What Are Listeners Looking For In A New Podcast Show

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found, and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today. Get ready to finish feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tracy Hazzard, and along with my co host, Tom Hassard, we're going to talk about what listeners are looking for in a new podcast show. And in the fall of every year, we find a lot of people starting up a second podcast. So if you've been successful with your podcast, now might be the time to start a new show. If you planned and had a New Year's resolution to get a show started, now is definitely the time. So while we are really working on thinking about this new podcast show, sometimes it's also really good to think about your existing show and if it's still really competitive against other shows. So this is a really good time for you to kind of evaluate the whole thing at this moment in time.

So true, Tracy. You know, I'm seeing this across the board with most shows, not all. There are always some variables that you have to realize may happen. But as long as your show is consistent and you're publishing episodes every week, then this time of year, you're usually going to see a bump in listenership. But the other thing is, boy, have we learned about how much new listeners are looking for additional shows. Isn't that exciting? And this is the time of year they're doing it a lot more.

Yeah, absolutely. There are so many listeners out there that are just really going to looking for new shows all the time. Like, I mean, it is a really common occurrence. There's 85% of active listeners, and the last number I have is 135 million monthly listeners.

That's a ton of listeners in the United States only.

Yeah, that's just the U.S. right. So 135 million monthly listeners, 85% of them are, are actively looking for a new show at any given time.

And I was really struck by the number of shows they're watching every week regularly. That number has been going higher also. It's now average of eight and a half shows.

Yeah, it's way up there, so. And 17% of those 135 million listeners are looking for a new show. All the Time. That's what they say. They're constantly looking for something new. They want to be up on the latest. They want to catch it, you know, catch what's new. They're looking for what's trending. So this is really important for us to remember that there are new listeners out there who may not have found our show yet. If we have an existing show and if we're starting a new one, there's a whole bunch of them ready to jump from the show they've been listening to for a long time to your show.

It's so true. And so a way you can imagine raising awareness of your show and your existing show is really critical. People are looking. Why aren't they finding you?

Absolutely. So, Tom, today we thought we'd talk about what listeners are looking for in a new podcast show. Really thinking about that from the listener perspective, because too often. And we hear it all the time. In fact, kind of we talk about it all the time. I hear you say it again and again. It's so great if you would brandcast your message out to the world, if you would broadcast your message, if you get your message out. But when we think about that, we're not thinking about listeners clicking through and listening to our show. And so we want to flip that conversation right now and get out of your view of why you're podcasting and into their view of why they're listening.

And what they're looking for and what they're responding to. Right. What kind of messages are they responding to? And it is really a critical thing. I know we mentioned in the context of, I think, last week's episode or the episode before that of this show, but most of you podcast hosts, those of you that are recording your content like we are right now, to share it with your audience, are not podcast listeners, right?

No. I think this was a huge advantage for us, Tom, that I was a podcast listener when we started our very first show, and I have found it again and again that those who don't listen to podcasts have a rougher start than those that do listen to podcasts.

I agree. Because you don't have a frame of reference. You don't have context.

Right. And so here's where the one thing that I find podcasters don't do when they start a new show, whether they are starting their second show or starting their first show, very few of them do any research. They don't check out the listening app to find what's out there already. They do no study to find out. So when we started our first podcast, WTFF, and that was what year was a 2014? Oh, my gosh, it's so long ago now.

2014 or 2015, I don't know, somewhere in there.

You know, on a funny aside, I just removed our LinkedIn page today. I was like, I don't think we really need a showcase page for WTFF anymore. And so I removed it for the first time in, you know, a decade. So. But a decade ago, we looked at the podcasts that were out there and we said, hey, what else is out there? And how can we present something that is interesting, viable, would make them switch from the show they're listening to to our show, or would be a compliment and add to the shows that are out there in the mix and bring something new and different. That's how we looked at it. We looked at it as how can we have a competitive advantage, but also how can we create an opportunity in the marketplace? Where's that opportunity gap for our show, for what we want our show to be like? And so when we looked at that, there was really only half a dozen shows. There really weren't that many. And so that was really easy for us to take a look at that. There were very few interview shows. I think there was only one. There was mostly short news type shows or super, super geeky in the tech industry. Kind of more focused on, like, where investments were going and not and, you know, and what was like blowing up in terms of different tech. And nothing focused on people who were using the 3D printers. And so we said, okay, that's our niche because we're users, we know how to use the machines, right? We know what we're doing over there. So we could bring a lot of viable, interesting information there. So that was the first thing we did, was take a look at that landscape and said, are we specialists and where can we shine in? What's the mix here?

