Make Quality Time to Think About Setting Better Podcasting Goals After 100+ Episodes - On-Air Podcast Coaching with Penny Zenker, host of Take Back Time

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 noise with the binge factor.

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Binge Factor. I'm Tracy Hazzard and we're trying out a new style of episode. If you haven't caught up with us yet, we are doing some on air coaching. So I haven't been able to do a lot of strategy calls and coaching with our clients in a while. You know, the business gets busy and it's been harder and harder to do that. So we decided to offer up to our special clients, especially some of them have been our clients for a long time. We decided to offer up an opportunity for them to have a refresh strategy session with me. So many of them have already had their podcast for a while and we're having a strategy session because what can happen is as we start our show, we have a specific plan for it, then our businesses shift and change. And so especially when we get to be over 100 episodes or more, we start to have these issues of, yeah, things have changed and now I would like to have my podcast do something different, achieve a different outcome. So that's the conversations we're hoping to have here with our special guests, our podcasters who are our clients. And they're not here to talk all about what we do here, although it may come up on occasion here about something that you can do on Poditize that you can't do anywhere else. So I'll be careful to mention that. But we're not mentioning that to you in a salesy way. And this is not to be a testimonial. It's for you to get to vicariously listen in and get to hear what an on air strategy session and how a strategy session might help you move your business forward. And this is something we do in a group situation once a week. So if people want to ask questions or do that, we do it in our group calls for all of our hosting clients. But the one on one is a deeper dive and so this is what it's typically like. So. So today's on air coaching guest is Penny Zenker. And Penny and I have known each other a while. She's one of my favorite. She calls herself a focusologist. She's an international speaker, a business coach, a bestselling author and a productivity expert. Before her 31st birthday, Penny founded, developed and sold her first multimillion dollar business while living in Zurich, Switzerland. Later, at the world's fourth largest market research company, she managed business unit turnarounds and was a Tony Robbins business coach, helping entrepreneurs around the world double their businesses. She is one of America's leading experts in the psychology of productivity eliminating distraction, perfectionism and self sabotage to maximize results in every area of your life. I'd love to listen to her tips. This is one of my go to people when I want to up my game and being less distracted and more focused. Her book the Productivity Zone was an instant bestseller and her TEDx the energy of Thought has gained attention around the world. She has a podcast called which I love this title and I love this cover art. So you got to go to the blog post for this episode@thebingefactor.com and check it out. It is Take Back Time. It is one of the COVID arts that I use as a fabulous example of both naming your show in such an activating way and also the imagery that supports that. It's just so energizing. You'll want to click, you'll want to check it out, you want to subscribe, and you want to listen. So let's hear from Penny Zenker. Let's hear what she's got going on in her business and let's hear how we can help shift her show for the new year and really get something going to achieve some new outcomes.

Hey Penny, let's talk Take Back Time.

Yay.

You are one of my favorite people to spend time with because I know that when we have a conversation, I'm going to learn as much from you as you get from me. I know you're here to get coaching, but I know I'm going to learn something like some really cool app. And I was learning that when I was setting up, I was listening to your latest episode and I learned about the hold app and I was thinking that just solves my problem with one of my daughters today.

Cool. Well, I do have another one for you that I just recorded.

Oh good. I can't wait. So that's what's really cool about your show. So I'm going to set this up by saying what I know about the binge factor of your show. And the binge factor is that Penny has and Take Back Time specifically is focused on productivities tools, tactics, tips, and the tools part I really love personally. But they're really actionable. These are things that you've used, you've tried, you understand intimately, and because you are a productivity expert, you understand how I can apply these. This isn't just some new cool thing everybody's exploring and trying. You're saying this is solving a problem, and here's the problem that it's solving. Love that model.

Cool. So I'm doing something right, I guess.

You are absolutely doing something right. So let's see, you've gotten to 130 something episodes, right?

Yeah, something like that.

So you've been doing it a while. How has podcasting felt?

