have her on.

The show because I had to hear how Danny's dugout came about and how this girl, right, this woman really put her stamp on sports podcasting.

So that's really why I had to bring her on. And I love that we're contrasting this after Kevin Warren's Sports Chasers podcast, which is really fan based as well, and just really kind of having this it's a little bit New York themed, but.

Sports back and forth and really talking.

About the challenges of these types of shows today. So Danny Sippola is an ex New.

York City model who left the industry to talk about Yankees baseball on her podcast Danny's Dugout during COVID while sports didn't exist.

Basically she came idea up with the idea of a new podcast podcast, ran some different podcasts, one called Tequila and the Tea where she could talk to.

Guests and then really thought that that.

Wasn'T enough for her.

She decided to run a candle company called Sensual as well and now she's back to doing even more podcasting things. She's got acting in an executive producer role for some other shows which she can't quite talk about, but she'll hint.

At that in the show today.

And I love that she has really made her mark on women talking sports. And that's really what we're going to head into. Some of those challenges, some of fabulous benefits and what it really takes to be an influencer in sports podcasting.

Dani, so glad to have you here. A Yankees girl. My dad was thrilled I'm interviewing you today.

It's always the dads.

That's right. It's absolutely always the dads. And you know what's so funny about it is that you grew up with your dad and grandfather giving you the love for the Yankees. And I grew up with my grandmother and my dad.

I am kind of jealous of the grandmother factor. If I was old enough to remember, my great grandmother was actually a huge Yankee fan and she was a die hard Joe DiMaggio fan. And if you said anything against him, she would rip you a new one. It is definitely passed down in the genetics of my family.

It isn't mine too. Yeah, it's that. That kind of a thing. So my nan, that's what we call her, my nan would sit in the kitchen and listen to the TV really loud in the other room. If they were losing, she thought that her being in the room was bad luck. So that's how diehard a fan is. She was like, if they were losing, she was like, I better leave the room and change things up.

Yes, I totally understand because, like, I'll do the same thing. And if we're like, we're doing really, really good. My boyfriend, who's not a huge baseball fan, he's like MMA and that, fighting and stuff like that. So dating me, he's forced to be a baseball and Yankee fan. So if we're winning and he gets up and like, say one of the players struck out or the out ends the inning, I'm like, sit your ass back down. Don't you dare move from this spot. I don't care if you have to pee.

That's it.

You're.

You're listening. Well, the other thing she used to do is, because, you know, she was alive during Joe Torres time, is she would yell at the tv, you could smile now and again.

And I know you know that because he never smiles.

Never. Not even when we were winning, blowing people out of the water. Nothing. He just stared intently.

Well, let's talk about how love of a game translated into starting a podcast. What was that impetus? What made you say, yeah, podcast. This is the thing for me.

So it wasn't actually me. And I will always give Joey his credit till I'm blue in the face. So I was a model and I'm actually going back into the modeling industry, but that's a different side story. So I was a model in New York City. Let me just say Epstein is real. The whole thing of that industry. Me too. Moment. It is real. And I was seeing it before my eyes. Nothing happened to me. I was seeing it before my eyes and I was like, I can't do this anymore. I can't be a part of this. And it was very sad for me because it was everything I always wanted other than to be the Yankees manager. But I'm a female who didn't play baseball, so I figured that was like, out of the woods for me.

That's really a long shot.

