RPF0505-50_Podcasting

00:00:00.000 | Today's special episode of Radical Personal Finance is sponsored by HelloFresh.

00:00:05.720 | Visit HelloFresh.com and use the coupon code RPF30 to save $30 off your first week of deliveries.

00:00:11.680 | HelloFresh.com, coupon code RPF30.

00:00:15.600 | Today on the show, I'm going to share with you some philosophy and some insight into

00:00:20.620 | the world of podcasting.

00:00:22.520 | I've got 50 specific tips and pieces of advice that I hope will serve you to take your message

00:00:29.220 | out to the world and do it in a very effective way.

00:00:48.320 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:51.160 | skills, insight and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while

00:00:55.360 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:00:58.160 | My name is Joshua and I am your host, special edition of the show today, not specific to

00:01:02.760 | personal finance content, no tax analysis here.

00:01:06.640 | Today we're going to talk podcasting and it's my hope that even if you're not currently

00:01:10.400 | a podcaster, give me a chance on today's show.

00:01:20.400 | One of my personal secret plans that I'm now sharing with you is that I want to encourage

00:01:24.440 | many more people to get involved in the world of production, of useful information, useful

00:01:30.160 | inspiration, useful teaching, etc.

00:01:32.520 | One of the most incredibly positive trends for liberty and freedom today, liberty, freedom

00:01:38.400 | and prosperity is the democratization of information.

00:01:42.680 | The fact that any individual today with the equipment and things that you already own

00:01:51.380 | can take your knowledge and skill and experience and share that publicly with the world.

00:01:55.980 | This is powerful.

00:01:58.640 | And in general, it's my conviction that it is a powerful force for good.

00:02:01.680 | At times this seems to be a powerful force for evil, but in the end, good wins and I

00:02:07.520 | am very confident that we will see more and more of that.

00:02:10.960 | I love to see the cartels that have controlled much of the historical shaping of public opinion

00:02:18.620 | broken by individuals like you and me stepping up and creating our own useful contribution.

00:02:28.960 | I believe that podcasting is a very powerful way for you to do that.

00:02:34.040 | And so I've continually sought to encourage many of you to begin podcasts.

00:02:38.360 | I've gotten feedback from many of you that you've begun podcasting and I want to continue

00:02:42.840 | that because we're just getting started.

00:02:46.240 | The trends are strong and we're just getting started.

00:02:50.360 | There's been some – we're just getting started.

00:02:53.160 | So today's episode I've got about 50 and I say about 50 because I lost count.

00:02:56.680 | I don't know whether it's 43 or 47 or 63, but I've got about 50 specific suggestions

00:03:02.480 | that I want to walk through.

00:03:04.080 | And give me a chance because you're not going to hear any discussion of microphone selection

00:03:07.800 | here.

00:03:08.800 | You're not going to hear any discussion of technical anything.

00:03:10.720 | I'm going to do what I do best, which is talk about philosophy and tactic, that the

00:03:17.480 | things that are changing and the things that will change.

00:03:21.040 | And I encourage you to know that I'm recording this in December of 2017, which means that

00:03:26.680 | some of these things will change.

00:03:29.680 | But most of them I think the principles that I have to share, the philosophy and the principles

00:03:34.480 | and the tactics will continue.

00:03:36.300 | So let's start with number one.

00:03:37.300 | I am more convinced than ever and I wish to convince you that podcasting is a powerful,

00:03:44.760 | powerful medium.

00:03:48.400 | Podcasting provides a tremendous platform for many reasons.

00:03:51.280 | Audio alone is a powerful form of communication because there's an ability to express personality

00:03:57.720 | and context in the form of audio that is more difficult to do in other ways.

00:04:04.900 | World writers are very good at conveying personality.

00:04:08.640 | But that develops – that requires a level of writing skill and a level of experience.

00:04:15.240 | Amateur and unsophisticated writers often struggle with this.

00:04:18.920 | How do you convey a proper tone?

00:04:21.320 | Tone in words is very difficult.

00:04:23.700 | Just think to the last crucial conversation that you tried to have via text message and

00:04:29.400 | you realize that so much of the tone is missing in the written word.

00:04:35.360 | Much of our communication – I've heard estimates that 93% of our communication is

00:04:38.840 | nonverbal, meaning that when you're speaking to somebody, only about 7% of the actual communication

00:04:44.440 | involved is the words that are a part of it.

00:04:48.920 | So of course the very best platform and medium for communication is going to be in person

00:04:53.720 | one-on-one.

00:04:54.720 | That's the way that you'll be able to have the greatest clarity of communication, the

00:04:58.200 | most powerful transfer of thoughts because you can really understand what somebody is

00:05:03.480 | saying and what they're thinking.

00:05:06.080 | But sometimes there are disadvantages to having that interpersonal one-on-one communication,

00:05:10.360 | especially when you're dealing with difficult subjects.

00:05:14.000 | For example, many people are intimidated by having intense communication with somebody

00:05:18.600 | on a subject where they're not sure they agree.

00:05:21.040 | So there's benefit in having a one-to-many conversation that's not simultaneous.

00:05:26.760 | But how do you maintain that same quality of interaction?

00:05:31.240 | It can happen at times with a room full of people come as students and a teacher standing

00:05:38.020 | in front.

00:05:39.020 | That has its place.

00:05:40.280 | But that's a very expensive way to do things.

00:05:42.800 | It's very expensive to put an in-person teacher in front of a room full of people.

00:05:49.800 | And it also requires a simultaneous presence.

00:05:54.400 | Whereas if you move to a non-simultaneous communication methodology by recording it,

00:06:00.240 | you open up many more things and you lower the cost.

00:06:02.860 | That allows communication to go more broadly.

00:06:05.460 | And so now we move into the world of video being probably the very best way for somebody

00:06:10.240 | to communicate one-to-many and have the full context.

00:06:15.200 | Because in video you can hear the words that are spoken and understand what's actually

00:06:18.920 | denoted by those words.

00:06:21.500 | You can see the body language of the person involved.

00:06:24.080 | You can hear the tone of their voice.

00:06:26.520 | But video has other problems.

00:06:27.520 | It requires that full attention between a listener and a speaker.

00:06:32.800 | Also video is often unengaging.

00:06:35.520 | We're so used to being engaged with our video that to put on a 60-minute lecture and try

00:06:41.600 | to give that full attention is very difficult for many of us.

00:06:48.960 | Video also has a problem of it being very expensive.

00:06:51.740 | It's expensive to create.

00:06:53.800 | It's hard work to create good and compelling and engaging video.

00:06:57.500 | It's expensive to listen to in terms of the time that's required because it requires full

00:07:03.640 | attention to see and to hear.

00:07:07.300 | And it's somewhat expensive to share, whether it's with how do you host it online, how do

00:07:14.520 | you share it, requires a lot of bandwidth, et cetera.

00:07:18.080 | Now moving down the scale, audio fills that next platform where it's much less expensive

00:07:24.340 | than video.

00:07:25.340 | It's less expensive for the publisher of the content.

00:07:29.100 | You don't have to come up with an elaborate physical set that's going to look great.

00:07:32.280 | You don't have to dress up.

00:07:34.040 | You don't have to look great on camera and put on makeup.

00:07:37.760 | You just have to simply record the voice.

00:07:39.960 | It's much less costly for the hearer to consume because it doesn't require full attention

00:07:47.140 | and is much less costly to share.

00:07:50.360 | But audio still has some superiority over text in the sense of context of the communication.

00:07:59.440 | Audio has the ability to convey emotion in a way that written text often lacks.

00:08:05.320 | You can hear somebody's voice and that helps you to understand more their phraseology and

00:08:10.080 | what they're actually saying.

00:08:11.880 | I want you to listen to a classic example from the world of speaking and understand

00:08:18.740 | how important this is in your ability to communicate with your listener.

00:08:22.900 | The classic example is this.

00:08:25.060 | Use this sentence.

00:08:27.060 | I didn't tell her you were stupid.

00:08:30.860 | Now when written, I didn't tell her you were stupid, it's very hard to understand exactly

00:08:37.580 | what's being implied.

00:08:39.940 | But now consider these different approaches to emphasis and the different meaning that's

00:08:46.660 | behind these words.

00:08:49.260 | I didn't tell her you were stupid.

00:08:53.580 | Obviously meaning that somebody else may have told her.

00:08:56.620 | I didn't tell her you were stupid.

00:09:00.740 | Meaning that most definitely I emphatically did not do this.

00:09:07.340 | I didn't tell her you were stupid.

00:09:12.420 | I may have implied it however.

00:09:15.760 | I didn't tell her you were stupid.

00:09:20.380 | But of course I may have told someone else.

00:09:24.220 | I didn't tell her you were stupid.

00:09:28.140 | I told her that someone else was stupid though.

00:09:32.900 | I didn't tell her you were stupid.

00:09:37.720 | I told her you're still stupid.

00:09:40.500 | Or I didn't tell her you were stupid.

00:09:45.860 | But I of course may have told her something else about you.

00:09:49.700 | As you can see from this classic example, context and tone matters.

00:09:55.820 | And there's a power that we have in verbal speech to convey meaning that doesn't exist

00:10:02.340 | in the written word, especially not from an unskilled writer.

00:10:08.940 | Text has significant advantages over podcasting.

00:10:11.980 | For example, in today's world, the written word is scannable, which is really valuable.

00:10:17.820 | It's scannable by individual people who can quickly look over and grasp the content of

00:10:23.180 | the idea.

00:10:24.180 | That means that your ideas will probably have a much broader impact.

00:10:28.420 | It's also scannable by bots that will archive it and inventory it for a search engine.

00:10:34.460 | And this in today's world is very important.

00:10:37.780 | Text speech is shareable in a way that verbal communication is not.

00:10:44.040 | If you write an essay that takes maybe 10 minutes to read, it can be a powerful and

00:10:47.740 | effective essay.

00:10:48.940 | And that essay may go viral.

00:10:51.980 | You may take the same content and pack it into a 30-minute podcast presentation with

00:10:57.380 | spoken word, and it may be way more powerful, but it's very hard for that 30 minutes of

00:11:01.660 | audio to go viral in today's world.

00:11:05.140 | Talk about virality in a little bit.

00:11:08.060 | But text does have some benefits, but podcasting has very powerful benefits.

00:11:14.580 | And so I think it's valuable for us to focus on this fact and recognize that podcasting

00:11:19.820 | is powerful and tremendous.

00:11:23.500 | I'm convinced one of the powers of podcasting is the ability for small audiences of people

00:11:38.300 | for ideas or for content to connect with creators.

00:11:46.140 | In the past, when mass media was all about the masses, you would automatically build

00:11:52.220 | a fairly generic, vanilla piece of content that had to have broad general appeal and

00:12:02.020 | not be broadly offensive.

00:12:06.120 | That was the world of mass media.

00:12:07.860 | But that world is now destroyed.

00:12:11.020 | And this is the fundamental thing that is blossoming.

00:12:14.700 | It's the world of an individual creator being able to discuss ideas that are only appealing

00:12:21.500 | to a very small market of people.

00:12:25.380 | When somebody with a niche interest is able to connect with others who share that interest,

00:12:33.000 | it can create a much tighter bond between that person and between those two people than

00:12:42.220 | is created from the creators and the consumers in the world of mass media.

00:12:48.340 | This is really, really powerful.

00:12:52.460 | Podcasting does this really well.

00:12:53.700 | And there's a tremendous future in podcasting.

00:12:56.580 | Next, podcasting as a marketplace has changed significantly in the last two years.

00:13:04.020 | I want to give you some examples of that in just a moment.

00:13:07.860 | Before I do, sponsor of today's show is HelloFresh.

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00:14:28.420 | And at this time of year, going through the holidays, it seems like especially the convenience

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00:14:48.940 | And if you like being in your house, then I prefer it, especially with young children.

00:14:55.080 | We go out to eat from time to time, but oftentimes, it's just easier to stay at home.

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00:15:17.660 | Number one, it'll save you $30, so that's our bribe to you.

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00:15:24.420 | is working.

00:15:25.740 | And thank you for that.

00:15:26.740 | Now, back to the changes in the podcast marketplace.

00:15:30.060 | A few months ago, I was with some friends of mine who have similar experience as I do

00:15:35.980 | in the world of podcasting, been doing it about three or four years now.

00:15:39.400 | And we were talking about the fact that we feel like dinosaurs, which is weird in a way,

00:15:43.820 | because there are people who've been podcasting for much longer.

00:15:46.260 | But we also all shared the same thought, and that's we're not sure that if we were going

00:15:52.340 | to start again today, that what we did and have done would work.

00:15:59.300 | I'm not sure, and I've recommended to people, and I've taken consulting calls with people,

00:16:03.300 | I've recommended to people that they not copy what I've done, because what I did in the

00:16:07.540 | beginning of Radical Personal Finance would not work, I don't think, in today's marketplace,

00:16:11.140 | or at least it would not work as quickly as it worked for me.

00:16:15.460 | When I closed my financial planning practice in order to start Radical Personal Finance,

00:16:18.620 | it was a very expensive decision.

00:16:19.860 | I closed a profitable and effective business.

00:16:22.340 | But I did it for essentially one major reason in terms of the timing.

00:16:26.860 | The major reason was I saw an opportunity to take advantage of an early mover advantage.

00:16:36.900 | And I felt like it would be worth it to take advantage of that.

00:16:40.320 | In hindsight, I was right.

00:16:42.540 | I did get to take advantage of that early mover advantage.

00:16:45.500 | Now hear me clearly.

00:16:48.020 | The world of podcasting is very young.

00:16:51.260 | Even today, I think there is still an opportunity for early mover advantage.

00:16:55.740 | But compared to three or four years ago, it's very different.

00:17:00.020 | Don't let that put anxiety in your heart if you didn't get to take advantage of the same

00:17:05.100 | early mover advantage that I did.

00:17:07.220 | Early mover advantage is only one of many types of advantages that you can build.

00:17:10.700 | And today, I'm not even sure it's the most powerful.

00:17:13.940 | The problem with being an early mover is sometimes you don't have as big of a marketplace as

00:17:18.420 | possible.

00:17:19.740 | And sometimes you come in and you prove the idea, but then somebody else comes in with

00:17:24.100 | way more resources, with way better ability to capitalize on the concept, and they eat

00:17:33.620 | your lunch.

00:17:34.620 | You're the old dinosaur that proved the concept, but you're stuck to the side.

00:17:38.180 | That's happened to radical personal finance a little bit.

00:17:40.100 | I've been amazed as I've watched other brands come in and capitalize on something that,

00:17:45.300 | in my mind, I and others proved out, but they do it better.

00:17:50.860 | So don't let that hurt you.

00:17:54.860 | But the marketplace has changed and it will continue to change.

00:17:58.140 | You must know this.

00:17:59.940 | It is no longer enough in today's world of podcasting for you to sit down and to say,

00:18:06.460 | "Hey, I'm going to sit down with a microphone and I'm going to interview somebody for an

00:18:10.580 | hour and I'm going to publish that to the internet, and all of a sudden people are going

00:18:13.460 | to listen."

00:18:15.880 | Not enough.

00:18:17.880 | The only exception to that would be is if you're in a very small market that has nobody

00:18:22.200 | doing that and there's a group of people who are desperate for your interviews on some

00:18:27.000 | weird esoteric subject.

00:18:29.480 | But in today's world, that is simply not enough.

00:18:32.320 | It's especially not enough for you to do it if you have bad audio quality, if you have

00:18:36.160 | bad interview skills, and if you're just boring as an interviewer.

