 Podcasters Roundtable round 127 podcast myths. Not 127 podcast myths, although maybe there's that many. It sort of feels that way. Although when we were putting this together, I felt like I hadn't found even half of the ones I've heard. So if you're in the chat, podcastersroundtable.com slash live or you're watching on YouTube later or listening to the audio only version, submit the myth that we don't cover. And we'll do this again because we're gonna get a few in here and then I'm sure there'll be plenty left for another round. So this is a little different, which is perfect for the roundtable. I always wanna do something different here. We're gonna break down some of the myths and then try to be as succinct as possible in confirming or busting those myths. So the goal really is to provide a resource here. So it'll be something you can link to when you hear people use these common podcasting myths. And hopefully it'll carry some weight because we have some level of expertise and hopefully trusted sources here on this round. All people we've seen before, all people who talk podcasting and been podcasting a long time. So check the description for the timestamped links which will allow you to easily just give the link to that specific myth and people will get right to the point and get their answer or you can give them the answer that you think is right if you agree with what we're doing. So let's meet the roundtable. Dave Jackson Coase, welcome back. Great to be here. Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting.com. Evo, welcome back. Hey, thank you very much. Ray Evo Terra from podcastpuntifications.com and apodcastlaunch.pro. Awesome, and Paul, welcome back. Everyone's welcome back. Well, thank you, thank you. Bob Paul Colligan, podcastpartnership.com. And when Daniel's not here, you don't qualify for a t-shirt because you're essentially filling that seat. Sorry, Paul. He's sorry, Paul. He's getting too- Womp, womp, womp, womp. Dave, hit that buzzer for us, Dave. Yeah. Oh yeah, that's gonna be fun. All right, let's stop wasting everyone's time for a podcast that works playing at radio. Let's go. All right, the first myth. These are not in order. This is the first myth pause for timestamp. Apple podcast ratings and reviews move your podcast up the charts. So I wanna know what you think Dave, true or false? That would be false. Evo. Falls. Paul. False. All right, we're all false. I think, quickly, I think Paul's gonna give us the, what's the truth? And, but quickly, do we need to say what charts, what we got charts? What are the charts when it comes to Apple podcast? Yeah, I'll jump in and take that. So we're talking about the, when you go on a podcast, Apple podcast and look at the top rated shows that would be one level of ratings that you see. You can also look at top rated episodes. Those are two different charts inside of iTunes. Top rated shows, which means podcasts and top rated episodes inside of Apple podcasts. And the myth is that ratings and reviews will boost your podcast up those charts. Paul. It's not true. It's absolutely goes into the category of myth. The fact of the matter is we, podcast partnership, we launch people to number one all the time. And the cool thing is, we launch people with a big launch day strategy that gets people done. And a lot of times we get them to number one even before any review that ever comes secondary can happen. Fact of the matter is this, the ratings for the last 12 years, and Apple can change this at any time, but the ratings for the last 12 years, A, have always been hidden like the Google formula or the KFC formula. But anybody who's looked at it, anybody who's actually tested it, about 90% of your score is how many people click subscribe in the last 24 hours. I will say that again, 90% of your score is how many people click subscribe in the last 24 hours. That's it. That's how the rankings go. Reviews are great for social proof and those types of things. But what matters is how many people click subscribe in the last 24 hours. I was lucky enough to have one client who made a mistake that it wasn't necessarily good for her, but Thursday was her launch, Friday was her partner launch. And although we got a lot more subscribes, although we got a lot more downloads, although we got a lot more things on day two, it did nothing for her score. I also worked with the guy who made the mistake of giving away free iPads in exchange for reviews on his podcast. And the guy got actually 10 times as many reviews as he got downloads. And if you don't think that Apple is tracking that, you don't know Apple that well. So absolutely false. The 90% of your score is how many people click subscribe in the last 24 hours. But the downloads that he got made up and it boosted him in the charts, right? Downloads count. Nope, nope. I actually think at this point, I don't know, he still might have more reviews than downloads total. It was a rather recent play. And again, who would have guessed people want free iPads? So why is this myth popular? Why do we hear this all the time? It's easy to do exchanges. It's easy to go into a Facebook group and say, I will do your review if you do my review. There are also a lot of podcast courses that have communities that review each other's stuff together. It's an easy thing to do. Subscribe is also fairly easy, but the numbers have to go up. And it's an interesting thing. I may or may not have been part of a test where the subscribe button was clicked 5,000 times without a single download. I'll say that again. The subscribe button was clicked on 5,000 different times without a single download. And we were able to get that episode up the charts as well. Not a single review, not a single star rating, just 5,000 clicks. Not a single download. We were able to get them at the top of the charts. That podcast, by the way, was only a test and it is no longer on the charts. Or in the directory at all. Eva, real quick, I think we're almost time. Yeah, I agree with everything that Paul said right here. I think the reason that people want it to be true is that we want the charts to be reflective of what's cool and what's happening, what do people actually love? But from Apple's point of view, Apple wants to make sure that you do, as a listener, get to see things that are cool and new. And cool and new doesn't mean it's got the biggest number of downloaders. That don't want it always to be Joe Roque sitting at the top of the chart. They want that to be influenced by an activity they can really count on or they think they can count on and they're wrong about this. And that's tracking new subscribers. Yeah, it's easy. It's easy to do. Subscribe, please, and it'll work magic. And it's like, that's not really how you grow an audience. Anything to grow an audience is gonna take a little bit of time. And actually, Ray, you have 40 seconds left if you'd like to wrap it up. Day, I wanna know what to do because people always use their call to action on this. What do podcasters do? If they now thought that doing this boosted their charts, what do they do? I have a page on my website. My website slash subscribe where I have every button under the sun, which is probably a mistake, and directions on how to use these buttons. How do people get ratings and reviews? Should they even bother? No, they shouldn't bother. At least not, I mean, not as much. Not anything forceful. It's great social proof. It's wonderful. But why concentrate it just on Apple? Put it everywhere. Put it on your website. Put it where people can discover you somewhere else, but no, it's not just Apple because it doesn't work the way you think it does. You get subscribed by asking for them. I'm having a good show. Sorry, Dave. That was good. We hit it. I am happy with that one. It's just so rude. I didn't know if you're gonna wait for a pause or you're just gonna buzz them out. Five minutes, man. I'm hitting the buzzer at five minutes. I like it. It's, Ray will not pay me if I don't buzz you on time. This is 100% true. 100% true. Good job, Dave. Your annual review is gonna be stellar. Excellent. All right, let's move on to another myth, not the second myth, another myth. This one, we hear it all the time. Or this is something that new podcasters are susceptible to. You can use copyrighted music as long as it's only a few seconds or you own it. Dave? That would be false. Okay, Evo, is this true in any form? Total myth. Wow, Paul. Myth. All right. Yeah, what you need is you need the songwriter, so that could be Prince. You need the song performer. That would be difficult. It would be hard, yeah. You need Sheena Easton then and you need the record label who I think was Warner Brothers at the time to give you permission to play. Why did I pick this example? Sugar Walls by Sheena Easton. Ah, we just dated ourselves to do it. There we go, yeah. But so you need the songwriter, the song performer and whoever owns the mechanical rights to say, sure, it's fine. And here to explain what a copyright is, Evo Terra. So the idea behind copyright is just that. All three of those people, they own the rights to make copies of those songs. Now you as a human being, you have the right to use that in a fair way. Some might