Very big long shot for me. So basically I was bartending at a bar called Jimmy's Corner in New York. Love that place. Will always hold so many memories for me. And a friend of mine walked in and he's like, why are you so sad today? And I was like, I've realized that I have to give up on one of my dreams and I don't know what I'm going to do next and I don't want to be a bartender for the rest of my life and I need to find my next thing. And he's like, I know you love the Yankees. My friend is pitching for the Blue Jays tomorrow. I'll have him get us some tickets and we'll get to go on the field. And I was like, I get to go on the field. 1. This is amazing. So I didn't sleep at all because it was at 11 o'. Clock. Like, get to the fields at 11am I worked till 5 o' clock in the morning. I think I slept maybe two hours. And then I was so excited and I needed to calm my nerves, so I poured a coffee with some tequila in it and I chugged that down and I got to the stadium and I'm just like, so happy. Like, you could see my gums. I was smiling so much. And I'm just on the field. And it's a Sunday, so there's no bp, which is batting practice. And it's just like the pitchers kind of throwing back and forth and that's it. And I don't care. I'm on Yankee Stadium field. Like, the dirt is below me. This is the greatest thing in the world. And I am so happy. So then we go upstairs to our seats, getting ready for the game. I'm sitting in front of the Blue Jays Starting pitcher, because it's call ups. It's a September call ups. And this family's like, we're really Yankee fans, but our boys playing for the Blue Jays. So I'm like, no, you're totally. I get you. It's so fine. And of course, the first batter comes up, I think it was Andrew McCutcheon. He hits a home run off this kid. And I'm standing up screaming and yelling and in my glory. And the dad to this boy is so mad. He's like, this girl got her tickets from a Blue Jays. She can't even respect it. She's sitting in the wrong section. And I'm trying so hard because if you listen to my podcast, I do not care. I will say whatever the hell I want, and you're going to deal with it. I say what everybody thinks, and I say what you say on your couch, yelling at the tv. I say it to the world. And I'm sitting there and my friend grabs my leg, and my other friend, who I got to bring with me, grabs my leg and they're like, danny, don't do it. And I'm like, I'm sitting in the wrong section. You're in the wrong effing stadium. And I'm like, under my breath, just saying everything I want to say to this guy. And my friend is cracking up, Joey. And he looks at me as I'm just watching the game, living my best life. He goes, this is what you need to do. Watch Yankees baseball. I plan to do that. What are you talking about? And he's like, no, this is what you need to do. Like start a podcast. Get on barstool sports. Do something in that nature. Like start a podcast about Yankees baseball. And me being a very sexual, innuendo, joke kind of person. And I'm going, what am I gonna do? Call it Danny's Dugout. And he's like, yes, that is exactly what you're going to do. You're going to call it Danny's Dugout, and you're going to make a podcast and you're going to rant about Yankees baseball. I was like, no, there's no way that would work. Pondered it for a couple days, and I was like, you know what? Screw it. I'm going to do it. And that was the start of Danny's Dugout was some guy heckling me, me getting mad at my friend, going, this is what you need to do.

I love it. But you still figured it all out. And so what was the biggest challenge to doing that part?

So I think the challenge was knowing what I'm doing. I mean, I had to learn from scratch. I had a friend who worked on podcasts. He set up my Libsyn account. He set up all of those things for me and, like, showed me how to do it. So it was that. And then it was audio. Audio was my biggest factor for the longest time because I didn't have the right setup. I was in a New York City apartment, and I was broke. So I had to deal with what I had and just go for it. So I recorded pretty much the beginning of my podcast on my cell phone, and the audio was terrible. Yes. But I was the only female doing this. There was no other female talking about baseball, unless they're on ESPN or on the MLB Network or whatever. I was the only female in general talking about baseball, and then I was the only female talking about the Yankees, and I still am the only female talking about the Yankees, and that's it. Otherwise, there's females out there who talk baseball, so on and so forth. They're different. Like, there's brewers podcast, Atlanta Braves, so on and so forth. But I was the first one to do it, and it was a lot of pressure because I needed to figure out how to make this work. I got in trouble for all the cursing I did. I got into trouble for all of this, and everybody's like, no one's going to listen to you because of this. And da, da, da. I proved every single person wrong.

When you say you got into trouble, what does that mean? Tell everyone, because I want them to hear some of these things that come up that you just don't anticipate.