00:18:41.640 | Just not enough.

00:18:43.440 | That ship has sailed and any show, even like mine, that use that as their foundational

00:18:50.520 | approach has found, is finding, and will find that that is not enough.

00:18:58.120 | There has to be change.

00:19:00.660 | So recognize that some of the advice that worked three years ago does not work today.

00:19:05.840 | But there's a whole new market that's waiting for your innovative idea.

00:19:11.440 | Next point, it is possible to build a business on podcasting alone.

00:19:17.080 | It is possible to build a business on podcasting alone.

00:19:22.320 | You can build a business that is a podcast and make a living.

00:19:29.400 | You will, however, need to have a very effective and successful podcast, but it is possible

00:19:35.520 | for you to do.

00:19:38.040 | Possible.

00:19:40.040 | Very hard, but possible.

00:19:42.840 | The reason I say that is because that was the question that I had a number of years

00:19:45.680 | ago.

00:19:46.680 | I remember at the time I had actually sent an email to Cliff Ravenscraft, who has a brand

00:19:52.200 | called the Podcast Answer Man, and I asked him that question.

00:19:55.400 | I said, "Is it possible for somebody to build a business on a podcast alone?"

00:19:58.960 | He responded, I can't remember how he responded.

00:20:00.920 | Yes, no, I had to go read the email.

00:20:02.680 | But it is possible.

00:20:04.520 | However, my next point, podcasting is a terrible business.

00:20:11.960 | I repeat that point.

00:20:16.680 | Podcasting is a terrible business.

00:20:21.520 | Podcasting, however, no matter the size, no matter the scale, is a great support.

00:20:31.120 | It's a great marketing support, and it's a great communications medium for a business

00:20:39.080 | if your interest is financial and profit related, and/or it's great support for your promulgation

00:20:45.600 | of an idea or an ideology if that's your area of interest.

00:20:52.680 | So it is possible to build a business on podcasting alone, but podcasting is a terrible business.

00:20:58.080 | The numbers don't work.

00:20:59.220 | It doesn't scale for you just to say, "Oh, I'm going to create a podcast and maybe I'll

00:21:02.440 | sell some ads."

00:21:03.440 | Very, very difficult.

00:21:05.060 | It will only work if you are in the top few percent of success for all podcasts.

00:21:11.160 | Now that is where Radical Personal Finance is, and so therefore it has worked for me.

00:21:16.360 | But hear me clearly.

00:21:18.360 | I don't look at my podcast as a business.

00:21:21.720 | I look at Radical Personal Finance as a business, which is led by a podcast that may be the

00:21:29.780 | biggest product that I currently have, but it's not necessarily going to be the biggest

00:21:34.280 | product in the future.

00:21:36.780 | So think carefully through your business model and recognize that podcasting is a terrible

00:21:41.740 | business.

00:21:43.020 | Podcast serves very well, however, as a leading product, as something for you to think, to

00:21:49.900 | lead with, and/or a supporting product, a way for you to have deeper communication with

00:21:54.780 | some segment of your customers or your fans or people who are interested in your message.

00:22:01.740 | Don't think podcast only.

00:22:05.180 | That's a real mistake, and that's one that I have made.

00:22:08.420 | Don't think podcast only.

00:22:10.700 | Think podcast and written word and video clips and images and email blasts.

00:22:22.700 | Don't think podcast only.

00:22:25.580 | The best way for a podcast to fit in today's world is as a component of an overall communication

00:22:32.940 | strategy for your company or for your ideology or for your political movement or for whatever

00:22:38.740 | it is that you're trying to do.

00:22:40.580 | Don't think podcast only.

00:22:41.660 | If you do, I think the results will be less than what they could otherwise be.

00:22:48.380 | Most people will not sit down and just listen to every single one of your podcasts.

00:22:52.900 | Some will, especially if your content's good.

00:22:54.780 | I've had dozens and dozens of people who've told me they've done that with Radical Personal

00:22:57.820 | Finance, and I deeply appreciate their doing that and their support.

00:23:02.780 | But in total, Radical Personal Finance has been hurt by my exclusive focus on a podcast.

00:23:14.220 | Much wiser to see a podcast as a component of your communication strategy.

00:23:18.700 | You want your ideas to infect the marketplace, and if you're going to do that, you need to

00:23:22.100 | present them in inappropriate ways for other people.

00:23:26.000 | There is a small subset of the marketplace for the ideas that I have to share of people

00:23:31.620 | who enjoy listening to audio, who have the capacity to sit and to follow a discussion

00:23:36.980 | or an argument for an extended period of time, who have the time to listen to a podcast.

00:23:41.980 | There's a small subset of people who are able to do that.

00:23:45.500 | But there's a much bigger population that would be interested in my ideas if they were

00:23:50.340 | packaged in various formats.

00:23:53.140 | So one of those ways of packaging is the podcast, but those ideas also need to be packaged in

00:23:58.980 | small little articles, in pithy little sayings, in longer pamphlets and books, in short presentations

00:24:08.180 | accompanied by visual aids, in long presentations accompanied by visual aids.

00:24:12.940 | And this way, if you're thinking about this broad-based strategy, you're presenting your

00:24:16.500 | ideas to the marketplace in a way that's palatable to somebody at their different times.

00:24:23.540 | And somebody can stay connected to your ideas in a way that fits their lifestyle.

00:24:30.860 | And that allows the individual to choose based upon where they are.

00:24:35.460 | There's a much bigger opportunity for ideas or communications when they're packaged in

00:24:41.220 | various formats than when they're only in the form of a podcast.

00:24:47.580 | Now if you need to start with a podcast, that's fine.

00:24:51.460 | If a podcast helps you to get to those other places, that's fine.

00:24:55.020 | In many ways, that's what radical personal finance has been for me.

00:24:57.660 | The most helpful thing about it has been a way for me to clarify my ideas, test ideas,

00:25:02.540 | etc.

00:25:03.540 | And it's a format that works for me.

00:25:05.420 | But it's a mistake to think podcast only.

00:25:10.820 | Think podcast and.

00:25:14.740 | Next, fit your chosen format to your goals and to your content.

00:25:26.060 | Don't copy someone else's stuff.

00:25:29.700 | Fit your format to your content and to your goals.

00:25:35.940 | Oftentimes people will copy somebody's format without understanding what it actually is

00:25:42.860 | that makes a format successful.

00:25:46.020 | I've seen this again and again in the world of podcasting.

00:25:49.580 | They'll say, well, Joshua does his shows as hour-long monologues, so therefore I should

00:25:54.700 | do a show as an hour-long monologue.

00:25:57.820 | That's a big mistake.

00:26:00.060 | Some hour-long monologues need to be delivered as two-minute live Facebook videos.

00:26:08.080 | And they're going to be much more effective.

00:26:10.780 | But then there's a place for hour-long monologues.

00:26:12.660 | So think through what you're trying to do and what you're trying to convey, and then

00:26:16.540 | fit your format to that content.

00:26:18.980 | Don't just copy somebody else's format.

00:26:22.340 | Take inspiration from somebody's format, but don't copy it.

00:26:27.180 | Think a little bit more critically about what would be helpful for you.

00:26:32.980 | In a moment I'll talk about editing, but let me give you just a quick preview.

00:26:36.980 | Some ideas would be so much better served if you spent four weeks creating and crafting

00:26:47.540 | and carefully editing something and releasing that carefully edited result than if you spent

00:26:53.660 | four weeks releasing the rough cut.

00:26:57.100 | And personally I always struggle with this.

00:26:58.380 | I always struggle to understand how impactful is the idea in its rough format versus in

00:27:02.980 | the careful, finally edited format.

00:27:06.540 | You'll have to figure that out for yourself.

00:27:08.740 | Sometimes it's better to spend four weeks doing just rough cuts.

00:27:12.660 | Sometimes it's better to spend four weeks doing preparation and releasing that polished,

00:27:16.900 | final version.

00:27:19.300 | Home movies are cool.

00:27:21.020 | They have their place.

00:27:22.300 | And not all home movies should be edited into a tightly crafted masterpiece.

00:27:28.140 | But at the end of the day, when you go to a Hollywood movie that may move your soul,

00:27:33.780 | you don't want to see a home movie.

00:27:36.140 | You want to see a tightly crafted masterpiece with every detail in place.

00:27:40.580 | So think through what your content is and think through what your goal is and fit your

00:27:44.500 | format to that.

00:27:47.080 | If you are trying to create masterful presentations on a specific subject that is probably going

00:27:53.220 | to stay static, then it would be best to create something that's more in the world of carefully

00:27:59.860 | and tightly edited.

00:28:01.980 | On the flip side, if you're trying to create fast content on something that's up to date,

00:28:06.260 | maybe a political commentary on an hour by hour or day by day basis, in that situation,

00:28:10.500 | maybe it's better for you to be less careful with your editing and quicker and your competition

00:28:20.040 | is first to publication, something like that.

00:28:24.860 | Here are my thoughts on length, people's obsess over length.

00:28:28.100 | I am convinced this question is simple.

00:28:31.500 | Make your length the appropriate length for your listener and for your content.

00:28:38.020 | Think through what's the most powerful way for me to convey this idea and make your length

00:28:41.820 | fit that.

00:28:43.700 | Don't obsess over something else.

00:28:48.300 | I find it very frustrating when people live in a world of 60 minutes.

00:28:53.420 | When television had to be 48 minutes, they could sell 12 minutes of commercials and so

00:28:57.180 | therefore you've got 48 minutes and you try to fit that format.

00:28:59.620 | If you're not on radio and if you're not on TV, don't worry about the 48 minutes.

00:29:03.620 | Make your content fit your length.

00:29:07.540 | Adjust your length to fit your content.

00:29:09.380 | One of my biggest, two of my biggest annoyances is number one, when there's something that

00:29:14.140 | is dealt with that could go on and it's valuable and it's cut short due to lack of time.

00:29:21.100 | I'm sorry, if it's valuable, it's valuable.

00:29:25.260 | But on the flip side, it's really frustrating when the content goes on too long.

00:29:30.180 | I have been guilty of this many times.

00:29:31.820 | It's an art.

00:29:32.820 | It's a studied, it's something that you have to study.

00:29:35.840 | But here's my thoughts on length.

00:29:38.280 | Make sure that your most important stuff is up front.

00:29:41.820 | And this is where I think the podcasting marketplace needs to make tremendous improvement.

00:29:45.380 | I studied a lot in the world of radio because when I just said I want to be a better broadcaster,

00:29:49.460 | I couldn't find much help in the podcasting world.

00:29:51.580 | The podcasting world was filled with technical gurus and people who would talk about how

00:29:56.500 | to hook up cables and RSS feeds and the right kind of microphone to choose.

00:29:59.540 | And that stuff bored me to tears.

00:30:01.420 | But I couldn't find anybody who would talk about content.

00:30:04.220 | And so in the first couple of years of learning how to be a broadcaster, I went and I studied

00:30:09.620 | and I did everything I could to try to find who are the people who have advised the radio

00:30:13.840 | industry.

00:30:14.940 | And one of the things that the radio industry has gotten right is they've shown how important

00:30:18.380 | it is to be quick and straight to the punch.

00:30:20.460 | Now, this is easier said than done.

00:30:23.580 | It's easier for me to teach you what you should do than it is for me to model on a

00:30:28.340 | daily basis how it's actually done.

00:30:31.180 | I try.

00:30:32.180 | I've got a lot of room to grow.

00:30:34.400 | But you need to think in terms of 30, 60, and 90 seconds.

00:30:38.780 | You've got about a minute to two minutes to capture your listeners' attention, which means

00:30:43.980 | you need to be interesting.

00:30:47.060 | You also need to be relevant, which is where I think the best way we serve our audience

00:30:52.940 | is to help our audience to filter by telling them, "Here's what I'm going to share with

00:30:57.460 | you in today's show," so you can choose whether you listen or not.

00:31:01.700 | Put your most important ideas up front so that those who only listen to the first 10%

00:31:06.300 | of your show can grasp those ideas.

00:31:08.680 | You want your ideas to be held.

00:31:11.620 | It's not that you want someone to listen to your entire show.

00:31:13.420 | You want your ideas to be held.

00:31:16.060 | So put your most important ideas up front.

00:31:19.580 | And then go ahead and expand on them.

00:31:23.020 | There's a time and a place for you to add all this different, all this expansion where

00:31:27.340 | you're giving them additional ideas, you're giving them clarification, you're delivering

00:31:30.940 | analogies, you're delivering additional meaning.

00:31:34.620 | That's great.

00:31:35.620 | But put that in the middle.

00:31:37.400 | And then put your other stuff towards the end.

00:31:41.160 | For example, you may have supporting materials.

00:31:43.580 | My intention, we'll see how long this show goes, but my intention is to read an essay

00:31:47.220 | to you, but I'm not going to lead with that essay here up front.

00:31:50.820 | I would lead with that essay either in a separate show as a support material or at the end of

00:31:55.340 | today's show.

00:31:57.000 | So you lead with the most important things.

00:31:59.780 | And this applies to every part of your content.

00:32:02.060 | An example would be banter.

00:32:04.060 | One of the biggest things that harms so many podcasts is there's so much banter, so much

00:32:08.440 | conversation up front that doesn't need to be there.

00:32:12.620 | When I'm listening to a new show, I will over time become interested in the host.

00:32:16.780 | I'll over time become interested in what's happening with the host, what are they doing,

00:32:21.300 | what's going on in their life, how are they, did they have children, how was their week,

00:32:26.140 | how's the weather?

00:32:27.340 | But I don't want to hear that up front.

00:32:28.960 | Put that at the back end so that those who are interested in that can listen to it.

00:32:33.780 | But make your length fit the content and think carefully about it.

00:32:38.780 | However, you should pay attention to the fact that increasingly people have very short attention

00:32:43.860 | spans and it's best to be as short as possible.

00:32:49.180 | If the subject involves more interaction, go deep.

00:32:54.220 | But it is always best to be as short as is possible or as is practical.

00:32:58.460 | The average commute in the United States of America is, what, they say 25 minutes, so

00:33:02.260 | let's call it 20 to 30 minutes.

00:33:03.940 | If you can be consistently at that 20 minutes and under, then I think that is a sweet spot.

00:33:09.180 | Now, that's hard for certain types of content.

00:33:11.460 | That's hard for me.

00:33:12.780 | I've gotten better, but it's hard.

00:33:16.080 | But that should be something that should be shooting for.

00:33:18.420 | But don't, if your ideas are worthy of a three-hour podcast, make the three-hour podcast.

00:33:28.140 | Next, thoughts on frequency.

00:33:31.140 | The other big question is how frequently should I publish an episode?

00:33:36.420 | In short, make your frequency fit the type of content and also your capacity.

00:33:42.900 | If your content is very timely, you're talking about politics or something that's changing

00:33:48.540 | on a day-to-day basis, then I think there your frequency is going to be set out for

00:33:54.100 | you.

00:33:55.140 | In the past, I did a show called Why I Do a Daily Podcast and Why You Should Model but

00:33:59.580 | not necessarily imitate me, and I explained what the value that I saw was of creating

00:34:04.200 | a daily show.

00:34:05.200 | And by daily, I mean five days a week.

00:34:07.380 | I pursued a Monday through Friday show.

00:34:10.380 | I still, at the time, my reasoning was valid, but the podcast marketplace has changed.

00:34:16.460 | And I think that this is a harder question than it was before.