call that the fair use doctrine, which is not a law, by the way. Fair use allows you to play that song in your car and make a copy of it if you want to have another copy. Those are fine things to do. What you can't do is the same thing that the NFL has told you every single time you've watched a football game. And that is you may not rebroadcast and guess what? Your podcast is a rebroadcast. Any portion, even a second, even a teeny tiny amount without the express written permission of the copyright holder because all rights are reserved. Yeah, and the whole fair use thing, that's the defense you use when you're in court. Exactly right. And they have much bigger lawyers than you do. Yeah, yeah. And court is not a cheap thing. So yeah, that's definitely false. I think we want it to be true because we all want to be DJs and play our favorite tunes and gosh, it's really not going to hurt them. But the bottom line is it's not yours. You do not own it. So why is this so popular? I'll jump in with this one. So I think, you know, guys like Brian Ibbott, for example, long, long time podcast of Brian Ibbott. Brian actually pays to use the songs that he does. He's got license to do this. He's working with BMI and ASCAP and the licensed agencies. He does this kind of work, right? I think that's one. People hear it happening on podcasts a lot. People also hear podcasters do it who don't know that they're breaking the law and haven't been caught and or prosecuted just yet. And then I think that there's some weird thought process that says, well, you know, I spent 11.99 on that CD or on that album somewhere. Clearly I own this and therefore I can reuse this which is simply not true. Yeah, the problem is the big wrinkle is you can download a podcast and now you have a copy of that song. If somebody's in your house and you play the CD, they walk out, it's in their head, but they don't have that song anymore. So that's really the big wrinkle between a podcast and radio is you end up with a physical copy of the file and yes, they could go in and cut out the rest of the podcast and just keep the song and nobody's probably going to do that. But nonetheless, they have a copy of it now and you don't have the rights to that copy or to distribute it that way. So don't do it. There are people, Paul, you brought up the poker podcast was getting soon. Yeah, I can't remember which way there was some poker podcast that was using copyrighted music and they got many cease and desists but they didn't cease, they didn't desist and just massive, massive lawsuit and I think they're out now. Yeah, Gregory in the chat room says what if we're not making any money? We didn't bring that up. It doesn't matter. If you're not making any money, that makes it even more complicated to pay for your lawyer. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, without the permission of the songwriter, the song performer and the record label in most cases, don't do it. Period. And why I say that new podcast just followed this because when you start, you're like, you do want to use that ACDC track and then you realize, I don't really need that. We're talking 10 seconds of bed music and it's better to be my own branded sound. I mean, it's just something you want to do in the beginning because you've got a microphone and music you love and it's just, you get over it. The chat room is loving this but they're getting free promotion. I get free promotion all the time at when I go to speak at events. I've yet to be at the grocery store. They do not take free promotion. I'm like, hey, let me have these groceries for free. I'll tell all my friends about your store and they're like, no, that's all right. We need money. How much can I get for this? How many bottles of milk can I get? Nothing? Yeah, nothing. Not even if you sign it. So it's, they appreciate it. They would appreciate it more if you bought their music and told your friends to go see them in concert but they're not gonna be... That was Evo's pass to Podfest, by the way. He was trying to sell it and then, no, not getting anything for it. Okay, cool. Well, there we go. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. I hit the wrong button. Oh my gosh, it's hitting me on fire. Is that copy right? Tell me how great that roadcaster is. It's pretty fun. I hope that wasn't copyrighted, Dave, because you just... No, that is... That would be funny. That would have been quite weird. You should have hit ACDC. Exactly. This changes a little bit, even with Spotify, but we won't go there. Maybe we can circle around after we get through our myths. All right, let's go for another myth. Also, check the chat and make sure we're not getting any myths coming in in real time. Dave will do that. He's all things. He definitely earns that paycheck. All right, let's go with myth, true or false. All podcast hosts are the same. Podcast media hosts, something like Libsyn, Blueberry, Podbean, all, there's so many out there. Just find the cheapest one and go. Dave, you work at Libsyn, but what would you say? I'm gonna say false. All right. I mean, everybody's gonna say, of course you are, you look to Libsyn, but false. Evo does not. I will back you up, Dave. That is definitely false. Paul, do you care? False as well. And let's not have Dave speak on this one. Let's have three of us. I'm sure the chatroom's going nuts, but yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, Paul. Thank you. Here's the thing for me. Tech has always been, I've been in tech longer than podcasting, and tech has always been a simple question of not if it goes down, but what's your plan when it does? That's simply all of tech. At the day we're recording this Facebook had a very bad day yesterday. And it happens. So basically ask your podcast host what happens when it breaks. And if they tell you it doesn't break, move on to the next host. Tech is tech. It's how you respond to the tech. It's what you do with the tech. There are podcast consultants that are $5 an hour. There are podcast consultants that are $5,000 an hour. Yes, all podcast consultants, but it's what they do with the tech. And so the host, yes, they might even all be on Amazon S3 at some point, but what happens when it breaks? What do you do about it? What's the plan? Who's on the beeper? Do they turn off the beeper when they go to bed? All that good stuff. Did I just say beeper? Do those even exist anymore? It's how the audience doesn't know what you're talking about. Yeah, exactly. Well, Paul takes the lead from being the oldest guy out of all old guys here in the chat room here. Eva, tell us why this is true. Yeah, I'm going to back up everything that Paul just said right there. It certainly is about failure, but it's also looking at the dedication. And so to me, that's step number one, make sure you are getting a dedicated podcast media hosting company. And that automatically cuts out a few of them. I won't mention them by name, but one of them kind of rhymes. Well, I'm not going to do that. Make sure that they're dedicated. Make sure that podcast hosting is what they do. And make sure that they're financially viable. Make sure that they've got some sort of a plan that might show that they've been in business for a while and they might be doing that going forward. Because it's not a matter of if, but when these cheap, oftentimes free, oftentimes podcasting as a side business because music is their most important thing. Those companies, it's not a matter of if, but when they do something different. And those places are the least likely to have a good exit program. Look, I know that if you pick with one of the big podcast hosting, I know just pick with what we'll use Libsyn, because I think a lot of us here host on Libsyn, we'll also use blueberry and you probably list a few other ones in there. They have good exit plans. In the event I want to leave Libsyn, or any of my clients want to leave Libsyn, it's a simple process. You want to leave blueberry, go somewhere else. It's a simple process. You just simply tell them you're leaving. They will help you redirect your feed. Everything works out nice and simply. And if your cheapo companies don't do that and maybe promise to do that, but they haven't done that previously, it's not a risk I'm willing to take. Amen. I think we covered it. Well, I mean, I guess we could go with the, is this popular? I don't know that I hear this a lot. Do you guys hear this a lot? I don't. I mean, I understand a download is a download, but even that. I mean, people want free. I mean, oftentimes. I hear it a lot. There are the anchors definitely one. There's a lot of people who still use the internet archive because that's probably not going away. Okay, yeah, but it's not. But I mean, look, I'm not technically illiterate. That site's a horrible thing to navigate. It wasn't designed to do the thing for kind of doing these. It makes it easy. We didn't even talk about the extensibility. What can a real professional podcast host do other than host a media file and generate an RSS feed? Are they looking towards the future? Are they enabling you to do things beyond just host a media file and just have an RSS feed? Also, if you're using archive.org that way, donate. Donate. Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Definitely worthy. It's not what they want you to do. It's not what it's for. So, the whole other conversation. All right, what do we do about this? I mean, we get reliable hosting. I don't, do we know how to do that? Does anyone have? Well, we also do the math. It seems there's the direct proportion between how much somebody spins on their MacBook Pro and their microphone set and how much they're willing to spend on the hosting. Everybody should get a piece of the action. And what we do about it is we just think logically. Is the reason this guy's paid and this guy's free is because nobody knows about the free option or is it something else? I recommend that what we do is simply do the math, maybe even do a little bit of homework. I think we can also educate. I mean, I think if you're a podcaster in the space and you're happy with your professional podcast hosting company and you talk to somebody else, let them know. Let them know to look, it's only 20 bucks a month. And I know that for everybody, can't always say 20 bucks a month. But you know, here's my take on that. Maybe this is just me coming from a privileged position. But if you've got the free time to invest hours and hours a week in making a podcast, free 20 bucks a month? I mean, really, honestly, it sounds a little weird to me. So, you know, go for the pros. You'll find more things that you're not thinking about. So make sure you encourage people to have good behavior as well. That's how I'm gonna kill them. All right. If you don't, I find that people come around on this because they figure out the limitation of free at some point. So if you just disregard this, it's just gonna be more of a headache. I mean, I would suggest it as to avoid that headache where you find out that free host has your RSS feed trapped and it's just a pain. You end up paying for it to transfer your files or something in the end, whatever. This is just, we think it's a myth. Start right, plan to be successful, you know, and- Or just wait 38 months to do a lot of business. Yes, you'll be forced to move. Okay, we got buzzed. So let's move on. Next myth. It just says consistency is key. And this is referring to producing content, I think. And yeah, could you be consistent one episode every month? But I think the common thing, the why it's, what's popular is you need to produce an episode every week at a minimum and don't miss. Consistency is key if you want to be quote unquote successful. Dave is out of myth. I'm gonna say it is, I'm gonna go, cause everybody's gonna say, of course, I talk about this all the time, but I'm gonna, we'll come back and I'll explain why. I'm gonna say, yeah, that's a myth. All right, Eva, what do you think? Yep, I'm also gonna say myth. I'm going with this as well. All right, all right. And this show I think proves that this is a myth. We're not weekly, we're bi-weekly and not always here and I see no effect in the numbers. It's just one show. Dave, what was the deal here? I would, if you'd said you have to deliver consistent value, ah, now I'm with you. Yeah, but the one I always hate to hear is, hey, it's Wednesday and we promise to show every Wednesday and hey, we're not sure what we're gonna talk about today. I eject immediately, cause that person's gonna waste 45 minutes of my time. So I would rather have a late show that's good than an on-time show that's, well, I don't know what we're gonna talk about today. And I do like, if you can be consistent, then you do become part of the routine. That is a great thing if you can do it, but it's gotta be consistent and also consistent value. How about this? Consistency is a benefit. Yeah. Yeah. And also go to iTunes and look up, there are lots of shows in the top 100 that haven't released a new episode in three or four years. You know, there's also that option. Right. And there's always the Dan Carlin effect. Right. And we talk about these extreme examples, but I think the most important point here, we did burnout on the last round, and it's that you can miss an episode. The OG podcasters like kudos to everyone. I mean, people just show up for every week for a job they're not getting paid for for years. And then they go away and they never produce another episode. One of those great shows that Paul's talking about in Apple podcast that might be ranked really well, that hasn't produced an episode in years, they may have just went away because they didn't keep up. I don't know, I just, I don't buy into the you can't ever miss, especially for something you're not getting paid for. Well, I mean, I came back from Florida, I got the flu. So I did one episode, I sounded horrible. And I said, Hey, I'm probably not gonna have another episode out till Monday. And it's usually Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And it's my audience, they like me. They went, Hey, get well soon. They didn't like, Oh, I'm gonna go subscribe to another show. So I get that whole thing. Sometimes I scratch my head on, if I miss one episode, my entire audience is going to cope. And I think that's part of, I think that's part of what is the truth here. It's not saying you can take every other week off. It is once in a while. Like I think consistency once a week, we've sort of put that out there as like the sweet spot. I think if you want to grow to your best, like Dave says, people build you into their schedule. I don't know, is it a myth that once a week is a good schedule? Like when we talk about consistency, what do we think in general is good for a podcast? I tell people, predictable always beats unpredictable. You know, if my customer is going to listen every Tuesday morning, I want to be there every Tuesday morning. You know, if I'm a big fan of back to work, that's one of my favorite podcasts. They always release on Tuesday. And I like to leave home, you know, I like to leave work for home early on Tuesdays because I know the show comes out that day. So consistency can be powerful. And, you know, I get it at that point. It's not a requirement, but it's definitely a benefit. You know, Evo can podcast because of a sultry voice. The rest of us need something else. Yeah, not this week because Evo, Evo, you do like an episode every day, four days a week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Yeah. And so you kind of, it seems like you would buy in consistency is key. I think it's, consistency is important, but, but, but for all the things we've talked about right here, I mean, to me, it's all about having a plan. You know, I went in with the idea of I'm going to do this every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, right? So that's the schedule I set. Is it key to the success of my show? No, it's just what I set for my show. And that's kind of topics I want to talk about there. But what I think is really interesting, and Paul started talking about it there, this concept of day parting, for those of us that come in the advertising world, day parting was really a big deal, when the ads actually run. We're starting to see more of that happening right now. Tech memes drive home. A podcast is available before 5 p.m. every day. So 5 p.m. Eastern time, so that you can catch that and listen to today's new tech as you drive home. That's interesting, that's day parting. Now, what happens if they skip a day? So they skip a day, it's not really a big deal. But if that change, right? And they start, well, Sunday's at 3 p.m. today, and then maybe over here, maybe next Friday, then that would be a problem. It all goes back to the sudden expectation with your audience. Try to meet that as much as you can, but everybody get, life's in the way. Life oftentimes gets in the way. Let it get in the way, but always have a good plan. So if you can be consistent, do, that's better than sporadic, I think. Here we go. See that fast. Not on tire. Yeah, perfect. All right, hitting the post, I think they call that. That's it. It's very nice. All right, let's get another one in here. There's an ideal length for a podcast. This podcast must be, we've here all the time, average commutes 24.7 minutes. Probably should have a 25-minute podcast. That's the exact length. It should be every podcast. Dave, do you agree? That is false. Are you sure? Evo? Positive. I'm sure that he said false. I also think it's false. Paul. False. All right. False. Okay, if it's busted, we need to know why, right? So what's the truth here? What, there's an ideal length for a podcast. Who wants to go? I'd love to take this one. Yeah. Podcast is an element of service. You serve your audience. Sometimes that audience can be served in five minutes. Sometimes that audience can be served in 15 minutes, 30 minutes an hour. And this is one of the things that we have that no other publishing media has. The guy who has to write the story about X, he gets 500 words. The evening news gets 30 minutes. CNN gets three minutes for the spot. We can actually serve and give them what we want, which is what's really powerful for us. So how long should it be, as long as it needs to be, and not one second more, but even not one second less? And then of course, people always ask me, what's the ideal length for a podcast? I usually