I really enjoy doing the interviews, especially when I'm really exploring a new tool that I wasn't even aware of before. And I find that it doesn't matter who I'm interviewing, whether it's somebody who's really well known or somebody who's not well known. Everybody's got some really great advice to share and tips of what works for them. So I enjoy that banter as well. Like today I was online with somebody and I challenge them. I'm like, hey, that usually goes first in the process and not second. So I kind of. I like to play that. And so when I'm in that mode, it really works for me. So I'm enjoying it. I just realized, though, that I also need to be more purposeful about doing the intro and creating, like, a little teaser in the beginning that I don't necessarily do. So there's things that I know that I can improve on it. So I need to step back. So this is perfect timing for this so that I can step back and put together an action plan of what I could do, what's easy to do, what's long term, so forth.

Well, that's our goal today, so we're going to get into some of that. But let's first start with when you originally started. You probably had a completely different outcome, goal, plan for what you were doing this for. Things change because 100 episodes means you've been doing this well over a year, probably into your third year, I would think. And so, yeah, you're looking at this as like, I may have different business goals now than I had when I started it. So how is the show serving that and can I achieve a new outcome? Maybe I achieved my goals and I'm ready to move on to the next one. So let's not talk about what your old outcome and business goals were. Let's talk about this new where you're going next. So what's the ultimate goal in your business right now? And how is the podcast potentially serving that well?

So I'm starting to create online courses and really so wanting to create. And this is where it comes to be purposeful, right. Is to create a list and really be engaging with the people who are listening. So the goal would be to 10x the show, like really take it to the next level in terms of accessibility. And I've got some cool things that will support that, but it's really, it's building that list and it's monetizing it.

Okay. And so this list building model is a really important part for a lot of people of podcasting. So the problem is, is that the podcast subscription base isn't a list. Right. They, you don't know, have their email addresses, iTunes has them, Spotify has them, and they're not going to give them to you.

I know, right? It's cool to know they're listening. Right.

How are we going to drive them off the show and get them to add themselves to your list? So that's one of our top goals of what we need to achieve in order to get the outcome of having a good list. Now, the good part about your podcast is that it has a very focused topic. You have focused experts. There's nothing about you've not deviated from your focus on this. And as long as your course and everything else you're building is still in that focus of productivity, then we're not going to have to worry about any shifting or anything else to the content side of things. Because you should be attracting the right type of people. Right. People who are interested in increasing their productivity.

Absolutely. And the audience is growing. It's great that they're listening, but I don't know who's listening. And I'd love to know what they want to hear. So I have very little engagement in terms of people contacting me. You know, I'd love to have questions from them. That kind of stuff gives me even more energy. So getting some contact with them and getting their emails would be helpful in that engagement.

So I'm thinking that we maybe need a few show refreshes to help make sure that you're getting full listens through your show. So one of the things I saw when I checked out your stats is that you have occasional shows that really pop up in numbers, and it's probably because the topic was really interesting or somebody shared it. Well, who was your guest on the other side of that? So you have, it's very typical in almost every show you'll see that you have like a little spike here and you're like, oh, somebody must have shared really well or you hit a hot topic. What I didn't see was, and I see steady growth over time, but it's very slow growth. Right. So that's got a. It gets a lot, very frustrating for a lot of people that you're still, you know, you're only seeing that steady growth. However, your website growth is going terrific and you can see it spike on the days on the organic growth of your website. You can see it spike on the days following you launching your episode. So I think you launch on Wednesdays and within a couple of days you see some traffic showing up. So obviously they're hearing something, maybe they're going to check that out in your website. So we want to make sure that we're doing more of that. So how can we structure our shows? So we make calls to action that send people back to our website, of which where your course is located, where your list building is happening. Right. So we want to take that away from these lead pages model and sending them back into your website to capture them because it feels less pushy. But we still have to then at that place, given the compelling reason. So if they listened, we want to give them a compelling reason to subscribe and to your email list, not just to the show, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So I also have an app that I haven't like, it's a soft launch, it's available, but I haven't and it's curated and it's got a lot of the people that I interviewed and there's a way for them to log in and get that access. Would you drive them to the app or to the website?

