Loading summary
Transcript117 lines
- [00:00]
Alvin
I have a new podcast promotion idea for you guys.
- [00:03]
Kevin
All right, let's hear it.
- [00:04]
Alvin
When I was at a coffee shop here in the Pacific Northwest, it was like, a rainy day. It was gorgeous. And I was just enjoying my time with my friends. And I look over at this shelf, and they have this, like, lovely assortment of, like, teapots and different pottery items. And I notice on the shelf, like, behind a little plate, was a little mini Sasquatch. Okay, bear with me. So I go up to it, and I grab the Sasquatch, and I look at the bottom, and there's a QR code sticker on the bottom of the Sasquatch. And so I scanned it, and it was an ad for a dentistry office.
- [00:39]
Kevin
The Sasquatch have, like, a famously good smile or something.
- [00:43]
Alvin
I don't know. It's just. It's like a thing over here. Like, we're. We're big into Bigfoot. You guys might know him as a skunk ape, but.
- [00:51]
Kevin
No.
- [00:52]
Alvin
Yeah, I'm. I'm pretty sure it's your neck of the woods. A skunk ape? No. Yes. Look that up.
- [00:58]
Kevin
Nobody's ever said that. All right, so a big fight.
- [01:01]
Alvin
I was just like. I saw this, and I was like, man, that's such a cool idea. And this would be really fun to do with a podcast because you see these all the time. I've seen, like, the little mini.
- [01:12]
Jordan
That's a huge leap. You don't see these all the time.
- [01:15]
Alvin
Well, okay, so not the. Not the Sasquatch ones. Okay. But you do see those little mini resin, like, ducks everywhere. Have you seen those?
- [01:24]
Kevin
Like, the Jeep duck?
- [01:26]
Alvin
Sure, yeah, sure. But they're like a really mini, like, hard resin version of it.
- [01:32]
Kevin
I don't think it's too.
- [01:32]
Alvin
People hide them everywhere. Okay, so let me just. We'll backtrack a little bit here. This is literally a thing people will take. These little resin minis. So I've seen, like, little. There was a guy at Pod Fest who was, like, hiding little, like, mini Jesus resin figures.
- [01:48]
Kevin
Okay, I have seen those.
- [01:49]
Alvin
Yeah.
- [01:49]
Kevin
Saw those at PodFest, and I saw one in a sauna.
- [01:52]
Alvin
It's the exact same thing. So there's just like, these little mini resin figures that you can get, and people hide them all over the place. And it's just like this fun little thing. It's like when people go on hikes and hide, like, painted rocks, it's just this, like, fun thing that people do. So I get really excited when I find one. But, yeah, just picking this one up, and it had, like, the little QR code on the bottom of it. I was thinking, like, that's actually a really cool way to promote your podcast if you. Because you can get minis for, like, anything. I just did, like, a quick Amazon search, and I found minis. It was like, I found, like, little mini food plates that have, like, food on them and, like, a little fork on the plate. And you could put a QR code on the back of that. We have that one podcaster that has, like, the French food podcast. They could do one of, like, mini croissants and put, like, little QR code for that. And then I've seen, like, mini skulls. If you have, like, a true crime podcast, or, like, little resin footballs and, like, different kind of sports figures and stuff like that.
- [02:49]
Kevin
You've also sent some over. There were, like, little mini books for a dollhouse. Yeah, Obviously that could work really well for a podcast that talked about books. Or I'm sure there's also movies and other ones. It is a cute idea. I feel like we've been giving you a little bit of a hard time. I don't know if I've seen the resin ducks before, but I do. I do think it's a cute idea because you'd see it and you'd go, what's this little guy? And you pick it up and you go, well, now I'm going to scan this QR code. So, yeah, that's a great idea.
- [03:17]
Alvin
Here we go. Welcome back to Buzzcast, the podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. So today, guys, we're gonna be talking about not necessarily pod fade, but when is it maybe time to pause a podcast that you're working on or end a podcast that you're working on and start a new one?
- [03:42]
Kevin
Jordan Buzzsprout's tagline is, start podcasting. Keep podcasting, no matter what. Never stop, please.
- [03:49]
Alvin
I will admit I had a little bit of a hesitancy about this topic, even though I was really excited about it, just because I want to make it a bit abundantly clear I'm not talking about quitting podcasting. And I think that that is something that's really important, because when we start a podcast, we feel very nervous about, like, the word pod fade. Like, that's kind of like the boogeyman in the podcasting space is pod fade. Oh, you don't want to pod fade. After eight episodes, you pod fade. Sometimes podcasts just have a natural ending, or maybe your tastes change, or maybe you are in a different Situation season of your life. And so it's time to, like, press pause or, like, sunset a podcast and then start something new that you're more excited about.
- [04:31]
Kevin
Okay, so you told us about this on Friday, and I kind of, over the weekend, was thinking about it, and eventually I thought of it as there's a type of finishing that is a funeral, and it's. It's very intense, and it's, oh, it's over. It's never coming back. It's sad. But there's also a finishing that is graduation, where you finish high school and now you get to go on to something new. You finish college, you get to go to something new. You're excited for the next chapter. And it's not that the chapter you finished was bad. It's just that some things do come to an end, and it's healthy for them to end and for new things to start. And when I thought about it that way, I at least had started, you know, all sorts of ideas bubbling to mind of things that ended at the right time and other things that just kind of kept going well beyond when they should have finished up.