ask them, what is the ideal length of a piece of string? Bingo. Or how long can you hold their attention? That's another way to put it. Wrapping this back into the previous myth, if you didn't know that one, check out the description. We've got all the myths listed there, say that fast. And the description, that would be the timestamping for YouTube. Will we be having that in the podcast as well? Yeah, it'll be on podcasertroundtable.com slash 127 or in the show notes right there in your app. You name it. All right, hey, I wanna know if there's not an ideal length, I can do a five minute episode and I can do a 20 minute episode and I can do a 15 minute episode. Consistency, is there anything to be said for that? If I only have five minutes this week and I have an hour and five minutes next week, I don't know, how's that gonna work? I don't really wanna disappoint and I don't wanna surprise my audience, right? And so I, and I've seen this before. I ran a network of some 700 podcasts and I always encouraged the producers on this network to make sure they tried to strive for a similar length because I had heard stories of people who say, ooh, I'm looking forward to listening to this thing on my way home and it's always 20 minutes long and I get in the car and I pop it in and this was before everybody had iPhones and other streaming devices. Now I said, pop that in for the commute home and it's five minutes. And then the audience has 15 minutes of nothing to listen to. Now I guess you could point back and say, well, that's their problem for not subscribing to enough shows. Okay, great, I understand that. But I think you probably should try and be, you wanna give your audience what they really expect. Now here's the deal, if you're the Dan Carlins of the world and they're used to hour plus long shows, knock yourself out, go to town. But I do my shows less than 10 minutes every single day. So, and I can also go less than if I only wanna do five minutes, I can do that. But I can't do 30 minutes, I can do 45 minutes because that would surprise and accept or un-possibly upset my audience. But that's the contract I've made with them. So I try to fulfill my obligation in this social contract we've made. Yeah, this show here typically runs 45 minutes. It really is an organic thing, it just seems to go there. Actually, I'm lying, it's probably goes down an hour, but it seems to hit a similar rhythm all the time. And I don't know, I feel like once you've established a rhythm for your show, it tends to follow that. But yeah, I mean, if you don't wanna extend that past what it needs to be. One simple nice option is just if you're gonna go outside of the room, let them know. You know, hey guys, normally we go 40 minutes, this conversation was so solid that it went an hour and a half and I didn't wanna chop it in two. So if you gotta listen over the next couple of days, that's great. Or vice versa, you know, normally when I interview somebody we've got 30 minutes, this person had one topic and I only wanted to hit one topic. So it's a seven minute episode. I don't wanna waste your time. You tell a podcast audience, I don't wanna waste your time, you'll have them for life. Yeah, no surprises, no surprises right there. So when you feel like you might surprise them, disclose. Let them know, yeah. Yeah, I did an episode once on should you have your own podcast network? And I just sat up and I was really starting to freak out about it. I said, you know what, I'm gonna cover this topic once. This is the episode on it, I'm just gonna cover everything. In my episodes, you're usually somewhere between 40 and 50 minutes. I think it went up to an hour and I'm like, I don't know that anybody's gonna crucify me for an extra 10 minutes. And I looked at the stats, I didn't lose people at 40 minutes. So I'm with you guys though. If you know what ahead of time, disclose it. I was wondering if Dave would buzz himself, but why do we think this is popular? I don't think he will, I think he's cheating. I don't think we hear this all the time. People want a checklist, we want a checklist. It should be this long, it should have this many hosts, it should be an air view, it should have this many reviews. We like checklists. Formula for success, how do I get there? So all I have to do is this and that and that and ask the same six questions and I will get tons of cash. And then Paradise can be yours, podcaster. Point of phrase, bah humbug, I love it. I think we're out on that one. No bug or necessary. No, not needed. All right, let's go to our next myth. This one is user submitted. Because it's user submitted because I think we hear it. You see it written in articles all the time. It's a very popular subject. And this is from at Clueless. Otherwise known as Andrew, thank you Andrew. Podcasting has a discovery problem. Oh boy. These are words we hear all the time. And there are apps right now trying to fix it. So Dave, is it true this podcasting have a discovery problem? This is another verbiage thing. I'm gonna say, I will say false, but there's something I would add to that. All right, good. Ivo, what say you? An asterisk, but strong false, but nonetheless there's an asterisk we have to come back to. I like it, Paul. I'm gonna go with an asterisk as well. Well good, so it's not, I mean it's good. There's, this is a myth for a reason then maybe because it seems to be a touchy thing. It sounds like there's some cases where it's not. Who wants to take the straight up answer? Can I, can I, can I, can I? I wanna start. I mean, you raise your hand, I guess you get to go. I wanna start, right? So here's the deal. Podcasting does not have a discovery problem. How do we know that? Well, thanks to the infinite dial report that just came out last week, 70% of the people of the population of America have said they have listened to at least one podcast ever. Okay, that's good. And 51% of the population, no, I'm sorry, 70% of people know what it is and 50% of the population, 51% of the population have listened at least one time. So that means podcasting, that thing that we do has no discovery problem. The world knows about podcasting. It's on television, it's in movies, it's on books, it's on podcasts, it's on everywhere. We understand there's this thing called podcasting and people are smart enough to know how do they go find podcasts? We've told them that, they're on your iPhone. They're the native app built into your iPhone. There's a native player built into Android and 200 million people have Spotify. Podcasting itself does not have a discovery problem. People have discovered podcasting. That's why it's a myth. And why I say, I think the problem is not finding a podcast. There's this thing. Have you ever heard of this thing called Google? No, what? You can actually Google like, let's say I want to learn about fly fishing. I could type in fly fishing podcast. It'll actually give me results. The problem is not finding a flywheel podcast or whatever, fly fishing. It's finding a good one. I think that's the biggest problem because sometimes what we find is just, and if you're having a hobby podcasting and you're talking to your buddies and you're having a good time, that's fine. But a lot of times those are based on inside jokes that nobody gets. And so that one person just found podcasting finds this show and they're like, I don't get it. So I don't think it's a, the technology is there now. Does Apple search leave some, like the fact, if I go back to, I think it was fly fishing podcast. The only way I could find it is I had to get rid of the word the and had to get rid of the word podcast because I was then competing with everyone else that had the or podcast in their title. But so Apple search could use some work, but it still works. Who else has an opinion? So what, I wanna know what, why do we keep seeing this written? Why does tech keep trying to solve this if it's not a problem? It puts the ownership on you. You've gotta go find your audience and let them know about your show. I think it's a different problem. Paul, do you wanna chime in here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also to quote Tom Webster, the internet's never been good to the middleman. Used to be we'd go to a bookstore and we'd ask the bookstore owner what's good and then make a recommendation. We'd go to the record store. What should I be listening to? They'd make a recommendation. We've lost that. We don't have that anymore. And as a result, it's hard to discover a good new book. It's hard to discover a good new TV show. Right now there's more TV that I wanna watch than there are hours in the day, but there's no taste maker. There's no person who tells us that. So the problem is, is it is hard to find a good podcast, but it's also hard to find a good music album. It's also hard to find a good movie. It's also hard to find a good restaurant. And we are at a point to where because the middleman's gone, it's now on us. Yeah, I think so. I think the problem is that it's, podcasting itself's not hard. There's no discovery problem. Your podcast has a discovery problem. And Dave talked about one of the reasons why that me. Maybe it sucks. Maybe that's the big discovery problem. But also as