That's a good question for you. It depends on really what you want to do. I'd say long term your best traffic will be over the website because it gives you the most flexibility for where to drive them next, for what to do with them, where the app may work out for you in a year, it may not work out for you and you don't want to maintain it or you don't want to do it. And now what do you do with all those people if they are legitimately a part of your regular list and then they've chosen to do something with the app because you gave them bonuses or something special. Now you've got them in your whole ecosystem and you still keep them within your world of being able to influence them and Bring them new products. Okay, so that's just my take on that. But when you're trying to do a user drive in the sense, and when you have a new app, you want to get a lot of users, you also want to do the most frictionless thing, which is send them straight to the app. Right. They're on their phone, they can just download. So these are some launch strategy versus long term strategy issues. You may want to just do a launch strategy. What I suggest that you do, because you're hosted on Poditize, is that if you're going to do any kind of strategy where you're driving them to the app for a period of time, do it like a drop in ad and not like a regular part of the baked in, part of the episode. So you'll do those dropped in ads. And then if you want to change that launch period where you stop sending them to the app, but now you're sending them to the website, you can remove that ad at a later time. So this gives you the ability to capture first off anyone who's listening to any of your shows in any order. Right. It doesn't matter where they are, they get to know about the app. Right. And then secondly, it gets you. So that if you want to then switch up your strategy and send them to the website, you're able to have that flexibility where if you record it in the show, you'd have to remove it and you don't want to.

Absolutely, absolutely. Right now I have an ad that sends them to my distraction quiz.

Awesome. So that's working for you. So how is the quiz working?

I haven't been able to dig into the stats to see, but it doesn't look like there's too many people going from the episodes to the quiz. So I need to figure out how to maximize that. Or maybe it's just driving them back to the website.

I mean, I think there is a. I'm going to call it a quiz fatigue. Like for lack of a better way to describe it, there is a quiz fatigue that we're getting very used to the fact as consumers that quizzes are just a way to build a list and they're not doing much for me on the other end. So how can we combat that? By having a really valuable quiz that gives some kind of really special, unique, deliverable at the other end. This is where we come into a play and also needs to be really quick and short. You need to tell people how quick it is.

Right? Right. Well, the quiz itself is pretty awesome. It's A distraction quiz, and it tells them whether they're a squirrel, deer in the headlights, or time zombie quiz.

I remember it right.

It's fun. But I guess I have to make sure that it's bringing that across. I have to review the ad and make sure that it's getting that piece across.

Yeah, absolutely. And so making clear that they're going to get. Not only find out who they are, but get tactics for how to combat that. So maybe you can give each one, like squirrels a specific list of episodes and tools you recommend for them will be the result that they get from that. So you're actually driving them back into your trap, into your content.

Right. That's a great idea. Because that can drive people to the show. Because a lot of people take the distraction quiz from my events when I'm doing public speaking, and that if I were to send them that list, that's a really great idea.

Yeah. So I just created something called a favorites list, and that came from listening to one of doing one of my interviews here on the podcast, which I totally love that I get to do an interview and somebody gives me a great idea. So I built a favorites list recently on the bingefactor.com's website. And it's just my list of if you're going to start at the episodes and you know, we've got a lot of them and you just want to be efficient, start with these 10. Like, you know, here, start with these six, whatever it might be. But if you created a curated list which was specifically for the squirrels or the deers, you know, then that would be fun because they'd feel like they got something special. And you can create that as a page that they can go to. So they, you know, so they hit the list, you can put it in the email, follow up, whatever they get. So now they've gotten those, and they can continue to come back to them and check them out, and it is more likely to make them click on and subscribe to you to your show. Once they say, oh, I'm going to. That one was really great. I'm going to go to the next one. That's when they're going to hit subscribe. So they don't. So they bookmark your show, essentially. So that's going to really help you drive traffic back and forth. So I think that's a really good plan. I know your quiz, it's fun and it's great from an event, but maybe the ad isn't as fun and compelling as that is. So, yeah, thinking that through might be test out different ads. You can a b test them. So list building. Our challenge is that a lot of people want really large lists. What is the ideal list size that you think you need?