So I should have expected, but I didn't anticipate it. I don't the misogyny. And I'm a girl, so I need to be prim and proper. And I got a lot of men just being like, yo, I just wish you didn't curse as much. And I got so high, up to a point where I was in the same room with YES Network executives, they literally told me, well, if you didn't curse so much, you'd be fine. And I'm like, well, I don't want to be on YES Network. That's not my goal. I don't want to be that. I was like, if I'm going to have a goal in this podcast, it's going to be the first baseball podcast on Showtime where I can say the F word and I can say whatever I want. And I could tell this person to suck. This person's Whatever. And you can't stop me. That's what I want. And that was where I was getting in trouble. And that's where, like, my viewership has gone up and down throughout the whole time. I have never stopped, though. I've gotten down to the point where I'm only listened to 50 times, and I've got up to the point where I've listened to tens of thousands of times. And what I noticed, my biggest struggle is not being in New York. So that way I can kind of have my face in front of everyone. But the struggles were mostly just the misogyny is men not understanding that women can also understand sports. Well.

And I think that it's kind of a tipping point where we're in. In podcasting as an industry, we just tipped over that almost to being exactly 50, 50 between male and female listenership. And I think that that's going to help it, because when women consume. We want to consume what we want to consum. They're swearing in it, and that's who we are when we listen to the game, then we're gonna like it and we're gonna want the options. So I think we might be in a tipping point for that. But I do understand, and I really am so glad you said this about the misogyny that goes on. So my very first podcast, it was a podcast on 3D printing. It was really geeky. It was predominantly male audience, and I wasn't solo. I had my partner and husband, Tom. We did the show together. And my role in it was to play the person who would be like, no idea what you just said there. That was way too technical. Our audience needs you to define that. And that was my role in it was to just make it, like, real and normal people could understand it because there were lots of people interested in learning 3D printing, and it was already complicated enough, and so that was it. But I would get hate mail, shut up, let Tom talk, things like that. And you really don't anticipate that. I was like, it's a little podcast on 3D printing. Like, who cares?

Yeah. I mean, I've gotten to a point where, I mean, I have 60,000 followers. I will say that a lot of them came from my modeling career prior, but I grew from about 30 to 60 because of baseball. And I had all of the guys being like, whoa, she's hot and she knows baseball. But I also had all of the guys going, get back in the kitchen and shut up. Make me a sandwich. Where I will always be very vulgar. Back to them. And I'll be like, okay, you small penis energy, like you live with your comment, whatever. But as most recently, I went after the captain of the New York Yankees. He was not the captain yet. He was not the captain yet. I would like to say that real quickly because he turned down a contract that I thought was perfect. I think a lot of people thought it was absolutely perfect for him and that he hadn't shown anything of true massive value for him to get more than what he asked for or more than what we were willing to give him. And then he beat the AL home run record. And I was like, all right, all right. You deserve your money. I don't think he should be the captain, but I'm also a Derek Jeter girl, and that is just who I am to my core. And so I went after him, and I, to this day, get people telling me to unalive myself. And those are probably the ones that bother me the most. Like, misogyny I can deal with until I'm blue in the face. Like, it's just. You get used to it as a female of just dealing with that, which is sad to say, but when people are telling you to unalive yourself, it takes you to that whole next level. And I totally understand what Susan the. Susan Waldman, not the voice of the Yankees, but she's next to the voice of the Yankees, John Sterling. John Sterling. Yeah, I said his name right. I hate him. So I never say it correctly. So she would get death threats and people would follow her home, and she had to get security to, like, follow her home to make sure she would get home okay. And I'm like, I'm not there. Okay. I don't have that much. So why are these people going crazy? So, I mean, with this podcast, that's just kind of like the struggles that I've had. That's kind of why sometimes on a Tuesday, you won't get a new episode. Because I'm like, do I want to get in front of this microphone again? And then the follow following Tuesday, I get in front of the microphone and I go in and I go hard. Because I'm like, you're never gonna stop me.

I'm glad you think that way. But I was at an event for women in New York City, and the head of CBS said that he never had. And he was introducing a woman in broadcasting who was gonna be the keynote speaker. And he said he never had any complaints ever about a single male host of the news or anything like that.

That was a complaint about the sound of his voice. It was only the women in his organization.

And he would tamp it down and say, like, this is stupid. We're just ignoring every time we hear. This has nothing to do with the person who's broadcasting. There's nothing to do with them. And that is a really hard place to come from. Like, it took me a really hard time to sit back and say, this really isn't about me.