00:34:20.260 | Of course, many shows are weekly, and weekly is wonderful.

00:34:25.540 | To do a show on a daily basis, I think you've got to really question that.

00:34:29.140 | There are shows that have that value, and still, on a daily basis, you're going to be

00:34:33.580 | very connected with your audience.

00:34:35.540 | That's the big power of daily.

00:34:38.060 | But I think you lose people on a daily basis.

00:34:40.260 | I know you lose people on a daily basis.

00:34:42.780 | There are many people who get this sense of anxiety at not being able to listen to everything

00:34:48.020 | that you produce.

00:34:49.540 | And this is where it goes back to the variety of content that you create.

00:34:55.380 | If you have content in various forms that allows you to have that consistent contact

00:35:01.660 | with your audience, but not to have everything focused on the podcast.

00:35:08.140 | And so in hindsight, this is the direction I'm moving with, need to move with Radical

00:35:11.820 | Personal Finance, and am moving, is to have a lot of content in a variety of forms, but

00:35:17.900 | the podcast shouldn't be daily.

00:35:19.940 | It's too much for most listeners, and you'll lose, I think, a lot of impact from it that

00:35:24.260 | you would otherwise have.

00:35:27.020 | I think I'll have more comments on this topic in about a year, because what's harmed us

00:35:31.580 | on this up till now is we haven't had good data on how much people actually listen to

00:35:36.980 | longer shows.

00:35:38.540 | For example, on Radical Personal Finance, up till now, I've never had really good data

00:35:44.100 | on how many of my listeners who would start a one or a one and a half or two hour show

00:35:48.940 | would get from the beginning all the way to the end.

00:35:51.620 | Of course, we could draw comparisons from other types of content, and we would say,

00:35:57.180 | "Well, it's probably not 100%," but we didn't have very good data.

00:36:01.300 | That is changing as podcast statistics services are updating, and so we'll have much better

00:36:06.140 | data.

00:36:07.140 | I do think that if you're going to be more frequent, that it's best if your length be

00:36:10.180 | shorter, especially if you want to reach a larger audience.

00:36:14.700 | I have in the past, and my own personal experience has colored this, I have a high tolerance

00:36:20.420 | for lengthy content if I'm interested in it, and I have a high tolerance for lots of content

00:36:28.180 | in the past.

00:36:29.700 | There was a time in my life at which I was a heavy audio listener, and I spent, I would

00:36:33.700 | guess on average, about 50 hours a week listening to audio.

00:36:38.620 | Even to this day, I almost never listen to music, and I was single, and I drove a lot.

00:36:44.220 | When I was driving, I was generally listening to audio, and/or when I was doing something

00:36:48.180 | that didn't engage my brain, I was listening to audio.

00:36:52.240 | When I was listening to audio, I would listen at basically 2x or 2.5x speed, and so I would

00:36:58.780 | probably consume an average week for a period of several years, I could consume 50 to 100

00:37:03.100 | hours of audio.

00:37:04.940 | That gave me a very high tolerance for shows that produce a lot of content, but most people,

00:37:11.540 | their lives don't fit those parameters.

00:37:14.060 | Most people don't have the ability to listen to that much content that frequently.

00:37:18.620 | And so, even today, my life, I don't listen to very much audio at all now.

00:37:24.900 | It's not that I don't want to, it's circumstantial.

00:37:27.580 | I no longer have a commute, I drive very little, and when I drive, I'm probably going to be

00:37:32.740 | with my wife or with my children.

00:37:35.420 | And I love being listened to when people are with their families, with their spouses and

00:37:40.700 | with their children, but I personally have a rule that basically, not a rule, I have

00:37:46.260 | a practice that I try to adhere to as much as possible, where when I'm with my wife and

00:37:52.100 | with my children, I don't listen to outside influence.

00:37:55.420 | That time to me is so valuable that I want to spend it in conversation.

00:37:58.940 | I find that an empty car, a car that is void of music and void of podcasting, void of voices,

00:38:06.380 | inspires conversation.

00:38:08.060 | And to me, the most important things I want to nurture are those conversations with my

00:38:11.820 | wife and with my children.

00:38:14.220 | And so I don't listen to audio when I'm with my wife and with my children.

00:38:17.220 | That means that in an average week, I probably at this point have about maybe three to four

00:38:21.620 | hours available to listen to audio.

00:38:24.180 | Also because my work is generally engaging my brain, I don't listen when I'm working.

00:38:28.180 | So that's different.

00:38:29.760 | And so here I think you should consider your content.

00:38:33.060 | If you look at the shows that focus heavily on long shows very frequently, they tend to

00:38:38.740 | be the kind of shows where you can hit or miss.

00:38:40.860 | It doesn't really matter.

00:38:41.860 | Maybe the comedians or people like that that you can, where you can just dip in and out

00:38:47.300 | and whether you miss any particular day doesn't really matter.

00:38:50.360 | That's not my interest.

00:38:51.360 | I have no interest in that type of content.

00:38:52.780 | If you're creating that type of content, then you should consider.

00:38:55.700 | But if you're not creating that content, if you're creating content related to ideas that

00:38:58.740 | you think are important or teaching that you think is important, then consider it and consider

00:39:03.540 | how is my ideal customer, how is my ideal consumer going to interact with this content?

00:39:09.980 | Let's take an analogy from the world of reading.

00:39:15.540 | You've got to consider when you're writing a book, am I going to write on a scholarly

00:39:18.960 | level or on a popular level?

00:39:20.620 | Well, first, what kind of book am I going to write?

00:39:22.460 | Am I trying to write a novel?

00:39:23.780 | Is my novel supposed to be fun and fluffy and make me money?

00:39:27.180 | Is my novel supposed to just make people feel good or is my novel supposed to be hard hitting

00:39:31.220 | and make people change their world?

00:39:35.120 | Then what language am I going to write in?

00:39:36.700 | Am I going to write on a popular level from writing nonfiction?

00:39:39.300 | Am I going to write on a popular level?

00:39:40.740 | Am I going to write on a scholarly level?

00:39:42.860 | And in general, you're going to want to adjust your content to meet different audiences.

00:39:46.380 | Best to have a short book that's on a popular level.

00:39:48.960 | Then you write articles and magazines that will convey the substance of what you're doing.

00:39:55.820 | You may have the very long scholarly book to help your intense students go into that.

00:40:01.500 | That's the best way to think about content, especially if you're dealing in the world

00:40:04.020 | of ideas.

00:40:06.740 | Virality.

00:40:09.140 | One of the biggest challenges with audio is there's very little ability to go viral.

00:40:15.740 | There has never once been a viral growth in radical personal finance.

00:40:22.620 | I think it's best if you acknowledge and recognize this because it'll make a difference in your

00:40:27.220 | marketing mix.

00:40:31.820 | Podcast episodes don't go viral.

00:40:34.500 | Now can a podcast go viral?

00:40:37.620 | Maybe.

00:40:39.140 | The only example that we generally ever can point to in this world is – what was that

00:40:46.180 | podcast with the story that – Serial.

00:40:50.540 | The Serial podcast.

00:40:52.460 | The Serial podcast in a way went viral.

00:40:55.740 | The challenge is that it wasn't viral in the – it was viral in the way that sometimes

00:41:00.100 | TV shows are viral, where the body of the show, whether it's a – what do they call

00:41:05.540 | it?

00:41:06.540 | The House of Games or Game of Thrones or some other of these types of – House of Cards

00:41:13.100 | and Game of Thrones, how these types of TV shows go viral and everybody talks about them.

00:41:17.900 | That's the way that podcasts can go viral.

00:41:20.860 | But individual episodes of podcasts don't really go viral and that has to do in my opinion

00:41:25.620 | because of the amount of investment of time on the listener for them to actually think

00:41:31.620 | and consider.

00:41:33.300 | Articles on the other hand or short video clips can go viral so quickly.

00:41:38.220 | An article that can get shared because as everyone is flipping through Facebook and

00:41:42.460 | Twitter and they – oh, great.

00:41:43.460 | Let me retweet that.

00:41:44.460 | Let me share that.

00:41:46.020 | It happens in their in-between time.

00:41:48.500 | So podcast episodes don't really fit into in-between time and even if they do, they're

00:41:53.700 | still not going to go viral because let's say you had a brilliant six-minute podcast

00:41:57.340 | episode.

00:41:58.820 | Very few people are going to sit on their mobile device and just listen to six minutes

00:42:03.060 | of audio without accompanying visuals supporting the point.

00:42:07.380 | So I think it's best to plan on the fact that your podcast will never go viral.

00:42:12.660 | Don't plan on virality.

00:42:16.060 | But maybe you can create some kind of useful ideas and content and package your content

00:42:21.500 | in a way that will help the show to gain public exposure.

00:42:27.620 | So this would be where and why it's important to not focus all of your energy on just podcasting

00:42:32.540 | but to focus some of your energy on other methods of communication that do have the

00:42:36.200 | possibility of going viral.

00:42:38.380 | I've never found a podcast that's gone viral.

00:42:42.140 | Now it may happen more in the future other than what I've said.

00:42:45.720 | It may happen more in the future because the base of podcast listeners is growing and as

00:42:50.660 | bigger names get into podcasting, then podcasts can grow more quickly.

00:42:55.500 | I'm reminded here of watching Ben Shapiro's podcast.

00:42:58.260 | Ben Shapiro was a well-known young conservative commentator and then he recently started a

00:43:03.500 | podcast and his podcast just rocketed up in terms of listenership.

00:43:08.140 | And so I think in the future it will be more possible but that's because of the nature

00:43:11.780 | of his content.

00:43:13.420 | Political junkies are going to be interested in it.

00:43:15.260 | His age and the people to whom he appeals and the fact that there's a growing and increasingly

00:43:19.760 | broad and growing base for podcasts.

00:43:22.920 | Another one I watched was Jocko Willmick.

00:43:26.460 | Just he was everywhere.

00:43:28.260 | But his virality didn't come from the podcast.

00:43:30.040 | It came from his being everywhere and having a unique idea at a certain point in time.

00:43:34.720 | So in terms of virality, I don't know of any way you can make your podcast go viral.

00:43:40.420 | But if you have a podcast and then you come along at a fortunate time where you create

00:43:46.320 | something that fits the cultural moment and you can build the PR machine behind it like

00:43:53.260 | some of these big names do where it's a very skillful approach to public relations and

00:43:57.300 | you appear everywhere, then the show can grow very quickly.

00:44:03.020 | There's no reason today whatsoever for you to not have great audio quality from day one.

00:44:11.540 | I didn't used to be an audio snob.

00:44:13.340 | To this day I still care more about the quality of the information than the quality of the

00:44:18.300 | presentation in general.

00:44:21.680 | But it has become so easy today to have fantastic audio.

00:44:27.320 | There's no reason whatsoever for you not to have great audio quality.

00:44:33.140 | Intros, themes, music, all that stuff in my opinion is overrated.

00:44:39.900 | I go back and forth.

00:44:41.220 | Sometimes I use intro music, sometimes I didn't.

00:44:43.180 | When I was first building the show, I thought, "Okay, I just bought some intro music."

00:44:46.700 | And then I thought, "Well, I need to make sure that I figure out how to make this intro

00:44:50.780 | music fantastic and I'm going to make it better and I'm going to get some professional voiceover."

00:44:55.380 | Think carefully through your particular ideas, your particular podcast.

00:45:03.140 | But I think that in many ways, the faster you get to the point, the better.

00:45:07.600 | It pains me when podcasts have lengthy 60-second intros that don't help and keep another 60

00:45:18.900 | seconds between the listener and the content.

00:45:22.340 | In many ways, there's no reason not to just get straight into it.

00:45:26.400 | When somebody's listening to a podcast, they've made an intentional choice to consume your

00:45:30.740 | podcast.

00:45:31.740 | That means they've probably subscribed to your show.

00:45:34.780 | They have information available to them in your episode title.

00:45:38.540 | And so they have opportunities right there for them to grasp what it's about.

00:45:44.400 | And then you can bring them in as quickly as possible, bring them right into the story.

00:45:48.900 | And in that case, much of the time, intro, music, et cetera, I think it hurts.

00:45:53.260 | Where it doesn't hurt is if your show, if you do just a minute to tell people what the

00:45:57.260 | show is about, a sentence, a couple sentences.

00:46:00.780 | I've struggled with this over time to figure out what my show is about.

00:46:04.060 | And I'm probably 65% happy with my current intro.

00:46:08.660 | My current intro is, "Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you

00:46:11.840 | with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life

00:46:16.300 | now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less."

00:46:20.760 | Still a little bit wordy, but honesty is really important to me.

00:46:24.260 | And I want to make sure that people know my show is about a rich and meaningful life now

00:46:28.460 | and financial freedom.

00:46:30.840 | So I could shorten it up, and maybe I should, but you want to have that clear communication.

00:46:36.780 | And so if you can craft a very clear statement that tells what your show is about and what

00:46:41.140 | your unique selling proposition is, what's different, then that should be what you should

00:46:45.980 | lead with.

00:46:46.980 | But it should be short.

00:46:47.980 | It's fine if it's a voiceover, but make it short.

00:46:51.340 | If you have qualifications in your area of expertise, I think it's best if we start to

00:46:56.080 | figure out how to bring those qualifications in.

00:46:59.380 | This one is new for me.

00:47:01.740 | Share with you a story that has brought this deeply to my attention.

00:47:09.340 | Someone in my personal circle of influence recently got involved with a lady that was

00:47:14.860 | in significant need.

00:47:17.060 | And my friend became aware of her situation.

00:47:19.960 | She was sleeping on the streets.

00:47:22.360 | She had been evicted from her apartment, was in a really tough space.

00:47:24.820 | And this lady was in her, I would say, late 60s, mid to late 60s, in a very difficult

00:47:31.460 | situation.

00:47:32.880 | And so my friend wanted to help her, and he didn't have, however, much capacity to be

00:47:37.460 | able to offer her.

00:47:38.780 | He didn't have any extra bedrooms, didn't have any extra space in his house, literally.

00:47:43.180 | And so the best that he could offer to her was to allow her to sleep on his back porch,

00:47:48.900 | a small screened-in back porch.

00:47:51.700 | And this was of help for her.

00:47:53.020 | It was the best he had, but it was of help for her because it allowed her to enjoy a

00:47:57.620 | little bit of physical safety.

00:48:00.160 | She was unsafe on the streets.

00:48:01.420 | She had been accosted, and there was potential for her to be physically accosted by other

00:48:10.820 | homeless people that were around.

00:48:12.220 | She was concerned for her safety.

00:48:14.100 | And so this was a great blessing to her to be able to be off of the physical street,

00:48:18.740 | even though she was simply sleeping on a back porch, a small screened-in back porch.

00:48:23.060 | That was a blessing to her.

00:48:24.940 | She was able to make that small screened-in back porch a little bit more homey by setting

00:48:30.360 | up a bed, hanging some curtains, et cetera, furnishing it with some furnishings she found

00:48:33.900 | on the side of the street.

00:48:35.160 | And I interacted with her in a few different ways through this process.

00:48:39.340 | And along the way, in inquiring into her situation, I found out that she is a podcaster and that

00:48:44.260 | she hosts a podcast on how to be successful in life.

00:48:48.820 | Now hear me clearly.

00:48:51.260 | I want to honor each and every person's individual story.

00:48:56.700 | I like the saying, although I don't remember who to attribute it to, that every man I meet

00:49:02.100 | is in some way my master.

00:49:04.500 | Every person with whom I interact has experiences that I can learn from and that I can gain

00:49:09.940 | from.