Actually, it's not really the list size.

Right.

Because it's how do I do more with what I have? I just want to know who they are and have conversations. So I don't care if it's not. I mean, yes, I said I would like to 10x my show because it's great to make a bigger impact, but it really doesn't matter. It's about the quality of people. And I already know, like you said, if they're coming to me, then this is the topic that they're interested in. So it's not a number per se, it's a quality of engagement that I want to create.

Okay, so maybe we want to delve into invitations to have deeper conversations. So whether that's consults with you, whether that's open Q and A sessions, whether that's different types of things that we might want to do where we're offering them something special. So that we were talking earlier about that, I was listening to that episode about the hold app and I was like, that's really cool. But you go to the space and you go to their webpage and it's like, oh, I got to get on their list. It's not out yet. But what if you could have structured a deal that your people that you put a list together on your website and submit that to the people at Hold. You guys get to the top of the list. So if you can give them some kind of exclusivity, then that's a reason to come and choose and have more direct contact with them.

That's true. That's a great idea. By the way, that is available. It's a Chrome plugin.

Oh, okay, good. Thank you for sharing.

That's a great idea. Is that I could get on some beta lists like, you know, and really. Or get some other kind of exclusive with the tool or something of that nature. I think that's a really good idea.

Right. And well, you know, this is the thing. You're a high level productivity expert who should be reviewing products and we've talked about that in past conversations. So Penny and I have talked about the fact that reviewing products, reviewing whether they're physical products or app products, software as a service products, She's a top level expert in this. So you should be connected up with people developing productivity tools somehow. We need to get you into a community like that where they're coming to you because you're an influencer on that future. So you're at that top of the list of people who I want to send my book about, my app to, my trial, my free trial. Because when you do a review not only on your show but on your website, that has high value to me from a social proof situation as the developer of those programs. So getting that through in the process actually will also serve you well in your goals of speaking more, which I know you had before COVID hit. So I'm sure you want to get back to doing a lot more of those come next year. So we want to make sure that that connection point though, of being sort of that specialized type of media is going to serve you well at getting invitations to those events coming up too. So I think at the end of the day that's probably the best way to serve you. So how do we do that? I mean, there's a couple of strategies, but do you have some ideas?

Well, I have a quick question first. So we had talked about this in the past and I didn't do that yet. You said I can have multiple channels, right? Should I pull the tools out and have them as like a separate stream or do I keep them in where they are now? Like, what do you think?

So this is what I call a feeds, because we call them our podcast feed. Right. So our feeds strategy. So I think when anyone gets over 100 episodes, it's certainly time to think about a feed, if a feed strategy makes sense for you. So again, you're on potitize. So we offer you five free feeds so you can create them at will. All you have to do is contact us and tell us. Send these 10 episodes or 20 episodes over to a brand new feed. Here's the information on the new feed. Super simple. It's like setting up a new show, but you just transfer everything. You can still keep them in your main feed so you can duplicate them.

So would you do new intros for it?

I don't do that typically. I don't always do that. Occasionally I do, but the point of it is that it's a curated collection, that you're really more creating it for your website than you are. Even though, yes, you can syndicate it if you choose to, but you don't have to. So if you are creating a syndication of the best tools and apps out there, or the best apps and the best tools to sign up for, or the best tools to buy on Amazon, like it doesn't really matter what they are. But if you felt that that was a list in and of itself that people could just go through and go, this is. I'm looking for the right types of tool. I'm going to listen to all of these really quickly. So we just did this with our show. The feed your brand is. We're breaking it off for it at the time that this episode goes live. It will happen. It will be there already. But we created a 101 for someone who hasn't launched their show yet so they don't have to go through all this other confusing information when they haven't launched yet. So we felt that 101 start here made sense to be a syndicated special place. Now it may never have more than 25 episodes in might have a couple of updates we could add later, but it might be just in its entirety. A show like that, you could do the same thing of. Here's some productivity basics if you are really thinking seriously about getting more productive in the new year. Here's my favorites and my start list. Right. Like do check out these seven. It could be a short list because attention spans and time. Right.