Where was the gap? And not only what could we do? Because it was important. I mean, even if you're a good fit for doing something, does anybody want to listen to it? You know, those are two different things. But in our case, we were lucky in that there was a place we really fit in that met a gap and a need that an awful lot of people wanted to listen to.

Right? And then the other thing is that the formats of the others were very much like radio shows. And here was where I could bring some perspective to it because I understood podcast listening as being much more of an intimate audience type thing, where it was A little more influencer model where radio shows and radio hosts fall back on their programming. Right. And that they like the programming. And so we decided to fly in the face of programming and have a much more casual environment. And that's why with Tom and I co hosting together, we have the banter. We have, we have all the stuff that we normally do. You guys hear here all the time. It's not any different. We still have the same kind of style that we had back in 3D printing WTFF, but here we're talking about podcasting. So it's that same style of things that we do. And so what we also did was we decided to test our programming and we did five days a week. I know that sounds a little crazy, but it was also a part of the strategy because there was shows that were these news shows and they would come out daily, but they were only five minute shows. And so we thought if we came out daily with a much longer show, which, you know, in the case, we did like 20 minutes and then we had one day a week where we did an interview and we did 45 minutes. So we had this kind of model of like how we were competing against that daily show. So we knew what we were matched against from a competition from a consistency standpoint. Right. So how are you going to beat out and get to the top of the list? You have to beat out their number of downloads. And the way to beat out downloads when they're doing a daily show is to match them or exceed them. So we did it by exceeding in minutes. So if there was playthrough, we'd beat them in playthrough every time if we were longer than their five minute show. So that's how we knew we could do that. But in doing it, we thought, let's test our programming, let's test what the audience wants. And then eventually when we get to the position we want, we'll scale back, which we did. We went down to three days and then two days and then one. And so what we did was we tested out. We had Monday, we had Back to business Monday. And so we would do business topics. So if you were building, building a 3D print business, what was that business going to be like? Nobody talked about that. Because running a design agency or design business is totally different than running a tech company that's building a 3D printer. And then we would do Tuesdays were tech Tuesdays. And Tom, that was your, your game. You loved those days.

Yeah, it was a technical tip regarding, you know, those People that were using 3D printers, because most of our listeners ended up people using 3D printers. And even back to business. Monday was a lot of discussions about, you know, there are a lot of people that are considering starting 3D print businesses because they enjoyed using them so much. What could they do with it? What was Wednesday? I don't even remember.

Wednesday was education. And so. But Tuesday and Wednesday were highly focused on the SEO. We were highly focused in making sure we were tapping in the keywords, answering the questions that people had about how do I make 3D print a part of my education plan, how do I bring it into my classroom, how do I justify it to the administration and get funds for it? Like, we've talked about all kinds of stuff like that in education areas. And so it really helped fill out our sort of keyword plan that we had for our 3D print site as well. So there was a lot of focus on that, and we could do that. On Thursdays we did our interviews, and that was so that we could collaborate with the industry. We went from nobody in the industry to some, to like, the experts in the industry and the people you look to to make recommendations. Because we did so much connection every week to different parts of the industry through those interviews. They were absolutely critical to the growth. And we would never have gotten to 100,000 users a month if it had not been to tapping into other people's audiences. And that happened through those interview process.

100,000 listeners, just to be clear.

Yeah, 100,000 listeners a month. And so on Fridays, we did a project. We would talk about something we were running. We very often got people to go to our YouTube and see a video of what we were running on our machine over the weekend. And usually it was the previous weekend, but. And then we. But we would share design tips, and no one talked about the design side of 3D printing. So it really worked well. So thinking about that, it's like, you don't have to be all those things. But look, we came up with five different areas we could play, and one that was very common, which was to do interviews. It just didn't happen to be that that 3D print interview happened a lot in that industry segment. So us doing that was a power play. But the other four days of the week, we could have picked one of them and been totally fine with. But we did them to test out and see where the biggest interest was for us. And we found that the Tech Tuesdays became some of the largest areas of interest in our Design Fridays. Those two Things were the biggest traffic that we got, the most comments, the most engagement. Everything that they were looking for was there.