00:49:11.020 | And for me, I try to find those experiences.

00:49:16.020 | It's valuable to seek those out.

00:49:18.340 | And I want to be very slow to denigrate or somehow try to cut down anybody who is seeking

00:49:25.220 | to work hard and to live honestly and uprightly and to improve their circumstances.

00:49:32.660 | I also believe that it's possible for people who are not experts in a subject to help other

00:49:38.460 | people as long as they're being honest about their lack of expertise.

00:49:43.860 | I could learn my way through, I could create media as I learn my way through a subject

00:49:48.700 | and create that in a useful way.

00:49:51.740 | But I would be very careful to disavow any claims of expertise in that situation.

00:49:57.460 | I became aware that this lady was podcasting on success and she has a regular show on blog

00:50:03.860 | talk radio about how to be successful.

00:50:08.180 | And I want to be, hear me, I don't want to cut her down, but I also want to be honest

00:50:13.340 | that she was homeless, literally living on the street, financially destitute, has very

00:50:22.580 | poor relationships with anybody in her family, is estranged from her husband, is estranged

00:50:29.260 | from some of her children, and relationships are so difficult to the point that even though

00:50:33.700 | the children know that their mom is living on the street, that they wouldn't support

00:50:40.660 | her, wouldn't take her in.

00:50:44.140 | Wasn't able to find a job for a very long time and that's enough.

00:50:49.660 | So the point is that she's podcasting on success and trying to teach people how to be successful.

00:50:57.540 | I found that difficult to take because what was the basis of her qualifications?

00:51:05.980 | Believe qualifications matter.

00:51:08.940 | They're not mandatory.

00:51:10.020 | We can learn from people who are failures, we can learn from people who are learning,

00:51:12.980 | but at the end of the day qualifications do matter.

00:51:16.020 | If you have qualifications, I think it's best if you can figure out how to share those

00:51:21.620 | qualifications in a useful way that people will know what your expertise is.

00:51:29.380 | Because the marketplace is getting crowded.

00:51:31.780 | If you're creating a success podcast and you are up against in competition with my

00:51:37.540 | friend who is homeless and also creating a success podcast, then you need to figure out

00:51:45.020 | how to set yourself apart.

00:51:48.500 | Carefully consider the time that you put into a podcast.

00:51:52.740 | There's a balance of too much versus too little and I have fought and struggled with this

00:51:59.420 | balance.

00:52:01.900 | You are always capable of better.

00:52:04.900 | No matter how good your podcast is, you can always create something that is better.

00:52:11.620 | But should you?

00:52:14.780 | On the other hand, if you have something that's not very good, should you really take it to

00:52:18.500 | the market?

00:52:20.580 | For me, this has been a real balance in terms of the quality of my own presentation.

00:52:27.180 | And I've tried a variety of approaches.

00:52:31.220 | I have found that I can create a phenomenal show if I sit down and I carefully script

00:52:38.620 | and plan everything I'm going to say.

00:52:41.620 | I plan every analogy, I plan every story, I plan every point, I number and outline everything

00:52:46.700 | very, very carefully.

00:52:47.980 | I can do that.

00:52:50.180 | But it takes a tremendous amount of time to do that effectively.

00:52:55.060 | If I do that, I'll be able to stay very carefully on track with my entire presentation.

00:53:02.820 | I won't ramble.

00:53:04.500 | I won't follow rabbit trails.

00:53:07.660 | I'll be on target.

00:53:09.100 | And that's really good.

00:53:10.500 | It creates a good result.

00:53:12.940 | Now I can take that show and I can make it even better by sitting down in the editing

00:53:16.180 | studio and carefully cutting, scrapping much of my ideas and just keeping the most powerful

00:53:24.460 | points.

00:53:25.460 | I could make it even better if I used one draft and then went and did a second recording

00:53:31.540 | and a second editing and maybe voiced over some parts that weren't so good and removed

00:53:36.300 | something that wasn't perfect.

00:53:38.540 | And I can make an absolute masterpiece of a show, which I then publish to the internet

00:53:47.100 | and 50 people listen to.

00:53:51.460 | That's probably not a good use of time.

00:53:53.860 | And you need to be aware of the fact that when you're taking your time to publish something

00:54:00.140 | to the internet for free for people to listen to, you should be careful about investing

00:54:06.100 | too much time and energy into that work.

00:54:11.900 | On the flip side, you can do too little.

00:54:15.060 | You can have a thought and you can sit down and you can wander in your presentation, not

00:54:18.540 | know where you're going, not know what you want to talk about.

00:54:20.660 | And you hear this frequently in the world of podcasting.

00:54:23.100 | So Joe, what do you want to talk about today?

00:54:24.620 | Well, I'm not sure, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:54:27.240 | And you essentially waste time.

00:54:29.560 | And your show is never good enough for the audience to actually grow to make it worth

00:54:32.840 | your while to do more work.

00:54:35.260 | I don't know how to advise you on the right solution.

00:54:40.100 | I do advise you to pay attention to it.

00:54:42.900 | And what I have had to learn and to be comfortable with is the fact that every individual podcast

00:54:48.860 | episode is not the best that I could do with unlimited time and resources, but it is the

00:54:57.100 | best that I can do with the time and the resources that I'm able to devote to my work.

00:55:04.620 | None of my listeners can expect me to sit down and pour 50 hours into creating a beautiful

00:55:11.780 | 25 or 30 minute show that I present to them for free with no good advertising model, with

00:55:17.900 | no good platform behind it.

00:55:20.700 | There are some people who have the platform to be able to do that.

00:55:23.140 | If I worked with one of the NPR or NPR outbranched podcasts and you had a staff of three to five

00:55:29.980 | to six people that are all had years of broadcast experience, we could pour 70 hour weeks, all

00:55:35.660 | of us into creating this 30 minute masterpiece and it would be huge.

00:55:39.380 | And there's a place for that.

00:55:40.700 | If you have those resources, you should seriously consider devoting those resources to it because

00:55:45.140 | the shows are wonderful.

00:55:49.740 | But that may not be your show and that may not be worth it for you.

00:55:54.660 | My record of preparation was about 16 or 18 hours, about 16 or 18 hours that I did on

00:56:01.740 | preparing for one podcast episode at one time.

00:56:06.020 | That show was very low listenership, was not particularly well embraced and made not much

00:56:12.020 | of a dent or a splash.

00:56:17.080 | One of my most popular shows in the last year I did zero preparation for.

00:56:29.420 | I had no prepared, let me adjust that.

00:56:31.960 | It would be unfair to say zero preparation.

00:56:33.600 | I have years of preparation of work and I've worked hard to get better as a broadcaster.

00:56:37.240 | I did no specific outline or plan.

00:56:39.480 | I just sat down with a general concept in my head and I hit record and I went.

00:56:45.480 | That was one of the most popular episodes of any of my shows for the last year.

00:56:49.640 | To the extent that a podcast can go viral, it went viral.

00:56:55.120 | So what do you do?

00:56:57.440 | Consider carefully your input and do what you can do.

00:57:02.520 | You want to create something that's good but don't fall prey to the trap of thinking that

00:57:07.320 | you're going to create the best that you possibly can.

00:57:09.640 | You can't.

00:57:13.680 | You can do what you can do.

00:57:18.080 | Podcasting can be very humbling.

00:57:19.560 | It can be very, very humbling.

00:57:23.360 | Even in what I just said, almost every single episode that I produce, I know I could do

00:57:27.600 | better.

00:57:29.720 | This episode right now, I'm racked with, I'm looking at the time and I'm saying, "Okay,

00:57:33.560 | it's 57 minutes into the show and I'm not even probably a third of the way into my outline

00:57:39.360 | and what am I going to do?

00:57:40.360 | Am I going to create a three-hour monstrosity?"

00:57:42.560 | And my brain, as I'm recording, is filled with doubt and question about, "Am I doing

00:57:50.440 | the right thing?

00:57:51.440 | Should I hit stop, scrap the last 57 minutes, rework my outline?

00:57:54.760 | Should I turn this into a three-part series?

00:57:56.520 | I don't know the right solutions but I'm live on the microphone and I got to figure out

00:57:59.400 | what to do."

00:58:01.560 | That's the scenario.

00:58:03.160 | As I'm listening to myself, I'm editing and I'm hearing the sentence that, "Oh, that was

00:58:06.520 | an unnecessary sentence," or, "That was an unnecessary pause that you've used a filler

00:58:12.520 | word because you weren't sure the next thing to say."

00:58:14.400 | I hear all those things.

00:58:16.640 | And yet I know that at the end of this episode, I'm going to hit stop and then I'm going to

00:58:20.680 | hit publish.

00:58:22.060 | And that's very humbling because I know I could do better with more time.

00:58:25.640 | But you can't afford to.

00:58:28.600 | It's a podcast.

00:58:30.160 | It's not a speech to the United Nations.

00:58:32.820 | It's a podcast.

00:58:35.320 | Now the other impact and reason why podcasting is humbling is that you can't edit your ideas

00:58:43.240 | and present them in the smoothest, most polished way possible as you can with written text.

00:58:50.160 | You can't present an idea that's going to be presented as smoothly as you would love,

00:58:57.600 | as effectively with a podcast as you can with a written essay.

00:59:01.680 | A written essay has the ability for you to sit there, consider your ideas, polish them,

00:59:07.840 | and then publish your final considered project to the world.

00:59:13.560 | Podcast is much more extemporaneous.

00:59:15.500 | You may have an idea of what you want to say, but then you're not so sure how it can be

00:59:19.680 | received and you better be ready to be humbled because all of a sudden your words will come

00:59:24.120 | back against you.

00:59:27.000 | You may express things clumsily and then there's that sense of regret, but you can't go back

00:59:32.800 | and undo it.

00:59:33.800 | And then you're faced with the question of, was that bad enough that I should go back

00:59:36.840 | and edit what I said and rework the whole thing and scrap it?

00:59:40.480 | Well, maybe some people can do that, but I think in general, you and I shouldn't do that.

00:59:44.160 | Let me give you one example of how hard this was for me.

00:59:48.320 | I have a mental list of a handful of times on Radical Personal Finance where I've said

00:59:53.880 | something that I legitimately regretted.

00:59:56.920 | And if it was serious, if I felt like I could apologize in good faith for something, then

01:00:04.560 | there have been a couple of times where I've apologized, whether I got something wrong,

01:00:07.640 | I shared erroneous information, or I just said something that was out of character.

01:00:12.080 | Sometimes my emotions get the best of me.

01:00:13.680 | I become very enthusiastic about a subject and my mouth outruns my brain.

01:00:18.160 | But one example of this that was hard, or just as a practical example of what I'm saying

01:00:23.960 | about how humbling it is, one time, and I forget what show it was, I was talking about

01:00:28.120 | Dr. Martin Luther King and I was talking about character.

01:00:32.160 | And I talked about Dr. Martin Luther King and I had recently read an accounting of his

01:00:39.880 | life.

01:00:40.880 | I was reading a biographical essay of his life.

01:00:43.720 | And in that context, one of the things that I learned that I had not previously known

01:00:51.320 | was about his personal moral failings.

01:00:56.080 | The man was an adulterer, extensively without any sense of sorrow or humility.

01:01:04.360 | And that for me was very disappointing because I really honor, personally, I really honored

01:01:09.760 | and respect Dr. Martin Luther King and his work that he did of seeking to preach righteousness

01:01:17.200 | and justice to a nation infused with unrighteousness and injustice.

01:01:23.180 | He stood in the face of tremendous attack.

01:01:27.400 | Some of his written content and his speeches to this day need to be studied and considered

01:01:33.360 | because they're incredibly powerful.

01:01:35.880 | You know, you go and you read his essay letter from a Birmingham jail and it's a powerful,

01:01:41.400 | powerful thing.

01:01:42.600 | And so I have this great respect and admiration for Dr. Martin Luther King and I believe he's

01:01:48.960 | a man who's worthy of study.

01:01:51.120 | But I had not previously been aware of the extent of his personal moral depravity.

01:01:57.860 | And I had just learned about this and I was disappointed.

01:02:01.600 | I was legitimately just disappointed in learning something about somebody that I honored and

01:02:07.840 | then having to reconcile with the fact that he was a flawed man.

01:02:13.460 | But in the context of the show, I said it without all of those positive things about

01:02:18.440 | him.

01:02:20.520 | And I said it without saying anything positive about him.

01:02:23.560 | I just said Dr. Martin Luther King was a morally depraved man and that really – and I was

01:02:29.520 | just saying it was hurtful to me and I learned this and how disappointing.

01:02:33.280 | But I wasn't able to wrap it with that polite context in which it came across in the way

01:02:38.840 | that I conveyed it.

01:02:40.400 | It came across in a way that was at the very least insensitive and perhaps clumsy with

01:02:48.760 | a kind expression, all the way to the point where an uncharitable hearing would – someone

01:02:56.680 | would accuse me of falling – of aligning with the various people who sought to destroy

01:03:03.040 | Dr. Martin Luther King because of their racism and their inherent desire to destroy him.

01:03:10.800 | I couldn't take it back.

01:03:11.960 | I can't remember if I apologized for that one or not.

01:03:14.280 | I felt like it's not my job to apologize for somebody else's uncharitable hearing

01:03:20.680 | of the words that I said.

01:03:21.760 | I have to trust that my heart is evident.

01:03:23.920 | I can't remember if I apologized for that one or not, but it was very humbling because

01:03:28.360 | I – in the clumsiness of words spoken extemporaneously, I wasn't able to communicate as precisely

01:03:35.800 | as I would have liked, as inoffensively as I would have liked.

01:03:39.280 | And that is very painful when you bring shame to a subject or an idea that you think is

01:03:44.400 | important and yet you express it clumsily and then that causes your message to be hurt.

01:03:51.320 | It's humbling.

01:03:53.360 | Guess what?

01:03:54.360 | Podcasting can be very humbling because you can't create that perfectly crafted written

01:04:00.360 | essay as effectively as you can.

01:04:03.200 | I have become much more charitable in my analysis of recorded comments or recorded remarks of

01:04:09.240 | popular personalities, people in the public eye, where it's recorded that so-and-so

01:04:13.600 | said such-and-such and it's this scandalous statement.

01:04:17.320 | I personally have become much more charitable to say, "Well, wait a moment.

01:04:21.520 | Let's view the context of that statement.

01:04:24.400 | What were they saying before that?

01:04:25.760 | What were the afterwards?

01:04:27.000 | If at all possible, rather than just reading the written words, let me go ahead and bring

01:04:31.200 | in some additional context.

01:04:32.540 | Can I see them say it?

01:04:33.960 | Can I try to listen for the inflection in their voice?

01:04:37.360 | And how does this fit in line with their other comments?"

01:04:41.140 | My hope is that a charitable listener would have heard my comments about Dr. Martin Luther

01:04:44.680 | King and somehow at least sense the heart of my disappointment in finding out the level

01:04:52.160 | of moral depravity in one of my heroes, not immediately jump to saying, "Well, Joshua

01:04:58.400 | is this terrible person who is a racist through and through, etc., blah, blah, blah."

01:05:04.120 | So it's very humbling.

01:05:06.320 | Get used to it if you're going to compete in the world of ideas.

01:05:10.480 | Next, the method and means of your production of your podcast doesn't matter.

01:05:19.000 | You should pursue whatever production methodology is going to get production out of the way

01:05:24.720 | so that creativity can follow.