Well, I am also thinking of a new feed that I started to ask people the question. I'm going to have to pull them out, but I'm asking them what their shortcuts are.

Right. So you could create a whole show on just the shortcuts?

Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. And this is thinking about strategically, what are you going to do with the pieces of the feed? Is the important part of it not the fact that you should do it or can do it? I mean, anyone who gets over 300 episodes. So if that's you out there and you're getting over 300 episodes, know that itunes or Apple podcasts will stop showing your 301 will drop number one off your list. So they show a maximum of 300. So you have to create an archive volume. So that's why we built everything the way we did. So for people get it. But there's so much benefit for you to decide how to organize your website, how to organize and treat it like a curated list for a specific type of customer. You have a lot, if I remember right, Penny corporate clients who are trying to keep their employees productive. You could have episodes that were solely focused on corporate tools and corporate advice and then market that specifically to corporate HR managers, people like that. So you can create almost a section of your website or a section of your blog. You want to think about it like that, a curated list just for them. So they don't have to search sort do the extra work. You're saving them time, which is exactly your mission, Penny. So it's in all alignment. Right. So I love that idea for you. I think that feeds are a great way for you. And because you're so detail oriented, you're gonna. And you know your episode so well, you're gonna be able to execute this for a lot of people. They like have to re. Listen to everything and it's difficult. But for you, I know you know intimately what the good ones are.

You.

It's going to be easy for you know that. That is totally. I know a lot about you. I'm very sure not true.

But I will get some help to figure that out.

Well, you can get help to have put your list together. But Penny, you know your stuff. That's what I'm saying about you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I know who I really enjoyed interviewing with, but I think it's just the way that it is. When you've had so many interviews, it's hard to remember the specifics of each one.

Yeah, you remember what rises. I mean, I've done thousands of interviews right now and sometimes I can't remember everybody's name or. But I will remember the thing about them. Like I just said, it probably went out of my head and actually just hit me. It was Paul Higgins episode where I got the idea for the favorites, but it took until just now for it to rise to the top of my brain. And that episode interview was only like a month ago. So it should be the case. But when you do thousands of interviews over time or hundreds, you do lose your ability to do that. But the thing that you took away, you'll remember and you'll just say, where was that one? I want that. And that's the important part because if you took it away, then it's valuable to your listeners, especially your active core ones, the ones who should become your clients. If you do have a raving fan, a listener who, you know has binge listened to everything. And some of us have them that I did an interview with binge listener on the Binge Factor from one of my clients show. She was her binge listener. She never wanted to start a podcast, but she was an avid podcast listener. And some of the things she said was that there's a point at which you reach out. And so if you get that person who reaches out, that one person will help tip the rest of them to start to make noise, ask questions. If you do shout outs. So what you want to do is say, hey, so and so reached out to me on Facebook and asked me this question. And I think there's a lot of you out there who are interested in understanding this right now, and you want to tell a slight story about them. Don't just give out their names. So if you were doing one about me, you would say, oh, yeah, Tracy Hazard reached out to me about my interview on the hold app and her daughter, who's 11, who's having issues with hybrid school situations. So, like, you'd give a little story and context so that as a listener, I'm like, oh, that's me too, right? Or oh, I understand. So you're describing the type of person, someone who's been struggling with this, working remotely and dealing with their boss. And here's a tactic or tool. So whatever that is, you're describing their situation and who they are, not just telling their name, right?

Absolutely. The story, that's how people get emotional. Right.