It's about his view of the world.

He's obviously had some bad experience with women.

Has nothing to do with me.

Exactly. It really never does. Especially when they're saying. When they get to the point of saying things so nasty. And it's like, this is coming out of place of. From you. Don't put that on me. Take your projections and take it elsewhere. Because I'm over here talking about baseball. Like, relax. Can relax, okay?

And you don't have to listen. It's not like you're being pushed in their face. It's a subscribed choice.

It is. And like, don't get me wrong, I'm very, very, very well off on social media. And I make my clips specifically to get a rise out of people. Like, it is specifically made that way because it's how we get viewership. It's how we get people to go, oh, I need to go listen to this. Or, I'm mad at what she said, but I want to listen to the rest of it. Like, the haters listen more than the lovers. It's the truth. And I specifically make my clips to piss people off because then it gets more and more. And people share it more and more because they want to get mad at you. They want the Internet to yell at you. And I'm like, at this point, I will the villain for you. Because at the end of the day, even the Yankees call themselves the evil empire.

This is true. I love that view of it. But you know what I think this is? It's an unfortunate position for you to be in because here you left something that was so misogynistic to begin with, modeling, and move into something that you think is you can hold your own. And then it still happens again.

I truly didn't go into it thinking that, though I will say this, I knew what I was getting myself into and my dad was cracking up because he's going like, so you decided to go from one extremely hard career to another one. I'm like, yes, yes, I did. Yes, I did.

Well, let's talk about some of the difficulties. And I think sports is not Unusual, but I think it's probably more difficult here to get advertisers to make money in. Podcasting is difficult in general, but I think sports for women is even harder. So what, how have you been able to create some success over in that area?

Social media. I will say this for I've never pulled on a advertisement for the podcast because one, I will only go with things that are authentic to me and who I am, because I am only authentic when I go on my social media. You're just getting like, maybe like me dialed up by two, but it's still me. There is no person on that. There is no fake Persona on my social media. I am who I am and if you don't like it, too bad. Like, I'm not going to come out here and come up with this acting situation. It is me and that is what it is.

Because it's exhausting the other way.

Yeah. So. Because then you have to keep up with a lie. And I'm like, I'm not doing that. That's just not going to happen. I want to be able to be present on my social media and as I constantly transform and do other things, because I do, I own a candle business. I also manage another podcast. I also am still modeling. Like, there are things in my life that is not just Yankees baseball. And I need people to see all of those things and know that this is all authentic to who I am. So when I get advertising, it's all social media. And I think the reason why is one, I am such a presence on social media. I do get viral things multiple times on social media and people see that virility. When it comes to a podcast, you have to show them the specs, you have to show them the numbers. And when it comes to a baseball podcast, specifically a woman talking about baseball, and then you niche it down even further, Yankees baseball. And then you need you down even further. Being unapologetic and being the fan point of view, you put yourself into this tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny box where you're only going to get a so many people listening to it and advertisers are going to go, okay, I can go on this podcast for five minutes, for a ten second whatever, or I can go on her social media where it's her talking about baseball. So I get this. Like, I worked with Franklin Sports for the Aaron Judge Clubs. So they're like, like, you can do the advertisement on the podcast or I can post a picture of it. It can go viral and then you get more bang out of your Buck. Because a lot of them just want me to announce it and then they don't want to pay. So, like, oh, we'll just announce it. I'm like, no, no, no, honey, I cost money.

But women buy or influence most of sports equipment, merchandise, tickets for their kids.

Right.

They make those decisions. And so if you have influence over that community in any way, shape or form, it should be more valuable, not less.

Well, that's the funny thing is basically a whole screwed up family. This is all men. Everything that I do, I have a lot more men than I do women. And the women that I have love the game immensely. But they're, let's be honest, there's a lot more men that love this game and game, baseball, football, so on and so forth. It's. It's a man's world. So I've got to sell to men. And I can't just sell to women because, yeah, women will buy my candles. Men will buy my candles because I told them to. But I am in the market where I actually have to advertise to men, which is so much harder to get them to buy. And when I do, it's ten times more successful. Because if you can convince a man to buy something more than just a woman, because a woman just sees it, it looks pretty, and she goes, I want it. I mean, I am that woman woman.