- [05:23]
Jordan
I mean, to be fair, we want to encourage. When we say start podcasting, keep podcasting. We want to keep people podcasting as long as they're having fun, doing it and enjoying it. Yeah. The intention of the tagline for Buzzsprout is not to keep you podcasting if you hate it, if you've gotten to a place in your life where you're like, this is miserable. But I signed up for Buzzsprout, so I have to keep at it. What we're trying to do is keep it fun, keep it enjoyable, keep it light when you need it to be light, keep it, you know, if it moves into something more intense or something more in your life, that's great, too, but all for, like, your benefit. And we've always said that podcasting should give you more than it takes from you. And so we try to give tips and helps and guidance in the direction to allow it to do that. And so I think this could fit into that. You're right, Jordan. Somebody could take the wrong message away from, like, maybe, I don't know. I'm sure you're gonna carefully select a show title. But we're not saying this is a podcast about giving you the 15 reasons how you know it's time to quit your podcast. Like, I don't think we're going in that direction. But, yeah, I like the framing of it could be exciting. It could be a new opportunity or a new idea, or you could find that your energy is waning in your current podcast endeavor. But podcasting itself isn't what's doing it. It's just the specific topic or the show format or something like that. So, yeah, let's dig in and see where it goes.
- [06:42]
Kevin
Yeah. Or the thing finished. I kept thinking of things that kind of, like, you start with a purpose, and you might do, you know, 20 episodes on a topic and go, okay, I think I put together something really nice, and I can now park it. Maybe I start a new project. Maybe I take a break. Maybe I don't start another project in this realm at all. But I did my period of what I wanted to do, and I put it out there, and I think that can be a really wonderful thing. So, Jordan, in the outline, you had a really good example. One of your podcasts you've talked about a few times, Potterless. And it's somebody who was new to Harry Potter, got into it way later after everybody else, and then kind of read the books along with his audience.
- [07:26]
Alvin
Yeah.
- [07:27]
Kevin
And then at some point, you finished the books, and at some point, you played the video games, and you've done all the merch and everything, and it's like you've exhausted the material and you could keep going indefinitely. Or, like you pointed out, Mike went on and started another podcast called the Newest Olympian. So I'm imagining that's a Percy Jackson podcast. Is that right?
- [07:51]
Alvin
Yeah. I mean, this is like. This is such a prime example of, like, something just has an end to it, and then you're moving on to something else. So, I mean, like, the premise is just, like, Mike reads Harry Potter for the first time and records it on a podcast. And it just started as this, like, little thing, and then it grew into this huge fan base, and he started, like, being a special guest at, like, Comic Cons, and he started interviewing the actors from the movies, and it grew into this bigger thing, and he. He toured all over the world, and then he did all the things like. Like you said, he played the games. He. He talked about the Lego sets. He talked about everything there was to do. And he had enough fans asking him, like, hey, there's this other book series that I enjoyed reading as a kid just as much as Harry Potter, and I really hope you do that. And then, so, yeah, like you said, he spin. He spun off into the newest Olympian, which is the Percy Jackson, like, Lightning Thief series, and it blew up because he was able to carry his fan base over. So I think that's a really good example of, you know, he has this format that he knows is winning. He knows it's working. That's how he grew his first podcast. He. And he's just kind of, like, adjusting the topic a little bit.
- [09:06]
Kevin
Yeah. Same core mechanic of I'm an adult. I'm experiencing this young adult series. It was very popular that I missed out on. And all the millennials now are kind of looking back on the nostalgia of. Oh, yeah, I remember reading those books, too. And then we all experienced the podcast with him the second time. Or experienced the books through the podcast a second time. Same concept. And is it working the second time? Is it. Does it work for you?
- [09:34]
Alvin
It's funny. I actually went and bought the Percy Jackson, the Olympian series because I had never read it as a kid. I actually bought the whole series so I could follow along. So, I mean, I jumped over. I was very excited about it. Yeah, I just love that he took this series that was so successful that he could have just kept going. I mean, he probably could have gone forever and kept, like, beating a dead horse, but he just, like, stopped it.
- [09:58]
Kevin
You know what it is? All right? 1989, two of the biggest TV shows both launched that year. Do you know what they are?
- [10:06]
Jordan
Kevin Friends and Seinfeld.
- [10:09]
Kevin
Friends actually might be in there as well. Seinfeld and the Simpsons both come out in 1989.
- [10:15]
Jordan
Okay?
- [10:16]
Kevin
Seinfeld runs 10 seasons and famously ends. And everyone. It's like the biggest show. When it ends, it's number one, and they could have gone forever. The other side is Simpsons, which are now at year, whatever, 36 or something, no end in sight. And both of them have about, in my opinion, about 10 seasons of really good material. And the Simpsons kept going and kept going and kept going. And, like, the quality, in my opinion, just kept dropping off to the point that even though I loved it as a kid, I never watched anymore Seinfeld because it ended kind of, like, a little early. I still go watch all these old episodes, and they still work for me because they're kind of not tainted by. Yeah, they already did that, and they're kind of going back to the same joke for the fourth time. It works so much better when they did end it, and if you think about it, almost everybody on that show went on to do something else, like Veep or Curb youb Enthusiasm or Comedians in Cars, and all of them doing comedy. They all got to go do other cool things rather than, hey, we've got one format that works. We're never, ever going to let this go.
- [11:35]
Jordan
Yeah, that's a tough analogy. I mean, specifically talking about Seinfeld, I feel like I've heard a little bit of the backstory from Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld talking about it independently, and it sounds like they were both done. Like, they were creatively running dry, and. And so they were ready to be done with the show, but it sounds like almost everybody else, and there was a lot of people involved with the larger production. They were not ready. They wanted to keep going. I think those would be very rare circumstances where you would build something that's massively successful and at the height of the success of the thing that you built, decide that it's over. You see this a lot with athletes. Of course, like, most athletes peak and play a few years longer than maybe they should. There's not a ton of athletes, like, famously, Michael Jordan, he retired sort of at the height of his career. Like, there was nobody better in the NBA at the time. When he initially retired, he retired for, like, two years, tried baseball, tried a few other things, and then came back and played a few more years, and he wasn't the same guy. Now, might he been able to continue to be the best player in the league if he had never retired, take two years off, and then come back? Maybe. Maybe he could have got a few more years out of it. But more. More often than not, we hear stories about people who go too long than people who stop it. Like, they actually timed it just right. They were the best ever, and then they shut it down on their terms. That's pretty rare.