01:05:28.100 | You have to learn what a microphone is, and it's good to learn the difference between

01:05:30.760 | a dynamic microphone and a, what do they call the other one?

01:05:38.680 | Condenser microphone.

01:05:39.680 | You need to learn the difference between a dynamic microphone and a condenser microphone.

01:05:42.480 | Hint, you want a dynamic microphone that lowers less room noise.

01:05:46.000 | Done.

01:05:47.000 | That's all you need to know.

01:05:48.000 | You need to figure out how to plug it in and turn it on and somehow capture a recording.

01:05:51.560 | But beyond that, none of the rest of the stuff matters.

01:05:54.840 | And it all gets in the way when people are messing around with stupid programs.

01:05:59.400 | Last year I spoke at a podcasting conference in Orlando called Podfest.

01:06:05.600 | I was there as an expert in Podfest.

01:06:09.600 | And one of the things that was so fascinating, I wasn't a featured speaker, I was there

01:06:12.440 | as a supporting expert.

01:06:14.120 | And it was fascinating to me because we did this exercise where we had a room of people

01:06:17.920 | who had never podcasted.

01:06:20.280 | And we divided everyone into six or eight teams, each team being led by somebody like

01:06:25.240 | me who was an experienced podcaster.

01:06:28.000 | And then we said, create a podcast, create a three-minute podcast on something using

01:06:34.200 | the equipment that you have.

01:06:36.200 | Now some of us had, one person had a microphone going into their iPhone, somebody had a computer,

01:06:41.200 | somebody had a voice recorder.

01:06:43.000 | But what was fascinating to me was none of us, none of it cared about the podcast.

01:06:47.280 | I recorded mine with a phone and I wanted to teach my group that it doesn't matter,

01:06:51.880 | all this stuff about gear doesn't matter.

01:06:56.520 | So we used my iPhone without any external microphone, which I have plenty of external

01:07:01.160 | microphones I could have plugged into it, didn't even use that.

01:07:03.640 | Just held the microphone in front of their face and we recorded right into the voice

01:07:07.920 | memo app on the microphone.

01:07:09.800 | And then I did use an editing program, which I use from time to time on the phone that

01:07:18.640 | I use called Multitrack DAW, if you'd like to know, D-A-W is Digital Audio Workstation

01:07:25.240 | or something like that.

01:07:26.240 | It's a frequently used acronym in the audio editing space.

01:07:28.920 | So I use this program called Multitrack DAW.

01:07:31.400 | So I edited the clips together real quick.

01:07:33.400 | But at the end, I expected, frankly, that I said, well, ours is going to be pretty good

01:07:37.680 | as I had this idea of a podcast.

01:07:40.480 | And I figured maybe there would be another one or two good ones and then three, four,

01:07:44.360 | five, not very good presentations.

01:07:46.840 | It was a competition.

01:07:48.880 | What we found was the exact opposite.

01:07:51.480 | Every single one of the six or eight recorded podcasts that had been created with groups

01:07:57.000 | of eight to 10 people in 30 minutes or less of work was unique and creative.

01:08:05.360 | And every one of them was good.

01:08:07.520 | I was blown away.

01:08:09.280 | Every one of them was good and every one of them was creative in its own way.

01:08:12.840 | Some people followed traditional formats.

01:08:14.520 | Some people had other formats that they pursued.

01:08:17.400 | My group, we tried to create this NPR style podcast and they were all really good, really,

01:08:23.880 | really good.

01:08:24.920 | And what we learned, what I learned and what all the other experts learned is when you

01:08:27.520 | get the gear out of the way, then you can have creativity with the message and with

01:08:32.800 | the content.

01:08:33.800 | And that's what matters.

01:08:37.480 | Next point, rankings don't really matter.

01:08:41.880 | Sometimes your show will rank, sometimes it won't.

01:08:44.680 | Rankings do not really matter.

01:08:46.960 | They matter for you if they give you a little bit of pride.

01:08:49.360 | But if you don't get rankings, it doesn't matter.

01:08:51.720 | I haven't checked my iTunes rankings in six months.

01:08:55.320 | It doesn't matter.

01:08:58.760 | Number one, whether or not you rank on iTunes shouldn't be your indicator of success.

01:09:10.360 | It might matter if you've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into this new giant

01:09:14.120 | company, blah, blah, blah.

01:09:15.880 | But you can't control how you rank compared to other people.

01:09:21.720 | And that's the thing that angers me when people compare things on rankings.

01:09:25.320 | Rankings involve other people.

01:09:27.880 | All you can do is do the best that you can do.

01:09:29.720 | And you compare yourself to other people who may have more resources than you, who may

01:09:33.800 | have more skill than you, who may have more experience than you.

01:09:36.880 | You get a flawed sense of your own ability.

01:09:40.180 | If I were to compare myself as a broadcaster against Alex Bloomberg of Gimlet Media, I

01:09:50.200 | would be angry at myself all the time.

01:09:55.400 | It would be a totally unfair consideration though, because Alex Bloomberg has a tremendous

01:10:01.640 | career history that he has learned.

01:10:05.800 | He's worked in the world of public radio and of spoken word.

01:10:09.840 | He worked on This American Life, widely known as one of the best storytelling presentations

01:10:14.280 | ever.

01:10:15.280 | He's worked under the masters for years.

01:10:16.800 | He had a decades-long head start on me.

01:10:19.840 | And so if I – and in terms of building his company, he built a tremendous podcast company

01:10:25.120 | with millions of dollars of venture capital.

01:10:28.000 | If I were to try to compare myself to him, I would be miserable and I would quit.

01:10:33.680 | And that's what happens when people compare themselves on rankings.

01:10:36.080 | Don't compare yourself on rankings.

01:10:38.160 | Compare yourself based upon what you're able to do.

01:10:41.320 | And take pride in what you're able to do and the progress that you've made.

01:10:45.840 | I am deeply proud of my growth as a broadcaster.

01:10:51.660 | Very proud of it, because I've worked really hard to get better.

01:10:56.240 | That doesn't mean that I don't see the flaws, but it does mean that I'm not going

01:11:00.300 | to compare myself to Alex Bloomberg.

01:11:03.360 | I'm going to compare myself to my past, and I'm going to be happy with my progress,

01:11:09.840 | not my perfection.

01:11:13.000 | The other reason rankings don't matter is that they're incredibly fickle.

01:11:19.320 | Rankings will change all the time.

01:11:21.680 | And when I was a new broadcaster, a new podcaster, I would take some screenshots, and I thought,

01:11:25.840 | "Well, I should take these in case I ever need to make some kind of marketing thing."

01:11:28.800 | I've never used them.

01:11:30.460 | But there have been times when I'm ranked higher than Dave Ramsey, when I'm ranked

01:11:33.800 | higher than other big brands.

01:11:36.120 | Does that mean that I have a bigger show than Dave Ramsey?

01:11:39.680 | Nonsense.

01:11:41.360 | Nonsense.

01:11:42.620 | Rankings are a distraction.

01:11:44.080 | You may need them for a time to give yourself a little bit of encouragement.

01:11:47.000 | But if you do well, recognize this.

01:11:49.800 | You're not always going to do well, because sometimes somebody else who has more experience

01:11:54.360 | or more money or a better concept or a better execution of an idea is going to come along

01:11:58.860 | and beat you.

01:12:00.960 | Don't take too much stock in rankings.

01:12:02.440 | And if you're not doing well in rankings, recognize that your content might not rank,

01:12:07.520 | but that doesn't mean it isn't important.

01:12:10.700 | Some of the most important ideas will never be publicly popular, or at least they won't

01:12:16.440 | be publicly popular during your lifetime.

01:12:19.600 | Still doesn't mean you shouldn't devote yourself to the promulgation of those ideas.

01:12:23.400 | Let's talk about reviews.

01:12:26.320 | The number of reviews on your show matters, but the content of those reviews or even the

01:12:31.400 | number of stars that people give you is much less relevant than almost any other other

01:12:36.720 | factor.

01:12:37.720 | Don't worry too much about the reviews.

01:12:41.120 | In my mind, most podcasts do and should be getting lots of five star reviews, and you

01:12:47.680 | should be getting a good number of one star reviews.

01:12:52.120 | Now don't ignore either, but don't run from your one star reviews.

01:12:57.680 | I love the fact that any individual listener of any show can make their voice known.

01:13:03.800 | It's such a tremendous, powerful thing that anybody who hears my voice can, without any

01:13:09.720 | influence of me or without any control of me or any ability of me to stop them, can

01:13:15.520 | pull up iTunes and can put their rating on Joshua's show and advise someone else.

01:13:20.960 | It even goes beyond that.

01:13:22.160 | Any person who listens to my show can go on Twitter and talk about it, can go on Reddit

01:13:26.400 | can talk about it, can go on a personal finance forum and talk about it.

01:13:30.280 | Anybody who listens to me can do that, and that's a powerful trend.

01:13:33.580 | You should applaud that because in the arc of liberty over human history, it has not

01:13:41.160 | always been that way.

01:13:43.960 | We live in an exciting time where no longer are the rich elite in charge of everything,

01:13:53.040 | but rather systematically common men and women can have their voice heard.

01:13:59.840 | That's powerful.

01:14:00.840 | This is happening every single day.

01:14:03.200 | Communications is one of the most visible places for it to happen, but there are many

01:14:06.200 | others as well.

01:14:08.320 | This is an exciting time to be alive.

01:14:10.840 | And so you've got to build a little bit of a thick skin to help you deal with it.

01:14:14.840 | Don't worry about your one-star reviews, but do listen to them.

01:14:23.320 | Listen to them and try to figure out what's the reason behind somebody saying something.

01:14:29.080 | If I go through and I read my one-star reviews, there is a lot of criticism in my one-star

01:14:33.760 | reviews that is absolutely accurate, that I fully agree with, and that's useful because

01:14:41.040 | it gives you a chance to get better.

01:14:44.640 | On the other hand, many times people will leave one-star reviews and it's their way

01:14:49.280 | of expressing themselves over something that I say and believe that they find to be objectionable.

01:14:57.200 | And so they'll say, I've had people say, one of my reviews, I can't remember the exact

01:15:01.840 | text, but it basically said something like this.

01:15:04.400 | Joshua goes really deep on financial subjects and he never talks about the same thing again

01:15:10.160 | and again.

01:15:11.640 | Well, my original outline for my show was I'm going to go deep on subjects that warrant

01:15:17.080 | it, and my intent is never to repeat the same subject.

01:15:21.640 | That means there's an archive of 500 individual unique episodes.

01:15:26.960 | But those will change over time.

01:15:28.600 | And so I'm not going to change my show plan because somebody left their one-star review

01:15:33.120 | because that's not how they want it.

01:15:34.520 | Well, they can go find a different show.

01:15:36.840 | I'm not changing my plan unless I felt like I wanted to change my plan.

01:15:40.640 | That's different than someone saying, Joshua gets off topic a lot.

01:15:44.160 | Joshua getting off topic is inexcusable, and that's the type of review that needs to be

01:15:48.200 | paid attention to.

01:15:50.580 | So don't worry too much about the content of the reviews.

01:15:53.360 | Don't let it bring you down.

01:15:54.760 | And recognize this, no one reads the reviews.

01:15:57.420 | No one sees it.

01:15:58.420 | In today's world of podcasting, the only thing that matters is the number of reviews because

01:16:04.360 | that's an indication of the size of the show and how established it is.

01:16:08.240 | Once you get past 20 reviews, almost nobody is going to be able to read your reviews.

01:16:13.060 | Nobody can go through.

01:16:14.060 | There's no currently, in the current technology, there's no real way for someone to go and

01:16:18.040 | look through all the reviews, and no one's going to do that.

01:16:20.680 | Your listeners are going to just simply click and listen, and if they like it, great.

01:16:25.200 | If they don't, they're going to move on.

01:16:26.840 | Don't worry about it.

01:16:28.640 | Which by the way, we talk about how to get reviews.

01:16:32.640 | Reviews are not as important as they once were, but they were important.

01:16:36.520 | I think it's a mistake for you to beg on your show for reviews.

01:16:39.960 | I think out of 500 episodes, I've probably said it five, maybe, no, in the early years

01:16:44.300 | it was more.

01:16:45.300 | A couple dozen times.

01:16:47.860 | It is important, and one of the way for you who are listening, who have not left your

01:16:52.700 | favorite podcast host's review, I would ask you to do that.

01:16:56.700 | Just do it right on your phone.

01:16:57.700 | It takes just a minute.

01:16:58.700 | Pull out your phone and please leave my show a review.

01:17:02.340 | It's fine to ask every now and then, but don't spend all your show talking about needing

01:17:08.340 | reviews.

01:17:09.340 | It's not as important as it once was.

01:17:10.780 | Just create good stuff and people will naturally do it.

01:17:13.260 | The most effective way that I have found to solicit reviews from my audience is when I

01:17:17.420 | answer email.

01:17:18.660 | When a listener writes to me and I respond to them, then I'll often put in a PS and say,

01:17:23.820 | "Please will you leave me a review?"

01:17:25.460 | That would be very helpful.

01:17:26.660 | I want to build reviews.

01:17:27.660 | I want to have thousands of reviews, but in terms of the value of your listener's time,

01:17:32.260 | it's not worth your wasting their time for a couple minutes just so you can build more

01:17:36.540 | reviews.

01:17:37.540 | Figure out another way to do it.

01:17:39.580 | Think carefully about the feedback that you get and recognize that some is actionable

01:17:44.900 | and some is not.

01:17:47.080 | People will give you all kinds of feedback and you've got to build a little maturity

01:17:51.380 | to filter through it.

01:17:53.700 | Some things are actionable now.

01:17:56.540 | For example, you may have an annoying verbal tick, an annoying habit that you weren't aware

01:18:01.900 | of.

01:18:04.020 | When you see that in a review, consider it and change it.

01:18:10.100 | But you also may be criticized for something that is harder to change.

01:18:15.500 | For me, the example is rambling.

01:18:18.360 | Huge number of my reviews say Joshua rambles.

01:18:20.500 | Well, I acknowledge that, but acknowledgement of a problem doesn't mean you know how to

01:18:25.300 | solve it immediately.

01:18:26.300 | It takes time.

01:18:27.300 | It's took me a couple of years to really work that out.

01:18:31.940 | I'm sure I still have room to grow.

01:18:34.560 | You've got to build that.

01:18:35.840 | That's actionable, whereas those are actionable things.

01:18:39.660 | But then you'll receive reviews where people just don't like you.

01:18:41.940 | They don't think that you ... You don't believe the right thing.

01:18:44.820 | You're too much of a whatever.

01:18:47.940 | Ignore that stuff and move on.

01:18:50.780 | Also, think carefully about who you're receiving feedback from.

01:18:56.140 | This to me is very important.

01:18:58.320 | We need to develop a whole new skill set in this year and going on about how to filter

01:19:04.940 | feedback.

01:19:07.180 | Who are we receiving feedback from?

01:19:10.220 | One of my biggest fears that comes along with the value of the democratization of information,

01:19:16.100 | so there's a compelling trend.

01:19:18.180 | Anybody can contribute something.

01:19:19.340 | But the problem is many people don't seem to exhibit the ability to discern the quality

01:19:24.820 | of the information that they're receiving.

01:19:27.140 | They don't seem to have the ability of critical thinking to ask questions.

01:19:33.060 | I'm so glad that anybody can publish a blog article or a Facebook post on anything and

01:19:38.960 | have it read by millions of people.