I agree. Now, I do think a lot of listeners are probably panicking, like you did five days a week. Are you kidding me? I mean, they're like, I can't do that. And most people can't and won't. And I think if you have the ability to. I mean, there's a show that we support that just went from one day a week to five days a week, and they're killing it from a downloads perspective, which is how they're going to climb the charts faster. I mean, it's still a strategy that works.

Absolutely, it does. But what I was suggesting is, is that what we were doing is testing out the programming. You could do that. One week you do education, the next week you do tech, the next week you do the design. You could have done it one a week for a month and given yourself four different tests of the different types of programming that you want to see if it resonates with this new listeners and see which one garners the most new listeners. So now, here's the next part of this, Tom. Right. We want to talk about what new listeners are looking for.

Yes.

Right. Now, sometimes when we look at the competitive landscape and we see a lot of people doing the same thing, we think, oh, we should do that. That's where the listeners are. But listeners who are looking to jump ship are looking for something different. So playing with your programming, playing with that could be real help to being a contrast to what's available in the marketplace.

I think it really helps to understand what motivates people to listen. Right. And this article, Tracy, that you were referencing does help give some insights into that through some research.

Right, well, so we didn't say that yet.

Oh, we didn't. I thought we did.

No, we didn't mention it at all yet. So there's an article by the media researcher nit, and it was a featured in Inside Radio magazine, and it was talk about podcast listeners are hunting for new shows. And here what, here's what appeals to them. Now, I didn't think some of their options were that good. That was my personal opinion. But I thought the stats were really great.

The stats are great. And this is very recent. You know, as we're recording this, this is a very recent article. So this is current information.

Right. And so. But I think that some of the stuff that they do list on the chart is pretty good. So how important are the following brand messages in a podcast promo? Important to you is an indicator of what works on a show.

I agree. I was going to say the same thing. I'm glad you see this the way I do.

Yeah, yeah. It's like a promo doesn't make sense. But they're talking about promoting the podcast itself so that they'll go and listen to it. That's really what they're talking about in this article. But they want something thought provoking that makes you think and challenges you. 45% of the people who surveyed said that. So if you have a thought provoking show that challenges conventional wisdom, which is something that we try to do here on feed your brand all the time. Right. We're always saying that this is what the advice, prevailing advice in the marketplace is. What? Name your show after yourself. Don't do it.

Oh, my gosh, Tracy. It happened to me again the other day. I want to share this because this is very relevant. So met with a podcaster who's literally been podcasting longer than anybody that I've ever encountered. You know, was since the very, very early days of the ipod. Okay. And she's a business podcaster, had a marketing agency and as a marketing related podcast, very popular area of podcasting. But the one thing, two things about her show listing I pointed out to her could be improved, that would help her be naturally heard by a lot more people. But the one that I'm talking about here is that her cover art was her headshot and her head, her head was filling the entire page. And she's not a nationally known celebrity. She's not very well known. And the text of the name of the show was so small it could hardly be seen. And so I told her, which is kind of risky when I talk to people because they usually don't like me telling them, hey, you gotta get your face off your cover art. But she. She starts laughing. I'm like, why are you laughing? Because for all my years of podcasting, I never had my face on it. And about a year ago, a podcast coach told me to put it on.

And so she was probably losing audience, right.

And has been losing audience and has less people in trying her show. And she's trying to figure out why. And I said, there's the first thing I would change and then here's the second. And I shared that with her as well.

So. But here you go. You're challenging her thoughts on things. And we do that all the time on this show. And that's what makes difference. That's what people are looking for. They want something where it makes them sit back and think, does this apply to me? And if I did that, am I going to have an advantage? Is it going to make a difference? Am I going to grow? Right. That's what they're looking for. The second thing they're looking for is motivational. They're looking for something motivational that makes them feel motivated and inspired to go do whatever it is that your show is about. Right.