- [13:05]
Alvin
Yeah. I think another example of this would be Ted Lasso Dead. Lasso is a show that I think was just perfect from start to finish, and they just wrapped it up in this nice bow, and it ended exactly how it should have ended. But what's really cool is when it is so successful that they, like, stop it. And then I just heard an announcement that they were bringing Ted Lasso back again because, you know, everyone wants it. I'm so excited. But this reminds me of a startup from Gimlet. Do you guys remember this podcast? I do. So good. So this is Alex Bloomberg. He made startup, and it's him documenting, trying to start up his own company, which eventually became Gimlet. But that was season one was just him trying to start up this podcasting company. And then, you know, of course, it did so well. And so they actually branched off in other seasons into, like, other. Other company stories of, like, starting up. So this was like American Apparel, and I think what was the other one dating ring. And then they just decided to, like, stop it. And then he started up without fail. And then in 2019, they brought back startup because Spotify was acquiring Gimlet, and so they did a whole new season about that.
- [14:23]
Kevin
All right, can you think of, though, any times where the hey, we're back for round two has worked out well?
- [14:30]
Alvin
I'm hoping Ted Lasso, but I guess we're waiting to see.
- [14:35]
Kevin
The example that came to mind was famously, Sherlock Holmes dies in, like, the Sherlock Holmes books. Because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is, like, tired of it. He's like, I've made incredible amount of success with this character. But, like, I'm done. And so he's like, here's how we do it. He dies. And, like, Watson's sad, and all the readers are sad. And he's like, good, I'm moving on with my life. And basically just got peer pressured. Back with money, obviously, as well. But his fans are like, dude, all we want is that Sherlock Holmes guy. He came back. And the stuff that's after that is not, in my opinion, as good. And I think there's a bit of, like, if. If you're the creative mind behind it and you said, I think it's done, it might just be good to let it be done. Because sometimes it does feel like it come. Like people try to bring things, bring it back, and it never feels like as authentic as it did the first time.
- [15:31]
Alvin
Well, okay, I don't know if this necessarily counts, but I feel like a good example of where this was successful could be Arrested Development, But I don't know if that counts because I think that they were canceled, like, by the network. And then I don't know what, six years later. It was something crazy. It was many years later.
- [15:53]
Jordan
Yeah, I think it's when they went on Netflix, they put the back catalog on Netflix and it started gaining a bunch of popularity. And then somebody wanted to renew the
- [16:00]
Alvin
show, but it felt. I think I recall them, like, ending it because there was like something about like a boat. And then when they came back on Netflix, it was like, suddenly everyone's like six years older, including the kids.
- [16:13]
Kevin
I get canceled for it, but I did never could get into Arrested Development, neither version. So it's probably the thing that's been recommended to me the most times and without me having any attraction to it, I watch things that feel like this is the best episode. I'm like, I mean, I can tell it's trying to be funny, but it doesn't for some reason. It doesn't land for me, but to each their own.
- [16:37]
Alvin
But I think in the example of Gimlet Startup, so they archived the show for several years, and then I think what happened was suddenly there was, like, a new chapter of the story that they wanted to tell, and so they were able to, like, bring it back for that. And I think. I think that's what's really cool about it.
- [16:55]
Kevin
Yeah, Potentially Spotify as well, who acquired the ip, was thinking, hey, it would be nice actually if you did an episode about us. And Netflix, who acquired Arrest development, was like, hey, you know, this would even be better if you made some more episodes about how cool Netflix was.
- [17:11]
Jordan
I do think it could help a little bit on the starting side of podcasting to give yourself the freedom to say, you know, I'm not going to start a podcast, and this is not like a marriage or a business partnership or something. Like, it doesn't mean that, like, from this point forward, the rest of my life, I am a podcaster. I do this every single week to say, I have an idea. I'm excited about talking about this idea. I'm excited about sharing my thoughts on this or interviewing people on this topic or doing research and boiling it down and putting some money, whatever the format is for your show and doing that. And I can foresee 10, 20 episodes, 30 episodes. I can foresee doing, committing to this for a year and seeing if I still love it. I think that might actually be healthier to go in with that mindset of, I'm starting a podcast and I'm committing for this amount of time, committing for this amount of seasons, or I'm committing to these 10 people that have already lined up to interview. That is a healthy place to start and then to reevaluate and to say, okay, now what do I know? Like, you learned a lot more. Was it as fun as you thought? Was it as easy as you thought? Did it take more or less time than you thought? Did you see meaningful improvement from your first episode to your most recent episode? You can evaluate all that stuff, and then you can figure out, okay, what's the next thing I want to commit to? And hopefully it's still in the podcasting space. Hopefully you're having fun. Hopefully that journey was exciting. But now you might want to pivot a little bit or make a few adjustments or park that and go in a totally new direction. All of those things are fine. And I think they all. There's a lot of rub between. This is how we should approach hobbies. This is, you know, Maybe how we should approach some businesses. Like, if you're in a startup mindset. You guys were just talking about startups, so I'm thinking about that. Not necessarily. Careers don't pivot careers every two weeks.
- [18:53]
Kevin
But I love that Kevin says this. Like, maybe after a little while you might want to pivot and leave your career. That he realizes who he's talking to. He goes, but not everybody. Most people stay.