01:19:42.380 | That said, the editorial integrity of a random blog post published by your favorite writer,

01:19:54.460 | who sits at home and puts words into their computer and makes claims and allegations,

01:19:59.380 | is nowhere near the editorial integrity of a carefully researched extensive article in

01:20:06.580 | the New York Times or the Washington Post.

01:20:10.580 | We're facing crisis in our modern world where people who are unable to distinguish the two.

01:20:15.780 | It doesn't mean that a blogger, an individual blogger, may not have incredible insight and

01:20:19.700 | inside connection.

01:20:20.700 | They need to be considered.

01:20:22.220 | But also the editorial integrity of a Wall Street Journal article needs to be considered.

01:20:28.260 | In the same way, you need to also consider who you're receiving feedback from.

01:20:33.500 | It's one thing if a fellow expert podcast host gives you suggested critique and criticism

01:20:39.640 | of your show.

01:20:40.820 | You should pay careful attention to what they have to say.

01:20:43.380 | You may still ignore it, but you should pay careful attention.

01:20:46.620 | It's another thing if an unknown person writes something hurtful about you on the internet

01:20:52.580 | or something that hurts you.

01:20:54.560 | You gotta ignore that and press forward.

01:20:58.220 | And we need to teach people to carefully consider the information that they're getting and where

01:21:01.540 | they're getting it from.

01:21:02.540 | I have my story about the broke homeless person living on my friend's back porch, creating

01:21:07.820 | a podcast telling people how to be successful.

01:21:10.380 | Unfortunately, I see this working out more and more and it's very concerning to me that

01:21:15.620 | in the world of the internet where communication is veiled, people put as much stock into a

01:21:21.060 | comment they receive in a Facebook group or in a forum as they do with somebody who knows

01:21:25.500 | them and who cares about them and who knows their life coming alongside in a quiet conversation

01:21:30.740 | saying, "Would you consider these things?"

01:21:34.860 | I've watched, especially young people, I'm very concerned, I've watched a few young lives

01:21:39.260 | be really disrupted because the primary source of information and encouragement seems to

01:21:44.300 | come from the internet.

01:21:45.300 | And on the internet, an insecure, let me think about what adjectives to use here, an insecure,

01:21:56.580 | immature 13-year-old who doesn't know how life works has the same voice as a successful,

01:22:07.140 | experienced, mature, upright 70-year-old.

01:22:11.700 | They're both words on a screen.

01:22:13.700 | But my goodness, we can't let the 13-year-olds, you can't let the 13-year-olds instruct your

01:22:19.020 | 13-year-old.

01:22:21.260 | That's insane.

01:22:23.300 | That's like sending your child into the monkey pen and saying, "You need to go in and learn

01:22:26.340 | etiquette."

01:22:27.340 | Well, they're going to come out acting like a monkey.

01:22:30.300 | And yet that's one of the challenges of the internet.

01:22:35.260 | Serve your audience first and always.

01:22:37.660 | Your loyalty has to be to your audience.

01:22:40.140 | In the world of podcasting, you can't produce a lot of podcasts and hide who you actually

01:22:44.820 | are.

01:22:45.820 | So make sure that your loyalty is genuine.

01:22:47.340 | If you keep that first and foremost, that will come through and people will look for

01:22:52.860 | you and they'll listen to you because they trust you.

01:22:56.220 | They may not agree with you and that shouldn't be your goal, to get agreement.

01:23:01.700 | In many ways, you can't control that.

01:23:03.860 | You may be wrong in something that you believe, but what you can do is seek to get a hearing.

01:23:09.260 | That's going to come from your genuine devotion to service, to the service of your audience.

01:23:17.140 | However, figuring out who your audience is can be really hard.

01:23:24.900 | And in a way, you're going to play this very weird game of self-selection because you're

01:23:30.740 | not going to know who your audience is, but you're going to create your audience based

01:23:34.120 | upon what you're actually talking about.

01:23:36.820 | And people are going to automatically self-select themselves in and out, which means that you're

01:23:40.900 | going to wind up with the audience that you created, that you don't know who they are,

01:23:45.220 | that you created them.

01:23:46.740 | It's very, very weird and very challenging.

01:23:53.140 | You create something for a purpose and then people find it.

01:23:59.140 | And the thing that you create will turn certain people off and it will turn certain people

01:24:02.420 | on and you're going to have a hard time.

01:24:05.060 | You're just going to have to go with your concept and you're not going to know for a

01:24:09.060 | long time if it works out.

01:24:11.600 | It's much harder for you to figure out who your audience is and about the only way that

01:24:17.180 | you can solve this problem is to say, "What audience do I want to serve and how do I want

01:24:21.740 | to serve them?"

01:24:22.900 | And then do your best to create something that you think will be effective and then

01:24:25.820 | wait and see because it can be really hard to figure out who your audience actually is.

01:24:32.680 | You will likely receive very little communication from your audience in the beginning, even

01:24:36.380 | telling you who they are.

01:24:38.140 | And this is not because your audience is filled with people who don't like to communicate.

01:24:41.340 | It's due to the problems of podcasting.

01:24:43.900 | When people listen to a podcast, they're generally engaged in another activity.

01:24:48.020 | Frequently it's something like driving or exercise or doing the dishes.

01:24:52.580 | They're not usually in front of a computer screen.

01:24:55.100 | Most of the audio communication is consumed on a mobile device.

01:25:00.260 | And usually, frequently, the person is actually not physically holding their mobile device.

01:25:04.660 | Their hands are on the steering wheel and the mobile device is piping through the speakers

01:25:08.460 | or their hands are in the dish bucket and their mobile device is piping on the counter

01:25:13.180 | next to them or the mobile device is in their armband and they're running down the road

01:25:17.580 | or pump an iron at the gym.

01:25:20.380 | So it's very hard for somebody in that situation to stop and to communicate with you.

01:25:25.600 | And so communication from an audience in the world of podcasting is in many ways much smaller

01:25:31.060 | and less frequent than it is from other media.

01:25:35.860 | On a blog article, somebody who's reading the blog article is frequently on a computer

01:25:41.180 | screen, although there is tremendous mobile device consumption.

01:25:45.380 | And they're probably, because they're reading it, they're probably also capable of either

01:25:48.580 | writing a quick comment or writing you a quick email.

01:25:52.840 | So there's going to be more communication from a reader than from an audience member.

01:25:58.740 | Also, medium matters.

01:26:00.900 | If somebody's watching a video of yours on YouTube, then right there underneath the video

01:26:06.740 | is a comment section that they can play your video and they can comment while they're still

01:26:11.520 | playing your video without stopping the video, which means that there's going to be much

01:26:15.620 | more engagement with commenting.

01:26:18.440 | Podcasting doesn't have that.

01:26:19.980 | When someone's listening to a podcast in a podcast application on their phone, they're

01:26:24.140 | not going to be also simultaneously posting a comment on your article.

01:26:30.060 | They're not there.

01:26:31.060 | There's no commenting function in the podcasting application.

01:26:34.020 | And so they'd have to go to a separate application, either the mail app or an internet app.

01:26:38.420 | They'd have to find that podcast, which may be very difficult, and let you know the feedback.

01:26:43.780 | And so it's just much less frequent that you're going to have communication.

01:26:46.820 | So don't sweat it.

01:26:48.340 | Just recognize that's the nature of the game.

01:26:51.460 | Now on the flip side, when your show grows, you may have more communication than you can

01:26:55.060 | handle.

01:26:56.060 | This has been a real challenge for me.

01:26:57.060 | I can't handle the communication and it's caused significant stress to me.

01:27:00.820 | I'm happy to hear from my audience, but it's caused stress for me to learn new skills,

01:27:04.180 | to figure out how do I gain the positive things of really listening to the individual people

01:27:09.380 | that listen to me without letting it run my life.

01:27:11.860 | So just don't worry about it.

01:27:13.900 | Just get used to it.

01:27:15.640 | Also get used to the idea of developing some filters for your feedback.

01:27:19.620 | For some reason, the anonymity, supposedly, of the internet causes people to lose their

01:27:25.900 | inhibitions.

01:27:27.260 | You see this every day and you experience this every day.

01:27:30.340 | But as you create public content, you're going to experience a lot more of this.

01:27:38.500 | People are just somehow, I don't know if, people somehow think that you're not a real

01:27:44.020 | person and they think that because your name is on a screen or because your name is attached

01:27:49.900 | to something that personal insults are now okay, that you're a public figure and they're

01:27:55.860 | now okay.

01:27:57.640 | In a way, they are in the sense that when you put yourself out there, you got to deal

01:28:00.700 | with it.

01:28:02.220 | But it takes a little bit of time to recognize that people think that you're fake.

01:28:07.740 | They would never sell you to your face some of the things that people write to you on

01:28:11.100 | the internet.

01:28:12.100 | The funniest one, last week, somebody tweeted to me, and I'll read you the tweet.

01:28:18.300 | Here was it.

01:28:19.300 | It was a man named Kevin Gates.

01:28:20.580 | He tweets to me and he says, "I'm a former subscriber who just checked in to see if you

01:28:25.140 | had any commentary on Bitcoin, only to see you've gone full MRA, men's rights activist.

01:28:31.940 | Glad you're no longer getting my $5.

01:28:34.540 | By the way, I always thought you looked like an inbred, an intelligent inbred, but an inbred

01:28:39.660 | nonetheless!"

01:28:40.660 | I burst out laughing.

01:28:45.660 | I have never in my life been called an inbred.

01:28:51.100 | I don't know what an inbred looks like.

01:28:52.620 | I don't know what an inbred is.

01:28:55.140 | I think it's usually reserved as an insult for Southern people who have a reputation

01:29:00.440 | if you live in the deep South and up in the mountains of marrying your cousin.

01:29:05.500 | But I had no idea what an MRA was or men's right activism.

01:29:11.900 | All this stuff is over me.

01:29:13.300 | I just had to laugh out loud.

01:29:17.620 | But if you think about that as an example, this was not private.

01:29:20.980 | This was not somebody privately writing me an email.

01:29:25.100 | This was not somebody commenting anonymously.

01:29:29.660 | This is somebody on the internet who calls me an inbred.

01:29:35.540 | It was remarkable to—it was just a good example of this.

01:29:39.940 | This happens again and again and again.

01:29:42.940 | One of the biggest challenges is that frequently when you—depending on your content.

01:29:49.580 | For me, ideas are important and the power of ideas are important.

01:29:52.980 | I don't shy from those ideas.

01:29:54.180 | That's very important to me.

01:29:56.140 | I'm sure I experience more of this than people who are more, I don't know, not so focused

01:30:02.380 | on ideas and more focused on entertainment.

01:30:04.020 | If I had a podcast about camping and how great camping was, I wouldn't expect such vitriolic

01:30:09.780 | ideas as what I do.

01:30:11.660 | But still, even so, you're going to get weird random insults.

01:30:15.540 | It takes time to develop some thick skin.

01:30:17.500 | All I can tell you, I don't know how to tell you to do it other than to recognize that

01:30:20.900 | you don't know who is talking to you and you often don't know who is hurting.

01:30:26.540 | Many times the people who are the most violent in their rhetoric are the people who are either

01:30:33.380 | personally hurting, they're in a tough spot, or they're also very personally insecure.

01:30:40.580 | And I'm not, it sounds arrogant to even say it, but the thing that I have learned the

01:30:47.580 | most is frequently the people who object the loudest are the ones who are the most insecure.

01:30:52.700 | And I've been there.

01:30:54.100 | When I think back to some of my ideas and the things that I've vigorously fought people

01:30:58.460 | over, the expression of my fighting them, and by fighting I mean debate, my debating

01:31:04.260 | them the most vigorously was because I didn't have a good answer.

01:31:07.420 | And frequently what will happen is when somebody, when you have a powerful idea or a powerful

01:31:11.980 | ideology or a powerful platform and you present it carefully, someone may interact with you

01:31:19.220 | over the ideas for a time.

01:31:23.340 | But then when they can't answer your argument, they answer with an insult.

01:31:30.060 | They call you an inbred or they say you look like an inbred, whatever that look is.

01:31:35.780 | And so I think it's important to recognize that that may happen.

01:31:40.660 | You don't want to be too arrogant and say, well, I'm getting lots of abuse because my

01:31:44.140 | ideas are so great.

01:31:45.460 | No, you might be getting abuse because your ideas are abhorrent, but only you are going

01:31:49.100 | to know that.

01:31:50.100 | And I will say this, it gets better with time.

01:31:53.700 | I don't know, I didn't expect this.

01:31:56.740 | This was one when I started a podcast, maybe I was naive.

01:32:00.500 | I didn't expect it.

01:32:02.540 | And I'm a very sensitive, emotionally sensitive person.

01:32:07.700 | I think I do a pretty good job of connecting with people's emotions, understanding where

01:32:11.020 | they are.

01:32:12.020 | And I'm a pretty nice guy.

01:32:13.020 | I've never been in a fight with anybody in my life, just as an expression of that.

01:32:17.260 | But then I wound up on the internet and it was not only people fighting with me, it was

01:32:21.460 | people fighting about me.

01:32:23.200 | And it was the weirdest thing ever.

01:32:25.980 | And there have been times when my email was filled with angry people and my comments were

01:32:31.140 | filled with nasty people who came to my website to tell me how bad I was.

01:32:35.700 | There were times when it really hurt me and it really caused me emotional pain.

01:32:44.060 | But I think if you push past that, I'll tell you, as you push past that and recognize,

01:32:49.300 | number one, that can be valuable because you can stop and think, is this something I really

01:32:53.160 | believe in?

01:32:54.160 | Is this idea that somebody is a part of something I really believe in?

01:33:00.940 | It's the hardest when you recognize that somebody is turned off to your message because of your

01:33:06.460 | own incompetence, because you express something clumsily.

01:33:09.980 | That's really painful because you bear the blame for that, or you bear at least some

01:33:13.520 | of the responsibility for that.

01:33:15.860 | But then on the other hand, sometimes you look and say, no, that idea is something that's

01:33:20.460 | worth it.

01:33:21.540 | And I never wish to have relationships severed, but if that's the idea that you walk away

01:33:27.180 | from, I'm okay with that.

01:33:28.740 | And in time, you can develop some thick skin.

01:33:31.900 | And that's really helpful, is to develop thick skin.

01:33:35.580 | And it does come with time.

01:33:37.580 | Today, I laughed when the person said it because it's so stupid.

01:33:44.220 | Now, it's not to say that it's always easy, but recognize in time, you will develop some

01:33:49.820 | thick skin.

01:33:50.820 | It's the internet.

01:33:52.060 | And a lot of times, some of the people who are the most hurting or the people that you

01:33:55.700 | are impacting the most are often the ones who react the most violently.

01:34:01.740 | Now, in that light, however, one thing I recommend to you is you're going to have to learn some

01:34:08.460 | new skills to interact with the world.

01:34:12.500 | And here's some examples of some new skills.

01:34:14.620 | Number one, I think it's important that you learn and put things in place to learn how

01:34:19.700 | to shut things off.

01:34:20.860 | If you're a new podcaster, it may not happen right away.

01:34:25.300 | It may not happen immediately, but you've got to learn how to get away.

01:34:31.780 | In the early years, in the early months, you're frequently going to be, "Oh, I'm going to

01:34:35.660 | check my statistic.

01:34:36.660 | Let me see who comments," et cetera.

01:34:38.540 | But this can be very unhealthy if you don't learn how to turn it off.

01:34:42.680 | What I have learned to do is to completely segment my life and to not have any possibility

01:34:49.180 | or to try as much as possible to minimize any possibility of my online life invading

01:34:55.260 | my offline life.