Paul talked about, we don't have a good way to surface quality content. I heard it in 2005. I remember I'm in an office in Manhattan. I was out, used to work for an agency, talking with a guy, just signed a whole bunch of books. And he said, I got a question for you about podcasting. Why do so many of them suck? And that was 2005, like so many of them suck. Of course, you were talking about me and my 40 friends anyhow. But now here it is, almost 700,000 in Sturgeon's Law still applies. That's 90% of everything sucks. It is difficult to find out what good quality content. I don't doubt that at all. Now the good news is we have some good people who are trying to fix that. We have the Sky Pills Berries of the world. We have the Will Williams of the world and lots of other people out there who are trying to be that curator. And that's a wonderful thing. Dave, all right. That was the five second. Hi, host this show. We're gonna extend this one a little bit because I am serious. But hey, Apple won't show my very good episode. My audience thinks it's amazing. I actually have like 3,000 downloads per episode, which is way up there in percentage. I'm in the like, you know, 80% out, whatever that is. And Apple just won't show it to anybody, right? That's why, that's what I mean. Only the shows that are gimlet and the top people who pay get front page of Apple. Like that's what I mean when I say that when I hear there's a discovery problem and I'm not some of you guys me, I'm speaking as the person who's complaining about discovery. They're saying that Apple needs to do more. They're not doing enough. And if only they would, then I would be found. I go back to the days of being a musician when people thought it was the bars. Like it's their job to bring in people. No, their job is to serve beer. Your job is to make music that makes people wanna dance so they get thirsty so they drink the beer. So that guy asked you back. Apple has put you in the middle of the world's biggest phone book and you're still complaining that it's not enough. That drives me bonkers. They're there, they give you a preset to your show. So it's like three clicks to subscribe. How much easier can they make it? It's like, come on, go find your audience, make a good product and say, hey, I'm right here. Click this button and you can get this stuff every day. No, it's not Apple's responsibility to grow your show. It's your job. Nobody likes that answer because it means you have to do this thing called work. Everybody wants the Netflix of podcast though. What is that about? I think that's different than a discovery issue. I think that's a servicing quality content issue. I think people, 700,000 podcasts means we have the tyranny of choice where there's way too much to rift through if everything is judged on a one by one. So that's why I'm not terrified of things like Luminary. They're gonna bring 40 podcasts out there that are super high quality for the 72% of the people in the population who still don't listen to podcasts on a regular basis. That just might be the gateway drug they need to get in there. I don't think that's discovery. I think that gets back to people who are looking for extreme quality content who are lazy on their end. They wanna know. Extreme quality, extreme quality content. They wanna push a button and all of it's great. That's what we can't offer that in the podcasting with our networks or with the apps that we have today. But maybe the new ones can, who knows. And nobody's looking for, the only people looking for the Netflix of podcasting are VCs who are sad that they got into this late. Yeah, they wanna make a video. There's nobody in the real world looking for the Netflix of podcasting. Why though? I mean, do we need, YouTube does a, I have to say YouTube does a great job. And then maybe this is just surfacing quality content. This could be a semantics issue where people say, hey, this is a discovery problem. Are you gonna go there? I'll go there. Yeah, let's go there. Yeah. Tell me about it. Finish it up. No, that's it. I mean, YouTube just, it's a walled garden, I understand. 70%, 70% of all YouTube downloads verified by YouTube come from the, if you watch this video, you'll also like this video. YouTube makes money by introducing your competitors to your audience. That's how they make their money. 70%. I don't like that idea at all. Once I've got my audience, I don't want Apple to promote it to other people. It's, YouTube is a mess. YouTube is a big problem. The people are flocking from YouTube to go to other places because of this model, let alone the whole, your three videos away from a conspiracy theory video recommended by the AI engine. YouTube is not the model we want. You don't think for someone who has a, who is starting, has the opportunity to surface because they have a relative video, like something that relates to a topic that's really popular and they're put in the sidebar and they're suggested video by YouTube? Absolutely, that can totally happen. But in the end, YouTube, see, Apple wins when they sell more iPhones. And if I provide somebody that sells more iPhones, Apple's gonna send people my direction. YouTube wins when they send my audience to my competition. Nice. We got Banjoo in the chat. He says, oh, I 100%, 100% disagree with this. So this one we'll have to bring back up. This is another round table. I like the topic and we'll get out of this myth because Dave says we're five minutes into the next myth. I'm gonna say we've already spent like 10 minutes on this one, so. We're bound to mine some gold here. We got more topics. So I'm gonna get to bring up Rick Cloud. Let's do the YouTube podcast one. I'm ready. Oh, for sure, 100%. I mean, we had a question I didn't include here, which is related that YouTube is not a good place for your podcast, but hold on to that. We're not gonna do that myth. I think we want to angle for that one anyways, so. Okay, let's go to another myth. You need 50,000 downloads per episode to get an advertiser. Evo, you have something to say about this. I think here's the problem is that I think this applies and this is different for different situations. So maybe specifically, I think I hear this when we're talking about third-party advertising. Like that company will get me ads. Well, you don't have 50,000 downloads. They're not gonna do it for you. I don't know. So I don't know if we can even call this myth or true. This one might be a problem. Dave, do you think it's. So clarify, is it a third-party or is it new? I guess it's just general because otherwise this is gonna not gonna be a myth, right? Cause it's very specific, right? So let's just take the idea as a whole. You need massive amounts of downloads to get an advertiser. That is false. All right, Evo. False? Paul. False. All right, so Evo, what do you wanna say on this? I don't know if I've already ruined it. No, you're on the right track right there. I mean, you talk about the third-party advertiser thing and I'm sure that Dave and Paul both wanna chime into that as well. But it's a math problem, people. So I have a client right now who has, she gets less than 100 downloads per episode of her show and she has a sponsor. We don't call her an advertiser. She has a sponsor. And that sponsor covers my costs and more, which means that I do increase my rates. But she gets this because her audience is super niche focused. It's targeted to a certain group of people who for that sponsor is a very, very valuable audience and they want to be a part of that, not so they can run an ad, but so that they have an understanding of that audience and so they get some brand awareness with that audience because they get special mentions and other considerations inside of the programming. They wouldn't do it if she had two listeners, obviously. So of course there is some minimum threshold. But if you're willing to hustle and you're willing to go out there and talk to people and drum up the business for it, there's probably someone, as long as you've got a focused audience that you can prove, then there is probably someone out there who would like to work with you to reach that audience. See, I'm gonna jump in. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. We want impact, not downloads. If I had a show that was only listened to by one person and that one person was Mark Zuckerberg, I could charge whatever I wanted for advertising. That's true. It's the simple truth. We want impact, not downloads. There are formulas to go to the bigger question. Everybody wants a formula. And the formulas don't work. The 50,000 is where the people will look at you without doing much homework, impact, not downloads. That's what you're looking for. Yeah, I think you're right. In this sponsorship model, you're right. And I thank you for clarifying it on that one. Clearly if those were 100 people that weren't getting anything, they wouldn't get that. Right, but impact. But I think it also for the 50, where the 50,000 number comes from? The 50,000 number comes from is that's when true advertising, the effortless advertising that Paul mentioned, to where when you get on a list somewhere and they say, oh, sure, that's worth a $25 CPM maybe. That's when it starts to become interesting from a business revenue perspective. Because 50 times 25 is a number that no one's going to say no to. No podcasters going to say no to. I disagree. I've said no to it. Really? Was it because it was the wrong deal? It would have been like advertising. More money elsewhere. $25 for CPM for the right audience is highway robbery. Clearly if you can make more than that, no one's saying you should take less money. They're not idiots. But the thing is there are some who have said, listen, I'll give you 30, I'll give you 35. I got a client who sells a product, makes $65,000 every time he sells it. Why would he give a $20 CPM just because he gets 50,000 downloads? Totally don't disagree with that. But if you're not negatively impacting your business and you're not making any revenue off of your show whatsoever, and somebody turns around and says, for every 1,000 of your 50,000 downloads, here's 25, you need some compelling reason to say no to that. So yes, so this was extending circumstances, but that's not taking advertising. Well, that's like saying other than death, what's your problem with Skydive? Oh, Jesus Christ. Talking about people who don't want to take advertising. But if you really are looking at making, using advertising as a revenue model for your business, then it doesn't make sense to even look at advertising as you start bringing down serious download numbers, somewhere in the 50,000 threshold level. Yeah, our people who start podcasts because they want to get ads, they want to make the money, and they think if I just produce a podcast, advertisers are going to show up. And, you know, this is all forms. Like you can go to third parties who offer you a $2 CPM, right? Because they're spreading their ad across 500 podcasts. And it's a matter of, do you want to take that? Not even a what? They're spreading their ad. Yeah, but a $2 CPM at 50, that's a hundred bucks. Which, you know, if you have 50,000 downloads. No, no, no, I'm not saying you don't get 50,000. People are taking those $2 CPMs and they're getting a hundred downloads. Right, but I'm just pretending. Like let's say that your show gets 50,000 downloads. If your show gets 50,000 downloads, and you're entertaining a $2 CPM offer, we should chat because that's just insane. I'm pretty sure you will be contacted if you're able to generate those kind of numbers. You've made it. If you hit that threshold, you've made it. All right, anything left on that one? Is there, I mean, there are a lot of caveats on that one. It feels like I mean, I have a show that gets far less than 50,000 downloads an episode and I walked into PodFest and the guy said, oh, Dave, I wanted to talk to you for the guy from Focusrite. He goes, I need to run another ad on your show. So what I have like multiple focus rights. I is that what is his name, Dave? We talked about consistency is key. Didn't we though? Yeah. OK, just so. So because his product fits my audience and I need to buzz myself, he came back. So there you go. Very cool. All right. Cool. Let's get another one in here. Let's skip. I'm going to skip a line. Hey, when you launch your podcast, launch with 10 episodes, you get more downloads. Dave, this seems to be something in your wheel. This is a pet peeve of mine. Yeah, the thing that bugs me about this the most. Wait, wait, true or false? I think I'm sorry. I'm sorry. As a host. Thank you, right? Fals. Yeah, evil. And so let me clarify the myth here. The myth is that when you launch your podcast, don't just you need to put multiple episodes into the feed from day one, because that's going to give you that many more downloads, right? Something like that. Or for whatever reason, this myth perpetuates. I don't know, evil. I'll give you a theory once we're done busting it. I'll give you. OK, good. Evo, I'll go with false, false. OK, and Paul, false. And do you guys are you guys saying that one episode in your in when you will quote unquote launch is fine? OK, it is a one episode. Yeah, the part that drove me nuts, like the second part of this myth was you need to launch. I've heard as many as 30 episodes, like you need to have that. And I was like, no, that's ridiculous, because that way when you subscribe, you'll get 30 downloads as in now. And this is what bugs me about. You can go to Apple iTunes or what and click Subscribe and Watch. You get one download, one. And people just because it sounded easy and it sounded like, wow, that's awesome. And nobody they trusted whoever was saying this stuff. I was like, it's so easy to prove wrong. Watch, subscribe, look, one download. So yeah, the other thing is I think people just think it downloads like once you're done with the first episode, the other one downloads. And I'm like, no, people have to mainly go back and do that. And yeah, so Paul or Evo, anybody else want to chime in on this? I want to have some fun here. I'm I took a client to number four in all of iTunes, number four, all of iTunes. She heard the 10 we fought, we fought, we fought. The compromise was three. OK, we launched with three episodes. Here's what's fun. You take all the downloads of episode number one, you add that to all the downloads of episode two, you multiply that by 10. It was still less than the amount of downloads of episode number three. Theory, here's why. I think the people who propagate this have how to podcast products. And these how to podcast products have a 60 day shelf life or 60 day money back guarantee. Nobody will get 10 episodes out in 60 days. So as a result, they automatically have built in the ability for them to pass the money back guarantee opportunity. That's where I think it comes from. Fire. Interesting. Interesting. And I remember this rumor from. Oh, five. I mean, this has been forever. Launch launch with a whole lot. And I'll be honest with you, I have not been. As good as I am today at dissecting this myth. I don't hate this myth. I'm going to tell you, but go ahead. I don't hate it anymore because I think it does a couple of things. One, to make sure that you can actually do this thing called podcast on a consistent basis, going back to our prior comment. But I think all the all bets were off when in this, I'm going to get some slack, some flak in the group from this. I think all bets were off when Apple started letting us put out that new special little trailer episode. Because now with the trailer episode, a well-produced professional trailer episode, not one that says podcast now. No, don't do that. They put together a trailer episode that says this is what the podcast I'm going to make is all about. Then you can already have your feed approved inside of Apple as well as all the other places. So now you can form a really smart launch party, as Paul mentioned early on on what it takes, actually, to really get your podcast bumped up the chart, knowing full well that your content is going to be available. So that's really what you should do. But I'm not really awesome, great, solid trailer episode. Mark it as such. And then if you want to produce 10 episodes ahead, knock yourself out. Guess what you don't have to do for the next 10 weeks. That's right. Scramble for an episode. I hate this one. I'm going to argue with Evo, which I very seldom do here. I have a client who I'll be very careful here. There are more than 40 episodes in the can. We practically have a year of episodes ready to launch. That's all. Here is the problem. Um, you can't fix anything until episode number 53, episode 54, 55 part of podcasting is serving your audience. You look at how much they listen to you, look at what they like, you look at the reviews, you change, you update, you modify, you serve the audience. You can't do that with a lot of stuff in the can. Right. Right. That's true. That's true. That is an exceptional point. There's no doubt about that. You want to be able to make adjustments. And that's the extreme example, man. That's the person who needs to just frick and launch the podcast. Like, give me a break. All right. Like, I mean, I do, I like having a few episodes. I'm going to get my first buzzer. I like having a few episodes because of that thing that we've talked about how someone finds you and they just want the next thing. It's nice to show up. And this only applies to the beginning, but your launch in theory is the biggest time. Launch in theory is the biggest time, excuse me, that, um, you're going to, to be pushing people constantly to say, Hey, there's something really cool here. And, you know, I like to have a few episodes where people like, I love it because I will, when I find something I love, yeah, give me the next one. And there's only one I'm going to subscribe. Don't get me wrong. It's not going to stop me. It's not going to stop me. I just would like it. So, you know, and producing a head. Don't put them all in the feed. Save them because we talked about consistency is key. You want to show up every week when you're throwing up on yourself after pod fest, like Dave in his t-shirt, his white t-shirt, it's the mess. Like, have one in the can that you, the can is a great saying, by the way, for that reference, have one in the can that you can stick in the feed when you're barfing on yourself. Right. When