- [19:04]
Jordan
But hobbies, for sure. Like, we totally do this with hobbies. The first time you go out and play golf, it's not like I'm going to become a professional golfer, but for some reason. Yeah. When we. When we put things like online, we put ourselves out to the world. We feel like, well, if I just did it once and then I try something totally different, then I'm a failure at that thing. No, it's fine to try stuff. Like, I get invited to do stuff all the time. Whatever. I go on vacation and I play cornhole and shuffleboard. But those aren't hobbies. They're just something I had fun with one time. So explore the things, but then find the thing that you love and then, you know, figure out how to adapt it, how to make it better, how to do more of it.
- [19:42]
Alvin
Yeah. I mean, speaking of, like, the experimentation, I'm thinking of Pat Flynn. So he has smart, passive income. But wasn't it, like, a few years back that he started a Pokemon YouTube channel with his kid that then got way more popular, like, it was way more successful than, like, anything else he had ever done? He was just like, oh, guess my thing now.
- [20:05]
Jordan
Yeah. And I think that's important because, you know, like, Pat Flynn is into building businesses.
- [20:11]
Alvin
Yeah.
- [20:11]
Jordan
Now, I don't think he started the Pokemon thing. I don't know. I'm just guessing, but I don't think he started that as a business. I think he started it as, hey, my kid is into it. I want to be into the stuff that my kids are into. I want to share some of what I know and what my world is with them. Really fun father son thing to do together. And then it ended up turning into something that he could build into a business. And so I think he did, like, to the point where maybe it exceeded his primary business.
- [20:37]
Kevin
Yeah.
- [20:38]
Jordan
Super rare. And I don't think you should pursue that. But I think the first part of that story is, what's really interesting is, like, he just tried something new to connect with the sun, and then it turned into something that he never maybe expected that it would.
- [20:51]
Kevin
So Jordan has kind of an Example of this in the outline as well. History of Rome podcast I actually never heard of, but is a podcast about, obviously, the History of Rome history podcast. And then they finished that and went on to start a podcast called Revolutions, which are individual seasons about a revolution in history. And I did listen to Revolutions because I listened to the one about the Haitian Revolution. It was a whole, like, eight part series and incredibly well done. And it's fun to realize the thing that landed for me was like, season three of the second podcast. I never would have found it had it been I, you know, I had to go listen to the History of Rome. I wouldn't have listened to episode 200 of History of Rome. I would just let be like, okay, I've got enough Rome.
- [21:40]
Alvin
This, this podcast was kind of finite just because naturally there's only so much history of Rome. So he chronologically went through the History of Rome and then, you know, Rome fell. And he was like, all right, it's done. But he had built up such, like, a fan base that he was able to then just move on to a different topic that he was more interested in, such as, like, Revolutions. And so he, it's again, like, he's, he's so good at researching and telling the stories of, like, history, and he was able to just pull it in there. And it was, it was so hard for me to find examples. It's actually, I'm kind of mad now that I just thought about the Pat Flynn, like, moving on to Pokemon thing because it was so hard to find examples of podcasters that, you know, had a successful podcast, one category and then just like went full 180 and into something else.
- [22:34]
Jordan
Yeah, I think that's an important reminder. Like, you don't have to do that. I think oftentimes we are. If you have something with any level of success and in podcasting, that could just mean as little as a couple hundred, like, downloads or listens per episode that you put out. That's actually really hard to achieve. And so if you get that, you might feel the pressure, like, of, I don't want to stop this thing. And it does take a long time to build a really large following.
- [23:01]
Alvin
Yeah.
- [23:01]
Jordan
And so you, you might be tempted to say, like, I'm actually losing my passion for this topic. I want to explore a new topic, but I don't want to walk away from all the hard work and effort and everything that I've built so far. And so whatever the new topic is, it has to be, like, attractive to the same people so I can bring them all over. And I think if. If you're lucky enough to be able to do that, that's fine. But I don't think we should discount all the fact that you've been on a journey. You've learned a lot as your audience has grown. You've learned how to market your show. You've learned how to be a better podcaster. You've learned how to cut down your workflow, time and the amount of investment. You've learned how to prepare better. You've learned to be more comfortable and confident on the microphone. So you're not walking away from all of that. If you create something that maybe a very small percentage or none of your existing audiences are going to be interested in, but you're excited and interested about, that's what Pat Flynn did with his son. He brought all of his expertise and talents, and he married it with something that his son was passionate about. And he tried it as an experiment and tried it as the main goal being to be able to spend more time sharing a shared interest with my son, and then that ends up blowing up. So it could happen. It could not happen again. If lightning strikes or if you have capture lightning in a bottle and you have something that's like, oh, my audience is going to love this just as much. This is perfect. And I'm also passionate about it. Wonderful. But I don't think it has to be. People would. I don't think we've shared this story much, but Higher Pixels is the company behind buzzsprout and Higher Pixels. Buzzsprout is not the only software product that we have. I would love for all of the software products that we've ever built to, like, be attractive to the same people, because then we'd have this audience overlap. So then you're starting to build an affinity towards a larger brand, which is Higher Pixels, the parent company, not just buzzsprout. But it didn't work out like that. Like, we had people join the team that had expertise in other areas that had nothing to do with podcasting, nothing to do with content creation, nothing to do with, you know, audio file syncing or video sharing. None of that. In fact, the person who joined the team had expertise in medical software billing. But it was a great idea. We had the capabilities and the technical expertise to build a great software product. So one of our other products for Higher Pixels is medical billing software. What is that like? But it's doing great and it's fun and it's a product that we love. Before we built buzzsprout we built time tracking software because we realized that our expertise wasn't podcasting. Podcasting is something that we love and it's something that we enjoy doing and we love supporting creators. But at the heart of what we are really doing is like the other stuff I was talking about before. Our real skill set is building really, like, user friendly, beautiful, thoughtful software that takes things that are, like, seemingly complicated and trying to make them really easy so that anybody can do them. And so we can do that in the medical billing space. We can do that in time tracking space. We can do it in a podcasting space. And then we have, you know, we. We put groups of people around those things to actually, you know, who are going to be. Here are the people that are really excited about podcasting, and that's the buzzsprout team. Here are the people are really excited about medical billing. That's the stream care team. And so. And that can apply also in podcasting. For sure, you can take if you're. You're a great podcaster, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to always talk about Rome.