Which makes a whole lot of sense when you think about it. Right, Right. You're trying to motivate people to go try your show. Right.

The next ones are humorous, educational. Those are a couple of ones that, you know, maybe being funny is not your style, but being educational is so, like, they could be interchangeable. There's different audiences for those things. We like to call that in one lump. Edutainment. That's what Tom and I call it. We think you should be entertaining and not necessarily funny. It doesn't always work. Like, maybe that's not your style, but entertaining and educational at the same time. You always want something to take something away that's memorable that they will tell someone else about.

I agree.

And that's when you've educated them.

Yeah. You don't always have to be funny. Ha ha. I remember back in the 3D print podcast, WTFF, our interaction with each other, our banter was often funny to people, and they liked watching it because of that dynamic. It was enjoyable. Right. So I mean, it can be at that level.

It was entertaining but not funny. Haha. Funny. Right, Right, exactly. So the other thing that they like, which I thought was a really good one to point out, is that inclusive, it makes you feel seen and included. So when they're hearing the show, we're not talking about diversity, equity, inclusion. We're not talking about it from that perspective, although that's great. But we're talking about it is that as a listener, I feel like I'm included in the conversation. The conversation is not excluding me. That's what that means. And that is the number one reason why we tell you to get your face and your name off of your show, because it already is a barrier before they've ever clicked. They know the show's not about them, it's about you. So the easiest way to get somebody to even consider your show is to remove those two things.

So true, Tracy. You definitely want to make them feel it's about them. And that's why I coach podcasters. Speak to your audience. Speak to them. Even though you're recording it on your Own usually not live here we're recording live. And I know there are people out there watching on YouTube or LinkedIn or wherever, right? So you speak to them. But even if you're pre recording and you're not broadcasting it live on social, anywhere, you need to speak to that listener and make them feel like they're a part of it. Like this is for them specifically. You need to get comfortable with that.

And a couple of ways we do that and we recommend doing that isn't doing like, what was the app that everybody used to do it on? It was like a live streaming thing before most livestreaming. Now I can't think of what it is, but they'd be like, it felt like Romper Room.

You're not talking about Clubhouse? No, you're not talking about Clubhouse? What are you talking about?

No, it felt like Romper Room. And you'd like go in and you'd be like, oh, hey, so and so showed up. And if you failed to acknowledge anyone, they would leave. And so it was so annoying because you just constantly be hearing people give shout outs to people's names. That was their way of accomplishing it. That's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about here is that I hear something very relevant to me and what I'm looking for. I hear that you understand where I am in my journey of things that I'm trying to improve or in my life, in my podcast journey, right? Whatever it is, you hear, hear that and you understand that you're not talking down to that. You're not talking over that. And you're also not babying me, like, so that it's, you know, I'm. I feel like I have a capability of understanding what you're saying, synthesizing it and making it very personal to me. And it feels intimate in that you are talking to me. So when stuff is too generic, that is the second problem that I see. I was before I was saying it's like when it's about you and not about the audience, right? The name, the image, like, those are indicators that that's what that means. But when it's not in a format in which it's personal, it's customized, it fits your style, it fits Tom's and my style here, right? It matches everybody else. Then you're interchangeable with those other people, and that's why people are jumping shows. So if I really loved my hosts, if I really loved the style of it, if I felt challenged by it, if I felt all of the things that we were just talking about from that show, I'm not even going to consider switching to somewhere else or the minute I do check out another show, I'm going to go, oh, that's not good enough. And I'm going to crash back and go back where I was. So when you're following somebody else's model, it's unsustainable. Is what I'm going to say to you is like, you cannot fake it and be like somebody you're not. That's something that we have to keep remembering. And that means that sometimes we're not the podcasters for everyone. We're right for a certain fit audience. That's why there are all these shows and why there are people out there searching.

It's why there are niches. And the word that captures what you're saying is authenticity, right?

Yes, exactly. And so the next one on the list of things was reassuring. They wanted to feel safe. And I'm going to say that that's actually not true as well, because there are a lot of podcasters who make a lot of money off of fear. But if it's not genuine and authentic to you to be a fear invoking podcaster, right. If you're not one of those, I call them the fear jockeys, right? If you're not one of those, then don't do it. That's not how you want to show up in the world. Look, I'm a dose of realism. Like, I know that that's who I am. Right. I am not going to sugarcoat it for you.