you have the flu. Can I have a re, I need, I need two minutes to talk about a real life happening to me personally. Situation that I think illustrates this, this really well. Do it. All right. Two minutes, two minutes, two minutes, two minutes time run. That is, yeah, so I, I, a partner and I here in Phoenix have been planning a podcast for, well, since I came back to America and we have, when we did this, he's busy, I'm busy. And so I said, yes, I'd love to do this show, but not until I can, you can prove to me, partner, that you're consistent with this. So we started the down the process of recording and we did two episodes together that were horrible. We did a third and fourth, the third and fourth episode that we thought were slightly better. Then we totally changed directions and now have three quite good, let's not say quite good, better than average shows, I think, that we have done together. We still have not launched this podcast. We have not launched this podcast and we will go back to those horrible episodes one and two. We will redo those in our new format and probably even three and four. We will redo bits and pieces of those to our own particular format. So you can learn before you launch, but that's not from the audience to Paul's point. We have not heard the answer. We could be totally wrong. Those first episodes might be exactly what they wanted, but the good news about this podcast is we don't care. This is what he's doing for fun. So we're OK with not getting that eye. But yeah, so I understand the need for have things in the can and practice and do all that thing. And occasionally I even practice what I preach. Yeah, I think you need just to launch because it's just for fun, so get out there. Yeah, eventually we will. Yeah, throw it out there. All right, hey, we've hit an hour. Doesn't mean we have to do an hour because, you know, length of podcast is based on what you have to say. We have more to say here. OK, we'd never stop if that was a key. It was just true. I saw the whole list of everything else that you have. You have like 97 myths here. I didn't write these. I think these are most you and Paul. So like we clearly have enough to keep going for another another round. But I one thing that I picked up out of the recent hot hot pod and true or false. That's a good place to get information. You can go there. We'll we'll skip it. Hot pod true and false is an entity or what they had to say. I'm just I wasn't even to go there. But you can choose. You could thumbs up, thumbs down, and only the people on video could see it. Paul, Nick, all right. Hey, Nick, hey, the round table got put in hot pod. Maybe that's why I'm bringing this up. Oh, shill, shill, shill. I'm on board now. But no, someone who watches the round table and I'm sorry. I don't remember who pointed me to this said the round. The the round we did last, which was on burnout made the hot. But I do not think that this. I think I checked the stats soon after it didn't show a rocket climb. There was no giant spike. But hey, I am happy for any new audience, any exposure I can get. And so that was very cool. Did not know we were on the radar. We are on the radar. So Nick, when you want to be a round table or we're here, dude, like, let's do this. All right. So from hot pod, this was a myth. And I think he's actually referring to something else. But this is the piece I pulled out of it because a lot of podcasters either feel this way or they're trying to accomplish this. There is a fair tale notion that if you have a good idea and you work hard at it, your hard earn pots of gold and rainbows will be waiting for you on the other side. So just start if you built Dave always says if you build it, they will come like you start this thing. And a lot of people, unfortunately, I think start a podcast because they are hoping to generate income out of it. Hopefully they love what they're doing. But even if you love it, even if it's good, it does not mean there is money there for you. I don't think. Do you think it's true or false? Dave, if your content is fantastic and you just stick at it, you show up every week, every day, whatever that really, but that schedule is that that's there a lot. You're evil and you show up Monday through Thursday. Will, does that mean that it'll pay off in terms of, you know, it's quit your day job type stuff, right Dave? See, this is a toughie. I will. This is, we want to, this isn't even barely included. I just want to get some. I will go, I will go false, I think. What do you think? Good, we'll get back to that. Evo, let's get one where we don't all think it's false. I mean, I'm going to have to say false, but again, I got to put an asterisk on that. So, yeah. Paul. False. Hmm, interesting. I mean. Because the reason I say this is because there are talented people that create good shows. Yeah. And for whatever reason, they're not promoting it enough or something like that, or maybe they're doing this and it's just not, you know, maybe it's the wrong time. Maybe it's, you know, you know, are we assuming this is a really good show? It's a great show to people who are interested in the topic. Yeah. OK, because I mean, there are a lot of people that work hard. I mean, I know people, they edit an episode. It's 20 minutes long and they edit it for eight hours. And I'm like, OK, there's something wrong there. But, you know, it's it like or not, we are in in some ways the entertainment business. And I know a ton of really talented musicians that are also waitresses and, you know, Uber drivers and things like that. And if they keep at it. So what I also see is sometimes you may not make a living from your podcast because most people don't. They make a living from a product that they're promoting with their podcast. But it also gives you opportunities and a network that might then lead to something that you would do, like, I don't know, get a job at Lipson or I don't know, get a job at the college I worked at. And I can't remember anymore. Or, you know, you get positions, you get opportunities and things like that. So that's where it's like, you know, the podcast, not sure, I don't know. What say you? Anyone? I would say bangs in the chat. Sometimes good shows fail and crap is what the public wants. I have frozen pizza in the fridge as an example. I'm going to quote my good friend, Mr. Corey Doctorow, who said many, many years ago that never conflate quality with commercial viability. They're two very different things, right? And there are some things that are really fantastic, but just simply don't see it. You could look back at my podcast. You know what I mean? The reason that my most popular show at the time totally came about when I was doing a show and we had a guest on who was a major advocate of the Save Enterprise campaign. Remember that very terrible Star Trek television show back in the 2006 timeframe? Enterprise. And I say it was terrible because it was. And Paramount was canceling it. They were canceling it. But we had him on our show, which actually a radio show at the time. And we had so many calls from that show because he was on it. And it took down the whole web server for the radio station. It was the most popular thing ever. And people said, you must do a show focused on this issue. And we said, well, we're not going to do that, but we will do a show focused on television. Previously we'd been doing one based on books. And my goodness, my goodness, that audience was five times what it was for the book focus show because it was a television based show and huge commercial success. And I hated every single minute I spent on that show because it wasn't what I wanted to do. So why stop doing it after a while? Because it just really wasn't for me. So yeah, I think you can find success, but it's just lucky sometimes. It all depends on the audience. It's not you. It's a relationship between you and the listener. So it's got to be what you both want. Does podcast offer anything new in terms of we are global, we are able to go niche, we are able to reach less people and are able to monetize in a way that maybe old media couldn't where they needed millions to get advertisers where we can go direct to audience. So if I just put the time in and my content is good and I reach the people, I mean, I don't know if I'd call it pot of gold, but there is something there to be made, right? Absolutely. Paul, I'd be huge. Paul, you shook your head. No, like it was a Pavlovian response. Well, it's just number, there are plenty of amazing restaurants that have gone out of business. There are plenty of book writers who never got their book published. There are plenty of bands who never got, you know, a contract or plenty of actors. What do you think that's missing there then? So I mean, It's a great class, man. Just deal with it. It's called math. Yeah. It's just math. That's such a deal. And podcasting doesn't change math. Math, math's still around. And it just has to be part of the equation for everyone. And podcasting doesn't change the game. Podcasting might help a little bit, like everything you said to the global audience and the cost of entry and that kind of stuff is true. But, you know, book publishing, it used to be, you know, when