People relate to that. And it also makes the person who has listened feel like you got to know them. And so then they tell their more friends and they encourage other people and they really become raving fans at that point. So that's a way you can really push the engagement model for yourself, is to do things out that. To give the mentions. And when we first started our very first show, WTFF on 3D printing, we made up the questions because we didn't have any listeners yet. Like, we were pre recording, so we didn't have any listeners. So we made them up. They were our buddies and our friends because we knew our friends would share the show anyway. Right. So now we gave them a reason to like, oh my gosh, I was mentioned in there. And so you could do the same thing if you need to try to, because you've got people in your. In your community groups and how we know each other. Right. Your networking friends that won't mind that at all and are happy to. If you actually reach out to them, they give you an answer anyway.

Yeah, absolutely. And like, you, you know, you listened and I wouldn't necessarily know unless we had the conversation. Right. So there's people who are listening, and unless I reach out and have a conversation, then I might not know. So then.

Yeah, so that's the last thing I kind of want to leave you with is how are your social sharing? How is that going? How is the engagement? What are you doing on that side? Let's sort of take a quick peek at that, because what we do after our episodes are as Critical to driving traffic back in to build that list as the episode itself.

Right. Well, what I realized did make a difference because my numbers went down a little and then back up is when I was doing the headliners. So headliner is a tool that you can pull out like a two minute snip.

Right.

And my virtual assistant, like something happened and she wasn't doing them for a little while and I'm like, hey, so.

You didn't have video clips and that made a big difference.

Made a big difference to have these. Yeah, these clips that went out. And so I'm going to look to do more types of things like that. So continue with the headliners. But like I also ask every guest what's their definition of productivity? So I'm gonna bundle like three of them together and then post them with like links to their episodes. So just maybe some other clever things to put some more tweetables in there, things like that.

Do you write an article or write articles anywhere? Do you have a column? Are you out there doing some writing?

I'm not.

I think it might be a good strategy for you. It's a little more complex with planning and other things but you've got all the good tools right now. So thinking about maybe I'm going to say Thrive Global would be a great place because they do have a whole, like how do you save time? Like it's a big deal over there and it's easy to become a subscriber for. Right. So you don't have, I mean become a contributor for. So it's not that big a deal to be able to apply to do that. There's a whole section on their website to apply and you submit a couple of articles and that's it. I'm sure we'll write in a service model and not a self serving model and then that's all that they care about at the end of the day. But your topic of saving time. I mean whenever I wrote an article on the brain or saving time, those took off and no matter where I wrote about them or what they had to do with. Right. Like those are the two things that people care about. So that's a great way for you to mention people in a follow up which gets them to be better at sharing your show and sharing their relationship with you to their communities. Because if they're developing apps they and doing all these things and you're creating mentions or tips or other things, then what's happening is that their social media is going to take on and start to repost and reshare and that's going to have a compounding effect out there for you in terms of audience growth. So you're the source back to that. But they are sharing you and more likely to share you because it's not just one thing you gave them, it's a follow up of other things. So we can really look at like the strategy for that as being the things you create in your show from the beginning. So that's kind of what I want to sort of lay out and have you think about as the next step here is sort of think about your show as I'm creating a path to all the things that I will need to share my show in the future. So it might be a 30 day strategy, it might be a year long strategy for what I'm going to do. If you want to create that sort of evergreen cycle with things. So you say I want to have videos, I want to have the headliner, two minute clips. I want those clips to be planned though where one is where I'm talking about productivity and one is where somebody's sharing their shortcut. Like so that if you have an episode, maybe there's two clips per episode. So you're thinking about what those are and where they go and you have a clear standard operating procedure for you either get two, three or at minimum this one out of each episode that we do based on how the episodes are structured. There's a quote graphic. So that same tip is given in a quote graphic visual. Do you want them in audiograms? So one of the things that I think is be a interesting look for you is where are you doing better? Is it Instagram? Is it Facebook, Is it Twitter? Like where are you doing better? Because that also can dictate maybe the type, the style you should head to. So Instagram's doing really well with audiograms. They're doing really well with standard quote graphics. Or we create them where they're like almost like we call them like a slider if they were on a website, right? So you get. But it's the story. So it gets quote image of the guest or tool and then episode information. So it's like 1, 2, 3. So it's dynamic but it's creating just this 1, 2, 3 from each episode of all the stuff we already have, we have our episode graphic square. We have a quote graphic from our guest and in the middle of that we have a headshot. So sometimes we'll put that or a logo of the company where, you know, in our case on the binge factor, I'm interviewing somebody else's podcast. So it'll be their podcast cover art.