Okay, well, usually they're looking for it and they're like, this is going to be a great gift for so and so. They've got a Rolodex of all of that in their head, right?

Yes. And you have like an Amazon wish list just for like that one friend. So it's like, okay, she would love this. And like, I'm on TikTok watching people organize things because I am a female and that's just what I want to watch. I go on social media as a woman. I will consume the baseball content. Yes. But what I'm going to consume is things that are marketed towards women. Baseball is not marketed towards women. And I can't even market baseball towards women because of the way that it's laid out. There is nothing making a woman want to watch baseball, and I have to try to do that. It is very hard out of a hundred percent. It's so challenging because I have 20% of my following is women. Yes. But 80% of it is men. However, on TikTok, it's completely different. It's 50. 50. It's right down the middle.

Well, and I suspect it's going to change over time in Podcasting as well, because as we start to get more and more women coming into it, I think we're going to see a sw, which. And I look forward to that. Now, you mentioned briefly, as we were just chatting there, you mentioned that you kind of casually dropped that you're managing another show. So I want to talk about that because I think that one of the things that you have done really well, and I'm going to head into your binge factor here, is that your show.

Is truly unique amongst the other shows.

You know, there's other Yankees podcasts out there and. And I don't see anything special in them. That makes me go, I really need to click on this, I really need to subscribe to this. I really need to listen to this. I don't see it in just the directory listings, how they talk about it, their trailers, overproduced. I'm just gonna say that yours is real and that makes it different. Well, I wanna talk to a girlfriend about Yankees baseball.

Right?

Like, that's what I'm gonna get talking with you. And I'm not gonna get that girlfriend who really knows her stuff. Stuff that impresses me. Right. And that's why I'm going to choose your show. Whether I'm a male or a female. That's one of the reasons I'm going to choose your show. But the other part that you've done so successfully is build that audience outside to come in. And that's where most people fall apart. And that's the unique thing you're bringing to other podcasters, is that social media management and planning, pre production, bringing those two things together so that you can.

Produce the clip that's gonna get the attention.

So in doing that, social media has always been my background prior to the baseball situation, because of modeling. Like, social media has always been my background. I will give my father some credit. My father is also was. He no longer is now. He just manages his wife's businesses. But my father was a PR manager. Like, that's what he did. He owned a PR company. So I grew up in social media management and understanding basically how to psych people into following and coming back for more. Problem is algorithms constantly change and it's super freaking annoying. What Instagram and TikTok are like, oh, no, now you have to do this. And I'm like, three days ago it was this, why are you changing things on me? Stop it. You have to follow those things and nobody pays attention to them. Like post every single day, post three stories every hour. Yes, every hour. They want at least two to three stories on there. They want you to post every single day to your feed. They want you to post a reel and a photo, like go back and forth. Have to really see these things and see these. For TikTok, I haven't posted in a few days and the first time I posted I only got like a thousand views. Instead of getting my typical like 10,000 or 5,000, like I only got 8,000. And it's because it's like, no, no, no, we don't reward you because you're not on here all the time. So when you create a podcast, it's a full time fricking job. Don't look at it as something as like, this is my side, like hobby just for this. And like, if you want to make something of it, you have to generate those clip to make six clips out of your episode. I only make one now because I'm lazy, but. And I have like three other things that I need to take care of. But for like the podcast that I manage, I call my guy and I'm like, I need six clips. I want one clip that's a promo clip where it's like a bunch of different portions of the episode put into one so it makes it really exciting. And you're like, ooh, I gotta watch that episode. Because, like, I want to hear what they talk about throughout it. And then I want like three to four more clips. Tips that are just like funny snippets that don't give too much away, but it gets you going. Oh, I want to know what the rest of what they just said is. Because that's how you pull in people off of your social media into your podcast. And that is the most difficult thing. You can get like tens of thousand followers on your Instagram or on your TikTok who will just go and watch that and they won't listen to your podcast. And yeah, that's great as long as you're selling like advertisement on your social media. But if you're not not doing that your pod, what's the point of your podcast? You might as well just keep making rants on Instagram and negate the podcast in general, right?