- [26:19]
Kevin
I was actually thinking that you were. When you said higher pixels, the thing that comes in my mind was the first product you had was Insights, which was a website builder. And it was only when people showed up and said, hey, the website you make is great, but I actually want to put my audio files on you research. And you go, oh, it's actually podcasting. And maybe we should just build a separate product around podcasting. And over time, the podcasting one took off. The world of website building got more and more competitive. And you looked at it, went, would we start this today? Probably not. This isn't the kind of product that we want to be doing long term. And so you just kind of let it go and then eventually sunset the product. I think that model works pretty well for podcasting. You could start one show, it gets a level of success. People are asking questions that kind of lead you to, oh, there's a different topic. And at some point you can just sit down and ask yourself the question, if I was to start it all today, would I start this show? And if the answer is no, then you can go, it's all right for it to end. And I can put it to the side and have, I don't know, like a bookshelf, like something that goes on the bookshelf and it's nice and you have a nice library. But it's not just like endlessly going and kind of getting worse and worse. So that eventually it kind of infects the whole back catalog.
- [27:46]
Jordan
Yeah, yeah.
- [27:47]
Alvin
I think a good example of someone taking something that's working and doing like different iterations of it. So there's the Washington Post. They have a series of like, they have a bunch of different podcasts. But there's a series. Well, it's not even a series. I shouldn't say this. It's a collection of podcasts by Lillian Cunningham. And she did Presidential first, which was like, the premise was what can presidents teach us about American history and power? And so I. I think she started from, you know, Washington, and then she went up to whoever the president elect was. I am not good at presidents. I think it was like the 44th, I don't know. But she went up until then, and then they ended the podcast and then she moved into a different podcast that they said was like presidential adjacent. But I think it really was just like a new podcast in the collection which was constitutional. And so that was what the Constitution can teach us about, like, American ideals and conflict. And then after that podcast, she then went into another one called Moonrise, which was about the space race. And it was just her, like, these are all like editorial sort of things. And I think Moonrise was nominated for, like, best podcast of the year or something by like, Apple, I can't remember exactly what, but it was very successful. All of her podcasts have been very successful. She just does these little editorial things. And I think it would be really easy to put all of these into the same podcast feed. But she separated it out into different podcasts. And so they just. They just rest in their own little areas. And then now she has one called Field Trip, which is about the American parks, like the national parks and stuff like that.
- [29:34]
Kevin
So they're all kind of hitting at this. Stories of American identity. What. How can we learn about what it is to be an American? Through the presidents, through the Constitution, through the park system, through the space race. They're kind of all getting at the same topic. You could imagine a world where somebody shoehorned all of these into one. They're all series in a multi year project. Or you could accept they're kind of different. They're in it. They could be in a collection.
- [30:04]
Alvin
It's so easy to have multiple podcasts on, like one plan now that I think it's nice to have them separate into their own feed. And then you can do the cross promotion thing. You can have a feed drop and say, hey, if you enjoyed this show, you should check out this other One.
- [30:19]
Jordan
Yeah. So I'm sort of like, pivoting this topic in my head. Talking about pivoting or changing directions. I'm started doing it in my head right now. I think that we shouldn't. We shouldn't talk about, like, when's the right time to stop your podcast or to kill your podcast or whatever. What about what. When is the right time to start your second podcast that might end up blowing up and being bigger than your first podcast? That's how I'm starting to think about it, because that's sort of what a lot of these stories that we're going through are talking about, and it is happening. So, like, one thing that, like, everybody. People are so complex, everyone has lots of things. Like, you have your day job, you have your family, you have your hobbies, you have your sports teams and your passions and all this other kind of stuff. And I think when people think about podcasting, at least it's a pretty popular genre, is like, a lot of guys will get together with other guys and they'll talk about, like, their sports team or something like that. And there's, you know, dozens and dozens of Jacksonville Jaguars podcasts probably, and some are probably great and some. Some probably aren't. But at the end of the day, like, what do you. What do these people do for a living? Like, they're probably doing something that they're really good at, but that's not what they're talking about. They. They want to be the commentators to talk about. And, and if you're into that and it's fun, then please, by all means, do it. But if you are, you know, a Monday morning quarterback for the Jaguars and hosting this, this, this podcast, and you're happy because you get your 50 or 100 listens every month and you're having fun with your buddies, I'm not. I don't want to take that away. But you're also probably going to your day job and you're building homes where you're building pools or your H Vac repair or your middle school teacher or whatever your trade is. And it's like, at the end of the day, that's probably your real expertise. That's probably the real value that you have, but you don't want to talk about that. Like, that's what I do Monday through Friday. It's not fun. And so if it's not fun, don't do it. But you could say, you know what? I actually know a lot about this stuff. What if I started a podcast that was talking about everything I've learned building pools for 20 years. Are people interested in that? I don't know. But maybe you try that second podcast, because now you become a good podcaster by talking about the Jaguars. And so now you can transfer that skill to something that you're really, really good at, and you have a bunch of expertise. I don't know. I'm just spitballing ideas of how people can launch their next podcast, not necessarily just kill their first one.