You really?

Yeah. I just found out that people are afraid of me, intimidated by me. And I, like, I don't know where it comes from, but I think it may come from me being very, like, straightforward about things. And that's okay. Like, this is who I am. I am going to tell it like it is.

I mean, you're not shy, that's for sure. I mean, that's sort of a nice way of saying, you know, you're not shy and you're not afraid to speak your mind and your opinion and all that. It's hard for me. You know, you, and you said this to me yesterday, because it was just yesterday you learned this, that people in one of your groups were saying this about you. I realized, boy, I'm not a good judge. I'm not someone to be able to either agree or disagree or to provide you a lot of guidance or support on it. Why? Because I'm married to you. We've been married for an awful long time. And obviously if I were afraid of you, I would have been gone a long, long time ago. But that doesn't mean that maybe I'm not. Yeah, you can be intimidating to some people. Maybe. I don't know.

But maybe that's a good thing. Maybe that's why my shows work, right? Maybe that's why it works for us, is because I am a dose of reality without being a fear invoking fear or lying. And there are a lot of them out there lying to sell their programs. And that is not something that I want and want a part of in any way, shape or form. So I want you to walk away if this isn't right for you. Right. I want you to think carefully about that. That's the challenge that I propose out there. And sometimes it is a little in your face about it and it is not this coddling warm and fuzzy. I don't do that because I don't think you'll be successful if I do that because I can't record for you, right? There's only so much we can do and at some point you have to be able to stand on your own two feet and do it. And so I think that sometimes that little bit of harsh love is the way to go. But it is still coming from a place of love and not coming from a place of fear that you can't do this. I do believe you all can do this.

Oh yeah. And actually that's something I tell almost every new podcaster who, you know, is a prospect. And maybe they haven't pulled the trigger on saying, okay, I'm going to launch my podcast. They haven't gotten started yet. And I tell them, you know, hey, I mean, everything else can be done for you if you want, if you don't have the time to spend, but the one thing I cannot do is record for you. And they usually chuckle a little bit, find that a little humorous, but there's truth in that. And I want to say that when.

They get to recording, they find out the hard way, right?

Well, and I want to tell them up front because I don't want them thinking that these things record themselves. I mean, it is some work. Even if you have people doing all the post production stuff where you got to do the preparation, you got to show up, you have to, you know, schedule those interviews if you're interviewing people or decide on those topics. If you're recording your own stuff and you have to do it, you got to be self motivated to an extent. And you know, I'll always be there to try to help make sure any obstacles are removed. That can be. But you've still got to actually record.

Right. So the last thing I kind of want to drop on everyone here is this thought, this idea, and this is my challenge to you. And think about this. And if you're an existing podcaster and not starting a new show or whatever that is, this is your risk point. Your risk is your audience leaves for somebody new because you didn't think carefully about what they wanted and you didn't keep up with what they wanted. So I had a podcaster come on the binge factor. She's had hundreds and hundreds of episodes. I can't even remember right now. I think it's probably. Oh, actually my notes are right here because she's up over 1100.

Okay. That's somebody who's committed. Been doing it a long time.

Yeah, exactly. And you know my style, Tom. I'm a person who challenges people on air.

Yes.

Not in a nasty way.

Not in a disrespectful way either.

I mean, no, I. Hey, I think it's time for a change and maybe this might be something that you consider doing. And I made a suggestion to her making some tries, some trial adjustments to the show to test it out. So she's got a really short show. Like it's like a two minute show.

Yeah.

And so I made the suggestion that she mix in a longer show, that she make a few changes to not scripting the show, which she does. Because today, like, I think she's about to be competing against someone who writes a two minute script is nothing. I could write a two minute script like that. And so a two minute script is nothing. And I could give it to the Google Gemini AI and have it translated in speech to tech, in text to speech, and made into a podcast and do no work. So she's going to start competing against that. So my suggestion was, is that she bring more of her real self to it. Well, ended the recording, she freaked out, sent me nasty emails for two days afterwards.

So you guys said goodbye, it was all good. And she went and thought about it after, Right?