you self-published a book and nothing even knows anything about this, but if you self-published a book, you know, you used to have to buy 5,000 copies. Now we can do POD with Amazon. Like it's gotten easier everywhere, bands, same thing. You can pay 99, you know, you could pay what, 10 bucks now to get on the iTunes catalog. The middleman's elimination has made it very easy for anyone to create it to distribute, but it still doesn't mean that they're going to succeed because of math. True point. I hate to be down or let's not end with that, but, you know, game math. No, I mean, we'll help the person who says, okay, I'm not going to do it then. I mean, like, help the person, what do they need to overcome? The cool thing about math, all right, yeah, let's do that. Let's give everybody some inspiration there. The cool thing about the math is most people are going to do nothing. You know, most people are going to put up, one episode are going to do some crappy optimization and are going to call Dave and ask him where the checks are. So if you just do something, you're already probably in the top 10% of the game. You know, and if you listen to some of the people who are doing stuff and you study some of the people like Dave and Evo and these guys, you could probably bring yourself to 5% of the game. And, you know, if you go to, you know, if you're a writer, you can go to Amazon and you could search for the terms and find out who's the best and buy four or five books. You can do the Dave thing and you do Amazon Unlimited and actually download them all for nine bucks and just read them. The same math that lets you go to the entire world, lets you study the entire world and so you've got some better chances. There's a fantastic book called The E-Myth Revisited by a guy named Gerber. And E-Myth is, it's funny because it has nothing to do with electronics. E-Myth is the entrepreneur myth. That is the idea that anybody with a great pie, anybody with a great cake, anybody with a great song, a great band can excel. They can't, he gives a formula for using math to have a better chance. And I would recommend The E-Myth Revisited highly. I wanna say one thing about another quote that I heard from Dave Slusher. Anybody know Dave Slusher here? Oh man, the evil genius. Evil genius, I call a lot, I can't speak Spanish, no, what are they? So, you know, Dave has been podcasting since I think September of 2004, long time. Long time, Dave's been doing the game. And, you know, what, he had a, I remember a long time he was doing this rant about his audience size. And his question to the audience was, you know, what's the minimum size of the audience that you're willing to show up for and do this? Everything put on an episode. What is that number? You gotta have your number. And when you fall below that number, then you make a decision. And for a lot of people that do this, that they've got a number in their head which has nothing to do with reality, you know? It's nothing, there's nothing that they're gauging that reality by. But I think for Dave, you know, his number was one and it was him, right? I mean, it really makes a show for him first and foremost. And so that was his attitude. Now, not everybody does that. Some say, well, if I can't get at least 5,000 people, I'm like, okay, if that's really and truly your number, then hold on to it. Then hold on to it and give yourself a year, see if you can build a number. But yeah, but again, what happens? I want you to do the thought exercise. What happens if you drop to one below that? Are you really gonna quit? Are you really going to quit? And if so, okay. Knock yourself out. But if not, then maybe you're doing this thing for other reasons. I remember there was a guy that ran a marathon and the way he did it is he just kept, every day he would go to the next telephone pole. He'd be running. Yeah. And he'd get it and go to the next telephone pole. And well, you know, in George Robb, said he started off and he thought he would do 100 episodes. And then after that, he'd go, well, let's see, when I get to 100, I'll see if I want to keep doing it. Well, he just did, he just did episode 600. 600 for you. And he's had so many opportunities come his way with speaking and traveling over the place and doing things like that. So I think it does boil down to know your why. So, you know, if you're, if you start off, cause you want to have fun with your friends and, you know, just remember, you know, whatever, and that's your thing. Okay. Well, six months later, you're not happy. Why? Because, well, we're not making any money. Wait, hold on. Why are you doing this again? I want to have fun with my friends. Okay. Are you doing that? Yes. Yes. So you're having fun. Okay. What happened? Oh, I just saw these other guys. That goes back to Ray, back to last week's episode. Quit comparing yourself to others. It's not fair. Cause you think they're doing all this stuff and they're just like you, well, they're not. They have a team of 19. They have, you know, whatever. So, what was your original myth? I'm completely upset. I don't know. This is, this is not, you know, if you just work hard. Yeah. Here's my final thought on that. Hustle, hustle, hustle. Hustle, that is a, it's a one word myth, man. Right. Hustle, hustle, but off. But also with a hung hustle is this. Podcasts tend to get the audience they deserve. Well, close it up right there. Close it up. Just finish the show right now. Like roll credits. Quote fade to black. We're out. All right. I always said the equation value multiplied the amount of smart marketing equals total number of downloads. Dave, I think you need to buzz yourself. And we're out of math. God damn it. We're done. Hey, why don't you look? Anyone who's listened this far clearly has an interest in one of what someone is saying, someone on this panel. So let everyone know where we can find more thoughts like these, because I know everyone here has them in another format, another audio, a podcast. Go crazy. Maybe YouTube. Dave, thank you for joining us. Thanks for doing your job. I don't know why I'm thanking you. I pay you so much. I'm starting not to be able to afford this. I'm not making money from this. And I'm just paying. As money goes out, money doesn't come in. Hey, I have a question. Can Dave and I both see who has the most disgusting cough right now? I think that'd be good. We're going to pass and just leave it as an idea. I just hocked up a good one. I was so glad you dumped in. We're going to let you guys go back to your respective corners and deal with your bodily stuff by yourselves. Yes. Thanks for having me as always. Always great time with great friends. Find me at schoolofpodcasting.com. Tonight is kind of special day. Evo, thanks for working the mute button, buddy. Sure, man. I got to do what I got to do. Anybody who listened to my episode a few days ago, episode 134, when I was doing focusing on your audience, got the sickest Evo has ever been behind a microphone. I got so many comments out of it. Because, dude, are you going to the hospital yet? You sound like you're about to die. And I kind of felt like I was. But I did it because consistency is key. Oh, wait. That was a death puzzle, wasn't it? All right. Cool. Clearly, quality doesn't matter because you just hacked up a lung on the mic. Not at all. But, yeah, you can go to podcastpontifications.com and enjoy that, episode 134, or anything else where I sound significantly better. I catch one every few weeks on YouTube. But then, that then, because of discovery, YouTube just rolls the next one. And I got stuck in a horrible Evo loop the other day where it just kept going. And, you know, my wife's world. Evo has to hear himself every day. All right. Hey, thanks, man. Paul, you know, I wish I could get you closer to a t-shirt, but I just, I can't help you, bud. Hey, the rule is the rules, man. What can I do? The rule is the rule. I can't help you. Yeah. Speaking of Dave's thing about using podcasts with the word the podcast or report in it, you can find more from me at thepodcastreport.com. Very cool. You might be the one. I enjoy those. Each of these podcasts exist in my podcast. That's not true. I told you. I consume Evo on YouTube, so that is what it is. He probably, he gets his listens. Don't worry about it. Doesn't care. We were, Paul, we are going to approach this topic again, this YouTube podcast thing. We are going to approach it. We found Internet Gold and we'll revisit. So that might not be 128, but return. PodcastersRoundTable.com will do round 28 fortnightly. I just got to get a fortnight keyword in there. I figured that's still relevant, right? So maybe we can tag for that now. Are you saying if someone wants to be around for the podcast and YouTube question, they should probably subscribe to the show. So when that episode comes out, it'll be sent to the podcatcher of their device without delay spam-free. I am pretty sure that if you are listening still, you are subscribed. But yes, if you have not, smash that subscribe button, buddy, smash it. And we'll see you next time. PodcastsRoundTable.com slash guest. If you want to join us on a roundtable, see you next time. Wave goodbye. We're out. If he finds the stop.