- [32:33]
Kevin
Yeah, I think the answer to that is follow your own energy. There are times where a project has me excited and it's hard to not work on it, you know, And I'm thinking, oh, how do I finish up the other work that I have so I can work on this work? Because I'm really excited to get into it. That's a good indicator there's something there. And I'm going to be, you know, running ahead of myself, not dragging myself to go do the work. Follow that energy. And sometimes it's. Today I was writing an email to somebody about working together on a video, and I was excited about it. And I'm like, typing it up all into that idea. It doesn't have to be some glamorous thing, but you just notice I'm excited about this. And there's other times I cannot write a sentence because everything inside of me is going, it's just not a good idea. I don't see where this is going. It's not going to be fun. Think about what is the idea that would. You'd be so excited, out of your mind to go do it. You know, right now there's like, I don't really want to lift weights. I really just want to run. So I'm letting myself run more than I lift. I know that I'll probably flip back in a few years. You just, like, you get into seasons of stuff, and there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe. So I need to find the podcast version of this now.
- [33:51]
Alvin
Well, I think there's also a logistical aspect to starting a second podcast, as opposed to pausing a podcast or, you know, sunsetting a podcast and then starting a new podcast, is that you have to make sure that you have the bandwidth and the energy to do another podcast, you know, and maybe you're to a point where you are so polished in how you are recording your podcast and you're so good at editing that is taking you no time at all. I know that there's some people that can just crank out podcast episodes. They're like, yeah, no biggie. I'm just batching things, and it's like, no problem. They might be in a vet in a much better position to start up multiple podcasts and keep juggling multiple podcasts along with, obviously, like, their day jobs.
- [34:41]
Kevin
All right, I've got a diagnostic framework I'd like to share.
- [34:44]
Alvin
Okay.
- [34:45]
Kevin
All right, so if you're at the end of this going, something's not working with the show I'm doing. Now, which of these three are you? Are you tired? Are you trapped or are you finished? Yes, tired. You still believe in the show, but you need a break. What's our diagnosis for this person?
- [35:04]
Jordan
Take a break.
- [35:05]
Kevin
Take a break. Take a pause, reduce cadence. No worries. All right, you're trapped. Show still has value, but the format, the name is too narrow. I talked about the history of Rome this whole time. I just feel kind of stuck in this room thing. What should I do?
- [35:22]
Jordan
I would. I'll go first. I'll say. I say run an experiment. Like, try something new. Try adding a new segment to your show. Try. If you have guests, try a different type of guests. If you don't have a co host, find out, like, test a few co hosts out. The show originally started with. It was Albin, myself, and Travis. And then Travis left, and so we had to find someone else, but we didn't know, like, where to start. And so we were just like, let's just have guests on for a while until we find the right person. And then Jordan came on as a guest, and we're like, she's the right person. So I would just say run experiments to see if you can find some of that creative energy and creative spark back.
- [35:56]
Kevin
We were like a band, Kevin, that lost one of the founding members. And then we kind of interviewed different drummers to find out, like, hey, can we get a better drummer? And we got Jordan, and it worked out even better.
- [36:07]
Alvin
Yeah, like Animal and the Muppets.
- [36:11]
Kevin
Yeah. So if you're feeling trapped, run some experiments and see. Is there a different show you could try? You don't. You can start the new show before you totally can the old one and start in a lightweight way so that you're not just doubling your workload. You're experimenting. Is my energy in this new project, or is my energy just out of podcasting altogether?
- [36:31]
Jordan
Right.
- [36:32]
Kevin
Three is finished. The original question that got you to start this podcast is done. I've answered it. Years ago, I did a podcast series with Jalon called How to Start a podcast. We did 10 episodes. It was walking you through how to Start a Podcast. And Then people would say, oh, I loved it. I'd love it if you kept that podcast going. We're like, but the question is done. You know, we told you how to do it. We did 10 episodes. We were happy with it, and now it's completed. And I think it was better that we just let it be once we were done with the 10 episodes.
- [37:08]
Alvin
Yeah, maybe you have a podcast about chess grandmasters and you've interviewed all of the chess grandmasters and there's no more left. Like, that's it, it's finished.
- [37:19]
Jordan
But then years later, there might be time to come back and redo that, because now think about where buzzsprout is today versus when you and Jelan finished up that series. It. There's so much more in buzzsprout, including video podcasting, which wasn't even touched on as a topic. And so now here you are years later, and I could see you going back to that at some point now and saying, oh, it's time to redo it.
- [37:39]
Kevin
I 100% agree.
- [37:40]
Alvin
Doing a video podcast version.
- [37:42]
Kevin
Yeah. How to start a podcast and explaining how you're thinking about it, how we think about it differently. Should you be doing audio or video? How do you craft an episode? The gear is slightly different. And walking through each of those. Totally agree. If you're with us, we want you to start podcasting. We want you to keep podcasting. But I keep podcasting if it more than anything is for us. Our job is to make it as easy and fun for you to keep podcasting by giving you the tools, support community to help you keep podcasting. But when, like Kevin says, you're getting less out of podcasting than you're giving, it is okay to experiment with. I think what I really want to do is start a whole new show or go on with a new hobby. And it might be needlepoint, and that could be just as life giving for you. So I hope that we have alleviated maybe some of the guilt of hold on to the thing that you haven't enjoyed. And I would love it if you would reach out to us and tell us, you know, maybe new projects that you're kind of leaning into, especially if there are other podcasting projects. Would be fun to support those.
- [38:49]
Alvin
All right, let's get into fan mail. So first up, we have a Reddit post from Frank from the AI argument. And he has a follow up about our podcast repurposing episode. And it inspired him to vibe code and retro video game on his website in honor of like the hundred episodes of the AI argument. And this is crazy.
- [39:14]
Jordan
This is crazy. I mean, taking our advice to the extreme, I've never vibe coded a video game, but I can't imagine that's, like, super easy.
- [39:21]
Kevin
That's. And it's. No, it was pretty good. Did either of you play it?