Yep. And thought I was the nastiest, meanest person for criticizing her show. And she wanted me to edit it and I said no because I don't edit my show. I went back and I read the script and I listened to it and I asked for her permission and to coach her beforehand.

Right.

Not before the episode was recorded. She gave it on air and I asked for permission, but I decided not to air it. So it's never going to air. It will never make the light of day, because I think her show is dead. It's on its way. It's on decline. Somebody is going to do just what I said and make and outdo her, because they could do five a day instead of one a day or one a week or whatever it is that she was doing. I think she's doing five a week.

Well, if they're two minutes long. I mean, she's still putting less effort into it than most of us that do a single episode every week. That's a normal length.

Right, right. And so with today's AI, I think she's done, and she doesn't even know it yet. And then by refusing to be authentic and bring out that she has no appeal to the new audiences, and that's trouble.

I think it's unfortunate that episode's not going to see the light of day because I think it would provide value to the audience.

Well, I mean, look, I. I don't.

Know how you can do it. I mean, you're being a nice person.

By saying, I'm being nice about it. Yeah.

You're not going to do it. You have every right to.

I do have every right to, because she signed away her rights when she signed on for it. But I'm not gonna do it because I don't want to bash anyone in the industry, especially somebody who's done 1100 episodes. Right. But I really foresee. And my prediction is her show will be gone within a year. And so that's what's going to happen if we're not considering not only the listeners out there. And that's what we pointed. We want you to think about it from the listener's perspective. And what do the listeners want? They want authenticity. They want reassurance. They want these things that you must keep providing it.

They want to be motivated. They want you to make them think. And, boy, Tracy, one thing that I want to just put a little context on for our listeners is these six things that you were sharing about the messages that podcast listeners are responding to, and which, really, I agree with you, equates to what they're looking for. Right. And wanting to listen to. When you look at all six of these and you. You gave them sort of in the order of the one that was stated by the most of them, and then each one was a little less, but it strikes me that there's not a huge spread, meaning all six of those things range from 45% to 30%. And most of them are in the mid-30th, 30s in terms of people that responded. So it's not like thought provoking was like 90% and reassuring was like 10%. No, all of these motivational factors are pretty significant. Motivating factors are, I think, all worth considering. What's going to be a best fit for you?

Right, right. And so when you incorporate them all into the programming style of your show, your style of how you do things, and it becomes an authentic part of you and the show, it has a longer term resonance to it. That's when your show has a longer life. But the second part of it, the part that she's not thinking about. Right. That podcaster I was talking about, is that competitiveness. We talked about what does the landscape look like. And this is one thing we Learned from our 3D print podcast, is that when we started, there were only six podcasts. But because our show was so successful, more came and some were worse than us and some were better than us and none of them ever beat us because every year we changed our show, every year we took the competitive landscape, took a look at it, and made sure we were still fulfilling the best opportunity gap that Tom and I could personally fill from our experience and what we brought to the podcasting world. Right. And what we brought to the 3D printing world in that particular case too. So when we look at those things and when we take about what listeners are always looking for, and we take that as to what the current landscape of what they can get, remembering that new shows are starting, but also old shows are fading. So those people are really desperately looking for new things. Right. And we gotta fill that gap. Making sure that we are doing that every year is like giving our show a refresh with new listeners.

You know, we really did do that a lot with wtff. We've done it with Feed, you'd brand as well, maybe not as much, although we have changed over the years. With Feed your brand, we never used to live stream anything in the beginning. Right. And we weren't recording our episodes live like this. And we're doing that today because videos and streaming has not only become technologically much easier, but it's also the best way to reach more people. And not everybody watches in every way. So you get a lot of different people by doing that. But with wtff, we really did switch it up every year, which I think kept us motivated to continue to do it because it wasn't just the same the same the same year after year at the same time, we really were going where the market, where the listeners, the audience wanted to go and provided them a different kind of value, maybe each time.

Well, I'm thinking about switching up. Just so everybody here hears me say it, I'm thinking about quitting the binge factor from its model that it's in today and switching it up. And part of it is that experience with that podcaster. I am finding less and less podcasters worth interviewing.

Ouch.