Which is why it's a little bit easier on other types of shows for them to sell their own stuff, right? And so that's the model. If you're selling your own stuff. It's a totally different model than what you're talking about here, which is you need to make outside money. So you've got to make that from advertising and Affiliations and all of those other things you have to work a lot harder at.

It is.

It is extremely difficult.

Even when like. So the, the podcast that I'm working on right now, it is. It's a rewatch of a television show that had millions and millions of people listening to it and watching it every week and still have a fan base that goes beyond and loves the show still to this day. And like, moms are showing their kids and like, my mom watched the show one and I watched it with her. And if I have a gremlin, I will show the same show. It is my go to show no matter what. Like, I love the show and to work on it is like a dream come true. True. But they can sell merchandise. They can do all of these things. Even still, that ad revenue is so much more money than you can get selling merchandise and stuff. I will promise you that. Because you can say to send like, say you have 20,000 subscribers, you can then sell like a 1,000 one minute freaking ad to better help. Because look, I've got 20,000 people listening to it. Like 2% of that is a thousand people. Like, boom, here you go.

Super fans on top of it.

Right.

You know, because it's a really target audience.

Correct. And better help is also a great freaking place. So. And they are selling advertisements constantly. You can go and find these advertisers, be like, I have this amount of listeners, this amount of people engage. They also engage on our social media, so on and so forth. Like, you can show the encompassment of how they engage on platforms. They engage by listening and keep it going from there. And by giving them numbers of more than just the podcast and giving them the numbers of social media showing that they're engaged with the content gets you to get more money out of the advertisement. Right.

And I think we don't do that very well here because podcast statistics suck.

They do, right?

They're like, no, podcasting is completely oversaturated. There's a podcast for fucking everything these days. Sorry I cursed. I don't know if I'm allowed to curse.

It's totally fine.

It comes out and I can't control it. I have a sailor's mouth, even though I'm not a sailor.

We're mostly adults here, so I'm not worried.

Wonderful. But if you can show so much more than just your listeners and you can show your engagement value across multiple platforms, you can get more money out of an advertisement and you can get more times that the advertisement comes back to you as well.

And I think that's underestimated value right there. What you just said is that them re upping and doing more campaigns with you is a big deal.

Deal, yeah, Very big deal.

It's a whole lot easier to sell someone who already knows you than sell someone new.

Exactly. And on top of that, if you're gonna just focus on merchandise and whatnot, you will make income a hundred percent if you. Especially if you make good stuff and especially if you have like a following of the proportion that is super fandom at, like, the podcast that I'm working on. Like, it's a. It's like a fantasy show. So you know that they go to the comic cons, they come and they get all of like, your merchandise that they possibly can get from you. But at the end of the day, there's only so much merchandise that can be bought. And you want to make sure that you're not just making one form of income and you're making multiple forms of income off of this because there's only a certain period of time that it can continue. I'm sorry, we're not all Joe Rogans. We're not all Call her daddies. If you want to get there, you're going to have to bust your ass and you're going to have to put in time, you have to put in effort. You're going to have to really go and find those amazing guest stars and you're going to have to put on a show. Show that is undeniably informative and binge worthy.

Absolutely. Danny. The other thing I think is that you have a challenge to so many podcasts, and I think this is the mistake and why you've actually done better than a lot of the other ones in the space is because they say baseball is a season. So I'm going to create a seasonal show. And you said that's not how social media works.