01:34:57.660 | So that involves things like removing your social media applications from my phone or

01:35:03.020 | your phone.

01:35:04.020 | That's what I have found to be very helpful is removing all social media from my phone

01:35:08.340 | because it's so tempting to sit there and say, "Oh, let's see what's going on on Twitter.

01:35:12.180 | Let's see what happens."

01:35:13.180 | Or, "Hey, guess what?

01:35:14.580 | My little email just popped up and there was my Google alert for my name.

01:35:19.460 | And oh, they're arguing about me on Reddit or they're arguing about me in such and such

01:35:23.660 | a personal finance forum.

01:35:25.180 | Maybe I should go and look and see what they're saying."

01:35:27.140 | And then you go on there and see people ripping you apart one way and people defending you.

01:35:30.740 | And it's like, "Wait a second.

01:35:32.660 | I'm hanging out here at the park with my children and now all of a sudden, instead of me pushing

01:35:37.300 | my kids on the swing, I'm now dealing with somebody on the internet who doesn't know

01:35:40.260 | me, who's upset about something I said?"

01:35:42.900 | And it's like, get a lot – and who thinks that their job is to talk about how I should

01:35:48.020 | quit what I'm doing when I give them a free podcast to listen to that may or may not help

01:35:52.940 | them and all they have to do is just click delete and move on with their life.

01:35:56.340 | It's so weird, but you've got to learn how to do that.

01:36:00.020 | And thankfully, I have a couple of friends that I have also learned that with who have

01:36:04.540 | learned to do the same thing.

01:36:06.340 | And if you're in the world of a public personality in any way, I think you need to learn new

01:36:10.700 | skills.

01:36:12.140 | And so I've learned new skills.

01:36:13.380 | Just simply, number one, get rid of any ability for anybody related to your stuff to find

01:36:20.300 | you when you're not in that mode.

01:36:23.580 | Meaning no social media – for me, it's been no social media, no email.

01:36:28.580 | I'm only going to go and deal with that stuff when I can.

01:36:31.900 | And I don't want it to find me and invade my life and wreck my weekend.

01:36:36.340 | As a friend of mine said, a friend of mine who was a writer, a well-known, popular, nationally

01:36:42.860 | prominent writer, and he said he was with his wife and his mother-in-law one weekend

01:36:47.980 | in Washington, D.C. and they were out beautiful afternoon, Mother's Day, I think, watching

01:36:53.780 | the cherry blossoms and his wife had walked away and he glanced at his phone and all of

01:36:58.220 | a sudden saw some crazy email from somebody who was mad and triggered over something he

01:37:02.900 | said and it wrecked his whole day.

01:37:04.900 | And I spoke to him recently and we were talking about this and it just really hit me in the

01:37:10.140 | same – I've learned the same way.

01:37:11.620 | And it can happen right when you don't expect it.

01:37:14.460 | And what happens is for me, I immediately – when somebody says something, I immediately

01:37:19.020 | start thinking about it and I immediately start arguing with them in my head and I say,

01:37:22.860 | "Well, here is my argument.

01:37:23.860 | I sketch out my argument.

01:37:24.860 | Here are the five main points, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

01:37:26.980 | and then they'll say this and then here's my rebuttal."

01:37:28.900 | And all of a sudden, I'm 45 minutes into this thought process and I was allowing myself

01:37:34.740 | to be controlled by some random person that doesn't care about me.

01:37:38.020 | Well, I ignore the people who are nearby.

01:37:42.020 | So you're going to have to develop new skills.

01:37:44.420 | I don't know exactly all the right way to handle it but think carefully about your situation.

01:37:49.500 | Make sure that you focus on the people that actually know you and that actually love you.

01:37:56.260 | Focus on those things first.

01:37:58.260 | In that light, if you have not yet started publishing anything online, I think you should

01:38:04.620 | seriously consider using a pen name or a pseudonym for your internet work.

01:38:10.060 | In hindsight, if you were going to ask me, my number one regret is using my name associated

01:38:16.900 | with radical personal finance.

01:38:18.980 | My number one regret at this point is using my name because it's very painful when your

01:38:25.460 | worlds interact and it's very annoying when all of a sudden you lose your personal privacy.

01:38:34.900 | Number one, it can cause you to diminish your ideas to a point.

01:38:40.340 | So in real life, working with an individual, I don't mind sharing my ideas.

01:38:44.500 | But when all of a sudden my name has to be associated with something in the world of

01:38:48.820 | the internet where an idea is going to be dealt with in whatever bazillion ways, then

01:38:55.620 | that's a little bit harder to deal with, especially when you see things done unfairly.

01:38:58.940 | Now if you're confident in your ideas, that's fine.

01:39:02.540 | But there are other expressions of it because the people that get hurt are often not just

01:39:05.860 | you, but people around you.

01:39:09.580 | And that can be very hard.

01:39:12.260 | In hindsight, if I were going to go back and do it over again, I would never associate

01:39:16.660 | my name with my online work.

01:39:20.500 | Now when I did it, I did it because I said, "Well, I'm a certified financial planner

01:39:23.660 | and I really stuff and of course I want people to know that I'm real and legitimate."

01:39:27.180 | Well, bad decision.

01:39:28.180 | If I were going to go and do it over again, I would never use – I would always use a

01:39:33.220 | pseudonym.

01:39:34.220 | I would always use a pen name.

01:39:36.260 | And there have been times where I have seriously considered shattering the whole thing, scrapping

01:39:40.140 | the whole brand so I could get away from the invasiveness of your life being all out there

01:39:47.780 | and everyone being able to find you.

01:39:50.460 | That's really tough, really tough to deal with, especially when it exposes people.

01:39:55.460 | And I've got thick enough skin to deal with – I can deal with or I can learn to develop

01:40:01.060 | thick enough skin to deal with the stuff that you got to deal with when you have ideas that

01:40:05.820 | you believe are important.

01:40:07.500 | But I'm not putting my wife and children through that.

01:40:09.540 | And unfortunately, that's the challenge is that you got to figure out how to protect

01:40:13.500 | the people that are the most important to you.

01:40:17.060 | And the challenge here of course is that if you want to do something fully privately,

01:40:20.420 | it's really tough.

01:40:22.300 | And to not have your name tied to it at all, it's really tough.

01:40:24.420 | So most people, you could pretty quickly pierce the veil of so-called anonymity with a little

01:40:29.300 | bit of work.

01:40:30.300 | I'm good enough on the internet.

01:40:31.420 | I could pierce most people's veils.

01:40:33.620 | But anyway, consider just using a pseudonym or a pen name.

01:40:37.980 | People have asked me about how I actually produce the show quite a bit.

01:40:40.940 | So I'll just make it very, very simple and walk you through what I actually – the gear

01:40:45.620 | that I use and what I actually do now.

01:40:48.700 | Recognize that this is built and grown over time.

01:40:51.620 | I record in my home office.

01:40:53.860 | My home office is just a third bedroom in my house.

01:40:58.420 | And in terms of the office, it's not particularly a great podcasting studio.

01:41:03.300 | My personal podcasting studio is not a soundproof room.

01:41:06.500 | Frequently, unfortunately, though I've done my best, you'll hear one of my young children

01:41:10.580 | crying in the background.

01:41:11.860 | I've tried to screen that out.

01:41:14.140 | What I did is there's a very non-sound dense wall between me and my family and I hung up

01:41:21.100 | some sound blankets on the wall to try to give a little bit more sound isolation for

01:41:26.460 | my young children.

01:41:27.460 | It's just pretty hard for me to stomach paying money for an out-of-the-house office when

01:41:33.460 | I'm paying a lot of money just to never have my children or my dogs interact with my audio.

01:41:38.580 | So I hung up a bunch of sound blankets on the wall.

01:41:41.620 | Sound blankets do a pretty good job.

01:41:42.740 | I have a triple layer of them and that blocks out enough of the noise that I am happy with

01:41:46.900 | it.

01:41:47.900 | Beyond that, my office has no particular sound treatment.

01:41:50.740 | I record using a dynamic microphone.

01:41:53.180 | A dynamic microphone is one that is not so sensitive to all of the room noise.

01:41:57.940 | I use a microphone that is called a Heil PR40, which is one of the popular podcasting microphones.

01:42:05.900 | Totally unnecessary if I were going to do it again, knowing what I now know, I wouldn't

01:42:08.700 | bother.

01:42:09.700 | I don't think it matters that much.

01:42:10.780 | I would use an Audio Technica ATR2100, which is a $70 microphone instead of a $350 microphone.

01:42:18.220 | It would be every bit as much as I ever care about.

01:42:21.540 | But I do use a Heil PR40.

01:42:23.440 | When I originally started, I just had it on a cheap stand and then over time, as I felt

01:42:27.040 | it was worth it, I went ahead and I bought the expensive shock mount.

01:42:30.500 | So in early episodes, there would be shocks to the microphone sometimes.

01:42:34.040 | There are fewer of those now.

01:42:35.560 | Now I can move the microphone and I can tap it and it won't convey the sound through.

01:42:41.500 | So I use the Heil shock mount.

01:42:43.100 | And I also do finally now use a Heil boom arm, which is very helpful because having

01:42:48.020 | your microphone on a good boom allows you to sit back and to speak much more comfortably

01:42:53.300 | versus hunching over a microphone for years, how I had it sitting on a desk.

01:42:57.500 | I record through a mixer.

01:42:59.220 | I use a Mackie mixer, which I have a 14 channel mixer because that was cheap.

01:43:05.180 | I bought the used one and I got it cheap.

01:43:06.580 | I don't need that at all.

01:43:08.020 | But the mixer is set up onto and that allows me to do things live.

01:43:13.260 | So if I'm going to go and play audio from the computer, if I'm going to play a video

01:43:19.140 | or something like that, then it allows me to do it live, which is valuable.

01:43:24.580 | When I originally set out to commit to my production schedule, I knew that I could never

01:43:27.800 | produce as much content as I wanted to if I was going to be doing editing after the

01:43:32.340 | fact.

01:43:33.340 | And so from the beginning, I focused on editing or producing live so I can do everything right

01:43:39.680 | at once, play voicemail, play sound clips, whatever.

01:43:43.220 | It all goes done and in one take.

01:43:45.860 | Coming also into that computer is I use, sorry, into the mixer is I have a channel for my

01:43:52.980 | computer and I use, what's this thing called?

01:43:56.580 | A sound blaster, a little USB adapter that adapts into my computer and that allows me

01:44:02.200 | to send my computer audio into my mixer.

01:44:05.540 | It also allows me to do what the podcasting world calls a mix minus, which allows me to

01:44:10.640 | use an online application to record my high quality microphone into an audio recorder

01:44:19.620 | while also recording the audio coming back from somebody else's audio to do my online

01:44:25.220 | interviews.

01:44:26.300 | And I can do that using frequently used Skype, but at this point I'm moving away from Skype

01:44:32.100 | and doing other communications options with my guests.

01:44:37.060 | Of course, Skype is the most well known, so that works fine.

01:44:40.920 | So that's effective.

01:44:41.920 | I have an output from that which goes into an external audio recorder.

01:44:45.420 | I use a Roland, I don't remember what this is called, but basically it's a Roland audio

01:44:52.720 | recorder which works fine.

01:44:54.040 | It records onto an SD card and that allows me to have a reliable, consistent recording

01:44:59.720 | of my show.

01:45:00.720 | So when I'm done, I hit stop and then I stick it in the computer.

01:45:03.520 | I used to do just a little bit of editing to trim the beginning and the end, and then

01:45:09.760 | even that was annoying to me and I couldn't do it.

01:45:12.760 | So finally, I use an audio processing program called Auphonic which levels the audio out

01:45:20.400 | and it gives it a good, nice, consistent level, which for my type of content is the most important

01:45:26.880 | thing.

01:45:27.880 | So I process my audio file with Auphonic and then I publish it.

01:45:30.760 | I upload it into my Libsyn account.

01:45:33.000 | Libsyn is my audio host.

01:45:34.480 | It uses a coupon code "radical" for, was it a first month free?

01:45:38.680 | Libsyn is my audio host that I use to host my files and then from Libsyn, everything

01:45:43.560 | gets distributed out to my website to the various feeds as well.

01:45:47.520 | So that's my tech setup.

01:45:49.000 | I've done different things.

01:45:50.000 | I sometimes record into my phone.

01:45:51.800 | I use Sean Smith's, the Mobile Pro setups when I've done mobile interviews.

01:45:57.520 | I've done a few different things like that.

01:46:00.200 | But at this point, all the tech stuff is my least interested, I'm completely disinterested

01:46:05.600 | in it.

01:46:06.800 | That's not what makes the difference.

01:46:09.040 | Probably the biggest tip I could give you is what I do use extensively is an application

01:46:13.680 | called Workflowy.

01:46:15.280 | And Workflowy is essentially an outlining program, but it's an outlining program with

01:46:20.240 | unlimited levels of outlining and unlimited movability, which it's hard for me to explain

01:46:27.760 | in audio form how important this is.

01:46:30.240 | But in practice, Workflowy is probably my most important tool.

01:46:34.320 | It costs five bucks a month.

01:46:36.440 | And of course, me being cheap, I've tried at times to say, "I'm going to do without

01:46:40.160 | it."

01:46:41.160 | But every time I come back to it, and I have about 900, almost a thousand pages of content

01:46:45.560 | in Workflowy over the years of all of my podcasts and all of the outlines that I have built.

01:46:50.720 | Workflowy is for me probably one of my most important tools because it allows me to do

01:46:54.960 | a good job of sketching out my notes in advance of the show, which is really, really good.

01:47:01.200 | So that's how I do it.

01:47:02.840 | And wrap up, I've got eight more points.

01:47:05.960 | An internet business is really wonderful, and it can change your view of the world substantially.

01:47:11.840 | It really can.

01:47:14.400 | It's also work, just like anything else.

01:47:18.400 | I always tried really hard to have an accurate understanding of the world.

01:47:26.160 | And I'm not scared of work.

01:47:27.160 | I don't think that work is something to be run from.

01:47:29.840 | But you should know that just podcasting, if your dream is podcasting, recognize that

01:47:34.240 | everything you do in the world is going to be meaningful.

01:47:38.000 | There's going to be parts of it that are great and parts of it that are not.

01:47:41.060 | But it is very valuable to be able to feel the contentment of impacting other people,

01:47:46.640 | impacting other lives, is really, really helpful.

01:47:50.440 | And podcasting is wonderful from that.

01:47:54.560 | Having your income untethered from your geographic location is powerful.

01:47:59.840 | And I really like it.

01:48:01.920 | It's very powerful.

01:48:04.280 | Working from home is great.

01:48:07.800 | Working from home has allowed me to achieve many of the goals that I have wanted to achieve.

01:48:14.520 | And yet, working from home has many challenges.

01:48:17.600 | I was naive when I started Radical Personal Finance.

01:48:22.080 | And I thought everything about working from home would be great.

01:48:24.520 | And there are many things that are much better about working from an office.

01:48:27.720 | So just recognize that it's a give and take.

01:48:29.680 | And it may take your family time.

01:48:31.280 | It took my wife quite a while, a number of months, probably six months, to figure out

01:48:36.080 | for us how to figure out our working relationship when I was at home during the day, about when

01:48:40.480 | I'm at work versus when I'm not at work, and how those lines are blurred or present.

01:48:48.400 | And so that took us a while to figure out some new skills to deal with that.