Right.

But it gives you something to flow through. And you're like, your stories are naturally created. You just load them up. 1, 2, 3 images and your stories for Instagram are done. So thinking about what you're going to do with them, that making sure you build those things from day one, the more work you have to do, go back through your episodes and build those social assets, the harder it is to share them, the more work your team has to do to listen, take care of it. So if we can do them at the very beginning, we're being really efficient with our time, but our outcomes are more likely to be really good because we're not batch doing them. We're doing them while we're in the moment of. This was a really good interview and this was something I had as a takeaway. So I like to make notes of, like, when I'm doing it, I'll make a Note, say at 20 minute, mark, Penny said something fantastic. I don't know what it is, but 20 minutes is on my thing. So I like look for a quote at 20 minutes. Right. You know, that's how I do it. And the team was like, okay, I'll figure it out. So you can do with as little as you can work for yourself, but the more notes you make, the more you do it up front, the better off it will be for everyone in the long run. And more accurate.

Absolutely. And that's what I meant by being more purposeful. So it's good to hear some of those suggestions, you know, and this is, I'm sure the same for everybody is you might know this stuff already, but when it comes to implementing it yourself, right, you need like a kick in the head or a kick in the pants or whatever it is. So being more purposeful in the beginning, as you said, is absolutely key.

Well, and you know, I just actually said this to somebody else and is that when we take just a little bit more time, we're not talking about a tremendous amount more time. We just take a little bit more care to make a few notes to give better instructions to our assistants or to our producers, we get such better results that translate into better listenership, easier jobs in continual marketing, and the engagement can increase. So once we find that we just spend that tiny little bit of extra time and preparation, it makes a world of difference overall. And that's what I think is the case. When you're talking about purposeful, you're also talking about not wasting your time either. Right. So we want to make sure we're triting that line. So if Headliner wasn't working, you should stop doing it, but if it is, you definitely need to do more of it.

Right.

So anything else before we go that you're sort of thinking about this new year of a podcast, of your podcast. And is there anything you want to achieve or things that we can have a quick chat about?

What would you do? You talked about like an open Q and A, right? Like, I like that thought. Can you maybe expand upon what that could look like or what you've seen done in the past?

So I would say this is a great opportunity to explore a live situation. So whether it's a Facebook Live that you do, a YouTube live, a live chat kind of model where you're not creating like a formal webinar or anything, we're just going to say we're creating a conversation today about moms and dads trying to juggle work and home work in school, the school schedules. So this is the thing, you know, like whatever that might be. It's obvious it needs to be a good, timely hot topic. And you just go and do a live Make a Watch party. So more people, if you're doing on Facebook, make a Watch party, I think that still exists. I haven't tried it in a while. But do one of those things and see if you can just get more people to randomly join because they're on and you may have to play with the time of day for whatever reason. I find Sunday late afternoons actually work really well for me on LinkedIn and on Facebook. I don't know why it is that Sunday afternoons work really well. It's like against all the normal time zones. But if I go live or I post a question, I get more responses at that time. So figure out what it is for you that's working with the community that you have. And then don't forget to invite your list that you do have, even if it's really small. Invite the list. You do have to tell them that you're gonna do these and they should friend you on Facebook or they should friend you on Instagram or whatever that is. You can do Instagram tv, you know, but going live and whether you're posting a video and live chatting, which some people can only do that in link because they don't have LinkedIn Live, for instance, they'll post a short little video as the topic and then they'll say, I'm going to be Chatting live with anyone from at this time period, little harder to get people to show up. If you've got a good community, you can drive them there. But other areas like YouTube and other things, they send all your subscribers notifications. All your friends who've got you on their notification list will send you say, hey, Penny's live. And see if you can generate some questions and answers about like here there's this subject, what kind of questions do you really have? What tools do you wish you had? You're going to be continually feeding the conversation, but they're going to be hopefully engaging with you and asking the questions. It's obviously it might be an ideal thing to do through zoom for some people. It might be just an ideal thing to do through a chat function like whatever works best for your community that you normally communicate with. If you do zoom, you can bring somebody on live, right? If you don't do zoom, Facebook doesn't really let you do that. It's just you talking and answering questions while people chat with you. But I think that it's just a start to see how you can get them to engage and how you can get them to talk. And even if I have a couple of people, I think it was Lauren Powers, maybe Laura Powers, who suggested that she starts her month by posting a question. Then based on some of the questions, her episode will be developed over the course of that month. So it may not be Lore Powers, now that I think about that, but there you go. So it's just one of those kind of concepts of you're prepping what episodes you're going to create in the future. So it's okay if they don't respond the minute you put it up there. It's okay if they respond over a week because you're still getting good information.