It is not. And I technically make a seasonal show show, quote, unquote, seasonal show. But we every week during season and then it's every other week during off season because there's not a lot to talk about during off season. But I will always make sure to on my social media because if they're listening to my podcast, they're already on my social media. I got them from my social media to go listen to my podcast so I can go on my social media and make a rant and just be like, yo, we're not gonna do an episode this week, but here's my rant towards this one tiny thing that happened in the last two weeks, because during off season, not a happens, but you have to stay engaged with your. With your people. So that's why I made other podcasts that I kind of negated now because, well, baseball is the love of my life, and that's what I want to pay attention to. But you have to continue to make content. You can't just stop making content for, what is it, like, five months? It's just not how this works. You lose people in five months.

Baseball fans don't stop being baseball fans during those five months. And they're desperate for some information and desperate to talk to other baseball fans.

Exactly. Not even that. But they're also. Okay, they're watching football right now. Now they don't even know what's going on in baseball, so they're coming back to you. So they're like, all right, she's going to let me know what's happening. I'm not even going to listen to any of this other crap. I'm going to go listen to her because she's going to inform me of all of the things that have happened in the last three weeks.

Right, exactly. So. But this is the thing that you were saying, though. All the algorithms are skewed against you if you're not posting constantly. And that includes podcasting, because seasonal shows. I have a minor league baseball owner who has had a podcast with us for five years, and in the last three, it has gotten harder for him to come back each season and start it back up again. Harder and harder each time. And I keep trying to tell him he needs to do something in the off season.

He has to.

It's not his brain. It's not his thinking. We're like, we're off for the summer, right? We're off from the summer. Yeah, we worked our buzz off.

You're off of the summer. But that doesn't mean that your team isn't still practicing, that you're not still constantly busting your butt making sure that your stadium is getting filled. Like, what are you doing during the summer that will make them still interested in coming back and listening to you? What is it that your show talks about? Is it just talking about the team? Because if it's just talking about the. So I'll tell them how they're training this week and doing this this week. Even though baseball's on its off season, the players are still making sure that their bodies are in shape to come back to season.

Right? We want to hear that. We want to know what they're doing. We Also want to know who's coming back to the team. And all those financial movements happen during that time. Like, there's always stuff going on, so there isn't a lack of things to talk about. But when you have the mindset that I'm just, this is seasonal, it really harms you in terms of getting building right back up again.

It does. And that's why when I first specifically made this, I was like, this will be bi weekly during off season because I need to make sure that it stays. Like, if I do it biweekly, people are like, okay, like, we get it. But if I say I'm only gonna make a podcast, like in three months from now, everyone's gonna be like, what? What just happened?

You just left me.

You just left me. Exactly. And the thing is, if you're not staying engaged on social media, luckily I have the social media. So if I do go away for three months, say that I do, I'm still engaging. I'm still making sure that they know that I'm here. I'm still making sure that I'm talking about baseball. I'm still making sure they are getting that content that they are fending for, because they are fending for it. People are always wanting to listen to content, always wanting to watch content. That's why we scroll for like 10 hours on our phone, even though we didn't really mean to. That's why we're staying up till 4 o' clock in the morning watching that damn frickin TikTok page that we can't stop watching because we are constantly wanting that dopamine hit. So if you aren't going to give people that dopamine hit, they're not going to stay around.

Absolutely.

You're spoken like somebody who does have a publicity background. I love it. Well, if I've got some people listening, listening in the audience and they're still on the fence about their podcast, what.

Advice do you have for them?

Lay it out, look at it. Figure out what it is that you want to talk about. Is it something that you could talk about for the rest of your days and for the rest of time? And yes, niche down. Because the only way, you have to start with a niche and then you can go from there. And I will give you an example. Call her daddy. It was a sex podcast. Now look at it. She is interviewing every actor and actress. She is talking about mental health. She's still talking about sex. Sex. It's still there. But once you start with a niche, you can then build pillars around that niche. So you need to create a map of your podcast. What is the one thing that you can always talk about, and then once it hits, what are the two other pillars that can come from that and go from there? So, like, for me with baseball, it was, okay, Yankees baseball. And then I was like, oh, I can't really go from a different pillar here, but I could. I can go from New York lifestyle and I can go to baseball lifestyle. It doesn't have to just be the Yankees. I can then hit two other factors within sports and within New York and go from there. So you have to make sure that you have something that can grow with you. And if you can't figure that out, then I'm going to tell you to find a different idea.