01:48:53.160 | Work is work no matter what.

01:48:55.440 | And I think you should be aware of that, that podcasting is great work.

01:49:01.400 | It's work, just like anything else.

01:49:04.520 | One of my big concerns today that I didn't have a few years ago, and I wouldn't recommend

01:49:07.920 | this to you to worry about this today.

01:49:10.240 | If you're a new podcaster, but I think that everybody who is creating something and publishing

01:49:14.520 | it needs to pay careful attention to this.

01:49:18.820 | Number one, you've got to make sure that your connection with your audience is sufficient

01:49:23.360 | because your work is good enough that they're going to find you wherever you wind up on

01:49:26.560 | the internet.

01:49:27.560 | One of the most devastating days of my business career was that after, right before my hundredth

01:49:33.080 | episode I deleted all my podcast listening audience.

01:49:36.880 | And I'd worked on it for months, six months.

01:49:39.340 | And I just deleted everything.

01:49:40.340 | And many of you have had your, just the show stopped updating and you had to go and find

01:49:44.600 | me again and figure out how to resubscribe.

01:49:47.320 | But this can happen today more easily than you might think.

01:49:52.480 | And you've got to figure out in today's world how to own your own brand and how to own your

01:49:57.240 | own list.

01:49:58.800 | One of the new dangers that we face today that we didn't face a number of years ago

01:50:02.640 | was being shuttered by the big corporations that own access.

01:50:07.000 | I have tremendous concerns right now about what YouTube is doing.

01:50:10.040 | I have thought about pursuing more video production and getting involved in the world of YouTube.

01:50:14.120 | I have ideas that I believe would be valuable there, but their actions of silencing voices

01:50:21.320 | that they don't want to have on their platform have been so, in my opinion, onerous and egregious

01:50:27.040 | that I don't much want to get involved with them.

01:50:29.540 | But unfortunately it's hard not to be involved with them all at some point.

01:50:34.120 | One of the biggest concerns that I have right now is the infringement on free speech and

01:50:41.000 | on people's ability to speak about the things that are valuable to them without being shut

01:50:46.360 | down by the content people that want to interact with them.

01:50:51.400 | So whether this is a hosting service, I had tremendous concerns when GoDaddy came out

01:50:57.720 | publicly and started to stop supporting the website registration and the domain service

01:51:03.960 | for people on their platform who they considered to be hate speech, the white supremacist and

01:51:11.240 | white nationalist movements a few months ago.

01:51:14.120 | I had tremendous concerns when Google did the same thing.

01:51:17.960 | One of my biggest concerns is that many of the payment processors right now are systematically

01:51:22.120 | delisting people.

01:51:24.480 | And this is significant in the world of Christian ministries right now where there are a number

01:51:29.920 | of Christian nonprofit organizations that are just systematically delisting people who

01:51:36.920 | want to use them as a donation service.

01:51:38.800 | I've looked at some where they've been dropped by PayPal, they were dropped by Stripe, they

01:51:42.800 | were dropped by all this.

01:51:44.000 | And it's very problematic when these companies own what you're doing and they decide, "Well,

01:51:50.600 | we don't like what you have to say and so we're going to drop you."

01:51:53.720 | This is a huge concern of mine.

01:51:55.840 | And so it's caused me to say, "Okay, well, how do I figure out how to own my own brand?"

01:52:00.320 | And I think that in the future, we'll more and more need to consider this.

01:52:03.520 | But I'm not willing to deal with these people who have betrayed my trust and allow them

01:52:07.440 | to have access to my stuff and to have them be the ones who control access.

01:52:12.400 | So that means we've got to go back and I've got to build more technical skills than I

01:52:15.400 | ever did before.

01:52:17.160 | So I think that if you're an established podcaster or if you're somebody who has a message that

01:52:21.600 | is controversial for whatever reason, that you should pay a tremendous amount of attention

01:52:29.680 | to the current infringements on free speech.

01:52:33.840 | Things are good.

01:52:34.960 | It's easier today to get a message out than it's been in the past.

01:52:38.440 | But just because things are good doesn't mean that there aren't substantial dangers.

01:52:42.080 | And just because there's a macro trend doesn't mean that you can't be steamrolled in your

01:52:46.320 | micro brand.

01:52:47.320 | It can be very devastating for your brand to be shut off.

01:52:51.240 | So think carefully about it and make sure that you own your list and make sure that

01:52:55.840 | you have a connection with your audience that will hopefully allow you to make it through

01:53:00.360 | those hard times.

01:53:02.800 | Interviews.

01:53:04.320 | The biggest challenge that I have had with Radical Personal Finance in terms of content

01:53:08.640 | is trying to figure out how to do great interviews.

01:53:11.920 | And I'm happy with my progress, but it's not easy.

01:53:15.640 | And I'll just tell you what I have learned.

01:53:17.960 | There are different approaches to interviews, approaches of people.

01:53:21.200 | Some people say, "Here are all my questions in advance.

01:53:24.000 | Here are all the questions that I want to ask you about.

01:53:27.500 | And here's everything that I want to talk about."

01:53:31.140 | Some people script an interview out in advance.

01:53:33.360 | That seems to work sometimes.

01:53:34.580 | When I'm interviewed, I often like to get the questions so I can prepare some ideas

01:53:38.200 | about the subject.

01:53:40.840 | But what I have also struggled with as an interviewer is trying to get someone to answer

01:53:46.120 | the questions the way that I want them to if I'm all prepared in advance.

01:53:50.320 | What I've learned, some of the people that are the hardest for me to interview are people

01:53:53.000 | that I know their stuff, whether I've read their books or I've read their blogs.

01:53:57.520 | And for me as an interviewer, my practice has frequently been to read everything that

01:54:03.440 | somebody's produced.

01:54:05.400 | And then I know all the things because I've consumed their 2,000 pages of content.

01:54:09.480 | I know the 12 key ideas that I want them to get to.

01:54:12.720 | And so there have been many interviews where I've really struggled, where I bring somebody

01:54:16.480 | on and I say, "Here, this is the topic that I want to interview you on."

01:54:21.160 | And I wind up asking leading questions because I'm trying to drive them in a certain direction,

01:54:25.760 | but then they don't want to be driven.

01:54:28.040 | That causes frustration because now I'm not really just asking them questions.

01:54:32.520 | I'm driving them in a certain direction, and yet they don't do it as well as I would like

01:54:39.680 | them to.

01:54:40.880 | And so I've often found that instead of me interviewing somebody that I like their stuff,

01:54:44.440 | I should probably just do the summary.

01:54:46.600 | Because if I've consumed their 2,000 pages and I know their 12 points that I think are

01:54:50.320 | the most powerful and the rest of it is all same old, same old, then I should just probably

01:54:54.320 | say, "Here are the 12 things that I most appreciate about Joe Smith and what Joe has to say."

01:54:59.080 | So I've struggled sometimes with interviewing authors.

01:55:01.200 | I've struggled with interviewing people that I really know a lot about.

01:55:04.320 | I've also struggled with having things kind of prepared in advance.

01:55:08.640 | And what I have found to be the best practice for me is trying to embrace my curiosity and

01:55:15.040 | asking somebody certain questions.

01:55:17.860 | So for me, that's been effective, is that I'm curious enough and I have a wide enough

01:55:22.080 | background and enough subjects that I think what has been effective for me is just showing

01:55:26.320 | up and asking somebody an interesting person interesting questions.

01:55:31.400 | Doesn't always work.

01:55:32.800 | And one of the things I had to learn how to do is in the early days, I basically would

01:55:38.040 | play every interview.

01:55:39.640 | But now sometimes I get to an interview and I try to ask the person interesting questions

01:55:43.000 | and they're just not an interesting person.

01:55:45.000 | And I look and look and look and I try to figure out, because my conviction that everybody's

01:55:48.500 | interesting in some way, and I just can't figure out how to get them to talk about anything

01:55:52.320 | interesting and sometimes I just scrap it and say, "I'm sorry, this isn't going to work

01:55:55.600 | out."

01:55:56.800 | But your allegiance is to your audience, not to your interviewee.

01:56:01.840 | It's a privilege for them to be being interviewed on your show.

01:56:04.500 | You owe it to your audience.

01:56:05.500 | And so I have many interviews that I've just scrapped that just simply because I said,

01:56:09.880 | "I'm sorry, but you didn't do a good enough job of presenting something that would be

01:56:14.560 | a value to my audience."

01:56:16.320 | Not arrogance, but I've got to serve my audience.

01:56:18.320 | I'm not going to waste their time with a boring interview.

01:56:21.660 | So what I've learned is just to follow my interest and actually listen to the interviewer.

01:56:26.320 | Now one of the challenges, one of the things that I like as an interview listener is I

01:56:31.280 | like to hear the host that I like and that I enjoy interact with somebody on a topic

01:56:37.440 | from their point of view.

01:56:39.360 | When I'm listening to a host, I want to hear them interview with their perspective.

01:56:45.400 | After all, Radical Personal Fineness is Joshua's show.

01:56:49.880 | And so in general, I assume that you want to hear Joshua's opinion on something.

01:56:54.360 | Otherwise why are you listening to Joshua's show?

01:56:56.300 | Many times someone who's been on a specific show is interviewed everywhere and you can

01:57:01.120 | go and pick whatever flavor of interviewer you want to find.

01:57:04.400 | But if they're on Joshua's show, I figure they should interact with Joshua.

01:57:06.560 | This is a bit of a double-edged sword though, because in the modern journalistic culture,

01:57:13.880 | we're basically trained that an interviewer should just ask a question and shut up.

01:57:20.840 | And I actually personally, I don't like that.

01:57:23.920 | I think it's appropriate for a journalist to ask a question and shut up.

01:57:27.840 | That's what a journalist should do.

01:57:29.600 | But an opinion commentator, I don't necessarily want them to ask a question and shut up.

01:57:33.920 | I want them to ask a question, listen to the answer, and then engage on it and draw at

01:57:38.560 | that deeper level.

01:57:40.040 | But I frequently receive feedback from audience members that don't, or from listeners who've

01:57:43.960 | listened to an interview that don't like my approach to it.

01:57:46.920 | They don't want to hear as much from Joshua on a subject as they do from the interviewee.

01:57:50.800 | That's kind of a delicate balance because I believe there is a rightness to that instinct.

01:57:55.720 | When I'm having somebody on my show, I'm having them to learn from them.

01:57:59.200 | But I also believe that I want to, if I were listening to the show, I'd want to hear the

01:58:05.320 | host interact with something.

01:58:08.080 | But interviews are really tough to do well.

01:58:10.860 | And so what I have learned is just to kind of follow my curiosity and to think.

01:58:14.480 | So today, these days, as far as how I do interviews, I try to understand a little bit about somebody.

01:58:19.280 | But I will usually show up with a pen and a notebook, and I'll just listen carefully

01:58:26.220 | to what they say and then try to interact with them on the subject.

01:58:32.480 | And then I think of the questions usually while I'm doing the interview.

01:58:39.400 | Don't think it'll work for everybody, but that's what I have done so far.

01:58:44.000 | Finally, embrace the vulnerability as a podcaster.

01:58:48.080 | It's hard, but you will learn more than anybody else.

01:58:51.640 | I am the one who's gained the most from Radical Personal Finance because I've learned a lot,

01:58:57.040 | I've been forced to articulate things that I couldn't articulate before, and I have grown

01:59:02.560 | a lot.

01:59:03.700 | And so I think as a podcaster, you're going to gain the most from your show.

01:59:07.700 | So embrace that and embrace the fact that you're going to learn.

01:59:11.180 | I do think it's important that you protect your family, and I think it's important that

01:59:14.900 | you put some safeguards in place to cut the outside world off to protect your family and

01:59:20.020 | protect the intimacy of that safe place.

01:59:22.340 | The internet is not a safe place.

01:59:25.020 | And two final comments is this.

01:59:30.180 | I want you to podcast.

01:59:34.020 | I want you to write.

01:59:35.940 | Because my hope is that podcasting can advance our public conversation in a useful way.

01:59:41.940 | Podcasting has a unique benefit of not being 280 characters of sniping at one another.

01:59:48.180 | And unfortunately, in the US American culture, our culture is systematically we're tearing

01:59:52.820 | each other apart.

01:59:55.500 | And it's getting worse and worse.

01:59:58.380 | And very few people are listening.

02:00:02.380 | And unfortunately, I don't know of a way that that can be done other than through conversation.

02:00:06.700 | And the best format for that is usually podcasting, for people to interact with one another and

02:00:11.460 | to present ideas in a format that allows somebody to engage and to listen.

02:00:15.220 | It's not going to happen on TV.

02:00:18.100 | TV is much more about the short soundbite and the opposing views tearing each other

02:00:22.620 | off and the fight.

02:00:24.620 | It's not going to happen on YouTube because it's got to be about three minutes long of

02:00:27.540 | people sniping at one another.

02:00:29.900 | Can it happen in text?

02:00:31.780 | Some places.

02:00:32.780 | But podcasting is a really unique forum for us to have useful conversations about things

02:00:38.340 | that matter.

02:00:39.940 | And so my hope is that podcasting can advance our public conversation and our public dialogue

02:00:47.620 | in a really valuable way and allows people to listen to ideas in a non-threatening environment

02:00:53.140 | where they're not going to be if they go and want to listen to a political figure, they're

02:00:56.580 | not going to be pelted with paint or yelled at by some protester outside.

02:01:03.400 | If they want to go and listen to some controversial opinion, they don't have to worry that it's

02:01:09.380 | going to show up in their Facebook likes.

02:01:14.020 | So podcasting has the ability to do that.

02:01:15.940 | But in order for that to happen, we need more and more people producing useful, impactful

02:01:20.860 | content.

02:01:21.940 | And so my hope is that podcasting can be one of the ways that we can build and resurrect

02:01:27.820 | to a degree, but I try not to look too much to the past, so that we can build an ability

02:01:32.380 | to have a conversation.

02:01:34.780 | I fear that it won't, but I hope that it can.

02:01:39.180 | And I want to invite you to join that conversation.

02:01:43.620 | It's going to require growth on your part and it will be hard, but I want to invite

02:01:48.660 | you to join that conversation.

02:01:51.540 | My final point is this.

02:01:53.600 | If you've been podcasting and you're not experiencing success, don't be scared to

02:01:58.620 | scrap what you're doing and start over.

02:02:02.220 | Don't be scared to dump what you've done and rebrand.

02:02:06.740 | Because there is a point at which many people are really struggling and perhaps you've had

02:02:11.500 | a little bit of light in something I've said today and you realize, "Oh, here's the

02:02:15.500 | problem.

02:02:16.500 | Here's what's not going well."

02:02:18.180 | Don't be scared to dump it and start again.

02:02:21.500 | In today's world, especially in today's world of podcasting, you can go from zero

02:02:25.500 | to significant pretty quickly.

02:02:28.620 | There's value to having an established brand, but if you're not experiencing the success

02:02:32.840 | that you have, just quit, retool, and start over.

02:02:41.460 | Hope these thoughts and ideas have been useful to you.

02:02:43.780 | I'm not turning Radical Personal Finance into the podcast advice hour, but as a fellow

02:02:50.500 | frontline innovator in this space, these are some lessons that I have learned from 500

02:02:56.580 | episodes of Radical Personal Finance.

02:03:00.180 | This show is part of the Radical Life Media network of podcasts and resources.

02:03:05.820 | Find out more at radicallifemedia.com.

02:03:12.820 | See you next time.

RPF0505-50_Podcasting_Lessons