Something I had toyed with last year, which was to create themes for each month and then to do something and I didn't follow through because it's harder. I mean, that's why a lot of people don't follow through. It's harder to do that. It's much easier just to say hey, especially now that a lot of people are contacting me for the interviews. I don't really have to do as much work, but it's much better to be again coming back to being more purposeful and laying it out. It's worth that little effort that you talked about.

Well, and I think this multi feed strategy, one other thing might be for you to do some real shorts. I don't recommend that to a Lot of people. But you can just do a quick little live that's two minutes long or something into Facebook or do an Instagram TV and just do a little two minute of this episode that is airing this week came out this morning. And I just want to highlight this one thing about this show and you really should listen. So you're in a sense doing a live promo of what today's episode is, but you're giving your view and now that video is useful for you to use that as a teaser going forward all the time. It's like you know where you're talking about, you know, so be careful how you word it. It's just like this episode. So don't say it just aired this morning. But this episode got me thinking. The link is here and of course it's today's episode, but they don't need to know that. So that it's evergreen for you to use the video later. But thinking about that kind of tease of what they want to dive into and learn more about, it's a good thing. People don't want to miss out on something they feel could be valuable to them.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, new year, new strategies, so I'm ready.

That's right. Well, Penny, thanks for coming on and letting me coach me on air and letting everybody else learn from you. And we want to make sure everybody checks out. Penny Zenker Show Take Back Time. It's a really great show. It's one of my favorites. I wish I had a lot of time to listen to podcasts for my own purposes, but it's on my list of my favorites list. So when I do pick up an episode for myself, I will skim through your shows and go, I need this one today. So take Back time. And your website is tug of war with time, which is a great concept as well because I think a lot of us feel that way right now. Like we are seriously having a tug of war between our kids and our businesses and our personal lives. Everything feels like it's in a tug of war right now. So great.

Name time, money, health.

Yeah.

So thanks again, Penny, and we look forward to following up and hearing what you're going to do in this new year.

Awesome. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Well, I hope you enjoyed our new style on air coaching with Penny Zenker today. So don't forget to go to Penny Zanker. And all the information on Take Back Time is at our blog post for this episode@thebingefactor.com and while you're there at the binge Factor apply to be one of our on air coaching guests. You can do that. You can suggest up your show. You can also apply to our Giving Tuesday Podcast features. So you can apply there and suggest your show. And if you want to also select as maybe a possibility of being an on air coaching guest, you can. You can do that there as well. All the forms, everything is under the Guesting tab or under the Giving Tuesday Podcast tab in the Binge Factor website. So thanks everyone for listening. I hope you learned some things. I hope you thought of some ideas and things that might work for you, some nuggets that might make your show achieve a brand new outcome here in the new year. Thanks everyone for listening. I'm Tracy Hazard and I'll be back next time with more of the Binge Factor Foreign.

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.