- [39:25]
Jordan
No, I didn't. I didn't play it.
- [39:26]
Alvin
I played it a couple times. I'm not good. I tried really hard.
- [39:30]
Kevin
Well, one. Okay. It's a good game. You're trying to control two characters at once. So you're flipping between the two.
- [39:37]
Alvin
Yeah.
- [39:37]
Kevin
And they're both accomplishing different goals, and you're trying to keep multiple stats in line. But it also is illustrative of, like, what we're. What's happening in AI. One person is, like, trying to regulate the market. The other is trying to knock down bad bots that are popping up to make sure that the AI doesn't overrun. And I don't know if there's a way to win the game because I played it, like, 10 times, and I kept thinking, like, I'm pretty close to perfect. And then it would, like, right at the end, mess up, and it would all fall apart. And I was like, it is kind of a good point that probably what their podcast is about is there's a lot happening all at once with AI and we're kind of trying to thread the needle between these things. Getting too powerful, not overregulating the market, helping people take. Use the tools, not get unemployment. And we're trying to balance a lot. I think the game probably made those points about as well as it could have. And it was pretty good. I was impressed. Yeah. Very good work, Frank. Justin, excellent job.
- [40:46]
Alvin
All right. And we got another female message from a listener in Michigan, and they said the episode with Alex was really helpful because I get so many pitches from potential guests, and I thought maybe I was the only one getting all the AI slop. And then they said that one thing I do. I have, quote, not written in AI, end quote, in my email signature, which is a good tip until AI starts doing that.
- [41:10]
Kevin
Before you delve into this email, I just want to let you know I didn't write this with AI EM dash.
- [41:16]
Jordan
I just think we just have to accept that for at least the foreseeable future. I imagine everything that I receive, whether it be email or everything I'm reading on a website or something, is basically AI generated. The good news is that mostly probably a human that just said, hey, here's kind of what I want to write. Can you just do it for me quickly. And it pretty, pretty much gets the gist of it. I shared with Alvin yesterday, my poor. The guy who does the pest control at our house, he sent me an email and it said the first line was, here's something you can copy and paste straight and send to all your customers. And then there's the body of the email which reads fine. And then at the bottom is another prompt that says if you would like, I could give you like a printed version of this so you could mail. Your customers sent the whole thing. Poor guy.
- [42:00]
Alvin
I've seen newspaper articles where like people have a screenshot, like newspaper articles where they left the like prompts and stuff in there and it got to print. I don't know.
- [42:09]
Kevin
Oh, it's, it's so bad. The worst part about it I think is that's the bare minimum is clipping that part out of it. And so it just makes you realize like there. That means there's so, so much that are people just kind of half heartedly throwing a prompt in and then copy pasting the result out. I've actually in my own life was trying to think of who are the writers that I've read over the course of my life who are the most on AI like. And I'm making a conscious point of going and reading their books now to try to get my mind out of like, I go on LinkedIn, I go on blogs and I'm reading. I'm like this just reads like I'm reading ChatGPT all the time. And I think I'm trying to get as much obviously not AI stuff into my brain or else. I'm afraid that even when I write and I'm not using AI, I don't want to naturally fall into the same patterns of bolding words in the middle of a bullet. You know, I don't want to end up just doing that everywhere and kind of just beating the same AI kind of nah AI stuff. It's just like it's all the same. It just doesn't feel like there's any real meaning or weight under the words because it's all just kind of like milk toast writing.
- [43:29]
Jordan
All right. Chris from Pod Tastic Audio wrote in and said what software are using to record the video. It looks great, by the way. Two part question. The next part says the camera switching is cool, but I would also like to be able to get a group shot too. I'm diving into video recording and I'm looking for a great way to make it look like the video look great. Without having to go full production mode. So that's an editing note, I think. Jordan, we have a feature request for a 2 up or a 3 up shot of all of us together.
- [43:56]
Alvin
Yeah, I, I have a comment to Chris that I am learning video production as well. I'm figuring it out and I'm. I literally like have it on my to do list to Google how to do like three people in a frame. Adobe Premiere Pro this week.
- [44:11]
Jordan
And I'm actually fine with you not doing that too often because usually when Jordan or Alvin are talking, that's my cue to like, I've got something in my eye or I've got to like fix something on my face. So like I'm. As soon as they're talking, I'm doing all sorts of weird stuff. So please don't put me on camera all the time.
- [44:27]
Kevin
We could do lots of single shots. Kevin, what's the software we're using?
- [44:33]
Jordan
Too early to say. So here's the thing. We've talked about this quite a bit. We've never really found a remote software recording tool that we've absolutely loved. And maybe we're too nitpicky, maybe it's on us, maybe, maybe we're not. And all the tools just actually do fail a lot of people in a lot of different ways. But we've been recording Double Enders for a long time on audio and we use hardware to do that. We use Rodecaster pros to do that. Even those sometimes have failed us. Alvin had a corrupted SD card a couple of weeks ago and we were scrambling to try to recover that recording, or he was scrambling actually to try to recover the recording. So it can happen anywhere. What we're trying to do right now is we've got a little in house tool that we're experimenting with that is the main feature of the product is robustness. We're trying to make it as robust as possible. And so we're using that right now. And so it records Double Ender video for us. And when we get it to a place where it's ready to be released, you'll hear all about it. But that's about all we want to say about that for now.
- [45:36]
Alvin
I love little teasers.
- [45:38]
Kevin
Yeah, it's nice to work on things that you feel the pain of the tools that exist and then you get to try to solve that pain. And if it works, you can give it away to everybody else. And if it doesn't work, then you can shelve it like a podcast that you didn't want to release. To the world, Right?
- [45:57]
Alvin
All right, well, if you have any topics or questions that you want us to answer in a future episode, go ahead and tap the send us fama link in the show notes. And until next time, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.