Ouch is right. I'm finding that I have three kinds of podcasters. I have the kind that are absolutely intractable and think they're absolutely right on everything. And they're actually one of the worst examples that people shouldn't follow. And then I have the other kind that are like, they are just flying by the seat of their pants. They have no idea what they're doing, if they've achieved success, been a complete accident. They couldn't tell you what end is up and they don't know how to tell you to replicate it. So they're not good. They don't bring good advice and examples. And then the third kind I have is the people who believe that they are the. The best thing since sliced bread to the podcasting world. And their show is actually a dog. And I say that with love for dogs, but their show is just not lighting the world on fire. And they do not see it because they just feel important. And that's crazy. Like, and so then of course, there's those beautiful ones who have.

Like, there are the gems.

Like, they're the gems, but they're so few and far between that it's becoming harder and harder for me to find them. And so I'm getting frustrated because now the show is not interesting to me anymore. And that's a real thing because I was learning something that I could apply to our clients, that I could bring lessons to our feed. You'd brand listeners. So I was tying in the things in a great way. And so it was a form of curiosity and research for me, not just industry interaction. Right. And getting people to promote it. I don't need that. I have a higher value than almost everyone I interview. So I don't need them to bring me more listeners. They're not going to. What I need from it is to keep that curiosity factor that learn something thought provoking. What could I take away that I could bring to you here that would be of value? But I am not getting that. In the last year, I have gotten two out of 52 interviews, two ideas out of 52.

That's an awful lot of effort.

It's an awful lot of effort.

Something that's not rewarding you that much. Yeah.

Right. And as we head into the end of the year for us, I'll do a final analysis of the marketplace, what it looks like in the competitive landscape, because if we're still filling a really valuable spot, I don't want to take that away.

But how do you change it up to make it more effective or more enjoyable or a combination of things? Because I agree with you. If we did sort of the Venn diagram of podcasting, you've got to find that sweet spot where it is meeting the needs of multiple people. Right. Or multiple factors, and one of those is you. That sweet spot has to be something you're happy with.

Right? Because so while we were talking here about what listeners are looking in a new podcast show, if what you figure out is what they need and you are not the person to fill it, you will struggle to make that happen. And that's the point that I want to make. It will be more and more difficult. This is how pod fade happens. This is how you just stop doing it. You're just not as excited about it. You're just not publishing as often. And the next thing you know, you've quit your show. That's where I am with the binge factor right now. And it is a really, really tough place because I know I'm still filling a market gap. I'm pretty sure I'm still filling a market gap right now.

I think you are, too. And I mean, just for you and for our business, when you think about it, the binge factor is sort of a marquee kind of a material. Is a bad way to say it, but it's something that is impressive to prospective customers of us. You know, it productize. So very interesting, though.

Well, that's what I call them. I call our shows our two shows here. They're very different, but they're the flagship shows. Because if we don't we aren't successful with them, then how can we expect you to be successful running a business doing shows? Right. So anyway, these are just the things that we're thinking about. You know, as always, I'm thinking on the air with you and sharing it, because I want to be challenging both to myself and to you about how we think about things and how we look about things. And is it still working? Because the one thing that Tom and I are all about is that if we're giving advice here that stops working, you must find out about it. You must know when it stops working. But we won't give you advice here that we know isn't working consistently and constantly already because we don't want to do that. Or we'll be straightforward and tell you we heard this, but we have no idea if it's going to work. Right. So we want to be straightforward about what's working today and what we think is going to still work tomorrow.

That's why we're practicing what we preach and keep doing this, because we get surprised. Things change. It's not the same as it was 10 years ago, right?

That's right. So anyway, that's it for what we've got for today's show, what listeners are looking for. We're going to actually talk about listeners next week, too, right? So we're really excited about what next week. It's coming up as well because we've got just a sort of different take on this from a different perspective. And we're really going where those listeners are going to get podcast recommendations for new shows. Little bit different but still focused on the listener side. And so we've been. We're doing a little bit more of that this month.

All right, well, hey, remember everyone, you can go get the link to the article Tracy and I referenced and anything else we have talked about today on the blog post for this episode, which you'll find@podcasters united.org that's the home for feed your brand. So check that out and we'll be back next time for that next episode about listeners. Where do they get podcast recommendations? That'll be fun. I look forward to it. We'll see you then.

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