Such great advice, Danny, and not something we've heard on this show, which is what I expected from you. That's why I invited you on here to get some unconventional advice that was truly valuable. And that's what you gave us today. Danny's dugout on Tuesdays in season and every other Tuesday in off season. It is a great show, Danny. You should be so proud of what you built here. And you know what? Don't let those typical fans push a girl out of baseball.

I will not. I promise.

Here we go.

There is so much in Dani's dugout that is really well done, but it takes going to her social media and.

Checking all of that out.

So we'll definitely have the links to.

All that in the blog post for.

This episode@thebingefactor.com I really want you to take a look at how she's promoting her podcast because she was giving you some brilliant insight into what it really takes to get your podcast engaged with on social media. If you want to have somebody come back and listen to the show, you have to do more in this. Say, here's my new episode. You have to incite them to disagree with you. You have to get them to want.

To hear the whole rest of what you offer.

You've got to be very, very concerted and deliberate about how you promote out on social media.

And she's really brilliant at it.

And yeah, is she controversial and maybe that's not for you, but there are lots of other techni that she utilizes, like this fear of missing out. And just be really looking at what she does here because this is what I see so many of you podcasters missing. You've got your show, and your show is brilliant and great, but nobody's coming and you're taking the Time to promote.

It on social media.

But you're not really doing what it's necessary to promote and get them to come back and engage and listen and subscribe. And that's really what she does really well. And I thought it was a really great view she was setting up for you on how you really create value. That the value is not only going to be in the podcast, it's going.

To be in your social following.

It's going to be an engagement of that following. It's going to be in the advertising.

Value of that following.

It's a really big, robust look at.

What really makes a valuable show.

And she understands that, and she's got that in spades here.

And it's really what I love about Dani's dugout.

Please.

Plus, it's got an edge to it. She knows who she is and she knows what she's putting out there. She knows the value she brings to herself, to the audience, and she can do that in a really authentic way that creates something of great entertainment value. Very interesting. And I can hear myself kind of.

Yelling at the podcast.

Right. Talking back with her. And that makes a much more intimacy creation with the audience. Audience, Even if they don't message you back. I mean, I'm very sure some of.

Her fans do, and you can see it on social media.

But even if they can't or just.

Don'T take the time to do it.

Because I'm talking back to her as I'm listening to her show, she's got my attention. I feel like I know her even better. And that's what makes this show truly binge bowl. That's what makes her binge factor so valuable. And it's going to make me subscribe.

So go check out Dani's dugout.

Make sure you check out the social media links that we're giving you in the blog post for this episode.

And go. If you are sitting on the fence, take what she said to heart. Go out there, make a plan. Get yourself an executive producer like Danny.

If you need it.

Figure out what that plan is and really think hard about, should I do this? Is this the right thing? Can this become something of interest and of value to my audience, to me, to the ecosystem of podcasting as a whole, to. To ultimately create something worth doing.

So I'm so glad Dani came on the show.

I can't wait to hook her up with Kevin's show. So look at the contrast between Kevin Warren and Danny Sippola. I mean, such polar opposites in the way that they approach the show, but extremely fan valuable, right? The fans are really represented there. They're getting what they really wish they.

Could hear on broadcast media.

And I love that. That's what podcasting and indie podcasting, if.

You want to call it that independent broadcasting should be all about.

And they both do it a completely different way, but it's having the same effective value to their audience and listeners.

So make sure you check out that previous episode I did with Kevin Warren.

And sportschasers podcast and then go check.

Out well, or check out Dani's dugout.

Before that and check them out and compare and contrast them and see how two different styles can still have the same effective results. Thanks everyone for listening and indulging me in a little bit of New York.

Sports in the last couple of weeks. Appreciate you giving me that intention indulgence. I'll be back next time with another podcast or another different take on the.

Marketplace looking at different genres right here on the Binge Factor.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and video casting 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.