- [46:14]
Kevin
We got a couple pieces of fan mail in around this world of like so much stuff just starts feeling the same. And writing feels cheap because you people can just use ChatGPT to create a big piece of writing. And like in the old world, like 2000 2020, you could just 100% know if you got a two page email. Somebody spent a good amount of time angrily typing up this two page email. Yeah, but now you can get like a two page email and you go, yeah, this might be 30 seconds of somebody just chatgpting me. You know, a big email. And so I've been thinking a lot about how do you force yourself to be intentional in creating something without even having the. The temptation, the very, very real temptation of just handing your thinking over to chat GPT. And I was thinking about this in the context of our marketing meetup. We're gonna do a marketing meetup in a couple weeks. And I shared with Jordan one of the main things that I wanted to do was talk about what is one thing for each of us that we want to get really, really good at. Picking one area of work that we just identify as like, this is something I want to be an expert at. I'm not an expert. And then here is my path to become a true world class at this thing. And I use this example of Kevin, have you ever seen this? Shohei Ohtani made the. The probably the greatest baseball player right now live sat down and wrote, I want to be the number one pick in the Japanese baseball draft in the center of this page. And then around that he wrote the eight things. If he did those eight things, he would become the number one pick. And around each of those eight things, he wrote eight characteristics that would contribute to each of those eight. So he ends up with 64 things that all kind of lead into this bullseye of be number one. The number one pick is one of them.
- [48:21]
Jordan
Being born like a physical specimen, like how tall is he? Six, four and massive and hand eye coordination unseen by any other human in the history of mankind.
- [48:32]
Kevin
He has things on there like throw a hundred miles an hour. He knew that that would be helpful. Well, he was not big enough at that period that he was likely to start hitting those numbers safely. And so he has on there he needed to have the body to throw a Hundred, which meant he needed to gain some weight and he needed to build a stronger core so he could have better rotation. And it, some of it is luck. He actually put on there. One of the eight is karma. And he goes, okay, if you want to get, like, good luck. What would, how would you get good luck in baseball? Be respectful to the umpires. Be somebody that people want to cheer for. Pick up trash is on the list. Taking the time to say, I want to be great at something and then taking the time to break it down into component pieces and figure out which of these do I have control over. Some are totally out of my control and I'll never be able to be 6 4. But some are within my control. I'm going to ruthlessly attack it. And so when we were talking about it and Jordan and I and Megan, one of the things that came with my mind was I think we need to all write this down, like, physically on a piece of paper. When we come into the office together, we're doing it like we physically took our hands pencil to paper and wrote it. Because even it's okay. If you want to use ChatGPT, think of, like, what are the components to becoming a great interviewer? But there's a difference between copy and pasting this all to a document and spending a couple hours of handwriting out each of these pieces.
- [50:09]
Alvin
Yeah, there's something to, like, comprehension as well. I know for me personally, I retain information so much better. I have all these notes apps on my computer and on my phone, and I don't get anything from them. I never revisit them. But I've got tons of these, like, little notes all over my desk. And these I do, like, hold on to, and I've got a drawer full of them. There's just something so much better about writing it down. And it's, it's, it goes from your, your hand up into your brain. Like, there's something about that, like, energetic creation of this list of this, like, intentionality that I am going to pursue this.
- [50:49]
Kevin
Yeah, I've done this. Started doing this too. Jordan, where I take a bunch of notes and I just sit there and write them down. And I think when you write it physically, you naturally are editing while you're writing and not editing. Like improving editing. As in, what is the 10% of this? That's the most important. I've shared this story, I'm sure, before, but my 1L year of law school, there's 84 of us in my section, 200 and something across the whole first year law students. And there was one kid who just wrote everything by hand. Every one of the rest of us wrote, typed, and we could all type fast enough that we were typing way more than he was. He had like one notebook per class. And I kept thinking like, you're missing out on a lot of stuff. 224, like very smart, hard working students. He was the number one of our year. He almost worked, clerked for a Supreme Court justice. And I realized later on, like, there really is something too. He was naturally thinking much more than we were. We were copying and he was thinking through, what if this is important, okay, that's an important fact. I'm going to write that. And was definitely, you know, synthesizing and retaining the data much better than the rest of us were.
- [52:09]
Alvin
You know what's funny is all the cool teachers when I was in like middle school and high school would allow us on our tests and on our finals to write down all the answers to everything we needed on a 4 by 6 index card. Like I got so pumped when we had the cool teacher that was like, all right, if you can fit on the index card, you can bring it into the final and use it as a cheat sheet. And inevitably I would write as tiny as humanly possible all the answers to everything I needed. And then when I got into the test, I didn't need it because I spent all that time writing all the answers out.
- [52:44]
Kevin
Right. I had a psychology class, I think this is like psychobiology or something. It was all, or neuroscience or some, some sort of like nerve, some brain psychology class. And we were allowed to bring in one sheet of paper front and back. And I had not been going to class. And so I took my entire time studying for this test was copy and pasting every slide into one document. And then I shrunk it to two size font, printed it as high quality as I could, went through and highlighted all the terms and I just sat there, I just used that. Ended up getting a B in the class because I had one sheet of paper that basically looked gray because it was so much writing crane down to this one page.
- [53:30]
Alvin
This has been Study Hacks with Alvin.
- [53:32]
Kevin
Well, I, I have retained, I don't even, haven't even retained the name of that class. Not a good, not a good indicator of what you should do.
- [53:40]
Jordan
Yeah, I would love to contribute, but I was the kid that showed up for the exam and everyone had their cheat sheet and I didn't have one. And they'd be like, you didn't make a cheat sheet. And I'D be like, I never went to class. I never knew we could bring a cheat sheet.
- [53:52]
Alvin
I didn't get the memoir.